Page:The beautiful and damned.djvu/42

 28 took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here.


 * (Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself) Whither shall I journey now?


 * To a new country—a land you have never seen before.


 * (Petulantly) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?


 * Fifteen years.


 * And what's the name of the place?


 * It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——


 * (In astonishment) What?


 * (Very much depressed) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."


 * But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?


 * Even so.


 * What of me? What chance shall I have?


 * It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.


 * (After a dissatisfied pause) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?