at . . . not Marise!
This is all nonsense. This is something left over from sleep and a bad
dream. I must wake up. I must wake up and find it not true."

He lay perfectly still, his fists clenched tight, perspiration standing
out on his rigid body. Then sternly he forced his mind to go forward
again, step by step.

"I suppose it's possible. Other women have. There's a lot in her that
must be starved here. I may not be enough for her. She was so young
then. She has grown so greatly. What right have I to try to hold her if
she is tired of it all, needs something else?"

He hesitated, shrinking back as from fire, from the answer he knew he
must give. At last he forced it out, "I haven't any right. I don't want
her to stay if she wants to go. I want Marise. But even more I want her
to be happy."

The thought, with all its implications, terrified him like a
death-sentence, but he repeated it grimly, pressing it home fiercely, "I
want her to be happy."

He realized where this thought would lead him, and in a panic wildly
fought against going on. He had tried to hold himself resolute and
steady, but he was nothing now save a flame of resentment. "Happy! She
won't be happy that way! She can't love that man! She's being carried
away by that damnable sensibility of hers. It would be the most hideous,
insane mistake. What am I thinking of . . . all these _words_! What I must
do is to keep her from ruining her life."

On the heels of this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a soft-spoken
crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was so sensitive, so
impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless when her emotions were
aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he who knew her better than
anyone else, to protect her against herself? Wasn't he deceiving himself
by fantastic notions? It would be so easy to act the ardent, passionate
young lover again . . . but when had he ever "acted" anything for Marise!
No matter, no matter, this was life or death; what was a lie when life
and death hung in the balance? He could play on her devotion to the
children, throw all the weight of his personality, work on her emotions.
That was what people did to gain their point. Everybody did it. And he
could win if he did. He could hold her.

* * * * *

Like the solemn tolling of a great bell there rang, through all this
hurried, despairing clutching at the endurable and lesser, a call to the
great and in