"Janey--I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get free--or if I do, whether I'll find freedom the ecstasy I imagine it. Perhaps freedom, like everything else, is a mirage, a snare, a disillusion. Yesterday I was reading the _Epic of Gilgamesh_-- Gilgamesh, why dost thou wander around? Life which thou seekest thou canst not find. That's the horrible truth--nothing that we seek shall we ever find, unless it's been found over and over again already. And then there's love, Janey, that's one of the things we never find, though we seek it till our tears are blood. I've written a poem about that, comparing love to the sea--to salt water, rather, for of course hundreds of poets have compared love to the sea. Love is like the salt water that splashes round the poor sailor dying of thirst--he drinks it in his desperation, and the more he drinks the fiercer becomes his thirst, and still he drinks on in despair and hope, till at last he ends in madness--that's love. Janey, that's love." He stooped suddenly forward, till his head was buried in her knees. "That's my love, sweet, sweet thing--my love for you. It never sates, it always burns, it tortures, it maddens. There is no rest, no rest in my love--it wakes me from my sleep to long for you--it is a hunger that gnaws through all my meals--it is a darkness that may be felt, a light too blinding to be borne...." His shoulders shook, and tears rushed scalding into Janet's eyes. With one hand she stroked and tangled his coarse hair, the other he had seized and laid under his cheek--and she felt one burning tear upon it. Her whole heart seemed to open itself to her lover in tender pity, and not only to him, but to all men--men, with their fierceness in desire and gentleness in satiety, with their terrible sudden temptations, their weakness and nobleness, their beasthood and their godhead. Men struck her--had always struck her--as intensely pathetic; and now Quentin and his love wrung her breast with tears. Before that storm of hungry love she bowed her head in mute homage--she worshipped him as he lay there on her knees. He lifted himself suddenly. Darkness was creeping fast into the woods, with little shivering gasps. "Janey, before you go, there's something I want particularly to ask you. Next Tuesday week my father's going to London for the day. He won't be back till late--I want you to come to Redpale when he's gone." "Redpale ... but there are the servants, Quentin." "They're all right. I'll send the girls over to Grinstead in the afternoon; there'll only be the men about the farm, and they needn't trouble us." "But...." "Oh, there's your brothers, of course," he cried harshly; "can't you get away from them for one afternoon?" "Yes, I can.... I don't know why I said 'But.'" "You mustn't say 'But'--Janey, do you realise that you and I have never had a meal together?" "No." "We must have a meal together--I want to see you eat--I want to drink with you."