"I'm a beast to go whining to you like this--but it helps me. It's such a relief to get all my furies off my chest and feel your sympathy--_feel_ it, Janey, you needn't speak, words seem to nail things down. Oh, why were you and I born into this muddle and never given a chance? I've never had a chance--not the shadow of one. All my life I've suffered that vile plague, dependence, and it's poisoned my blood and sapped my strength and perverted my reason. My father's to blame for it. The whole object of his life has been to keep me dependent on him. He's stinted me of everything--friends, money, education--just to keep me dependent. He's well off, as you know, but he allows me a miserable screw many tradesmen would be ashamed to offer their sons. He's made my bad health an excuse for cutting short my time at college, and for not bringing me up to any profession. He's in terror lest I should strike out a line for myself. He wants me to live my whole life on a negation--'thou shalt not,' he says. He doesn't say it because he's my father, but because he's a clergyman. It's that which has spoiled him, because it hasn't let him go to life for his principles. Christianity never does. I hate Christianity, Janey--Christianity's a piece of Semitic bargaining--all Semitic religions are commercial, but Christianity has been so far Europeanised that it offers its rewards not for what you do but for what you don't do. I once wrote a poem on the Christian heaven--God and all the angels and curly-locked saints yawning their heads off because they're all so tired of doing nothing, and at last all falling asleep together. Ugh! One reason I love you, Janey, is that you're so beautifully pagan--just like the country here. The country's all pagan at bottom, and that's why every one loves the country, even the Christians." Janey smiled, and pressed his hand. She knew Quentin liked "talking," so she let him "talk," though she troubled very little about the questions that were so vital to him. She knew it relieved him to pour into her ears the torrent of abuse which was always roaring against its sluices, and had no other outlet--unless it found its way into publishers' offices and damaged his poor chances there. "It's Christianity which makes my father so damned clever in keeping me dependent," continued Lowe. "He's got so used to tying souls up in paper and string that he can make a neat parcel even of a bulky, bulgy soul like mine. You know how we admire shop people for the neat way they tie up parcels--we couldn't do it. Well, my father's a kind of celestial shop-keeper, and I'm the goods he's sending out--payment on delivery. Oh, damn!" Janey's hand went up to his face and stroked it. Quentin's furies always struck her as infinitely pathetic. "It'll be all right, dear," she whispered. "I'm sure it will. You're bound to get free." He seized her hand and held it fiercely in his while he stared into her eyes.