"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later on, and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why should my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use as my guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and distinct nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which conforms to those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what seems right to myself. I shall not desert--" She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was rising. It had never come to her before. "It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not--it is my father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and--and--" (the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives me. He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the rest, he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it to please him--if they are not willing to--they have no right to stay, and then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me. If he wants--" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a right to dictate? We have our places in _his_ home. We are not paid wages like James and Susan, but--but--we are given what we have; we are dependent. He has never refused us anything--any sum we wanted--but he can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should. Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not know. What can _I_ afford?" She spread her hands out before her, palms up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the electric light in the street. "They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they are helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the conceit, and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is true. A pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a dependent and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness save me! They have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they were compelled to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a dependent. Have I a right to stand against the will and pleasure of my father, when by doing so I compel him to seem to sustain and support that which he disapproves? Have I a right to do that?"