“Oh, Hadria! And you don’t count me then?”
“Obviously I count you. But one’s whole life becomes a lie.”
“That is surely schoolgirl’s reasoning. Strange that you should be guilty of it! Is one’s life a lie because one makes so bold as to keep one’s own counsel? Must one take the world into one’s confidence, or stand condemned as a liar? Oh, Hadria, this is childish!”
“Yes, I am getting weak-minded, I know,” she said feverishly. “I resent being forced to resort to this sort of thing when I am doing nothing wrong, according to my own belief. Why should I be forced to behave as if I were sinning against my conscience?”
“So you may say; that is your grievance, not your fault. But, after all, compromise is necessary in everything, and the best way is to make the compromise lightly and with a shrug of the shoulders, and then you find that life becomes fairly manageable and often extremely pleasant.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right.” Hadria was picking the petals off a buttercup one by one, and when she had destroyed one golden corolla, she attacked another.
“Fate is ironical!” she exclaimed. “Never in my life did I feel more essentially frank and open-hearted than I feel now.”
The Professor laughed.
“My impulse is to indulge in that sort of bluff, boisterous honesty which forms so charming a feature of our national character. Is it not disastrous?”
“It is a little inopportune,” Theobald admitted with a chuckle.