"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 hesitations, a division cleft by the remembrance of the time when one had commanded and the other obeyed. There were other elements here--for one the element of an old affection that had once been at the very root of the boy's soul and was now in the strangest way creeping back to him, as an old familiar, but forgotten form might creep out of the dark and sit at his feet and clasp his knees. "Well," said John Warlock. "That's very pleasant. You must feel very grateful to your aunt Rachel, Martin; she's given you the opportunity of doing what you like with your life. She spoke to me about it before she died." "She spoke to you about it?"