"I don't expect to." Hadria was standing by the window looking out over the glimmering fields and the shrouded white hills. "Life is as white and as unsympathetic as this," she said dreamily. "We just dance our reel in our garret, and then it is all over; and whether we do the steps as our fancy would have them, or a little otherwise, because of the uneven floor, or tired feet, or for lack of chance to learn the steps--heavens and earth, what does it matter?" "Hadria!" exclaimed an astonished chorus. The sentiment was so entirely unlike any that the ardent President of the Society had ever been known to express before, that brothers and sisters crowded up to enquire into the cause of the unusual mood. "Oh, it is only the moonlight that has got into my head," she said, flinging back the cloudy black hair from her brow. Algitha's firm, clear voice vibrated through the room. "But I think it matters very much whether one's task is done well or ill," she said, "and nobody has taught me to wish to make solid use of my life so much as you have, Hadria. What possesses you to-night?" "I tell you, the moonlight." "And something else." "Well, it struck me, as I stood there with my head full of what we have been discussing, that the conditions of a girl's life of our own class are pleasant enough, but they are stifling, absolutely _stifling_; and not all the Emersons in the world will convince me to the contrary. Emerson never was a girl!" There was a laugh. "No; but he was a great man," said Ernest. "Then he must have had something of the girl in him!" cried Hadria. "I didn't mean that, but perhaps it is true." "If he had been a girl, he would have known that conditions _do_ count hideously in one's life. I think that there are more 'destroyers' to be carried about and pampered in this department of existence than in any other (material conditions being equal)." "Do you mean that a girl would have more difficulty in bringing her power to maturity and getting it recognized than a man would have?" asked Fred. "Yes; the odds are too heavy." "A second-rate talent perhaps," Ernest admitted, "but not a really big one." "I should exactly reverse that statement," said Hadria. "The greater the power and the finer its quality, the greater the inharmony between the nature and the conditions; therefore the more powerful the leverage against it. A small comfortable talent might hold its own, where a larger one would succumb. That is where I think you make your big mistake, in forgetting that the greatness of the power may serve to make the greatness of the obstacles." "So much the better for me then," said Algitha, with a touch of satire; "for I have no idea of being beaten." She folded her arms in a serene attitude of determination. "Surely it only wants a little force of will to enable you to occupy your life in the manner you think best," said Ernest. "That is often impossible for a girl, because prejudice and custom are against her."