They arrived in limousines with dove-colored upholstery and crystal vases of maidenhair fern and moss-roses; and often, in such a car, Linda went to the theatre with Judith or Pansy and some cousins. Usually it was a matinee, where their seats were the best procurable, directly at the stage; and they sat in a sleek expensive row eating black chocolates from painted boxes ruffled in rose silk. The audience, composed mostly of their own world, followed the exotic fortunes of the plays with a complete discrimination in every possible emotional display and crisis. Lithe actresses in a revealing severity of attire, like spoiled nuns with carmine lips, suffering in ingenuous problems of the passions, agonized in shuddering tones; or else they went to concerts to hear young violinists, slender, with intense faces and dramatic hair, play concertos that irritated Linda with little shivers of delight. Sometimes they had lunch in a restaurant of Circassian walnut and velvet carpets, with cocktails, and eggs elaborate with truffles and French pastry. Then, afterward, they would stop at a confectioner's, or at a cafe where there was dancing, for tea. They all danced in a perfection of slow graceful abandon, with youths who, it seemed to Linda, did nothing else. She accepted her part in this existence as inevitable, yet she was persistently aware of a feeling of strangeness, of essential difference from it. She was unable to lose a sense of looking on, as if morning, noon and night she were at another long play. Linda regarded it--as she did so much else--with neither enthusiasm nor marked annoyance. Probably it would continue without change through her entire life. All that was necessary, and easily obtained, was a sufficient amount of money. Her manner, Pansy specially complained, was not intimate and inviting; in her room Linda usually closed the door; the frank community of the sisters was distasteful to her. She demanded an extraordinary amount of personal privacy. Linda never consulted Judith's opinion about her clothes, nor exchanged the more significant aspects of feeling. Alone in a bed-chamber furnished in silvery Hungarian ash, her bed a pale quilted luxury with Madeira linen crusted in monograms, without head or foot boards, and a dressing-table noticeably bare, she would deliberately and delicately prepare for the night. While Judith's morning bath steamed with the softness and odor of lavender crystals, Linda slipped into water almost cold. This, with her clear muslins and heavy black silk stockings, her narrow unornamented slippers, represented the perfection of niceness.