"All this--the whole thing--the stupidity of it--the society that's driven to these kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads--ennui! Look at us all! For God's sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our pinchbeck mummery--forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I'm sick of it!" "Duane!" "Oh, yes; I'm one of 'em--dragging my idleness and viciousness and my stupidity and my money at my heels.

I tell you, Kathleen, this is no good.

There's a stench of money everywhere; there's a staler aroma in the air, too--the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I'm deadly tired of it--of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can buy--like horses and yachts and prima donnas----" She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on: "Yes, prima donnas.

Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty one that sang in 'La Esmeralda' ?" "Duane!" she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting hands in his and held her powerless.
"You happen to be a darling," he said; "but you were not born to this environment.

Geraldine was--and she is a darling.