So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.

She considered herself unconventional.

Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.

Diana knew it wouldn't be right, but then she told herself that things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.

There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.

Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.

That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams. The girls of 1929.