to him. "How do you suppose I can take my hat off if you don't?"

He obeyed and drew up to her, stooping near, a hand on the mane of her
horse. The horses nosed together and fidgeted, while she balanced
herself in the saddle with lifted arms, busy with hat-pins. The task
accomplished, she handed the hat to him and they cantered on. Presently
she turned towards him, brightening.

"You were quite right about the hat, Max. It's ever so much nicer
without it; one feels freer, and what I love about riding is the free
feeling. It's as though one had got out of a cage; as though one could
jump over all the barriers of life; as though there were nobody and
nothing to hinder one from galloping right out into the sky if one
chose. But I can't explain what I mean."

"Of course you don't mean the sky," he answered. "What you really mean
is the desert. There's space, there's color, glorious, infinite, with an
air purer than earthly. Such a life, Mildred! The utter freedom of it!
None of this weary, dreary slavery you call civilization. That would be
the life for you."

It was true that Mildred's was an essentially nomadic and adventurous
soul. Whether the desert was precisely the most suitable sphere for her
wanderings was open to doubt, but for the moment as typifying freedom,
travel, and motion--all that really was as the breath of life to her--it
fascinated her imagination. Maxwell, closely watching that
sunshine-gilded head, saw her eyes widen, her whole expression at once
excited and meditative, as though she beheld a vision. But in a moment
she had turned to him with a challenging smile.

"I thought slavery was the only proper thing for women."

"So it is--for ordinary women. It makes them happier and less
mischievous. But I don't fall into the mistake--which causes such a deal
of unnecessary misery and waste in the world--the mistake of supposing
that you can ever make a rule which it's good for every one to obey.
You've got to make your rule for the average person. Therefore it's
bound not to fit the man or woman who is not average, and it's folly to
wish them to distort themselves to fit it."

"And I'm not average? I needn't be a slave? Oh, thank you, Max! I am so
glad."

"Confound it, Mildred, I'm not joking. You are a born queen and you
oughtn't to be a slave; but you are one, all the same. You're a slave to
the 'daily round, the common task,' which were never meant for such as
you; you're a slave to the convent