He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands extended, explanatory. He wanted intensely that she should understand and agree and his desire made him clumsy, now slow and awkward, now glibly and unsatisfyingly eloquent. But she comprehended his quality better than he knew. They were to go away to Labrador, this snowy desert of which she had scarcely heard, to camp in the very heart of the wilderness, two hundred miles or more from any human habitation---- "But how long?" she asked abruptly. "The better part of a year." "And we are to talk?" "Yes," he said, "talk and think ourselves together--oh!--the old phrases carry it all--find God...." "It is what I dreamt of, Rag, years ago." "Will you come," he cried, "out of all this?" She leant across the hearthrug, and seized and kissed his hand.... Then, with one of those swift changes of hers, she was in revolt. "But, Rag," she exclaimed, "this is dreaming. We are not free. There are the children! Rag! We cannot leave the children!" "We can," he said. "We must." "But, my dear!--our duty!" "_Is_ it a mother's duty always to keep with her children? They will be looked after, their lives are organized, there is my mother close at hand.... What is the good of having children at all--unless their world is to be better than our world?... What are we doing to save them from the same bathos as this--to which we have come? We give them food and health and pictures and lessons, that's all very well while they are just little children; but we've got no religion to give them, no aim, no sense of a general purpose. What is the good of bread and health--and no worship?... What can we say to them when they ask us why we brought them into the world?--_We_ happened--_you_ happened. What are we to tell them when they demand the purpose of all this training, all these lessons? When they ask what we are preparing them for? Just that _you_, too, may have children! Is that any answer? Marjorie, it's common-sense to try this over--to make this last supreme effort--just as it will be common-sense to separate if we can't get the puzzle solved together." "Separate!" "Separate. Why not? We can afford it. Of course, we shall separate." "But Rag!--separate!" He faced her protest squarely. "Life is not worth living," he said, "unless it has more to hold it together than ours has now. If we cannot escape together, then--_I will go alone_."... § 9