human
It was worse than I had feared, Algitha said, with a quiver in her voice.
gpt
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.
human
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 something of themselves is being wrenched away from them. She said that her children were all bad and unnatural; that she had spent her whole life in their interests; that if it had not been for her, we should all of us have grown up without education or accomplishments, or looks, or anything else; that she watched over us incessantly when we were little children, denying herself, spending her youth in devotion to us, when she might have gone into the world, and had some brightness and pleasure. If we imagined that she had never felt the dulness of her life, and never longed to go about and see people and things, we were much mistaken. But she had renounced everything she cared for, from her girlhood--she was scarcely older than I when her sacrifices began--and now her children gave no consideration to her; they were ready to scatter themselves hither and thither without a thought of her, or her wishes. They even talked scoffingly of the kind of life that she had led for _them_--for _them_, she repeated bitterly.
gpt
Truly parents must have a bad time of it! she exclaimed,
human
Mother says I shall ruin my life by this fad. What real good am I going to do? She says it is absurd the way we talk of things we know nothing about.
gpt
But she won't let us know about things; one must talk about _some_thing!
human
She says she has experience of life, and we are ignorant of it. I reminded her that our ignorance was not exactly our fault.
gpt
Ah! precisely. Parents throw their children's ignorance in their teeth, having taken precious good care to prevent their knowing anything. I can't understand parents; they must have been young themselves once. Yet they seem to have forgotten all about it. They keep us hoodwinked and infantile, and then launch us headlong into life, with all its problems to meet, and all momentous decisions made for us, past hope of undoing. Hadria rose restlessly in her excitement.
human
Surely no creature was ever dealt with so insanely as the well-brought-up girl! Surely no well-wisher so sincere as the average parent ever ill-treated his charge so preposterously.
gpt
One begins to understand a little, why women do things that one despises, and why the proudest of them so often submit to absolute indignity. You remember when Mrs. Arbuthnot and----
human
Ah, don't! cried Algitha, flushing.
gpt
H'm----I suspect the world that we know nothing about, Algitha, has ways and means of applying the pressure such as you and I scarcely dream of. Hadria spoke with half-closed eyes that seemed to see deep and far.
human
I have read and heard things that have almost taken my breath away! I feel as if I could _kill_ every man who acquiesces in the present order of things. It is an insult to every woman alive!