“My dear, he was in love with you.”
“And so he thought himself justified in deceiving me. There is indeed war to the knife between the sexes!” Hadria stood with her elbows on the back of a high arm-chair, her chin resting on her hands.
“It is not fair to use that word. I tell you that we both confidently expected that when you had more experience you would be like other women and adjust yourself sensibly to your conditions.”
“I see,” said Hadria, “and so it was decided that Hubert was to pretend to have no objections to my wild ideas, so as to obtain my consent, trusting to the ponderous bulk of circumstance to hold me flat and subservient when I no longer had a remedy in my power. You neither of you lack brains, at any rate.” Henriette clenched her hands in the effort of self-control.
“In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, our forecasts would have come true,” she said. “I mean——”
“That is refreshingly frank,” cried Hadria.
“We thought we acted for the best.”
“Oh, if it comes to that, the Spanish Inquisitors doubtless thought that they were acting for the best, when they made bonfires of heretics in the market-places.” Henriette bent her head and clasped the arms of the chair, tightly.
“Well, if there be any one at fault in the matter, I am the culprit,” she said in a voice that trembled. “It was I who assured Hubert that experience would alter you. It was I who represented to him that though you might be impulsive, even hard at times, you could not persist in a course that would give pain, and that if you saw that any act of yours caused him to suffer, you would give it up. I was convinced that your character was good and noble au fond, Hadria, and I have believed it up to this moment.”
Hadria drew herself together with a start, and her face darkened. “You make me regret that I ever had a good or a pitiful impulse!” she cried with passion.