"Why did you disappear so suddenly last night?" asked Grace, with her usual indiscreet directness, as soon as they had shaken hands. "I don't believe you heard Carmencita sing, after all."
"No, I did not. There was some one there I did not wish to meet. I had to go. I told you New York society and I would never agree. It proved so last night. I shall not try the experiment again. I shall leave New York to-morrow."
"Is it not a pity to take life so very hard as you do?"
"It is life that took me."
"You strike me as treading very heavily on it. 'Glissez, et n'appuyez pas' is such a wise motto."
"I see you have Golightly's 'Souvenirs'"—he pointed to the book on her lap. "Perhaps you are right. I suppose the career of that veteran butterfly proves it. I suppose if I had been born like him I should be happier than I am."
"Grace opened the book, and read this passage aloud:
"'If you see a fossil of a man, shabbily dressed, it is better to cross the street and avoid meeting him!' There is a fitness in such noble sentiments being expressed in this refined language. I fancy I hear you saying that!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Golightly is the natural outcome of a society that is built solely upon wealth. I look upon that rubbish as the most salutary lesson our people could have of the depth of degradation to which a 'leader of society,' as he is called, may sink."