"Father was terrible. I heard him all the way upstairs in my room. But," she looked at him a little doubtfully, "don't you think he will get over it?"
"He may, but I shan't. I'd rather starve than live under a petty tyranny like that?"
"I know," she nodded, and he saw that she understood him. It was wonderful how perfectly, from the very first instant, she had understood him. She grasped things, too, by intelligence, not by intuition, and he found this refreshing in an age when the purely feminine was in fashion. Never had he seen a finer example of young, buoyant, conquering womanhood—of womanhood freed from the consciousness and the disabilities of sex. "She's not the sort of girl a man would lose his head over," he reflected; "there's too little of the female about her—she's as free from coquetry as she is from the folderol of sentimentality. She's a free spirit, and God knows how she ever came out of the Treadwells." Her beauty even wasn't of the kind that usually goes by the name. He didn't suppose there were ten men in Dinwiddie who would turn to look back at her—but, by Jove, if she hadn't beauty, she had the character that lends an even greater distinction. She looked as if she could ride Life like a horse—could master it and tame it and break it to the bridle.
"It's amazing how you know things, Susan," he said, "and you've never been outside of Dinwiddie."
"But I've wanted to, and I sometimes think the wanting teaches one more than the going."
He thought over this for an instant, and then, as if the inner flame which consumed him had leaped suddenly to the surface, he burst out joyously: "I've come to the greatest decision of my life in this last hour, Susan."
Her eyes shone. "You mean you've decided not to do what father asks no matter what happens?"
"I've decided not to accept his conditions—no matter what happens," he answered.
"He was in earnest, then, about wanting you to give up writing?"
"So much in earnest that he would give me a job only on those terms."