“With making herself agreeable and her house attractive, with going to lunches and teas and dinners and concerts and theatres and art exhibitions, and charity meetings and receptions, and with writing a thousand and one notes about them, and accepting and declining, and giving lunches and dinners, and making calls and receiving them, and I don’t know what all. It’s the most hideous slavery!” Her voice rose into something like a shriek; one could see that her nerves were going at the mere thought of it all. “You don’t have a moment to yourself; your life isn’t your own.” “But the lady isn’t allowed to do any useful kind of work?” “_Work_! Don’t you call all that work, and _useful_? I’m sure I envy the cook in my kitchen at times; I envy the woman that scrubs my floors. Stop! Don’t ask why I don’t go into my kitchen, or get down on my knees with the mop. It isn’t possible. You simply can’t. Perhaps you could if you were very _grande dame_, but if you’re anywhere near the line of necessity, or ever have been, you can’t. Besides, if we did do our own household work, as I understand your Altrurian ladies do, what would become of the servant class? We should be taking away their living, and that would be wicked.” “It would certainly be wrong to take away the living of a fellow-creature,” the Altrurian gravely admitted, “and I see the obstacle in your way.” “It’s a mountain,” said the lady, with exhaustion in her voice, but a returning amiability; his forbearance must have placated her. “May I ask what the use of your society life is?” he ventured, after a moment. “Use? Why should it have any? It kills time.” “Then you are shut up to a hideous slavery without use, except to kill time, and you cannot escape from it without taking away the living of those dependent on you?” “Yes,” I put in, “and that is a difficulty that meets us at every turn. It is something that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who need the work if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The question is unanswerable.” “That is true; in your conditions, it is unanswerable,” said the Altrurian. “I think,” said Mrs. Makely, “that, under the circumstances, we do pretty well.” “Oh, I don’t presume to censure you. And if you believe that your conditions are the best--” “We believe them the best in the best of all possible worlds,” I said, devoutly; and it struck me that, if ever we came to have a national church, some such affirmation as that concerning our economical conditions ought to be in the confession of faith. The Altrurian’s mind had not followed mine so far. “And your young girls,” he asked of Mrs. Makely--“how is their time occupied?” “You mean after they come out in society?” “I suppose so.”