who worked as hard and complained as little as salmon fishermen.

He talked with Stubby in the den until late in the afternoon, and then
walked downtown. When he reached the Granada he loafed uneasily in the
billiard room until dinner. His mind persistently turned from material
considerations of boats and gear and the season's prospects to dwell
upon Betty Gower. This wayward questing of his mind irritated him. But
he could not help it. Whenever he met her, even if it were only a brief,
casual contact, for hours afterward he could not drive her out of his
mind. And he was making a conscious effort to do that. It was a matter
of sheer self-defense. Only when he shut Betty resolutely out of the
chambers of his brain could he be free of that hungry longing for her.
While he suffered from that vain longing there was neither peace nor
content in his life; he could get no satisfaction out of working or
planning or anything that he undertook.

That would wear off, he assured himself. But he did not always have
complete confidence in this assurance. He was aware of a tenacity of
impressions and emotions and ideas, once they took hold of him. Old
Donald MacRae had been afflicted with just such characteristics, he
remembered. It must be in the blood, that stubborn constancy to either
an affection or a purpose. And in him these two things were at war,
pulling him powerfully in opposite directions, making him unhappy.

Sitting deep in a leather chair, watching the white and red balls roll
and click on the green cloth, MacRae recalled one of the maxims of
Hafiz:

"'Two things greater than all things are
And one is Love and the other is War.'"