This little lady's answer to such an objection is usually accompanied by a shrug and a mildly condescending expression.
"If you are going to keep bothering your head about the effect of your actions on other people, might as well give up at the start and be a nice little sheep. The game isn't worth the candle.
"Besides, there's more humbug in that than any of the other bromides, weak natures prate about. Most people in this world have got to look out for themselves. You can't hope to be anything, or do anything worth while without occasionally treading on some one's toes. It has always been that way and if you're honest with yourself, you may as well recognize the fact and accept it philosophically.
"In most cases the harm that you do is much less than you imagine. That usually takes care of itself, somehow."
If people bore her, she doesn't believe in pretending that they interest her. She will not invite them to her house, or accept their invitations.
If she has agreed to go somewhere, where she expects to amuse herself and then, at the last moment, no longer feels in the mood for it, she calls it off. Or if in the meantime, something else turns up that she would prefer to do, she does not hesitate to switch to the thing she prefers.
If people don't like that, it is their affair. She has no intention of cramping her freedom, denying her desires, on their account. What she does means more to her than it does to anybody else. There is no good reason for her to pretend to be any different from what she is.
Moreover, in this particular case, there can be very little doubt, among those who know her, that she practices what she preaches. This, too, is something which occurs more frequently in the new generation than it did in the past. There is no great trouble in accommodating practice to theory—or rather the theory accommodates itself very readily to the kind of conduct which persons of this kind are ready to practice.
For instance, the lady in question wanted to visit Chinatown in one of the large cities and arranged with a professional guide to be taken there at night, alone with a girl friend. Among other things, they saw a Chinaman smoking opium and this gave rise to a desire on her part to experience the sensation for herself. The guide was prevailed upon, for a consideration, to procure her an outfit and a supply of opium; and that very night in her room she took a try at an opium dream. Why not?
At another time, at a cabaret party, she was introduced to a somewhat notorious young man of the Bohemian world. He was obviously dissolute, but talented and interesting. She danced with him, gave him encouragement, invited him to her home and was not afraid to be seen going about with him frequently on terms of intimacy. Among other things, he was addicted to the cocaine habit—he sniffed the powder from the back of his hand—and in due time he talked to her about it. He presented her with a bottle of the drug and after that, she always had a supply in reserve which she used when the impulse came. Why not?