We had to mix a little in society, and Sergy took me out occasionally to pay formal calls, a task I particularly disliked. There seemed to be no end of card-leaving and card-receiving. It is such a bore going out visiting or holding a drawing-room—and this was my only crumpled rose-leaf. I had got thoroughly tired of the vapid folly and hypocrisy of social life, which is a daily lie, and mentally consigned all dinner-parties and deadly “At-Homes” to perdition. Nothing is more horrible than these “At-Home” days; it is such a nuisance to have to be nice to people whom in the bottom of your heart you despise, and who devote their ample leisure to passing criticisms of no tender character on their friends behind their backs. All these _Grandes Dames_ of the so-called Best World are more like mechanical dolls moving on wires, than living, feeling women. Their lives are framed uniformly on a fixed set of rules, and their gossip is perfectly intolerable to me. They talk either platitudes about chiffons, or make remarks about the weather; they murmur mechanically hospitable phrases, and then tear their guests to pieces and mock the weak points of the very people whose hands they had just pressed. I have the courage to order my life independently of the conventions which govern the existence of most women of my position, and I want to keep myself apart from the Great World. I am no longer fond of the pleasures and the admiration of society, finding no interest whatever in balls, which are insipid without a little bit of flirtation, for I can’t enjoy the actual exercise of dancing quite irrespective of whom I dance with; and now that I am married, I certainly will not admit any more courting. People wonder how I manage to kill my time, hiding myself from the world in a monastic seclusion. I am being talked about. “Mrs. This” and “Mrs. That” disapprove of my manner of life which gives rise to comment, but I am hopeless, and they have quite given up trying to reform me. They boycott me now when they meet me and cut me dead, giving me only the tips of their fingers. I pay them back in the same coin, even more, by giving them the ends of my nails. I do not care at all about what people say or think. Why should others busy themselves with my affairs? I am perfectly well able to act for myself and intend to do so now, and to always brave public opinion. It is difficult to imagine my ranging myself among the slaves, and certainly I am not going to permit my life to be interfered with. If my husband is satisfied with me, it’s all right then; only we two—the rest of the world does not count.