Hadria, who had merely agreed, doubtless out of a desire to support
her sister.

"I have not known you for seven years, but I am going to poke your
fire," said Henriette, when they were established in Hadria's room.

"I never thought you would wait so long as that," was Hadria's ambiguous
reply.

Then Henriette opened her batteries. She talked without interruption,
her companion listening, agreeing occasionally with her adversary, in a
disconcerting manner; then falling into silence.

"It seems to me that you are making a very terrible mistake in your
life, Hadria. You have taken up a fixed idea about domestic duties and
all that, and are going to throw away your chances of forming a happy
home of your own, out of a mere prejudice. You may not admire Mrs.
Gordon's existence; for my part I think she leads a very good, useful
life, but there is no reason why all married lives should be like hers."

"Why are they, then?"

"I don't see that they are."

"It is the prevailing type. It shows the way the domestic wind blows.
Fancy having to be always resisting such a wind. What an oblique,
shorn-looking object one would be after a few years!"

Henriette grew eloquent. She recalled instances of women who had
fulfilled all their home duties, and been successful in other walks as
well; she drew pictures in attractive colours of Hadria in a home of her
own, with far more liberty than was possible under her parents' roof;
and then she drew another picture of Hadria fifteen years hence at
Dunaghee.

Hadria covered her face with her hands. "You who uphold all these social
arrangements, how do you feel when you find yourself obliged to urge me
to marry, not for the sake of the positive joys of domestic existence,
but for the merely negative advantage of avoiding a hapless and forlorn
state? You propose it as a _pis-aller_. Does _that_ argue that all is
sound in the state of Denmark?"

"If you had not this unreasonable objection to what is really a woman's
natural destiny, the difficulty would not exist."

"Have women no pride?"

Henriette did not answer.

"Have they no sense of dignity? If one marries (accepting things on the
usual basis, of course) one gives to another person rights and powers
over one's life that are practically boundless. To retain one's
self-direction in case of dispute would be possible only on pain of
social ruin. I have little enough freedom now, heaven knows; but if I
married, why my very thoug