human
Take care of dolly,
gpt
Yes, Henriette, you and Hubert have made your calculations cleverly. You have advocates only too eloquent in my woman's temperament. You have succeeded only too well by your fraud, through which I now stand here, with a life in fragments, bound, chafe as I may, to choose between alternative disasters for myself and for all of us. Had you two only acted straightly with me, and kindly allowed me to judge for myself, instead of treacherously insisting on judging for me, this knot of your tying which you naïvely bring me to unravel, would never have wrung the life out of me as it is doing now--nor would it have caused you and Hubert so much virtuous distress.
human
But, Hadria, _do_ be calm, _do_ look at the matter from our point of view. I have owned my indiscretion. (Hadria gave a little scornful cry.)
gpt
Surely you are not going to throw over all allegiance to your husband on _that_ account, even granting he was to blame.
human
I deny that I owe allegiance to a man who so treated me. I don't deny that he had excuses. The common standards exonerate him; but, good heavens, a sense of humour, if nothing else, ought to save him from making this grotesque claim on his victim! To preach the duties of wife and mother to _me!_ Hadria broke into a laugh.
gpt
It is inconceivably comic.
human
I fear my sense of humour is defective. I can't see the justice of repudiating the duty of one's position, since there the position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be denied. Why not make the best of it?
gpt
Henriette, you are amazing! Supposing a wicked bigamist had persuaded a woman to go through a false marriage ceremony, and when she became aware of her real position, imagine him saying to her, with grave and virtuous mien, 'My dear, why repudiate the duties of your position, since there your position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be denied?'
human
Oh, that's preposterous,
gpt
It's preposterous and it's parallel.
human
Hubert did not try to entrap you into doing what was wrong.
gpt
We need not discuss that, for it is not the point. The point is that the position (be that right or wrong) was forced on the woman in both cases by fraud, and is then used as a pretext to exact from her the desired conduct; what the author of the fraud euphoniously calls 'duty.'
human
You are positively insulting!