ason told him this, and yet, though he
longed passionately to let himself go--to make the wild dash for
freedom--his disabled will, the nervous indecision from which he
suffered, prevented both his liberation and his recovery. There were
hours of grayness when he told himself that he had neither the fortitude
to endure the old nor the energy to embrace the new. In his nature, as
in his environment, two opposing spirits were struggling: the realistic
spirit which saw things as they were and the romantic spirit which saw
things as they ought to be. It was the immemorial battle, brought by
circumstances to a crisis, between the race and the individual, between
tradition and adventure, between philosophy and experience, between age
and youth.

Yes, it was "something different" that he craved. He had known Margaret
too long; there was no surprise for him in any gesture that she made, in
any word that she uttered. They had drunk too deeply of the same springs
to offer each other the attraction of mystery, the charm of the
unusual. He was familiar with every opinion she had inherited and
preserved, with every dress she had worn, with every book she had read.
As a whole she embodied his ideal of feminine perfection. She was
gentle, lovely and unselfish; she never asked unnecessary questions,
never exacted more of one's time than one cared to give, never
interfered with more important, if not more admirable, pursuits. That
was the rarest of combinations, he knew--the delightful mingling of
every virtue he held desirable in woman--and yet, rare and delightful as
he acknowledged it to be, he was obliged to confess that it awakened not
the faintest quiver of his pulses. Margaret aroused in him every
sentiment except the one of interest; and he had begun to realize that
at the moments when he admired her most, it was often impossible for him
to make conversation. It had never occurred to him to wonder if their
association had become emotionally unprofitable to her also, for in
accordance with the system under which he lived, he had assumed that
woman's part in love was as heroically passive as it had been in
religion. What he had asked himself again and again was why, since she
was so perfectly desirable in every way, he had never fallen in love
with her? Until this evening he had always told himself that it would
come right in the end, that he was in his own phrase simply "playing for
time." Margaret was handsomer, if less piquant,