How painful it must be to spend summer after summer in a world of reality, where the truth is so much more thrilling than any possible fiction that people are deprived of the pleasure of invention and the imagination falls into desuetude.

At Narragansett every one is veneered for the occasion,--every seam, scar, and furrow is hidden by paint, powder, and rouge; the duchess may be a cook, but the count who is a butler gains nothing by exposing her.
The very conditions of existence at Newport demand the exposure of every frailty and every folly; the skeleton must sit at the feast.
There is no room for gossip where the facts are known.

Nothing is whispered; the megaphone carries the tale.

What a ghastly society, where no amount of finery hides the bald, the literal truth; where each night the same ones meet and, despite the vain attempt to deceive by outward appearances, relentlessly look each other through and through.

Of what avail is a necklace of pearls or a gown of gold against such X-ray vision, such intimate knowledge of one's past, of all one's physical, mental, and moral shortcomings?
The smile fades from the lips, the hollow compliment dies on the tongue, for how is it possible to pretend in the presence of those who know?
At Narragansett friends are strangers, in Newport they are enemies; in both places the quality of friendship is strained.