"As you do? Poor Monsieur Krafft! Your work is not so very certain!... But at least you like your work. But what sort of work can we do? There isn't any that we could find interesting--for, I know, we dabble in all sorts of things, and pretend to be interested in a heap of things that do not concern us: we do so want to be interested in something! I do what the others do. I do charitable work and sit on social work committees. I go to lectures at the Sorbonne by Bergson and Jules Lemaître, historical concerts, classical matinées, and I take notes and notes.... I never know what I am writing!... and I try to persuade myself that I am absorbed by it, or at least that it is useful. Ah! but I know that it is not true. I know that I don't care a bit, and that I am bored by it all!... Don't despise me because I tell you frankly what everybody thinks in secret I'm no sillier than the rest. But what use are philosophy, history, and science to me? As for art,--you see,--I strum and daub and make messy little water-color sketches;--but is that enough to fill a woman's life? There is only one end to our life: marriage. But do you think there is much fun in marrying this or that young man whom I know as well as you do? I see them as they are. I am not fortunate enough to be like your German Gretchens, who can always create an illusion for themselves.... That is terrible, isn't it? To look around and see girls who have married and their husbands, and to think that one will have to do as they have done, be cramped in body and mind, and become dull like them!... One needs to be stoical, I tell you, to accept such a life with such obligations. All women are not capable of it.... And time passes, the years go by, youth fades: and yet there were lovely things and good things in us--all useless, for day by day they die, and one has to surrender them to the fools and people whom one despises, people who will despise oneself!... And nobody understands! One would think that we were sphinxes. One can forgive the men who find us dull and strange! But the women ought to understand us! They have been like us: they have only to look back and remember.... But no. There is no help from them. Even our mothers ignore us, and actually try not to know what we are. They only try to get us married. For the rest, they say, live, die, do as you like! Society absolutely abandons us." "Don't lose heart," said Christophe. "Every one has to face the experience of life all over again. If you are brave, it will be all right. Look outside your own circle. There must be a few honest men in France."