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Buck, Charles Neville, 1879-1930

"A Pagan of the Hills"

For such
as these, life held something, but for her, she was sure in her
obduracy of inexperience, there was no objective.
If the truth be told, the "spring-tide" was welling in the channels of
her being, as well as in the rivulets of the hills, and the changes
that had come to her were near to bearing fruit.
That space of little more than a week, when she had left her home--a
home which had also been a world with its own laws and environment--had
brought her into contact with other views. Her father's death had left
the house no longer the same. Two independent souls, with strong
views, may succeed in fashioning their own world, and she and her
father had been two such.
One left unsupported may fail, and now she was alone--for Joe hardly
counted.
Ever since she had been old enough to think at all, she had been
inordinately proud of "being a man," and profoundly contemptuous of the
women about her whose colorless lives spelled thraldom and hard
servitude.
That long fostered and passionately held creed would die hard. She
would fight herself and whomsoever else challenged its acceptance--but
insidious doubts were assailing her.


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