No discoveries he might make about them would surprise
him.--And once more the old impotent anger with himself broke forth,
that he should ever have let himself take root in such detestable
surroundings.
Why not shake the dust of the country off his feet?--From this direct
attack he recoiled, casting up his hands as if against the evil eye.
What next? But exclaim as he might, now that the idea had put on words,
it was by no means so simple to fend it off as when it had been a mere
vague humming at the back of his mind. It seized him; swept his brain
bare of other thoughts. He began to look worn. And never more so than
when he imagined himself taking the bull by the horns and asking Mary's
approval of his wild-goose scheme. He could picture her face, when she
heard that he planned throwing up his fine position and decamping on
nothing a year. The vision was a cold douche to his folly. No, no! it
would not do. You could not accustom a woman to ease and luxury and
then, when you felt YOU had had enough and would welcome a return to
Spartan simplicity, to an austere clarity of living, expect her to be
prepared, at the word, to step back into poverty. One was bound . . .
bound . . . and by just those silken threads which, in premarital days,
had seemed sheerly desirable. He wondered now what it would be like to
stand free as the wind, answerable only to himself. The bare thought of
it filled him as with the rushing of wings.
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