He could say: it is not good for me to see so much of Lois. He could say: it is not right to impose further on the Deanes. After all, go back a year and he had not seen them: they had not bothered--or been bothered--with him. Let him blaze his own trail.... If he wished to be free to live his own life, was that not natural also? He had his own key at the Deanes. But there was a certain unavoidable restraint. Suppose he had wanted some night to stay out till morning? This had never been. It might. He was approaching twenty-one! What would his aunt say? What would Muriel and Lois think? Manhood needs room. It was awkward to bring friends to the big house: he seldom did so. What if, some day, he should want to bring a girl--bring her somewheres? A thrilling reason, this! To have a place that was his, where he could be with a girl! The hospitable house of the Deanes was not hospitable to such conceptions. In the air of these daughters, even the thought of adventure seemed strained. The presence of Muriel and Lois fretted his nerves: spiced them: taunted them. But if their lives, their thoughts, the gay deckings of their bodies called forth sex, also they stifled it. David wondered if it would be always so, even when they were married. For a reason he could not name he decided he would not want to be a husband to Lois. There was a curious contradiction in these girls: something counterfeit; perhaps something thwarted. David once saw a great red flower--Muriel’s--in a vase on her table. Thinking of other things, he smelt it: his mind went rushing toward it, finding it odorless. He crushed it. He had never felt the least impulse to crush a fragrant flower. Muriel and Lois were roses, but they had no perfume. He thought, if he held such a lover, he should want to crumple her. It might mysteriously be a way of having satisfaction--of having a substitute for satisfaction. Living in the house with Muriel and Lois, he found they sharpened his senses, yet blunted his will: heightened his needs, yet dwarfed his power to get them. And David knew it was Muriel and Lois who filled this house of the Deanes. It was the house of Muriel and Lois: not the house of his uncle and aunt. Why should he keep on living with two exacerbating cousins?... There were reasons aplenty. But this fading day was a day that drifted beyond the world of reasons. He was alone. He had been tired, he had managed to leave the office early, to be alone. He sat there, gazing away at the hot park with eyes that were truly looking inward. Something stirred in him. Not the movement of unrest: rather a deep vibration as when coals kindle: the quickening from inert heat to glow.