“Oh, I know what you mean, Wolf!” cried Christie. “That’s why I’ve loved reading those books in our shop⁠ ⁠… especially Leibnitz and Hegel. I’ve never been able to follow their real meaning, I suppose; but all the same it’s been a great satisfaction to me to read them.”

“I don’t think it’s pedantry or priggishness in either of us,” Wolf continued. “I think we’re thrilled by the weight of history that lies behind each one of these phrases. It isn’t just the word itself, or just its immediate meaning. It’s a long, trailing margin of human sensations, life by life, century by century, that gives us this peculiar thrill. Don’t you think so, Christie?”

“What I was going to say,” the girl murmured, “was that since I’ve known you I haven’t cared so much for these philosophical books.”

“Nonsense!” he muttered. But once more there floated over him an undulating tide of happiness that made the mere tone of her voice seem to him like those fluctuating wine-dark shadows on the deep sea, that suggest the presence of cool-swaying fields of submerged seaweeds lying beneath the water.