Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
They are symbols of an awful fact of life that no one can afford to ignore." "What insensate fools we all are!" Hadria exclaimed. "I mean women." The Professor made no polite objection to the statement. As they were wending their way towards the Red House, the Professor reminded his companion of the old friendship that had existed between them, ever since Hadria was a little girl.
"I can understand so well how it is that women become conventional," she said, apparently without direct reference to the last remark, "it is so useless to take the trouble to act on one's own initiative. It annoys everybody frightfully, and it accomplishes nothing, as you say." "My dear Hadria, you alarm me!" cried Lady Engleton, laughing.
The less intelligence and imagination the better, if our current morality is to hold its own. We want our women to accept its dogmas without question. We tell them how to be good, and if they don't choose to be good in that way, we call them bad. Nothing could be simpler." "I believe," said Hadria, "that the women who are called good have much to do with the making of those that are called bad.
"Ah, I know you won't admit it," said Hadria, "but some day we shall all see that this is the result of human cruelty and ignorance, and that it is no more 'intended' or inherently necessary than that children should be born with curvature of the spine, or rickets. Some day it will be as clear as noon, that heartless 'some day' which can never help you or me, or any of us who live now.
You were so devoted to the little girl, and it does seem terribly hard that she should be taken away from you." "It was my last chance," Hadria muttered, half audibly. "Then I suppose you will not attempt to resist?" "No," said Hadria. "He thinks of leaving Martha with you for another month." "Really? It has not struck him that perhaps I may not keep her for another month.
Fullerton had looked up in astonishment, at this incursion into her very sanctuary, of a stranger met at haphazard on the hills. Hadria wheeled up an easy-chair for the visitor. "I fear Miss Du Prel will not find much to see in the old house," said Mrs.
"Even then, I can't see what you can find in it to make you willing to sink from your old ideals." "Ideals! A woman with ideals is like a drowning creature with a mill-stone round its neck! I have had enough of ideals!" "It is a sad day to me when I hear you say so, Hadria!" the sister exclaimed.
Nor was this all. Crockery, pots and pans, clothes for the children, clothes for herself, were urgently needed, and no experienced person, she declared, could afford to regard the matter as simple because it was trivial. "One of the ghastliest mistakes in this trivial and laborious world." Valeria thought that cooks had simply to be advertised for, and they came. "What naïveté!" exclaimed Hadria.
This morning's conversation therefore touched closely on burning topics. "Mrs. Gordon's people meant it for the best, I suppose," Ernest observed, "when they married her to a good man with a fine property." "That is just the ghastly part of it!" cried Hadria; "from ferocious enemies a girl might defend herself, but what is she to do against the united efforts of devoted friends?"
Martha let go Hadria's hand, and ran off after a gorgeous butterfly that had fluttered over the headstone: a symbol of the soul; fragile, beautiful, helpless thing that any rough hand may crush and ruin. Hadria turned to watch the graceful, joyous movement of the child, and her delight in the beauty of the rich brown wings, with their enamelled spots of sapphire. "Hadria!"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking