and bored that nobody asked one to do anything or to go anywhere. The thought came to Campaspe that she was seldom lonely, seldom bored nowadays. Only in her extreme youth had she experienced these and kindred unpleasant emotions. She had a practical nature; she hated the ineffectual. She had conquered fear; she conquered any feeling that annoyed or troubled her. She had mastered a formula for handling life, made life her slave, and this formula infrequently failed her.
After her bath, she donned a dressing-gown of pale green crêpe de chine, purfled in silver frogs, their legs extended in queer swimming postures, and sat down before her little writing-desk.
Dear Laura, she wrote:
You are bored in the Berkshires. I am amused in New York. Why should I go to you. Return, rather, to me. I know, of course, you can't or won't. You always consider the feelings of your children or your husband and, as a consequence, always keep them unhappy or uncomfortable. If you lived your own life, they would adjust their lives to yours. I suppose, as a matter of fact, that you are living your own life, doing what you really want to do, just as much as I am. People who suffer usually like to suffer and talk about it. There is Wilson Goodward, for instance, always complaining about his hard knocks, his consistently bad luck, always insisting that nothing ever comes out right for him. He likes to suffer and he likes to talk about his suffering. It is his way of making himself important. He cannot impose his personality on others in