o
sat at home, and wove, and span, and bore children--of sinning against
the State!"

"Certainly," said Hadria, undismayed. "It was they who insidiously
prepared the doom for their country, as they wove and span and bore
children, with stupid docility. As surely as an enemy might undermine
the foundations of a city till it fell in with a crash, so surely they
brought ruin upon Greece."

"Oh, Hadria, you are quite beside yourself to-day!" cried Henriette.

"A love of paradox will lead you far!" said Lady Engleton. "We have
always been taught to think a nation sound and safe whose women were
docile and domestic."

"What nation, under those conditions, has ever failed to fall in with a
mighty crash, like my undermined city? Greece herself could not hold
out. Ah, yes; we have our revenge! a sweet, sweet revenge!"

Lady Engleton was looking much amused and a little dismayed, when she
and her companions rejoined the party.

"I never heard anyone say so many dreadful things in so short a space of
time," she cried. "You are distinctly shocking."

"I am frank," said Hadria. "I fancy we should all go about with our hair
permanently on end, if we spoke out in chorus."

"I don't quite like to hear you say that, Hadria."

"I mean no harm--merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels
impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don't we all
know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered
libertine."

"Why, you are saying almost exactly what Professor Theobald said the
other day, and we were so shocked."

"And yet my meaning has scarcely any relation to his," Hadria hastened
to say. "He meant to drag down all belief in goodness by reminding us of
dark moments and hours; by placarding the whole soul with the name of
some shadow that moves across it, I sometimes think from another world,
some deep under-world that yawns beneath us and sends up blackness and
fumes and strange cries." Hadria's eyes had wandered far away. "Are you
never tormented by an idea, an impression that you know does not belong
to you?"

Lady Engleton gave a startled negative. "Professor Fortescue, come and
tell me what you think of this strange doctrine?"

"If we had to be judged by our freedom from rushes of evil impulse,
rather than by our general balance of good and evil wishing, I think
those would come out best, who had fewest thoughts and feelings of any
kind to record." The subject attracted a small group.

"