Miss Du Prel smiled.
“It is true,” she admitted. “A woman must not renounce too much if she desires to retain her influence.”
“Pas trop de zèle,” Hadria quoted.
“There is something truly unmanageable about you, my dear!” cried Valeria, much amused. “Well, I too have had just that sort of instinct, just that imperious demand, just that impatience of restraint. I too regarded myself and my powers as mine to use as I would, responsible only to my own conscience. I decided to have freedom though the heavens should fall. I was unfitted by temperament to face the world, but I was equally unfitted to pay the price for protection—the blackmail that society levies on a woman: surrender of body and of soul. What could one expect, in such a case, but disaster? I often envy now the simple-minded woman who pays her price and has her reward—such as it is.”
“Ah! such as it is!” echoed Hadria.
“Who was it said, the other day, that she thought a wise woman always took things as they were, and made the best of them?”
“Some dull spirit.”
“And yet a practical spirit.”
“I am quite sure,” said Hadria, “that the stokers of hell are practical spirits.”
“Your mother must have had her work cut out for her when she undertook to bring you up,” exclaimed Miss Du Prel.