“What surprises me,” he heard himself saying, “is that you are contented to stay in Octavius. I should think that you would travel--go abroad--see the beautiful things of the world, surround yourself with the luxuries of big cities--and that sort of thing.” Celia regarded the forest prospect straight in front of her with a pensive gaze. “Sometime--no doubt I will sometime,” she said abstractedly. “One reads so much nowadays,” he went on, “of American heiresses going to Europe and marrying dukes and noblemen. I suppose you will do that too. Princes would fight one another for you.” The least touch of a smile softened for an instant the impassivity of her countenance. Then she stared harder than ever at the vague, leafy distance. “That is the old-fashioned idea,” she said, in a musing tone, “that women must belong to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues, or race-horses. You don't understand, my friend, that I have a different view. I am myself, and I belong to myself, exactly as much as any man. The notion that any other human being could conceivably obtain the slightest property rights in me is as preposterous, as ridiculous, as--what shall I say?--as the notion of your being taken out with a chain on your neck and sold by auction as a slave, down on the canal bridge. I should be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any other thought were possible to me.” “That is not the generally accepted view, I should think,” faltered Theron. “No more is it the accepted view that young married Methodist ministers should sit out alone in the woods with red-headed Irish girls. No, my friend, let us find what the generally accepted views are, and as fast as we find them set our heels on them. There is no other way to live like real human beings. What on earth is it to me that other women crawl about on all-fours, and fawn like dogs on any hand that will buckle a collar onto them, and toss them the leavings of the table? I am not related to them. I have nothing to do with them. They cannot make any rules for me. If pride and dignity and independence are dead in them, why, so much the worse for them! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it is no reason why I should get down and grovel also. No; I at least stand erect on my legs.”