"
Mr. Percival, nodding, patting her hand, put in a gentle remonstrance. "I
shouldn't say that, Sancie, I shouldn't indeed. It used to be considered
everything in the world, to a woman."
She mused, then decided. "No. I can't understand that. It's not everything
in the world. It's almost nothing compared to other things--like freedom.
To me the only thing that seems to matter is one's mind. Freedom for that!
You can give up anything else. But that you must have--if you are to live
at all."
He made a loyal effort to follow her thought, but it led him into dismal
regions where he found himself unnerved. "I don't know, upon my soul,
where you get these notions of yours, my dear. I don't indeed. Not from
me, I believe."
She smiled gently at him, but with a wistful tinge, as if she felt her
isolation. "I don't know, either--but there they are. I always know what
I've got to do. I see it, or feel it, ahead of me. There's a path that
way, a path the other. I see the fork, and have to follow one of them. I
always know which."
That was equally beyond him. He left it, and returned to a more practical
puzzlement. "But when--when you make up your mind about--_him_, you know?
I wish you would tell me.
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