His hand trembled as he hung up the receiver, and he was weak from the organ which had stirred him.  His eyes were shining like an angel’s, and his face was transfigured, purged of all earthly dross, and pure and holy.

“Makin’ dates outside, eh?” his brother-in-law sneered.  “You know what that means.  You’ll be in the police court yet.”

But Martin could not come down from the height.  Not even the bestiality of the allusion could bring him back to earth.  Anger and hurt were beneath him.  He had seen a great vision and was as a god, and he could feel only profound and awful pity for this maggot of a man.  He did not look at him, and though his eyes passed over him, he did not see him; and as in a dream he passed out of the room to dress.  It was not until he had reached his own room and was tying his necktie that he became aware of a sound that lingered unpleasantly in his ears.  On investigating this sound he identified it as the final snort of Bernard Higginbotham, which somehow had not penetrated to his brain before.

As Ruth’s front door closed behind them and he came down the steps with her, he found himself greatly perturbed.  It was not unalloyed bliss, taking her to the lecture.  He did not know what he ought to do.  He had seen, on the streets, with persons of her class, that the women took the men’s arms.  But then, again, he had seen them when they didn’t; and he wondered if it was only in the evening that arms were taken, or only between husbands and wives and relatives.

Just before he reached the sidewalk, he remembered Minnie.  Minnie had always been a stickler.  She had called him down the second time she walked out with him, because he had gone along on the inside, and she had laid the law down to him that a gentleman always walked on the outside—­when he was with a lady.  And Minnie had made a practice of kicking his heels, whenever they crossed from one side of the street to the other, to remind him to get over on the outside.  He wondered where she had got that item of etiquette, and whether it had filtered down from above and was all right.

It wouldn’t do any harm to try it, he decided, by the time they had reached the sidewalk; and he swung behind Ruth and took up his station on the outside.  Then the other problem presented itself.  Should he offer her his arm?  He had never offered anybody his arm in his life.  The girls he had known never took the fellows’ arms.  For the first several times they walked freely, side by side, and after that it was arms around the waists, and heads against the fellows’ shoulders where the streets were unlighted.  But this was different.  She wasn’t that kind of a girl.  He must do something.