is sexual desire to that fever-heat which they
called impassioned living. As if there were not a thousand other forms
of deep fulfilment in life. People who thought that, how narrow and
cramped they seemed, and blinded to the bigness and variety of life! But
then, of course, everybody hadn't had under his eyes a creature
genuinely rich and various, like Marise, and hadn't seen how all
children feasted on her charm like bees on honey, and how old people
adored her, and how, just by being herself, she enriched and civilized
every life that touched her, and made every place she lived in a home
for the human spirit. And Heaven knew she was, with all that, the real
emotional inspiration of a man's life, a man who loved her a thousand
times more than in his ignorant and passionate youth.

* * * * *

Come, this wasn't work. He might as well have stayed out with the family
and helped with the dishes. This was being like Eugenia Mills, who
always somehow had something to do upstairs when there was any work to
do downstairs. Eugenia was a woman who somehow managed to stand from
under life, anyhow, had been the most successful draft-dodger he knew.
No call had been urgent enough to get _her_ to the recruiting station to
shoulder her share of what everybody had to do. But what did she get out
of her successful shirking? She was in plain process of drying up and
blowing away.

He turned to his desk and drew out the papers which had the figures and
estimates on that popple. He would see if the Warner woodlot had as much
popple and basswood on it as they thought. It would, of course, be
easiest to get it off that lot, if there were enough of it to fill the
order for casters. The Hemmingway lot and the Dornwood lot oughtn't to
be lumbered except in winter, with snow for the sleds. But you could
haul straight downhill from the Warner lot, even on wheels, using the
back lane in the Eagle Rocks woods. There was a period of close
attention to his papers, when he heard nothing at all of what went on in
the rooms next his study. His mind was working with the rapid, trained
exactitude which was a delight to him, with a sure, firm grasp on the
whole problem in all its complicated parts.

Finally he nodded with satisfaction, pushed the papers away, and lighted
his pipe, contentedly. He had it by the tail.

He leaned back in his chair, drawing on the newly lighted pipe and
ruminating again. He thought to himse