He challenged this.
“Because you never turn any other roads than the smooth paths of Mrs. Mearely’s walled enclosure—where there are no fascinating dangers. At least, not for you.”
Though she smiled, her answer was only half humorous.
“But what happens to people who try to escape from the safe enclosures?—Those, I mean, who won’t live the way others want them to?”
“Ah!” he cried. “They make one glorious blind leap for freedom....”
“And land on—‘the ’ead of the Law,’” she retorted.
“Break its head! The sooner the better” smilingly.
“They can’t,” she replied, gravely; though the light his coming had put into her eyes, like new candles, was still there. “The law is too strong. It brings them back again—wounded!” She pointed to the bandage.
When he answered, there was a defiant ring in his voice that was not all pretence. All his gypsying past was calling to him to guard himself against the unconscious power of the little lady of the museum whose shining eyes told so frankly that her heart had set out on the great search.
“A pin-scratch on the skin of my shoulder! That’s all that the talons of social law have been able to do to this vagabond. I go to drink to liberty—and the open road—in a bumper of ice-water.”