At the suggestion all David 's long-repressed craving for the wide blue wastes of the ocean , and the wind whistling through the spars with the salt foam in its breath , broke forth with a passion all the more intense for that very repression . He must go on that voyage with James Barrett -- he MUST ! That over , he would be contented again ; but go he must . His soul struggled within him like a fettered thing . Isabella opposed the scheme vehemently and unwisely , with mordant sarcasm and unjust reproaches . The latent obstinacy of David 's character came to the support of his longing -- a longing which Isabella , with five generations of land-loving ancestry behind her , could not understand at all . He was determined to go , and he told Isabella so . `` I 'm sick of plowing and milking cows , '' he said hotly . `` You mean that you are sick of a respectable life , '' sneered Isabella . `` Perhaps , '' said David , with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders . `` Anyway , I 'm going . '' `` If you go on this voyage , David Spencer , you need never come back here , '' said Isabella resolutely . David had gone ; he did not believe that she meant it . Isabella believed that he did not care whether she meant it or not . David Spencer left behind him a woman , calm outwardly , inwardly a seething volcano of anger , wounded pride , and thwarted will . He found precisely the same woman when he came home , tanned , joyous , tamed for a while of his wanderlust , ready , with something of real affection , to go back to the farm fields and the stock-yard . Isabella met him at the door , smileless , cold-eyed , set-lipped . `` What do you want here ? '' she said , in the tone she was accustomed to use to tramps and Syrian peddlers . `` Want ! ''
David 's surprise XXXXX him at a loss for words .
Barrett David Isabella Spencer Syrian left smileless spars stock-yard wanderlust