“If you are going to take this hard tone, Hadria, I fear you will never listen to reason.”
“Henriette, when people look popular sentiments squarely in the face, they are always called hard, or worse. You have kept yourself thoroughly informed of our affairs. Whose parental sentiments were gratified by the advent of those children—Hubert’s or mine?”
“But you are a mother.”
Hadria laughed. “You play into my hands, Henriette. You tacitly acknowledge that it was not for my gratification that those children were brought into the world (a common story, let me observe), and then you remind me that I am a mother! Your mentor must indeed be slumbering. You are simply scathing—on my behalf! Have you come all the way from England for this?”
“You won’t understand. I mean that motherhood has duties. You can’t deny that.”
“I can and I do.”
Miss Temperley stared. “You will find no human being to agree with you,” she said at length.
“That does not alter my opinion.”
“Oh, Hadria, explain yourself! You utter paradoxes. I want to understand your point of view.”
“It is simple enough. I deny that motherhood has duties except when it is absolutely free, absolutely uninfluenced by the pressure of opinion, or by any of the innumerable tyrannies that most children have now to thank for their existence.”