"I like you; you're a nice girl; you don't turn up your nose at us
because we live in our own way. You're a nice girl."

"I like your way of living," said I, then. "From what I can see, it
seems to me you are about as free as any one can be in this world,
and that is the best of all things,--freedom."

"You've hit it!" cried Richard Norton, bringing his flat hand down
on the table. "We are free!"

"Now I'll tell you," said Gabriel. "This time last year we had
horrible lodgings in Bloomsbury. Father went every day to drudgery
in a dirty office, helping another man to rob his fellow-creatures;
aunt there gave lessons,--she can't teach a bit; she was only
putting nonsense into the heads of future men and women, and, such
as it was, putting it there wrong. I was doing likewise, and I teach
worse than she does. Of an evening I wrote drivel for the papers. We
were, every one of us, useless and miserable. At last one day I
said--"

"You did!" interrupted his father. "You may live to be a hundred,
you'll never say anything so wise again."

"I said: 'Look here! How many lives have we?' 'One,' replied father.
'What are we alive for?' 'I don't know,' replied father. 'Neither do
I; only I know that life's not worth living as we live it. Let's go
into the country.'"

"I beg your pardon, Gabriel," interrupted his father again; "it was