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."Mr.Ware sat up, and stared confusedly, with round eyes and parted lips, at his companion.Instinctively his brain dragged forth to the surface those epithets which the doctor had hurled in bitter contempt at her--"mad ass, a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness."The words rose in their order on his memory, hard and sharp-edged, like arrow-heads.But to sit there, quite at her side; to breathe the same air, and behold the calm loveliness of her profile; to touch the ribbon of her dress--and all the while to hold these poisoned darts of abuse levelled in thought at her breast--it was monstrous.
He could have killed the doctor at that moment.
With an effort, he drove the foul things from his mind--scattered them back into the darkness.He felt that he had grown pale, and wondered if she had heard the groan that seemed to have been forced from him in the struggle.