“By bartering your womanhood, by using these powers of body, in return for food and shelter and social favour, or for the sake of so-called ‘duty’ irrespective of—perhaps in direct opposition to your feelings. How then do you differ from the slave woman who produces a progeny of young slaves, to be disposed of as shall seem good to her perhaps indulgent master? I see no essential difference.”
“I see the difference between honour and ignominy,” said Henriette. Hadria shook her head, sadly.
“The differences are all in detail and in circumstance. I am sorry if I offend your taste. The facts are offensive. The bewildering thing is that the facts themselves never seem to offend you; only the mention of them.”
“It would take too long to go into this subject,” said Henriette. “I can only repeat that I fail to understand your extraordinary views of the holiest of human instincts.”
“That catch-word! And you use it rashly, Henriette, for do you not know that the deepest of all degradation comes of misusing that which is most holy?”
“A woman who does her duty is not to be accused of misusing anything,” cried Miss Temperley hotly.
“Is there then no sin, no misuse of power in sending into the world swarms of fortuitous, poverty-stricken human souls, as those souls must be who are born in bondage, with the blended instincts of the slave and the master for a proud inheritance? It sounds awful I know, but truth is apt to sound awful. Motherhood, as our wisdom has appointed it, among civilized people, represents a prostitution of the reproductive powers, which precisely corresponds to that other abuse, which seems to most of us so infinitely more shocking.”
Miss Temperley preferred not to reply to such a remark, and the entrance of little Martha relieved the tension of the moment. Henriette, though she bore the child a grudge, could not resist her when she came forward and put up her face to be kissed.
“She is really growing very pretty,” said Henriette, in a tone which betrayed the agitation which she had been struggling to hide.
Martha ran for her doll and her blue man, and was soon busy at play, in a corner of the room, building Eiffel Towers out of stone bricks, and knocking them down again.