"the noblest and wildest hopes (if you like to call them so) that ever
thrilled generous hearts."

But she gave no encouragement to certain of her companion's most
vehement sentiments. She seemed to yearn for exactly that side of life
from which the younger shrank with so much horror. She saw it under an
entirely different aspect. Hadria felt thrown back on herself, lonely
once more.

"You have seen Mrs. Gordon," she said at length, "what do you think of
her?"

"Nothing; she does not inspire thought."

"Yet once she was a person, not a thing."

"If a woman can't keep her head above water in Mrs. Gordon's position,
she must be a feeble sort of person."

"I should not dare to say that, until I had been put through the mill
myself, and come out unpulverised."

Miss Du Prel failed to see what there was so very dreadful in Mrs.
Gordon's lot. She had, perhaps, rather more children than was necessary,
but otherwise----

"Oh, Miss Du Prel," cried Hadria, "you might be a mere man! That is just
what my brothers say."

"I don't understand what you mean," said Miss Du Prel. "Do explain."

"Do you actually--_you_ of all people--not recognize and hate the idea
that lies so obviously at the root of all the life that is swarming
round us----?"

Valeria studied her companion's excited face.

"Are you in revolt against the very basis of existence?" she asked
curiously.

"No: at least ... but this is not what I am driving at exactly," replied
Hadria, turning uneasily away from the close scrutiny. "Don't you
know--oh, don't you see--how many women secretly hate, and shrink from
this brutal domestic idea that fashions their fate for them?"

Miss Du Prel's interest quickened.

"Nothing strikes me so much as the tamely acquiescent spirit of the
average woman, and I doubt if you would find another woman in England
to describe the domestic existence as you do."

"Perhaps not; tradition prevents them from using bad language, but they
_feel_, they _feel_."

"Young girls perhaps, brought up very ignorantly, find life a little
scaring at first, but they soon settle down into happy wives and
mothers."

"As the fibre grows coarser," assented Hadria.

"No; as the affections awaken, and the instincts that hold society
together, come into play. I have revolted myself from the conditions of
life, but it is a hopeless business--beating one's wings against the
bars."

"The bars are, half of them, of human construction," said Ha