George could not say.

His senses were washed aswim by this torrent of beauty poured
unexpected through eyes to brain. It surged the centres to violent
commotion, one jostling another in a whirlpool of conflict. Out of the
tumult alarm flashed down the wires to his heart--set it banging;
flashed in wild message to his tongue--locked it.

The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He
loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a
moment the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down
the street, a murderer with bloody hand, a liar with false words
suddenly pumped.

A moment later the driver is calm and aghast at the ruin he has
contrived. Why, before God, did he pull the leg lever?--the arm
lever?--the tongue lever? In an instant's action he has accomplished
calamity; where sunshine laughed now darkness heaps; where the
prospect smiled disaster now comes rolling up in thunder.

These are your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes
temporarily idiot--stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out
some stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have
fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an
intolerable fellow.

"Oh, what must you think of me?"

That pause followed while the driver in George's brain stood gapingly
inactive; and then came laughter to him like a draught of champagne.