n a sack. If you listened you could just hear the soft
swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles. The sun was sinking.

"And so you go back to the office on Monday, do you, Jonathan?" asked
Linda.

"On Monday the cage door opens and clangs to upon the victim for another
eleven months and a week," answered Jonathan.

Linda swung a little. "It must be awful," she said slowly.

"Would ye have me laugh, my fair sister? Would ye have me weep?"

Linda was so accustomed to Jonathan's way of talking that she paid no
attention to it.

"I suppose," she said vaguely, "one gets used to it. One gets used to
anything."

"Does one? Hum!" The "Hum" was so deep it seemed to boom from underneath
the ground. "I wonder how it's done," brooded Jonathan; "I've never
managed it."

Looking at him as he lay there, Linda thought again how attractive he
was. It was strange to think that he was only an ordinary clerk, that
Stanley earned twice as much money as he. What was the matter with
Jonathan? He had no ambition; she supposed that was it. And yet one felt
he was gifted, exceptional. He was passionately fond of music; every
spare penny he had went on books. He was always full of new ideas,
schemes, plans. But nothing came of it all. The new fire blazed in
Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained, described
and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had fallen in and
there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with a look like
hunger in his black eyes. At these times he exaggerated his absurd
manner of speaking, and he sang in church--he was the leader of the
choir--with such fearful dramatic intensity that the meanest hymn put on
an unholy splendour.

"It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the
office on Monday," said Jonathan, "as it always has done and always will
do. To spend all the best years of one's life sitting on a stool from
nine to five, scratching in somebody's ledger! It's a queer use to make
of one's... one and only life, isn't it? Or do I fondly dream?" He
rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. "Tell me, what is the
difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner. The only
difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody's ever
going to let me out. That's a more intolerable situation than the other.
For if I'd been--pushed in, against my will--kicking, even--once the
door was locked, or at any rate in five yea