afy
distance. "That is the old-fashioned idea," she said, in a musing tone,
"that women must belong to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues,
or race-horses. You don't understand, my friend, that I have a different
view. I am myself, and I belong to myself, exactly as much as any man.
The notion that any other human being could conceivably obtain the
slightest property rights in me is as preposterous, as ridiculous,
as--what shall I say?--as the notion of your being taken out with a
chain on your neck and sold by auction as a slave, down on the canal
bridge. I should be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any other
thought were possible to me."

"That is not the generally accepted view, I should think," faltered
Theron.

"No more is it the accepted view that young married Methodist ministers
should sit out alone in the woods with red-headed Irish girls. No, my
friend, let us find what the generally accepted views are, and as fast
as we find them set our heels on them. There is no other way to live
like real human beings. What on earth is it to me that other women crawl
about on all-fours, and fawn like dogs on any hand that will buckle
a collar onto them, and toss them the leavings of the table? I am not
related to them. I have nothing to do with them. They cannot make any
rules for me. If pride and dignity and independence are dead in them,
why, so much the worse for them! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it
is no reason why I should get down and grovel also. No; I at least stand
erect on my legs."

Mr. Ware sat up, and stared confusedly, with round eyes and parted lips,
at his companion. Instinctively his brain dragged forth to the surface
those epithets which the doctor had hurled in bitter contempt at
her--"mad ass, a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed
lewdness." The words rose in their order on his memory, hard and
sharp-edged, like arrow-heads. But to sit there, quite at her side; to
breathe the same air, and behold the calm loveliness of her profile; to
touch the ribbon of her dress--and all the while to hold these poisoned
darts of abuse levelled in thought at her breast--it was monstrous. He
could have killed the doctor at that moment. With an effort, he drove
the foul things from his mind--scattered them back into the darkness.
He felt that he had grown pale, and wondered if she had heard the groan
that seemed to have been forced from him in the struggle. Or was the
groan imagin