re's a thing in the
world I'm fond of," she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur,
"it's my personal independence."

But whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved
Caspar Goodwood's admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the
large air of it. He had never supposed she hadn't wings and the need of
beautiful free movements--he wasn't, with his own long arms and strides,
afraid of any force in her. Isabel's words, if they had been meant to
shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the sense
that here was common ground. "Who would wish less to curtail your
liberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to see you
perfectly independent--doing whatever you like? It's to make you
independent that I want to marry you."

"That's a beautiful sophism," said the girl with a smile more beautiful
still.

"An unmarried woman--a girl of your age--isn't independent. There are
all sorts of things she can't do. She's hampered at every step."

"That's as she looks at the question," Isabel answered with much spirit.
"I'm not in my first youth--I can do what I choose--I belong quite to
the independent class. I've neither father nor mother; I'm poor and of
a serious disposition; I'm not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be
timid and conventional; indeed I can't afford such luxuries. Besides,
I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more
honourable than not to judge at all. I don't wish to be a mere sheep in
the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs
beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me."
She paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He
was apparently on the point of doing so when she went on: "Let me say
this to you, Mr. Goodwood. You're so kind as to speak of being afraid of
my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I'm on the point of doing
so--girls are liable to have such things said about them--remember what
I have told you about my love of liberty and venture to doubt it."

There was something passionately positive in the tone in which she gave
him this advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped
him to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you might have
perceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly: "You want
simply to travel for two years? I'm quite willing to wait two years, and
you may do what you like in the interva