"And, further," she continued warmly, "I am astonished that in this age, when the entire world tacitly admits that woman is man's absolute equal in every respect, that you apparently still harbour old-fashioned, worn-out and silly notions. You are very far out of date, my charming brother."
"What notions?" he demanded.
"Notions that a girl's mission is to go to parties and dance when she doesn't desire to—that a girl had better conform to the uninteresting and stilted laws of the recent past and live her life as an animated clothes-rack, mind her deportment, and do what nice girls do, and marry and become the mother of numerous offspring; which shall be taught to follow in her footsteps and do the same thing all over again, generation after generation—ad nauseam!—— Oh, Jim! I'm not going to live out my life that way and be looked after as carefully as a pedigreed Pekinese——"
"For Heaven's sake——"
"For Heaven's sake—yes!—and in God's name, Jim, it is time that a woman's mind was occupied by something beside the question of clothes and husbands and children!"
The boy whistled softly, stared at her, and she looked at him unflinchingly, with her pretty, breathless smile of defiance.
"I want to live my own life in my own way. Can't I?" she asked.
"Of course——"
"You say that. But the instant I venture to express a desire for any outlet—for any chance to be myself, express myself, seek the artistic means for self-utterance, then you tell me I am unconventional!"
He was silent.