“What do you do?” Claudine asked, with earnestness. “I wish you’d tell me what you do all day?”
“Oh ... so many things!” murmured the other, taken aback. “There’s the house-keeping, of course—and social duties ... and with a man in the house there are such a lot of little things....”
Now it must be admitted that Claudine was not a lover of her kind. She had no special interest in humanity; she was not ready to see the simple human qualities in those about her. She was an aloof, eager soul, greedy for activity, for gaiety, and for something more than that. She wanted food for thought; she was not very original, she needed perpetual stimulation, a constant flow of external impressions. She did not wish to meditate, she wished to observe.
She was baffled at every turn. She tried to discover what it was that enabled the old lady to pass the time so tranquilly without impatience or weariness. After a few orders to the servants and her marketing, she had nothing to do. Other old ladies came in during the afternoons to talk with her; often there were old ladies from the country spending a few days with her, they talked of other old ladies known to them with a sort of good-humoured indifference.... Perhaps that was the key to it—a profound and cynical indifference, nothing mattered; one endured and existed, and life consisted not in accomplishment, but in a perfectly passive Duty.
The old lady said Claudine was excitable, and even went so far as to call her frivolous. And yet the only part of Claudine’s life which either she or her son took with any seriousness were these horrible little frivolities, the euchre club, the dinner parties, the calls. Her social duties....
“What in the world makes you so restless, child?” the old lady asked her one afternoon. Claudine had come into her room and was wandering about looking at the photographs, asking idle questions.
“I don’t know what to do with myself!” she answered suddenly.
“Do? Why, what under the sun do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.... But it seems.... Oh, it seems such a waste of time!”
“I must say you have very queer notions for a young married woman, Claudine. I’ve never heard of anyone else with such notions. You have your home, and your friends. And there’s the euchre club, and Gilbert takes you to the theatre every mortal week. What more do you want?”