Valeria was silent. “I have thought, at times, that you might make a better stand,” she said at last, clinging still to her theory of the sovereignty of the will.
Hadria did not reply.
The Professor shook his head.
“You know my present conditions,” said Hadria, after a silence. “I can’t overcome them. But perhaps some one else in my place might overcome them. I confess I don’t see how. Do you?”
Valeria hesitated. She made some vague statement about strength of character, and holding on through storm and stress to one’s purpose; had not this been the history of all lives worth living?
Hadria agreed, but pressed the practical question. And that Valeria could not answer. She could not bring herself to say that the doctor’s warnings ought to be disregarded by Hadria, at the risk of her mother’s life. It was not merely a risk, but a practical certainty that any further shock or trouble would be fatal. Valeria was tongue-tied.
“Now do you see why I feel so terrified when anyone proposes to narrow down his existence, even in the smallest particular, for my sake?” asked Hadria. “It is because I see what awful power a human being may acquire of ravaging and of ruling other lives, and I don’t want to acquire that power. I see that the tyranny may be perfectly well-intentioned, and indeed scarcely to be called tyranny, for it is but half conscious, yet only the more irresistible for that.”
“It is one’s own fault if one submits to conscious tyranny,” the Professor put in, “and I think tyrant and victim are then much on a par.”
“A mere demand can be resisted,” Hadria added; “it is grief, real grief, however unreasonable, that brings people to their knees. But, oh, may the day hasten, when people shall cease to grieve when others claim their freedom!”
Valeria smiled. “I don’t think you are in much danger of grudging liberty to your neighbours, Hadria; so you need not be so frightened of becoming a vampire, as I think you call it.”