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The unconscious, inexorable ship ... gliding across the Atlantic. They would take up their bright Canadian life again. England, a silent picture, fading.... Dear Dr. von Heber. I owe it to myself just to inform you that the legend you heard about me was untrue. Wishing you a happy and prosperous career yours truly. That would be saying I, fool, have discovered too late that I was not clever enough to let you imagine that you were the only kind of man in the world ... discreet women are sly. To get on in the world it is necessary to be sly. Von Heber is sly. Careful and prudent and sly. What did genius Wayneflete think? Genius understands everything. Discreet proper clever women are open books to him. He will never marry. Whimsical old failure, Winchester, disappearing into British Columbia; failure; decorated in his evening conversations by having been to England.... My dear von Heber, what the devil do you mean? When will you meet me? Choose your own weapons ... that would be admitting not having the right to be as free and indiscreet as one chooses ... “a woman must march with her regiment; if she is wise she does”; something like that. If a woman is sly she marches with her regiment ... all in agreement, being sly and discreet, helping each other. What for? What was the plot for? ... there’s a word ... coercion, that’s the word. Better any sort of free life.
If he could have seen. But then he would have seen those other moments too. Von Heber. Power and success. Never any moments like that. Divided life all the time always. So much for his profession, so much for her, outside it with the regiment of women. Proper men can’t bring the wild, gleaming ... channel of flowers, pulling dragging to fling yourself headlong down it and awake, dead. Dead if you do. Dead if you don’t. Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost.