her. Where the soft woodland light played in among the strands of her
disordered hair, he saw the veritable gleam of gold. A mysterious new
suggestion of power blended itself with the beauty of her face, was
exhaled in the faint perfume of her garments. He maintained a timorous
hold upon the ribbon, wondering at his hardihood in touching it, or
being near her at all.

"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