ing out, bound for China.

Good God! What an astonishing onslaught that had been! How from some
great, fierce, unguessed appetite, the longing for wandering, lawless
freedom had burst up! Marise, the children, their safe, snug
middle-class life, how they had seemed only so many drag-anchors to cut
himself loose from and make out to the open sea! If the steamer had been
still close enough to the dock so that he could have jumped aboard, how
he would have leaped! He might have been one of those men who
disappeared mysteriously, from out a prosperous and happy life, and are
never heard of again. But it hadn't been close enough. The green oily
water widened between them; and he had gone back with a burning heart to
that deadly little country hotel.

Well, had he buried it and forced himself to think no more about it? No.
Not on your life he hadn't. He'd stood up to himself. He'd asked himself
what the hell was the matter, and he'd gone after it, as any grown man
would. It hadn't been fun. He remembered that the sweat had run down his
face as though he'd been handling planks in the lumber-yard in
midsummer.

And what had he found? He'd found that he'd never got over the jolt it
had given him, there on that aimless youthful trip through Italy, with
China and the Eastern seas before him, to fall in love and have all
those plans for wandering cut off by the need for a safe, stable life.

Then he'd gone on. He'd asked himself, if that's so, _then_ what? He
hadn't pulled any of the moralizing stern-duty stuff; he knew Marise
would rather die than have him doing for her something he hated, out of
stern duty. It was an insult, anyhow, unless it was a positively
helpless cripple in question, to do things for people out of duty only.
And to mix what folks called "duty" up with love, that was the devil. So
he hadn't.

That was the sort of thing Marise had meant, so long ago, when they were
first engaged, that was the sort of thing she had asked him never to do.
He'd promised he never would, and this wasn't the first time the promise
had held him straight to what was, after all, the only decent course
with a woman like Marise, as strong as she was fine. Anything else would
be treating her like a child, or a dependent, as he'd hate to have her
treat him, or anybody treat him.

So this time he'd asked himself right out, what he really wanted and
needed in life, and he'd been ready, honestly ready, to take any answer
he got, and dr