"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