"I feel now that all our lives now, Marjorie----We have come to a
crisis. I feel that now----_now_ is the time. Either we shall save
ourselves now or we shall never save ourselves. It is as if something
had gathered and accumulated and could wait no longer. If we do not
seize this opportunity----Then our lives will go on as they have gone
on, will become more and more a matter of small excitements and
elaborate comforts and distraction...."
He stopped this halting speech and then broke out again.
"Oh! why _should_ the life of every day conquer us? Why should
generation after generation of men have these fine beginnings, these
splendid dreams of youth, attempt so much, achieve so much and then,
then become--_this!_ Look at this room, this litter of little
satisfactions! Look at your pretty books there, a hundred minds you have
pecked at, bright things of the spirit that attracted you as jewels
attract a jackdaw. Look at the glass and silver, and that silk from
China! And we are in the full tide of our years, Marjorie. Now is the
very crown and best of our lives. And this is what we do, we sample, we
accumulate. For this we loved, for this we hoped. Do you remember when
we were young--that life seemed so splendid--it was intolerable we
should ever die?... The splendid dream! The intimations of greatness!...
The miserable failure!"
He raised clenched fists. "I won't stand it, Marjorie. I won't endure
it. Somehow, in some way, I will get out of this life--and you with me.
I have been brooding upon this and brooding, but now I know...."
"But how?" asked Marjorie, with her bare arms about her knees, staring
into the fire. "_How?_"
"We must get out of its constant interruptions, its incessant vivid,
petty appeals...."
"We might go away--to Switzerland."
"We _went_ to Switzerland. Didn't we agree--it was our second honeymoon.
It isn't a honeymoon we need. No, we'll have to go further than that."
A sudden light broke upon Marjorie's mind. She realized he had a plan.
She lifted a fire-lit face to him and looked at him with steady eyes and
asked----
"Where?"
"Ever so much further."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"You do. You've planned something."
"I don't know, Marjorie. At least--I haven't made up my mind. Where it
is very lonely. Cold and remote. Away from all this----" His mind
stopped short, and he ended with a cry: "Oh! God! how I want to get out
of all this!"
He sat down in her arm-chair, and bowed his face on his hands.
Then abruptly he stood up and went out of the room.