"It is ages since I smelt honeysuckle," she confessed, "except in
a perfumer's shop. I was wondering what it reminded me of."
"That," he said, as they turned out into the broad main road,
with its long vista of telegraph poles, "is because you have been
neglecting the real for the sham, flowers themselves for their
artificially distilled perfume. What I was going to try and put
into words without sounding too priggish, Lady Cynthia," he went
on, "is this. It is just you people who are cursed with a
restless brain who are in the most dangerous position, nowadays.
The things which keep us healthy and normal physically--games,
farces, dinner-parties of young people, fresh air and exercise
--are the very things which after a time fail to satisfy the
person with imagination. You want more out of life, always the
something you don't understand, the something beyond. And so you
keep on trying new things, and for every new thing you try, you
drop an old one. Isn't it something like that?"
"I suppose it is," she admitted wearily.
"Drugs take the place of wholesome wine," he went on, warming to
his subject. "The hideous fascination of flirting with the
uncouth or the impossible some way or another, stimulates a
passion which simple means have ceased to gratify. You seek for
the unusual in every way--in food, in the substitution of
absinthe for your harmless Martini, of cocaine for your
stimulating champagne.
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