I laughed. “No doubt you women are too good for us,” said I carelessly. “We’re grateful that you don’t scorn us too much even to accept our money.” “How coarse that is! Don’t spoil the happiest evening of my life.” We were at home, so she could escape from me. And I, for my part, was as glad to be quit of her society as she could possibly have been to get rid of me. I was beginning to realize that her conversation bored me, that it had always bored me, that it was her sex and only her sex that interested me. And latterly even this had lost its charm. Why? I have observed--and perhaps you have observed it, too--that people of wealth and position, unless they have very striking individuality indeed, are usually utterly devoid of charm. It is difficult to become interested in them, to establish any sort of sympathetic current. And you will notice that fashionable functions are dull, essentially dull; that the animation is artificial, is supplied from without by an orchestra or entertainers, and fails to infect the company. It was long before I discovered the explanation for this. I at first thought it was the stupidity that comes from a surfeit of the luxuries and pleasures. But I am now convinced that this familiar explanation is not the true one; that the true one is the excessive, the really preposterous self-centeredness of people of rank and wealth. From waking until sleeping they are surrounded by hirelings and sycophants who think and talk only of them. Thus the rich man or woman gets into the habit of concentrating upon self. Now the essence of charm is giving--giving oneself out in sympathetic interest in one’s fellows. How can people, all whose faculties are trained to work in upon themselves--how can they have charm? An egotist, one who _talks_ only of himself, may have charm because he gives you the impression that he is trying to please you, that he thinks you so important that he wishes you to be sensible of his importance. But the egotist who, whatever he _talks_, _thinks_ only of himself--he is not only dull and bored but also a diffuser of dullness and boredom. And that is how their servants and their sycophants make the rich and the fashionable so dreary.