girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some
day--some remote day probably--become his wife. He was not in love with
Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was
not in love with him--that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be
called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who
read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon. But he was aware also
that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of
four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past
experience his mother's heart had invariably triumphed over his less
intrepid resolves. When Janet had said that the war had "spoiled" this
carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her
usual accuracy. If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have
married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would
have begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of
tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous
ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the
compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of
the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for
romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would
have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James
River. But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had
sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness
could not suffice for his needs. He craved something larger, something
wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived.
In that first year after his return he had felt that antiquated
traditions were closing about him and shutting out the air, just as he
had felt at times that the fine old walls of the house were pressing
together over his head. At such moments the sense of suffocation, of
smothering for lack of space in which to breathe, had driven him like a
hunted creature out into the streets. It was not long before he