discovered that certain persons brought this feeling of oppression more
quickly than others, that the presence of Margaret or of his parents
stifled him, while Corinna made him feel as if a window had been
suddenly flung open. The doctors, of course, had talked in scientific
terms of diseased nerves and a specialist whom his mother had called in
on one occasion had tried first to probe into the secrets of his infancy
and afterward to analyse his symptoms away. But the war, among other
lessons, had taught him that one must not take either one's sensations
or scientific opinion too seriously, and he had contrived at last to
turn the whole thing into the kind of family joke that his father could
understand. Outwardly he took up his life as before; if the penalty of
depression was psychoanalysis, it was worth while to pretend at least to
be gay. Yet beneath the surface there was, he told himself, a profound
revulsion from everything that he had once enjoyed and loved--an apathy
of soul which made him a moving shadow in a universe of stark
unrealities. He knew that he was sinking deeper and deeper into this
morass of indifference; he realized, at times vividly, that his only
hope was in change, in a complete break with the past and a complete
plunge into the future. His reason told him this, and yet, though he
longed passionately to let himself go--to make the wild dash for
freedom--his disabled will, the nervous indecision from which he
suffered, prevented both his liberation and his recovery. There were
hours of grayness when he told himself that he had neither the fortitude
to endure the old nor the energy to embrace the new. In his nature, as
in his environment, two opposing spirits were struggling: the realistic
spirit which saw things as they were and the romantic spirit which saw
things as they ought to be. It was the immemorial battle, brought by
circumstances to a crisis, between the race and the individual, between
tradition and adventure, between philosophy and experience, between age
and youth.