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 reason 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