“North-West, then? Canada? It’ll be a new land to me----” “Doug-land! cowboy sombreros and log-cabins and biting blizzards and leagues of glittering white snow ... the red fox ... or is it the Red Indian? Never mind, we needn’t be accurate in Doug-land!” Her husband remained good-tempered. Good temper under provocation was, indeed, one of his attractions: “I can’t quite get the hang of that. But it looks as though any place I took you to would be Doug-land, as you call it.” “It would. Oh, it would.” “Ursula--aren’t we going to break away, then? by ourselves? to the back of nowhere?” “We needn’t be quite so drastic, nor so picturesque about it, that’s all.” She sank to a more serious note: “We mustn’t be more than a day’s journey away from your mother, Doug, for the next few years.... Remember what the doctor told you about her heart.” He nodded, contrite. “Poor old Mater. England, then. How far can we trek from mankind. Jove--trekking--I’d like to have swept you off to a farm on the Transvaal, Teddy!” “Grey felt sombrero exchanged for flopping straw, the same loose shirt as we used in the tropics and in Canada; patient lumbering oxen responsive to the slightest crack of your sjambok....” “I don’t see why we shouldn’t farm in the west of England,” reflected Doug; “there’d be moors and the sea and good rich soil--I’d have to look round a bit first and find my feet. My oath, it’s a topping notion of yours, Teddy. I’ve always been keen on farming, deep down. Good-bye to the artificial life and hurrah for Arcadia!” “Doug, are there no Doreens in Arcadia?” “Rustics, farm-girls. No, they don’t appeal to me. Honestly. It’s girls of our own class, with dainty minds and dainty bodies who are fatal. It’s queer, you know”--Doug was engrossed in the subject of his ego; and Ursula listened attentively, thinking that out of all his innocent misconceptions of himself, she might yet pick up an essential hint or two; “it’s queer that though I’m a primitive man, primitive to the very spine, yet the type of opposite sex that--that upset me, is delicate and puzzling and highly-finished--you don’t meet ’em often away from towns. Isn’t it queer, Ursula?” She nodded absently, her mind a-swing upon some tiny thread of its own. “I don’t want to be a beast--and I don’t want to nag--but, Doug, if we go and live in the country, away from temptation, it’s _not_ just for a change and a jolly adventure. It’s because I’m desperate. I don’t look it, I know, and I don’t behave like it, but I’m desperate all the same. Do you really want to be cured, Doug? I won’t force the experiment on you. I’m the last creature who ought to do that--I’m personally too much interested. But austerity isn’t half as romantic as you’re imagining it now. You’re still thinking about the hunting-flask....”