And all the World had Sense!

“What hurts me most,” he went on, “is having to watch her making herself ridiculous.  Yet what am I to do?  If I explain things to her she will be miserable and ashamed of herself; added to which her frankness—perhaps her greatest charm—will be murdered.  The trouble runs through everything.  She won’t take my advice about her frocks.  She laughs, and repeats to me—well, the lies that other women tell a girl who is spoiling herself by dressing absurdly; especially when she is a pretty girl and they are anxious she should go on spoiling herself.  She bought a hat last week, one day when I was not with her.  It only wants the candles to look like a Christmas tree.  They insist on her taking it off so they may examine it more closely, with the idea of having one built like it for themselves; and she sits by delighted, and explains to them the secret of the thing.  We get to parties half an hour before the opening time; she is afraid of being a minute late.  They have told her that the party can’t begin without her—isn’t worth calling a party till she’s there.  We are always the last to go.  The other people don’t matter, but if she goes they will feel the whole thing has been a failure.  She is dead for want of sleep, and they are sick and tired of us; but if I look at my watch they talk as if their hearts were breaking, and she thinks me a brute for wanting to leave friends so passionately attached to us.

“Why do we all play this silly game; what is the sense of it?” he wanted to know.

I could not tell him.