“Then what happens?”
“That’s just what I don’t know. That’s just why I say that I am probably wrong, because, in this transition period, there seems to be no clear right.”
“To cease to believe in right and wrong would be to founder morally, altogether,” Valeria warned.
“I know, and yet I begin to realize how true it is that there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong. It is related to the case and the moment.”
“This leads up to some desperate deed or other, Hadria,” cried her friend, “I have feared it, or hoped it, I scarcely know which, for some time. But you alarm me to-day.”
“If I believed in the efficacy of a desperate deed, Valeria, I should not chafe as I do, against the conditions of the present scheme of things. If individuals could find a remedy for themselves, with a little courage and will, there would be less occasion to growl.”
“But can they not?”
“Can they?” asked Hadria. “A woman without means of livelihood, breaks away from her moorings—well, it is as if a child were to fall into the midst of some gigantic machinery that is going at full speed. Let her try the feat, and the cracking of her bones by the big wheels will attest its hopelessness. And yet I long to try!” Hadria added beneath her breath.
Miss Du Prel admitted that success was rare in the present delirious state of competition. Individuals here and there pulled through.
“I told you years ago that Nature had chosen our sex for ill-usage. Try what we may, defeat and suffering await us, in one form or another. You are dissatisfied with your form of suffering, I with mine. A creature in pain always thinks it would be more bearable if only it were on the other side.”