MISS DU PREL had promised to allow Hadria to drive her to Darachanarvan, a little town on the banks of the river, about seven miles across country.

Hadria was in high spirits, as they trundled along the white roads with the wind in their faces, the hills and the blue sky spread out before them, the pleasant sound of the wheels and the trotting of the pony setting their thoughts to rhythm.

The trees were all shedding their last yellow leaves, and the air was full of those faded memories of better days, whirling in wild companies across the road, rushing upward on the breast of some vagabond gust, drifting, spinning, shuddering along the roadside, to lie there at last, quiet, among a host of brothers, with little passing tremors, as if (said Valeria) they were silently sobbing because of their banishment from their kingdom of the air.

Miss Du Prel, though she enjoyed the beauty of the day and the scenery, seemed sad of mood. “This weather recalls so many autumns,” she said. “It reminds me too vividly of wonderful days, whose like I shall never see again, and friends, many of whom are dead, and many lost sight of in this inexorable coming and going of people and things, this inexorable change that goes on for ever. I feel as if I should go mad at times, because it will not stop, either in myself or others.”

“Ah, that is a dreadful thought!”

“It comes to me so insistently, perhaps, because of my roving life,” she said.

She paused for a moment, and then she fell into one of her exalted moods, when she seemed to lose consciousness of the ordinary conditions around her, or rather to pierce deeper into their significance and beauty. Her speech would, at such times, become rhythmic and picturesque; she evidently saw vivid images before her, in which her ideas embodied themselves.

“Most people who live always in one place see the changes creeping on so gradually that they scarcely feel them, but with me this universal flux displays itself pitilessly, I cannot escape. Go where I will, there is something to measure the changes by. A shoal of yellow leaves whispers to me of seasons long ago, and the old past days, with their own intimate character that nothing ever repeats, flash before me again with the vividness of yesterday; and a flight of birds—ah! if I could express what they recall! The dead years pass again in a great procession, a motley company—some like emperors, crowned and richly dowered, with the sound of trumpets and the tramping of many obsequious feet; and others like beggars, despoiled and hungry, trudging along a dusty high road, or like grey pilgrims bound, with bleeding feet, for a far-off shrine.”

They entered a little beech-wood, whose leaves made a light of their own, strange and mystical.

“Yours must have been a wonderful life!” said Hadria.

“Yes, I have seen and felt many things,” answered Miss Du Prel, stirred by the intoxication of the motion and the wind and the sunlight, “life has been to me a series of intense emotions, as it will be to you, I fear——”

“You fear?” said Hadria.

“Yes; for that means suffering. If you feel, you are at the mercy of all things. Every wind that blows uses you as an Æolian harp.”

“That must be charming, at least for those who live in your neighbourhood,” said Hadria.

“No; for often the harp rings false. Its strings get loosened; one hangs slack and jars, and where then is your harmony?”

“One would run the risk of many things rather than let one’s strings lie dumb,” said Hadria.

“What a dangerous temperament you have!” cried Valeria, looking round at the glowing face beside her.

“I must take my risks,” said Hadria.

“I doubt if you know what risks there are.”

“Then I must find out,” she answered.

“One plays with fire so recklessly before one has been burnt.”

Hadria was silent. The words sounded ominous.

“Will can do so much,” she said at length. “Do you believe in the power of the human will to break the back of circumstance?”

“Oh, yes; but the effort expended in breaking its back sometimes leaves one prone, with a victory that arrives ironically too late. However I don’t wish to discourage you. There is no doubt that human will has triumphed over everything—but death.”

Again the sound of the pony’s hoofs sounded through the silence, in a cheerful trot upon the white roads. They were traversing an open, breezy country, chequered with wooded hollows, where generally a village sought shelter from the winds. And these patches of foliage were golden and red in the meditative autumn sunshine, which seemed as if it were a little sad at the thought of parting with the old earth for the coming winter.

“I think the impossible lesson to learn would be renouncement,” said Hadria. “I cannot conceive how anyone could say to himself, while he had longings and life still in him, ‘I will give up this that I might have learnt; I will stop short here where I might press forward; I will allow this or that to curtail me and rob me of my possible experience.’”

“Well, I confess that has been my feeling too, though I admire the spirit that can renounce.”

“Admire? Oh, yes, perhaps; though I am not so sure that the submissive nature has not been too much glorified—in theory. Nobody pays much attention to it in practice, by the way.”

Miss Du Prel laughed. “What an observant young woman you are.”

“Renunciation is always preached to girls, you know,” said Hadria—“preached to them when as yet they have nothing more than a rattle and a rag-doll to renounce. And later, when they set about the business of their life, and resign their liberty, their talents, their health, their opportunity, their beauty (if they have it), then people gradually fall away from the despoiled and obedient being, and flock round the still unchastened creature who retains what the gods have given her, and asks for more.”

“I fear you are indeed a still unchastened creature!”

“Certainly; there is no encouragement to chasten oneself. People don’t stand by the docile members of Society. They commend their saints, but they drink to their sinners.”

Miss Du Prel smiled.

“It is true,” she admitted. “A woman must not renounce too much if she desires to retain her influence.”

“Pas trop de zÈle,” Hadria quoted.

“There is something truly unmanageable about you, my dear!” cried Valeria, much amused. “Well, I too have had just that sort of instinct, just that imperious demand, just that impatience of restraint. I too regarded myself and my powers as mine to use as I would, responsible only to my own conscience. I decided to have freedom though the heavens should fall. I was unfitted by temperament to face the world, but I was equally unfitted to pay the price for protection—the blackmail that society levies on a woman: surrender of body and of soul. What could one expect, in such a case, but disaster? I often envy now the simple-minded woman who pays her price and has her reward—such as it is.”

“Ah! such as it is!” echoed Hadria.

“Who was it said, the other day, that she thought a wise woman always took things as they were, and made the best of them?”

“Some dull spirit.”

“And yet a practical spirit.”

“I am quite sure,” said Hadria, “that the stokers of hell are practical spirits.”

“Your mother must have had her work cut out for her when she undertook to bring you up,” exclaimed Miss Du Prel.

“So she always insinuates,” replied Hadria demurely.

They were spinning down hill now, into a warm bit of country watered by the river, and Hadria drew rein. The spot was so pleasant that they alighted, tied the pony to a tree, and wandered over the grass to the river’s edge. Hadria picked her way from stone to slippery stone, into the middle of the river, where there was comparatively safe standing room. Here she was suddenly inspired to execute the steps of a reel, while Valeria stood dismayed on the bank, expecting every moment, to see the dance end in the realms of the trout.

But Hadria kept her footing, and continued to step it with much solemnity. Meanwhile, two young men on horseback were coming down the road; but as a group of trees hid it from the river at this point, they were not noticed. The horsemen stopped suddenly when they cleared the group of trees. The figure of a young woman in mid-stream, dancing a reel with extreme energy and correctness, and without a smile, was sufficiently surprising to arrest them.

“As I thought,” exclaimed Hadria, “it is Harold Wilkins!”

“I shall be glad to see this conquering hero,” said Valeria.

Hadria, who had known the young man since her childhood, waited calmly as he turned his horse’s head towards the river, and advanced across the grass, raising his hat. “Good morning, Miss Fullerton.”

“Good morning,” Hadria returned, from her rock.

“You seem to be having rather an agreeable time of it.”

“Very. Are you fond of dancing?”

Mr. Wilkins was noted, far and wide, for his dancing, and the question was wounding.

He was tall and loosely built, with brown expressionless eyes, dark hair, a pink complexion, shelving forehead, and a weak yet obstinate mouth. His companion also was tall and dark, but his face was pale, his forehead broad and high, and a black moustache covered his upper lip. He had raised his hat gracefully on finding that the dancer in mid-stream was an acquaintance of his companion, and he shewed great self-possession in appearing to regard the dancing of reels in these circumstances, as an incident that might naturally be expected. Not a sign of surprise betrayed itself in the face, not even a glimmer of curiosity. Hadria was so tickled by this finished behaviour under difficulties, that she took her cue from it, and decided to treat the matter in the same polished spirit. She too would take it all decorously for granted.

Mr. Wilkins introduced his friend: Mr. Hubert Temperley. Hadria bowed gracefully in reply to Mr. Temperley’s salute.

“Don’t you feel a little cramped out there?” asked Mr. Wilkins.

“Dear me, no,” cried Hadria in mock surprise. “What could induce you to suppose I would come out here if I felt cramped?”

“Are you—are you thinking of coming on shore? Can I help you?”

“Thank you,” replied Hadria. “This is a merely temporary resting-place. We ought to be getting on; we have some miles yet to drive,” and she hurried her friend away. They were conducted to the pony-cart by the cavaliers, who raised their hats, as the ladies drove off at a merry pace, bowing their farewells.

“The eternal riddle!” Temperley exclaimed, as they turned the corner of the road.

“What is the eternal riddle?” Harold Wilkins enquired.

“Woman, woman!” Temperley replied, a little impatiently. He had not found young Wilkins quick to catch his meaning during the two hours’ ride, and it occurred to him that Miss Fullerton would have been a more interesting companion.

He made a good many enquiries about her and her family, on the way back to Drumgarren.

“We are invited to tennis at their house, for next Tuesday,” said Harold, “so you will have a chance of pursuing the acquaintance. For my part, I don’t admire that sort of girl.”

“Don’t you? I am attracted by originality. I like a woman to have something in her.”

“Depends on what it is. I hate a girl to have a lot of silly ideas.”

“Perhaps you prefer her to have but one,” said Temperley, “that one being that Mr. Harold Wilkins is a charming fellow.”

“Nothing of the kind,” cried Harold. “I can’t help it if girls run after me; it’s a great bore.”

Temperley laughed. “You, like Achilles, are pursued by ten thousand girls. I deeply sympathize, though it is not an inconvenience that has troubled me, even in my palmiest days.”

“Why, how old are you? Surely you are not going to talk as if those days were over?”

“Oh, I am moderately palmy still!” Temperley admitted. “Still, the hour approaches when the assaults of time will become more disastrous.”

“You and Hadria Fullerton ought to get on well together, for she is very musical,” said Harold Wilkins.

“Ah!” cried Temperley with new interest. “I could have almost told that from her face. Does she play well?”

“Well, I suppose so. She plays things without any tune that bore one to death, but I daresay you would admire it. She composes too, I am told.”

“Really? Dear me, I must make a point of having a talk with her, on the earliest opportunity.”

Meanwhile, the occupants of the pony-cart had arrived at Darachanarvan, where they were to put up the pony and have luncheon. It was a prosaic little Scottish town, with only a beautiful survival, here and there, from the past.

After luncheon, they wandered down to the banks of the river, and watched the trout and the running water. Hadria had long been wishing to find out what her oracle thought about certain burning questions on which the sisters held such strong, and such unpopular sentiments, but just because the feeling was so keen, it was difficult to broach the subject.

An opportunity came when Miss Du Prel spoke of her past. Hadria was able to read between the lines. When a mere girl, Miss Du Prel had been thrown on the world—brilliant, handsome, impulsive, generous—to pass through a fiery ordeal, and to emerge with aspirations as high as ever, but with her radiant hopes burnt out. But she did not dwell on this side of the picture; she emphasized rather, the possibility of holding on through storm and stress to the truth that is born in one; to belief in “the noblest and wildest hopes (if you like to call them so) that ever thrilled generous hearts.”

But she gave no encouragement to certain of her companion’s most vehement sentiments. She seemed to yearn for exactly that side of life from which the younger shrank with so much horror. She saw it under an entirely different aspect. Hadria felt thrown back on herself, lonely once more.

“You have seen Mrs. Gordon,” she said at length, “what do you think of her?”

“Nothing; she does not inspire thought.”

“Yet once she was a person, not a thing.”

“If a woman can’t keep her head above water in Mrs. Gordon’s position, she must be a feeble sort of person.”

“I should not dare to say that, until I had been put through the mill myself, and come out unpulverised.”

Miss Du Prel failed to see what there was so very dreadful in Mrs. Gordon’s lot. She had, perhaps, rather more children than was necessary, but otherwise——

“Oh, Miss Du Prel,” cried Hadria, “you might be a mere man! That is just what my brothers say.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” said Miss Du Prel. “Do explain.”

“Do you actually—you of all people—not recognize and hate the idea that lies so obviously at the root of all the life that is swarming round us——?”

Valeria studied her companion’s excited face.

“Are you in revolt against the very basis of existence?” she asked curiously.

“No: at least ... but this is not what I am driving at exactly,” replied Hadria, turning uneasily away from the close scrutiny. “Don’t you know—oh, don’t you see—how many women secretly hate, and shrink from this brutal domestic idea that fashions their fate for them?”

Miss Du Prel’s interest quickened.

“Nothing strikes me so much as the tamely acquiescent spirit of the average woman, and I doubt if you would find another woman in England to describe the domestic existence as you do.”

“Perhaps not; tradition prevents them from using bad language, but they feel, they feel.”

“Young girls perhaps, brought up very ignorantly, find life a little scaring at first, but they soon settle down into happy wives and mothers.”

“As the fibre grows coarser,” assented Hadria.

“No; as the affections awaken, and the instincts that hold society together, come into play. I have revolted myself from the conditions of life, but it is a hopeless business—beating one’s wings against the bars.”

“The bars are, half of them, of human construction,” said Hadria, “and against those one may surely be allowed to beat.”

“Of human construction?”

“I mean that prejudice, rather than instinct, has built up the system that Mrs. Gordon so amiably represents.”

“Prejudice has perhaps taken advantage of instinct to establish a somewhat tyrannical tradition,” Miss Du Prel admitted, “but instinct is at the bottom of it. There is, of course, in our society, no latitude for variety of type; that is the fault of so many institutions.”

“The ordinary domestic idea may have been suitable when women were emerging from the condition of simple animals,” said Hadria, “but now it seems to me to be out of date.”

“It can never be entirely out of date, dear Hadria. Nature has asked of women a great and hard service, but she has given them the maternal instinct and its joys, in compensation for the burden of this task, which would otherwise be intolerable and impossible. It can only be undertaken at the instigation of some stupendous impetus, that blinds the victim to the nature of her mission. It must be a sort of obsession; an intense personal instinct, amounting to madness. Nature, being determined to be well served in this direction, has supplied the necessary monomania, and the domestic idea, as you call it, grows up round this central fact.”

Hadria moved restlessly to and fro by the river bank. “One presumes to look upon oneself, at first—in one’s earliest youth,” she said, “as undoubtedly human, with human needs and rights and dignities. But this turns out to be an illusion. It is as an animal that one has to play the really important part in life; it is by submitting to the demands of society, in this respect, that one wins rewards and commendation. Of course, if one likes to throw in a few ornamental extras, so much the better; it keeps up appearances and the aspect of refined sentiment—but the main point——”

“You are extravagant!” cried Miss Du Prel. “That is not the right way to look at it.”

“It is certainly not the convenient way to look at it. It is doubtless wise to weave as many garlands as you can, to deck yourself for the sacrifice. By that means, you don’t quite see which way you are going, because of the masses of elegant vegetation.”

“Ah! Hadria, you exaggerate, you distort; you forget so many things—the sentiments, the affections, the thousand details that hallow that crude foundation which you see only bare and unsoftened.”

“A repulsive object tastefully decorated, is to me only the more repulsive,” returned Hadria, with suppressed passion.

“There will come a day when you will feel very differently,” prophesied Miss Du Prel.

“Perhaps. Why should I, more than the others, remain uninfluenced by the usual processes of blunting, and grinding down, and stupefying, till one grows accustomed to one’s function, one’s intolerable function?”

“My dear, my dear!”

“I am sorry if I shock you, but that is how I feel. I have seen this sort of traditional existence and nothing else, all my life, and I have been brought up to it, with the rest—prepared and decked out like some animal for market—all in the most refined and graceful manner possible; but how can one help seeing through the disguise; how can one be blind to the real nature of the transaction, and to the fate that awaits one—awaits one as inexorably as death, unless by some force of one’s own, with all the world—friends and enemies—in opposition, one can avert it?”

Miss Du Prel remained silent.

“You can avert it,” she said at last; “but at what cost?”

“Miss Du Prel, I would rather sweep a crossing, I would rather beg in the streets, than submit to the indignity of such a life!”

“Then what do you intend to do instead?”

“Ah! there’s the difficulty. What can one do instead, without breaking somebody’s heart? Nothing, except breaking one’s own. And even putting that difficulty aside, it seems as if everyone’s hand were against a woman who refuses the path that has been marked out for her.”

“No, no, it is not so bad as that. There are many openings now for women.”

“But,” said Hadria, “as far as I can gather, ordinary ability is not sufficient to enable them to make a scanty living. The talent that would take a man to the top of the tree is required to keep a woman in a meagre supply of bread and butter.”

“Allowing for exaggeration, that is more or less the case,” Miss Du Prel admitted.

“I have revolted against the common lot,” she went on after a pause, “and you see what comes of it; I am alone in the world. One does not think of that when one is quite young.”

“Would you rather be in Mrs. Gordon’s position than in your own?”

“I doubt not that she is happier.”

“But would you change with her, surrendering all that she has surrendered?”

“Yes, if I were of her temperament.”

“Ah! you always evade the question. Remaining yourself, would you change with her?”

“I would never have allowed my life to grow like hers.”

“No,” said Hadria, laughing, “you would probably have run away or killed yourself or somebody, long before this.”

Miss Du Prel could not honestly deny this possibility. After a pause she said:

“A woman cannot afford to despise the dictates of Nature. She may escape certain troubles in that way; but Nature is not to be cheated, she makes her victim pay her debt in another fashion. There is no escape. The centuries are behind one, with all their weight of heredity and habit; the order of society adds its pressure—one’s own emotional needs. Ah, no! it does not answer to pit oneself against one’s race, to bid defiance to the fundamental laws of life.”

“Such then are the alternatives,” said Hadria, moving close to the river’s brink, and casting two big stones into the current. “There stand the devil and the deep sea.”

“You are too young to have come to that sad conclusion,” said Miss Du Prel.

“But I haven’t,” cried Hadria. “I still believe in revolt.”

The other shook her head.

“And what about love? Are you going through life without the one thing that makes it bearable?”

“I would not purchase it at such a cost. If I can’t have it without despoiling myself of everything that is worth possessing, I prefer to go without.”

“You don’t know what you say!” exclaimed Miss Du Prel.

“But why? Love would be ruined and desecrated. I understand by it a sympathy so perfect, and a reverence so complete, that the conditions of ordinary domestic existence would be impossible, unthinkable, in connection with it.”

“So do I understand love. But it comes, perhaps, once in a century, and if one is too fastidious, it passes by and leaves one forlorn; at best, it comes only to open the gates of Paradise, for a moment, and to close them again, and leave one in outer darkness.”

“Always?”

“I believe always,” answered Miss Du Prel.

The running of the river sounded peacefully in the pause that followed.

“Well,” cried Hadria at length, raising her head with a long sigh, “one cannot do better than follow one’s own instinct and thought of the moment. Regret may come, do what one may. One cannot escape from one’s own temperament.”

“One can modify it.”

“I cannot even wish to modify mine, so that I should become amenable to these social demands. I stand in hopeless opposition to the scheme of life that I have grown up amongst, to the universal scheme of life indeed, as understood by the world up to this day. Audacious, is it not?”

“I like audacity,” returned Miss Du Prel. “As I understand you, you require an altogether new dispensation!”

Hadria gave a half smile, conscious of her stupendous demand. Then she said, with a peculiar movement of the head, as if throwing off a heavy weight, and looking before her steadily: “Yes, I require a new dispensation.”