remble.

As he sat there uneasily in the stuffy car, which smelt of camphor and
reminded him of a hearse, he was threatened by that familiar sensation
of oppression, of closing walls. Would he ever again be free from this
impalpable terror, from this dread of being shut within a space so small
that he must smother if he did not escape? And not only places but
persons, as he had found long ago, persons with closed souls, with
narrow minds, produced in him this feeling of physical suffocation.
Margaret, with her serenity, her changeless sweetness, affected him
precisely as he was affected by the stained glass windows of a church.
He felt that he should stifle unless he could break away into a place
where there were winds and blown shadows and pure sunshine. He admired
her; he might have loved her; but she smothered him like that rich and
heavy wave of the past from which he was still struggling to free
himself. For he knew now that it was not the past he wanted; it was the
future. Above all things he needed release, he needed deliverance; and
yet he knew, more surely at this moment than ever before, that he was
not free, that he was still in chains, still the servant, not the
master, of tradition. He lacked the courage of life, the will to feel
and to live. Only through emotion, only through some courageous
adventure of the spirit, only through daring to be human, could he reach
liberation; and yet he could not dare; he could not let himself go; he
could not lose his life in order that he might find it. Corinna was
right, he felt, when she called him a prig. She was right though he
hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let
himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse. He
longed to dare, and yet he had never dared. He longed to take risks, and
yet he studied every step of the road. He longed to be unconventional,
and yet he would have died rather than wear a red flower in his
buttonhole. The thought of Patty rushed over him like the wind at dawn
or the light of the sunrise. There was deliverance; there was freedom of
spirit! She was the impulse he dared not follow, the risk he dared not
take, the red flower he dared not wear.

"What lovely eyes Miss Vetch has," Margaret was saying. "Don't you think
so, Cousin Harriet?"

Mrs. Culpeper sniffed at her bottle of smelling-salts. "She seemed to
me very ordinary," she answered stiffly. "How could Gideon Vetch's
daughter be anything