Sitting thus, he had a mighty longing come upon him to give up the struggle, to go back to the simplest life with his wife and two boys. Why should he tread in the mill, when every day was taking the life-blood out of his heart? Slowly his longing took resolution. At last he drew his desk down, and as the lock clicked it seemed like the shutting of a prison gate behind him. At the elevator door he met a fellow-editor. "Hello, Bloom! Didn't know you were down to-day." "I'm only trying it. I'm going to take a vacation for a while." "That's right, man. You look like a ghost." He hadn't the courage to tell him he never expected to work there again. His step on the way home was firmer than it had been for weeks. In his white face his wife saw some subtle change. "What is it, Robert?" "Mate, let's give it up." "What do you mean?" "The struggle is too hard. I can't stand it. I'm hungry for the country again. Let's get out of this." "Where'll we go?" "Back to my native town--up among the Wisconsin hills and coulies. Go anywhere, so that we escape this pressure--it's killing me. Let's go to Bluff Siding for a year. It will do me good--may bring me back to life. I can do enough special work to pay our grocery bill; and the Merrill place--so Jack tells me--is empty. We can get it for seventy-five dollars for a year. We can pull through some way." "Very well, Robert." "I must have rest. All the bounce has gone out of me, Mate," he said, with sad lines in his face. "Any extra work here is out of the question. I can only shamble around--an excuse for a man." The wife had ceased to smile. Her strenuous cheerfulness could not hold before his tragically drawn and bloodless face. "I'll go wherever you think best, Robert. It will be just as well for the boys. I suppose there is a school there?" "Oh, yes. At any rate, they can get a year's schooling in nature." "Well--no matter, Robert; you are the one to be considered." She had the self-sacrificing devotion of the average woman. She fancied herself hopelessly his inferior. They had dwelt so long on the crumbling edge of poverty that they were hardened to its threat, and yet the failure of Robert's health had been of the sort which terrifies. It was a slow but steady sinking of vital force. It had its ups and downs, but it was a downward trail, always downward. The time for self-deception had passed. His paper paid him a meagre salary, for his work was prized only by the more thoughtful readers of the Star. In addition to his regular work he occasionally hazarded a story for the juvenile magazines of the East. In this way he turned the antics of his growing boys to account, as he often said to his wife. He had also passed the preliminary stages of literary success by getting a couple of stories accepted by an Eastern magazine, and he still confidently looked forward to seeing them printed.