BOOK ONE Chapter 1

I am considered by those who have the honor of my acquaintance to be a pillar of propriety. I am pointed out by anxious mothers as an excellent example of careful training, combined with the advantages of a Continental finishing course at a most select pensionnat de demoiselles in the environs of Paris. I am the invited of very strict old maids, because I affect to enter into their schemes for the conversion of untold savages, am liberal of purse and reticent of tongue. The latter quality runs in my family. Our history demands an extraordinary amount of it. There are at least two families of high and ancient aristocratic pretensions, whose loud-tongued, drinking, gambling male descendants openly boast that they have never allowed a maiden of their noble line to pass, as such, out of the family and into the arms of her spouse. Ours is a third, only we are not so simple as to publish the fact.

I am not, by any means, a saint in outward seeming. In my appearance and ordinary habits I am not so straight-laced as I am represented. I do not set up for particular formality in my daily pursuits. I am only quiet, observant, always affable, amiable and sometimes a trifle volatile. The men call me dull, and say, "a pretty girl, but you know, dear boy, there is no fun in her. No use to try it on, dear old chappie, you'll only come off second best."

"Fun," in the mind of the society man of the present day, means immorality. They adopt the word because it is a light and gay style of describing the loose conditions which bind together all that they care for in the nature of modern society. At present, society is content to parade itself with a superficial and very flimsy disguise over its naked deformity. In a few years' time, at its present rate of progress, it will work barefaced in the open light of day.

I am not going to moralize; I do not even wish to be a self- appointed censor of the times in which I live. I do not personally care a pin what becomes of society, so long as I succeed in avoiding the arrows of detraction, scorn, and contempt which it launches against any luckless member who has the misfortune to be found out. I hardly think it will do so in my case; at any rate, I take all possible precautions to pursue my silent path of sensual indulgence in obscurity and peace.