“No; I quite agree as to the right. I only say that the means which the situation may make necessary are sometimes very hateful.”
“Ah, that is among the cruelest of the victim’s wrongs,” said Professor Fortescue. “He is reduced to employ artifices that he would despise, were he a free agent. Take a crude instance: a man is overpowered by a band of brigands. Surely he is justified in deceiving those gentlemen of the road, and in telling and acting lies without scruple.”
“The parallel is exact,” said Theobald, with a triumphant glance at Hadria.
“Honour departs where force comes in. No man is bound in honour to his captor, though his captor will naturally try to persuade his prisoner to regard himself as so bound. And few would be our oppressions, if that persuasion did not generally succeed!”
“The relations of women to society for instance——” began Theobald.
“Ah, exactly. The success of that device may be said to constitute the history of womanhood. Take my brigand instance and write it large, and you have the whole case in a nutshell.”
“Then you would recommend rank rebellion, either by force or artifice, according as circumstances might require?” asked Hadria.
Professor Fortescue looked round at her, half anxiously, half enquiringly.
“There are perils, remember,” he warned. “The woman is, by our assumption, the brigand’s captive. If she offends her brigand, he has hideous punishments to inflict. He can subject her to pain and indignity at his good pleasure. Torture and mutilation, metaphorically speaking, are possible to him. How could one deliberately counsel her to risk all that?”
There was a long silence.