with deep conviction, "I should
adore it; I would give all I possess to be able to do it." "Then it is
nothing," I said, "but a sense of duty that tears you away?" To which
she made no answer except to shake her head mournfully, and to give me
a penetrating smile.

I cannot help wondering whether the people who talk about the simple
life have any idea what it means; I do not think that my fair hostess's
desire for it is altogether a pose. One who lives, as she does, in the
centre of the fashionable world, must inevitably tire of it from time
to time. She meets the same people over and over again, she hears the
same stories, the same jokes; she is not exactly an intellectual woman,
though she has a taste for books and music; the interest for her, in
the world in which she lives, is the changing relations of people,
their affinities, their aversions, their loves and hates, their warmth
and their coldness. What underlies the shifting scene, the endless
entertainments, the country-house visits, the ebb and flow of society,
is really the mystery of sex. People with not very much to do but to
amuse themselves, with no prescribed duties, with few intellectual
interests, become preoccupied in what is the great underlying force in
the world, the passion of love; the talk that goes on, dull and
tiresome as it appears to an outsider, is all charged with the secret
influence; it is not what is said that matters; it is what is implied
by manner and glance and inflection of tone. This atmosphere of
electrical emotion is, for a good many years of their lives, the native
air of these fair and unoccupied women. Men drift into it and out of
it, and it provides for them often no more than a beautiful and
thrilling episode; they become interested in sport, in agriculture, in
politics, in business; but with women it is different; lovers and
husbands, emotional friendships with other women--these constitute the
business of life for a time; and then perhaps the tranquillizing and
purer love of children, the troubles and joys of growing boys and
girls, come in to fill the mind with a serener and kindlier, though not
less passionate an emotion; and so life passes, and age draws near.

It is thus easier for men to lead the simple life than women, because
they find it natural to grow absorbed in some definite and tangible
occupation; and, after all, the essence of the simple life is that it
can be lived in any milieu and under any circumstances.