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 dinner wasn't until you happened to finish doing something else and began to wonder about it.

"Luxury is terribly insidious. At first I didn't pay much attention to my surroundings, but when I came to, there I was actually depending on them. That worried me a little. But it's hard to go on worrying about being comfortable. Sitting on the terrace after dinner, with pre-war things in your glass, and the moon creeping up out of the sea to make silhouettes in the garden, smelling thick sweet smells and hearing the fresh rustle of the trees and the fountain, it seemed downright fanatical to think of giving up all that for a remote, doubtful, single-handed fight for something you couldn't even define. I kept reminding myself of the austere vows I made at Harvard to keep my flame burning high and bright, to go out into the world and preach the gospel of Me, as though by doing that hard enough and long enough I would get somewhere and make something happen. But where, and what? What more could one ask for? The Marples comfort you with apples and stay you with flagons; they have a Corot landscape and a Sargent portrait of Rhoda's mother to look at; a piano to play on; and a bay with a wonderful canter to ride. And the tacit implication was that I could go on eating and drinking and cantering right into Kingdom Come if I wanted to.

"One night when Rhoda and I were roaming alone between hedges of roses and I got out of my shell a bit and spoke of the forlorn little Thanet acres far off