Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/37

A Puritan Bohemia "It was hard to come," she added. "My family disapprove. They say that it is very foolish and very improper."

"Do they need you?"

Red colour surged to Helen's cheeks.

"That's the way everybody talks!" she cried. "If I were a man, I should by general consent have a right to live my own life. But just because I am a woman, with an aim of my own, nobody understands.

"You see," she pleaded, "it is impossible for me to live out at home my beliefs. It is a Christian home, they say, and yet my family feels a great deal more responsible to social convention than to its faith. I cannot have simple relations there. My position in regard to the maids in my father's house contradicts my idea of the Gospels."

"You are a new kind of Saint Francis," said Anne with a smile. "You seem to have taken a vow of poverty and disobedience."

The door was suddenly pushed open.