Although they were together facing the first of
the events that were to be like ports-of-call in the great voyage of their
lives, they were not facing it with the same mutual understanding and
kindly tolerance with which they had faced smaller things in the past--a
disagreement over the method of shooting a rapid in a river or the
entertainment of an undesirable guest. The inclination to fits of temper
loosens and disarranges all the little wires of life. The tune will not
get itself played. One stands waiting for the discord, strained, missing
the harmony. It was so with Sam. He began feeling that he must keep a
check upon his tongue and that things of which they had talked with great
freedom six months earlier now annoyed and irritated his wife when brought
into an after-dinner discussion. To Sam, who, during his life with Sue,
had learned the joy of free, open talk upon any subject that came into his
mind and whose native interest in life and in the motives of men and women
had blossomed in the large leisure and independence of the last year, this
was trying. It was, he thought, like trying to hold free and open
communion with the people of an orthodox family, and he fell into a habit
of prolonged silences, a habit that later, he found, once formed,
unbelievably hard to break.
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