Some time after this, he was pulled back from those critical and glorious hours by the consciousness, gradually forcing itself on him on two discomforts; his pipe had gone out and Eugenia was at it again.  He scratched a match and listened in spite of himself to that smooth liquid voice.  She was still harping on psycho-analysis.  Wasn’t she just the kind of woman for whom that would have an irresistible fascination!  He gathered that Marise was objecting to it, just as sweepingly as Eugenia was approving.  How women did hate half-tones and reasonable qualifications!

“I’m a gardener,” Marise was saying, “and I know a thing or two about natural processes.  The thing to do with a manure pile is not to paw it over and over, but to put it safely away in the dark, underground, and never bother your head about it again except to watch the beauty and vitality of the flowers and grains that spring from the earth it has fertilized.”

Neale as he held the lifted match over his pipe, shook his head.  That was all very well, put picturesquely as Marise always put things; but you couldn’t knock an idea on the head just with an apt metaphor.  There was a great deal more to be said about it, even if fool half-baked faddists like Eugenia did make it ridiculous.  In the first place it was nothing so new.  Everybody who had ever encountered a crisis in his life and conquered it, had . . . why, he himself . . .

He felt his heart beat faster, and before he knew what was coming, he felt a great, heart-quickening gust of fresh salt air blow over him, and felt himself far from the book-tainted stagnant air of that indoor room.  He forgot to light his pipe and sat motionless, holding the burning match till it flared up at the end and scorched his fingers.  Then he dropped it with a startled oath, and looked quickly around him.

In that instant he had lived over again the moment in Nova Scotia when he had gone down to the harbor just as the battered little tramp steamer was pulling out, bound for China.

Good God!  What an astonishing onslaught that had been!  How from some great, fierce, unguessed appetite, the longing for wandering, lawless freedom had burst up!  Marise, the children, their safe, snug middle-class life, how they had seemed only so many drag-anchors to cut himself loose from and make out to the open sea!  If the steamer had been still close enough to the dock so that he could have jumped aboard, how he would have leaped!  He might have been one of those men who disappeared mysteriously, from out a prosperous and happy life, and are never heard of again.  But it hadn’t been close enough.  The green oily water widened between them; and he had gone back with a burning heart to that deadly little country hotel.

Well, had he buried it and forced himself to think no more about it?  No.  Not on your life he hadn’t.  He’d stood up to himself.  He’d asked himself what the hell was the matter, and he’d gone after it, as any grown man would.  It hadn’t been fun.  He remembered that the sweat had run down his face as though he’d been handling planks in the lumber-yard in midsummer.