elp him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, "I'll bet
the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like
an old professional!"

All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his
wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent.

III

There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take
his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was
nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He
saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul,
in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he
actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his
business, and "Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off
there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from
now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!"

He went, after lengthy meditations.

With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going
to seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie
prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had
to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even
to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than
he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, "God bless
you, baby!" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet
spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a
steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he
looked back at the last suburb of Zenith.

All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and
daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise
in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He
particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he
could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with
his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to
this dull decency!

Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the
forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not?
He COULD do it! There'd be enough money at home for the family to live
on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would
look out for them. Honestly! Why NOT? Really LIVE--

He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed
th