brick, of house, of street, of person—of dress, and feature, and expression—stuns and exhausts me. I stand at Richard''s side and keep my arm in his. If he should leave me—! A whistle is blown and men, in dark suits—ordinary men, gentlemen—pass by us, running-
We take our place in the hackney at last, and are jerked out of the terminus into choked and filthy roads. Richard feels me tense. ''Are you startled, by the streets?'' he says. ''We must pass through worse, I''m afraid. What did you expect? This is the city, where respectable men live side by side with squalor. Don''t mind it. Don''t mind it at all. We are going to your new home.''
''To our house,'' I say. I think: There, with the doors and windows shut, I will grow calm. I will bathe, I will rest, I will sleep.
''To our house,'' he answers. And he studies me a moment longer, then reaches across me. ''Here, if the sight troubles you—'' He pulls down the blind.
And so once again we sit, and sway to the motion of a coach, in a kind of twilight; but we are pressed about, this time, by all the roar of London. I do not see it when we go about the park. I do not see what route the driver takes, at all: perhaps I should not know it, if I did, though I have studied maps of the city, and know the placing of the Thames. I cannot say, when we stop, how long we have driven for—so preoccupied am I with the desperate stir of my senses and heart. Be bold, I am thinking. God damn you, Maud! You have longed for this. You have given up Sue, you have given up everything, for this. Be bold!