ne who has lived in a world where there was always creative
work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women
with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe
in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor; can
you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you
have to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all--where money
is the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody's
thoughts--where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work,
that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they
have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller
than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display
and silly amusements and silly immoralities; do you know how awful that
life is? Of course I know there are clever people, and people of taste
in that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thing
in the end; empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I'm exaggerating, and I did make
friends and have some happy times; but that's how I feel after it
all. The seasons in New York and London--how I hated them! And our
house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest--the same people,
the same emptiness.

'And you see, don't you, that my husband couldn't have an idea of all
this. His life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and when
he was in society he had always his business plans and difficulties to
occupy his mind. He hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I never
let him know; I couldn't, it wouldn't have been fair. I felt I must
do something to justify myself as his wife, sharing his position and
fortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and try, to live up
to his idea about my social qualities... I did try. I acted my best. And
it became harder year by year... I never was what they call a popular
hostess, how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on trying... I used
to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as if I was not doing my
part of a bargain--it sounds horrid to put it like that, I know, but it
was so--when I took one of my old school-friends, who couldn't afford to
travel, away to Italy for a month or two, and we went about cheaply all
by ourselves, and were quite happy; or when I went and made a long stay
in London with some quiet people who had known me all my life, and we
all lived just as in the old days, when we had to thin