set for so much more in life than love. For one thing, she would never stay here with him by the river. And he would want to stay by the river.
He thought back over his life. He knew he had packed into fifteen years the intensities that stronger men spread over forty. He had lived with a reckless disregard of health or old age. He had never seen any good reason for living long, for living past the summit of one’s powers. He loathed the thought of a nerveless, loveless, ravaged old age, and so he had flung roses riotously with the throng till he had broken down. Then, forced to face alternatives, to estimate his spiritual assets and liabilities, he had been surprised to find that he cared to live on a basis of revaluation. He laid most of the world away, and came back to concentrate his forces on his work and on such beauty as he could find there within reach of his old place.
And he told himself that he, a clouded and despairing spirit, had no business to snatch at the brightness of untarnished youth going by, had no business to impose the moods and habits of a reckless life upon the fine hope and gaiety of a purposeful one. He saw it all very clearly that May morning.
The next day it turned cold and rained and there followed a week of early winter weather that depressed him. He did not go into Mac’s at all. It was too cold to enjoy his launch. After two bad nights he came to a decision. He ordered his tent and its belongings brought home. He packed into chests and locked up the smaller and more valuable of his things, and leaving his boys as he had before to look after them and his house till he should return, he slipped away to Auckland and to Sydney for the winter. He knew what he was doing. For the first time in his experience he was running away from life.
