"And I, I am a fool, talking to them, giving myself away to them, as to Mary. Why, Mary ought to go down on her knees before the honour, if I want to take her. Instead of which she puffs herself up, and spits venom in my face like a cobra.
"Very well, very well. Soon I can go out of her sight again, for I loathe the sight of her. I can ride down Hay Street without yielding a hair's breadth to any man or woman on earth. And I can ride out of Perth without leaving a vestige of myself behind, for them to work mischief on.
"God, but it's a queer thing, to know that they all want to destroy me as I am, even out here in this far-off colony. I thought it was only my Aunts, and my father because of his social position. But it is everybody. Even, passively, my mother, and Tom and Len. Because inside my soul I don't conform: can't conform. They would all like to kill the non-conforming me. Which is me myself.
"And at the same time they all love me exceedingly the moment they think I am in line with them. The moment they think I am in line with them, they're awfully fond of me. Monica, Mary, Old George, even Aunt Matilda, they're almost all of them in love with me then, and they'd give me anything. If I asked Mary to sin with me as something I shouldn't do, but I went down on my knees and asked for it, unable to help myself, she'd give in to me like anything. And Monica, if I was willing to be forgiven, would forgive me with unction.
"But since I refuse the sin business, and I never go down on my knees; and since I say that my way is better than theirs, and that I should have my two wives, and both of them know that it is an honour for them to be taken by me, an honour for them to be put into my house and acknowledged there, they would like to kill me. It is I who must grovel, I who must submit to judgment. If I would but submit to their judgment, I could do all the wicked things I like, and they would only love me better. But since I will never submit to them, they would like to destroy me off the face of the earth, like a rattlesnake.
"They shall not do it. But I must be wary. I must not put out my hand to ask them for anything, or they will strike my hand like vipers out of a hole. I must take great care to ask them for nothing, and to take nothing from them. Absolutely I must have nothing from them, not so much as to let them carry the cup of tea for me, unpaid. I must be very careful. I should not have let that brown snake of a Mary see I wanted her. As for Monica, I married her, so that makes them all allow me certain rights, as far as she is concerned. But she has her rights too, and the moment she thinks I trespass on them, she will unsheath her fangs.
"As for me, I refuse their social rights, they can keep them. If they will give me no rights, to the man I am, to me as I am, they shall give me nothing.
"God, what am I going to do? I feel like a man whom the snake-worshipping savages have thrown into one of their snake-pits. All snakes, and if I touch a single one of them, it will bite me. Man or woman, wife or friend, every one of them is ready for me since I am rich. Daniel in the den of lions was a comfortable man in comparison. These are all silent, damp, creeping snakes, like that yellow-faced Mary there, and that little whip-snake of a Monica, whom I have loved. 'Now they bite me where I most have sinned,' says old Don Rodrigo, when the snakes of the Inferno bite him. So they shall not bite me. God in heaven, no, so they shall not bite me. Snakes they are, and the world is a snake-pit into which one is thrown. But still they shall not bite me. As sure as God is God, they shall not bite me. I will crush their heads rather.
"Why did I want that Mary? How unspeakably repulsive she is to me now! Why did I ever want Monica so badly? God, I shall never want her again. They shall not bite me as they bit Don Rodrigo, or Don Juan. My name is John, but I am no Don. God forbid that I should take a title from them.
"And the soft, good Tom and Lennie, they shall live their lives, but not with my life.