begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of
tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous
ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the
compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of
the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for
romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would
have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James
River. But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had
sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness
could not suffice for his needs. He craved something larger, something
wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived.
In that first year after his return he had felt that antiquated
traditions were closing about him and shutting out the air, just as he
had felt at times that the fine old walls of the house were pressing
together over his head. At such moments the sense of suffocation, of
smothering for lack of space in which to breathe, had driven him like a
hunted creature out into the streets. It was not long before he
discovered that certain persons brought this feeling of oppression more
quickly than others, that the presence of Margaret or of his parents
stifled him, while Corinna made him feel as if a window had been
suddenly flung open. The doctors, of course, had talked in scientific
terms of diseased nerves and a specialist whom his mother had called in
on one occasion had tried first to probe into the secrets of his infancy
and afterward to analyse his symptoms away. But the war, among other
lessons, had taught him that one must not take either one's sensations
or scientific opinion too seriously, and he had contrived at last to
turn the whole thing into the kind of family joke that his father could
understand. Outwardly he took up his life as before; if the penalty of
depression was psychoanalysis, it was worth while to pretend at least to
be gay. Yet beneath the surface there was, he told himself, a profound
revulsion from everything that he had once enjoyed and loved--an apathy
of soul which made him a moving shadow in a universe of stark
unrealities. He knew that he was sinking deeper and deeper into this
morass of indifference; he realized, at times vividly, that his only
hope was in change, in a complete break with the past and a complete
plunge into the future. His re