going," she said almost impatiently.

He turned to go, and she said after him, as he rolled away, "I'll let you
hear some of my verses one day when you're more developed and can
understand them."

"I'll bet they beat mine," he called back.

"You'll win your bet," she answered, and stood leaning against a tree
with a curious look emerging and receding in her eyes. When he had
disappeared, sitting down, she drew from her breast a slip of paper,
unfolded it, and laid it on her knee. "It is better," she said. "It's
not good poetry, of course, but it's truer, and it's not done according
to a pattern like his. Yes, it's real, real, real, and he'll never see
it--never see it now, for I've fought it' all out, and I've won."

Then she slowly read the verses aloud:

"Yes, I've won," she said with determination. So many of her sex have
said things just as decisively, and while yet the exhilaration of their
decision was inflaming them, have done what they said they would never,
never, never do. Still there was a look in the fair face which meant a
new force awakened in her character.

For a long time she sat brooding, forgetful of the present and of the
little comedy of elderly lovers going on inside the house. She was
thinking of the way conventions hold and bind us; of the lack of freedom
in the lives of all, unless they live in wild places beyond the social
pale. Within the past few weeks she had had visions of such a world
beyond this active and ordered civilisation, where the will and the