doubt if you know what risks there are."

"Then I must find out," she answered.

"One plays with fire so recklessly before one has been burnt."

Hadria was silent. The words sounded ominous.

"Will can do so much," she said at length. "Do you believe in the power
of the human will to break the back of circumstance?"

"Oh, yes; but the effort expended in breaking its back sometimes leaves
one prone, with a victory that arrives ironically too late. However I
don't wish to discourage you. There is no doubt that human will has
triumphed over everything--but death."

Again the sound of the pony's hoofs sounded through the silence, in a
cheerful trot upon the white roads. They were traversing an open, breezy
country, chequered with wooded hollows, where generally a village sought
shelter from the winds. And these patches of foliage were golden and red
in the meditative autumn sunshine, which seemed as if it were a little
sad at the thought of parting with the old earth for the coming winter.

"I think the impossible lesson to learn would be renouncement," said
Hadria. "I cannot conceive how anyone could say to himself, while he had
longings and life still in him, 'I will give up this that I might have
learnt; I will stop short here where I might press forward; I will allow
this or that to curtail me and rob me of my possible experience.'"

"Well, I confess that has been my feeling too, though I admire the
spirit that can renounce."

"Admire? Oh, yes, perhaps; though I am not so sure that the submissive
nature has not been too much glorified--in theory. Nobody pays much
attention to it in practice, by the way."

Miss Du Prel laughed. "What an observant young woman you are."

"Renunciation is always preached to girls, you know," said
Hadria--"preached to them when as yet they have nothing more than a
rattle and a rag-doll to renounce. And later, when they set about the
business of their life, and resign their liberty, their talents, their
health, their opportunity, their beauty (if they have it), then people
gradually fall away from the despoiled and obedient being, and flock
round the still unchastened creature who retains what the gods have
given her, and asks for more."

"I fear you are indeed a still unchastened creature!"

"Certainly; there is no encouragement to chasten oneself. People don't
stand by the docile members of Society. They commend their saints, but
they drink to their sinners."

Miss Du Prel