? What's the good of being alive at all if you've got to do
everything whether you want to do it or not? It's not sense!"

"It's fact, though. From the king to the miner--all a part of a big
complicated machine that's grinding us slowly to bits, making us all
more and more wretched."

"But who makes it like that, Keith?" cried Jenny. "Who says it's to be
so?"

Keith laughed grimly.

"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 wo