Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/266

254 in which to deal with a puncture or any such misadventure.

They crested the Mendips above Shepton Mallet, ran through Tilchester and Ilminster into the lovely hill country about Up-Ottery and so to Honiton and the broad level road to Exeter. Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont were in a state of happy gravity; they sat contentedly side by side, talking very little. They had already made their arrangements for writing to one another. There was to be no stream of love-letters or protestations. That might prove a mutual torment. Their love was to be implicit. They were to write at intervals about political matters and their common interests, and to keep each other informed of their movements about the world.

“We shall be working together,” she said, speaking suddenly out of a train of thought she had been following, “we shall be closer together than many a couple who have never spent a day apart for twenty years.”

Then presently she said: “In the New Age all lovers will have to be accustomed to meeting and parting. We women will not be tied very much by domestic needs. Unless we see fit to have children. We shall be going about our business like men; we shall have world-wide businesses—many of us—just as men will....

“It will be a world full of lovers’ meetings.