Read "Helen of Troy; and Rose" by Phyllis Bottome online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Lady Walton was a woman who never did anything with her hands. She was content to sit for hours at a time thinking -- "doing nothing," her acquaintances called it. Certain hours in the day she read, but she never opened a modern book of any kind.
"I have a feeling," she said to her niece, "that they would revive a very painful experience I once received of a kitchen-maid in hysterics. People used to accept life and make their appeal to the intellect; now they spend their time screaming at natural laws and living for the emotions. It is a mysterious modern compulsion which used to be called selfishness. When I hear you begin to talk of your temperament, my dear Edith, I shall cease to ask you to run my errands."