"Fail you? How can I fail?"
"You can't, of course you can't. Your star is above you. But don't listen to them."
"To whom do you mean, Olive? To my parents?"
"Oh no, not your parents," Miss Chancellor replied, with some sharpness. She paused a moment, and then she said: "I don't care for your parents. I have told you that before; but now that I have seen them—as they wished, as you wished, and I didn't—I don't care for them; I must repeat it, Verena. I should be dishonest if I let you think I did."
"Why, Olive Chancellor!" Verena murmured, as if she were trying, in spite of the sadness produced by this declaration, to do justice to her friend's impartiality.
"Yes, I am hard; perhaps I am cruel; but we must be hard if we wish to triumph. Don't listen to young men when they try to mock and muddle you. They don't care for you; they don't care for us. They care only for their pleasure, for what they believe to be the right of the stronger. The stronger? I am not so sure!"
"Some of them care so much—are supposed to care too much—for us," Verena said, with a smile that looked dim in the darkness.
"Yes, if we will give up everything. I have asked you before—are you prepared to give up?"
"Do you mean, to give you up?"
"No, all our wretched sisters—all our hopes and purposes—all that we think Sacred and worth living for!"