h the hazards of heredity.

However, in the end fate has no favourites. A woman who has beauty wants
to frame it in beauty. The eye is a sensualist, and its appetites, once
aroused, grow. A beautiful woman takes the same pleasure in the sight of
another beautiful woman as a man does; only jealousy or fear prevents her
from admitting the pleasure. I collected beautiful women.... Elegance is
a form of beauty. It not only enhances beauty, but it is the one thing
which will console the eye for the absence of beauty. The first rule
which I made for my home was that in it my eye should not be offended. I
lost much, doubtless, by adhering to it, but not more than I gained. And
since elegance is impossible without good manners, and good manners are a
convention, though a supremely good one, the society by which I
surrounded myself was conventional; superficially, of course, for it is
the business of a convention to be not more than superficial. Some
persons after knowing my drawing-room were astounded by my books, others
after reading my books were astounded by my drawing-room; but these
persons lacked perception. Given elegance, with or without beauty itself,
I had naturally sought, in my friends, intellectual courage, honest
thinking, kindness of heart, creative talent, distinction, wit. My search
had not been unfortunate.... You see Heaven had been so kind to me!

That night in my drawing-room (far too full of bric-a-brac of all climes
and ages), beneath the blaze of the two Empire chandeliers, which
Vicary, the musical composer, had found for me in Chartres, there were
perhaps a dozen guests assembled.

Vicary had just given, in his driest manner, a description of his recent
visit to receive the accolade from the Queen. It was replete with the
usual quaint Vicary details--such as the solemn warning whisper of an
equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, '_Mind the edge of the
carpet';_ and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little
hysterically--all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But
immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting,
involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of
autumn in late summer, and which accuse the hostess. It was over in an
instant; the broken current was resumed; everybody pretended that
everything was as usual at my receptions. But that pause was the
beginning of the downfall.

With a fierce effort I tried to escape from my ent