So I got little help from him in this matter. I never really settled it. More or less it settled itself. There were forces at work which were stronger than my scruples. Sometimes it seemed horribly wrong to me and I decided not to go back to Cromley. But as the days passed I began to think more and more of Ann. Sooner or later I telephoned. I did not surrender without many struggles. But gradually she became an accepted fact in my life and with the years an increasingly valued fact. I am not proud of the moral indecisions, not at all proud of my contentment with what seemed less than perfect. But so it was. Nothing in my life has seemed to me of so uncertain ethical value. Of course it was a violation of our traditional morality, but there are very few who blindly accept the conventions as always binding. I cannot dismiss it offhand as simply right or wrong; my own judgment in the matter was swung back and forth with almost the regularity of a pendulum. At first it seemed to me unfair to take so much more than I could give. But after all I think little is gained by trying to treat love like merchandise, by trying to measure and weigh it. Certainly Ann would have been glad if I had loved her more wholly. But she regarded that as a work of fate, which no amount of wishing—by either of us—could change. She would have run away if our intimacy had begun to interfere with her work. She threw herself into her specialty with a wholeheartedness I have never seen equalled. Once I asked her if she had no desire for children. "Of course I have," she said, "but sometimes I’ve wanted the moon to wear in my hair. I’d like to live till I could see the triumph of medicine. I’d like to be a pall-bearer at the funeral of the last malignant germ. I’d like a yacht. I never went sailing but once—and it was very wonderful. But I don’t want any of these things in the same way I want to work." She was not entirely satisfied. Who is? She had been taught contempt for the cheap respectability we could have secured for a small fee from a justice of the peace. I think she got as much happiness out of our relationship as most women do from their home lives. I cannot picture her as getting any added pleasure out of sewing buttons onto my clothes or darning my hose. No doubt there were lonely evenings when she wished the fates had given her a more ordinary life and a husband who came home regularly. Although she never complained, I knew that it hurt her if the rush of other—to me more important—affairs kept me in town when she was expecting me. But she would have been more unhappy if she had been in love with a man who interfered in the least in her freedom. It does not seem so unfair to me now as it did at first. We were neither of us getting all we could dream of. But no more was either of us ready to give up the half loaf.