“I see; you are going in for that stupid look now.”
“If it becomes necessary.”
“You never will succeed.”
“Probably I don’t want you to hope we will. You know what I mean—”
“How can I help knowing? Do we hear anything else but relaxing? Those of you who are not relaxing tremendously are repenting of your outlines and straining to get thin.”
“Don’t you suppose there are great advantages in these readjustments? When a girl is very pretty she is pampered; when she is pampered she grows fat; when she grows fat she grows ugly; and so things are balanced.”
“Let me amend that,” I said. “When she gets fat she gets frightened, diets, and gets fatter. Then she gets a little angry, golfs, rides, swims, hustles, finds the secret, gets reasonably proper again and acquires the new charm that comes with the aroused energy and the humility of a threatened loss—or gain, as you may wish to put it. Nothing is more qualifying than the threatened adversity of fat. We all know women who would be simply insufferable if they were not a shade plumper than they care to be. I fancy that leanness induces a more private humility.”
“It is a more private defect. But this is all to be righted in the next century. Our new ideals are going to give us more of the English physique. Anyway, we are going to be more athletic, not merely in this gymnasium way, which is only a sign of good faith, but in a broader, more practical, more—shall I say final?—way. See what summer means to us now.”