“So you are going to throw us over?”
“Not at all. I believe in the Cause, but I won’t march. The cause of woman would be all right if there were no women—I mean the chief enemy to women’s suffrage is the suffragette. No woman has more influence than the French woman. It is all the more powerful because it is indirect. It is based on love. A Frenchwoman knows that to coax is better than to bully.”
“Oh, you’re always praising up the French women. Why don’t you go over to Paris to live, if you are so fond of them?”
“I never want to set foot in Paris again.”
“But what about me? I’ve never been there. Am I never to see it?”
“No; I don’t think you would like it.”
“I think I would. I think we’d better go over there for the Spring.”
Any opposition on my part made her determined, so that if I wanted a thing very much I had to pretend the very opposite. On the other hand, if I had expressed a keen wish to go to Paris she would have objected strenuously. Her nature was very antagonistic. I admired her greatly for her intellect, for her character; but she was one of those self-possessed, logical, clear-brained women who get on your nerves, and every day she was getting more and more on mine.
We took an Italian Palace near the Parc Monceau, bought a limousine, kept a dozen servants, moved in the Embassy crowd and had our names in the Society column of the New York paper nearly every day. Life became one beastly nuisance after another—luncheons, balls, dinners, theatre parties. I, who had a Bohemian hatred of dressing, had to dress every evening. I, who dreaded making an engagement because it interfered with my liberty, found myself obliged to keep a book in which I recorded my too numerous engagements. I, who had so strenuously objected to the constraints of company, was obliged to force smiles and stroke people the right way for hours on end. Was there ever such a slavery? It seemed as if I never had a moment in which I could call my soul my own. I was bored, heart-sick, goaded to rebellion.
“Why can’t we be simple, even if we are rich?” I remonstrated. “It would be far less trouble and we’d be far happier. I’m tired of trying to live up to my valet. Let’s cut out this society racket and live naturally.”