"Don't let's talk about it," he urged. "No good talking about it. The only thing to do is to fight it--get out of the machine ..." "But there's nowhere to go, is there?" asked Jenny. "I was thinking about it this evening. 'They've' got every bit of the earth. Wherever you go 'they're' there ... with laws and police and things all ready for you. You've _got_ to give in." "I'm not going to," said Keith. "I'll tell you that, Jenny." "But Keith! Who is it that makes it so? There _must_ be somebody to start it. Is it God?" Keith laughed again, still more drily and grimly. ii Jenny was not yet satisfied. She still continued to revolve the matter in her mind. "You said nobody was free, Keith. But then you said you were free--when you got married." _"Till_ I got married. Then I wasn't. I fell into the machine and got badly chawed then." "Don't you want to get married?" Jenny asked. "Ever again?" "Not that way." Keith's jaw was set. "I've been there; and to me that's what hell is." How Jenny wished she could understand! She did not want to get married herself--that way. But she wanted to serve. She wanted Keith to be her husband; she wanted to make him happy, and to make his home comfortable. She felt that to work for the man she loved was the way to be truly happy. Did he not think that he could be happy in working for her? She _couldn't_ understand. It was all so hard that she sometimes felt that her brain was clamped with iron bolts and chains. "What way d'you want to get married?" Jenny asked. "I want to marry _you_. Any old way. And I want to take you to the other end of the world--where there aren't any laws and neighbours and rates and duties and politicians and imitations of life.... And I want to set you down on virgin soil and make a real life for you. In Labrador or Alaska ..." He glowed with enthusiasm. Jenny glowed too, infected by his enthusiasm. "Sounds fine!" she said. Keith exclaimed eagerly. He was alive with joy at her welcome. "Would you come?" he cried. "Really?" "To the end of the world?" Jenny said. "Rather!" They kissed passionately, carried away by their excitement, brimming with joy at their agreement in feeling and desire. The cabin seemed to expand into the virgin forest and the open plain. A new vision of life was opened to Jenny. Exultingly she pictured the future, bright, active, occupied--away from all the old cramping things. It was the life she had dreamed, away from men, away from stuffy rooms and endless millinery, away from regular hours and tedious meals, away from all that now made up her daily dullness. It was splendid! Her quick mind was at work, seeing, arranging, imagining as warm as life the changed days that would come in such a terrestrial Paradise. And then Keith, watching with triumph the mounting joy in her expression, saw the joy subside, the brilliance fade, the eagerness give place to doubt and then to dismay. "What is it?" he begged. "Jenny, dear!"