Chapter 10 - Page 2

felt ashamed of himself for finding it singularly childish.
No doubt she simply echoed what was said for her;
but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday, and
he wondered at what age "nice" women began to
speak for themselves.

"Never, if we won't let them, I suppose," he mused,
and recalled his mad outburst to Mr. Sillerton Jackson:
"Women ought to be as free as we are--"

It would presently be his task to take the bandage
from this young woman's eyes, and bid her look forth
on the world. But how many generations of the women
who had gone to her making had descended bandaged
to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering
some of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the
much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which
had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for
them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to
open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?

"We might be much better off. We might be
altogether together--we might travel."

Her face lit up. "That would be lovely," she owned:
she would love to travel. But her mother would not
understand their wanting to do things so differently.

"As if the mere 'differently' didn't account for it!"
the wooer insisted.

"Newland! You're so original!" she exulted.

His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the
things that young men in the same situation were
expected to say, and that she was making the answers
that instinct and tradition taught her to make--even to
the point of calling him original.

"Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls
cut out of the same folded paper. We're like patterns
stencilled on a wall. Can't you and I strike out for
ourselves, May?"

He had stopped and faced her in the excitement of
their discussion, and her eyes rested on him with a
bright unclouded admiration.

"Mercy--shall we elope?" she laughed.

"If you would--"

"You DO love me, Newland! I'm so happy."

"But then--why not be happier?"

"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can
we?"

"Why not--why not--why not?"

She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew
very well that they couldn't, but it was troublesome to
have to produce a reason. "I'm not clever enough to
argue with you. But that kind of thing is rather--vulgar,
isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a word
that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.

"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"

She was evidently staggered by this. "Of course I
should hate it--so would you," she rejoined, a trifle
irritably.

He stood silent, beating his stick nervously