“But seriously, Hadria, if one may speak frankly, I can’t see that the game is worth the candle. You have tested your power sufficiently. What more do you want? Claude Moreton is too nice and too good a man to trifle with. And poor Joseph Fleming! That is to me beyond everything.”
Hadria flushed deeply.
“I never dreamt that he—I—I never tried, never thought for a moment——”
“Ah! that is just the danger, Hadria. Your actions entail unintended consequences. As Miss Du Prel says, ‘It is always the good men whom one wounds; the others wound us.’” Hadria was silent. “And Claude Moreton,” continued Algitha presently. “He is far too deeply interested in you, far too absorbed in what you say and do. I have watched him. It is cruel.”
Hadria grew fierce. “Has he never cruelly injured a woman? Has he not at least given moral support to the hideous indignities that all womanhood has to endure at men’s hands? At best one can make a man suffer. But men also humiliate us, degrade us, jeer at, ridicule the miseries that they and their society entail upon us. Yet for sooth, they must be spared the discomfort of becoming a little infatuated with a woman for a time—a short time, at worst! Their feelings must be considered so tenderly!”
“But what good do you do by your present conduct?” asked Algitha, sticking persistently to the practical side of the matter.
“I am not trying to do good. I am merely refusing to obey these rules for our guidance, which are obviously drawn up to safeguard man’s property and privilege. Whenever I can find a man-made precept, that will I carefully disobey; whenever the ruling powers seek to guide me through my conscience, there shall they fail!”
“You forget that in playing with the feelings of others you are placing yourself in danger, Hadria. How can you be sure that you won’t yourself fall desperately in love with one of your intended victims?” Hadria’s eyes sparkled.
“I wish to heaven I only could!” she exclaimed. “I would give my right hand to be in the sway of a complete undoubting, unquestioning passion that would make all suffering and all life seem worth while; some emotion to take the place of my lost art, some full and satisfying sense of union with a human soul to rescue one from the ghastly solitude of life. But I am raving like a girl. I am crying for the moon.”
“Ah, take care, take care, Hadria; that is a mood in which one may mistake any twopenny-halfpenny little luminary for the impossible moon.”