have a good time. One's only young once. I'm awfully sorry. I
want to please you in any way I can, but--but--it's all gone--all that
early part. It's simply one's childhood that's finished with."

"And it can't come back?" his father said quietly.

"Never!" Martin's voice was almost a cry as though he were defying
something.

"We are very weak against God's will," his father said, still quietly
as though it were not he that was speaking but some voice in the shadow
behind him. "You are not your own master, Martin."

"I am my own master," Martin answered passionately. "I have been my own
master for ten years. I've not done anything very fine with my life, I
know. I'm just like any one else--but I've found my feet. I can look
after myself against anybody and I'm independent--of every one and of
everything."

His father drew a little closer to him.

"Of course," he said, "I was not so foolish as to expect that you would
come back to us just as you left us. I know that you must have your own
life--and be free--so much as any of us are free at all ..." Then after
a little pause. "What are your plans? What are you going to do?"

"Well," answered Martin, hesitating, "I haven't exactly settled, you
know. I might take a small share in some business, go into the City.
Then at other times I feel I shouldn't like being cooped up in a town
after the life I've led. Sometimes, this last month, I've felt I
couldn't breathe. It was though, are you, all the chimneys were going
to tumble in. When you're out on a field you know where you are, don't
you? So I've thought it would be nice to have a little farm somewhere
in the South, Devonshire or Glebeshire ... And then I'd marry of
course, a girl who'd like that kind of life and wouldn't find it dull.
There'd be plenty of work--a healthy life for children right away from
these towns ... That's my sort of idea, father, but of course one
doesn't know ..."

Martin trailed off into inconsequent words. It was as though his father
were waiting for him to commit himself and would then suddenly leap
upon him with "There! Now, you've betrayed yourself. I've caught you--"
and he had simply nothing to betray, nothing to conceal.

But anything was better than these pauses during which the threats and
anticipations piled up and up, making a monstrous figure out of exactly
nothing at all.

It was not enough to tell himself that between every father and son
there were restraints and hesitation