He walked with her through the darkness of the lime-tree avenue, refusing to stay to supper. Why could he not then and there in that solitary dark place catch her in his arms and force her to wake up, to leave off being a choir-boy, a pew-opener? Or shake her. One or the other. At that moment he did not much care which. But he could not. He told himself that why he could not was because she would be so limitlessly surprised, and that for all her surprise he would be no nearer, not an inch nearer to whatever it was in her he was now so eager to reach. She might even--indeed he felt certain she would--thank him profusely for such a further mark of esteem, for being, as she would say, so very kind. "Are you tired?" she asked, peering up at his face in the scented gloom, for it was the time of the flowering of the lime-trees, on his suddenly stopping and saying good night. "No." "You're feeling quite well?" "Perfectly." "Then," she said, "why go away?" "I'm in slack water. I have no talk. I'd bore you. Good night." The next day, having found the morning quite intolerably long, he approached her directly they were alone on the difficult subject of husbands. "It's no good, Ingeborg," he said, "yes, I'm going to call you Ingeborg--we're fellow pilgrims you and I along this rocky ridiculousness called life, and we'll soon be dead, and so, my dear, let us be friends for just this little while--" "Oh, but of course, of course--" "It's no good, you know, barring certain very obvious subjects because of that idiotic prepossession one has for what is known as good taste. The only really living thing is bad taste. All the preliminaries to real union, union of any sort, mind or body, consist in the chucking away of reticences and cautions and proprieties, and each single preliminary is in bad taste. If we're going to be friends we'll have to go in for that. Bad taste. Execrable taste. Now--" He stopped. "Well?" She was looking at him in a kind of alarm. This was the longest speech by far he had made, and she could not imagine what was coming at the end. He was busy as usual flinging her on to paper--the number of his studies of her was by this time something monstrous--and was glancing at her swiftly and professionally at every sentence. "About husbands. Tell me what you think about husbands." "About husbands? But _they're_ not bad taste," she said. "Tell me what you think about them." "Well, they're people one is very fond of," she said, with her hands clasped round her knees. "Oh. You find that?" "Yes. Don't you?" "I never had one." "The advantages of being a woman! They're people one is fond of once and for all. They rescue one from Redchester. They're good and kind. They help one roll up great balls of common memories, and all the memories grow somehow into tender things at last. And they're patient. Even when they've found out how tiresome one is they still go on being patient. And--one loves them." "And--they love you?"