“I don’t know,” said Howard; “there seems to me to be something rather stuffy about it:  why can’t we just live?  Women do; there is no fuss made about their work, and their need to express themselves; yet they do it even more than men, and they do it without priggishness.  My work at Cambridge is just what everyone else is doing, and if I don’t do it, there will be half a dozen men capable of doing it and glad to do it.  The great men of the world don’t talk about the importance of their work:  they just do whatever comes to hand—­it’s only the second-rate men who say that their talents haven’t full scope.  Do you remember poor Chambers, who was at lunch the other day?  He told me that he had migrated from a town parish to a country parish, and that he missed the organisation so much.  ’There seems nothing to organise down in the country!’ he said.  ’Now in my town parish there was the whole machine to keep going—­I enjoyed that, and I don’t feel I am giving effect to the best part of myself.’  That seemed to me such a pompous line, and I felt that I didn’t want to be like that.  One’s work! how little it matters!  No one is indispensable—­the disappearance of one man just gives another his chance.”

“Yes, of course, it is rather hard to draw the line,” said Maud, “and I think it is a pity to be solemn about it; but it seems to me so simple in this case.  You can do the work—­they want you back—­ there is no reason why you should not go back.”

“Perhaps it is mere laziness,” said Howard, “but I feel as if I wanted a different sort of life now, a quieter life; and yet I know that there is a snare about that.  I rather mistrust the people who say they must get time to think out things.  It’s like the old definition of metaphysics—­the science of muddling oneself systematically.  I don’t think one can act by reason; one must act by instinct, and reason just prevents one’s making a fool of oneself.”

“I believe the time for the other life will come quite naturally later,” said Maud.  “At your age, you have got to do things.  Of course it’s the same with women in a way, but marriage is their obvious career, and the pity is that there don’t seem enough husbands to go round.  I can sit in my corner and placidly survey the overstocked market now!”

Howard got up and leaned against the chimneypiece, surveying his wife with delight.  “Ah, child,” he said, “I was lucky to come in when I did.  I shiver at the thought that if I had arrived a little later there would have been ‘no talk of thee and me’ as Omar says.  You would have been a devoted wife, and I should have been a hopeless bachelor!”

“It’s unthinkable,” said Maud, “it’s horrible even to speculate about such things—­a mere question of proximity!  Well, it can’t be mended now; and the result is that I not only drive you back to work, but you have to carry me back as well, like Sindbad and the old man of the sea.”

“Yes, it’s just like that!” said Howard.