Explore "A Transaction in Hearts" by Edgar Saltus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The drive from Mrs. Manhattan's to the rectory was always a short one, but on this occasion it was brief indeed. The noise of the wheels brought to Gonfallon the echo of Miss Raritan's song; and as in a constant resummons of the same refrain it beset and pursued him, forcing him whether he willed it or not into a lunatic duo with the vehicle in which he sat, a disorganized lamppost caught and detained the obsession, and he fell to wondering whether electricity was preferable to gas.
Then at once the query departed of itself. Jones was standing opposite, relating less to him than to an audience behind his back some endless story of nothing at all. And that story, to which five minutes before he had accorded only the show of interest which civility exacts, suddenly became poignant and fraught with interest.