“I do. That’s why I want all women to have the same chance that men have had to get superior. I—I want my sisters to get there, too!”
“There? Just where?” Truedale began to think the girl frivolous; but her charm held.
“Why, where their qualifications best fit them to be. I’m going to tell you a secret—I’m tremendously religious! I believe God knows, better than men, about women; I want—well, I don’t want to seem flippant—but truly I’d like to hear God speak for himself!”
Truedale smiled. “That’s a common-sense argument, anyway,” he said. “But I suppose we men are afraid to trust any one else; we don’t want to—lose you.”
“As if you could!” Betty held her small, white hand out to the dog lying at her feet. “As if we didn’t know, that whatever we don’t want, we do want you. Why, you are our—job.”
Truedale threw his head back and laughed. “You’re like a whiff of your big mountain air,” he said.
“I hope I always will be,” Betty replied softly and earnestly, “I must keep—free, no matter what happens. I must keep what I am, or how can I expect to keep—Brace? He loved this me. Marriage doesn’t perform a miracle, does it—Conning? please let me call you that. Lynda has told me how she and you believe in two lives, not one narrow little life. It’s splendid. And now I am going to tell you another secret. I’ll have to let Lynda in on this, too, she must help me. I have a little money of my very own—I earned every cent of it. I am going to buy a tiny bit of ground, I’ve picked it out—it’s across the river in the woods. I’m going to build a house, not much of a one, a very small one, and I’m going to call it—The Refuge. When I cannot find myself, when I get lost, after I’m married, and am trying to be everything to Brace, I’m going to run away to—The Refuge!” The blue eyes were shining “And nobody can come there, not even Brace, except by invitation. I think”—very softly—“I think all women should have a—a Refuge.”
Truedale found himself impressed. “You’re a very wise little woman,” he said.
“One has to be, sometimes,” came the slow words. And at that moment all doubt of Betty’s serious-mindedness departed.
Brace joined them presently. He looked as if he had been straining at a leash since dinner time.