“You can avert it,” she said at last; “but at what cost?”
“Miss Du Prel, I would rather sweep a crossing, I would rather beg in the streets, than submit to the indignity of such a life!”
“Then what do you intend to do instead?”
“Ah! there’s the difficulty. What can one do instead, without breaking somebody’s heart? Nothing, except breaking one’s own. And even putting that difficulty aside, it seems as if everyone’s hand were against a woman who refuses the path that has been marked out for her.”
“No, no, it is not so bad as that. There are many openings now for women.”
“But,” said Hadria, “as far as I can gather, ordinary ability is not sufficient to enable them to make a scanty living. The talent that would take a man to the top of the tree is required to keep a woman in a meagre supply of bread and butter.”
“Allowing for exaggeration, that is more or less the case,” Miss Du Prel admitted.
“I have revolted against the common lot,” she went on after a pause, “and you see what comes of it; I am alone in the world. One does not think of that when one is quite young.”
“Would you rather be in Mrs. Gordon’s position than in your own?”
“I doubt not that she is happier.”