le of trying to understand. There was John. All John
would see was an elderly and not over-robust man deliberately throwing
away the fruits of year-long toil--and for what? For the privilege of,
in some remote spot, as a stranger and unknown, having his way to make
all over again; of being free to shoulder once more the risks and
hazards the undertaking involved. And little though he cared for John
or any one else's opinion, Mahony could not help feeling a trifle sore,
in advance, at the ridicule of which he might be the object, at the
zanyish figure he was going to be obliged to cut.

But a fig for what people thought of him! Once away from here he would,
he thanked God, never see any of them again. No, it was Mary who was
the real stumbling-block, the opponent he most feared. Had he been less
attached to her, the thing would have been easier; as it was, he shrank
from hurting her. And hurt and confuse her he must. He knew Mary as
well--nay, better than he knew his own unreckonable self. For Mary was
not a creature of moods, did not change her mental envelope a dozen
times a day. And just his precise knowledge of her told him that he
would never get her to see eye to eye with him. Her clear, serene
outlook was attuned to the plain and the practical; she would discover
a thousand drawbacks to his scheme, but nary a one of the incorporeal
benefits he dreamed of reaping from it. There was his handling of money
for one thing: she had come, he was aware, to regard him as incurably
extravagant; and it would be no easy task to convince her that he could
learn again to fit his expenses to a light purse. She had a woman's
instinctive distrust, too, of leaving the beaten track. Another point
made him still more dubious. Mary's whole heart and happiness were
bound up in this place where she had spent the flower-years of her
life: who knew if she would thrive as well on other soil? He found it
intolerable to think that she might have to pay for his want of
stability.--Yes, reduced to its essentials, it came to mean the pitting
of one soul's welfare against that of another; was a toss-up between
his happiness and hers. One of them would have to yield. Who would
suffer more by doing so--he or she? He believed that a sacrifice on his
part would make the wreck of his life complete. On hers--well, thanks
to her doughty habit of finding good everywhere, there was a chance of
her coming out unscathed.

Here was his case in a nutshell.