"Not at all!" I retorted, somewhat nettled. "I am an individualist in this as in other things. I do not believe in the subordination of a wife to her husband. Zulime has all the rights I claim for myself--no more, no less. If she fails to go on with her painting or sculpture the fault will not be mine. Our partnership is an equal one." I meant this. Although dimly aware that mutual concessions must be made, it was my fixed intention to allow my wife the fullest freedom of action. Proud of her skill as an artist, I went so far as to insist on her going back into her brother's studio to resume her modeling. "You are not my house-keeper--you are a member of a firm. I prefer to have you an artist." Smiling, evasive, she replied, "I haven't at the present moment the slightest 'call' to be an artist. Perhaps I shall--after a while; but at present I'd rather keep house." "But consider _me_!" I insisted. "Here am I, a public advocate of the rights of women, already denounced as your 'tyrant husband,' 'a selfish egotistic brute!'--I'll be accused--I am already accused--of cutting short your career as a sculptor. Consider the injustice you are doing _me_!" She refused to take my protest or her friends' comment seriously; and so we drifted along in pleasant round of parties till the suns of May, brooding over the land lured us back to the Homestead, in which Zulime could house-keep all day long if she wished to do so, and she did! Full of plans for refurnishing and redecorating, she was busy as a bumble-bee. As the mistress of a big garden and a real kitchen she invited all her Chicago friends to come and share her good fortune. She was filled with the spirit of ownership and exulted over the four-acre patch as if it were a noble estate in Surrey. It chanced that Lorado on his way to St. Paul was able to stop off, and Zulime not only cooked a special dinner for him, but proudly showed him all about the garden, talking gaily of the number of jars of berries and glasses of jelly she was planning to put up. "Well, Zuhl," he said resignedly, "I suppose it's all for the best, but I don't quite see the connection between your years of training in sculpture and the business of canning fruit." It was a perfect spring day, and the Homestead was at its best. The entire demesne was without a weed, and the blooming berry patches, the sprouting asparagus beds and the budding grape vines all come in for the eminent sculptor's enforced inspection, until at last with a yawn of unconcealed boredom he turned away. "You _seem_ to _like_ your slavery," he remarked to Zulime, a note of comical accusation in his voice.