"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. § 8 When in five minutes' time he came back into her room she was still upon her hearthrug before the fire, with her necklace in her hand, the red reflections of the flames glowing and winking in her jewels and in her eyes. He came and sat again in her chair. "I have been ranting," he said. "I feel I've been--eloquent. You make me feel like an actor-manager, in a play by Capes.... You are the most difficult person for me to talk to in all the world--because you mean so much to me." She moved impulsively and checked herself and crouched away from him. "I mustn't touch your hand," she whispered. "I want to explain." "You've got to explain." "I've got quite a definite plan.... But a sort of terror seized me. It was like--shyness." "I know. I knew you had a plan." "You see.... I mean to go to Labrador."