"
"It's a sight too big for me!" Caspar exclaimed with a simplicity
our young lady might have found touching if her face had not been
set against concessions.
This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately
embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment: "Don't think
me unkind if I say it's just that- being out of your sight- that I
like. If you were in the same place I should feel you were watching
me, and I don't like that- I like my liberty too much. If there's a
thing in the world I'm fond of," she went on with a slight
recurrence of grandeur, "it's my personal independence."
But whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved
Caspar Goodwood's admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the
large air of it. He had never supposed she hadn't wings and the need
of beautiful free movements- he wasn't, with his own long arms and
strides, afraid of any force in her. Isabel's words, if they had
been meant to shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile
with the sense that here was common ground. "Who would wish less to
curtail your liberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to
see you perfectly independent- doing whatever you like? It's to make
you independent that I want to marry you.
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