n't
even profess to have felt an unselfish desire to see one enjoying
oneself at their expense (though, as a matter of fact, what enjoyment
one has generally _is_ at their expense). People are always
enthusiastically congratulated on the arrival of a new child, though it
be the fourteenth, and the income two hundred a year! This seems to
point to a pronounced taste for new children, regardless of the
consequences!"

"Oh, of course," said Algitha, "it's one of the canons! Women, above
all, are expected to jubilate at all costs. And I think most of them do,
more or less sincerely."

"Very well then," cried Hadria, "it is universally admitted that
children are summoned into the world to gratify parental instincts. Yet
the parents throw all the onus of existence, after all, upon the children,
and make _them_ pay for it, and apologise for it, and justify it by
a thousand sacrifices and an ever-flowing gratitude."

"I am quite ready to give gratitude and sacrifice too," said Algitha,
"but I don't feel that I ought to sacrifice _everything_ to an idea
that seems to me wrong. Surely a human being has a right to his own life.
If he has not that, what, in heaven's name, _has_ he?"

"Anything but that!" cried Hadria.

* * * * *

While the momentous interview was going on, Hadria walked restlessly up
and down the garden, feverishly waiting. The borders were brilliant with
vast sunflowers, white lilies, and blazing "red-hot pokers" tangled
together in splendid profusion, a very type of richness and glory of
life. Such was the sort of existence that Hadria claimed from Fate. Her
eyes turned to the bare, forlorn hills that even the August sunshine
could not conjure into sumptuousness, and there she saw the threatened
reality.

When at last Algitha's fine figure appeared at the further end of the
path, Hadria hastened forward and took her sister's arm.

"It was worse than I had feared," Algitha said, with a quiver in her
voice. "I _know_ I am right, and yet it seems almost more than I am
equal for. When I told mother, she turned deadly white, and I thought,
for a moment, that she was going to faint. Let's sit down on this
seat."

"Oh, it was horrible, Hadria! Mother must have been cherishing hopes
about us, in a way that I don't think she quite knew herself. After that
first moment of wretchedness, she flew into a passion of rage--that
dreadful, tearing anger that people only feel when somethi