" John Knightley only was in mute astonishment.—That a man who might have
spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London, should set off again, and
walk half a mile to another man's house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time,
of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to
strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o'clock in the morning, and
might now have been still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had
been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone!—Such a man, to quit the tranquillity
and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold sleety April day rush out
again into the world!—Could he by a touch of his finger have instantly taken back his wife,
there would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather than break up
the party. John Knightley looked at him with amazement, then shrugged his shoulders, and
said, "I could not have believed it even of him. "

― Jane Austen , Emma