Positively he seems aghast at me.

"Do you mean elope with her?"

"It seems a most suitable case."

For a space he is silent, and we go on through the trees. A Utopian
tram-car passes and I see his face, poor bitted wretch! looking
pinched and scared in its trailing glow of light.

"That's all very well in a novel," he says. "But how could I go back
to my laboratory, mixed classes with young ladies, you know, after a
thing like that? How could we live and where could we live? We might
have a house in London, but who would call upon us? ... Besides, you
don't know her. She is not the sort of woman.... Don't think I'm
timid or conventional. Don't think I don't feel.... Feel! _You_
don't know what it is to feel in a case of this sort...."

He halts and then flies out viciously: "Ugh! There are times when I
could strangle him with my hands."

Which is nonsense.

He flings out his lean botanising hands in an impotent gesture.

"My dear Man!" I say, and say no more.

For a moment I forget we are in Utopia altogether.