“No. We mustn’t. Give us this day our daily round.... Don’t you ever get sick for freedom? To chuck the whole code and get away ... ride away” (when it wasn’t the ship and the straining deck!). “Oh--riding--the steady thud and gallop of your horse’s feet under you, miles and miles and miles....” And so Doug went on for miles and miles and miles. And years and years and years. [III] TILL now, at last, he and Ursula were talking about it. It was amazing to Doug that she did not cry, and cling to him, and attempt to win a promise of no more Doreens. He said so. “Dear old boy, I’ve learnt from King Canute that I may sit in a chair and forbid the waves to wet my feet, and they’ll blandly roll up all the same. No more Doreens? There will be dozens of Doreens. Dozens--and I love you. What am I to do about it, Doug? Can you suggest anything?” “Let’s go away, then--where there are no waves--no Doreens. Darling--you take matches away from a child, because he’s not to be trusted. I’m a child. Take the matches away from me. Take me away from the matches.” He was speaking honestly now. “Animal, vegetable, mineral,” murmured Ursula--“Doreen, waves, matches. Never mind. We can’t cut clean away from things as they are, unless you give up the Knapsack, Doug.” “I’ve been wanting to for a long time”--two and a half minutes precisely. “I’m getting much too fat and contented.” He strolled to the looking-glass, humming: “Put me on an island where the girls are few!”--“Yes, I’m in rotten condition. Look at this arm. I’ll hand in my resignation tomorrow. I expect they’ll get up a subscription for a present, as I’ve been there so long. Mr. Barrison all unobservant as the list goes round! I’m rather keen on a decent pocket-flask. Useful when I’m riding round to have a look at the crops.” “Dear, we’re not going into the Bush, are we?” “We’re going to the other end of nowhere!” shouted Doug, swinging out his arm and hitting it against the bed-post. “We’re buccaneers--soldiers of fortune. The horizon ... how it pulls and pulls----” “And beyond it, the warm dim lagoons, where a man and a woman can bathe their hot bodies, naked and unashamed,” Ursula reeled off with wicked fluency. “God--and the maddening smell of the hibiscus blossom in the blue night air. Why does any one stay this side of the Equator, I wonder? Just wait till you see the Southern Cross flaming above our heads--I’ve been pent up long enough. Oh, I’m talking damned rot, perhaps, but convention--it’s nothing but a strait-waistcoat. Let’s burst it and be off! I want to show you the warm dim lagoons----” Ursula broke off from imitation “And here the same tune comes round again on the barrel-organ,” she finished, in her soft, sedate fashion. Doug was staring at her, bewildered as a puppy before whom a mirror is held up. “Don’t you want to go to the tropics?” “They’re so--tropical,” sighed Ursula. “Insects and miasma.”