ped her hands in despair.

"I simply can't understand you. What you say is rank heresy against all
that is most beautiful in human nature."

"Surely the rank heresy is to be laid at the door of those who degrade
and enslave that which they assert to be most beautiful in human nature.
But I am not speaking to convince; merely to shew where you cannot count
upon me for a point of attack. Try something else."

"But it is so strange, so insane, as it seems to me. Do you mean to
throw contempt on motherhood _per se_?"

"I am not discussing motherhood _per se_; no woman has yet been in a
position to know what it is _per se_, strange as it may appear. No woman
has yet experienced it apart from the enormous pressure of law and
opinion that has, always, formed part of its inevitable conditions. The
illegal mother is hounded by her fellows in one direction; the legal
mother is urged and incited in another: free motherhood is unknown
amongst us. I speak of it as it is. To speak of it _per se_, for the
present, is to discuss the transcendental."

There was a moment's excited pause, and Hadria then went on more
rapidly. "You know well enough, Henriette, what thousands of women there
are to whom the birth of their children is an intolerable burden, and a
fierce misery from which many would gladly seek escape by death. And
indeed many _do_ seek escape by death. What is the use of this eternal
conspiracy of silence about that which every woman out of her teens
knows as well as she knows her own name?"

But Henriette preferred to ignore that side of her experience. She
murmured something about the maternal instinct, and its potency.

"I don't deny the potency of the instinct," said Hadria, "but I do say
that it is shamefully presumed upon. Strong it obviously must be, if
industrious cultivation and encouragements and threats and exhortations
can make it so! All the Past as well as all the weight of opinion and
training in the Present has been at work on it, thrusting and alluring
and coercing the woman to her man-allotted fate."

"_Nature_-allotted, if you please," said Henriette. "There is no need
for alluring or coercing."

"Why do it then? Now, be frank, Henriette, and try not to be offended.
Would _you_ feel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this
sort (however noble and so on you might think it _per se_), if you knew
that it would be demanded of you as a duty, if you did not welcome it as
a joy?"

"I shou