The Daughters of Danaus

"What always bewilders me," Hadria says, bending over the balustrade among the ivy, "is the enormous gulf between what might be and what is, in human life." In a bleak and solitary district of Scotland, a group of children form a secret society -- the Preposterous Society, they call it -- for the discussing of ideas. Of them, Hadria seems especially to have absorbed the spirit of those mystic northern twilights. A slight, dark-haired girl, she has a pale, rather mysterious face, and large, bewitched-looking eyes -- yet she is full of life, and is an inspiration to her siblings . . . for her thoughts as much as for her actions. Now a new thought disturbs her -- springing from a chance disagreement with a quotation from Emerson. In thinking of the greatness Emerson achieved, she wondered: could a woman do the same? Would circumstances allow a woman to raise herself to the same heights, in a society that expects it of a man?