“Certainly,” said Hadria, undismayed. “It was they who insidiously prepared the doom for their country, as they wove and span and bore children, with stupid docility. As surely as an enemy might undermine the foundations of a city till it fell in with a crash, so surely they brought ruin upon Greece.”
“Oh, Hadria, you are quite beside yourself to-day!” cried Henriette.
“A love of paradox will lead you far!” said Lady Engleton. “We have always been taught to think a nation sound and safe whose women were docile and domestic.”
“What nation, under those conditions, has ever failed to fall in with a mighty crash, like my undermined city? Greece herself could not hold out. Ah, yes; we have our revenge! a sweet, sweet revenge!”
Lady Engleton was looking much amused and a little dismayed, when she and her companions rejoined the party.
“I never heard anyone say so many dreadful things in so short a space of time,” she cried. “You are distinctly shocking.”
“I am frank,” said Hadria. “I fancy we should all go about with our hair permanently on end, if we spoke out in chorus.”
“I don’t quite like to hear you say that, Hadria.”
“I mean no harm—merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don’t we all know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered libertine.”
“Why, you are saying almost exactly what Professor Theobald said the other day, and we were so shocked.”