ould never succumb to Althea's plans.
Would Martin's love for her, and her love for him--if she did love
him--make up for all this havoc?

Could she, by any process, so divorce herself from old habits and
associations as to decide this step with reference to her one self only?
She had been saying to herself for years that she had a right to every
rich experience life could offer, she had been greedy for more and more.
But was there such a thing as continence? In order to get away from that
despised word "self-denial" she looked upon the thing as a matter of
spiritual health. If overeating was destruction to the body tissue, was
greediness for experience also destruction to the soul stuff?

Day after day she pondered these questions as she tramped around the
lake, or as they drove through the still, silver-gray forests, where the
only hint of spring was an occasional whiff of arbutus as they passed.
Jane found great peace and help from those straight, slim trees. They
were so unfettered, so upstanding, so sure. She repeated over and over:

"Hast thou ne'er known the longings--
Ambitions vain desires--
The hope, the fear, the yearning
Which mortal man inspires?"

She gathered into her being all the calm of Nature, strength from her
out-of-door life, wisdom out of silence and Baby's talk, but yet she
could not bring herself to send for Jerry. She knew that both of these
men were suffering, as they waited for her answer; she wanted not to
hurt them, and still--she hesitated.

CHAPTER XXXIII

When the train pulled out which carried his family into unknown country,
Jerry turned across town, determined to walk back to the studio and get
to work. He had scarcely closed his eyes the night before, and he felt
all edgy. Exercise and hard work was his prescription for himself. He
set off at a good pace, through a part of town he was unused to, hoping
that it would divert his thoughts. He made himself look at the shabby
old shops he passed--at the people on the street. He searched all their
faces for traces of such experiences as he was sampling, but they were
usually vacuous or hardened or only worried. He wondered if his face
mirrored his misery.

Jerry was a stranger to defeat. His life had been a happy-go-lucky
affair. Since the death of his parents, when he was a little boy, he had
known no acute sorrows. To be sure he had been poor, but he had not
minded that especially. The very small inheritance,