“Never,” he said.  “He’s got everything else in the world, but he shan’t have me.  I don’t care much about being alive at best, seeing I must be different from other people all my life; but I’d rather die twenty times than owe anything to him.  He knew before I was born that he was going to wreck my life, and he did it, and he wrecked yours, and his marriage with any other woman but you is a lie and a sham, and Estelle knows it very well.  Now I hate her as much as him, and I hate those who let her marry him, and I hate the clergyman that will do it; and if I could ruin them by killing myself on their doorstep, I would.  But he wouldn’t care for that.  If I was to do that, it would just suit the devil, because he’d know I’d gone and could never rise up against him any more.”

She made a half-hearted attempt to distract his thoughts.  She began to argue and, as usual, ended in bitterness.

“You mustn’t talk nonsense, like that.  He means well by you, and you mustn’t cut off your nose to spite your face.  You’ll find plenty of people to take his side and you mustn’t only listen to his enemies.  There’s always wise people to stand up for young men and excuse them, though not many to stand up for young women.”

“Let them stand up for me and excuse me, then,” he answered.  “Let them explain me and tell me why I should think different, and why I should take his filthy money just to set his mind at rest.  What has he done for me that I should ease him and do as he pleases?  Is it out of any care for me he’d lift me up?  Not likely.  It’s all to deceive the people and make them say he’s a good man.  And until he puts you right, he’s not a good man, and soon or late I’ll have it out with him.  God blast me if I don’t.  But I’ll revenge myself clean on him.  He shan’t make out to the world that he’s done what a father should do for a son.  He’s my natural father and no more, and he never wanted or meant to be more.  And no right will take away that wrong.  And I’ll treat him as other natural creatures treat their fathers.”

“You can’t do that,” she said.  “You’re a human, and you’ve got a conscience and must answer to it.”

“I will—­some day.  I know what my conscience says to me.  My conscience tells me the truth, not a lot of lies like yours tells you.  I know what’s right and I know what’s justice.  I gave the man one chance.  I offered to go in his works—­my works that ought to be some day.  But that didn’t suit him.  I must always knuckle under and bend to his will.  But never—­never.  I’d starve first, or throw myself into the sea.  He don’t want me near him for people to point to, so I must be drove out of Bridetown to the ends of the earth if he chooses.  And if the damned world was straight and honest and looked after the women and innocent children, ’tis him, not me, would have been drove out of Bridetown.”

He spoke with amazing bitterness for youth, and echoed much that he had heard, as well as what he had thought.  His mother felt some astonishment to find how his mind had enlarged, and some fear, also, to see the hopelessness of the position.