It was a frenzy that now I can hardly realize. I can understand it
intellectually. You see, in those days I was interested in people
with "hearts." There was Florence, there was Edward
Ashburnham--or, perhaps, it was Leonora that I was more
interested in. I don't mean in the way of love. But, you see, we
were both of the. same profession--at any rate as I saw it. And the
profession was that of keeping heart patients alive.

You have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become.
Just as the blacksmith says: "By hammer and hand all Art doth
stand," just as the baker thinks that all the solar system revolves
around his morning delivery of rolls, as the postmaster-general
believes that he alone is the preserver of society--and surely,
surely, these delusions are necessary to keep us going--so did I
and, as I believed, Leonora, imagine that the whole world ought to
be arranged so as to ensure the keeping alive of heart patients.
You have no idea how engrossing such a profession may
become--how imbecile, in view of that engrossment, appear the
ways of princes, of republics, of municipalities. A rough bit of
road beneath the motor tyres, a couple of succeeding
"thank'ee-marms" with their quick jolts would be enough to set me
grumbling to Leonora against the Prince or the Grand Duke or the
Free City through whose territory we might be passing. I would
grumble like a stockbroker whose conversations over the
telephone are incommoded by the ringing of bells from a city
church. I would talk about medieval survivals, about the taxes
being surely high enough. The point, by the way, about the
missing of the connections of the Calais boat trains at Brussels was
that the shortest possible sea journey is frequently of great
importance to sufferers from the heart. Now, on the Continent,