So now I am going to join you abroad, to travel and live among pictures and music and real people. These months out of society have broken the charm. I've tried to go back, but I can't stand it. The inanities of an afternoon At Home are more than I can bear. Everybody repeating to each other the same absurd commonplaces over and over again. Society conversation in one way is like a Wagner opera: it is composed of the same themes, which recur over and over again; only, in the conversation referred to, these themes are deadly, dull, fatuous remarks. As for balls and evening parties, I don't care about dancing any more, somehow, and to see the young _debutantes_ about me almost breaks my heart, full of memories of my daughter and what she might have been. Tears are not becoming to a very low-necked dress, and shouldn't be worn with powder and jewels. No, my dear Mary, I see in this society of ours, we all grow so hardened, that if we don't have some such grief as I have had, we become hopeless. People soon forgot I had ever had a child, or at least that she hadn't been dead for years. I find myself becoming a bore, because of perhaps a certain lack of spirit that I used to have; and I began to realize that I had never been liked for myself, but for what I gave, and for the atmosphere of amusement which I helped to create by nearly always being gay and enjoying myself. As you yourself said of society, it is absolutely unsatisfactory. I never knew a purely society woman yet who wasn't somewhat or sometimes dissatisfied. First, they can't go as much or everywhere they want; and soon after they have all the opportunities they desire, they find that isn't sufficient, after all, to make life perfect, and then the boredom of fatigue begins to creep upon them with the years, and soon old age begins like a worm to eat into what happiness they have had. Oh, no! When I think of how full your life is, of the interesting people you know--not merely empty names with a fashionable address or a coronet on their note paper,--of the places you see and the books you read; and then hear you say your life is too short to see or enjoy a third the world has to offer you! You happy, _happy_ woman you!