“Oh, it is no laughing matter! It amounts to a monomania. I long to take Mrs. Walker aside and say ‘Hi! look here, Mrs. Walker, I just want to mention to you——’ and so on; and Mrs. Jordan inspires me with a still more fatal impulse of frankness. If only for the fun of the thing, I long to do it.”
“You are quite mad, Hadria!” exclaimed the Professor, laughing.
“Oh, no,” she said, “only bewildered. I want desperately to be bluff and outspoken, but I suppose I must dissemble. I long painfully to be like ‘truthful James,’ but I must follow in the footsteps of the sneaky little boy who came to a bad end because he told a lie. The question is: Shall my mother be sacrificed to this passionate love of truth?”
“Or shall I?” asked the Professor. “You seem to forget me. You frighten me, Hadria. To indulge in frankness just now, means to throw me over, and if you did that, I don’t know how I should be able to stand it. I should cut my throat.”
Hadria buried her face in her hands, as if to shut out distracting sights and sounds, so that she might think more clearly.
It seemed, at that moment, as if cutting one’s throat would be the only way out of the growing difficulty.
How could it go on? And yet, how could she give him up? (The imp gave a fiendish chuckle.) It would be so unfair, so cruel, and what would life be without him? (“Moral development impossible!” cried the imp, with a yell of laughter.) It would be so mean to go back now—(“Shocking!” exclaimed the imp.) Assuming that she ought never to have allowed this thing to happen (“Oh, fie!”) because she bore another man’s name (not being permitted to retain her own), ought she to throw this man over, on second and (per assumption) better thoughts, or did the false step oblige her to continue in the path she had entered?
“I seem to have got myself into one of those situations where there is no right,” she exclaimed.
“You forget your own words: A woman in relation to society is in the position of a captive; she may justly evade the prison rules, if she can.”
“So she may; only I want so desperately to wrench away the bars instead of evading the rules.”