“It is simple enough. We can go to Spain if we travel third class, and we can’t if we don’t. I want to see Spain more than any country in Europe. I have heard you say more than once that you were wild to see it—the Alhambra and all that—well, anxious, then,” as Mrs. Moulton raised a protesting eyebrow. “I’m wild, if you like. I’d walk, go on mule-back; in short, I’ll go alone if you won’t take me.” “You will do what?” The color came into Mrs. Moulton’s faded cheek, and she squared herself as for an encounter. Open friction was infrequent, for Mrs. Moulton was nothing if not diplomatic, and Catalina was indifferent. Nevertheless, encounters there had been, and at the finish the Californian had invariably held the middle of the field, insolent and victorious; and Mrs. Moulton had registered a vow that sooner or later she would wave the colors over the prostrate foe. For thirty-two years she had merged, submerged, her individuality, but in these last four months she had been possessed by a waxing revolt, of an almost passionate desire for a victorious moment. It was her first trip abroad, and she had followed where her energetic husband and daughters listed. Hardly once had she been consulted. Perhaps, removed for the first time from the stultifying environment of habit, she had come to realize what slight rewards are the woman’s who flings her very soul at the feet of others. It was too late to attempt to be an individual in her own family; even did she find the courage she must continue to accept their excessive care—she had a mild form of invalidism—and endeavor to feel grateful that she was owned by the kindest of husbands, and daughters no more selfish than the average; but since the advent of Catalina all the rebellion left in her had become compact and alert. Here was an utterly antagonistic temperament, one beyond her comprehension, individual in a fashion that offended every sensibility; cool, wary, insolently suggesting that she purposed to stalk through life in that hideous get-up, pursuing the unorthodox. She was not only indomitable youth but indomitable savagery, and Mrs. Moulton, of the old and cold Eastern civilization, bristled with a thrill that was almost rapture whenever this unwelcome relative of her husband stared at her in contemptuous silence. “You will do what? The suggestion that we travel third class is offensive enough—but are you aware that Spanish women never travel even first class alone?”