Upon the evening which followed his insult to the Newlyn gulls, Barron, with Edmund Murdoch and some other men, was talking in the studio of one Brady, known to fame as the "Wrecker," from his love for the artistic representation of maritime disaster. Barron liked this man, for he was outspoken and held vigorous views, but the two quarreled freely. "Fate was a fool when she chucked her presents into the lap of a lazy beggar like you," said Brady, addressing the visitor. "And thrice a fool," he added, "to assort her gifts so ill." "Fate is a knave, a mad thing playing at cat's cradle with the threads of our wretched little lives," answered John Barron, "she is a coward--a bully. She hits the hungry below the belt; she heaps gold into the lap of the old man, but not till he has already dug his own grave to come at it; she gives health to those who must needs waste all their splendid strength on work; and wealth to worthless beings like myself who are always ailing and who never spend a pound with wisdom. Make no dark cryptic mystery of Fate when you paint her. She looks to me like a mischievous monkey poking sticks into an ant-hill." "She's a woman," said Murdoch. "She's three," corrected Brady; "what can you expect from three women rolled into one?" "Away with her! Waste no incense at her shrine. She'll cut the thread no sooner because you turn your back on her. Fling overboard your mythologies, dead and alive, and kneel to Nature. A budding spike of wild hyacinth is worth all the gods put together. Go hand in hand with Nature, I say. Ask nothing from her; walk humbly; be well content if she lets you but turn the corner of one page none else have read. That's how I live. My life is not a prayer exactly--" "I should say not," interrupted Brady. "But a hymn of praise--a purely impersonal existence, lived all alone, like a man at a prison window. This carcass, with its shaky machinery and defective breathing apparatus, is the prison. I look out of the window till the walls crumble away--" "And then?" asked one Paul Tarrant, a painter who prided himself on being a Christian as well. "Then, the spark which I call myself, goes back to Nature, as the cloud gives the raindrop back to the sea from whence the sun drew it." "A lie, man!" answered the other hotly. "Perhaps. It matters nothing. God--if there be a God--will not blame me for making a mistake. Meantime I live like the rook and the thrush. They never pray, they praise, they sing 'grace before meat' and after it, as Nature taught them." "A simple child of Nature--beautiful spectacle," said Brady. "But I'm sorry all the same," he continued, "that you've found nothing in Cornwall to keep you here and make you do some work. You talk an awful deal of rot, but we want to see you paint. Isn't there anything or anybody worthy of you here?" "As a matter of face, I've found a girl," said Barron. There was a clamor of excitement at this news, above which Brady's bull voice roared approval.