The Descent of Man

I

When Professor Linyard came back from his holiday in the Maine woods
the air of rejuvenation he brought with him was due less to the
influences of the climate than to the companionship he had enjoyed
on his travels. To Mrs. Linyard's observant eye he had appeared to
set out alone; but an invisible traveller had in fact accompanied
him, and if his heart beat high it was simply at the pitch of his
adventure: for the Professor had eloped with an idea.

No one who has not tried the experiment can divine its exhilaration.
Professor Linyard would not have changed places with any hero of
romance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. The most fascinating
female is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up
a good deal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into
the future; whereas an idea can accommodate itself to a single
molecule of the brain or expand to the circumference of the horizon.
The Professor's companion had to the utmost this quality of
adaptability. As the express train whirled him away from the
somewhat inelastic circle of Mrs. Linyard's affections, his idea
seemed to be sitting opposite him, and their eyes met every moment
or two in a glance of joyous complicity; yet when a friend of the
family presently joined him and began to talk about college matters,
the idea slipped out of sight in a flash, and the Professor would
have had no difficulty in proving that he was alone.

But if, from the outset, he found his idea the most agreeable of
fellow-travellers, it was only in the aromatic solitude of the woods
that he tasted the full savour of his adventure. There, during the
long cool August days, lying full length on the pine-needles and
gazing up into the sky, he would meet the eyes of his companion
bending over him like a nearer heaven. And what eyes they
were!--clear yet unfathomable, bubbling with inexhaustible laughter,
yet drawing their freshness and sparkle from the central depths of
thought! To a man who for twenty years had faced an eye reflecting
the obvious with perfect accuracy, these escapes into the
inscrutable had always been peculiarly inviting; but hitherto the
Professor's mental infidelities had been restricted by an unbroken
and relentless domesticity. Now, for the first time since his
marriage, chance had given him six weeks to himself, and he was
coming home with his lungs full of liberty.

It must not be inferred that the Professor's domestic relations were
defective: they were in fact so complete that it was almost
impossible to get away from them. It is the happy husbands who are
really in bondage; the little rift within the lute is often a
passage to freedom. Marriage had given the Professor exactly what he
had