“We each have all the accumulated experience of the centuries.  We don’t have to keep to the limits of our own little individual lives.”

“I often have dreamed of bringing you up on this trail,” said Wander whimsically, “but never for the purpose of hearing you make your declaration of independence.”

“Why not?” demanded Kate.  “In what better place could I make it?”

Beside the clamorous waterfall was a huge boulder squared almost as if the hand of a mason had shaped it.  Kate stepped on it, before Wander could prevent her, and stood laughing back at him, the wind blowing her garments about her and lifting strands of her loosened hair.

“I declare my freedom!” she cried with grandiose mockery.  “Freedom to think my own thoughts, preach my own creeds, do my own work, and make the sacrifices of my own choosing.  I declare that I will have no master and no mistress, no slave and no neophyte, but that I will strive to preserve my own personality and to help all of my brothers and sisters, the world over, to preserve theirs.  I declare that I will let no superstition or prejudice set limits to my good will, my influence, or my ambition!”

“You are standing on a precipice,” he warned.

“It’s glorious!”

“But it may be fatal.”

“But I have the head for it,” she retorted.  “I shall not fall!”

“Others may who try to emulate you.”

“That’s Fear—­the most subtle of foes!”

“Oh, come back,” he pleaded seriously, “I can’t bear to see you standing there!”

“Very well,” she said, giving him her hand with a gay gesture of capitulation.  “But didn’t you say that men liked to climb?  Well, women do, too.”

They were conscious of being late for dinner and they turned their faces toward home.

“How ridiculous,” remarked Wander, “that we should think ourselves obliged to return for dinner!”

“On the contrary,” said Kate, “I think it bears witness to both our health and our sanity.  I’ve got over being afraid that I shall be injured by the commonplace.  When I open your door and smell the roast or the turnips or whatever food has been provided, I shall like it just as well as if it were flowers.”

Wander helped her down a jagged descent and laughed up in her face.

“What a materialist!” he cried.  “And I thought you were interested only in the ideal.”

“Things aren’t ideal because they have been labeled so,” declared Kate.  “When people tell you they are clinging to old ideals, it’s well to find out if they aren’t napping in some musty old room beneath the cobwebs.  I’m a materialist, very likely, but that’s only incidental to my realism.  I like to be allowed to realize the truth about things, and you know yourself that you men—­who really are the sentimental sex—­have tried as hard as you could not to let us.”

“You speak as if we had deliberately fooled you.”