Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/241

229 We have to put this relationship upon a Higher Plane.”

His mind stopped short at that.

Presently his voice sounded out of the depths of his heart. “God! How I loathe the Higher Plane!...

“God has put me into this Higher Plane business like some poor little kid who has to wear irons on its legs.”

“I want her.... Do you hear, Martin? I want her.”

As if by a lightning flash he saw his car with himself and Miss Grammont—Miss Seyffert had probably fallen out—traversing Europe and Asia in headlong flight. To a sunlit beach in the South Seas....

His thoughts presently resumed as though these unmannerly and fantastic interruptions had not occurred.

“We have to carry the whole affair on to a Higher Plane—and keep it there. We two love one another—that has to be admitted now. (I ought never to have touched her. I ought never to have thought of touching her.) But we two are too high, our aims and work and obligations are too high for any ordinary love making. That sort of thing would embarrass us, would spoil everything.

“Spoil everything,” he repeated, rather like a small boy who learns an unpalatable lesson.