"I know you can't slip away from things and be a quitter, no matter how hard you try.

Life pulls you back again and again till you've learned to play the game squarely." He was gazing into the fire with a look that was strangely spiritual on his face, which was half in shadow, half in the transfiguring glow of the flames.

For the second time she became acutely aware of the hidden subtleties beneath his apparent simplicity.
"I've felt that myself often enough," he resumed presently in a low voice.

"I've been pulled up by something inside of me when I was plunging ahead with the bit in my teeth, and it's been just exactly as if this something said: 'Go steady or you'll run amuck and bu'st up the whole blooming show.' You can't talk about it.

It sounds like plain foolishness when you put it into words, but when it comes to you, no matter where you are, you have to stand still and listen." "And is it only when you are running amuck that you hear it ?" she asked.
"No, there've been other times--a few of them.