She held out a large strong hand and gave Joan a longish grip. “You’re right,” she said, “we must get her out of this house at once. Forgive me.” “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I was just wanting you.”!

“I’m glad you didn’t do it,” said Joan: “that you put up a fight for all women.” “Will it shock you, Dad?” she asked.

“Some men,” he answered. “Artists and poets. They have the woman within them. Men like myself—the mere fighter: we are incomplete in ourselves. Male and female created He them. We are lost without our mate.” “His sufferings!” he interrupted. “Does suffering entitle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a God. Look at me!” He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. “Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?” “Yes,” he said, “I love the sea. It’s clean and strong.”