Fate, Destiny, God, Chance, whoever or whatever rolls the dice of events did not decree that Rod and his wife should come to their full estate by way of teas and tennis, the secure comfort of Hawk's Nest and the full social life open to the Norquays in town when they chose to avail themselves of town. It didn't elect for Mary an absorption into the younger matrons' set, immediate luxury and alternate boredom and excitement. Nor for Rod a mixture of gentlemanly leisure, casual attention to estate affairs and dillettante efforts at writing a prose epic of pioneering times. No. Before they were born, forces were shaping to jostle them out of this pleasant groove. Or was it merely a careless roll of the dice? Who can say? They returned from a brief honeymoon quite frankly absorbed in each other, in the confirmation of the dreams and glamor of love, exultingly triumphant in having achieved a perfect union of the spirit as well as the flesh. They were welcomed to Hawk's Nest by a hand-picked group of the family and intimates. Laska, Phil, their father, their sister Dorothy from Victoria with two chubby sons, two cousins from Montreal, an old school chum of Phil's with his wife. For the time it seemed to Rod that his childish impression of family solidarity, of complete and intimate understanding and support, which had made so fine an atmosphere of home about the place, had been restored in full force. As if the Norquay Trust Company and Grove's hectic yachting parties, jazz and restlessness, the slow disintegration of their unity had vanished into some place remote. It was very pleasant for a week or so. Rod watched with mingled pride and amusement the first cordial effort to be kind to his wife, merely because she was his wife, evolve into a relieved acceptance of her as quite one of themselves. "One would think," he reflected, "that they had half expected her to eat spinach with a knife." Rod, of course, knew quite well that Mary's adaptation to this more luxurious mode of living, a more elaborate manner, was no more difficult for her than his own ready fitting-in to the life of a logging crew. He had long ago learned that rubbing elbows with people is the surest cure for self-consciousness; that the fundamentals of good breeding are simple. There were a great many people of his own kind who believed that good manners must necessarily be the exclusive possession of the well-to-do. It had never occurred to him before so strongly, but he saw now that most of his own family and many of his friends took it for granted that to be poor--as they defined poverty--meant that one had never been anywhere, knew nothing, murdered the King's English, committed every conceivable _faux pas_, and was naturally an impossible sort of person.