"Doesn't he know good people—not religious, you know, but good?"
"Oh yes—everybody in London; but his parties are dreadful. You sit in the pitch dark while he describes to you how he discovered Venice or Vienna, and shows you the Lido or Lowndes Square, upside down as often as not. His coloured slides are really agonising."
"But his guests?"
"Oh! they're all right, of course, so far as any—any smart people are all right."
Mrs. Van Adam was about to utter a fervent protest, but Mrs. Verulam displayed sudden energy. She sat straight up, planted her little feet firmly on a tiny satin footstool, clasped her soft hands, and said:
"No; hear me, Chloe. You don't understand things. It is my duty to tell you what this London society is. It is a cage, like the cage of my squirrel Tommy, and those who are in it are captives—yes, yes, wretched captives—for I speak of us, of the women. The men are not so bound. They can escape from a ball directly after supper without being thought greedy; they can leave invitations unanswered, and be considered well-bred; they can forget a dinner-party, and retain respect; they can commit a thousand outrages, and yet remain gentlemen. How it is so nobody knows, but everybody knows that it is so; but we—we women! What is London society to us?"
"Heaven."
"Purgatory. We have to look pretty when we should like to rest and be quietly plain; we have to talk when we have nothing to say to men who talk and have nothing to say to us; we have to take exercise—in the way of smiling—that would knock up an athlete; we have to be made love to——"
"Charming! Exquisite!"
"When we long to be left alone with our neuralgia, and to listen to music when all our nervous system is quivering for silence. We have to flirt through 'Tristan' and laugh through 'Lohengrin.' We have to eat when we are not hungry, watch polo when we are longing for sleep, go to Ranelagh instead of to bed, and stand like sheep in a pen for hours at a stretch."