delicate, high-strung woman to go with him. The woman could not follow
her warrior to the battle, for marriage meant children to Joe, and the
little ones must stay back at home with the mother.

In that moment of clear terror he had said to Myra:

"I may never see you again.... I belong to those dead girls."

And this phrase came and went like a refrain. He must choose between her
and those "dead girls." There stood Myra with gray luminous eyes and
soft echoing voice magically hinting of a life of ever-renewed romance.
She had a breast for his aching head, she had in her hands a thousand
darling household things, she had in her the possibilities of his own
children ... who should bring a wind of laughter into his days and a
strange domestic tenderness. The depths of the man were stirred by these
appeals--that was the happy human way to take, the common road fringed
with wild flowers and brier-lost berries, and glorious with the stride
of health and the fresh open air.

And Myra herself, that charming presence to infold his life--He would go
walking through the golden October park, by little leaf-strewn paths
under the wild and sun-soaked foliage, with many vistas every way of
luring mystery, and over all the earth the rich opulent mother-bliss of
harvest, and his heart would ache, ache within him, ache for his own
harvests, ache like the sun for the earth, the man for the woman.

A mad frenzy would seize him and he would plunge into his books and read
and think and lash himself to a fury of speculation till the early hours
of the morning. Exhaustion alone brought him peace.