“But, Hadria, do be calm, do look at the matter from our point of view. I have owned my indiscretion.” (Hadria gave a little scornful cry.) “Surely you are not going to throw over all allegiance to your husband on that account, even granting he was to blame.” Hadria stopped abruptly.
“I deny that I owe allegiance to a man who so treated me. I don’t deny that he had excuses. The common standards exonerate him; but, good heavens, a sense of humour, if nothing else, ought to save him from making this grotesque claim on his victim! To preach the duties of wife and mother to me!” Hadria broke into a laugh. “It is inconceivably comic.”
Henriette shrugged her shoulders. “I fear my sense of humour is defective. I can’t see the justice of repudiating the duty of one’s position, since there the position is, an accomplished fact not to be denied. Why not make the best of it?”
“Henriette, you are amazing! Supposing a wicked bigamist had persuaded a woman to go through a false marriage ceremony, and when she became aware of her real position, imagine him saying to her, with grave and virtuous mien, ‘My dear, why repudiate the duties of your position, since there your position is, an accomplished fact not to be denied?’”
“Oh, that’s preposterous,” cried Henriette.
“It’s preposterous and it’s parallel.”
“Hubert did not try to entrap you into doing what was wrong.”
“We need not discuss that, for it is not the point. The point is that the position (be that right or wrong) was forced on the woman in both cases by fraud, and is then used as a pretext to exact from her the desired conduct; what the author of the fraud euphoniously calls ‘duty.’”
“You are positively insulting!” cried Henriette, rising.
By this time, Hadria had allowed the doll to slip back, and its limp body was hanging down disconsolately from her elbow, although she was clutching it, with absent-minded anxiety, to her side, in the hope of arresting its threatened fall.