“But would you change with her, surrendering all that she has surrendered?”
“Yes, if I were of her temperament.”
“Ah! you always evade the question. Remaining yourself, would you change with her?”
“I would never have allowed my life to grow like hers.”
“No,” said Hadria, laughing, “you would probably have run away or killed yourself or somebody, long before this.”
Miss Du Prel could not honestly deny this possibility. After a pause she said:
“A woman cannot afford to despise the dictates of Nature. She may escape certain troubles in that way; but Nature is not to be cheated, she makes her victim pay her debt in another fashion. There is no escape. The centuries are behind one, with all their weight of heredity and habit; the order of society adds its pressure—one’s own emotional needs. Ah, no! it does not answer to pit oneself against one’s race, to bid defiance to the fundamental laws of life.”
“Such then are the alternatives,” said Hadria, moving close to the river’s brink, and casting two big stones into the current. “There stand the devil and the deep sea.”
“You are too young to have come to that sad conclusion,” said Miss Du Prel.
“But I haven’t,” cried Hadria. “I still believe in revolt.”