Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/159

Rh The thing took the doctor’s breath away. For the moment he could say nothing. He stared over his tea-cup dour-faced.

An objection formulated itself very slowly. “But that dicky,” he whispered.

His whisper went unnoted. Sir Richmond was talking of the completeness of Salisbury. From the very beginning it had been a cathedral city; it was essentially and purely that. The church at its best, in the full tide of its mediaeval ascendancy, had called it into being. He was making some extremely loose and inaccurate generalizations about the buildings and ruins each age had left for posterity, and Miss Grammont was countering with equally unsatisfactory qualifications. “Our age will leave the ruins of hotels,” said Sir Richmond. “Railway arches and hotels.”

“Baths and aqueducts,” Miss Grammont compared. “Rome of the Empire comes nearest to it....”

As soon as tea was over, Dr. Martineau realized, they meant to walk round and about Salisbury. He foresaw that walk with the utmost clearness. In front and keeping just a little beyond the range of his intervention, Sir Richmond would go with Miss Grammont; he himself and Miss Seyffert would bring up the rear. “If I do,” he muttered, “I’ll be damned!” an unusually strong expression for him.

“You said——?” asked Miss Seyffert.