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?"

[Pg 20]

"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."

"Yes, but the other sheep!"

"All baa in the same way and on the same note; all jump over the same imaginary fence, because one has jumped over a real one; are all branded with the same mark, washed in the same pool and shorn with the same scissors."

"Mercy, darling! Are you a farmer?"

A tender smile dawned in Mrs. Verulam's eyes.

[Pg 21]

[Pg 21]

"No," she murmured softly. "It was James Bush who taught me all about sheep."

"James Bush!"

"Yes. If you want to stop a ewe from coughing——"

"Daisy!"

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