When Henry had rendered up his ticket and recovered his garments, he found Geraldine in the hall, and a servant asking her if she wanted a four-wheeler or a hansom. He was not quite sure whether she had descended¹ before him or after him: things were rather misty².  
'I am going your way,' he said. 'Can't I see you home?'
 
He was going her way: the idea of going her way had occurred to him suddenly as a beautiful idea.
 
Instead of replying, she looked at him. She looked at him sadly out of the white shawl which enveloped³ her head and her golden hair, and nodded.
 
There was a four-wheeler at the kerb, and they entered it and sat down side by side in that restricted compartment⁴, and the fat old driver, with his red face popping up out of a barrel consisting of scores of overcoats and aprons⁵, drove off. It was very foggy, but one could see the lamp-posts.
 
Geraldine coughed.
 
'These fogs are simply awful, aren't they?' he remarked.
 
She made no answer.
 
'It isn't often they begin as early as this,' he proceeded; 'I suppose it means a bad winter.'
 
But she made no answer.
 
And then a sort of throb⁶ communicated itself to him, and then another, and then he heard a smothered⁷ sound. This magnificent creature, this independent, experienced, strong-minded, superior, dazzling creature was crying—was, indeed, sobbing⁸. And cabs are so small, and she was so close. Pleasure may be so keen as to be agonizing⁹: Henry discovered this profound truth in that moment. In that moment he learnt more about women than he had learnt during the whole of his previous life. He knew that her sobbing had some connection with A Question of Cubits, but he could not exactly determine the connection.
 
 
'What's the matter?' the blundering fool inquired nervously¹⁰. 'You aren't well.'
 
'I'm so—so ashamed,' she stammered¹¹ out, when she had patted her eyes with a fragment of lace.
 
'Why? What of?'
 
'I introduced her to you. It's my fault.'
 
'But what's your fault?'
 
'This horrible thing that happened.'
 
She sobbed¹² again frequently.
 
'Oh, that was nothing!' said Henry kindly¹³. 'You mustn't think about it.'
 
'You don't know how I feel,' she managed to tell him.
 
'I wish you'd forget it,' he urged her. 'He didn't mean to be rude.'
 
'It isn't so much his rudeness,' she wept. 'It's—anyone saying a thing—like that—about your book. You don't know how I feel.'
 
'Oh, come!' Henry enjoined¹⁵ her. 'What's my book, anyhow?'
 
'It's yours,' she said, and began to cry gently, resignedly, femininely.
 
It had grown dark. The cab had plunged¹⁶ into an opaque¹⁷ sea of blackest fog. No sound could be heard save the footfalls of the horse, which was now walking very slowly. They were cut off absolutely from the rest of the universe. There was no such thing as society, the state, traditions, etiquette¹⁸; nothing existed, ever had existed, or ever would exist, except themselves, twain, in that lost four-wheeler.
 
Henry had a box of matches in his overcoat pocket. He struck one, illuminating¹⁹ their tiny chamber²⁰, and he saw her face once more, as though after long years. And there were little black marks round her eyes, due to her tears and the fog and the fragment of lace. And those little black marks appeared to him to be the most delicious, enchanting²¹, and wonderful little black marks that the mind of man could possibly conceive. And there was an exquisite²², timid, confiding²³, surrendering look in her eyes, which said: 'I'm only a weak, foolish, fanciful woman, and you are a big, strong, wise, great man; my one merit is that I know how great, how chivalrous²⁴, you are!' And mixed up with the timidity in that look there was something else—something that made him almost shudder²⁵. All this by the light of one match....
 
Good-bye world! Good-bye mother! Good-bye Aunt Annie! Good-bye the natural course of events! Good-bye correctness, prudence²⁶, precedents²⁷! Good-bye all! Good-bye everything! He dropped the match and kissed her.
 
And his knowledge of women was still further increased.
 
Oh, the unique ecstasy²⁸ of such propinquity!
 
Eternity²⁹ set in. And in eternity one does not light matches....
 
 
 
The next exterior³⁰ phenomenon was a blinding flash through the wind............