It is the push
of life itself, essential, fundamental, which makes us "feel in _that_
way"--the push of spirit yearning to be clothed upon with flesh, made
visible and given its chance to enter the earthly arena, to play an
individual part in the beautiful, terrible earthly scene. Therefore she
must neglect it, reject it no longer. It had to be met and understood, if
she would graduate in the school of reality; and in what other possible
school is it worth while to graduate?
Reaching which climax in her argument, the selfishness of her recent
behaviour became humiliatingly patent to her. From the whole household,
but especially from Carteret and Aunt Felicia, she had taken all and
given nothing in return. She had added to their grief, their anxieties,
by her silence, her apathy, her whimsies.
"Patch," she asked suddenly, "which is the shortest way home, without
going through Stourmouth and Marychurch? "--And, under his instructions,
turned the dog-cart down a grassy side-track, heading south-east--her back
now to the wind and inland country, her face to the larger horizon, the
larger if more hazardous freedom of the sea.
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