'Do you never take quite another line?' she said, with sparkling eyes. 'Do you never say—"This is my will, and I mean to have it! I have as much right to my way as other people?" Have you never tried it with Teresa?'
The Contessa opened her eyes.
'But I am not a tyrant,' she said, and there was just a touch of scorn in her reply.
Eleanor trembled.
'We have so few years to live and be happy in,' she said in a lower voice, a voice of self-defence.
'That is not how it appears to me,' said the Contessa slowly. 'But then I believe in a future life.'
'And you think it wrong ever to press—to insist upon—the personal, the selfish point of view?'
The Contessa smiled.
'Not so much wrong, as futile. The world is not made so—chère madame.'
Eleanor sank back in her chair. The Contessa observed her emaciation, her pallor—and the pretty dress.