human
I told you years ago that Nature had chosen our sex for ill-usage. Try what we may, defeat and suffering await us, in one form or another. You are dissatisfied with your form of suffering, I with mine. A creature in pain always thinks it would be more bearable if only it were on the other side.
gpt
Ah, I know you won't admit it, said Hadria,
human
The poor are helpers of the poor,
gpt
But if they grow too poor, to starvation point, then they can help no more; they can only perish slowly.
human
I hoped, said Valeria,
gpt
He does in one sense. But in another, he makes me feel more than ever what I am missing.
human
There is really nothing for it, but some deed of daring, she cried.
gpt
I believe, if only your husband could get over his horror of the scandal and talk, that a separation would be best for you both. It is not as if he cared for you. One can see he does not. You are such a strange, inconsequent being, Hadria, that I believe you would feel the parting far more than he would (conventions apart).
human
No question of it, said Hadria.
gpt
Our disharmony, radical and hopeless as it is, does not prevent my having a strong regard for Hubert. I can't help seeing the admirable sides of his character. He is too irritated and aggrieved to feel anything but rancour against me. It is natural. I understand.
human
Ah, it will only end in some disaster, if you try to reconcile the irreconcilable. Of course I think it is a great pity that you have not more of the instincts on which homes are founded, but since you have not----
gpt
Do you really regret that just for once the old, old game has been played unsuccessfully? Therein I can't agree with you, though I am the loser by it. Hadria grasped a swaying spray that the wind blew towards her, and clasped it hard in her hand, regardless of the thorns.
human
It gives me a keen, fierce pleasure to know that for all their training and constraining and incitement and starvation, I have _not_ developed masses of treacly instinct in which mind and will and every human faculty struggle, in vain, to move leg or wing, like some poor fly doomed to a sweet and sticky death. At least the powers of the world shall not prevail with me by _that_ old device. Mind and will and every human faculty may die, but they shall not drown, in the usual applauded fashion, in seas of tepid, bubbling, up-swelling instinct. I will dare anything rather than endure that. They must take the trouble to provide instruments of death from without; they must lay siege and starve me; they must attack in soldierly fashion; I will not save them the exertion by developing the means of destruction from within. There I stand at bay. They shall knock down the citadel of my mind and will, stone by stone.
gpt
That is a terrible challenge!