“I suppose you have long ago tried all the devices of self-discipline?” said the Professor. “There are ways, of course, of arming oneself against minor difficulties, of living within a sort of citadel. Naturally much force has to go in keeping up the defences, but it is better than having none to keep up.”
Hadria gave a quiet smile. “There is not a method, mental or other, that I have not tried, and tried hard. If it had not been for the sternest self-discipline, my mind at this moment, would be so honeycombed with small pre-occupations (pleasant and otherwise), that it would be incapable of consecutive ideas of any kind. As it is, I feel a miserable number of holes here”—she touched her brow—“a loss of absorbing power, at times, and a mental slackness that is really alarming. What remains of me has been dragged ashore as from a wreck, amidst a rush of wind and wave. But just now, thanks greatly to your sympathy and Algitha’s, I seem restored to myself. I can never describe the rapture of that sensation to one who has never felt himself sinking down and down into darkness, to a dim hell, where the doom is a slow decay instead of the fiery pains of burning.”
“This is all wrong, wrong!” cried the Professor anxiously.
“Ah! but I feel now, such certainty, such courage. It seems as if Fate were giving me one more chance. I have often run very close to making a definite decision—to dare everything rather than await this fool’s disaster. But then comes that everlasting feminine humility, sneaking up with its simper: ‘Is not this presumptuous, selfish, mistaken, wrong? What business have you, one out of so many, to break roughly through the delicate web that has been spun for your kindly detention?’ Of course my retort is: ‘What business have they to spin the web?’ But one can never get up a real sense of injured innocence. It is always the spiders who seem injured and innocent. However, this time I am going to try, though the heavens fall!”
A figure appeared, in the dusk, at the further end of the avenue. It proved to be Miss Du Prel, who had come to find Hadria. Henriette had arrived unexpectedly by the late afternoon train, and Valeria had volunteered to announce her arrival to her sister-in-law.
“Ah!” exclaimed Hadria, “heaven helps him who helps himself! This will fit in neatly with my plans.”
CHAPTER XXX.
VALERIA DU PREL, finding that Miss Temperley proposed a visit of some length, returned to town by the early morning train.
“Valeria, do you know anyone in Paris to whom you could give me a letter of introduction?” Hadria asked, at the last moment, when there was just time to write the letter, and no more.