"You must hurry, Stephen, or everything will be burned to a cinder." "I am sorry," he replied with compunction, "I didn't realize that I was late." Her expression was stern but kind.

"If you could only learn to be punctual, dear.

Of course while we felt that you were not quite yourself, we tried not to worry about it.

But you have been home so long now that you ought to be able to drop back into your old habits." She was right, he knew; the exasperating thing about her was that she was always right.

It was reasonable, it was logical, that after two years he should be able to drop back into his old habits of life; and yet he realized, with the intensity of revolt, that these habits represented for him the form of bondage from which he desired passionately to escape.