But Marjorie fluctuated more than he did.
There were times when the expedition for which he was now preparing
rapidly and methodically seemed to her the most adventurously-beautiful
thing that had ever come to her, and times when it seemed the maddest
and most hopeless of eccentricities. There were times when she had
devastating premonitions of filth, hunger, strain and fatigue, damp and
cold, when her whole being recoiled from the project, when she could
even think of staying secure in London and letting him go alone. She
developed complicated anxieties for the children; she found reasons for
further inquiries, for delay. "Why not," she suggested, "wait a year?"
"No," he said, "I won't. I mean we are to do this, and do it now, and
nothing but sheer physical inability to do it will prevent my carrying
it out.... And you? Of course you are to come. I can't drag you
shrieking all the way to Labrador; short of that I'm going to _make_ you
come with me."
She sat and looked up at him with dark lights in her upturned eyes, and
a little added warmth in her cheek. "You've never forced my will like
this before," she said, in a low voice. "Never."
He was too intent upon his own resolve to heed her tones.
"It hasn't seemed necessary somehow," he said, considering her
statement. "Now it does."
"This is something final," she said.
"It is final."
She found an old familiar phrasing running through her head, as she sat
crouched together, looking up at his rather gaunt, very intent face, the
speech of another woman echoing to her across a vast space of years:
"Whither thou goest I will go----"
"In Labrador," he began....