ofessor shook his head.

"You know my present conditions," said Hadria, after a silence. "I can't
overcome them. But perhaps some one else in my place might overcome
them. I confess I don't see how. Do you?"

Valeria hesitated. She made some vague statement about strength of
character, and holding on through storm and stress to one's purpose; had
not this been the history of all lives worth living?

Hadria agreed, but pressed the practical question. And that Valeria
could not answer. She could not bring herself to say that the doctor's
warnings ought to be disregarded by Hadria, at the risk of her mother's
life. It was not merely a risk, but a practical certainty that any
further shock or trouble would be fatal. Valeria was tongue-tied.

"Now do you see why I feel so terrified when anyone proposes to narrow
down his existence, even in the smallest particular, for my sake?" asked
Hadria. "It is because I see what awful power a human being may acquire
of ravaging and of ruling other lives, and I don't want to acquire that
power. I see that the tyranny may be perfectly well-intentioned, and
indeed scarcely to be called tyranny, for it is but half conscious, yet
only the more irresistible for that."

"It is one's own fault if one submits to _conscious_ tyranny," the
Professor put in, "and I think tyrant and victim are then much on a
par."

"A mere _demand_ can be resisted," Hadria added; "it is _grief_, real
grief, however unreasonable, that brings people to their knees. But, oh,
may the day hasten, when people shall cease to grieve when others claim
their freedom!"

Valeria smiled. "I don't think you are in much danger of grudging
liberty to your neighbours, Hadria; so you need not be so frightened of
becoming a vampire, as I think you call it."

"Not _now_, but how can one tell what the result of years and years of
monotonous existence may be, or the effect of example? How did it happen
that my mother came to feel aggrieved if her daughters claimed some
right of choice in the ordering of their lives? I suppose it is because
_her_ mother felt aggrieved if _she_ ventured to call her soul her own."

Valeria laughed.

"But it is true," said Hadria. "Very few of us, if any, are in the least
original as regards our sorrowing. We follow the fashion. We are not so
presumptuous as to decide for ourselves what shall afflict us."

"Or what shall transport us with joy," added Valeria, with a shrug.

"Still less perhaps.