The captive on the sofa sighed.  It was no use trying to hide from himself his longing to be out there with her in that heavenly Spring-pierced air, revelling in its bloomy wetness; strong and fit in muscle and nerve, carrying wood, getting his head soaked, doing all the foolish things which youth does with impunity and careless joy.  The new restlessness, which he had come so far to quiet, broke over him in miserable, taunting waves.

Why was he here on the sofa instead of out there in the rain?  The war?  But he was too inherently honest to blame the war.  It was, perhaps, responsible for the present state of his sciatic nerve but not for the selling of his birthright of sturdy youth.  The causes of that lay far behind the war.  Had he not refused himself to youth when youth had called?  Had he not shut himself behind study doors while Spring crept in at the window?  The war had come and dragged him out.  Across his quiet, ordered path its red trail had stretched and to go forward it had been necessary to go through.  The Spences always went through.  But Nature, every inch a woman, had made him pay for scorning her.  She had killed no fatted calf for her prodigal.

So here he was, at thirty-five, envying a girl who could carry wood without weariness.  The envy had become acute irritation by the time the wood was stacked and the wood-carrier brought her shining hair and rain-tinted cheeks into the living-room.

“Leg bad again?” asked Desire casually.

“No—­temper.”

“It’s time for tea.  I’ll see about it.”

“You’ll take your wet things off first.  You must be wet through.  Do you want to come down with pneumonia?”

The girl’s eyebrows lifted.  “That’s silly,” she said.  And indeed the remark was absurd enough addressed to one on whom the wonder and mystery of budding life rested so visibly.  “I’m not wet at all,” she went on.  “Only my coat.”  She slipped out of the old tweed ulster, scattering bright drops about the room.  “And my hair,” she added as if by an afterthought.  “I’ll dry it presently.  But I don’t wonder you’re cross.  The fire is almost out.  We’ll have something to eat when the kettle boils.  Father’s gone up trail.  He probably won’t be back.”  For an instant she stood with a considering air as if intending to add something.  Then turned and went into the kitchen without doing it.  She came back with a handful of pine-knots with which she deftly mended the fire.

The professor moved restlessly.

“I’ll be around soon now,” he said, “and then you shan’t do that.”

“Shan’t do what?”

“Carry wood.”

“That’s funny.”  Desire placed a crackling pine-knot on the apex of her pyramid and sat back on her heels to watch it blaze.  Her tone was ruminative.  “There’s no real sense in that, you know.  Why shouldn’t I carry wood when I am perfectly able to do it?  Your objection is purely an acquired one—­a manifestation of the herd instinct.”