“Did you think it was a good ball?”
“I enjoyed it,” he answered, truthfully.
Her face fell. “How very disappointing,” she said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Disappointing that you did not see me there?”
“No,” she replied, and then, less positively; “No; I meant it was disappointing that you were the kind of man who went to parties—and enjoyed them.”
“It would be silly to go if you didn’t enjoy them,” he returned, lightly.
She turned to him very seriously. “You’re right,” she said; “it is silly—very silly, and it’s just what I do. I consider parties like that the lowest, emptiest form of human entertainment. They’re dull; they’re expensive; they keep you from doing intelligent things, like studying; they keep you from doing simple, healthy things, like sleeping and exercising; they make you artificial; they make you civil to people you despise—they make women, at least, for we must have partners—”
“But why do you go, then?”
She was silent, and they looked straight and long at each other. Then she said, gravely:
“The answer’s very humiliating. I go because I haven’t anything else to do.”