"So we are," she explained. "But being entertained isn't always being interested, is it?"
"That's the theory, isn't it?" he rejoined.
"It may be the theory," she confessed, "but I'm sure it isn't the practice."
"I know that little college town of ours is remote from the path of progress," he went on, "but sometimes we behold those messengers of civilization, the New York Sunday newspapers. And whenever I do get one I am certain to see that you have been to a dinner-dance here, to a bal poudré there. I should judge that you lived in an endless merry-go-round of gayety."
She smiled again, and there was no sadness in her smile, only a vague, detached weariness. "Dinner-dances are the fashion just now," she said; "and if there is anything more absurd than the fashion it's to waste one's strength struggling against it."
"That is very end-of-the-century philosophy," he commented.
"It's philosophical not to want to be left out of things, isn't it?" she inquired. "Even if one doesn't care to go, one doesn't like not to be asked, and so one goes often when one would rather stay at home."
"I should think that if many people had motives like that, your parties here in New York might be rather dull," he retorted, with a little laugh.
"They are dull," she returned, calmly. "Sometimes they are very dull. But, of course, it doesn't do not to go."
"I suppose not," he agreed.