ppose I'm exaggerating, and I did make
friends and have some happy times; but that's how I feel after it all.
The seasons in New York and London! How I hated them! And our
house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest--the same people,
the same emptiness!

"And you see, don't you, that my husband couldn't have an idea of all
this? _His_ life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and
when he was in society he had always his business plans and difficulties
to occupy his mind. He hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I never
let him know--I couldn't; it wouldn't have been fair. I felt I must do
_something_ to justify myself as his wife, sharing his position and
fortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and try, to live up
to his idea about my social qualities.... I did try. I acted my best.
And it became harder year by year.... I never was what they call a
popular hostess--how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on
trying.... I used to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as if I
was not doing my part of a bargain--it sounds horrid to put it like
that, I know, but it _was_ so--when I took one of my old school-friends,
who couldn't afford to travel, away to Italy for a month or two, and we
went about cheaply all by ourselves and were quite happy; or when I went
and made a long stay in London with some quiet people who had known me
all my life, and we all lived just as in the old days, when we had to
think twice about seats at the theater, and told each other about cheap
dress-makers. Those and a few other expeditions of the same sort were my
best times after I was married, and they helped me to go through with it
the rest of the time. But I felt my husband would have hated to know how
much I enjoyed every hour of those returns to the old life.

"And in the end, in spite of everything I could do, he came to
know.... He could see through anything, I think, once his attention was
turned to it. He had always been able to see that I was not fulfilling
his idea of me as a figure in the social world, and I suppose he thought
it was my misfortune rather than my fault. But the moment he began to
see, in spite of my pretending, that I wasn't playing my part with any
spirit, he knew the whole story; he divined how I loathed and was weary
of the luxury and the brilliancy and the masses of money just because
of the people who lived among them--who were made so by them, I
suppose.... It happened last