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+House of Mirth
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: House of Mirth
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2008 [EBook #284]
+[Last updated: January 12, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSE OF MIRTH ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+The House of Mirth
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+EDITH WHARTON
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK ONE
+</H2>
+
+<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0101">CHAPTER 1</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0102">CHAPTER 2</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0103">CHAPTER 3</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0104">CHAPTER 4</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0105">CHAPTER 5</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0106">CHAPTER 6</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0107">CHAPTER 7</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0108">CHAPTER 8</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0109">CHAPTER 9</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0110">CHAPTER 10</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0111">CHAPTER 11</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0112">CHAPTER 12</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0113">CHAPTER 13</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0114">CHAPTER 14</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap0115">CHAPTER 15</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK TWO
+</H2>
+
+<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0201">CHAPTER 1</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0202">CHAPTER 2</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0203">CHAPTER 3</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="25%">
+<A HREF="#chap0204">CHAPTER 4</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0205">CHAPTER 5</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0206">CHAPTER 6</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0207">CHAPTER 7</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0208">CHAPTER 8</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0209">CHAPTER 9</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0210">CHAPTER 10</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0211">CHAPTER 11</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0212">CHAPTER 12</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0213">CHAPTER 13</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >
+<A HREF="#chap0214">CHAPTER 14</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0101"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK ONE
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 1
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central
+Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from
+a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at
+that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have
+inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and
+another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close
+of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood
+apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the
+street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
+be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she
+was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him.
+There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
+a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
+always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of
+far-reaching intentions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door,
+and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she
+would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her
+skill to the test.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Selden&mdash;what good luck!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him.
+One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss
+Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his
+last train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against
+the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a
+ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish
+smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after
+eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really
+eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached
+the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my rescue!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked
+what form the rescue was to take.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, almost any&mdash;even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One sits
+out a cotillion&mdash;why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit hotter here than
+in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory&mdash;and some of the women are not a bit
+uglier." She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to
+town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had
+missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another
+till half-past five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her
+laces. "Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
+My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on
+to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is closed, and I don't
+know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively about the station. "It IS
+hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after all. If you can spare the time, do
+take me somewhere for a breath of air."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as
+diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his
+course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a
+moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So many people come up to town on a Monday&mdash;one is sure to meet a lot of
+bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any
+difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not," she objected gaily. "I'm
+dying for tea&mdash;but isn't there a quieter place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
+interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that
+both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In judging Miss
+Bart, he had always made use of the "argument from design."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll find a
+hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her through the
+throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in
+preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles
+and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race?
+The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him
+feel how highly specialized she was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung refreshingly
+over the moist street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged from the
+station.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As she
+moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was conscious of
+taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the modelling of her
+little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair&mdash;was it ever so slightly
+brightened by art?&mdash;and the thick planting of her straight black lashes.
+Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong
+and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to
+make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious
+way, have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
+distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as
+though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to
+vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture
+will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material
+was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and her
+lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she paused
+with a sigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty&mdash;and what a hideous place New York is!"
+She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare. "Other
+cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in
+its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered down one of the side-streets.
+"Someone has had the humanity to plant a few trees over there. Let us go
+into the shade."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as they
+turned the corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your street? Do you live here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
+fantastically varied in obedience to the American craving for novelty,
+but fresh and inviting with their awnings and flower-boxes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes&mdash;to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building! I
+don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
+flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade. "Which are
+your windows? Those with the awnings down?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On the top floor&mdash;yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give you a
+cup of tea in no time&mdash;and you won't meet any bores."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her colour deepened&mdash;she still had the art of blushing at the right
+time&mdash;but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not? It's too tempting&mdash;I'll take the risk," she declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he had never
+liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without
+afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there
+was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the
+mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out the tea-things and
+provided some cake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed
+the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks;
+then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its
+walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he
+had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had
+sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent
+of mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What a
+miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a luxury of
+discontent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges of a
+flat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, governesses&mdash;or widows. But not girls&mdash;not poor, miserable,
+marriageable girls!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sat up in surprise. "You do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for
+cake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know&mdash;you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little unkindly. "But I
+said MARRIAGEABLE&mdash;and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no
+maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the
+food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting the cake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the
+kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green
+glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its
+slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he
+was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin
+Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the
+civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet
+seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that of
+Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was your
+cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I
+like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I
+daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure
+bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the
+horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt's drawing-room I
+know I should be a better woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
+filled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come oftener?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all&mdash;and yet we get on so well
+when we meet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I haven't
+any cream, you know&mdash;shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a
+thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason," she insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The reason for what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in
+her charming eyes. "I wish I knew&mdash;I wish I could make you out. Of course
+I know there are men who don't like me&mdash;one can tell that at a glance.
+And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry
+them." She smiled up at him frankly. "But I don't think you dislike
+me&mdash;and you can't possibly think I want to marry you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I absolve you of that," he agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against the
+chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement.
+The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement&mdash;he had not supposed
+she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only
+keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation
+but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he
+had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard it as
+such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt a slight shiver down
+his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you to make
+love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She leaned back, sipping
+her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that, if they had been in
+her aunt's drawing-room, he might almost have tried to disprove her
+deduction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
+pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't be
+afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have
+fancied you might be that friend&mdash;I don't know why, except that you are
+neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't have to pretend with
+you or be on my guard against you." Her voice had dropped to a note of
+seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a
+child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My aunt is
+full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in
+the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them would include
+wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other women&mdash;my best
+friends&mdash;well, they use me or abuse me; but they don't care a straw what
+happens to me. I've been about too long&mdash;people are getting tired of me;
+they are beginning to say I ought to marry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or two
+replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he
+rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all, and that
+is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably. "Isn't
+marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought up for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the first
+man who came along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there
+must be some one with the requisite qualifications."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances when I
+first came out&mdash;I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly
+poor&mdash;and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, his mother was frightened&mdash;she was afraid I should have all the
+family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn't do over
+the drawing-room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The very thing you are marrying for!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hard luck&mdash;but you can do better than Dillworth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting
+one between her lips and slipping the others into a little gold case
+attached to her long pearl chain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of
+her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal
+enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids,
+and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of
+the cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between
+the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints
+of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes lingered on them
+caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the
+pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost
+susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory
+enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You collect, don't you&mdash;you know about first editions and things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up
+something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the big sales."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept
+them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Americana&mdash;do you collect Americana?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden stared and laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector, you see; I
+simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should fancy so&mdash;except to the historian. But your real collector
+values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana
+sit up reading them all night&mdash;old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch fabulous
+prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly
+badly-printed book that one is never going to read! And I suppose most
+of the owners of Americana are not historians either?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use
+those in the public libraries or in private collections. It seems to be
+the mere rarity that attracts the average collector."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing,
+and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes,
+whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finest
+in the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a single
+volume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted now one
+book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her
+fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined against the warm
+background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder
+at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never
+be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing,
+and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
+the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her
+next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before him
+with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
+familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy
+all the books you want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby
+walls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And having to work&mdash;do you mind that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, the work itself is not so bad&mdash;I'm rather fond of the law."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but the being tied down: the routine&mdash;don't you ever want to get
+away, to see new places and people?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Horribly&mdash;especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough&mdash;to marry to get
+out of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, there's the difference&mdash;a girl must, a man may if he chooses." She
+surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little shabby&mdash;but who cares? It
+doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one
+would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for
+herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they
+don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman?
+We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop&mdash;and if we
+can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with her
+lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for such an
+investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the Trenors'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She returned his look interrogatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you might be going there&mdash;oh, not in that capacity! But there
+are to be a lot of your set&mdash;Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls, Lady
+Cressida Raith&mdash;and the George Dorsets."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her
+lashes; but he remained imperturbable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the week; and
+those big parties bore me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's part of the business&mdash;you forget! And besides, if I didn't, I
+should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they both
+laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced at the clock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while
+she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her
+slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline&mdash;as
+though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the
+drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan
+freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
+threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; good bye here, please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good bye, then&mdash;and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening the door
+for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
+chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and
+she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of
+prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a char-woman who was
+scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and its surrounding implements
+took up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts
+and brush against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work
+and looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth
+she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly
+pitted with small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her
+scalp shone unpleasantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to convey a
+criticism of the other's manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued to
+stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings. Lily felt
+herself flushing under the look. What did the creature suppose? Could one
+never do the simplest, the most harmless thing, without subjecting one's
+self to some odious conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled
+to think that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
+was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE such
+apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with
+the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it
+occurred to her that the woman's persistent gaze implied a groping among
+past associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
+fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
+Fifth Avenue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for a
+hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she ran
+against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat, who
+raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Bart? Well&mdash;of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and she
+caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Rosedale&mdash;how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
+irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden intimacy
+of his smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He was a
+plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes
+fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the
+air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. He glanced up
+interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a tone
+which had the familiarity of a touch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
+precipitate explanations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch the
+train to the Trenors'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know there
+were any dress-makers in the Benedick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of this
+building?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor, isn't it?
+I happen to own the building&mdash;that's the way I know." His smile deepened
+as he added with increasing assurance: "But you must let me take you to
+the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of course? You've barely time
+to catch the five-forty. The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a hansom
+drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a desperate gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you," she said,
+extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his protestations,
+she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out a breathless order
+to the driver.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0102"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 2
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so dearly
+for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing
+without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice? She had
+yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence Selden's rooms, and it
+was so seldom that she could allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This
+one, at any rate, was going to cost her rather more than she could
+afford. She was vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of
+vigilance, she had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story
+about her dress-maker was bad enough&mdash;it would have been so simple to
+tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere
+statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having
+let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the
+witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to let
+Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have purchased
+his silence. He had his race's accuracy in the appraisal of values, and
+to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the
+company of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as he
+might himself have phrased it. He knew, of course, that there would be a
+large house-party at Bellomont, and the possibility of being taken for
+one of Mrs. Trenor's guests was doubtless included in his calculations.
+Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage in his social ascent when it was of
+importance to produce such impressions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The provoking part was that Lily knew all this&mdash;knew how easy it would
+have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it might be to do
+so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who made it his business to
+know everything about every one, whose idea of showing himself to be at
+home in society was to display an inconvenient familiarity with the
+habits of those with whom he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure
+that within twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker
+at the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's
+acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and
+ignored him. On his first appearance&mdash;when her improvident cousin, Jack
+Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too easily guessed)
+a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"&mdash;Rosedale,
+with that mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which
+characterizes his race, had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She
+understood his motives, for her own course was guided by as nice
+calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be hospitable to
+newcomers, since the most unpromising might be useful later on, and there
+were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But
+some intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social
+discipline, had made her push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a
+trial. He had left behind only the ripple of amusement which his speedy
+despatch had caused among her friends; and though later (to shift the
+metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in fleeting
+glimpses, with long submergences between.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set Mr.
+Rosedale had been pronounced "impossible," and Jack Stepney roundly
+snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner invitations. Even Mrs.
+Trenor, whose taste for variety had led her into some hazardous
+experiments, resisted Jack's attempts to disguise Mr. Rosedale as a
+novelty, and declared that he was the same little Jew who had been served
+up and rejected at the social board a dozen times within her memory; and
+while Judy Trenor was obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale's
+penetrating beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave
+up the contest with a laughing "You'll see," and, sticking manfully to
+his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable restaurants, in
+company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who are
+available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been vain, and
+as Rosedale undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh remained with his
+debtor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
+feared&mdash;unless one put one's self in his power. And this was precisely
+what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see that she had
+something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score to settle with her.
+Something in his smile told her he had not forgotten. She turned from the
+thought with a little shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the
+station, and dogged her down the platform with the persistency of Mr.
+Rosedale himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but having
+arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive feeling for effect
+which never forsook her, she glanced about in the hope of seeing some
+other member of the Trenors' party. She wanted to get away from herself,
+and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man with a
+soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the carriage, appeared to be
+dissembling himself behind an unfolded newspaper. Lily's eye brightened,
+and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines of her mouth. She had known
+that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at Bellomont, but she had not counted on
+the luck of having him to herself in the train; and the fact banished all
+perturbing thoughts of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to
+end more favourably than it had begun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her prey
+through downcast lashes while she organized a method of attack.
+Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told her that he was
+aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite so engrossed in an
+evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy to come up to her, and
+that she would have to devise some means of approach which should not
+appear to be an advance on her part. It amused her to think that any one
+as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce should be shy; but she was gifted with
+treasures of indulgence for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his
+timidity might serve her purpose better than too much assurance. She had
+the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not
+equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was racing
+between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as it lowered its
+speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and drifted slowly down the
+carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the train gave a lurch, and he was
+aware of a slender hand gripping the back of his chair. He rose with a
+start, his ingenuous face looking as though it had been dipped in
+crimson: even the reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen. The train
+swayed again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was enveloped in
+the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her fugitive touch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I'm so sorry&mdash;I was trying to find the porter
+and get some tea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they stood
+exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes&mdash;he was going to Bellomont. He
+had heard she was to be of the party&mdash;he blushed again as he admitted it.
+And was he to be there for a whole week? How delightful!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last station
+forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat to her seat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The chair next to mine is empty&mdash;do take it," she said over her
+shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded in
+effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and his bags
+to her side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that
+seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little table had
+been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to bestow his
+encumbering properties beneath it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her hands
+flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast
+to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed wonderful to him that any
+one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making
+tea in public in a lurching train. He would never have dared to order it
+for himself, lest he should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers;
+but, secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky
+draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, with the flavour of Selden's caravan tea on her lips, had no great
+fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such nectar to her
+companion; but, rightly judging that one of the charms of tea is the fact
+of drinking it together, she proceeded to give the last touch to Mr.
+Gryce's enjoyment by smiling at him across her lifted cup.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it quite right&mdash;I haven't made it too strong?" she asked
+solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never tasted
+better tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I daresay it is true," she reflected; and her imagination was fired by
+the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the depths of the most
+complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually taking his first journey
+alone with a pretty woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument of his
+initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage him. They would
+have over-emphasized the novelty of the adventure, trying to make him
+feel in it the zest of an escapade. But Lily's methods were more
+delicate. She remembered that her cousin Jack Stepney had once defined
+Mr. Gryce as the young man who had promised his mother never to go out in
+the rain without his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to
+impart a gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her
+companion, instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or
+unusual, would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always having a
+companion to make one's tea in the train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray had been
+removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement of Mr. Gryce's
+limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity but imagination that he
+lacked: he had a mental palate which would never learn to distinguish
+between railway tea and nectar. There was, however, one topic she could
+rely on: one spring that she had only to touch to set his simple
+machinery in motion. She had refrained from touching it because it was a
+last resource, and she had relied on other arts to stimulate other
+sensations; but as a settled look of dulness began to creep over his
+candid features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And how," she said, leaning forward, "are you getting on with your
+Americana?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient film
+had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful operator.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've got a few new things," he said, suffused with pleasure, but
+lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers might be in
+league to despoil him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn on to talk
+of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which enabled him to
+forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember himself without
+constraint, because he was at home in it, and could assert a superiority
+that there were few to dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared for
+Americana, or knew anything about them; and the consciousness of this
+ignorance threw Mr. Gryce's knowledge into agreeable relief. The only
+difficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the front; most
+people showed no desire to have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Gryce
+was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable
+commodity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about Americana; and
+moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to make the task of
+farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable. She questioned him
+intelligently, she heard him submissively; and, prepared for the look of
+lassitude which usually crept over his listeners' faces, he grew eloquent
+under her receptive gaze. The "points" she had had the presence of mind
+to glean from Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were
+serving her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him
+had been the luckiest incident of the day. She had once more shown her
+talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the
+advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the surface of
+smiling attention which she continued to present to her companion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Gryce's sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable. He
+felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms welcome the
+gratification of their needs, and all his senses floundered in a vague
+well-being, through which Miss Bart's personality was dimly but
+pleasantly perceptible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Gryce's interest in Americana had not originated with himself: it was
+impossible to think of him as evolving any taste of his own. An uncle had
+left him a collection already noted among bibliophiles; the existence of
+the collection was the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of
+Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it
+had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such,
+and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any
+reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal
+notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so
+exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking
+from publicity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all the
+reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American history in
+particular, and as allusions to his library abounded in the pages of
+these journals, which formed his only reading, he came to regard himself
+as figuring prominently in the public eye, and to enjoy the thought of
+the interest which would be excited if the persons he met in the street,
+or sat among in travelling, were suddenly to be told that he was the
+possessor of the Gryce Americana.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
+discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
+proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident person
+she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or to show such
+exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly guessed that Mr. Gryce's
+egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring constant nurture from without. Miss
+Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she
+appeared to be sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case
+her mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce's
+future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but
+lately introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
+after old Jefferson Gryce's death, to take possession of his house in
+Madison Avenue&mdash;an appalling house, all brown stone without and black
+walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked
+like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce's
+arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl
+has no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
+herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself in the
+young man's way, but had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a
+monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied
+with the iniquities of her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs.
+Peniston and learn from that lady how she managed to prevent the
+kitchen-maid's smuggling groceries out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a
+kind of impersonal benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded
+with suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their annual
+reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties were manifold,
+for they extended from furtive inspections of the servants' bedrooms to
+unannounced descents to the cellar; but she had never allowed herself
+many pleasures. Once, however, she had had a special edition of the Sarum
+Rule printed in rubric and presented to every clergyman in the diocese;
+and the gilt album in which their letters of thanks were pasted formed
+the chief ornament of her drawing-room table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a woman
+was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion had been
+grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious, with the result
+that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs. Gryce to extract his
+promise about the overshoes, so little likely was he to hazard himself
+abroad in the rain. After attaining his majority, and coming into the
+fortune which the late Mr. Gryce had made out of a patent device for
+excluding fresh air from hotels, the young man continued to live with his
+mother in Albany; but on Jefferson Gryce's death, when another large
+property passed into her son's hands, Mrs. Gryce thought that what she
+called his "interests" demanded his presence in New York. She accordingly
+installed herself in the Madison Avenue house, and Percy, whose sense of
+duty was not inferior to his mother's, spent all his week days in the
+handsome Broad Street office where a batch of pale men on small salaries
+had grown grey in the management of the Gryce estate, and where he was
+initiated with becoming reverence into every detail of the art of
+accumulation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce's only
+occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it not too hard
+a task to interest a young man who had been kept on such low diet. At
+any rate, she felt herself so completely in command of the situation that
+she yielded to a sense of security in which all fear of Mr. Rosedale, and
+of the difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
+the edge of thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted her from
+these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of distress in her
+companion's eye. His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he
+had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance; a fact confirmed
+by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own
+entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed by the
+high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train accompanied by a
+maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering under a load of bags and
+dressing-cases.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Lily&mdash;are you going to Bellomont? Then you can't let me have your
+seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this carriage&mdash;porter, you
+must find me a place at once. Can't some one be put somewhere else? I
+want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make
+him understand that I must have a seat next to you and Lily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller with a
+carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by getting out of
+the train, stood in the middle of the aisle, diffusing about her that
+general sense of exasperation which a pretty woman on her travels not
+infrequently creates.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of
+pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like
+the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small pale face seemed the mere
+setting of a pair of dark exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze
+contrasted curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that,
+as one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who
+took up a great deal of room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart's was at her
+disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther displacement of her
+surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had come across from Mount
+Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had been kicking her heels for
+an hour at Garrisons, without even the alleviation of a cigarette, her
+brute of a husband having neglected to replenish her case before they
+parted that morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And at this hour of the day I don't suppose you've a single one left,
+have you, Lily?" she plaintively concluded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own lips
+were never defiled by tobacco.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What an absurd question, Bertha!" she exclaimed, blushing at the thought
+of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, don't you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What&mdash;you
+never&mdash;&mdash; And you don't either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course&mdash;how stupid of
+me&mdash;I understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a smile
+which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her own.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0103"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 3
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily
+went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her room,
+she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the hall below,
+where the last card-players were grouped about the tray of tall glasses
+and silver-collared decanters which the butler had just placed on a low
+table near the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale yellow
+marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped against a background
+of dark foliage in the angles of the walls. On the crimson carpet a
+deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire,
+and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness
+on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified
+her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life;
+there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her
+own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast
+was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset,
+glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a
+confidential nook beneath the gallery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired hold
+over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but she had
+neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture. She was too
+self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his shyness, and besides, why
+should she care to give herself the trouble? At most it might amuse her
+to make sport of his simplicity for an evening&mdash;after that he would be
+merely a burden to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
+encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a
+man up and toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as
+a possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had been
+bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce&mdash;the mere thought seemed to waken
+an echo of his droning voice&mdash;but she could not ignore him on the morrow,
+she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be
+ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare
+chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her
+for life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a hateful fate&mdash;but how escape from it? What choice had she? To be
+herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her bedroom, with its
+softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across the silken
+bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the fire, a vase of
+carnations filling the air with perfume, and the last novels and
+magazines lying uncut on a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a
+vision of Miss Farish's cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and
+hideous wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby
+surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being
+dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required,
+the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not
+what she wanted. A few years ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her
+daily meed of pleasure without caring who provided it. Now she was
+beginning to chafe at the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere
+pensioner on the splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There
+were even moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she could not
+afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive a taste. She had
+seen the danger exemplified in more than one of her associates&mdash;in young
+Ned Silverton, for instance, the charming fair boy now seated in abject
+rapture at the elbow of Mrs. Fisher, a striking divorcee with eyes and
+gowns as emphatic as the head-lines of her "case." Lily could remember
+when young Silverton had stumbled into their circle, with the air of a
+strayed Arcadian who has published charming
+sonnets in his college journal. Since then he had developed a taste for
+Mrs. Fisher and bridge, and the latter at least had involved him in
+expenses from which he had been more than once rescued by harassed maiden
+sisters, who treasured the sonnets, and went without sugar in their tea
+to keep their darling afloat. Ned's case was familiar to Lily: she had
+seen his charming eyes&mdash;which had a good deal more poetry in them than
+the sonnets&mdash;change from surprise to amusement, and from amusement to
+anxiety, as he passed under the spell of the terrible god of chance; and
+she was afraid of discovering the same symptoms in her own case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to
+take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay
+for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses and trinkets which
+occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe. And since she had
+played regularly the passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she
+had won a large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
+spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
+imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove
+her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse
+herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one
+must either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
+that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
+surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold purse
+which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she returned to her
+room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her jewel-case, looked
+under the tray for the roll of bills from which she had replenished the
+purse before going down to dinner. Only twenty dollars were left: the
+discovery was so startling that for a moment she fancied she must have
+been robbed. Then she took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the
+writing-table, tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her
+head was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again
+and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three
+hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
+balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred in the
+other direction. Then she returned to her calculations; but figure as she
+would, she could not conjure back the vanished three hundred dollars. It
+was the sum she had set aside to pacify her dress-maker&mdash;unless she
+should decide to use it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so
+many uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play high
+in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost&mdash;she who needed
+every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her,
+must have pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
+afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching such a
+heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with her guests
+when they bade her good night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily
+Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a
+universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had sent to
+bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people's pleasure to be
+considerate of those who depended on hers, and in her bitter moods it
+sometimes struck her that she and her maid were in the same position,
+except that the latter received her wages more regularly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollow
+and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth,
+faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I must stop worrying!" she exclaimed. "Unless it's the electric
+light&mdash;&mdash;" she reflected, springing up from her seat and lighting the
+candles on the dressing-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
+candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a
+background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but
+the two lines about the mouth remained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily rose and undressed in haste.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
+about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty
+cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence
+against them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She returned
+wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy
+load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost sure she had
+"landed" him: a few days' work and she would win her reward. But the
+reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she could get no zest from
+the thought of victory. It would be a rest from worry, no more&mdash;and how
+little that would have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions
+had shrunk gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
+failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used to
+say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But you'll get it all
+back&mdash;you'll get it all back, with your face."&nbsp;&#8230; The remembrance
+roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the darkness
+reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was "company"; a
+door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered with square
+envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong envelopes which were
+allowed to gather dust in the depths of a bronze jar; a series of French
+and English maids giving warning amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked
+wardrobes and dress-closets; an equally changing dynasty of nurses and
+footmen; quarrels in the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room;
+precipitate trips to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
+interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer
+should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
+expense&mdash;such was the setting of Lily Bart's first memories.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and determined
+figure of a mother still young enough to dance her ball-dresses to rags,
+while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted father filled an intermediate
+space between the butler and the man who came to wind the clocks. Even to
+the eyes of infancy, Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could
+not recall the time when her father had not been bald and slightly
+stooping, with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
+shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
+mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down town"; and
+in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on
+the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would kiss her in
+silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or the governess; then
+Mrs. Bart's maid would come to remind him that he was dining out, and he
+would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
+Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent
+than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours
+staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the
+clatter of his wife's existence went on unheeded a few feet off.
+Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
+before the steamer was half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the
+horizon. Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected
+to forward Mrs. Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never
+mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure presented itself
+on the New York dock as a buffer between the magnitude of his wife's
+luggage and the restrictions of the American custom-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily's teens:
+a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid
+current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need&mdash;the
+need of more money. Lily could not recall the time when there had been
+money enough, and in some vague way her father seemed always to blame for
+the deficiency. It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who
+was spoken of by her friends as a "wonderful manager." Mrs. Bart was
+famous for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to the
+lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though
+one were much richer than one's bank-book denoted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line: she had
+been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must have a good
+cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst
+reproach to her husband was to ask him if he expected her to "live like a
+pig"; and his replying in the negative was always regarded as a
+justification for cabling to Paris for an extra dress or two, and
+telephoning to the jeweller that he might, after all, send home the
+turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily knew people who "lived like pigs," and their appearance and
+surroundings justified her mother's repugnance to that form of existence.
+They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy houses with engravings from
+Cole's Voyage of Life on the drawing-room walls, and slatternly
+parlour-maids who said "I'll go and see" to visitors calling at an hour
+when all right-minded persons are conventionally if not actually out. The
+disgusting part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that
+Lily imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from choice,
+and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct. This gave her a
+sense of reflected superiority, and she did not need Mrs. Bart's comments
+on the family frumps and misers to foster her naturally lively taste for
+splendour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view of the
+universe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy
+thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on the
+horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke. The
+suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times when Lily
+relived with painful vividness every detail of the day on which the blow
+fell. She and her mother had been seated at the luncheon-table, over the
+CHAUFROIX and cold salmon of the previous night's dinner: it was one of
+Mrs. Bart's few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of
+her hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is youth's
+penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite of a few lines
+about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her temples, was as alert,
+determined and high in colour as if she had risen from an untroubled
+sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES and
+candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their vigorous
+stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but their rose-colour
+had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily's sense of fitness was
+disturbed by their reappearance on the luncheon-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I really think, mother," she said reproachfully, "we might afford a few
+fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or lilies-of-the-valley&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the world,
+and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when there was no one
+present at it but the family. But she smiled at her daughter's innocence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lilies-of-the-valley," she said calmly, "cost two dollars a dozen at
+this season."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl," she argued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six dozen what?" asked her father's voice in the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday, the sight
+of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But neither his wife nor his
+daughter was sufficiently interested to ask an explanation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the fragment of
+jellied salmon which the butler had placed before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was only saying," Lily began, "that I hate to see faded flowers at
+luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley would not cost
+more than twelve dollars. Mayn't I tell the florist to send a few every
+day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her anything,
+and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her own entreaties
+failed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and his
+lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his thin hair lay
+in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he looked at his daughter and
+laughed. The laugh was so strange that Lily coloured under it: she
+disliked being ridiculed, and her father seemed to see something
+ridiculous in the request. Perhaps he thought it foolish that she should
+trouble him about such a trifle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twelve dollars&mdash;twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly, my
+dear&mdash;give him an order for twelve hundred." He continued to laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You needn't wait, Poleworth&mdash;I will ring for you," she said to the
+butler.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving the
+remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?" said Mrs. Bart severely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making, and it
+was odious to her that her husband should make a show of himself before
+the servants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you ill?" she repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ill?&mdash;&mdash; No, I'm ruined," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ruined&mdash;&mdash;?" she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she turned a
+calm face to Lily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut the pantry door," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father was
+sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon between them,
+and his head bowed on his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
+unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached: her look
+was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly cheerfulness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your father is not well&mdash;he doesn't know what he is saying. It is
+nothing&mdash;but you had better go upstairs; and don't talk to the servants,"
+she added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that voice. She
+had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart's words: she knew at once that they
+were ruined. In the dark hours which followed, that awful fact
+overshadowed even her father's slow and difficult dying. To his wife he
+no longer counted: he had become extinct when he ceased to fulfil his
+purpose, and she sat at his side with the provisional air of a traveller
+who waits for a belated train to start. Lily's feelings were softer: she
+pitied him in a frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for
+the most part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into
+the room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a
+stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home till after
+dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a blur&mdash;first of
+sleepiness, then of distance and indifference&mdash;and now the fog had
+thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. If she could have
+performed any little services for him, or have exchanged with him a few
+of those affecting words which an extensive perusal of fiction had led
+her to connect with such occasions, the filial instinct might have
+stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active expression, remained in a
+state of spectatorship, overshadowed by her mother's grim unflagging
+resentment. Every look and act of Mrs. Bart's seemed to say: "You are
+sorry for him now&mdash;but you will feel differently when you see what he has
+done to us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a relief to Lily when her father died.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to Mrs.
+Bart it seemed worse than nothing&mdash;the mere mockery of what she was
+entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to live like a pig?
+She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against
+fate. Her faculty for "managing" deserted her, or she no longer took
+sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was well enough to "manage" when
+by so doing one could keep one's own carriage; but when one's best
+contrivance did not conceal the fact that one had to go on foot, the
+effort was no longer worth making.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long visits
+to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and who deplored
+the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the girl had no
+prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap continental refuges,
+where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof from the frugal tea-tables of
+her companions in misfortune. She was especially careful to avoid her old
+friends and the scenes of her former successes. To be poor seemed to her
+such a confession of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she
+detected a note of condescension in the friendliest advances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily's
+beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some
+weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset
+in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt.
+She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its
+mere custodian; and she tried to instil into the latter a sense of the
+responsibility that such a charge involved. She followed in imagination
+the career of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might be
+achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of those
+who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to Mrs. Bart,
+only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement of some of her
+examples. She was not above the inconsistency of charging fate, rather
+than herself, with her own misfortunes; but she inveighed so
+acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own
+marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured
+her that she had been "talked into it"&mdash;by whom, she never made clear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities. The
+dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the existence
+to which she felt herself entitled. To a less illuminated intelligence
+Mrs. Bart's counsels might have been dangerous; but Lily understood that
+beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into
+success other arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of
+superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother denounced, and
+it did not take her long to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the
+possessor of an average set of features.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart's. It had been among that
+lady's grievances that her husband&mdash;in the early days, before he was too
+tired&mdash;had wasted his evenings in what she vaguely described as "reading
+poetry"; and among the effects packed off to auction after his death were
+a score or two of dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among
+the boots and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
+Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source, which
+gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think
+of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to
+attain a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague
+diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures and
+flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help thinking that
+the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages.
+She would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she
+was secretly ashamed of her mother's crude passion for money. Lily's
+preference would have been for an English nobleman with political
+ambitions and vast estates; or, for second choice, an Italian prince with
+a castle in the Apennines and an hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost
+causes had a romantic charm for her, and she liked to picture herself as
+standing aloof from the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her
+pleasure to the claims of an immemorial tradition.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were hardly
+more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had centred about
+the possession of a French jointed doll with real hair. Was it only ten
+years since she had wavered in imagination between the English earl and
+the Italian prince? Relentlessly her mind travelled on over the dreary
+interval.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died&mdash;&mdash;died of a deep
+disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be dingy. Her
+visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded after the first year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People can't marry you if they don't see you&mdash;and how can they see you
+in these holes where we're stuck?" That was the burden of her lament; and
+her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from dinginess if she
+could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way out of it
+somehow&mdash;you're young and can do it," she insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and there Lily
+at once became the centre of a family council composed of the wealthy
+relatives whom she had been taught to despise for living like pigs. It
+may be that they had an inkling of the sentiments in which she had been
+brought up, for none of them manifested a very lively desire for her
+company; indeed, the question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs.
+Peniston with a sigh announced: "I'll try her for a year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their surprise, lest
+Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into reconsidering her decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart's widowed sister, and if she was by no means
+the richest of the family group, its other members nevertheless abounded
+in reasons why she was clearly destined by Providence to assume the
+charge of Lily. In the first place she was alone, and it would be
+charming for her to have a young companion. Then she sometimes travelled,
+and Lily's familiarity with foreign customs&mdash;deplored as a misfortune by
+her more conservative relatives&mdash;would at least enable her to act as a
+kind of courier. But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not been
+affected by these considerations. She had taken the girl simply because
+no one else would have her, and because she had the kind of moral
+MAUVAISE HONTE which makes the public display of selfishness difficult,
+though it does not interfere with its private indulgence. It would have
+been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but
+with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in
+her act.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and found
+an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected to find Lily
+headstrong, critical and "foreign"&mdash;for even Mrs. Peniston, though she
+occasionally went abroad, had the family dread of foreignness&mdash;but the
+girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more penetrating mind than her aunt's,
+might have been less reassuring than the open selfishness of youth.
+Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable
+substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece's adaptability.
+Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her aunt's good nature. She
+was in truth grateful for the refuge offered her: Mrs. Peniston's opulent
+interior was at least not externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality
+which assumes all manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as
+latent in the expensive routine of her aunt's life as in the makeshift
+existence of a continental pension.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the padding of
+life. It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus
+of activities. The most vivid thing about her was the fact that her
+grandmother had been a Van Alstyne. This connection with the well-fed and
+industrious stock of early New York revealed itself in the glacial
+neatness of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room and in the excellence of her
+cuisine. She belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always
+lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these
+inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always
+been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little
+mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper
+windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they
+might see what was happening in the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she had
+never lived there since her husband's death&mdash;a remote event, which
+appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in the
+personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation. She
+was a woman who remembered dates with intensity, and could tell at a
+moment's notice whether the drawing-room curtains had been renewed before
+or after Mr. Peniston's last illness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and cherished a
+vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such contingencies she
+frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself
+impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting
+screen of her verandah. In the care of such a guardian, it soon became
+clear to Lily that she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good
+food and expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
+would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her to
+regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother's fierce
+energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled with Mrs.
+Peniston's resources. Lily had abundant energy of her own, but it was
+restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to her aunt's habits. She
+saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs.
+Bart would have phrased it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no
+mind for the vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to
+Mrs. Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive
+attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt
+into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
+Mrs. Peniston against which her niece's efforts spent themselves in vain.
+To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging
+at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor. She did not,
+indeed, expect Lily to remain equally immovable: she had all the American
+guardian's indulgence for the volatility of youth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece's. It
+seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on dress, and
+she supplemented the girl's scanty income by occasional "handsome
+presents" meant to be applied to the same purpose. Lily, who was
+intensely practical, would have preferred a fixed allowance; but Mrs.
+Peniston liked the periodical recurrence of gratitude evoked by
+unexpected cheques, and was perhaps shrewd enough to perceive that such a
+method of giving kept alive in her niece a salutary sense of dependence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do anything for
+her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her take the field. Lily
+had taken it, at first with the confidence of assured possessorship, then
+with gradually narrowing demands, till now she found herself actually
+struggling for a foothold on the broad space which had once seemed her
+own for the asking. How it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she
+thought it was because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she
+feared it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she
+shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy
+and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or
+absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total of her
+failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by dozens, and
+she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she
+longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself.
+But what manner of life would it be? She had barely enough money to pay
+her dress-makers' bills and her gambling debts; and none of the desultory
+interests which she dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced
+enough to enable her to live contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no&mdash;she was
+too intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she hated
+dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she
+meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its
+flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented
+such a slippery surface to her clutch.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0104"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 4
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note from her
+hostess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest Lily," it ran, "if it is not too much of a bore to be down by
+ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some tiresome
+things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh. It
+WAS a bore to be down by ten&mdash;an hour regarded at Bellomont as vaguely
+synchronous with sunrise&mdash;and she knew too well the nature of the
+tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary, had been called
+away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards to write, lost addresses
+to hunt up, and other social drudgery to perform. It was understood that
+Miss Bart should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
+recognized the obligation without a murmur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the previous
+night's review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything in her
+surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity. The windows
+stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September morning, and
+between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of hedges and
+parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to the free
+undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little fire on the
+hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted
+across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old
+marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray,
+with its harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
+slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters. There
+was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied luxury; but, though
+they formed a part of her atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to
+their charm. Mere display left her with a sense of superior distinction;
+but she felt an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor's summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
+dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that she
+was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions leave
+lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had meant to take
+warning by the little creases which her midnight survey had revealed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The matter-of-course tone of Mrs. Trenor's greeting deepened her
+irritation. If one did drag one's self out of bed at such an hour, and
+come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing, some special
+recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs. Trenor's tone
+showed no consciousness of the fact.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Lily, that's nice of you," she merely sighed across the chaos of
+letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave an incongruously
+commercial touch to the slender elegance of her writing-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are such lots of horrors this morning," she added, clearing a
+space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat to Miss
+Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her from
+redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile
+activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished
+play of feature. It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she
+seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated
+instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a
+crowd. The collective nature of her interests exempted her from the
+ordinary rivalries of her sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than
+that of hatred for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have
+more amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by
+Mr. Trenor's bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph in
+such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous good
+nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart's utilitarian
+classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as the woman who was
+least likely to "go back" on her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor declared, as
+her friend seated herself at the desk. "She says her sister is going to
+have a baby&mdash;as if that were anything to having a house-party! I'm sure I
+shall get most horribly mixed up and there will be some awful rows. When
+I was down at Tuxedo I asked a lot of people for next week, and I've
+mislaid the list and can't remember who is coming. And this week is going
+to be a horrid failure too&mdash;and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell
+her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls&mdash;that
+was a blunder of Gus's. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
+one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get that
+second divorce&mdash;Carry always overdoes things&mdash;but she said the only way
+to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony.
+And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It's really absurd of Alice
+Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks of what
+society is coming to. Some one said the other day that there was a
+divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows. Besides,
+Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in a good humour when we have
+bores in the house. Have you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All,
+I mean, except her own. It's rather clever of her to have made a
+specialty of devoting herself to dull people&mdash;the field is such a large
+one, and she has it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no
+doubt&mdash;I know she borrows money of Gus&mdash;but then I'd PAY her to keep him
+in a good humour, so I can't complain, after all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart's efforts to
+unravel her tangled correspondence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry," she resumed, with a fresh note
+of lament. "The truth is, I'm awfully disappointed in Lady Cressida
+Raith."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Disappointed? Had you known her before?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mercy, no&mdash;never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her over with
+letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van Osburgh was
+asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought it would be fun to
+get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her in India, managed it for me.
+Maria was furious, and actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite
+herself here, so that they shouldn't be QUITE out of it&mdash;if I'd known
+what Lady Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
+thought any friend of the Skiddaws' was sure to be amusing. You remember
+what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send the
+girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess of
+Beltshire's sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same sort; but
+you never can tell in those English families. They are so big that
+there's room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the
+moral one&mdash;married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East End.
+Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman's wife, who
+wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take her all through the
+glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to death by asking him the names
+of the plants. Fancy treating Gus as if he were the gardener!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to meeting
+Carry Fisher," said Miss Bart pacifically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and if she
+takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will be too
+depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so useful at the
+right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once a year, and she
+would have given just the right tone to things. I always have horrid luck
+about the Bishop's visits," added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was
+being fed by a rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; "last year, when he
+came, Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
+Wintons and the Farleys&mdash;five divorces and six sets of children between
+them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When is Lady Cressida going?" Lily enquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. "My dear, if one only knew! I
+was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I actually forgot to
+name a date, and Gus says she told some one she meant to stop here all
+winter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To stop here? In this house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be silly&mdash;in America. But if no one else asks her&mdash;you know they
+NEVER go to hotels."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put in
+while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You should have
+seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you know&mdash;if she stays here
+all the autumn she'll spoil everything, and Maria Van Osburgh will simply
+exult."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor's voice trembled with self-pity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Judy&mdash;as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!" Miss Bart
+tactfully protested. "You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van Osburgh
+were to get all the right people and leave you with all the wrong ones,
+you'd manage to make things go off, and she wouldn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor's complacency;
+but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented. "Everything has gone wrong
+this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Furious with you? Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he wouldn't,
+after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think it's my fault."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she had
+begun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought that was all over," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since. But I
+fancy she's out of a job just at present&mdash;and some one gave me a hint
+that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him&mdash;but I couldn't make
+him come; and now I suppose she'll take it out of me by being perfectly
+nasty to every one else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming&mdash;to some one
+else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. "She knows he wouldn't mind. And
+who else is there? Alice Wetherall won't let Lucius out of her sight.
+Ned Silverton can't take his eyes off Carry Fisher&mdash;poor boy! Gus is
+bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well&mdash;and&mdash;well, to be sure,
+there's Percy Gryce!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sat up smiling at the thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart's countenance did not reflect the smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that she'd shock him and he'd bore her? Well, that's not such a
+bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won't take it into her head to be
+nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily laughed. "MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
+against Bertha."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I'm not really, you know. Every one
+knows you're a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than Bertha; but
+then you're not nasty. And for always getting what she wants in the long
+run, commend me to a nasty woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. "I thought you were so fond of
+Bertha."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I am&mdash;it's much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she IS
+dangerous&mdash;and if I ever saw her up to mischief it's now. I can tell by
+poor George's manner. That man is a perfect barometer&mdash;he always knows
+when Bertha is going to&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To fall?" Miss Bart suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of course I
+don't say there's any real harm in Bertha. Only she delights in making
+people miserable, and especially poor George."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he seems cut out for the part&mdash;I don't wonder she likes more
+cheerful companionship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him he
+would be quite different. Or if she'd leave him alone, and let him
+arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn't dare lose her hold of him
+on account of the money, and so when HE isn't jealous she pretends to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following her
+train of thought with frowning intensity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," she exclaimed after a long pause, "I believe I'll call up
+Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't," said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
+surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though not
+commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with puzzled
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him so
+much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
+intention of protecting me from Bertha&mdash;I don't think I need your
+protection."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. "Lily!&mdash;&mdash;PERCY? Do you mean to
+say you've actually done it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart smiled. "I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are getting to
+be very good friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm&mdash;I see." Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know they say
+he has eight hundred thousand a year&mdash;and spends nothing, except on some
+rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and will leave him a
+lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY," her friend adjured her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. "I shouldn't, for
+instance," she remarked, "be in any haste to tell him that he had a lot
+of rubbishy old books."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, of course not; I know you're wonderful about getting up people's
+subjects. But he's horribly shy, and easily shocked, and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the hunt
+for a rich husband?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't mean that; he wouldn't believe it of you&mdash;at first," said
+Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. "But you know things are rather
+lively here at times&mdash;I must give Jack and Gus a hint&mdash;and if he thought
+you were what his mother would call fast&mdash;oh, well, you know what I mean.
+Don't wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don't smoke if you
+can help it, Lily dear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. "You're very kind,
+Judy: I'll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year's dress you sent
+me this morning. And if you are really interested in my career, perhaps
+you'll be kind enough not to ask me to play bridge again this evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life you'll
+lead! But of course I won't&mdash;why didn't you give me a hint last night?
+There's nothing I wouldn't do, you poor duck, to see you happy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex's eagerness to smooth the course of
+true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're quite sure," she added solicitously, as the latter extricated
+herself, "that you wouldn't like me to telephone for Lawrence Selden?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite sure," said Lily.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction Miss
+Bart's ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont, she
+smiled at Mrs. Trenor's fear that she might go too fast. If such a
+warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a salutary
+lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to adapt her pace
+to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well
+to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively and luring him on from depth
+to depth of unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was
+propitious to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word,
+had shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had even
+hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no surprise at
+her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint, Lily found herself
+the centre of that feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in
+the mating season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
+existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater
+readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
+attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a sympathetic
+comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in her esteem as she saw
+the consideration he inspired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot propitious
+to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning against the
+balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little distance from the
+animated group about the tea-table, she might have been lost in the mazes
+of an inarticulate happiness. In reality, her thoughts were finding
+definite utterance in the tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in
+store for her. From where she stood she could see them embodied in the
+form of Mr. Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
+nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the
+energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to endow
+her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of municipal
+reform.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher's latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been preceded by
+an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced an energetic
+advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was small, fiery and dramatic;
+and her hands and eyes were admirable instruments in the service of
+whatever causes she happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault
+common to enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part
+of her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
+resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce's attitude. Lily
+herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold
+if he remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
+he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a paper
+to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what he called
+"committing himself," and tenderly as he cherished his health, he
+evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink
+till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast
+agonized glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was
+to sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had learned
+the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief, and was fully
+aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's volubility was enhancing her
+own repose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
+Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning across the garden
+from the tennis court.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance in which
+Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in contemplating
+what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation. Miss Van Osburgh
+was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had
+once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste
+was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger
+makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
+been reduced to a crust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl's
+turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled,
+while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching
+boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to get
+everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas
+I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were
+going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me
+hopelessly out of time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
+likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
+resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way&mdash;he looked
+like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast&mdash;while Gwen's
+countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.
+But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices
+and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent
+by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they
+had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
+range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for
+each other by every law of moral and physical correspondence&mdash;&mdash;"Yet they
+wouldn't look at each other," Lily mused, "they never do. Each of them
+wants a creature of a different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all
+sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even
+guess the existence of. And they always get what they want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a slight
+cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly amenities were
+subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the necessity of not
+exciting enmities at this crucial point of her career, dropped aside
+while the happy couple proceeded toward the tea-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her head
+against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The fragrance of the
+late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil scene, a landscape
+tutored to the last degree of rural elegance. In the foreground glowed
+the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal
+pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle;
+and through a long glade the river widened like a lake under the silver
+light of September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
+tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she was
+content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty
+that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load
+from her mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal
+not to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence might
+have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be
+able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
+security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns
+than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would
+be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the
+relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered;
+instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old
+scores she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
+she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr. Gryce
+was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses and emotions.
+He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice
+the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily had known the species before:
+she was aware that such a guarded nature must find one huge outlet of
+egoism, and she determined to be to him what his Americana had hitherto
+been: the one possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money
+on it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
+meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her husband's
+vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form
+of self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort to
+some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended it should
+free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she would be able to
+play the game in her own way. How should she have distrusted her powers?
+Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have
+been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
+she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of
+permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she
+had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this
+crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her
+poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people whom she had ridiculed
+and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed circle
+about which all her desires revolved. They were not as brutal and
+self-engrossed as she had fancied&mdash;or rather, since it would no longer be
+necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature became
+less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged
+according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was
+turning its illuminated face to Lily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
+qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of
+emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness
+now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the
+only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks
+and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing
+allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a
+disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
+the people who were not able to live as they lived.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs of the
+long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of wheels, and
+divined that more visitors were approaching. There was a movement behind
+her, a scattering of steps and voices: it was evident that the party
+about the tea-table was breaking up. Presently she heard a tread behind
+her on the terrace. She supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means
+to escape from his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his
+coming to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fire-side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved; but her
+greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who had approached
+her was Lawrence Selden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see I came after all," he said; but before she had time to answer,
+Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with her host, had
+stepped between them with a little gesture of appropriation.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0105"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 5
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the punctual
+appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the household to the
+little church at the gates. Whether any one got into the omnibus or not
+was a matter of secondary importance, since by standing there it not only
+bore witness to the orthodox intentions of the family, but made Mrs.
+Trenor feel, when she finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow
+vicariously made use of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Mrs. Trenor's theory that her daughters actually did go to church
+every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions calling her to the
+rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping their mother in her room
+till luncheon, there was seldom any one present to verify the fact. Now
+and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue&mdash;when the house had been too
+uproarious over night&mdash;Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight
+frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually,
+as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the
+church bells were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven
+away empty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious observances
+was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during her visits to
+Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda to church. This
+tallied with the assurance, also confidentially imparted, that, never
+having played bridge before, she had been "dragged into it" on the night
+of her arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in consequence
+of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of betting. Mr. Gryce was
+undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the
+life, and the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of
+rich and conspicuous people. But he thought it a very materialistic
+society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the men
+and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for
+all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
+atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to learn that
+she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors to church on Sunday
+morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep before the door, his light
+overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he
+reflected agreeably on the strength of character which kept her true to
+her early training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
+themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference on the
+part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the hope that Miss
+Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes were flying, however;
+the big chestnuts pawed the ground and flecked their impatient sides with
+foam; the coachman seemed to be slowly petrifying on the box, and the
+groom on the doorstep; and still the lady did not come. Suddenly,
+however, there was a sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the
+doorway, and Mr. Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a
+nervous start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
+into the carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of
+human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single
+one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. It is true that
+the Bellomont puppets did not go to church; but others equally important
+did&mdash;and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall's circle was so large that God was
+included in their visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and
+resigned, with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after
+them Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's veils
+and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church with
+her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that they didn't
+mind doing it to please her, though they couldn't fancy what had put the
+idea in her head, and though for their own part they would much rather
+have played lawn tennis with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she
+was coming. The Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
+weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on
+seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were not to walk
+across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall's horrified protest that the
+church was a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
+other's heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce
+found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare
+he felt not the least concern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known that Miss
+Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen earlier than
+usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea that the sight of
+her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her famous lashes drooped
+above a prayer-book, would put the finishing touch to Mr. Gryce's
+subjugation, and render inevitable a certain incident which she had
+resolved should form a part of the walk they were to take together after
+luncheon. Her intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor
+Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
+as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
+people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies,
+hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant
+in the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was
+carrying her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see
+herself or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that
+moment, should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
+with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons of
+his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the ill-humour
+of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she learned from Mrs. Trenor
+that Selden had come of his own accord. "He didn't even wire me&mdash;he just
+happened to find the trap at the station. Perhaps it's not over with
+Bertha after all," Mrs. Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to
+arrange her dinner-cards accordingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless she had
+lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset's call, it was at her
+own that he would stay. So much the previous evening had told her. Mrs.
+Trenor, true to her simple principle of making her married friends happy,
+had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in
+obedience to the time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had
+separated Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset,
+while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+George Dorset's talk did not interfere with the range of his neighbour's
+thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on finding out the
+deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted from this care only by
+the sound of his wife's voice. On this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset
+took no part in the general conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs
+with Selden, and turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her
+host, who, far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
+the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset,
+however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such evident concern that,
+when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist
+bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin
+neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on opposite
+sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe Mrs. Dorset
+also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to set up a rapid
+comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison
+which was her undoing. Why else had she suddenly grown interested in
+Selden? She had known him for eight years or more: ever since her return
+to America he had formed a part of her background. She had always been
+glad to sit next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
+men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful
+to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
+affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories of
+life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw that her
+sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that his presence
+shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant
+or exceptional; in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one
+man who had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
+had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the
+show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage
+in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the
+world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on
+her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always
+open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
+once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's
+distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily, turning
+her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world through his
+retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut off and the dusty
+daylight let in. She looked down the long table, studying its occupants
+one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between
+his shoulders, as he preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the
+opposite end of the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
+good-looks, of a jeweller's window lit by electricity. And between the
+two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people
+were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
+her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a
+"spicy paragraph"; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
+proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had
+become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list,
+whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and
+the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod
+of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they
+were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes,
+half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all
+the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that
+there is no one richer than her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had
+seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was
+gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon
+they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were
+merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she
+saw the poverty of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to
+be more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
+picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which, a few
+hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their standards. She
+closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine of the life she had
+chosen stretched before her like a long white road without dip or
+turning: it was true she was to roll over it in a carriage instead of
+trudging it on foot, but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of
+a short cut which is denied to those on wheels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from the
+depths of his lean throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, do look at her," he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
+lugubrious merriment&mdash;"I beg your pardon, but do just look at my wife
+making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really suppose she
+was gone on him&mdash;and it's all the other way round, I assure you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was affording
+Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared, as he said, that
+Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in the scene: her neighbour
+seemed to receive her advances with a temperate zest which did not
+distract him from his dinner. The sight restored Lily's good humour, and
+knowing the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset's marital fears assumed,
+she asked gaily: "Aren't you horribly jealous of her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dorset greeted the sally with delight. "Oh, abominably&mdash;you've just hit
+it&mdash;keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's what has knocked
+my digestion out&mdash;being so infernally jealous of her.&mdash;I can't eat a
+mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added suddenly, pushing back his
+plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable,
+accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other
+people's cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of
+melted butter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man as well
+as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances into it he was
+not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he engaged Lily so long
+that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other
+side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering
+Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was
+jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a handspring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And of course you'll have Sim Rosedale as best man!" Lily heard her
+fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney responded,
+as if struck: "Jove, that's an idea. What a thumping present I'd get out
+of him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive, obtruded
+itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one of the many hated
+possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If she did not marry Percy
+Gryce, the day might come when she would have to be civil to such men as
+Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM? But she meant to marry him&mdash;she was
+sure of him and sure of herself. She drew back with a shiver from the
+pleasant paths in which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet
+once more in the middle of the long white road.... When she went
+upstairs that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
+batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
+forwarded them all to Bellomont.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
+conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself betimes
+from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast-tray, rang to have her grey
+gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs.
+Trenor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of
+rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused a
+smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to kindle Lily's
+imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the borrowed prayer-book
+flashed a long light down the years. She would have to go to church with
+Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have a front pew in the most
+expensive church in New York, and his name would figure handsomely in the
+list of parish charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would
+be made a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
+her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES
+were included, except those who had showed signs of penitence by being
+re-married to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in
+this round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
+great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent
+to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and her bath had
+filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected in the
+clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this morning, or else the
+glass was at a happier angle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and
+truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold; below the dewy bloom
+of the lawns the woodlands blushed and smouldered, and the hills across
+the river swam in molten blue. Every drop of blood in Lily's veins
+invited her to happiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning behind her
+shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She was too late,
+then&mdash;but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr. Gryce's
+crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely in absenting
+herself, since the disappointment he so candidly betrayed would surely
+whet his appetite for the afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to
+miss; one glance at the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall
+its necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could
+muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough
+with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free
+field till luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and
+Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be
+having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her
+host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of
+young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
+tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left
+only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never came down till
+luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden her to expose herself
+to the crude air of the morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
+wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her plans.
+These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress somewhat more
+rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she had first selected,
+and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a
+lady in quest of exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of
+dogs by the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
+Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship. She put
+aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and assuring the
+joyous volunteers that she might presently have a use for their company,
+sauntered on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of
+the house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the old
+manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions
+of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
+the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass urns. A
+few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies
+with large head-dresses and small bodies, hung between the shelves lined
+with pleasantly-shabby books: books mostly contemporaneous with the
+ancestors in question, and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no
+perceptible additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used
+for reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking-room or a
+quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however, that it
+might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only member of the
+party in the least likely to put it to its original use. She advanced
+noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered with easy-chairs, and before
+she reached the middle of the room she saw that she had not been
+mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in fact seated at its farther end; but
+though a book lay on his knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but
+directed to a lady whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an
+adjoining chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
+dusky leather upholstery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she seemed
+about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she announced her
+approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made the couple raise
+their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank displeasure, and Selden
+with his usual quiet smile. The sight of his composure had a disturbing
+effect on Lily; but to be disturbed was in her case to make a more
+brilliant effort at self-possession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear me, am I late?" she asked, putting a hand in his as he advanced to
+greet her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Late for what?" enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. "Not for luncheon,
+certainly&mdash;but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I had," said Lily confidingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely at
+your disposal." Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her antagonist felt
+a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dear, no&mdash;do stay," she said good-humouredly. "I don't in the least
+want to drive you away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden's
+engagements."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost on
+its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping to pick
+up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach. The latter's eyes widened
+charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go to
+church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS it
+started, do you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away some
+time since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go to
+church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well, I shall
+have the credit of trying, at any rate&mdash;and the advantage of escaping
+part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself, after all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss Bart
+strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling grace down the
+long perspective of the garden walk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a fact not
+lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway looking after her
+with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is that she was conscious of
+a somewhat keen shock of disappointment. All her plans for the day had
+been built on the assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come
+to Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to find him on
+the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in a situation which
+might well denote that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it
+possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
+acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when she
+never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw
+no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden
+might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of
+town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their
+judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted; competition put
+her on her mettle, and she reflected that Selden's coming, if it did not
+declare him to be still in Mrs. Dorset's toils, showed him to be so
+completely free from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to
+carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from
+the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to
+sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and
+Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence
+enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude
+except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
+scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
+profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
+rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked;
+the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her
+lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to
+find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a
+vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness
+about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the
+ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade. As she did so a
+step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch up with
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been sitting
+under that tree for an hour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well&mdash;waiting to see if you would come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the one
+involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I waited long enough&mdash;but you see I had only a limited time to give
+to the experiment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; by my other engagement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but to come home from church with another person."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives.
+And is the other person coming home this way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find out, it
+is my business to get to church before the service is over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case
+the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve
+of driving back in the omnibus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the
+bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in such an
+emergency?" she enquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you," he
+cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Walking a mile in an hour&mdash;you must own that the omnibus would be
+quicker!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;but will he find you in the end? That's the only test of success."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had
+felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily's
+face changed, and she said: "Well, if it is, he has succeeded."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
+toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had
+evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the church-goers had
+thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily's companion looked rapidly
+from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking
+respectfully at Lady Cressida's side with his little sidelong look of
+nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs.
+Wetherall and the Trenors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;now I see why you were getting up your Americana!" Selden exclaimed
+with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with which the sally
+was received checked whatever amplifications he had meant to give it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors, or even
+about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden that he had a
+momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number of possibilities; but
+she rose gallantly to the defence of her confusion, by saying, as its
+object approached: "That was why I was waiting for you&mdash;to thank you for
+having given me so many points!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short time," said
+Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart; and while she
+signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he added quickly:
+"Won't you devote your afternoon to it? You know I must be off tomorrow
+morning. We'll take a walk, and you can thank me at your leisure."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0106"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 6
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air, and the
+glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which diffused the
+brightness without dulling it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill; but as
+the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long slopes
+beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone of lingering
+summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered trees; then it
+dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling sprays of bramble,
+whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves, the country unrolled
+itself in pastoral distances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the creeping
+glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang it, and the
+shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove. The boles of the
+trees stood well apart, with only a light feathering of undergrowth; the
+path wound along the edge of the wood, now and then looking out on a
+sunlit pasture or on an orchard spangled with fruit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the
+appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the
+fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below
+her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of
+herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the
+nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down
+was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of
+an oak-grove. Two or three red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees,
+and the white wooden spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder
+of the hill; while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran
+between the fields.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us sit here," Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge of
+rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She sat
+quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes wandering
+peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape. Selden stretched
+himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat against the level
+sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head, which rested against
+the side of the rock. He had no wish to make her talk; her
+quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general hush and harmony of
+things. In his own mind there was only a lazy sense of pleasure, veiling
+the sharp edges of sensation as the September haze veiled the scene at
+their feet. But Lily, though her attitude was as calm as his, was
+throbbing inwardly with a rush of thoughts. There were in her at the
+moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration,
+the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But
+gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed
+to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
+quivered for flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed
+to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it
+love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts
+and sensations? How much of it was owing to the spell of the perfect
+afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the thought of the dulness she
+had fled from? Lily had no definite experience by which to test the
+quality of her feelings. She had several times been in love with
+fortunes or careers, but only once with a man. That was years ago, when
+she first came out, and had been smitten with a romantic passion for a
+young gentleman named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave
+in his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
+securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest Miss Van
+Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was given to
+telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled this early emotion
+it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only
+point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which
+she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a
+conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance. She had
+not known again till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now
+it was something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
+charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she could put
+her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing them together.
+Though his popularity was of the quiet kind, felt rather than actively
+expressed among his friends, she had never mistaken his inconspicuousness
+for obscurity. His reputed cultivation was generally regarded as a slight
+obstacle to easy intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her
+broad-minded recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam
+in her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she felt
+would have had its distinction in an older society. It was, moreover, one
+of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which lifted his head
+above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark features which, in a land
+of amorphous types, gave him the air of belonging to a more specialized
+race, of carrying the impress of a concentrated past. Expansive persons
+found him a little dry, and very young girls thought him sarcastic; but
+this air of friendly aloofness, as far removed as possible from any
+assertion of personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily's
+interest. Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in
+her taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed to
+her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being able to
+convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever
+met.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her to say
+presently, with a laugh: "I have broken two engagements for you today.
+How many have you broken for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None," said Selden calmly. "My only engagement at Bellomont was with
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her look deepened meditatively. "Why?" she murmured, with an accent which
+took all tinge of coquetry from the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you
+are doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden smiled. "I don't flatter myself that my coming has deflected your
+course of action by a hair's breadth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's absurd&mdash;since, if you were not here, I could obviously not be
+taking a walk with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making use of
+your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you
+are using today. It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce
+premeditated effects extemporaneously."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense of
+humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his presence as
+part of a very definite effect; or that, at least, was the secret pretext
+she had found for breaking her promise to walk with Mr. Gryce. She had
+sometimes been accused of being too eager&mdash;even Judy Trenor had warned
+her to go slowly. Well, she would not be too eager in this case; she
+would give her suitor a longer taste of suspense. Where duty and
+inclination jumped together, it was not in Lily's nature to hold them
+asunder. She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a headache:
+the horrid headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
+church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
+languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her
+hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered rather
+nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the
+future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not
+to expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of
+exposure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him, since
+she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the party who, after
+luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit to the Van Osburghs at
+Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her disinterestedness, and, to escape
+from the threatened vacuity of the afternoon, had taken her advice and
+departed mournfully, in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged
+down the avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
+had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to
+his suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as her
+plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included in it.
+The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the stair and
+strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at her
+feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought, after all, the air might do me good," she explained; and he
+agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and Selden had
+the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of leisure and safety gave
+the last touch of lightness to her spirit. With so much time to talk, and
+no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of
+mental vagrancy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge with a
+touch of resentment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," she said, "why you are always accusing me of
+premeditation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you had to
+follow a certain line&mdash;and if one does a thing at all it is a merit to do
+it thoroughly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged to
+think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation. But you
+must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I never yield to
+an impulse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, but I don't suppose that: haven't I told you that your genius lies
+in converting impulses into intentions?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My genius?" she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. "Is there any
+final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven't succeeded."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her. "Success&mdash;what
+is success? I shall be interested to have your definition."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I
+suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his
+elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of
+success," he said, "is personal freedom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From everything&mdash;from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from
+all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
+spirit&mdash;that's what I call success."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know&mdash;I know&mdash;it's
+strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling so rare
+with you?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly sordid, don't
+you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any choice. There was no
+one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There never is&mdash;it's a country one has to find the way to one's self."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, there are sign-posts&mdash;but one has to know how to read them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of eagerness.
+"Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign&mdash;and
+yesterday&mdash;last evening at dinner&mdash;I suddenly saw a little way into your
+republic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had
+found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a
+reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.
+His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have
+been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should
+interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this
+weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on
+her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
+altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm.
+THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and
+the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It
+was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
+spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning
+intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be
+the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
+even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he said, "did it make you want to see more? Are you going to
+become one of us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand
+toward the case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, do give me one&mdash;I haven't smoked for days!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER; and at
+the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, then I'm afraid we can't let you into the republic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not in the least, though I'm bound to say there are not many married
+people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it's as hard for
+rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
+conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the
+only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to
+have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs
+are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich
+people&mdash;they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all
+the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and
+gasp!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal of your
+time in the element you disapprove of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried
+to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in
+another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back
+again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your
+friends have lost."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that the
+people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and
+not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only
+use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at
+them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
+intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is
+that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not
+the critics on the fence. It's just the other way with most shows&mdash;the
+audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is
+on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an
+escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes
+the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden
+raised himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
+underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of
+splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it
+is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we're all the
+raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that
+tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society
+like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of
+purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton&mdash;he's really too good to be used
+to refurbish anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out
+to discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding it in
+Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to
+write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society
+that he is likely to lose them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our generous ideas
+illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a sufficient condemnation
+of society to find one's self accepting such phraseology? I very nearly
+acquired the jargon at Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter
+the colour of beliefs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
+habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and
+compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory
+where his faiths were formed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed; "why do you
+call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create
+arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D'ETAT and seat
+you on the throne."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the
+threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions&mdash;you
+think them unworthy of me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I think
+them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible that, if I
+had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better use of them?
+Money stands for all kinds of things&mdash;its purchasing quality isn't
+limited to diamonds and motor-cars."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by founding a
+hospital."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must think my
+ambitions are good enough for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am not
+divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you are trying
+to get!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get them I
+probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath. "What a miserable
+future you foresee for me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well&mdash;have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour rose to
+her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the deep wells of
+feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had produced it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when you show
+it to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat silent,
+while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do you do
+this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have chosen seem
+hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had fallen. He
+himself did not know why he had led their talk along such lines; it was
+the last use he would have imagined himself making of an afternoon's
+solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one of those moments when neither
+seemed to speak deliberately, when an indwelling voice in each called to
+the other across unsounded depths of feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I have nothing to give you instead," he said, sitting up and turning
+so that he faced her. "If I had, it should be yours, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than the
+manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he saw that
+for a moment she wept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and drew
+down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she turned on
+him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he said to
+himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and irony:
+"Isn't it natural that I should try to belittle all the things I can't
+offer you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with a
+gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which she had
+no claim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you belittle ME, don't you," she returned gently, "in being so sure
+they are the only things I care for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
+egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: "But you do care for
+them, don't you? And no wishing of mine can alter that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry him,
+that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned on him a
+face sparkling with derision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," she cried, "for all your fine phrases you're really as great a
+coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if you hadn't been
+so sure of my answer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden's
+wavering intentions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not so sure of your answer," he said quietly. "And I do you the
+justice to believe that you are not either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a moment&mdash;"Do you
+want to marry me?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He broke into a laugh. "No, I don't want to&mdash;but perhaps I should if you
+did!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what I told you&mdash;you're so sure of me that you can amuse yourself
+with experiments." She drew back the hand he had regained, and sat
+looking down on him sadly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not making experiments," he returned. "Or if I am, it is not on you
+but on myself. I don't know what effect they are going to have on me&mdash;but
+if marrying you is one of them, I will take the risk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled faintly. "It would be a great risk, certainly&mdash;I have never
+concealed from you how great."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, it's you who are the coward!" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The soft
+isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed lifted into a
+finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their
+veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to
+the earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's you who are the coward," he repeated, catching her hands in his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings: he felt
+as though her heart were beating rather with the stress of a long flight
+than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing back with a little smile
+of warning&mdash;"I shall look hideous in dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own
+hats," she declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other like
+adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which
+they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling
+itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser
+blue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect, and
+following the high-road, which wound whiter through the surrounding
+twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and she
+began to move toward the lane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after dark," she
+said, almost impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to regain
+his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable note of
+dryness: "That was not one of our party; the motor was going the other
+way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know&mdash;I know&mdash;&mdash;" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
+twilight. "But I told them I was not well&mdash;that I should not go out. Let
+us go down!" she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his
+pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that
+moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered
+hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion
+see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held
+out the cigarettes to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned
+forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red
+gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble
+into a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she
+might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without
+having time to select the just note. Selden's voice was under better
+control. "Why not?" he returned. "You see I took no risks in being so."
+And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort,
+he added quickly: "Let us go down."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0107"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 7
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice,
+in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
+she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back,
+sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
+indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while
+she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case,
+the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously&mdash;but I'm sure
+you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to
+let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don't
+suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine
+your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And
+I'm sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even
+Bertha kept her hands off&mdash;I will say that&mdash;till Lawrence came down and
+you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
+retaliate&mdash;why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known Lawrence
+Selden for years&mdash;why did you behave as if you had just discovered him?
+If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it&mdash;you
+could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you
+Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
+Lawrence's turning up put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her
+think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you
+this trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
+impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own
+conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's reproachful accents.
+But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence.
+"I only took a day off&mdash;I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and
+I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its
+weakness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did mean to stay&mdash;that's the worst of it. It shows that he's run away
+from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him thoroughly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily, do
+nothing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean, literally, to
+take the next train. There are ways&mdash;&mdash;" But she did not go on to specify
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways&mdash;plenty of
+them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don't
+deceive yourself&mdash;he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to
+his mother, and she'll protect him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How you can LAUGH&mdash;&mdash;" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
+soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha
+really told him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't ask me&mdash;horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you
+know what I mean&mdash;of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose
+she brought in Prince Varigliano&mdash;and Lord Hubert&mdash;and there was some
+story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
+she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their
+tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity
+comes they remember everything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money
+I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
+gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man&mdash;she knew
+just what to tell him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
+friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
+temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
+had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
+people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
+as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
+statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
+thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
+in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was
+certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
+gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's
+words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
+herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
+imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
+poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
+consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
+have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
+of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
+were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
+char-woman. Mrs. Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the
+situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her
+friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
+she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of
+indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had
+driven her out again on those dark seas?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was
+the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive
+her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of
+occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in
+which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long
+hours of subjection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm sorry to
+have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have
+some letters for me to answer&mdash;let me at least be useful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption
+of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had
+proved herself unfit for higher uses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney
+and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony
+that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady
+Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to
+lunch at a distant country-house. At such moments of diminished interest
+it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on
+this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed
+and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few of us are
+left! I do so enjoy the quiet&mdash;don't you, Lily? I wish the men would
+always stop away&mdash;it's really much nicer without them. Oh, you don't
+count, George: one doesn't have to talk to one's husband. But I thought
+Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?" she added enquiringly.
+"Didn't he intend to, Judy? He's such a nice boy&mdash;I wonder what drove
+him away? He is rather shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he
+has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he
+told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you
+doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and
+always has a lot left over to invest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some one's duty
+to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to
+realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to
+study the laws of his country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the divorce
+laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a
+petition against divorce."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing
+glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to
+tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed
+with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship that will do for
+him, it's the crew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated a voyage
+with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate
+expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at him; I think he's very
+nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a girl who married him would
+always have enough to be comfortable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but
+it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the
+breast of one of her hearers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than
+any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the
+heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her
+mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to
+her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut
+deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no
+one else&mdash;not even Judy Trenor&mdash;knew the full magnitude of her folly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered
+request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the
+luncheon-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher
+that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at
+four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I'm very
+glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him
+rather severely since she's been here, and she is so keen about going to
+fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
+It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her
+alimony is paid by other women's husbands!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
+friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself. Why should
+she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
+elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
+unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
+their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
+married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
+for a married woman to borrow money&mdash;and Lily was expertly aware of the
+implication involved&mdash;but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
+the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
+private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
+society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
+could of course borrow from her women friends&mdash;a hundred here or there,
+at the utmost&mdash;but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
+looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
+Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
+were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
+to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations was the
+decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
+without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
+continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
+difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
+necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
+next morning for Richfield.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
+unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
+which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
+crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't
+often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
+to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
+conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
+caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
+of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from
+the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and
+slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not often I
+have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won the race,
+anyhow. But I know what really happened&mdash;my wife sent you. Now didn't
+she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could
+not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with; and she's
+quite right," she rejoined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste your time
+on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can
+get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who've kept a free foot. Let
+me light a cigar, will you? I've had a beastly day of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to
+her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand
+cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with
+a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him
+handsome!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you have
+such a lot of tiresome things to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should say so&mdash;rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by
+his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a
+confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow has to hustle to keep
+this kind of thing going." He waved his whip in the direction of the
+Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations.
+"Judy has no idea of what she spends&mdash;not that there isn't plenty to keep
+the thing going," he interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his
+eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to
+live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
+too&mdash;luckily for me&mdash;but at the pace we go now, I don't know where I
+should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then. The women all
+think&mdash;I mean Judy thinks&mdash;I've nothing to do but to go down town once a
+month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of
+hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain
+to-day, though," he went on after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke
+of business, thanks to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily,
+I wish you'd try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
+going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she'd
+only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him.
+The man is mad to know the people who don't want to know him, and when a
+fellow's in that state there is nothing he won't do for the first woman
+who takes him up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's discourse had
+started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by
+the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She uttered a faint protest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, hang it&mdash;because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner! Well,
+all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him
+now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he'll be in
+it whether we want him or not, and then he won't be giving away a
+half-a-million tip for a dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale
+to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first words. This vast
+mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and "deals"&mdash;might she not find in
+it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard
+of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more
+notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and
+its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed,
+imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a "tip" from Mr.
+Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
+commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in
+a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal
+instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of
+explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always
+scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal
+fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of
+inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not
+open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile.
+"The afternoon is so perfect&mdash;don't you want to drive me a little
+farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day, and it's so restful to
+be away from people, with some one who won't mind if I'm a little dull."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
+trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
+himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him&mdash;not
+battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would
+have given their boots to get such a look from.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is your
+last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of
+everything at bridge last night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet; and
+bridge too&mdash;I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of the things
+my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I
+don't play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as
+the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about
+my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a
+favour&mdash;the very greatest of favours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of
+apprehension that she read in them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course&mdash;if it's anything I can manage&mdash;&mdash;" He broke off, and she
+guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs.
+Fisher's methods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is, Judy is
+angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense&mdash;&mdash;" his relief broke through in a
+laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her.
+But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her
+heart&mdash;poor dear&mdash;on my marrying&mdash;marrying a great deal of money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning
+abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove&mdash;you don't mean Gryce? What&mdash;you do?
+Oh, no, of course I won't mention it&mdash;you can trust me to keep my mouth
+shut&mdash;but Gryce&mdash;good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring
+yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And
+so you gave him the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the
+first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther
+across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
+discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I
+could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that men
+understand a woman's motives better than other women do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some men&mdash;I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he repeated,
+exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to you,"
+Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage; it's impossible.
+But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost
+entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she
+makes me no regular allowance, and lately I've lost money at cards, and I
+don't dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but
+there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
+my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income
+of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in
+less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know
+if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a
+moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all
+this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can't, at
+present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away
+tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the
+rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
+clothes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was
+heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of
+indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his
+wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart's future, he would
+have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better
+marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of
+discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that
+he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the
+assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
+that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he
+was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
+disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if
+she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and
+approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she
+was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
+find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
+Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
+titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
+much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
+her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
+before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
+her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
+money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
+too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
+understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
+certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
+transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
+general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
+that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
+risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
+within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
+and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
+repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
+resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
+the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
+herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
+immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
+nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
+shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
+appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
+inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
+consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
+claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
+his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
+which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
+him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0108"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 8
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
+scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
+degree to which it effaced her debts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
+absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
+this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
+she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
+order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
+disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
+orders without making the payment!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
+listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
+seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
+with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
+hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing
+intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
+kindness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
+approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
+with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
+listen to them when we were engaged&mdash;I'm sure he is telling the same ones
+still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
+keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she
+hasn't the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for
+her, and I'm sure she never pays when she loses."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
+of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
+There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
+had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
+cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
+Rosedale's "tip," and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
+there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood therefore
+that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
+owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
+demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
+borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
+did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
+of the next "big rise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on the
+occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
+the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
+had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
+attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group. The
+truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
+there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
+pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
+before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
+youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
+paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple country wedding" to
+which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
+the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
+While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
+fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
+threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
+presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
+apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
+often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
+the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
+mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
+her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
+that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
+possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
+rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
+her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
+could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
+enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
+easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
+in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
+Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
+large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
+After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
+ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
+weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
+brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
+man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
+imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
+Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
+prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
+her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
+did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
+blunder and bring him once more to her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
+for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
+their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
+and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
+his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
+cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
+Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
+the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
+him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
+else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
+luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
+more than it was worth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
+delightful had just happened to you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
+did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities. Miss
+Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
+there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
+freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
+observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
+grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her wavered
+between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
+acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
+dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
+consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
+occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
+inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
+acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty
+Farish's gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to
+let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
+proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have
+taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was something
+irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no higher pleasures,
+and that one might get as much interest and excitement out of life in a
+cramped flat as in the splendours of the Van Osburgh establishment.
+Today, however, her chirping enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They
+seemed only to throw her own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and
+give a soaring vastness to her scheme of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else leaves
+the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in her friend's.
+It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental and unenvious interest
+in all the details of a wedding: she was the kind of person who always
+kept her handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a
+box of wedding-cake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered the
+distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van Osburgh's bridal
+spoils. "I always say no one does things better than cousin Grace! Did
+you ever taste anything more delicious than that MOUSSE of lobster with
+champagne sauce? I made up my mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this
+wedding, and just fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence
+Selden heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving
+me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him
+at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
+myself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
+cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time in such
+an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a vague pleasure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you see him often?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and then we
+do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of him. He doesn't
+look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled. The dear fellow! I do
+wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so today, but he said he
+didn't care for the really nice ones, and the other kind didn't care for
+him&mdash;but that was just his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl
+who WASN'T nice. Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
+displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught the
+refraction of light from their surfaces&mdash;the milky gleam of perfectly
+matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet,
+the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding
+diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied
+art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like
+wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized
+the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and
+refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and
+the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant&mdash;it's as big as a
+dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent short-sightedly
+over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE. What, that horrid man?
+Oh, yes&mdash;I remember he's a friend of Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace
+had to ask him here today; but she must rather hate having to let Gwen
+accept such a present from him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of
+Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the
+persons least likely to be encumbered by them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always exchange
+it for something else," she remarked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued. "Do
+look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person who chose it
+must have taken particular pains. What is the name? Percy Gryce? Ah,
+then I'm not surprised!" She smiled significantly as she replaced the
+card. "Of course you've heard that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van
+Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about it&mdash;it's quite a romance! He
+met her first at the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's
+just the nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
+money&mdash;of course she has plenty of her own&mdash;but she's such a quiet
+stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so
+they are exactly suited to each other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed.
+Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her
+brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull
+and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness,
+had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls
+who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love&mdash;a mother who knows how to
+contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage
+of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
+cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned,
+may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it
+takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
+safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of failure.
+Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy Gryce's millions be
+joined to another great fortune, why should this clumsy girl be put in
+possession of powers she would never know how to use?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her arm,
+and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of vexation:
+what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had wandered off to
+the next table, and they were alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
+unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
+undisguised approval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly into
+the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the right moment
+to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and women called each
+other by their Christian names; it was only on Trenor's lips that the
+familiar address had an unpleasant significance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance, "have
+you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean to
+duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for you in my pocket
+that will go a long way in that line!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual, and the
+room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance assured her
+that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of pleasure replaced her
+apprehension.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the desire
+not to be overheard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off four thou'
+for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you'll begin to think
+you're a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you won't think poor old
+Gus such an awful ass as some people do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you properly now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
+hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone&mdash;and how glad she
+was that they were not! The news filled her with the glow produced by a
+sudden cessation of physical pain. The world was not so stupid and
+blundering after all: now and then a stroke of luck came to the
+unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began to rise: it was
+characteristic of her that one trifling piece of good fortune should give
+wings to all her hopes. Instantly came the reflection that Percy Gryce
+was not irretrievably lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of
+recapturing him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
+have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping
+to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
+countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an
+air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence
+was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily quickly
+transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of her gratitude
+seemed not to have brought the complete gratification she had meant it to
+give.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hang thanking me&mdash;I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like the
+chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I thought you
+were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I've hardly laid eyes
+on you for the last month. Why can't you come back to Bellomont this
+evening? We're all alone, and Judy is as cross as two sticks. Do come and
+cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you
+can telephone your maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish I
+could&mdash;but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and I
+must be with her for the next few days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be such pals
+than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he continued with
+unconscious penetration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you say the
+most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would tire of me
+much sooner than Judy&mdash;but come and see me at my aunt's the next
+afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet talk, and you
+can tell me how I had better invest my fortune."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had absented
+herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other visits to pay; but
+she now began to feel that the reckoning she had thus contrived to evade
+had rolled up interest in the interval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing to
+Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he said:
+"Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a fresh tip every day. But
+there's one thing you might do for me; and that is, just to be a little
+civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to dine when we get to
+town, but I can't induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would
+let me bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
+believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can tell you
+he's a chap it pays to be decent to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words which
+seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an unexpectedly easy
+way of acquitting her debt; and had she not reasons of her own for
+wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can get a tip
+out of him on my own account."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with a look
+which made her change colour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, you know&mdash;you'll please remember he's a blooming bounder," he
+said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window near
+which they had been standing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for space and
+fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where only a few men
+were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while scattered couples
+strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted borders of the
+flower-garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and she
+found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which his
+nearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.
+They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that
+episode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to be
+less conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than the
+satisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in
+masculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
+reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor,
+and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant
+to rest a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
+Selden's manner always conveyed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be able to
+have a word with you before the special snatches us away. I came with
+Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train, but I am sure
+she is still extracting sentimental solace from the wedding presents. She
+appears to regard their number and value as evidence of the disinterested
+affection of the contracting parties."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and as he
+spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and letting his
+eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace, she felt with a
+faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the
+footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her
+vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to
+him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
+diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her
+reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with
+romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my
+self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions
+were."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity. It
+seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had been the
+means of proving they were more important to you than anything else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden
+obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly,
+like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the
+faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go
+alone!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latent
+chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that
+his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood
+to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in a world
+apart with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she exclaimed
+with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the flow of
+comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the reappearance of Gus
+Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his wake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I have
+been hunting all over for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
+detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and the
+idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful by
+the sense of Selden's surprise that she should number Rosedale among her
+acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued to
+stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smile
+at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the
+privilege of being seen with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but
+Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene,
+and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to
+exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any
+need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial
+phrases of politeness. Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant
+attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level
+with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
+silence implied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered the
+plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his moustache;
+then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said, with a
+side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a more ripping get-up.
+Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go to see at the
+Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don't go to her too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she saw in a
+flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In ordinary talk
+they might have passed unheeded; but following on her prolonged pause
+they acquired a special meaning. She felt, without looking, that Selden
+had immediately seized it, and would inevitably connect the allusion with
+her visit to himself. The consciousness increased her irritation against
+Rosedale, but also her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
+propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
+returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my friends!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this privileged
+circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification, and a knowing
+smile drew up his moustache.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the whole
+outfit and win at a canter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would carry
+me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or some innocent
+drink before we all have to rush for the train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through the
+gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her throbbed with
+the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of the scene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the light
+surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted: she did not
+mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth about Percy Gryce.
+Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty
+withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most
+of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few
+minutes&mdash;the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life
+which she most wished him to ignore&mdash;increased her longing for shelter,
+for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation
+would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in
+an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of an
+audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal actors had
+left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily could discover
+neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh. That both should be
+missing struck her with foreboding; and she charmed Mr. Rosedale by
+proposing that they should make their way to the conservatories at the
+farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long
+suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of
+being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off
+as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
+self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen
+with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search.
+The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and
+Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for
+a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came
+upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the
+consciousness of duty performed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the tired
+hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots in a
+kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly fixed, and
+she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture. "My dear Lily, I
+haven't had time for a word with you, and now I suppose you are just off.
+Have you seen Evie? She's been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to
+tell you her little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already.
+The engagement is not to be announced till next week&mdash;but you are such a
+friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the first to know
+of their happiness."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0109"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 9
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In Mrs. Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
+therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue
+residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze
+who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey of that
+deserted thoroughfare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the
+domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She "went through" the linen
+and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner
+folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for
+lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield
+up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths
+and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed
+in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on the
+afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The journey back to
+town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves. Though Evie Van
+Osburgh's engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which
+the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed;
+and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and
+anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of
+innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation
+evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included
+a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in
+the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear
+herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner
+between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
+by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to feel
+the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed
+to a deeper self-disgust.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a physical
+outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She revolted from
+the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston's black walnut, from the
+slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the mingled odour of sapolio
+and furniture-polish that met her at the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she was
+arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds. Gathering up
+her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture; and as she did so
+she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same
+situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was
+again descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to
+remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met
+by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar
+circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on
+crimson elbows, examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the
+same apparent reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss
+Bart was on her own ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail," she said
+sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of excuse,
+she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth across the
+landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter swept by. It was
+insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such creatures about the
+house; and Lily entered her room resolved that the woman should be
+dismissed that evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance:
+since early morning she had been shut up with her maid, going over her
+furs, a process which formed the culminating episode in the drama of
+household renovation. In the evening also Lily found herself alone, for
+her aunt, who rarely dined out, had responded to the summons of a Van
+Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
+unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
+turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
+the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
+buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
+domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
+had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
+that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
+been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
+of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
+time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
+as she had said to Selden&mdash;people were tired of her. They would welcome
+her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart. She
+knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story. There were
+moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
+remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
+beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
+herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
+sheds perfume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
+returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
+dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
+Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
+Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
+of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
+as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
+confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
+a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
+the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
+Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
+manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston
+when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
+dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
+admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in
+the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented
+the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston's temperate career.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her
+excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the
+person who performs them. She greatly preferred the brilliant and
+unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the
+other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that
+the drawing-room should be "done over." But when it came to hunting for
+missing napkins, or helping to decide whether the backstairs needed
+re-carpeting, Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to
+mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
+soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean of
+itself, without extraneous assistance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier&mdash;Mrs.
+Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was "company"&mdash;Lily seemed to
+watch her own figure retreating down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to
+a middle age like Grace Stepney's. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor
+and her friends she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston;
+whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims
+of others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty house,
+roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was as though all
+the weariness of the past months had culminated in the vacuity of that
+interminable evening. If only the ring meant a summons from the outer
+world&mdash;a token that she was still remembered and wanted!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announcement
+that there was a person outside who was asking to see Miss Bart; and on
+Lily's pressing for a more specific description, she added:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman in
+a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light. The
+glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face and
+the reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.
+Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you wish to see me?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like to say a word to you, Miss." The tone was neither
+aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker's errand.
+Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to withdraw beyond
+ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and closed
+the door when they had entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it that you wish?" she enquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms folded
+in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small parcel wrapped
+in dirty newspaper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart." She spoke
+the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a
+part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like a
+threat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have found something belonging to me?" she asked, extending her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Haffen drew back. "Well, if it comes to that, I guess it's mine as
+much as anybody's," she returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her visitor's
+manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in certain directions,
+there was nothing in her experience to prepare her for the exact
+significance of the present scene. She felt, however, that it must be
+ended as promptly as possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked for
+me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared to
+answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way back to make a
+beginning, and it was only after a pause that she replied: "My husband
+was janitor to the Benedick till the first of the month; since then he
+can't get nothing to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily remained silent and she continued: "It wasn't no fault of our own,
+neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for, and we was
+put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had a long sickness
+last winter, and an operation that ate up all we'd put by; and it's hard
+for me and the children, Haffen being so long out of a job."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a place for
+her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady's intervention
+with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always getting what she
+wanted that she was used to being appealed to as an intermediary, and,
+relieved of her vague apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional
+formula.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry you have been in trouble," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that we have, Miss, and it's on'y just beginning. If on'y we'd 'a
+got another situation&mdash;but the agent, he's dead against us. It ain't no
+fault of ours, neither, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this point Lily's impatience overcame her. "If you have anything to
+say to me&mdash;&mdash;" she interposed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Miss; I'm coming to that," she said. She paused again, with her
+eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When
+we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms;
+leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays. Some of the gentlemen got the
+greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper
+baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers falling over on the floor.
+Maybe havin' so many is how they get so careless. Some of 'em is worse
+than others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
+carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore 'em in little bits in
+summer. But sometimes he'd have so many he'd just bunch 'em together, the
+way the others did, and tear the lot through once&mdash;like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her hand,
+and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table between Miss
+Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn in two; but with a
+rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together and smoothed out the page.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the presence
+of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured&mdash;the kind of vileness of
+which people whispered, but which she had never thought of as touching
+her own life. She drew back with a motion of disgust, but her withdrawal
+was checked by a sudden discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston's
+chandelier she had recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a
+large disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly
+disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
+pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily's ear as though she had heard them
+spoken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
+understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha Dorset,
+and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was no date, but the
+blackness of the ink proved the writing to be comparatively recent. The
+packet in Mrs. Haffen's hand doubtless contained more letters of the same
+kind&mdash;a dozen, Lily conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her
+was short, but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she
+was conscious of reading them, told a long history&mdash;a history over which,
+for the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
+shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless "good situations"
+of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the
+volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo
+glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek.
+Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given
+its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for
+having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender
+who is found out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The
+code of Lily's world decreed that a woman's husband should be the only
+judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while she had
+the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man
+of George Dorset's temper there could be no thought of condonation&mdash;the
+possessor of his wife's letters could overthrow with a touch the whole
+structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha Dorset's secret
+had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged
+Lily's disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust
+prevailed&mdash;all her instinctive resistances, of taste, of training, of
+blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest
+sense was one of personal contamination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible between
+herself and her visitor. "I know nothing of these letters," she said; "I
+have no idea why you have brought them here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. "I'll tell you why, Miss. I brought 'em
+to you to sell, because I ain't got no other way of raising money, and if
+we don't pay our rent by tomorrow night we'll be put out. I never done
+anythin' of the kind before, and if you'd speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr.
+Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on again at the Benedick&mdash;I seen you
+talking to Mr. Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr.
+Selden's rooms&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The blood rushed to Lily's forehead. She understood now&mdash;Mrs. Haffen
+supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap of her
+anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but an obscure
+impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden's name had started a new
+train of thought. Bertha Dorset's letters were nothing to her&mdash;they might
+go where the current of chance carried them! But Selden was inextricably
+involved in their fate. Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such
+exposure; and in this instance the flash of divination which had carried
+the meaning of the letters to Lily's brain had revealed also that they
+were appeals&mdash;repeated and therefore probably unanswered&mdash;for the renewal
+of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact that
+the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands would
+convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world holds it least
+pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider where a man of
+Dorset's ticklish balance was concerned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was aware only
+of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued, and that therefore
+she must obtain possession of them. Beyond that her mind did not travel.
+She had, indeed, a quick vision of returning the packet to Bertha Dorset,
+and of the opportunities the restitution offered; but this thought lit up
+abysses from which she shrank back ashamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had already
+opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All the letters
+had been pieced together with strips of thin paper. Some were in small
+fragments, the others merely torn in half. Though there were not many,
+thus spread out they nearly covered the table. Lily's glance fell on a
+word here and there&mdash;then she said in a low voice: "What do you wish me
+to pay you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Haffen's face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that the
+young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman to make
+the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than she had
+foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
+expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price named,
+and after a moment's hesitation, met it by a counter-offer of half the
+amount.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
+outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to restore
+them to their wrapping.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess they're worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor has got
+to live as well as the rich," she observed sententiously.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
+resistance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have offered all I am
+willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
+them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
+know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
+rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
+a word of this commanding young lady's might set in motion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
+that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
+she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
+honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
+letters mustn't go any farther.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
+greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones. The
+idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
+that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
+original demand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
+the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
+minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
+her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
+closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's
+dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
+do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
+them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
+keep them&mdash;to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
+their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
+be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
+drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
+lamps, was never lit except when there was company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
+opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
+Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
+trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
+clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
+always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
+kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
+was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
+being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.
+"I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it's
+extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the
+glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. "My dear, you look tired; I
+suppose it's the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full
+of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us
+about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the CONSOMME: a
+wedding breakfast should always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn't care
+for the bridesmaids' dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
+they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste's, but she says they
+didn't look it. I'm glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade
+of salmon-pink wouldn't have suited you." Mrs. Peniston delighted in
+discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
+part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue
+of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in
+the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
+extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably
+careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed
+to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh's gown, and could not even say
+whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table:
+Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener
+than as a narrator.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really, Lily, I don't see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding,
+if you don't remember what happened or whom you saw there. When I was a
+girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went to, and write the
+names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion
+favours till after your uncle's death, when it seemed unsuitable to have
+so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I
+remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van
+Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it's wonderful how she
+notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress
+was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must
+have come from Paquin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
+surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece
+between two malachite vases, passed her lace handkerchief between the
+helmet and its visor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew it&mdash;the parlour-maid never dusts there!" she exclaimed,
+triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
+reseating herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
+best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID cost more
+than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea&mdash;a combination of
+sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who
+won't take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa
+at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject's home life&mdash;a most
+peculiar arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
+herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things and she
+was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better;
+she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
+Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
+influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in that
+silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has
+been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really
+engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it
+all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven&mdash;she had almost
+despaired of marrying Evie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed itself,
+not to the furniture, but to her niece.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you were to
+marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they had stopped
+with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite sure there was an
+engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left unexpectedly one morning,
+they all thought he had rushed to town for the ring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily rose and moved toward the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed," she said; and Mrs.
+Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel sustaining
+the late Mr. Peniston's crayon-portrait was not exactly in line with the
+sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded brow to her kiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the grate.
+It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at least she
+could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her aunt's
+disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however, but dropping
+into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was large and
+comfortably-furnished&mdash;it was the envy and admiration of poor Grace
+Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious
+appointments of the guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily's existence
+were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
+bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston's bedroom, and
+the magenta "flock" wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early 'sixties,
+was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had
+tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches,
+in the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
+surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as
+she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the
+setting she had pictured for herself&mdash;an apartment which should surpass
+the complicated luxury of her friends' surroundings by the whole extent
+of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior;
+in which every tint and line should combine to enhance her beauty and
+give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical
+ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
+the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her aunt's words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
+vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding her up
+to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of their little
+group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than any other
+sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon which could flay
+its victims without the shedding of blood. Her cheek burned at the
+recollection, and she rose and caught up the letters. She no longer meant
+to destroy them: that intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion
+of Mrs. Peniston's words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed
+the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and
+deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a
+flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of
+buying them.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0110"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 10
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or two
+notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to Bellomont;
+but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to remain with her
+aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of her solitary existence
+with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement of spending her
+newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in, and
+whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting aside a
+part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of the risks of the
+opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to feel that, for a few
+months at least, she would be independent of her friends' bounty, that
+she could show herself abroad without wondering whether some penetrating
+eye would detect in her dress the traces of Judy Trenor's refurbished
+splendour. The fact that the money freed her temporarily from all minor
+obligations obscured her sense of the greater one it represented, and
+having never before known what it was to command so large a sum, she
+lingered delectably over the amusement of spending it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she had spent
+an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most complicated
+elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered the same
+establishment with the modest object of having her watch repaired. Lily
+was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to defer the purchase of
+the dressing-case till she should receive the bill for her new
+opera-cloak, and the resolve made her feel much richer than when she had
+entered the shop. In this mood of self-approval she had a sympathetic eye
+for others, and she was struck by her friend's air of dejection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting of a
+struggling charity in which she was interested. The object of the
+association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a reading-room and
+other modest distractions, where young women of the class employed in
+down town offices might find a home when out of work, or in need of rest,
+and the first year's financial report showed so deplorably small a
+balance that Miss Farish, who was convinced of the urgency of the work,
+felt proportionately discouraged by the small amount of interest it
+aroused. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily,
+and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's philanthropic
+efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast
+between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty's
+"cases." These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps pretty, some
+not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself
+leading such a life as theirs&mdash;a life in which achievement seemed as
+squalid as failure&mdash;and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
+price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing out her
+little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the amount into Miss
+Farish's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
+moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a
+person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing
+good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her
+horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy. Moreover,
+by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of
+generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in
+which she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish's surprise and
+gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense
+of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend the
+Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation was one
+which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready response, for the
+party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was ostensibly given by a lady of
+obscure origin and indomitable social ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily
+had hitherto avoided. Now, however, she was disposed to coincide with
+Mrs. Fisher's view, that it didn't matter who gave the party, as long as
+things were well done; and doing things well (under competent direction)
+was Mrs. Wellington Bry's strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
+as "Welly" Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had already
+sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to her
+determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry Fisher, she
+was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing herself entirely
+to that lady's guidance. Everything, accordingly, was well done, for
+there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher's prodigality when she was not spending
+her own money, and as she remarked to her pupil, a good cook was the best
+introduction to society. If the company was not as select as the CUISINE,
+the Welly Brys at least had the satisfaction of figuring for the first
+time in the society columns in company with one or two noticeable names;
+and foremost among these was of course Miss Bart's. The young lady was
+treated by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the
+mood when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
+Bry's admiration was a mirror in which Lily's self-complacency recovered
+its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those
+which will sustain the weight of human vanity; and the sense of being of
+importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the
+gratifying consciousness of power. If these people paid court to her it
+proved that she was still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired;
+and she was not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her
+fineness, in developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware from
+the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp cold and
+hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the influences of the
+winter woods. She returned to town in a glow of rejuvenation, conscious
+of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a fresh elasticity in her muscles. The
+future seemed full of a vague promise, and all her apprehensions were
+swept out of sight on the buoyant current of her mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise of a
+visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential hour when the
+tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly expectancy; and his
+manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to the intimacy of the occasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her lucky
+speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but there was
+something in the quality of his geniality which chilled her own, and she
+was conscious of marking each step in their acquaintance by a fresh
+blunder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Rosedale&mdash;making himself promptly at home in an adjoining easy-chair,
+and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: "You ought to go to my
+man for something really good"&mdash;appeared totally unconscious of the
+repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness behind the urn. It was
+perhaps her very manner of holding herself aloof that appealed to his
+collector's passion for the rare and unattainable. He gave, at any rate,
+no sign of resenting it and seemed prepared to supply in his own manner
+all the ease that was lacking in hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box on the
+opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively: "Mrs. Fisher
+is coming, and I've secured a tremendous admirer of yours, who'll never
+forgive me if you don't accept."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Lily's silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he added with
+a confidential smile: "Gus Trenor has promised to come to town on
+purpose. I fancy he'd go a good deal farther for the pleasure of seeing
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful enough
+to hear her name coupled with Trenor's, and on Rosedale's lips the
+allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Trenors are my best friends&mdash;I think we should all go a long way to
+see each other," she said, absorbing herself in the preparation of fresh
+tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her visitor's smile grew increasingly intimate. "Well, I wasn't thinking
+of Mrs. Trenor at the moment&mdash;they say Gus doesn't always, you know."
+Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right note, he added,
+with a well-meant effort at diversion: "How's your luck been going in
+Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a nice little pile for you
+last month."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that her
+hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady them; but
+her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid the tremor might
+communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke, however, it was in a
+tone of perfect lightness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes&mdash;I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor, who
+helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks instead of a
+mortgage, as my aunt's agent wanted me to do; and as it happened, I made
+a lucky 'turn'&mdash;is that what you call it? For you make a great many
+yourself, I believe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her attitude,
+and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance and manner, a
+step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct always nerved her
+to successful dissimulation, and it was not the first time she had used
+her beauty to divert attention from an inconvenient topic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
+acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having comported
+himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He had always believed
+he had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt manner
+in which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had "come into line,"
+confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Her
+way of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a
+tribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The
+girl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
+advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage of
+her nervousness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible that
+Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With all his faults,
+Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions, and was the less likely to
+overstep them because they were so purely instinctive. But Lily recalled
+with a pang that there were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided
+to her, Gus "talked foolishly": in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word
+had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
+shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit
+enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not
+uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of
+supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general
+dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane,
+the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial
+conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions
+with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr.
+Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him
+with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
+flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice
+to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt of the
+expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening night of the
+opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised to take him up that
+winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of being first in the field.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a day or two after Rosedale's visit, Lily's thoughts were dogged by
+the consciousness of Trenor's shadowy claim, and she wished she had a
+clearer notion of the exact nature of the transaction which seemed to
+have put her in his power; but her mind shrank from any unusual
+application, and she was always helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover
+she had not seen Trenor since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in
+his continued absence the trace of Rosedale's words was soon effaced by
+other impressions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
+completely vanished that the sight of Trenor's ruddy countenance in the
+back of Mr. Rosedale's box filled her with a sense of pleasant
+reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity of
+appearing as Rosedale's guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and it was a
+relief to find herself supported by any one of her own set&mdash;for Mrs.
+Fisher's social habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify
+Miss Bart's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty in
+public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of dress, the
+insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the general stream of
+admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to
+be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength
+and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one's self
+lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
+counterpart of genius!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happy
+shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, the
+cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. But
+brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt
+to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still
+performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If
+Lily's poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought
+that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor,
+the latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight of
+these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily look
+smarter in her life, that there wasn't a woman in the house who showed
+off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the
+opportunity of making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of
+gazing at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the back of
+the box, where they found themselves alone between two acts, Trenor said,
+without preamble, and in a tone of sulky authority: "Look here, Lily, how
+is a fellow ever to see anything of you? I'm in town three or four days
+in the week, and you know a line to the club will always find me, but you
+don't seem to remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip
+out of me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any
+easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment
+for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows
+by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm very much flattered by your wanting to see me," she returned,
+essaying lightness instead, "but, unless you have mislaid my address, it
+would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt's&mdash;in fact, I
+rather expected you to look me up there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a
+failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows
+that made him look his dullest when he was angry: "Hang going to your
+aunt's, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps
+talking to you! You know I'm not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw&mdash;I'd
+always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on. But why
+can't we go off somewhere on a little lark together&mdash;a nice quiet little
+expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the
+station?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she
+fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on
+his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
+tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: "I
+don't see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not
+always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what
+afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice
+quiet talk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hang talking! That's what you always say," returned Trenor, whose
+expletives lacked variety. "You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh
+wedding&mdash;but the plain English of it is that, now you've got what you
+wanted out of me, you'd rather have any other fellow about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with
+annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive
+hand on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be foolish, Gus; I can't let you talk to me in that ridiculous
+way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn't we take a walk in the
+Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it's amusing to be rustic in
+town, and if you like I'll meet you there, and we'll go and feed the
+squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took
+the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, then: that's a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three
+o'clock, at the end of the Mall. I'll be there sharp, remember; you won't
+go back on me, Lily?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But to Miss Bart's relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by
+the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on
+the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at
+Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled
+the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom
+the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and
+distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions.
+But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily's intuitions sent out
+thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she
+was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the
+trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to
+him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
+kindness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling," he began
+complainingly. "Not a shade of difference between this year and last,
+except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven't got
+new voices. My wife's musical, you know&mdash;puts me through a course of this
+every winter. It isn't so bad on Italian nights&mdash;then she comes late, and
+there's time to digest. But when they give Wagner we have to rush
+dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable&mdash;asphyxia in
+front and pleurisy in the back. There's Trenor leaving the box without
+drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don't make any
+difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you'd wonder why
+he's alive; I suppose he's leather inside too.&mdash;But I came to say that my
+wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven's
+sake say yes. She's got a lot of bores coming&mdash;intellectual ones, I mean;
+that's her new line, you know, and I'm not sure it ain't worse than the
+music. Some of 'em have long hair, and they start an argument with the
+soup, and don't notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is
+the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton
+brings them to the house&mdash;he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he
+are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of 'em if
+she chose, and I don't blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I
+say is: 'Don't let me see 'em eat!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of
+pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing
+surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont
+episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a
+start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died
+out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST
+INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the
+apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset's letters, she might have
+continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession
+had fed her resentment to satiety.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie an
+escape from Trenor's importunities.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0111"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 11
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning. Fifth
+Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging upward to the
+fashionable quarters about the Park, where illuminated windows and
+outspread awnings betokened the usual routine of hospitality. Other
+tributary currents crossed the mainstream, bearing their freight to the
+theatres, restaurants or opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded
+watch-tower of her upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the
+chronic volume of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward
+a Van Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
+that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as keenly
+as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she
+enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who
+take part must proverbially forego. No one could have kept a more
+accurate record of social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring
+finger on the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
+extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special
+memory for the vicissitudes of the "new people" who rose to the surface
+with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or
+landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers; and she was apt
+to display a remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate,
+so that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost always
+able to say to Grace Stepney&mdash;the recipient of her prophecies&mdash;that she
+had known exactly what would happen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as that in
+which everybody "felt poor" except the Welly Brys and Mr. Simon Rosedale.
+It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where prices fell in accordance
+with that peculiar law which proves railway stocks and bales of cotton to
+be more sensitive to the allotment of executive power than many estimable
+citizens trained to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes
+supposed to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
+dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion
+sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito, general
+entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners
+became the fashion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of
+the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any
+magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the
+golden coach. The mere fact of growing richer at a time when most
+people's investments are shrinking, is calculated to attract envious
+attention; and according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale
+had found the secret of performing this miracle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and there
+was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the victims of
+the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had made the same
+number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue, filled a
+picture-gallery with old masters, entertained all New York in it, and
+been smuggled out of the country between a trained nurse and a doctor,
+while his creditors mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests
+explained to each other that they had dined with him only because they
+wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
+career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his
+race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was
+prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season afforded him an
+unusual opportunity to shine, and he set about with patient industry to
+form a background for his growing glory. Mrs. Fisher was of immense
+service to him at this period. She had set off so many newcomers on the
+social stage that she was like one of those pieces of stock scenery which
+tell the experienced spectator exactly what is going to take place. But
+Mr. Rosedale wanted, in the long run, a more individual environment. He
+was sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never have
+credited him with perceiving, because he had no corresponding variations
+of manner; and it was becoming more and more clear to him that Miss Bart
+herself possessed precisely the complementary qualities needed to round
+off his social personality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston's vision.
+Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to overlook the MINUTIAE
+of the foreground, and she was much more likely to know where Carry
+Fisher had found the Welly Brys' CHEF for them, than what was happening
+to her own niece. She was not, however, without purveyors of information
+ready to supplement her deficiencies. Grace Stepney's mind was like a
+kind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn
+by a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
+inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how many
+trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney's head. She
+was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed
+that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for
+brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state. She knew that
+Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she
+inspired the same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a
+Gerty Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they differed
+from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss Farish's heart was a
+fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney's a precise register of facts
+as manifested in their relation to herself. She had sensibilities which,
+to Lily, would have seemed comic in a person with a freckled nose and red
+eyelids, who lived in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston's
+drawing-room; but poor Grace's limitations gave them a more concentrated
+inner life, as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser
+efflorescence. She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did
+not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant, but
+because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less mortifying to
+believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to
+assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. Even such
+scant civilities as Lily accorded to Mr. Rosedale would have made Miss
+Stepney her friend for life; but how could she foresee that such a friend
+was worth cultivating? How, moreover, can a young woman who has never
+been ignored measure the pang which this injury inflicts? And, lastly,
+how could Lily, accustomed to choose between a pressure of engagements,
+guess that she had mortally offended Miss Stepney by causing her to be
+excluded from one of Mrs. Peniston's infrequent dinner-parties?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense of family
+obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their honeymoon she
+felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room lamps and extract
+her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston's rare
+entertainments were preceded by days of heart-rending vacillation as to
+every detail of the feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern
+of the table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary
+discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as
+the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in it. For a week
+the prospect had lighted up Miss Stepney's colourless existence; then she
+had been given to understand that it would be more convenient to have her
+another day. Miss Stepney knew exactly what had happened. Lily, to whom
+family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her
+aunt that a dinner of "smart" people would be much more to the taste of
+the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her niece
+in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce Grace's exile.
+After all, Grace could come any other day; why should she mind being put
+off?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other day&mdash;and
+because she knew her relations were in the secret of her unoccupied
+evenings&mdash;that this incident loomed gigantically on her horizon. She was
+aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and dull resentment was turned
+to active animosity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the dinner,
+laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of
+Fifth Avenue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gus Trenor?&mdash;Lily and Gus Trenor?" she said, growing so suddenly pale
+that her visitor was almost alarmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, cousin Julia&nbsp;&#8230; of course I don't mean&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what you DO mean," said Mrs. Peniston, with a frightened
+quiver in her small fretful voice. "Such things were never heard of in my
+day. And my own niece! I'm not sure I understand you. Do people say he's
+in love with her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston's horror was genuine. Though she boasted an unequalled
+familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she had the innocence
+of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a part of "history," and to
+whom it never occurs that the scandals she reads of in lesson-hours may
+be repeating themselves in the next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her
+imagination shrouded, like the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of
+course, that society was "very much changed," and that many women her
+mother would have thought "peculiar" were now in a position to be
+critical about their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils of
+divorce with her rector, and had felt thankful at times that Lily was
+still unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could attach to a young
+girl's name, above all that it could be lightly coupled with that of a
+married man, was so new to her that she was as much aghast as if she had
+been accused of leaving her carpets down all summer, or of violating any
+of the other cardinal laws of housekeeping.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel the
+superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was really pitiable
+to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston! She smiled at the
+latter's question. "People always say unpleasant things&mdash;and certainly
+they're a great deal together. A friend of mine met them the other
+afternoon in the Park&mdash;quite late, after the lamps were lit. It's a pity
+Lily makes herself so conspicuous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"CONSPICUOUS!" gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her voice
+to mitigate the horror. "What sort of things do they say? That he means
+to get a divorce and marry her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grace Stepney laughed outright. "Dear me, no! He would hardly do that.
+It&mdash;it's a flirtation&mdash;nothing more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to tell me
+that, with Lily's looks and advantages, she could find no better use for
+her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost old enough to be her
+father?" This argument had such a convincing ring that it gave Mrs.
+Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up her work, while she waited for
+Grace Stepney to rally her scattered forces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. "That's the worst of
+it&mdash;people say she isn't wasting her time! Every one knows, as you say,
+that Lily is too handsome and&mdash;and charming&mdash;to devote herself to a man
+like Gus Trenor unless&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless?" echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath nervously. It was
+agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to the verge of
+anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar with the classic drama
+to have recalled in advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially
+received, but she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a
+reduced wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To
+the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more
+personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to
+boast of her niece's charms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless," said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned emphasis,
+"unless there are material advantages to be gained by making herself
+agreeable to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly that
+Mrs. Peniston's black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would have been
+hers at the end of the season.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same idea
+had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath her dignity
+to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who wore her old
+clothes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations," she
+said coldly, "you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than
+just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney's last scruples. "I
+don't know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling you
+about Lily. I was sure I shouldn't get any thanks for it," she returned
+with a flare of temper. "But I have some family feeling left, and as you
+are the only person who has any authority over Lily, I thought you ought
+to know what is being said of her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Mrs. Peniston, "what I complain of is that you haven't told
+me yet what IS being said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say that Gus
+Trenor pays her bills."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pays her bills&mdash;her bills?" Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. "I can't
+imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has her own
+income&mdash;and I provide for her very handsomely&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we all know that," interposed Miss Stepney drily. "But Lily wears a
+great many smart gowns&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like her to be well-dressed&mdash;it's only suitable!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this point; but
+Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She was like the
+stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must be annihilated to be
+convinced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gambling debts? Lily?" Mrs. Peniston's voice shook with anger and
+bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of her
+mind. "What do you mean by her gambling debts?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily's set one is liable to
+lose a great deal&mdash;and I don't suppose Lily always wins."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who told you that my niece played cards for money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mercy, cousin Julia, don't look at me as if I were trying to turn you
+against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs. Gryce told
+me herself that it was her gambling that frightened Percy Gryce&mdash;it seems
+he was really taken with her at first. But, of course, among Lily's
+friends it's quite the custom for girls to play for money. In fact,
+people are inclined to excuse her on that account&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To excuse her for what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For being hard up&mdash;and accepting attentions from men like Gus
+Trenor&mdash;and George Dorset&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. "George Dorset? Is there any one else? I
+should like to know the worst, if you please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a good deal
+with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her&mdash;but of course that's only
+natural. And I'm sure there is no truth in the horrid things people say;
+but she HAS been spending a great deal of money this winter. Evie Van
+Osburgh was at Celeste's ordering her trousseau the other day&mdash;yes, the
+marriage takes place next month&mdash;and she told me that Celeste showed her
+the most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And people
+say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I'm
+sure I'm sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston's genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney
+with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect of succeeding to
+the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason have generally some
+crack through which suspicion filters, and her visitor's insinuations did
+not glide off as easily as she had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked
+scenes, and her determination to avoid them had always led her to hold
+herself aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls had
+not been supposed to require close supervision. They were generally
+assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and
+marriage, and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural
+guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator's suddenly
+joining in a game. There had of course been "fast" girls even in Mrs.
+Peniston's early experience; but their fastness, at worst, was understood
+to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which there could be no
+graver charge than that of being "unladylike." The modern fastness
+appeared synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was
+as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the drawing-room:
+it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to admit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had heard,
+or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of discreet
+interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and a scene, in the
+shaken state of Mrs. Peniston's nerves, with the effects of her dinner
+not worn off, and her mind still tremulous with new impressions, was a
+risk she deemed it her duty to avoid. But there remained in her thoughts
+a settled deposit of resentment against her niece, all the denser because
+it was not to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible
+of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the
+charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.
+Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the
+house, and she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated
+furniture.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0112"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 12
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her
+critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had
+a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another,
+without ever perceiving the right road till it was too late to take it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not imagined
+that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money for her would
+ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in itself still seemed
+harmless enough; only it was a fertile source of harmful complications.
+As she exhausted the amusement of spending the money these complications
+became more pressing, and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in
+tracing the causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the
+thought that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
+This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of friendliness
+between the two women. Lily's visit to the Dorsets had resulted, for
+both, in the discovery that they could be of use to each other; and the
+civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its
+antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in
+a new sentimental experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher's late property, Ned
+Silverton, was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had
+once remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband's
+attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his
+self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather these were
+especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy
+Gryce stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset's humours, and if
+the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her
+situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such difficulties on
+the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy Trenor's lavish impulses,
+and Dorset's admiration was not likely to express itself in financial
+"tips," even had Lily cared to renew her experiences in that line. What
+she required, for the moment, of the Dorsets' friendship, was simply its
+social sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but
+this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set
+such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a
+married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her
+opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk in
+the Park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and since his
+marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the form of the
+sentimental small-talk which doubles upon itself like the paths in a
+maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led
+back to the same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually
+losing control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
+mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been somewhat
+heavily "touched" by the fall in stocks; his household expenses weighed
+on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all sides, a sullen opposition to
+his wishes, instead of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open, and
+descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but preferring
+the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the restrictions of a
+dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged Lily to return to
+Bellomont, and the first time they met in town Lily fancied there was a
+shade of coldness in her manner. Was it merely the expression of her
+displeasure at Miss Bart's neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached
+her? The latter contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a
+sense of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere,
+it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity
+of her friend's affection, though it sometimes showed itself in
+self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from any
+risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly conscious of
+the way in which such an estrangement would react on herself. The fact
+that Gus Trenor was Judy's husband was at times Lily's strongest reason
+for disliking him, and for resenting the obligation under which he had
+placed her. To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New
+Year, "proposed" herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in
+advance that the presence of a large party would protect her from too
+great assiduity on Trenor's part, and his wife's telegraphic "come by all
+means" seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always prevailed
+over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her hostess's manner.
+Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the experiment of coming to
+Bellomont was destined not to be successful. The party was made up of
+what Mrs. Trenor called "poky people"&mdash;her generic name for persons who
+did not play bridge&mdash;and, it being her habit to group all such
+obstructionists in one class, she usually invited them together,
+regardless of their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an
+irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in common than
+their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group
+lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in this
+case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed boredom of their
+host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to
+Lily to fuse the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a
+service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her accustomed
+zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts.
+If Mrs. Trenor's manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a
+faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic
+allusion to "your friends the Wellington Brys," or to "the little Jew who
+has bought the Greiner house&mdash;some one told us you knew him, Miss
+Bart,"&mdash;showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of
+society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the
+right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The indication was
+a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have smiled at it, trusting to
+the charm of her personality to dispel any prejudice against her. But now
+she had grown more sensitive to criticism and less confident in her power
+of disarming it. She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont
+permitted themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
+they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind her
+back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor's manner should seem to
+justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for avoiding him,
+and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in every purpose which
+had taken her there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had the
+happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly Brys, after
+much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly acquired friends, had
+decided on the bold move of giving a general entertainment. To attack
+society collectively, when one's means of approach are limited to a few
+acquaintances, is like advancing into a strange country with an
+insufficient number of scouts; but such rash tactics have sometimes led
+to brilliant victories, and the Brys had determined to put their fate to
+the touch. Mrs. Fisher, to whom they had entrusted the conduct of the
+affair, had decided that TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music were the
+two baits most likely to attract the desired prey, and after prolonged
+negotiations, and the kind of wire-pulling in which she was known to
+excel, she had induced a dozen fashionable women to exhibit themselves in
+a series of pictures which, by a farther miracle of persuasion, the
+distinguished portrait painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed upon to
+organize.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth's guidance her
+vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than
+dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal of
+draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights and shadows.
+Her dramatic instinct was roused by the choice of subjects, and the
+gorgeous reproductions of historic dress stirred an imagination which
+only visual impressions could reach. But keenest of all was the
+exhilaration of displaying her own beauty under a new aspect: of showing
+that her loveliness was no mere fixed quality, but an element shaping all
+emotions to fresh forms of grace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher's measures had been well-taken, and society, surprised in a
+dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs. Bry's hospitality. The
+protesting minority were forgotten in the throng which abjured and came;
+and the audience was almost as brilliant as the show.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
+inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom that a
+man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long since learned
+that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small group of the
+like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and was not insensible
+to the part money plays in their production: all he asked was that the
+very rich should live up to their calling as stage-managers, and not
+spend their money in a dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be
+charged with doing. Their recently built house, whatever it might lack as
+a frame for domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the display of a
+festal assemblage as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian
+architects improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of
+improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so
+rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the
+marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat one's self in
+one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it was not painted
+against the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself, from
+an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank enjoyment. The
+company, in obedience to the decorative instinct which calls for fine
+clothes in fine surroundings, had dressed rather with an eye to Mrs.
+Bry's background than to herself. The seated throng, filling the immense
+room without undue crowding, presented a surface of rich tissues and
+jewelled shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and
+the flushed splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of the
+room a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch curtained with
+folds of old damask; but in the pause before the parting of the folds
+there was little thought of what they might reveal, for every woman who
+had accepted Mrs. Bry's invitation was engaged in trying to find out how
+many of her friends had done the same.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that indiscriminate and
+uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss Bart's finer perceptions. It
+may be that Selden's nearness had something to do with the quality of his
+cousin's pleasure; but Miss Farish was so little accustomed to refer her
+enjoyment of such scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely
+conscious of a deeper sense of contentment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wasn't it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course it would never
+have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list, and I should have
+been so sorry to miss seeing it all&mdash;and especially Lily herself. Some
+one told me the ceiling was by Veronese&mdash;you would know, of course,
+Lawrence. I suppose it's very beautiful, but his women are so dreadfully
+fat. Goddesses? Well, I can only say that if they'd been mortals and had
+to wear corsets, it would have been better for them. I think our women
+are much handsomer. And this room is wonderfully becoming&mdash;every one
+looks so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George
+Dorset's pearls&mdash;I suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent of our
+Girls' Club for a year. Not that I ought to complain about the club;
+every one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you that Lily had
+given us three hundred dollars? Wasn't it splendid of her? And then she
+collected a lot of money from her friends&mdash;Mrs. Bry gave us five hundred,
+and Mr. Rosedale a thousand. I wish Lily were not so nice to Mr.
+Rosedale, but she says it's no use being rude to him, because he doesn't
+see the difference. She really can't bear to hurt people's feelings&mdash;it
+makes me so angry when I hear her called cold and conceited! The girls at
+the club don't call her that. Do you know she has been there with me
+twice?&mdash;yes, Lily! And you should have seen their eyes! One of them said
+it was as good as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat
+there, and laughed and talked with them&mdash;not a bit as if she were being
+CHARITABLE, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did. They've
+been asking ever since when she's coming back; and she's promised
+me&mdash;&mdash;oh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of the curtain on
+the first TABLEAU&mdash;a group of nymphs dancing across flower-strewn sward
+in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend
+for their effect not only on the happy disposal of lights and the
+delusive-interposition of layers of gauze, but on a corresponding
+adjustment of the mental vision. To unfurnished minds they remain, in
+spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but
+to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary
+world between fact and imagination. Selden's mind was of this order: he
+could yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
+spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry's TABLEAUX wanted none of the qualities
+which go to the producing of such illusions, and under Morpeth's
+organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other with the rhythmic march
+of some splendid frieze, in which the fugitive curves of living flesh and
+the wandering light of young eyes have been subdued to plastic harmony
+without losing the charm of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had been
+cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No one, for
+instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry Fisher, with her
+short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of her eyes, the
+provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant Miss Smedden from
+Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous curves of Titian's Daughter,
+lifting her gold salver laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of
+rippled hair and rich brocade, and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed
+the frailer Dutch type, with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes and
+lashes, made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a
+curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar
+of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and
+marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians,
+lounging by a fountain in a sunlit glade.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in Selden,
+leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even Gerty Farish's
+running commentary&mdash;"Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson looks!" or: "That must be
+Kate Corby, to the right there, in purple"&mdash;did not break the spell of
+the illusion. Indeed, so skilfully had the personality of the actors been
+subdued to the scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of
+the audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
+suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly the
+portrait of Miss Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of personality&mdash;the
+unanimous "Oh!" of the spectators was a tribute, not to the brush-work of
+Reynolds's "Mrs. Lloyd" but to the flesh and blood loveliness of Lily
+Bart. She had shown her artistic intelligence in selecting a type so like
+her own that she could embody the person represented without ceasing to
+be herself. It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into,
+Reynolds's canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams
+of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a splendid
+setting&mdash;she had thought for a moment of representing Tiepolo's
+Cleopatra&mdash;had yielded to the truer instinct of trusting to her
+unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a picture without
+distracting accessories of dress or surroundings. Her pale draperies,
+and the background of foliage against which she stood, served only to
+relieve the long dryad-like curves that swept upward from her poised foot
+to her lifted arm. The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of
+soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden
+always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
+her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to
+see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her
+little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of
+which her beauty was a part.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there isn't
+a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to know it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
+Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden's shoulder
+whenever the parting of the curtains presented any exceptional
+opportunity for the study of the female outline, affected their hearer in
+an unexpected way. It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily's
+beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of the comments had
+imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of
+indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the
+standards by which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban
+for a judgment on Miranda?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole
+tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all
+that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him
+from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where
+he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. "Wasn't she too
+beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple dress? It
+makes her look like the real Lily&mdash;the Lily I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he corrected;
+and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding, exclaimed joyfully:
+"I'll tell her that! She always says you dislike her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The performance over, Selden's first impulse was to seek Miss Bart.
+During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX, the actors
+had seated themselves here and there in the audience, diversifying its
+conventional appearance by the varied picturesqueness of their dress.
+Lily, however, was not among them, and her absence served to protract the
+effect she had produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see
+her too soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
+detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding,
+and on his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however, he
+knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her side; and
+though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither it would, without
+making an immediate effort to reach her, his procrastination was not due
+to any lingering resistance, but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in
+the sense of complete surrender.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had not an instant's doubt as to the meaning of the murmur greeting
+her appearance. No other tableau had been received with that precise note
+of approval: it had obviously been called forth by herself, and not by
+the picture she impersonated. She had feared at the last moment that she
+was risking too much in dispensing with the advantages of a more
+sumptuous setting, and the completeness of her triumph gave her an
+intoxicating sense of recovered power. Not caring to diminish the
+impression she had produced, she held herself aloof from the audience
+till the movement of dispersal before supper, and thus had a second
+opportunity of showing herself to advantage, as the throng poured slowly
+into the empty drawing-room where she was standing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed itself as
+the circulation became general, and the individual comments on her
+success were a delightful prolongation of the collective applause. At
+such moments she lost something of her natural fastidiousness, and cared
+less for the quality of the admiration received than for its quantity.
+Differences of personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in
+which her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
+approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning on Ned
+Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of capturing for
+himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher, as
+whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the group
+before Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two of the men
+wandered off in search of their partners for supper, and the others,
+noticing Selden's approach, gave way to him in accordance with the tacit
+freemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he
+reached her; and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the
+satisfaction of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen
+as it rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
+felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced. She
+read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation of her
+triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she
+cared to be beautiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in silence,
+and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but against the tide
+which was setting thither. The faces about her flowed by like the
+streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was leading
+her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the long
+suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden.
+Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent
+dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the
+depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
+lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash
+of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might
+have been blown across a sleeping lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a
+part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them
+to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the
+boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude
+about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it
+together. At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so
+that her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of the
+branches. Selden followed her, and still without speaking they seated
+themselves on a bench beside the fountain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a child.
+"You never speak to me&mdash;you think hard things of me," she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why do we never see each other? Why can't we be friends? You
+promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as though the
+words were drawn from her unwillingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a low
+voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion of a
+flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips touched. She drew back and
+rose from her seat. Selden rose too, and they stood facing each other.
+Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a moment against her cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, love me, love me&mdash;but don't tell me so!" she sighed with her eyes in
+his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped through the
+arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the room beyond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the transiency of
+exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but presently he reentered
+the house and made his way through the deserted rooms to the door. A few
+sumptuously-cloaked ladies were already gathered in the marble vestibule,
+and in the coat-room he found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The former, at Selden's approach, paused in the careful selection of a
+cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hallo, Selden, going too? You're an Epicurean like myself, I see: you
+don't want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin. Gad, what a
+show of good-looking women; but not one of 'em could touch that little
+cousin of mine. Talk of jewels&mdash;what's a woman want with jewels when
+she's got herself to show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they
+wear cover up their figures when they've got 'em. I never knew till
+tonight what an outline Lily has."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not her fault if everybody don't know it now," growled Trenor,
+flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined coat. "Damned bad
+taste, I call it&mdash;no, no cigar for me. You can't tell what you're smoking
+in one of these new houses&mdash;likely as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay
+for supper? Not if I know it! When people crowd their rooms so that you
+can't get near any one you want to speak to, I'd as soon sup in the
+elevated at the rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says
+life's too short to spend it in breaking in new people."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0113"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 13
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bedside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town that
+afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dine
+with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly that an important
+case called him to Albany, whence he would be unable to return till the
+evening, and asked Lily to let him know at what hour on the following day
+she would see him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his letter. The
+scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part of her dreams; she
+had not expected to wake to such evidence of its reality. Her first
+movement was one of annoyance: this unforeseen act of Selden's added
+another complication to life. It was so unlike him to yield to such an
+irrational impulse! Did he really mean to ask her to marry him? She had
+once shown him the impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent
+behaviour seemed to prove that he had accepted the situation with a
+reasonableness somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more
+agreeable to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the
+cost of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
+sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the episode
+of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could not marry him, it
+would be kinder to him, as well as easier for herself, to write a line
+amicably evading his request to see her: he was not the man to mistake
+such a hint, and when next they met it would be on their usual friendly
+footing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted to
+write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her resolve. She
+was still languid from her brief sleep and the exhilaration of the
+evening, and the sight of Selden's writing brought back the culminating
+moment of her triumph: the moment when she had read in his eyes that no
+philosophy was proof against her power. It would be pleasant to have that
+sensation again&nbsp;&#8230; no one else could give it to her in its fulness;
+and she could not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection by an
+act of definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily: "TOMORROW
+AT FOUR;" murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet into its
+envelope: "I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Judy Trenor's summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first time she
+had received a direct communication from Bellomont since the close of her
+last visit there, and she was still visited by the dread of having
+incurred Judy's displeasure. But this characteristic command seemed to
+reestablish their former relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that
+her friend had probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys'
+entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast, perhaps
+for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband, perhaps because, as
+Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she "couldn't bear new people
+when she hadn't discovered them herself." At any rate, though she
+remained haughtily at Bellomont, Lily suspected in her a devouring
+eagerness to hear of what she had missed, and to learn exactly in what
+measure Mrs. Wellington Bry had surpassed all previous competitors for
+social recognition. Lily was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but
+it happened that she was dining out. She determined, however, to see Mrs.
+Trenor for a few moments, and ringing for her maid she despatched a
+telegram to say that she would be with her friend that evening at ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal feast a
+few of the performers of the previous evening. There was to be plantation
+music in the studio after dinner&mdash;for Mrs. Fisher, despairing of the
+republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to her small crowded house
+a spacious apartment, which, whatever its uses in her hours of plastic
+inspiration, served at other times for the exercise of an indefatigable
+hospitality. Lily was reluctant to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and
+she would have liked to lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but
+she could not break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten she
+asked her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth Avenue to the
+Trenors'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that Judy's presence in
+town was not signalized by a greater promptness in admitting her; and her
+surprise was increased when, instead of the expected footman, pushing his
+shoulders into a tardy coat, a shabby care-taking person in calico let
+her into the shrouded hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the
+threshold of the drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual volubility
+while he relieved her of her cloak and drew her into the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come along to the den; it's the only comfortable place in the house.
+Doesn't this room look as if it was waiting for the body to be brought
+down? Can't see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up in this awful
+slippery white stuff&mdash;it's enough to give a fellow pneumonia to walk
+through these rooms on a cold day. You look a little pinched yourself, by
+the way: it's rather a sharp night out. I noticed it walking up from the
+club. Come along, and I'll give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast
+yourself over the fire and try some of my new Egyptians&mdash;that little
+Turkish chap at the Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try,
+and if you like 'em I'll get out a lot for you: they don't have 'em here
+yet, but I'll cable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where Mrs.
+Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there was an air of
+occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers, newspapers, a littered
+writing-table, and a general aspect of lamp-lit familiarity, so that it
+was a surprise not to see Judy's energetic figure start up from the
+arm-chair near the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat in
+question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and near it
+stood one of those intricate folding tables which British ingenuity has
+devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco and spirits. The sight
+of such appliances in a drawing-room was not unusual in Lily's set, where
+smoking and drinking were unrestricted by considerations of time and
+place, and her first movement was to help herself to one of the
+cigarettes recommended by Trenor, while she checked his loquacity by
+asking, with a surprised glance: "Where's Judy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and perhaps by
+prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending over the latter to
+decipher their silver labels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy water&mdash;you do
+look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your nose is red. I'll take
+another glass to keep you company&mdash;Judy?&mdash;Why, you see, Judy's got a
+devil of a head ache&mdash;quite knocked out with it, poor thing&mdash;she asked me
+to explain&mdash;make it all right, you know&mdash;Do come up to the fire, though;
+you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me make you comfortable, there's a
+good girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her toward a low
+seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed herself quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to say that Judy's not well enough to see me? Doesn't she
+want me to go upstairs?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to set it
+down before he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, no&mdash;the fact is, she's not up to seeing anybody. It came on
+suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully sorry she
+was&mdash;if she'd known where you were dining she'd have sent you word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram. But it
+doesn't matter, of course. I suppose if she's so poorly she won't go back
+to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and see her then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes: exactly&mdash;that's capital. I'll tell her you'll pop in tomorrow
+morning. And now do sit down a minute, there's a dear, and let's have a
+nice quiet jaw together. You won't take a drop, just for sociability?
+Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why, don't you like it? What
+are you chucking it away for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am chucking it away because I must go, if you'll have the goodness to
+call a cab for me," Lily returned with a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not like Trenor's unusual excitability, with its too evident
+explanation, and the thought of being alone with him, with her friend out
+of reach upstairs, at the other end of the great empty house, did not
+conduce to a desire to prolong their TETE-A-TETE.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved between
+herself and the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy'd been here you'd have
+sat gossiping till all hours&mdash;and you can't even give me five minutes!
+It's always the same story. Last night I couldn't get near you&mdash;I went to
+that damned vulgar party just to see you, and there was everybody talking
+about you, and asking me if I'd ever seen anything so stunning, and when
+I tried to come up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just
+went on laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be
+able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when you were
+mentioned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in which
+resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she had regained
+her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the middle of the room,
+while her slight smile seemed to put an ever increasing distance between
+herself and Trenor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Across it she said: "Don't be absurd, Gus. It's past eleven, and I must
+really ask you to ring for a cab."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown to detest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And supposing I won't ring for one&mdash;what'll you do then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. "Look here, Lily:
+won't you give me five minutes of your own accord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not tonight, Gus: you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very good, then: I'll take 'em. And as many more as I want." He had
+squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
+He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go and sit down there, please: I've got a word to say to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew herself
+up and moved toward the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time. I
+shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He burst into a laugh. "Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you won't
+find Judy. She ain't there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily cast a startled look upon him. "Do you mean that Judy is not in the
+house&mdash;not in town?" she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just what I do mean," returned Trenor, his bluster sinking to
+sullenness under her look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense&mdash;I don't believe you. I am going upstairs," she said
+impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold unimpeded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lily had a flash of reassurance. "If she hadn't come she would have
+sent me word&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I received no message."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't send any."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her opponent
+through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations indistinct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on me; but if
+you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour I must again ask
+you to send for a cab."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung by irony
+it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry streaks on Trenor's
+face might have been raised by an actual lash.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Lily, don't take that high and mighty tone with me." He had
+again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive shrinking from him
+she let him regain command of the threshold. "I DID play a trick on you;
+I own up to it; but if you think I'm ashamed you're mistaken. Lord knows
+I've been patient enough&mdash;I've hung round and looked like an ass. And
+all the while you were letting a lot of other fellows make up to
+you&nbsp;&#8230; letting 'em make fun of me, I daresay&nbsp;&#8230; I'm not sharp, and
+can't dress my friends up to look funny, as you do&nbsp;&#8230; but I can tell
+when it's being done to me&nbsp;&#8230; I can tell fast enough when I'm made a
+fool of&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I shouldn't have thought that!" flashed from Lily; but her laugh
+dropped to silence under his look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; you wouldn't have thought it; but you'll know better now. That's
+what you're here for tonight. I've been waiting for a quiet time to talk
+things over, and now I've got it I mean to make you hear me out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
+steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily than the
+excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind forsook her.
+She had more than once been in situations where a quick sword-play of wit
+had been needful to cover her retreat; but her frightened heart-throbs
+told her that here such skill would not avail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To gain time she repeated: "I don't understand what you want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw himself
+in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I stand.
+Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally allowed to have a
+seat at table."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of having to
+conciliate where she longed to humble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what you mean&mdash;but you must see, Gus, that I can't stay
+here talking to you at this hour&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gad, you go to men's houses fast enough in broad day light&mdash;strikes me
+you're not always so deuced careful of appearances."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that follows
+on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then&mdash;this was the way men talked
+of her&mdash;She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there was a throb of
+self-pity in her throat. But all the while another self was sharpening
+her to vigilance, whispering the terrified warning that every word and
+gesture must be measured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you have brought me here to say insulting things&mdash;&mdash;" she began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor laughed. "Don't talk stage-rot. I don't want to insult you. But a
+man's got his feelings&mdash;and you've played with mine too long. I didn't
+begin this business&mdash;kept out of the way, and left the track clear for
+the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set to work to make an ass
+of me&mdash;and an easy job you had of it, too. That's the trouble&mdash;it was too
+easy for you&mdash;you got reckless&mdash;thought you could turn me inside out, and
+chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that ain't
+playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. Of course I know now
+what you wanted&mdash;it wasn't my beautiful eyes you were after&mdash;but I tell
+you what, Miss Lily, you've got to pay up for making me think so&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward her with
+a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every nerve tore at
+her to retreat as he advanced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pay up?" she faltered. "Do you mean that I owe you money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed again. "Oh, I'm not asking for payment in kind. But there's
+such a thing as fair play&mdash;and interest on one's money&mdash;and hang me if
+I've had as much as a look from you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me how to
+invest mine&nbsp;&#8230; you must have seen I knew nothing of business&nbsp;&#8230;
+you told me it was all right&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It WAS all right&mdash;it is, Lily: you're welcome to all of it, and ten
+times more. I'm only asking for a word of thanks from you." He was closer
+still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened self in her
+was dragging the other down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I HAVE thanked you; I've shown I was grateful. What more have you done
+than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor caught her up with a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted as much
+before&mdash;and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to chuck me. I don't
+care how you settled your score with them&mdash;if you fooled 'em I'm that
+much to the good. Don't stare at me like that&mdash;I know I'm not talking the
+way a man is supposed to talk to a girl&mdash;but, hang it, if you don't like
+it you can stop me quick enough&mdash;you know I'm mad about you&mdash;damn the
+money, there's plenty more of it&mdash;if THAT bothers you&nbsp;&#8230; I was a
+brute, Lily&mdash;Lily!&mdash;just look at me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke&mdash;wave crashing on wave so
+close that the moral shame was one with the physical dread. It seemed to
+her that self-esteem would have made her invulnerable&mdash;that it was her
+own dishonour which put a fearful solitude about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back from
+him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've told you I don't understand&mdash;but if I owe you money you shall be
+paid&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called out
+the primitive man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale&mdash;and take your chances of
+fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless&mdash;unless you've settled your
+other scores already&mdash;and I'm the only one left out in the cold!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words&mdash;the words were worse
+than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body&mdash;in her throat,
+her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes travelled despairingly
+about the room&mdash;they lit on the bell, and she remembered that help was in
+call. Yes, but scandal with it&mdash;a hideous mustering of tongues. No, she
+must fight her way out alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to
+be in the house with Trenor&mdash;there must be nothing to excite conjecture
+in her way of leaving it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare. With
+his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him chill and
+humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the fumes of his
+libations, and the situation loomed before him black and naked as the
+ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the hand of inherited order,
+plucked back the bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts.
+Trenor's eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
+ledge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go home! Go away from here"&mdash;&mdash;he stammered, and turning his back on her
+walked toward the hearth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate lucidity.
+The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and she heard herself,
+in a voice that was her own yet outside herself, bidding him ring for the
+servant, bidding him give the order for a hansom, directing him to put
+her in it when it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but
+an insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly, and
+nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light
+words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while
+all the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
+street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as
+the prisoner's first draught of free air; but the clearness of brain
+continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
+lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure&mdash;was there
+something half-familiar in its outline?&mdash;which, as she entered the
+hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the obscurity of
+the side street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness
+closed on her. "I can't think&mdash;I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her
+head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to
+herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always
+known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She
+had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of
+the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of
+the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
+huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might
+sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners,
+and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her
+brain&nbsp;&#8230; She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing&mdash;the familiar
+alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was
+a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past
+seemed simple, natural, full of daylight&mdash;and she was alone in a place of
+darkness and pollution.&mdash;Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened
+her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she
+saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
+eleven&mdash;there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend
+them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled
+from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her
+through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
+vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed&mdash;and the darkness would
+frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the
+room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated
+her room at Mrs. Peniston's&mdash;its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact
+that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human
+nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four
+walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
+superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even
+had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs.
+Peniston's mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as
+Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that
+questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the
+darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but
+compassion holding its breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!&mdash;they
+were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach there before this
+labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips&mdash;if only she could
+feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she shook in the ague-fit of fear
+that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door in the roof and called
+the address to the driver. It was not so late&mdash;Gerty might still be
+waking. And even if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate
+every recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend's
+call.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0114"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 14
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys' entertainment, woke
+from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were less vivid in hue, more
+subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they
+were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such
+flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was
+accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through
+the cracks of other people's lives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but
+unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to
+herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If
+these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine
+psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite
+in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to
+look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends. Now that
+she was enjoying a little private feast of her own, it would have seemed
+incredibly selfish not to lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one
+with whom she would rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As to the nature of Selden's growing kindness, Gerty would no more have
+dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a butterfly's
+colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize on the wonder would
+be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it fade and stiffen in her
+hand: better the sense of beauty palpitating out of reach, while she held
+her breath and watched where it would alight. Yet Selden's manner at the
+Brys' had brought the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be
+beating in her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
+so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
+absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for, as the
+liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but she was quick
+to feel in him a change implying that for once she could give pleasure as
+well as receive it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should be
+reached through their interest in Lily Bart!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty's affection for her friend&mdash;a sentiment that had learned to keep
+itself alive on the scantiest diet&mdash;had grown to active adoration since
+Lily's restless curiosity had drawn her into the circle of Miss Farish's
+work. Lily's taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite
+for well-doing. Her visit to the Girls' Club had first brought her in
+contact with the dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with
+philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled
+on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay all
+around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life reached
+its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter night enclose
+a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this was in the natural
+order of things, and the orchid basking in its artificially created
+atmosphere could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by
+the ice on the panes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of
+poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments.
+Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the
+mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable
+separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure,
+her own fierce revulsions from pain&mdash;that some of these bundles of
+feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to
+look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love&mdash;this discovery gave
+Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a
+life. Lily's nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
+demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which did not
+press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was drawn out of
+herself by the interest of her direct relation with a world so unlike her
+own. She had supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or
+two of Miss Farish's most appealing subjects, and the admiration and
+interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club
+ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to disentangle
+the mixed threads of which Lily's philanthropy was woven. She supposed
+her beautiful friend to be actuated by the same motive as herself&mdash;that
+sharpening of the moral vision which makes all human suffering so near
+and insistent that the other aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty
+lived by such simple formulas that she did not hesitate to class her
+friend's state with the emotional "change of heart" to which her dealings
+with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
+she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer
+to all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real
+Lily," and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her
+placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities&mdash;a
+sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the receipt of
+a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine with her that evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement produced
+in her small household, Selden was at one with her in thinking with
+intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him to Albany was not
+complicated enough to absorb all his attention, and he had the
+professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind free when its services
+were not needed. This part&mdash;which at the moment seemed dangerously like
+the whole&mdash;was filled to the brim with the sensations of the previous
+evening. Selden understood the symptoms: he recognized the fact that he
+was paying up, as there had always been a chance of his having to pay up,
+for the voluntary exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from
+permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a
+different way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment.
+There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
+had never wanted to marry a "nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his
+cousin's vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to
+preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a
+charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still
+emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind
+of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her,
+and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for
+money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little
+more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely
+kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
+on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
+understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and
+discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the
+bills mounted up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though many of Selden's friends would have called his parents poor, he
+had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt only as a
+check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions were so good that
+their rarity gave them a merited relief, and abstinence was combined with
+elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs. Selden's knack of wearing her old
+velvet as if it were new. A man has the advantage of being delivered
+early from the home point of view, and before Selden left college he had
+learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as
+of spending it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that
+practised at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
+the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of "values."
+It was from her that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side
+of life: the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the
+Epicurean's pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling appeared to
+him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending of the two
+ingredients so essential as in the character of a pretty woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
+besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of a
+love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central fact of
+life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the makeshift
+alternative of a relation that should be less than this: that should
+leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it put an undue
+strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield to the growth of an
+affection which might appeal to pity yet leave the understanding
+untouched: sympathy should no more delude him than a trick of the eyes,
+the grace of helplessness than a curve of the cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now&mdash;that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows. His
+reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less important
+than the question as to when Lily would receive his note! He yielded
+himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations, wondering at what hour
+her reply would be sent, with what words it would begin. As to its import
+he had no doubt&mdash;he was as sure of her surrender as of his own. And so
+he had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on
+a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel
+gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
+him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation
+to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before of what was
+said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he knew from the
+vulgar estimate of her. His mind turned to Gerty Farish's words, and the
+wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of
+innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD&mdash;even
+the hidden god in their neighbour's breast! Selden was in the state of
+impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces.
+His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should
+justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth
+to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday
+recess, but seized a moment's leisure in court to scribble his telegram
+to Gerty Farish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a note
+from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only a line of
+rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away disappointed when he
+was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me&mdash;I've ordered a
+canvas-back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall glass at
+his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight. I shall
+have the club to myself. You know how I'm living this winter, rattling
+round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town today, but she's
+put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine alone in a room with the
+looking-glasses covered, and nothing but a bottle of Harvey sauce on the
+side-board? I say, Lawrence, chuck your engagement and take pity on
+me&mdash;it gives me the blue devils to dine alone, and there's nobody but
+that canting ass Wetherall in the club."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sorry, Gus&mdash;I can't do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor's face, the
+unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way his jewelled
+rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red fingers. Certainly the
+beast was predominating&mdash;the beast at the bottom of the glass. And he had
+heard this man's name coupled with Lily's! Bah&mdash;the thought sickened him;
+all the way back to his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor's fat
+creased hands&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew what
+was in it before he broke the seal&mdash;a grey seal with BEYOND! beneath a
+flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond&mdash;beyond the ugliness, the
+pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden entered it.
+Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and ingenuity, spoke to him
+in the language just then sweetest to his ear. It is surprising how
+little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul
+has suddenly been raised. Gerty sparkled too; or at least shone with a
+tempered radiance. He had never before noticed that she had
+"points"&mdash;really, some good fellow might do worse&nbsp;&#8230; Over the little
+dinner (and here, again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she
+ought to marry&mdash;he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had
+made the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such
+gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim
+her own hats&mdash;she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little repast he
+kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being the centre of
+observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she had manufactured for
+the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household
+arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had
+utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
+about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in
+a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a
+large establishment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as snugly as
+bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and poured it into her
+grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he leaned back, basking in the
+warm fragrance, lighted on a recent photograph of Miss Bart, and the
+desired transition was effected without an effort. The photograph was
+well enough&mdash;but to catch her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed
+with him&mdash;never had she been so radiant. But could photography capture
+that light? There had been a new look in her face&mdash;something different;
+yes, Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was so
+exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to the watery
+stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare,
+alternating with the equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A
+man who lived in lodgings missed the best part of life&mdash;he pictured the
+flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's compassion
+for the man&nbsp;&#8230; But to return to Lily&mdash;and again and again he returned,
+questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts
+of their stored tenderness for her friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
+communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped to
+confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on the fact
+that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous impulses&mdash;her
+restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life had never satisfied
+her proved that she was made for better things. She might have married
+more than once&mdash;the conventional rich marriage which she had been taught
+to consider the sole end of existence&mdash;but when the opportunity came she
+had always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love
+with her&mdash;every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her
+dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce
+incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not to be instantly adopted
+by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once seemed
+the obvious solution. If rejection there had been&mdash;and he wondered now
+that he had ever doubted it!&mdash;then he held the key to the secret, and the
+hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with dawn. It
+was he who had wavered and disowned the face of opportunity&mdash;and the joy
+now warming his breast might have been a familiar inmate if he had
+captured it in its first flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings in
+Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing Selden,
+repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been understood&mdash;&mdash;" and all
+the while she herself seemed to be sitting in the centre of a great glare
+of comprehension. The little confidential room, where a moment ago their
+thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly
+vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length of her new vision
+of the future&mdash;and that future stretched out interminably, with her
+lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them," she
+heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't you?" and:
+"She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to be&mdash;you'll help
+her by believing the best of her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language which has
+seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to be
+unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily&mdash;that was all! There
+had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had
+taken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to
+her own part in the talk&mdash;but it was all as meaningless as the boom of
+waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
+sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she could
+yield to the blessed waves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music afterward; I
+believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the foolish pink-faced
+clock that was drumming out this hideous hour. "A quarter past ten? I
+might look in there now; the Fisher evenings are amusing. I haven't kept
+you up too late, Gerty? You look tired&mdash;I've rambled on and bored you."
+And in the unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss
+upon her cheek.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen voices
+greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he dropped into a
+seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search of Miss Bart. But she
+was not there, and the discovery gave him a pang out of all proportion to
+its seriousness; since the note in his breast-pocket assured him that at
+four the next day they would meet. To his impatience it seemed
+immeasurably long to wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to
+Mrs. Fisher to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where. Wasn't she
+wonderful last night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a neighbouring
+arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when it comes to a girl
+standing there as if she was up at auction&mdash;I thought seriously of
+speaking to cousin Julia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher said to
+Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the general derision:
+"But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's married&mdash;TOWN TALK was
+full of her this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking his
+moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the dirty sheet? No, of
+course not; some fellow showed it to me&mdash;but I'd heard the stories
+before. When a girl's as good-looking as that she'd better marry; then no
+questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized society there is no
+provision as yet for the young woman who claims the privileges of
+marriage without assuming its obligations."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of Mr.
+Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rosedale&mdash;good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his eye-glass.
+"Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our family,"
+Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive bridal
+finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the judicial
+reflection: "In Lily's circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a
+standard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs. Fisher
+rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off his head. What do
+you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? 'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I
+could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that, the picture'd appreciate a
+hundred per cent in ten years.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove,&mdash;but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
+restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs. Where
+was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't heard of anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish who had
+arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she gave the
+driver the Trenors' address."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
+closed&mdash;Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come now,
+Trenor's there, anyhow&mdash;I&mdash;oh, well&mdash;the fact is, I've no head for
+numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining foot, and
+the smile that circled the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with his
+hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why he had
+stayed in it so long.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's: "It seems
+to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you disapprove of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well&mdash;what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
+element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That
+BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's
+task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are
+numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with
+dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had
+strength for both&mdash;it was her weakness which had put the strength in him.
+It was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a
+clogging morass of old associations and habits, and for the moment its
+vapours were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in
+her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar
+which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor
+with which he was trying to build up a defence against the influences of
+the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
+which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so swayed by
+them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view
+of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he
+strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
+At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of
+company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now that
+women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine. It would be a
+curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the
+sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to
+obscure the moral issue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van
+Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined
+himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control. Happily
+Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of social aspects, and with
+Selden for audience was eager to show the sureness of his touch. Mrs.
+Fisher lived in an East side street near the Park, and as the two men
+walked down Fifth Avenue the new architectural developments of that
+versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne's comment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That Greiner house, now&mdash;a typical rung in the social ladder! The man
+who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table
+at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a
+style his friends might have thought the money had given out. Not a bad
+purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western
+sight-seer. By and bye he'll get out of that phase, and want something
+that the crowd will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he
+marries my clever cousin&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'? Rather
+clever of its kind, don't you think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich restraint of
+line, which suggested the clever corseting of a redundant figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to Europe,
+and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a copy of the
+TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt furniture is thought to
+be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever chap that architect is,
+though&mdash;how he takes his client's measure! He has put the whole of Mrs.
+Bry in his use of the composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember,
+he chose the Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
+Trenor house is one of his best things&mdash;doesn't look like a
+banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out
+a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at
+Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys' ball-room must rankle: you may be
+sure she knows 'em as well as if she'd been there last night with a
+yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She
+isn't, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I
+suppose Gus lives in the back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had halted opposite the Trenors' corner, and Selden perforce stayed
+his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited; only an oblong
+gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and fifty
+feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's to be, with a
+gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above. I suggested
+changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room across the whole
+Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door corresponds with the
+windows&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped to a
+startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures were seen
+silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom halted at
+the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it in a haze of
+evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky, remained
+persistently projected against the light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
+silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the whole
+scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A&mdash;hem&mdash;nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I may
+count on you&mdash;appearances are deceptive&mdash;and Fifth Avenue is so
+imperfectly lighted&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street without
+seeing the other's extended hand.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Alone with her cousin's kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He had
+kissed her before&mdash;but not with another woman on his lips. If he had
+spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming the dark flood
+as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot through with glory, and
+it was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness. Gerty hid her face
+from the light, but it pierced to the crannies of her soul. She had been
+so contented, life had seemed so simple and sufficient&mdash;why had he come
+to trouble her with new hopes? And Lily&mdash;Lily, her best friend!
+Woman-like, she accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily,
+her fond imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
+her&mdash;had understood and sympathized with the modest independence of her
+life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice
+balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his
+view of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
+at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door barred
+against her by Lily's hand! Lily, for whose admission there she herself
+had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She
+knew Selden&mdash;she saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped
+to dispel his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
+him&mdash;she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known to each
+other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient;
+he had never guessed her foolish secret; but Lily&mdash;Lily must have known!
+When, in such matters, are a woman's perceptions at fault? And if she
+knew, then she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere
+wantonness of power, since, even to Gerty's suddenly flaming jealousy, it
+seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden's wife. Lily might
+be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of
+living without it, and Selden's eager investigations into the small
+economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as tragically duped
+as herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were crumbling to
+cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade. Just beneath it stood
+the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out imperially on the cheap
+gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the little room. Could Selden picture
+her in such an interior? Gerty felt the poverty, the insignificance of
+her surroundings: she beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the
+cruelty of Lily's judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
+dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily ever
+really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was the taste of
+new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature experimenting in a
+laboratory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with a
+start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a district
+visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered the fire, and
+went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass above her
+dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the shadows of the
+room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right had she to dream the
+dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly
+as she undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
+setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life must be
+taken up as though there had been no break in its routine. Her servant
+did not come till eight o'clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and
+placed it beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat,
+extinguished her light and lay down. But on her bed sleep would not
+come, and she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
+closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be blindly
+grappled with. Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight
+forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
+wanted happiness&mdash;wanted it as fiercely and unscrupulously as Lily did,
+but without Lily's power of obtaining it. And in her conscious impotence
+she lay shivering, and hated her friend&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a light and
+stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat incoherently, then
+she felt the sobering touch of fact, and remembered that such calls were
+not unknown in her charitable work. She flung on her dressing-gown to
+answer the summons, and unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision
+of Lily Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty's first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as though
+Lily's presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then she
+heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend's face, and felt
+herself caught and clung to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily&mdash;what is it?" she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who has
+gained shelter after a long flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was so cold&mdash;I couldn't go home. Have you a fire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty's compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of habit,
+swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one who needed
+help&mdash;for what reason, there was no time to pause and conjecture:
+disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty's lips, and made her
+draw her friend silently into the sitting-room and seat her by the
+darkened hearth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed
+strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on
+the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at each other in silence;
+then Lily repeated: "I couldn't go home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;no&mdash;you came here, dear! You're cold and tired&mdash;sit quiet, and I'll
+make you some tea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade: all
+personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and experience had
+taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
+soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
+wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed it
+away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came here because I couldn't bear to be alone," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily! Something has happened&mdash;can't you tell me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I couldn't bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my room at
+Aunt Julia's&mdash;so I came here&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in a
+fresh burst of fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Gerty, the furies&nbsp;&#8230; you know the noise of their wings&mdash;alone, at
+night, in the dark? But you don't know&mdash;there is nothing to make the dark
+dreadful to you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words, flashing back on Gerty's last hours, struck from her a faint
+derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery, was blinded to
+everything outside it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll let me stay? I shan't mind when daylight comes&mdash;Is it late? Is
+the night nearly over? It must be awful to be sleepless&mdash;everything
+stands by the bed and stares&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Farish caught her straying hands. "Lily, look at me! Something has
+happened&mdash;an accident? You have been frightened&mdash;what has frightened you?
+Tell me if you can&mdash;a word or two&mdash;so that I can help you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily shook her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not frightened: that's not the word. Can you imagine looking into
+your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement&mdash;some hideous change
+that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that&mdash;I
+can't bear to see myself in my own thoughts&mdash;I hate ugliness, you
+know&mdash;I've always turned from it&mdash;but I can't explain to you&mdash;you
+wouldn't understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long the night is! And I know I shan't sleep tomorrow. Some one told
+me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors. And he was not
+wicked, only unfortunate&mdash;and I see now how he must have suffered, lying
+alone with his thoughts! But I am bad&mdash;a bad girl&mdash;all my thoughts are
+bad&mdash;I have always had bad people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought
+I could manage my own life&mdash;I was proud&mdash;proud! but now I'm on their
+level&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of experience,
+till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech. She had first
+imagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, since
+Lily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher's; but she now saw
+that other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back from
+conjecture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me&mdash;do they ever pick themselves
+up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily! you mustn't speak so&mdash;you're dreaming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back&mdash;your
+old self rejects you, and shuts you out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness. "Go to
+bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I'll watch here by the fire,
+and you'll leave the light, and your door open. All I want is to feel
+that you are near me." She laid both hands on Gerty's shoulders, with a
+smile that was like sunrise on a sea strewn with wreckage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
+frozen&mdash;you must undress and be made warm." Gerty paused with sudden
+compunction. "But Mrs. Peniston&mdash;it's past midnight! What will she think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She goes to bed. I have a latch-key. It doesn't matter&mdash;I can't go back
+there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me where you
+have been. Listen, Lily&mdash;it will help you to speak!" She regained Miss
+Bart's hands, and pressed them against her. "Try to tell me&mdash;it will
+clear your poor head. Listen&mdash;you were dining at Carry Fisher's." Gerty
+paused and added with a flash of heroism: "Lawrence Selden went from here
+to find you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the word, Lily's face melted from locked anguish to the open misery of
+a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help me.
+He told me&mdash;he warned me long ago&mdash;he foresaw that I should grow hateful
+to myself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened the
+springs of self-pity in her friend's dry breast, and tear by tear Lily
+poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped sideways in
+Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden's had leaned,
+in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty's aching senses the
+inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on
+Lily's part to rob her of her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was
+to see in it a natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to
+such as Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they
+despoil. But if Selden's infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect
+that his name produced shook Gerty's steadfastness with a last pang. Men
+pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
+probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would have
+welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed the sufferer
+back to tolerance of life! But Lily's self-betrayal took this last hope
+from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who
+loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. "Gerty, you know
+him&mdash;you understand him&mdash;tell me; if I went to him, if I told him
+everything&mdash;if I said: 'I am bad through and through&mdash;I want admiration,
+I want excitement, I want money&mdash;' yes, MONEY! That's my shame,
+Gerty&mdash;and it's known, it's said of me&mdash;it's what men think of me&mdash;If I
+said it all to him&mdash;told him the whole story&mdash;said plainly: 'I've sunk
+lower than the lowest, for I've taken what they take, and not paid as
+they pay'&mdash;oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him
+everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me,
+and save me from loathing myself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had
+come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river
+sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge
+past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: "He is
+like other men?" She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so
+would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before
+herself in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of
+her own passion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes: I know him; he will help you," she said; and in a moment Lily's
+passion was weeping itself out against her breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on
+it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily's dress and persuaded her to
+put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in
+the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to
+avoid contact with her bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be
+caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses
+toward her friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily's
+nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet
+stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand of
+her hair swept Gerty's cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was
+warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as
+rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her
+side, in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs
+from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped
+for her friend's, and held it fast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things," she moaned; and
+Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow
+as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay
+still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to
+Gerty's as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers
+relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she
+slept.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0115"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 15
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in
+the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; then
+memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the cold
+slant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building,
+she saw her evening dress and opera cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a
+chair. Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and
+it occurred to Lily that, at home, her maid's vigilance had always spared
+her the sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and
+with the constriction of her attitude in Gerty's bed. All through her
+troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss in, and
+the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if she had spent
+her night in a train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then
+she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration, a languor
+of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The
+thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast
+roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the
+slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the
+dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But
+she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay
+back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical
+distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no
+freshness through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil
+of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of
+tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull
+hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she felt;
+Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up to drink
+the tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous attack
+in the carriage," she said, as the drink brought clearness to her
+sluggish thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were not well; I am so glad you came here," Gerty returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your things.
+But won't you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress under
+her maid's searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty was obliged
+to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a trace of the
+previous night's emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace
+Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of enquiries as
+best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her
+way back from Carry Fisher's; that, fearing she would not have strength
+to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish's instead; but that a quiet
+night had restored her, and that she had no need of a doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to her own
+symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her aunt's panacea for
+all physical and moral disorders. In the solitude of her own room she was
+brought back to a sharp contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them
+necessarily differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged
+furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea.
+But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
+besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced herself
+to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and the result of
+this hateful computation was the discovery that she had, in all, received
+nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been
+given and received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame: she knew that
+not a penny of it was her own, and that to restore her self-respect she
+must at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her
+outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
+realizing for the first time that a woman's dignity may cost more to keep
+up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute
+should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more
+sordid place than she had conceived it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After luncheon, when Grace Stepney's prying eyes had been removed, Lily
+asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the
+sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin
+arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a
+bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for
+these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the
+fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
+confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
+associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs.
+Peniston's lips. That lady's dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness
+which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since
+it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing
+this, Lily seldom ventured to assail it. She had never felt less like
+making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in
+vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. "You're a bad colour, Lily: this
+incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart saw an opening. "I don't think it's that, Aunt Julia; I've had
+worries," she replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse
+closing against a beggar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry to bother you with them," Lily continued, "but I really
+believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
+thoughts&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should have said Carry Fisher's cook was enough to account for it.
+She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891&mdash;the spring of the year
+we went to Aix&mdash;and I remember dining there two days before we sailed,
+and feeling SURE the coppers hadn't been scoured."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I ate much; I can't eat or sleep." Lily paused, and then
+said abruptly: "The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston's face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
+astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced
+to continue: "I have been foolish&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No doubt you have: extremely foolish," Mrs. Peniston interposed. "I
+fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses&mdash;not to mention
+the handsome presents I've always given you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you've been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your
+kindness. But perhaps you don't quite realize the expense a girl is put
+to nowadays&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your clothes
+and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid
+Celeste's bill for you last October."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily hesitated: her aunt's implacable memory had never been more
+inconvenient. "You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few
+things since&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the
+bill&mdash;I daresay the woman is swindling you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and
+one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and
+skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me see the bill," Mrs. Peniston repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet sent
+in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a
+fraction of the sum that Lily needed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hasn't sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it's large;
+and there are one or two other things; I've been careless and
+imprudent&mdash;I'm frightened to think of what I owe&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly
+hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without
+effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs.
+Peniston shrink back apprehensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after
+frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at
+least choose a better time to worry me with such matters." Mrs. Peniston
+glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of digitalis. "If you owe
+Celeste another thousand, she may send me her account," she added, as
+though to end the discussion at any cost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time; but I
+have really no choice&mdash;I ought to have spoken sooner&mdash;I owe a great deal
+more than a thousand dollars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told you it was not only Celeste. I&mdash;there are other bills&mdash;more
+pressing&mdash;that must be settled."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your
+head," said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. "But if you have run into debt,
+you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till
+your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead
+of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all,
+and surely in four or five months you can settle the rest of your bills
+if I pay the dress-maker now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract even a
+thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of paying Celeste's
+bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the dress-maker's account,
+and would make out the cheque to her and not to Lily. And yet the money
+must be obtained before the day was over!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The debts I speak of are&mdash;different&mdash;not like tradesmen's bills," she
+began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston's look made her almost afraid to
+continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything? The idea
+precipitated Lily's avowal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fact is, I've played cards a good deal&mdash;bridge; the women all do it;
+girls too&mdash;it's expected. Sometimes I've won&mdash;won a good deal&mdash;but lately
+I've been unlucky&mdash;and of course such debts can't be paid off
+gradually&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused: Mrs. Peniston's face seemed to be petrifying as she listened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cards&mdash;you've played cards for money? It's true, then: when I was told
+so I wouldn't believe it. I won't ask if the other horrors I was told
+were true too; I've heard enough for the state of my nerves. When I think
+of the example you've had in this house! But I suppose it's your foreign
+bringing-up&mdash;no one knew where your mother picked up her friends. And her
+Sundays were a scandal&mdash;that I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. "You play cards on Sunday?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at Bellomont
+and with the Dorsets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for cards, but
+a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and one drifts into
+doing what the others do. I've had a dreadful lesson, and if you'll help
+me out this time I promise you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. "You needn't make any promises:
+it's unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn't undertake to pay
+your gambling debts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aunt Julia! You don't mean that you won't help me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
+countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker, I will
+settle with her&mdash;beyond that I recognize no obligation to assume your
+debts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
+stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: "Aunt
+Julia, I shall be disgraced&mdash;I&mdash;" But she could go no farther. If her
+aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts, in
+what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct far
+more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded you to play
+cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson too. They can
+probably afford to lose a little money&mdash;and at any rate, I am not going
+to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I must ask you to leave
+me&mdash;this scene has been extremely painful, and I have my own health to
+consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and tell Jennings I will see no
+one this afternoon but Grace Stepney."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling with
+fear and anger&mdash;the rush of the furies' wings was in her ears. She walked
+up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The last door of escape
+was closed&mdash;she felt herself shut in with her dishonour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
+chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she remembered
+that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant to put him off with
+a word&mdash;but now her heart leaped at the thought of seeing him. Was there
+not a promise of rescue in his love? As she had lain at Gerty's side the
+night before, she had thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of
+weeping out her pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear
+herself of its consequences before she met him&mdash;she had never really
+doubted that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
+in the full storm of her misery, that Selden's love could not be her
+ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment's shelter
+there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
+wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive as the
+river's flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be terrible&mdash;but
+afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered Gerty's words: "I
+know him&mdash;he will help you"; and her mind clung to them as a sick person
+might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if he really understood&mdash;if he would
+help her to gather up her broken life, and put it together in some new
+semblance in which no trace of the past should remain! He had always made
+her feel that she was worthy of better things, and she had never been in
+greater need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
+imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she needed&mdash;it
+would take the glow of passion to weld together the shattered fragments
+of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty's words and held fast to
+them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden's feeling for her, and it had
+never dawned upon her blindness that Gerty's own judgment of him was
+coloured by emotions far more ardent than her own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Four o'clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that Selden
+would be punctual. But the hour came and passed&mdash;it moved on feverishly,
+measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had time to take a fresh
+survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate anew between the impulse to
+confide in Selden and the dread of destroying his illusions. But as the
+minutes passed the need of throwing herself on his comprehension became
+more urgent: she could not bear the weight of her misery alone. There
+would be a perilous moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her
+beauty to bridge it over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
+detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the four for
+a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after five confirmed
+this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to write more legibly in
+future. The sound of steps in the hall, and of the butler's voice
+preceding them, poured fresh energy into her veins. She felt herself once
+more the alert and competent moulder of emergencies, and the remembrance
+of her power over Selden flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the
+drawing-room door opened it was Rosedale who came in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing movement of
+irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her own carelessness in not
+denying the door to all but Selden, she controlled herself and greeted
+Rosedale amicably. It was annoying that Selden, when he came, should find
+that particular visitor in possession, but Lily was mistress of the art
+of ridding herself of superfluous company, and to her present mood
+Rosedale seemed distinctly negligible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few moments'
+conversation. She had caught at the Brys' entertainment as an easy
+impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval till Selden
+appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside the tea-table, his
+hands in his pockets, his legs a little too freely extended, at once gave
+the topic a personal turn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pretty well done&mdash;well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry's got his back
+up and don't mean to let go till he's got the hang of the thing. Of
+course, there were things here and there&mdash;things Mrs. Fisher couldn't be
+expected to see to&mdash;the champagne wasn't cold, and the coats got mixed in
+the coat-room. I would have spent more money on the music. But that's my
+character: if I want a thing I'm willing to pay: I don't go up to the
+counter, and then wonder if the article's worth the price. I wouldn't be
+satisfied to entertain like the Welly Brys; I'd want something that would
+look more easy and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it
+takes just two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman
+to spend it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to rearrange
+the tea-cups.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've got the money," he continued, clearing his throat, "and what I want
+is the woman&mdash;and I mean to have her too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
+walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne's type bring their hats
+and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added a touch of
+elegant familiarity to their appearance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on his
+face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would take some
+time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before the moment of
+refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of a mind withdrawn yet
+not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of a subtle encouragement. He
+would not have liked any evidence of eagerness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to have her too," he repeated, with a laugh intended to
+strengthen his self-assurance. "I generally HAVE got what I wanted in
+life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I've got more than I know how to
+invest; and now the money doesn't seem to be of any account unless I can
+spend it on the right woman. That's what I want to do with it: I want my
+wife to make all the other women feel small. I'd never grudge a dollar
+that was spent on that. But it isn't every woman can do it, no matter how
+much you spend on her. There was a girl in some history book who wanted
+gold shields, or something, and the fellows threw 'em at her, and she was
+crushed under 'em: they killed her. Well, that's true enough: some women
+looked buried under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who'll hold her
+head higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
+other night at the Brys', in that plain white dress, looking as if you
+had a crown on, I said to myself: 'By gad, if she had one she'd wear it
+as if it grew on her.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme: "Tell
+you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than all the rest
+of 'em put together. If a woman's going to ignore her pearls, they want
+to be better than anybody else's&mdash;and so it is with everything else. You
+know what I mean&mdash;you know it's only the showy things that are cheap.
+Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if
+she wanted to. I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and that's
+the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in
+that way." He paused, and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an
+earlier manner: "I guess you know the lady I've got in view, Miss Bart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge. Even
+through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr. Rosedale's
+millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of them to cancel
+her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly
+repugnant in the light of Selden's expected coming. The contrast was too
+grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided
+that directness would be best.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful&mdash;very much flattered;
+but I don't know what I have ever done to make you think&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, if you mean you're not dead in love with me, I've got sense enough
+left to see that. And I ain't talking to you as if you were&mdash;I presume I
+know the kind of talk that's expected under those circumstances. I'm
+confoundedly gone on you&mdash;that's about the size of it&mdash;and I'm just
+giving you a plain business statement of the consequences. You're not
+very fond of me&mdash;YET&mdash;but you're fond of luxury, and style, and
+amusement, and of not having to worry about cash. You like to have a good
+time, and not have to settle for it; and what I propose to do is to
+provide for the good time and do the settling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: "You are mistaken in
+one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared to settle for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words implied
+a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was prepared to meet and
+repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning it failed to abash him,
+and he went on in the same tone: "I didn't mean to give offence; excuse
+me if I've spoken too plainly. But why ain't you straight with me&mdash;why do
+you put up that kind of bluff? You know there've been times when you were
+bothered&mdash;damned bothered&mdash;and as a girl gets older, and things keep
+moving along, why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable
+to move past her and not come back. I don't say it's anywhere near that
+with you yet; but you've had a taste of bothers that a girl like yourself
+ought never to have known about, and what I'm offering you is the chance
+to turn your back on them once for all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The colour burned in Lily's face as he ended; there was no mistaking the
+point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass unheeded was a fatal
+confession of weakness, while to resent it too openly was to risk
+offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation quivered on her lip; but
+it was quelled by the secret voice which warned her that she must not
+quarrel with him. He knew too much about her, and even at the moment when
+it was essential that he should show himself at his best, he did not
+scruple to let her see how much he knew. How then would he use his power
+when her expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for
+restraint? Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she
+had to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as a
+breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try to
+decide coolly which turn to take.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am grateful
+to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always easy to be
+quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor and lives among
+rich people; I have been careless about money, and have worried about my
+bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful if I made that a reason for
+accepting all you offer, with no better return to make than the desire to
+be free from my anxieties. You must give me time&mdash;time to think of your
+kindness&mdash;and of what I could give you in return for it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal was
+shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale rise in
+obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for success, and
+disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept what was conceded,
+without undue haste to press for more. Something in his prompt
+acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the stored force of a
+patience that might subdue the strongest will. But at least they had
+parted amicably, and he was out of the house without meeting
+Selden&mdash;Selden, whose continued absence now smote her with a new alarm.
+Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she understood that it was now
+too late to hope for Selden. He would write explaining his absence, of
+course; there would be a note from him by the late post. But her
+confession would have to be postponed; and the chill of the delay settled
+heavily on her fagged spirit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It lay heavier when the postman's last ring brought no note for her, and
+she had to go upstairs to a lonely night&mdash;a night as grim and sleepless
+as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty. She had never learned to
+live with her own thoughts, and to be confronted with them through such
+hours of lucid misery made the confused wretchedness of her previous
+vigil seem easily bearable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her that she
+would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed without his
+writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and dining alone with
+her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the heart, and talked icily on
+general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to bed early, and when she had gone
+Lily sat down and wrote a note to Selden. She was about to ring for a
+messenger to despatch it when her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening
+paper which lay at her elbow: "Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the
+passengers sailing this afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the
+Windward Liner Antilles."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note. She
+understood now that he was never coming&mdash;that he had gone away because he
+was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking across the floor
+stood gazing at herself for a long time in the brightly-lit mirror above
+the mantel-piece. The lines in her face came out terribly&mdash;she looked
+old; and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she look to other
+people? She moved away, and began to wander aimlessly about the room,
+fitting her steps with mechanical precision between the monstrous roses
+of Mrs. Peniston's Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with
+which she had written to Selden still rested against the uncovered
+inkstand. She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
+it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and sat over
+it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write the date, and
+"Dear Mr. Rosedale"&mdash;but after that her inspiration flagged. She meant to
+tell him to come to her, but the words refused to shape themselves. At
+length she began: "I have been thinking&mdash;&mdash;" then she laid the pen down,
+and sat with her elbows on the table and her face hidden in her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was not
+late&mdash;barely ten o'clock&mdash;and there might still be a note from Selden, or
+a message&mdash;or he might be there himself, on the other side of the door!
+The announcement of his sailing might have been a mistake&mdash;it might be
+another Lawrence Selden who had gone to Havana&mdash;all these possibilities
+had time to flash through her mind, and build up the conviction that she
+was after all to see or hear from him, before the drawing-room door
+opened to admit a servant carrying a telegram.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset's name below
+the message: "Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us on a cruise
+in Mediterranean?"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0201"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK TWO
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 1
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo had, more
+than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating itself to each
+man's humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a festive readiness of
+welcome that might well, in a disenchanted eye, have turned to paint and
+facility. So frank an appeal for participation&mdash;so outspoken a
+recognition of the holiday vein in human nature&mdash;struck refreshingly on a
+mind jaded by prolonged hard work in surroundings made for the discipline
+of the senses. As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry
+of architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
+loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which suggested a
+sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting of scenes&mdash;as he
+took in the whole outspread effect of light and leisure, he felt a
+movement of revulsion from the last few months of his life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
+snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and furious
+air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the gritty wind ground
+into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work, had told himself that
+external conditions did not matter to a man in his state, and that cold
+and ugliness were a good tonic for relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent
+case summoned him abroad to confer with a client in Paris, he broke
+reluctantly with the routine of the office; and it was only now that,
+having despatched his business, and slipped away for a week in the south,
+he began to feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is the solace of
+those who take an objective interest in life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The multiplicity of its appeals&mdash;the perpetual surprise of its contrasts
+and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the show were upon him
+with a spring as he descended the Casino steps and paused on the pavement
+at its doors. He had not been abroad for seven years&mdash;and what changes
+the renewed contact produced! If the central depths were untouched,
+hardly a pin-point of surface remained the same. And this was the very
+place to bring out the completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the
+perpetuities, might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a
+day's revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his fixed sky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its climax
+and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens would soon
+dissolve and re-form in other scenes. Meanwhile the last moments of the
+performance seemed to gain an added brightness from the hovering threat
+of the curtain. The quality of the air, the exuberance of the flowers,
+the blue intensity of sea and sky, produced the effect of a closing
+TABLEAU, when all the lights are turned on at once. This impression was
+presently heightened by the way in which a consciously conspicuous group
+of people advanced to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the
+air of the chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the
+final effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had
+been staged regardless of expense, and emphasized its resemblance to one
+of those "costume-plays" in which the protagonists walk through the
+passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood in unrelated
+attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the men hung about
+them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors are named in the
+programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly fused the group by
+arresting the attention of one of its members.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Mr. Selden!" Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a gesture
+toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added plaintively:
+"We're starving to death because we can't decide where to lunch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their difficulty,
+Selden learned with amusement that there were several places where one
+might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit something by lunching;
+so that eating actually became a minor consideration on the very spot
+consecrated to its rites.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE&mdash;but that looks as if
+one hadn't any other reason for being there: the Americans who don't know
+any one always rush for the best food. And the Duchess of Beltshire has
+taken up Becassin's lately," Mrs. Bry earnestly summed up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher's despair, had not progressed beyond the point
+of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could not acquire the
+air of doing things because she wanted to, and making her choice the
+final seal of their fitness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure clothes, met
+the dilemma hilariously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess the Duchess goes where it's cheapest, unless she can get her
+meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE she'd turn
+up fast enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. "The Grand Dukes go to that little
+place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it's the only restaurant in
+Europe where they can cook peas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn
+smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy
+to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis: "It's quite that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"PEAS?" said Mr. Bry contemptuously. "Can they cook terrapin? It just
+shows," he continued, "what these European markets are, when a fellow can
+make a reputation cooking peas!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jack Stepney intervened with authority. "I don't know that I quite agree
+with Dacey: there's a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire&mdash;but in
+any case, I can't advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at least not with ladies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as the Van
+Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and
+discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness of gait which left
+him trailing breathlessly in her wake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's where we'll go then!" she declared, with a heavy toss of her
+plumage. "I'm so tired of the TERRASSE: it's as dull as one of mother's
+dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who all the awful people
+are at the other place&mdash;hasn't he, Carry? Now, Jack, don't look so
+solemn!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Mrs. Bry, "all I want to know is who their dress-makers are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No doubt Dacey can tell you that too," remarked Stepney, with an ironic
+intention which the other received with the light murmur, "I can at least
+FIND OUT, my dear fellow"; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn't
+walk another step, the party hailed two or three of the light phaetons
+which hover attentively on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off
+in procession toward the Condamine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging the
+boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
+intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they
+presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue
+curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to
+the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its
+church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the
+gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a
+light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the
+culminating moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great
+steam-yacht drew the company's attention from the peas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove, I believe that's the Dorsets back!" Stepney exclaimed; and Lord
+Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated: "It's the
+Sabrina&mdash;yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily," Mrs. Fisher observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess they feel as if they had: there's only one up-to-date hotel in
+the whole place," said Mr. Bry disparagingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Ned Silverton's idea&mdash;but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must have
+been horribly bored." Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to Selden: "I do
+hope there hasn't been a row."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back," said Lord Hubert, in his
+mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: "I daresay the
+Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily's here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Duchess admires her immensely: I'm sure she'd be charmed to have it
+arranged," Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional promptness of the
+man accustomed to draw his profit from facilitating social contacts:
+Selden was struck by the businesslike change in his manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily has been a tremendous success here," Mrs. Fisher continued, still
+addressing herself confidentially to Selden. "She looks ten years
+younger&mdash;I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her everywhere in
+Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her to stop for a week at
+Cimiez. People say that was one reason why Bertha whisked the yacht off
+to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn't take much notice of her, and she
+couldn't bear to look on at Lily's triumph."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was cruising in
+the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that
+there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the
+season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating
+his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in
+his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really
+affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments
+of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings,
+and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight of the
+Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that his three months
+of engrossing professional work, following on the sharp shock of his
+disillusionment, had cleared his mind of its sentimental vapours. The
+feeling he had nourished and given prominence to was one of thankfulness
+for his escape: he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a
+dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises.
+Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he had
+not come off unhurt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher's side in the Casino gardens, he was trying
+to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in the
+contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed with the
+loitering indecision characteristic of social movements at Monte Carlo,
+where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to
+offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally
+gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with
+the delicate negotiation of securing that lady's presence at dinner, the
+Stepneys had left for Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed
+to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment
+engaging his highest faculties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after luncheon,
+had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to withdraw to her
+hotel for an hour's repose; and Selden and his companion were thus left
+to a stroll propitious to confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself
+into a tranquil session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian
+roses, from which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble
+balusters, and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like
+from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of
+the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of
+many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
+Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had
+come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the
+inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first
+success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the
+Riviera as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their
+course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital, and a
+facility for picking them up again after long absences; and the carefully
+disseminated rumour of the Brys' wealth had at once gathered about them a
+group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But things are not going as well as I expected," Mrs. Fisher frankly
+admitted. "It's all very well to say that every body with money can get
+into society; but it would be truer to say that NEARLY everybody can.
+And the London market is so glutted with new Americans that, to succeed
+there now, they must be either very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are
+neither. HE would get on well enough if she'd let him alone; they like
+his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by
+trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she'd be natural
+herself&mdash;fat and vulgar and bouncing&mdash;it would be all right; but as soon
+as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She
+tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled.
+I've done my best to make her see her mistake&mdash;I've said to her again and
+again: 'Just let yourself go, Louisa'; but she keeps up the humbug even
+with me&mdash;I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the
+door shut.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The worst of it is," Mrs. Fisher went on, "that she thinks it's all MY
+fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and everybody began
+to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa thought that if she'd
+had Lily in tow instead of me she would have been hob-nobbing with all
+the royalties by this time. She doesn't realize that it's Lily's beauty
+that does it: Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than
+when he knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously
+admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to
+marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned
+up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her
+marriage-settlements with the step-father were being drawn up. Some
+people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal:
+there was an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
+so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
+elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks that Aix
+didn't suit her, and mentions her having been sent there as proof of the
+incompetence of French doctors. That's Lily all over, you know: she works
+like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she
+ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a
+picnic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of sea
+between the cactus-flowers. "Sometimes," she added, "I think it's just
+flightiness&mdash;and sometimes I think it's because, at heart, she despises
+the things she's trying for. And it's the difficulty of deciding that
+makes her such an interesting study." She glanced tentatively at Selden's
+motionless profile, and resumed with a slight sigh: "Well, all I can say
+is, I wish she'd give ME some of her discarded opportunities. I wish we
+could change places now, for instance. She could make a very good thing
+out of the Brys if she managed them properly, and I should know just how
+to look after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy
+Silverton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She met Selden's sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance. "Well,
+what's the use of mincing matters? We all know that's what Bertha brought
+her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good time she has to provide
+occupation for George. At first I thought Lily was going to play her
+cards well THIS time, but there are rumours that Bertha is jealous of her
+success here and at Cannes, and I shouldn't be surprised if there were a
+break any day. Lily's only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly&mdash;oh,
+very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it's necessary
+that George's attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And I'm
+bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he'd marry her tomorrow if
+he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But you know him&mdash;he's
+as blind as he's jealous; and of course Lily's present business is to
+keep him blind. A clever woman might know just the right moment to tear
+off the bandage: but Lily isn't clever in that way, and when George does
+open his eyes she'll probably contrive not to be in his line of vision."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden tossed away his cigarette. "By Jove&mdash;it's time for my train," he
+exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs. Fisher's
+surprised comment&mdash;"Why, I thought of course you were at Monte!"&mdash;a
+murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his head-quarters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now," he heard irrelevantly flung
+after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel overlooking
+the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of gaping
+portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to transport them to the
+cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to
+the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Nice; and not
+till he was installed in the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim
+to himself, with a reaction of self-contempt: "What the deuce am I
+running away from?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pertinence of the question checked Selden's fugitive impulse before
+the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like an emotional
+coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered. He had instructed
+his bankers to forward some important business letters to Nice, and at
+Nice he would quietly await them. He was already annoyed with himself for
+having left Monte Carlo, where he had intended to pass the week which
+remained to him before sailing; but it would now be difficult to return
+on his steps without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride
+recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the
+probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself
+from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance; and
+viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a reassuring
+object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated mention of her
+name, would send his thoughts back into grooves from which he had
+resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could be entirely excluded from
+his life, the pressure of new and varied impressions, with which no
+thought of her was connected, would soon complete the work of separation.
+Mrs. Fisher's conversation had, indeed, operated to that end; but the
+treatment was too painful to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies
+were untried; and Selden thought he could trust himself to return
+gradually to a reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in his
+reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned him that
+he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment there was a
+hand on the door, and he turned to confront the very face he was fleeing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the
+train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and Lord
+Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage, and
+envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before the
+whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were hastening to
+Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the Duchess of
+Beltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan evidently
+improvised&mdash;in spite of Lord Hubert's protesting "Oh, I say, you
+know,"&mdash;for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry's endeavour to
+capture the Duchess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time for a
+rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself opposite to him in
+the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three months had elapsed since he
+had parted from her on the threshold of the Brys' conservatory; but a
+subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty. Then it had had
+a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were
+sometimes tragically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a
+process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
+brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation:
+to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm
+fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
+competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she took up
+the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had not been
+snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such facility
+sickened him&mdash;but he told himself that it was with the pang which
+precedes recovery. Now he would really get well&mdash;would eject the last
+drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt himself calmer in her
+presence than he had learned to be in the thought of her. Her assumptions
+and elisions, her short-cuts and long DETOURS, the skill with which she
+contrived to meet him at a point from which no inconvenient glimpses of
+the past were visible, suggested what opportunities she had had for
+practising such arts since their last meeting. He felt that she had at
+last arrived at an understanding with herself: had made a pact with her
+rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government,
+under which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced
+into the service of the state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had adjusted itself
+to the hidden intricacies of a situation in which, even after Mrs.
+Fisher's elucidating flashes, he still felt himself agrope. Surely Mrs.
+Fisher could no longer charge Miss Bart with neglecting her
+opportunities! To Selden's exasperated observation she was only too
+completely alive to them. She was "perfect" to every one: subservient to
+Bertha's anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods,
+brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her
+on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton,
+portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something
+vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of
+manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed
+on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be
+desperate. She was on the edge of something&mdash;that was the impression left
+with him. He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one
+graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ground was
+failing her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for the
+half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of the general
+insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism. How any one
+could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera&mdash;any one with a grain of
+imagination&mdash;with the whole Mediterranean to choose from: but then, if
+one's estimate of a place depended on the way they broiled a spring
+chicken! Gad! what a study might be made of the tyranny of the
+stomach&mdash;the way a sluggish liver or insufficient gastric juices might
+affect the whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in
+reach&mdash;chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the "statutory causes"; a
+woman's life might be ruined by a man's inability to digest fresh bread.
+Grotesque? Yes&mdash;and tragic&mdash;like most absurdities. There's nothing
+grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he?
+Oh&mdash;the reason they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well&mdash;partly, no
+doubt, Miss Bart's desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a
+stone to art and poetry&mdash;the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And
+of course she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for him. Oh,
+she could make him believe anything&mdash;ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset was aware of
+it&mdash;oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn't see! But she could hold her
+tongue&mdash;she'd had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an intimate friend&mdash;she
+wouldn't hear a word against her. Only it hurts a woman's pride&mdash;there
+are some things one doesn't get used to&nbsp;&#8230; All this in confidence, of
+course? Ah&mdash;and there were the ladies signalling from the balcony of the
+hotel.... He plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative
+cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the evening, by
+some of those faint corroborative hints that generate a light of their
+own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden, stumbling on a chance
+acquaintance, had dined with him, and adjourned, still in his company, to
+the brightly lit Promenade, where a line of crowded stands commanded the
+glittering darkness of the waters. The night was soft and persuasive.
+Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from
+the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent
+across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red
+glitter of the illuminated boats. Down the lantern-hung Promenade,
+snatches of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft
+tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and the
+backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the
+vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of the
+season.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the stands facing
+the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng, and then found a point
+of vantage on a high garden-parapet above the Promenade. Thence they
+caught but a triangular glimpse of the water, and of the flashing play of
+boats across its surface; but the crowd in the street was under their
+immediate view, and seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than
+the show itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and,
+dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and
+turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls
+overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty cab
+trailed along the deserted thoroughfare, and presently Selden saw two
+persons emerge from the opposite shadows, signal to the cab, and drive
+off in it toward the centre of the town. The moonlight touched them as
+they paused to enter the carriage, and he recognized Mrs. Dorset and
+young Silverton.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw that the
+time was close on eleven. He took another cross street, and without
+breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way to the fashionable
+club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here, amid the blaze of crowded
+baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord Hubert Dacey, seated with his
+habitual worn smile behind a rapidly dwindling heap of gold. The heap
+being in due course wiped out, Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining
+Selden, adjourned with him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was
+now past midnight, and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the
+long trails of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky
+repossessed by the tranquil splendour of the moon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Hubert looked at his watch. "By Jove, I promised to join the Duchess
+for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it's past twelve, and I suppose
+they've all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the crowd soon after
+dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They had seats on one of the
+stands, but of course they couldn't stop quiet: the Duchess never can.
+She and Miss Bart went off in quest of what they call adventures&mdash;gad, it
+ain't their fault if they don't have some queer ones!" He added
+tentatively, after pausing to grope for a cigarette: "Miss Bart's an old
+friend of yours, I believe? So she told me.&mdash;Ah, thanks&mdash;I don't seem to
+have one left." He lit Selden's proffered cigarette, and continued, in
+his high-pitched drawling tone: "None of my business, of course, but I
+didn't introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess, you
+understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a liberal
+education."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert broke
+out again: "Sort of thing one can't communicate to the young lady&mdash;though
+young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for themselves; but in
+this case&mdash;I'm an old friend too, you know&nbsp;&#8230; and there seemed no one
+else to speak to. The whole situation's a little mixed, as I see it&mdash;but
+there used to be an aunt somewhere, a diffuse and innocent person, who
+was great at bridging over chasms she didn't see&nbsp;&#8230; Ah, in New York,
+is she? Pity New York's such a long way off!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0202"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 2
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found herself
+alone on the deck of the Sabrina. The cushioned chairs, disposed
+expectantly under the wide awning, showed no signs of recent occupancy,
+and she presently learned from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet
+appeared, and that the gentlemen&mdash;separately&mdash;had gone ashore as soon as
+they had breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over
+the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
+before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath of
+purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of foam at
+the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences, hotels and villas
+flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and eucalyptus; and the
+background of bare and finely-pencilled mountains quivered in a pale
+intensity of light.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+How beautiful it was&mdash;and how she loved beauty! She had always felt that
+her sensibility in this direction made up for certain obtusenesses of
+feeling of which she was less proud; and during the last three months she
+had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets' invitation to go abroad with
+them had come as an almost miraculous release from crushing difficulties;
+and her faculty for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off
+problems of conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had
+arisen, made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a
+postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed
+for her only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
+to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they changed
+their background. She could not have remained in New York without
+repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious
+debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident
+of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them
+dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled
+past them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to aid this
+illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new scenes, and had found
+in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions. The cruise itself charmed
+her as a romantic adventure. She was vaguely touched by the names and
+scenes amid which she moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading
+Theocritus by moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories,
+with a thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
+superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given her more
+pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high company, and of
+making her own ascendency felt there, so that she found herself figuring
+once more as the "beautiful Miss Bart" in the interesting journal devoted
+to recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions&mdash;all
+these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of memory
+the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had escaped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her
+ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only
+problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.
+Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of the skill with which she had
+adapted herself to somewhat delicate conditions. She had reason to think
+that she had made herself equally necessary to her host and hostess; and
+if only she had seen any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a
+financial profit from the situation, there would have been no cloud on
+her horizon. The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently
+low; and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
+be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could worry
+along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some happy
+change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was gay and
+beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not unworthily in
+such a setting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of Beltshire,
+and at twelve o'clock she asked to be set ashore in the gig. Before this
+she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see Mrs. Dorset; but the
+reply came back that the latter was tired, and trying to sleep. Lily
+thought she understood the reason of the rebuff. Her hostess had not been
+included in the Duchess's invitation, though she herself had made the
+most loyal efforts in that direction. But her grace was impervious to
+hints, and invited or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily's fault if
+Mrs. Dorset's complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess's
+easy gait. The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated
+her objection beyond saying: "She's rather a bore, you know. The only one
+of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry&mdash;HE'S funny&mdash;" but Lily
+knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether sorry to be
+thus distinguished at her friend's expense. Bertha certainly HAD grown
+tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned Silverton.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from the
+Sabrina; and the Duchess's little breakfast, organized by Lord Hubert
+with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter to Lily for not
+including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of late, had grown more than
+usually morose and incalculable, and Ned Silverton went about with an air
+that seemed to challenge the universe. The freedom and lightness of the
+ducal intercourse made an agreeable change from these complications, and
+Lily was tempted, after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her
+companions to the hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to
+play; her diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure;
+but it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of the
+Duchess's back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a neighbouring
+table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the afternoon
+hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the Sunday crowd in a
+lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass, identities were hardly
+distinguishable; but Lily presently saw Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined
+way through the doors, and, in the broad wake she left, the light figure
+of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug.
+Mrs. Bry pressed on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain
+point in the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
+towing-line, and let herself float to the girl's side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lose her?" she echoed the latter's query, with an indifferent glance at
+Mrs. Bry's retreating back. "I daresay&mdash;it doesn't matter: I HAVE lost
+her already." And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: "We had an awful row
+this morning. You know, of course, that the Duchess chucked her at dinner
+last night, and she thinks it was my fault&mdash;my want of management. The
+worst of it is, the message&mdash;just a mere word by telephone&mdash;came so late
+that the dinner HAD to be paid for; and Becassin HAD run it up&mdash;it had
+been so drummed into him that the Duchess was coming!" Mrs. Fisher
+indulged in a faint laugh at the remembrance. "Paying for what she
+doesn't get rankles so dreadfully with Louisa: I can't make her see that
+it's one of the preliminary steps to getting what you haven't paid
+for&mdash;and as I was the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms,
+poor dear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came naturally to
+her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to Mrs. Fisher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there's anything I can do&mdash;if it's only a question of meeting the
+Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. "My dear, I have my
+pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn't manage the Duchess, and I can't
+palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I've taken the final step: I
+go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers. THEY'RE still in the elementary
+stage; an Italian Prince is a great deal more than a Prince to them, and
+they're always on the brink of taking a courier for one. To save them
+from that is my present mission." She laughed again at the picture. "But
+before I go I want to make my last will and testament&mdash;I want to leave
+you the Brys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me?" Miss Bart joined in her amusement. "It's charming of you to
+remember me, dear; but really&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're already so well provided for?" Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp glance
+at her. "ARE you, though, Lily&mdash;to the point of rejecting my offer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart coloured slowly. "What I really meant was, that the Brys
+wouldn't in the least care to be so disposed of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye.
+"What you really meant was that you've snubbed the Brys horribly; and you
+know that they know&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you'd even
+managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina&mdash;especially when royalties
+were coming! But it's not too late," she ended earnestly, "it's not too
+late for either of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled. "Stay over, and I'll get the Duchess to dine with them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shan't stay over&mdash;the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT," said Mrs.
+Fisher with simplicity. "But get the Duchess to dine with them all the
+same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend's importunity
+was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. "I'm sorry I have been
+negligent about the Brys&mdash;&mdash;" she began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, as to the Brys&mdash;it's you I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Fisher
+abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice:
+"You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess chucked us.
+It was Louisa's idea&mdash;I told her what I thought of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart assented. "Yes&mdash;I caught sight of you on the way back, at the
+station."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset&mdash;that
+horrid little Dabham who does 'Society Notes from the Riviera'&mdash;had been
+dining with us at Nice. And he's telling everybody that you and Dorset
+came back alone after midnight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alone&mdash;? When he was with us?" Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into
+gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher's look. "We DID
+come back alone&mdash;if that's so very dreadful! But whose fault was it? The
+Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown Princess; Bertha
+got bored with the show, and went off early, promising to meet us at the
+station. We turned up on time, but she didn't&mdash;she didn't turn up at all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with
+careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher received it
+in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have lost sight of her
+friend's part in the incident: her inward vision had taken another slant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for the
+FETE. At any rate, I know she's safe on the yacht, though I haven't yet
+seen her; but you see it was not my fault," Lily summed up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not your fault that Bertha didn't turn up? My poor child, if only you
+don't have to pay for it!" Mrs. Fisher rose&mdash;she had seen Mrs. Bry
+surging back in her direction. "There's Louisa, and I must be off&mdash;oh,
+we're on the best of terms externally; we're lunching together; but at
+heart it's ME she's lunching on," she explained; and with a last
+hand-clasp and a last look, she added: "Remember, I leave her to you;
+she's hovering now, ready to take you in."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher's leave-taking away with her
+from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving, the first
+step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry's good graces. An affable
+advance&mdash;a vague murmur that they must see more of each other&mdash;an
+allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include the Duchess as
+well as the Sabrina&mdash;how easily it was all done, if one possessed the
+knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as she had so often
+wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not more consistently
+exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful&mdash;and sometimes, could it be
+that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious of
+a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to the point of
+suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps,
+that he might really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE
+undertook to have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his
+help, with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
+way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more
+for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as she
+advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it been
+produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden? She thought
+not&mdash;time and change seemed so completely to have relegated him to his
+proper distance. The sudden and exquisite reaction from her anxieties had
+had the effect of throwing the recent past so far back that even Selden,
+as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so
+clear that they were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down
+to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
+No&mdash;that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
+fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
+uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
+descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her across the
+square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and regain the yacht; but
+she now had the immediate impression that something more was to happen
+first.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?" he began, putting the
+second question before the first was answered, and not waiting for a
+reply to either before he directed her silently toward the comparative
+seclusion of the lower gardens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension.
+The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its sallowness had
+paled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and long
+reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine effect. His appearance,
+in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till they
+reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then, pulling up
+abruptly, he said: "Have you seen Bertha?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;when I left the yacht she was not yet up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
+clock. "Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time she
+came on board? This morning at seven!" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At seven?" Lily started. "What happened&mdash;an accident to the train?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed again. "They missed the train&mdash;all the trains&mdash;they had to
+drive back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well&mdash;&mdash;?" She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this necessity
+accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, they couldn't get a carriage at once&mdash;at that time of night, you
+know&mdash;" the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he were
+putting the case for his wife&mdash;"and when they finally did, it was only a
+one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How tiresome! I see," she affirmed, with the more earnestness because
+she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after a pause she
+added: "I'm so sorry&mdash;but ought we to have waited?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the four of
+us, do you think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh intended
+to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of it. "Well, it
+would have been difficult; we should have had to walk by turns. But it
+would have been jolly to see the sunrise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly," he agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was it? You saw it, then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally&mdash;I suppose you were worried. Why didn't you call on me to
+share your vigil?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. "I
+don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said with sudden
+grimness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as in
+one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping her
+sense of it out of her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"DENOUEMENT&mdash;isn't that too big a word for such a small incident? The
+worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has probably slept
+off by this time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to her
+in the glare of his miserable eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't&mdash;don't&mdash;&mdash;!" he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and while
+she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore any cause for
+it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he dropped down on the bench
+near which they had paused, and poured out the wretchedness of his soul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a dreadful hour&mdash;an hour from which she emerged shrinking and
+seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was
+not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak; but
+rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface
+of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had
+always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the
+situation had presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid
+image&mdash;that of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping
+road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending,
+and wondering what would give way first. Well&mdash;everything had given way
+now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so long.
+Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it
+from the road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his
+furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made her feel
+the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his life. But for her,
+what ear would have been open to his cries? And what hand but hers could
+drag him up again to a footing of sanity and self-respect? All through
+the stress of the struggle with him, she had been conscious of something
+faintly maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
+present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to
+feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted her to suffer
+with him, not to help him to suffer less.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
+frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy so
+deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would think it
+the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But Monte Carlo is,
+of all places, the one where the human bond is least close, and odd
+sights are the least arresting. If a glance or two lingered on the
+couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed them; and it was Lily herself who
+broke the silence by rising from her seat. With the clearing of her
+vision the sweep of peril had extended, and she saw that the post of
+danger was no longer at Dorset's side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you won't go back, I must&mdash;don't make me leave you!" she urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: "What are you going to
+do? You really can't sit here all night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers." He sat up, roused by
+a new thought. "By Jove, Selden's at Nice&mdash;I'll send for Selden!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. "No, no, NO!" she
+protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He swung round on her distrustfully. "Why not Selden? He's a lawyer isn't
+he? One will do as well as another in a case like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do&mdash;by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn't been for you
+I'd have ended the thing long ago. But now it's got to end." He rose
+suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. "You can't want to see
+me ridiculous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him kindly. "That's just it." Then, after a moment's
+pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
+inspiration: "Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You'll have time to do it
+before dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, DINNER&mdash;&mdash;" he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
+rejoinder: "Dinner on board, remember; we'll put it off till nine if you
+like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the quay, and
+she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her, she began to wonder
+what had been happening on the yacht. Of Silverton's whereabouts there
+had been no mention. Had he returned to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha&mdash;the
+dread alternative sprang on her suddenly&mdash;could Bertha, left to herself,
+have gone ashore to rejoin him? Lily's heart stood still at the thought.
+All her concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
+in such affairs, the woman's instinct is to side with the man, but
+because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was so
+desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of so
+different a quality from Bertha's, though hers too was desperate enough.
+The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about herself, while
+he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual crisis, this
+difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution on Bertha's side,
+since at least he had her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any
+rate, viewed less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were
+for the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went out.
+She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of
+obligation, the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain
+it. Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the last
+months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction of which
+Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more urgent that she
+should work undividedly in her friend's interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in Bertha's interest, certainly, that she had despatched Dorset to
+consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of the situation
+accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the safest in which Dorset
+could find himself. Who but Selden could thus miraculously combine the
+skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? The consciousness
+that much skill would be required made Lily rest thankfully in the
+greatness of the obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through
+she could trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust
+in the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the conviction
+strengthened her for the task that remained. She and Bertha had never
+been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis the barriers of reserve
+must surely fall: Dorset's wild allusions to the scene of the morning
+made Lily feel that they were down already, and that any attempt to
+rebuild them would be beyond Bertha's strength. She pictured the poor
+creature shivering behind her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense
+the moment when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered.
+If only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
+traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily grew
+more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her long absence.
+What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long hours no soul to
+turn to&mdash;but by this time Lily's eager foot was on the side-ladder, and
+her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be
+unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck, the
+wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated elegance, sat
+dispensing tea to the Duchess of Beltshire and Lord Hubert.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that Bertha, at
+least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was proportionately
+disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned. But in an instant she
+saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to look blank before the others,
+and that, to mitigate the effect of her own surprise, she must at once
+produce some simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions
+made it easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess: "Why, I thought you'd
+gone back to the Princess!" and this sufficed for the lady she addressed,
+if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the Duchess
+was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first rushed out to the
+yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject of tomorrow's
+dinner&mdash;the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert had finally
+insisted on dragging them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To save my neck, you know!" he explained, with a glance that appealed to
+Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the Duchess added, with
+her noble candour: "Mr. Bry has promised him a tip, and he says if we go
+he'll pass it onto us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to Lily, Mrs.
+Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the close of which
+Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder, called back, with an air
+of numbering heads: "And of course we may count on Dorset too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, count on him," his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up well to
+the last&mdash;but as she turned back from waving her adieux over the side,
+Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul of fear look
+out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady her
+muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control when,
+dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she remarked to
+Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: "I suppose I ought to say good
+morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the vaguest
+sense of what was expected of her in return. There was something
+unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset's composure, and she had to
+force the light tone in which she answered: "I tried to see you this
+morning, but you were not yet up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought we
+ought to wait for you till the last train." She spoke very gently, but
+with just the least tinge of reproach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You missed us? You waited for us at the station?" Now indeed Lily was
+too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other's words or keep watch
+on her own. "But I thought you didn't get to the station till after the
+last train had left!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
+immediate query: "Who told you that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George&mdash;I saw him just now in the gardens."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, is that George's version? Poor George&mdash;he was in no state to
+remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this morning,
+and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he found him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset settled
+herself indolently in her seat. "He'll wait to see him; he was horribly
+frightened about himself. It's very bad for him to be worried, and
+whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings on an attack."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was
+put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air
+of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully:
+"Anything upsetting?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
+hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big responsibility in such a
+scandalous place after midnight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that&mdash;at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable audacity of
+it&mdash;Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, really&mdash;considering it was you who burdened him with the
+responsibility!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. "By not having the
+superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush for the
+train? Or the imagination to believe that you'd take it without us&mdash;you
+and he all alone&mdash;instead of waiting quietly in the station till we DID
+manage to meet you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was pursuing
+an object, following a line she had marked out for herself. Only, with
+such a doom impending, why waste time in these childish efforts to avert
+it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed Lily's indignation: did it not
+prove how horribly the poor creature was frightened?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice," she returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity to
+rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are not a
+child to be led by the hand!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that's what you are doing to
+me now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. "Lecture you&mdash;I? Heaven forbid!
+I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it's usually the
+other way round, isn't it? I'm expected to take hints, not to give them:
+I've positively lived on them all these last months."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hints&mdash;from me to you?" Lily repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, negative ones merely&mdash;what not to be and to do and to see. And I
+think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you'll let me say
+so, I didn't understand that one of my negative duties was NOT to warn
+you when you carried your imprudence too far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery
+that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a
+moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this
+outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to
+cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to
+exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double and turn&mdash;come straight back to me,
+and we'll find a way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable
+insolence of Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it
+quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its
+accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to
+her cabin.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0203"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 3
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart's telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his hotel; and
+having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The message
+necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he had recently
+heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On the whole he was
+surprised; for though he had perceived that the situation contained all
+the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his
+personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into
+harmlessness. Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless
+disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and
+it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from
+a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to
+safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for either lay in
+repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had
+only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his
+desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
+There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished to
+spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the
+public washing of the Dorset linen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more
+vividly after his two hours' talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out
+at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as
+left him, after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling
+open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come
+out; and happily for his side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced
+together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a
+homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit&mdash;there were
+missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
+was naturally Selden's business to make the most of in putting them under
+his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's mood the completest
+demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the
+moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize, to offer sympathy and
+to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with the
+sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly
+noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted
+for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not
+long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset,
+the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a
+little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such
+natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
+telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
+"Assume that everything is as usual."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was
+lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's imperative bidding,
+had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast
+had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of
+the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called
+his "attacks" that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this
+cause; but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to
+make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt
+of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a
+grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one
+herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
+perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak
+flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of
+"appearances," her own attention was perpetually distracted by the
+question: "What on earth can she be driving at?" There was something
+positively exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If
+only she would have given her friend a hint they might still have worked
+together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while she was thus
+obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she
+honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but for the Dorsets'. She had
+not thought of her own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in
+trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary
+evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
+tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of
+his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who
+should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the
+infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it
+seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an
+hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage
+and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the
+same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the
+confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were
+all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned
+Silverton. No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject
+kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
+another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset now
+avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was repenting his
+rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only trying, in his clumsy
+way, to conform to Selden's counsel to behave "as usual." Such
+instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the
+photographer's behest to "look natural"; and in a creature as unconscious
+as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to
+maintain a pose was sure to result in queer contortions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
+resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset was
+still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and feeling
+too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried ashore.
+Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a group of
+acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in whose company she
+was returning to the rooms when she encountered Selden crossing the
+square. She could not, at the moment, separate herself definitely from
+her party, who had hospitably assumed that she would remain with them
+till they took their departure; but she found time for a momentary pause
+of enquiry, to which he promptly returned: "I've seen him again&mdash;he's
+just left me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited before him anxiously. "Well? what has happened? What WILL
+happen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing as yet&mdash;and nothing in the future, I think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's over, then? It's settled? You're sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled. "Give me time. I'm not sure&mdash;but I'm a good deal surer." And
+with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the expectant
+group on the steps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness, had even
+stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And now, as he
+turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station, that anxiety
+remained with him as the visible justification of his own. It was not,
+indeed, anything specific that he feared: there had been a literal truth
+in his declaration that he did not think anything would happen. What
+troubled him was that, though Dorset's attitude had perceptibly changed,
+the change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been
+produced by Selden's arguments, or by the action of his own soberer
+reason. Five minutes' talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
+been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment as
+weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of apathy, like a
+dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however
+exerted, it worked for the general safety: the question was how long it
+would last, and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On
+these points Selden could gain no light; for he saw that one effect of
+the transformation had been to shut him off from free communion with
+Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the irresistible desire to
+discuss his wrong; but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn
+tenacity, Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
+expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
+impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden began to
+feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of
+the sequel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station
+when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his brief word with
+her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual
+change in his purpose. The change had been produced by the look in her
+eyes; and in his eagerness to define the nature of that look, he dropped
+into a seat in the gardens, and sat brooding upon the question. It was
+natural enough, in all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a
+young woman placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
+couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her concern for
+her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her own position. The
+worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss Bart's state of mind, so many
+alternative readings were possible; and one of these, in Selden's
+troubled mind, took the ugly form suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl
+was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what
+degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being
+fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs.
+Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
+Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are
+generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with
+the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs.
+Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the likelihood of Dorset's marrying
+Miss Bart if "anything happened"; and though Mrs. Fisher's conclusions
+were notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from
+which they were drawn. Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the
+girl, and this interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife's
+struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
+last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
+combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences. She could
+be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was reckless in
+courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely
+to be used as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just
+what course she was likely to take, but his perplexity increased his
+apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must speak
+again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the situation&mdash;and he had
+always honestly tried to resist judging her by her surroundings&mdash;however
+free she might be from any personal connection with it, she would be
+better out of the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to
+him for help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him back to
+the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her disappearing; but
+a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed to put him on her traces. He
+saw instead, to his surprise, Ned Silverton loitering somewhat
+ostentatiously about the tables; and the discovery that this actor in the
+drama was not only hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the
+exposure of the footlights, though it might have seemed to imply that all
+peril was over, served rather to deepen Selden's sense of foreboding.
+Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see
+Miss Bart move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably
+to do at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for a
+glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that she had
+gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow her there, and
+still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a
+private word; and he had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative
+of writing, when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled
+before him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord Hubert that
+Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset's company; an
+announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Bry, after a
+glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a
+spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet
+his friends at dinner that evening&mdash;"At Becassin's&mdash;a little dinner to
+the Duchess," she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the
+pressure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought
+him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused
+to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace.
+There, while the Brys hovered within over the last agitating alternatives
+of the MENU, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length
+rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw
+and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss
+Bart on the pretext of a moment's glance into one of the brilliant shops
+along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
+white dazzle of a jeweller's window: "I stopped over to see you&mdash;to beg
+of you to leave the yacht."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. "To
+leave&mdash;? What do you mean? What has happened?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The glare from the jeweller's window, deepening the pallour of her face,
+gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. "Nothing
+will, I am sure; but while there's even a doubt left, how can you think I
+would leave Bertha?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words rang out on a note of contempt&mdash;was it possibly of contempt for
+himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of
+insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest: "You have yourself
+to think of, you know&mdash;" to which, with a strange fall of sadness in her
+voice, she answered, meeting his eyes: "If you knew how little difference
+that makes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, nothing WILL happen," he said, more for his own reassurance
+than for hers; and "Nothing, nothing, of course!" she valiantly assented,
+as they turned to overtake their companions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry's
+illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the
+familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife once
+more presenting their customary faces to the world, she engrossed in
+establishing her relation with an intensely new gown, he shrinking with
+dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations of the MENU. The mere
+fact that they thus showed themselves together, with the utmost openness
+the place afforded, seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their
+differences were composed. How this end had been attained was still
+matter for wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested
+confidently in the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by
+telling himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler
+than his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses, in
+which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away from
+Lord Hubert's restraining hand, Selden's general watchfulness began to
+lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days
+when she was so handsome that to be handsome was enough, and all the
+rest&mdash;her grace, her quickness, her social felicities&mdash;seemed the
+overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the
+way in which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable shades, from
+the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such
+company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired
+to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace
+cheapening the other women's smartness as her finely-discriminated
+silences made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had
+restored to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
+in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her voice
+and eyes. Yes, she was matchless&mdash;it was the one word for her; and he
+could give his admiration the freer play because so little personal
+feeling remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not
+at the lurid moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light
+of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the
+crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt
+in her. It was before him again in its completeness&mdash;the choice in which
+she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the
+showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived
+at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
+setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a
+special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of
+the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where
+conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become
+the roll of fame.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham, wedged
+in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours, suddenly became
+the centre of Selden's scrutiny. How much did he know of what was going
+on, and how much, for his purpose, was still worth finding out? His
+little eyes were like tentacles thrown out to catch the floating
+intimations with which, to Selden, the air at moments seemed thick; then
+again it cleared to its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it
+for the journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies' gowns.
+Mrs. Dorset's, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham's
+vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he would have
+called "the literary style." At first, as Selden had noticed, it had been
+almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now she was in full command of
+it, and was even producing her effects with unwonted freedom. Was she
+not, indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was not
+Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too
+jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always
+jerky; but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him
+farther from his centre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evident
+satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between Lord
+Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher to
+witness her achievement. Short of Mrs. Fisher her audience might have
+been called complete; for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainly
+gathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as
+to the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry,
+conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
+each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
+pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
+catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
+organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to adorn
+it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore herself, he
+smiled to think that he should have fancied her in need of help. Never
+had she appeared more serenely mistress of the situation than when, at
+the moment of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about
+the table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the shoulders
+to receive her cloak from Dorset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry's exceptional cigars and a
+bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables were empty;
+but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to give relief to the
+leave-taking of Mrs. Bry's distinguished guests. This ceremony was drawn
+out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the
+Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite farewells, and pledges of speedy
+reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes
+on the way to England. The quality of Mrs. Bry's hospitality, and of the
+tips her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the
+English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over
+their hostess's future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
+also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy worth
+their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister that
+they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry of this
+departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the door, offered to
+convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The offer was accepted,
+and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband in attendance. Miss Bart had
+lingered for a last word with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry
+was pressing a final, and still more expensive, cigar, called out: "Come
+on, Lily, if you're going back to the yacht."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused on
+her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht," she said in a voice of
+singular distinctness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the verge of
+congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her husband, and
+Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was mainly conscious of
+a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and fling him out into the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife's side. His face was
+white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes. "Bertha!&mdash;Miss
+Bart&nbsp;&#8230; this is some misunderstanding&nbsp;&#8230; some mistake&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Bart remains here," his wife rejoined incisively. "And, I think,
+George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable
+erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her. She
+had paled a little under the shock of the insult, but the discomposure of
+the surrounding faces was not reflected in her own. The faint disdain of
+her smile seemed to lift her high above her antagonist's reach, and it
+was not till she had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance
+between them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am joining the Duchess tomorrow," she explained, "and it seemed easier
+for me to remain on shore for the night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held firmly to Mrs. Bry's wavering eye while she gave this
+explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative glance
+from one to another of the women's faces. She read their incredulity in
+their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness of the men behind them,
+and for a miserable half-second he thought she quivered on the brink of
+failure. Then, turning to him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery
+of her recovered smile&mdash;"Dear Mr. Selden," she said, "you promised to see
+me to my cab."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden moved
+toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of warm rain
+blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab had been
+tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till
+the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a
+bench, he said: "Sit down a moment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at the
+bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her face.
+Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful lest any
+word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and kept also from
+free utterance by the wretched doubt which had slowly renewed itself
+within him. What had brought her to this pass? What weakness had placed
+her so abominably at her enemy's mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have
+turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the
+support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of
+husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind,
+reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
+fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the corroboration of his own
+impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint,
+since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked
+by the fear of committing a blunder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as
+that of the men he had despised for turning from her; but before he could
+find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An hotel&mdash;HERE&mdash;that you can go to alone? It's not possible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. "What IS, then?
+It's too wet to sleep in the gardens."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But there must be some one&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some one to whom I can go? Of course&mdash;any number&mdash;but at THIS hour? You
+see my change of plan was rather sudden&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good God&mdash;if you'd listened to me!" he cried, venting his helplessness
+in a burst of anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. "But haven't
+I?" she rejoined. "You advised me to leave the yacht, and I'm leaving it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to
+explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had
+forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like
+some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily!" he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but&mdash;"Oh, not
+now," she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her
+recovered composure: "Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since
+you're so kindly here to help me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gathered himself up at the challenge. "You will do as I tell you?
+There's but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the
+Stepneys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;" broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he
+insisted: "Come&mdash;it's late, and you must appear to have gone there
+directly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last
+gesture of protest. "I can't&mdash;I can't&mdash;not that&mdash;you don't know Gwen: you
+mustn't ask me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I MUST ask you&mdash;you must obey me," he persisted, though infected at
+heart by her own fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice sank to a whisper: "And if she refuses?"&mdash;but, "Oh, trust
+me&mdash;trust me!" he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch,
+she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which
+carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys' hotel. Here he
+left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was
+sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter's
+descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the
+gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew
+up with a last flare of reluctance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's understood, then?" he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
+Selden's arm. "She leaves tomorrow by the early train&mdash;and my wife's
+asleep, and can't be disturbed."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0204"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 4
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The blinds of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down against the
+oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her
+assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were
+all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons&mdash;even a stray Peniston or
+two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of
+remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in
+fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's property
+"went back"; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal
+of his widow's private fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent.
+Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took
+the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
+and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude
+and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the
+insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her
+in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to
+conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and
+smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I
+couldn't BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere else!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the
+door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with
+Gerty Farish at her side. The women's faces, as she paused
+interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two
+made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either
+by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others
+meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney,
+with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily,
+ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney's official attempt to
+direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
+herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from
+the others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from
+Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their
+welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of
+her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard
+from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated,
+almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
+be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable
+uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had
+vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
+her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The
+certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the
+prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have
+repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of
+undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
+long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, "always
+understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece;
+and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized
+into fact.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She gets everything, of course&mdash;I don't see what we're here for," Mrs.
+Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the
+latter's deprecating murmur&mdash;"Julia was always a just woman"&mdash;might have
+been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it's only about four hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney rejoined with
+a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer's
+preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They won't find a towel
+missing&mdash;I went over them with her the very day&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh
+mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, solemnly
+erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle
+through the preamble of the will.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's like being in church," she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen
+Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had
+grown&mdash;he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a
+few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on
+his stick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder why rich people always grow fat&mdash;I suppose it's because there's
+nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my
+figure," she mused, while the lawyer droned on through a labyrinth of
+legacies. The servants came first, then a few charitable institutions,
+then several remoter Melsons and Stepneys, who stirred consciously as
+their names rang out, and then subsided into a state of impassiveness
+befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney,
+and a cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few
+thousands: Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she
+heard her own name&mdash;"to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars&mdash;" and
+after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
+periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling
+distinctness: "and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and
+name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a
+surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed
+out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged
+handkerchief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first
+time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware of her
+presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance. And under
+her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes
+deceived. Disinherited&mdash;she had been disinherited&mdash;and for Grace
+Stepney! She met Gerty's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing
+effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There was
+something to be done before she left the house: to be done with all the
+nobility she knew how to put into such gestures. She advanced to the
+group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her hand said simply: "Dear
+Grace, I am so glad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space created
+itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no one advanced to
+fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about her, calmly taking the
+measure of her situation. She heard some one ask a question about the
+date of the will; she caught a fragment of the lawyer's answer&mdash;something
+about a sudden summons, and an "earlier instrument." Then the tide of
+dispersal began to drift past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert
+Melson stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group
+escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should
+take, though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
+found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which more than
+ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family vault, in which
+the last corpse had just been decently deposited.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+In Gerty Farish's sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the two
+friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of laughter: it
+struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt's legacy should so
+nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor. The need of
+discharging that debt had reasserted itself with increased urgency since
+her return to America, and she spoke her first thought in saying to the
+anxiously hovering Gerty: "I wonder when the legacies will be paid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into a
+larger indignation. "Oh, Lily, it's unjust; it's cruel&mdash;Grace Stepney
+must FEEL she has no right to all that money!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her money,"
+Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she was devoted to you&mdash;she led every one to think&mdash;" Gerty checked
+herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to her with a
+direct look. "Gerty, be honest: this will was made only six weeks ago.
+She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every one heard, of course, that there had been some disagreement&mdash;some
+misunderstanding&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry George
+Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn't that what
+she told Gwen Stepney?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know&mdash;I don't listen to such horrors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I MUST listen to them&mdash;I must know where I stand." She paused, and again
+sounded a faint note of derision. "Did you notice the women? They were
+afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get the
+money&mdash;afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague." Gerty
+remained silent, and she continued: "I stayed on to see what would
+happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu Melson&mdash;I saw them
+watching to see what Gwen would do.&mdash;Gerty, I must know just what is
+being said of me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you I don't listen&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One hears such things without listening." She rose and laid her resolute
+hands on Miss Farish's shoulders. "Gerty, are people going to cut me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your FRIENDS, Lily&mdash;how can you think it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who are one's friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor trustful
+darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!" She kissed Gerty with
+a whimsical murmur. "You'd never let it make any difference&mdash;but then
+you're fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the irreclaimable ones,
+though? For I'm absolutely impenitent, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty, towering
+like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty, who could only
+falter out: "Lily, Lily&mdash;how can you laugh about such things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So as not to weep, perhaps. But no&mdash;I'm not of the tearful order. I
+discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has
+helped me through several painful episodes." She took a restless turn
+about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted the bright mockery of
+her eyes to Gerty's anxious countenance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shouldn't have minded, you know, if I'd got the money&mdash;" and at Miss
+Farish's protesting "Oh!" she repeated calmly: "Not a straw, my dear;
+for, in the first place, they wouldn't have quite dared to ignore me; and
+if they had, it wouldn't have mattered, because I should have been
+independent of them. But now&mdash;!" The irony faded from her eyes, and she
+bent a clouded face upon her friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours,
+but after all that makes no difference. The important thing&mdash;&mdash;" Gerty
+paused, and then continued firmly: "The important thing is that you
+should clear yourself&mdash;should tell your friends the whole truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth? Where a woman is
+concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a
+great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she
+has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms
+with her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. "But what IS your
+story, Lily? I don't believe any one knows it yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My story?&mdash;I don't believe I know it myself. You see I never thought of
+preparing a version in advance as Bertha did&mdash;and if I had, I don't think
+I should take the trouble to use it now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: "I don't want a
+version prepared in advance&mdash;but I want you to tell me exactly what
+happened from the beginning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From the beginning?" Miss Bart gently mimicked her. "Dear Gerty, how
+little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my
+cradle, I suppose&mdash;in the way I was brought up, and the things I was
+taught to care for. Or no&mdash;I won't blame anybody for my faults: I'll say
+it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving
+ancestress, who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and
+wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!" And as Miss Farish
+continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: "You
+asked me just now for the truth&mdash;well, the truth about any girl is that
+once she's talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her
+case the worse it looks.&mdash;My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a
+cigarette about you?"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily
+Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June,
+and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed
+on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston's will, had taken
+flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of
+them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in
+her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at
+the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
+sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
+catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and
+under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to
+London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which
+asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously
+how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
+parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her
+aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded
+in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess's
+championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she
+was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in
+favour of a new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America.
+But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
+that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys,
+the Brys&mdash;all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama&mdash;had
+preceded her with their version of the case; and, even had she seen the
+least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and
+reluctance would have restrained her. She knew it was not by
+explanations and counter-charges that she could ever hope to recover her
+lost standing; but even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy,
+she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her
+from defending herself to Gerty Farish&mdash;a feeling that was half pride and
+half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed
+to Bertha Dorset's determination to win back her husband, and though her
+own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
+she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair
+was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from
+his wife. That was what she was "there for": it was the price she had
+chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her
+habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of
+introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the
+situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had
+carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a
+handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences
+resulting from that failure; and these became clearer to her with every
+day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort
+of Gerty Farish's nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go.
+She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must
+set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the
+first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on
+how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
+Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were
+amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the
+still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy,
+though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart's return, had not even
+recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend's
+bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily's side might have been
+perilous: there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an
+accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there
+was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent
+passages through town.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
+frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
+luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Gerty, you wouldn't have me let the head-waiter see that I've
+nothing to live on but Aunt Julia's legacy? Think of Grace Stepney's
+satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea!
+What sweet shall we have today, dear&mdash;COUPE JACQUES or PECHES A LA MELBA?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour, and
+Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an inner
+room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It was
+impossible for these ladies and their companions&mdash;among whom Lily had at
+once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale&mdash;not to pass, in going out,
+the table at which the two girls were seated; and Gerty's sense of the
+fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss
+Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace,
+and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for
+them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could
+impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown
+was on Mrs. Trenor's side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
+exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed
+pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization,
+which included neither enquiries as to her future nor the expression of a
+definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed in the language of
+these omissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other
+members of the party: even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the
+importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs.
+Trenor's cordiality, and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss
+Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the
+pretext of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group
+soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor's wake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was over in a moment&mdash;the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on the
+result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA MELBA&mdash;but
+Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy
+Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily had the doomed sense of
+the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor's complaints of Carry Fisher's
+rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her
+husband's private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life
+at Bellomont, where no one seemed to have time to observe any one else,
+and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the
+rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from
+inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money
+of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily's
+part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly jealous of
+his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The
+immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay
+back her debt to Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a
+thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston's legacy left, and nothing to live on
+but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish's
+wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative
+claim of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first;
+after that she would take thought for the future.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that her
+legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt's
+will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to enquire the
+cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Peniston's
+lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that,
+some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will,
+he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till
+the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement.
+Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
+appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
+powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the
+law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight
+of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney,
+who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of "going
+over" her benefactress's effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a
+favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one
+morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston's, where Grace, for the
+facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so
+long commanded, increased Lily's desire to shorten the ordeal; and when
+Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best
+quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the point: would she be
+willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
+inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realized
+the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think that only the
+payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss Stepney herself had
+not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent&mdash;yes,
+actually!&mdash;for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her.
+She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have
+wished&mdash;she had told the executors so to their faces; but they were
+inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily
+take example by her, and be patient&mdash;let them both remember how
+beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this
+example. "But you will have everything, Grace&mdash;it would be easy for you
+to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Borrow&mdash;easy for me to borrow?" Grace Stepney rose up before her in
+sable wrath. "Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my
+expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable
+horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the
+truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her
+illness&mdash;you remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I
+don't know the particulars, of course&mdash;I don't WANT to know them&mdash;but
+there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy&mdash;no one
+could be with her without seeing that. I can't help it if you are
+offended by my telling you this now&mdash;if I can do anything to make you
+realize the folly of your course, and how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I
+shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0205"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 5
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was
+taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her
+dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities
+showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did
+not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she
+reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a hansom which pulled up at
+sight of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a signalling
+hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had
+folded her in a demonstrative embrace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town? When I saw you the
+other day at Sherry's I didn't have time to ask&mdash;&mdash;" She broke off, and
+added with a burst of frankness: "The truth is I was HORRID, Lily, and
+I've wanted to tell you so ever since."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;&mdash;" Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp; but
+Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: "Look here, Lily, don't
+let's beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is caused by
+pretending there isn't any. That's not my way, and I can only say I'm
+thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other women's lead. But
+we'll talk of that by and bye&mdash;tell me now where you're staying and what
+your plans are. I don't suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace
+Stepney, eh?&mdash;and it struck me you might be rather at loose ends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of
+this appeal, and she said with a smile: "I am at loose ends for the
+moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and she's good enough to let
+me be with her whenever she can spare the time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "H'm&mdash;that's a temperate joy. Oh, I
+know&mdash;Gerty's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together; but A
+LA LONGUE you're used to a little higher seasoning, aren't you, dear?
+And besides, I suppose she'll be off herself before long&mdash;the first of
+August, you say? Well, look here, you can't spend your summer in town;
+we'll talk of that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a
+few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers'
+tonight?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she
+continued with her easy laugh: "You don't know them and they don't know
+you; but that don't make a rap of difference. They've taken the Van
+Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I've got CARTE BLANCHE to bring my friends
+down there&mdash;the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and
+there's to be rather a jolly party there this week&mdash;&mdash;" she broke off,
+checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart's expression. "Oh, I don't
+mean YOUR particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but very
+good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their
+own: what they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own
+way. They gave the other thing a few months' trial, under my
+distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely
+well&mdash;getting on a good deal faster than the Brys, just because they
+didn't care as much&mdash;but suddenly they decided that the whole business
+bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel
+at home with. Rather original of them, don't you think so? Mattie Gormer
+HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she's awfully
+easy-going, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be the most
+important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous
+performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody
+is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs. I think
+it's awfully good fun myself&mdash;some of the artistic set, you know, any
+pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they
+have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in 'The Winning of
+Winny'; and Paul Morpeth&mdash;he's painting Mattie Gormer&mdash;and the Dick
+Bellingers, and Kate Corby&mdash;well, every one you can think of who's jolly
+and makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my
+dear&mdash;it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and
+you'll find clever people as well as noisy ones&mdash;Morpeth, who admires
+Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority. "Jump
+in now, there's a dear, and we'll drive round to your hotel and have your
+things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at
+the train."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town&mdash;of that no
+doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy verandah,
+she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward picturesquely dotted
+with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men in tennis flannels. The
+huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their
+fullest capacity with the Gormers' week-end guests, who now, in the
+radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the
+grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded:
+distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from
+bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches without.
+Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as
+carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde
+and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly
+assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented
+the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for
+the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The
+train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed&mdash;life whizzed on with a
+deafening' rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a
+welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU
+represented a social out-skirt which Lily had always fastidiously
+avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant
+copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the
+"society play" approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people
+about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
+the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner,
+from the pattern of the men's waistcoats to the inflexion of the women's
+voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of
+each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more
+familiarity&mdash;but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher
+capacity for enjoyment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness
+that first irritated her pride and then brought her to a sharp sense of
+her own situation&mdash;of the place in life which, for the moment, she must
+accept and make the best of. These people knew her story&mdash;of that her
+first long talk with Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly
+branded as the heroine of a "queer" episode&mdash;but instead of shrinking
+from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question
+into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as
+easily as they did Miss Anstell's, and with no apparent sense of any
+difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was that she
+should&mdash;in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of
+gifts&mdash;contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful
+actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied
+order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be "stuck-up," to mark a
+sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance
+in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms&mdash;and into such a
+world!&mdash;was hard enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized,
+with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
+all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious
+charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was
+smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty
+deserted city to the space and luxury of a great country-house fanned by
+sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude agreeable enough
+after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For
+the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved&mdash;after
+that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her
+dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the
+unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and
+courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions.
+But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of
+indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities,
+and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux, the
+return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was
+leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence
+in a different setting: some at Newport, some at Bar Harbour, some in the
+elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who
+welcomed Lily's return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to
+join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily
+herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
+great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
+transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a
+day or two on the way to the Brys' camp, came to the rescue with a new
+suggestion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Lily&mdash;I'll tell you what it is: I want you to take my place
+with Mattie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out to Alaska next
+month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the laziest woman alive,
+wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging
+things; but the Brys want me too&mdash;oh, yes, we've made it up: didn't I
+tell you?&mdash;and, to put it frankly, though I like the Gormers best,
+there's more profit for me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try
+Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them they&mdash;well,
+they'll make it a success for me." Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands
+enthusiastically. "Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the
+better I like it&mdash;quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have
+both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska
+is&mdash;well&mdash;the very thing I should want for you just at present."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. "To take me out of my
+friends' way, you mean?" she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher responded with
+a deprecating kiss: "To keep you out of their sight till they realize how
+much they miss you."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if it did
+not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the
+negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre of criticism and
+discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with all the energy of her
+somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit
+to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would
+renounce her journey; but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this
+plan under a sufficiently valid reason.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You dear innocent, don't you see," she protested, "that Carry is quite
+right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people
+as much as possible? If my old friends choose to believe lies about me I
+shall have to make new ones, that's all; and you know beggars mustn't be
+choosers. Not that I don't like Mattie Gormer&mdash;I DO like her: she's kind
+and honest and unaffected; and don't you suppose I feel grateful to her
+for making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own
+family have unanimously washed their hands of me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was
+cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have
+cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former
+manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from
+it. Gerty had but an obscure conception of what Lily's actual experience
+had been: but its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity
+since the memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to
+her friend's extremity. To characters like Gerty's such a sacrifice
+constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it
+has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her;
+and helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring of
+such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the
+amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York
+August, mitigated only by poor Gerty's presence, her worldly wisdom would
+have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that
+Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be the first step
+toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of
+season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers' tumultuous
+progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view
+of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury&mdash;the daily waking to an
+assured absence of care and presence of material ease&mdash;gradually blunted
+her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void
+they could not fill. Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating good-nature, and
+the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as
+they treated each other&mdash;all these characteristic notes of difference
+began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in
+her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
+The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed
+idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
+perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her
+pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to
+cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in
+the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of
+adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be
+blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her
+craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
+resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy
+elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the
+band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
+her; but Mattie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that
+they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If
+Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity,
+had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where
+the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man
+could either break his engagements, or keep them in a painting-jacket and
+slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his
+appreciation of graces he had no time to cultivate. During the
+preparations for the Brys' TABLEAUX he had been immensely struck by
+Lily's plastic possibilities&mdash;"not the face: too self-controlled for
+expression; but the rest of her&mdash;gad, what a model she'd make!"&mdash;and
+though his abhorrence of the world in which he had seen her was too great
+for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the
+privilege of having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in
+Mattie Gormer's dishevelled drawing-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus
+of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course in
+lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor was she without pale
+glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking-up of the
+Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island.
+Kate Corby, whose tastes made her as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was
+rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers,
+where, after a first stare of surprise, she took Lily's presence almost
+too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in
+the neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
+what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
+latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk
+with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence it was
+impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher
+conveniently took for granted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to
+probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to view it from the
+outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and these conclusions, at
+the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the
+succinct remark: "You must marry as soon as you can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily uttered a faint laugh&mdash;for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. "Do
+you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of 'a
+good man's love'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that
+description," said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Either? Are there actually two?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half&mdash;for the moment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. "Other things being
+equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons&mdash;George Dorset."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;&mdash;" Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
+unrebuffed. "Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when they
+first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them
+again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and
+George's powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They're at their
+place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly
+party&mdash;no one else but poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a
+galley-slave (they used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy!)&mdash;and
+after luncheon George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end
+would have to come soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. "As far as that goes, the end will
+never come&mdash;Bertha will always know how to get him back when she wants
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. "Not if he has any one
+else to turn to! Yes&mdash;that's just what it comes to: the poor creature
+can't stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow, full of life
+and enthusiasm." She paused, and went on, dropping her glance from
+Lily's: "He wouldn't stay with her ten minutes if he KNEW&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Knew&mdash;&mdash;?" Miss Bart repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What YOU must, for instance&mdash;with the opportunities you've had! If he
+had positive proof, I mean&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. "Please let us
+drop the subject, Carry: it's too odious to me." And to divert her
+companion's attention she added, with an attempt at lightness: "And your
+second candidate? We must not forget him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. "I wonder if you'll cry out just as loud if
+I say&mdash;Sim Rosedale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her
+friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a possibility which,
+in the last weeks, had more than once recurred to her; but after a moment
+she said carelessly: "Mr. Rosedale wants a wife who can establish him in
+the bosom of the Van Osburghs and Trenors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. "And so YOU could&mdash;with his money!
+Don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you both?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see any way of making him see it," Lily returned, with a laugh
+intended to dismiss the subject.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had taken
+leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her annexation by the
+Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner
+Paradise from which she was now excluded; but once or twice, when nothing
+better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he
+had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation. That he still
+admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer
+circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no
+puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
+was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of
+her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known "Miss
+Lily"&mdash;she was "Miss Lily" to him now&mdash;before they had had the faintest
+social existence: enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with
+the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt
+that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social
+current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and
+manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of
+meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was
+deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with
+Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most
+unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her
+wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest
+construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at
+Carry Fisher's suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she
+disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
+gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always
+less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency
+which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
+mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he
+had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of
+affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth
+Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure
+on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
+distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable
+clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or
+twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right
+note of disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was
+a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
+ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his
+affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the
+goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of
+the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her
+in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her&mdash;she could
+distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And the
+twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a
+faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosedale's
+wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination.
+She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he
+dared to admire her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the
+other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please
+him&mdash;he had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if
+she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had
+felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he
+had no other reason for marrying her?
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0206"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 6
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were engaged
+in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a part of Miss
+Bart's duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits of inspection to the
+new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged into problems of lighting
+and sanitation, Lily had leisure to wander, in the bright autumn air,
+along the tree-fringed bay to which the land declined. Little as she was
+addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a
+welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being
+swept passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she had
+no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and squander
+money, while she felt herself of no more account among them than an
+expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one
+morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon
+the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in the immediate
+neighbourhood of the Gormers' newly-acquired estate, and in her
+motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught one or two
+passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so different an orbit
+that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did not see
+Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight, instead of bringing
+him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent him toward her with an
+eagerness which found expression in his opening words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Bart!&mdash;You'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to meet
+you&mdash;I should have written to you if I'd dared." His face, with its
+tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look, as
+though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts
+at his heels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed
+on, as if encouraged by her tone: "I wanted to apologize&mdash;to ask you to
+forgive me for the miserable part I played&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She checked him with a quick gesture. "Don't let us speak of it: I was
+very sorry for you," she said, with a tinge of disdain which, as she
+instantly perceived, was not lost on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the
+thrust. "You might well be; you don't know&mdash;you must let me explain. I
+was deceived: abominably deceived&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am still more sorry for you, then," she interposed, without irony;
+"but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject
+can be discussed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met this with a look of genuine wonder. "Why not? Isn't it to you, of
+all people, that I owe an explanation&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;&mdash;" he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute hand
+switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement
+to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: "Miss Bart, for God's sake
+don't turn from me! We used to be good friends&mdash;you were always kind to
+me&mdash;and you don't know how I need a friend now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily's
+breast. She too needed friends&mdash;she had tasted the pang of loneliness;
+and her resentment of Bertha Dorset's cruelty softened her heart to the
+poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha's victims.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you," she said. "But
+you must understand that after what has happened we can't be friends
+again&mdash;we can't see each other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, you ARE kind&mdash;you're merciful&mdash;you always were!" He fixed his
+miserable gaze on her. "But why can't we be friends&mdash;why not, when I've
+repented in dust and ashes? Isn't it hard that you should condemn me to
+suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough
+at the time&mdash;is there to be no respite for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
+reconciliation which was effected at my expense," Lily began, with
+renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: "Don't put it in that
+way&mdash;when that's been the worst of my punishment. My God! what could I
+do&mdash;wasn't I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice: any word I
+might have said would have been turned against you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have told you I don't blame you; all I ask you to understand is that,
+after the use Bertha chose to make of me&mdash;after all that her behaviour
+has since implied&mdash;it's impossible that you and I should meet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. "Is it&mdash;need it
+be? Mightn't there be circumstances&mdash;&mdash;?" he checked himself, slashing at
+the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again: "Miss Bart,
+listen&mdash;give me a minute. If we're not to meet again, at least let me
+have a hearing now. You say we can't be friends after&mdash;after what has
+happened. But can't I at least appeal to your pity? Can't I move you if I
+ask you to think of me as a prisoner&mdash;a prisoner you alone can set free?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it possible
+that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher's adumbrations?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't see how I can possibly be of any help to you," she murmured,
+drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest
+moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an
+abrupt drop to docility: "You WOULD see, if you'd be as merciful as you
+used to be: and heaven knows I've never needed it more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her
+influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering, and the
+sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for
+his weakness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very sorry for you&mdash;I would help you willingly; but you must have
+other friends, other advisers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never had a friend like you," he answered simply. "And besides&mdash;can't
+you see?&mdash;you're the only person"&mdash;his voice dropped to a whisper&mdash;"the
+only person who knows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in precipitate
+throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her
+entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You understand? I'm desperate&mdash;I'm
+at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know
+you can. You don't want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't
+want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind&mdash;your eyes
+are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to
+show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you back. You
+understand, of course&mdash;there wouldn't be a hint of publicity&mdash;not a sound
+or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that,
+you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: 'I know this&mdash;and
+this&mdash;and this'&mdash;and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and
+the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
+between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the
+shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For
+there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal;
+she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's
+insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his
+loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he
+would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to
+make him so lay in her hand&mdash;lay there in a completeness he could not
+even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a
+stroke&mdash;there was something dazzling in the completeness of the
+opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the
+deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her&mdash;fear of herself, and of
+the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like
+so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had
+already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodbye&mdash;I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that you
+abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved
+me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodbye&mdash;goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she
+heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At least you'll let me see
+you once more?"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the lawn
+toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her hostess might be
+speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of her delay; for, like
+many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a
+high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the
+gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective
+pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to
+an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh: "Did you see my
+visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George
+Dorset&mdash;she said she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience
+of Bertha's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the
+neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer, relieved to see that
+she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh: "Of
+course what really brought her was curiosity&mdash;she made me take her all
+over the house. But no one could have been nicer&mdash;no airs, you know, and
+so good-natured: I can quite see why people think her so fascinating."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with
+Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck
+Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha's habits to
+be neighbourly, much less to make advances to any one outside the
+immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored
+the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members
+only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
+capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them
+special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this
+now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable complacency, and in the happy
+irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted Bertha's
+opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret
+ambitions which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence, and the attitude of her
+companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating afresh in the
+glow of Bertha's advances; and whatever the cause of the latter, Lily saw
+that, if they were followed up, they were likely to have a disturbing
+effect upon her own future.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new friends by
+one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent; and on her return
+from this somewhat depressing excursion she was immediately conscious
+that Mrs. Dorset's influence was still in the air. There had been another
+exchange of visits, a tea at a country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball;
+there was even a rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer,
+with an unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
+conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell Sunday
+with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish's aid, had discovered a small
+private hotel where she might establish herself for the winter. The
+hotel being on the edge of a fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the
+few square feet she was to occupy was considerably in excess of her
+means; but she found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters
+in the argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
+importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible
+for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
+lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish's. She had never been so
+near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage to meet her
+weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts
+out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair
+margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
+enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her
+rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and
+fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged
+ceiling and haunting smell of coffee&mdash;all these material discomforts,
+which were yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be
+withdrawn, kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
+her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels. Beat
+about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was that she
+must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was fortified by
+an unexpected visit from George Dorset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her
+narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with
+which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances; but the sight of
+her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn't come to bother
+her&mdash;that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of
+anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
+himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that
+had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
+herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint
+realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his
+self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had
+actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there
+was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn't more than
+enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The
+fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
+intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might
+mean&mdash;and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way
+in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must dress for
+dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to blurt out: "It's
+been such a comfort&mdash;do say you'll let me see you again&mdash;" But to this
+direct appeal it was impossible to give an assent; and she said with
+friendly decisiveness: "I'm sorry&mdash;but you know why I can't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
+embarrassed but insistent. "I know how you might, if you would&mdash;if things
+were different&mdash;and it lies with you to make them so. It's just a word to
+say, and you put me out of my misery!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of
+the temptation. "You're mistaken; I know nothing; I saw nothing," she
+exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration, to build a barrier
+between herself and her peril; and as he turned away, groaning out "You
+sacrifice us both," she continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: "I
+know nothing&mdash;absolutely nothing."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with Mrs.
+Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met she was
+conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour. There could be no
+doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested
+with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear
+down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one;
+but neither was it easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the
+thought of what George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness
+for baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when a
+marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her
+difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day
+of plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
+well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
+mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were
+certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at
+any cost be exorcised&mdash;and one of these was the image of herself as
+Rosedale's wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys' Newport
+success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; and
+thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset's visit. Though it was
+nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was still out, and the
+firelit quiet of the small silent house descended on her spirit with a
+sense of peace and familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had
+ever before been evoked by Carry Fisher's surroundings; but, contrasted
+to the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of repose
+and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in the quiet
+competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her room. Mrs. Fisher's
+unconventionality was, after all, a merely superficial divergence from an
+inherited social creed, while the manners of the Gormer circle
+represented their first attempt to formulate such a creed for themselves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had found
+herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of familiar
+associations had almost prepared her, as she descended the stairs before
+dinner, to enter upon a group of her old acquaintances. But this
+expectation was instantly checked by the reflection that the friends who
+remained loyal were precisely those who would be least willing to expose
+her to such encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
+instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth
+before his hostess's little girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily; yet she
+could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to the
+child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctory
+endearments of the guest under his hostess's eye, for he and the little
+girl had the room to themselves; and something in his attitude made him
+seem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creature
+who endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind&mdash;Lily, from the threshold,
+had time to feel&mdash;kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way
+of the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which
+to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her
+repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for at
+sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid and
+dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer's drawing-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her only
+fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter's
+tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness which
+enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant course through a world of
+antagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of her
+friends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she
+actively gleaned her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real
+sympathies were on the other side&mdash;with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
+unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of
+success.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of exposing
+Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression of Rosedale's
+personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped in to dinner, and
+Lily, alive to every detail of her friend's method, saw that such
+opportunities as had been contrived for her were to be deferred till she
+had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
+sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer
+resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic
+helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs.
+Fisher followed her upstairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in my
+room we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about her with the
+eye of the solicitous hostess. "I hope you've managed to make yourself
+comfortable, dear? Isn't it a jolly little house? It's such a blessing to
+have a few quiet weeks with the baby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively maternal
+that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time and
+money enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a well-earned rest: I'll say that for myself," she continued,
+sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near the fire.
+"Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to wish myself back with
+the Gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious&mdash;it's
+nothing to social ambition! Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering
+whether the women who called on us called on ME because I was with her,
+or on HER because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to
+find out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
+rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
+acquaintance&mdash;when, all the while, that was what she had me there for,
+and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season was over!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause, and the
+practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an occasional
+resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial moments, the
+purpose of the juggler's chatter while he shifts the contents of his
+sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette smoke she continued to gaze
+meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
+toilet-table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened undulations of
+her hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your hair's wonderful, Lily. Thinner&mdash;? What does that matter, when it's
+so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go straight to their
+hair&mdash;but yours looks as if there had never been an anxious thought under
+it. I never saw you look better than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer
+told me that Morpeth wanted to paint you&mdash;why don't you let him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to the
+reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she said, with a
+slight touch of irritation: "I don't care to accept a portrait from Paul
+Morpeth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher mused. "N&mdash;no. And just now, especially&mdash;well, he can do you
+after you're married." She waited a moment, and then went on: "By the
+way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned up here last
+Sunday&mdash;and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the world!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
+hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained its
+unwavering stroke from brow to nape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never was more astonished," Mrs. Fisher pursued. "I don't know two
+women less predestined to intimacy&mdash;from Bertha's standpoint, that is;
+for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that she should be
+singled out&mdash;I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the
+anaconda. Well, you know I've always told you that Mattie secretly longed
+to bore herself with the really fashionable; and now that the chance has
+come, I see that she's capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
+friend. "Including ME?" she suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, my dear," murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from the
+hearth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what Bertha means, isn't it?" Miss Bart went on steadily. "For
+of course she always means something; and before I left Long Island I saw
+that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate. To
+think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only a subtler form of
+snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe anything she
+pleases&mdash;and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor child, by insinuating
+horrors about you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. "The world is too
+vile," she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's anxious scrutiny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to
+fight it on its own terms&mdash;and above all, my dear, not alone!" Mrs.
+Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp.
+"You've told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening;
+but in the rush we all live in there's no time to keep on hating any one
+without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure
+you with other people it must be because she's still afraid of you. From
+her standpoint there's only one reason for being afraid of you; and my
+own idea is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
+hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don't
+care for that particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you
+from Bertha is to marry somebody else."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0207"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 7
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the cheerless
+distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts with a cold
+precision unmodified by shade or colour, and refracted, as it were, from
+the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she had opened windows
+from which no sky was ever visible. But the idealist subdued to vulgar
+necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he
+cannot stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her
+case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with it, however,
+she went the full length of its consequences; and these had never been
+more clearly present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out
+for a walk with Rosedale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the
+light of summer, and something in the lines of the landscape, and in the
+golden haze which bathed them, recalled to Miss Bart the September
+afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellomont with Selden. The
+importunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her
+present situation, since her walk with Selden had represented an
+irresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion was
+designed to bring about. But other memories importuned her also; the
+recollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through
+some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always
+failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now.
+She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and
+against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in breaking up
+her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for shelter and security
+was intensified by the passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only
+wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of
+Rosedale&mdash;the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create&mdash;she would at
+least present an invulnerable front to her enemy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to keep
+up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending.
+As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which
+his look and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this
+momentary endurance of his mood was the price she must pay for her
+ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which
+concession must turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be
+made equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
+impenetrable to such hints, and she had a sense of something hard and
+self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above
+the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned
+period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her gaze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale," she said quietly; "and I am
+ready to marry you whenever you wish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
+announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted
+before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For I suppose that is what you do wish," she continued, in the same
+quiet tone. "And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in
+this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust
+my happiness to your hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such
+occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown across the
+tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient brightness
+Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious that every avenue
+of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in which,
+with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped cigarette.
+Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying: "My
+dear Miss Lily, I'm sorry if there's been any little misapprehension
+between us-but you made me feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really
+no intention of renewing it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked
+the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: "I
+have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my
+decision was final."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in
+puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest
+inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I
+want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a
+vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the
+sense of distance she could convey without a hint of disdain, that made
+it most difficult for him to give her up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain't we going to be good friends all
+the same?" he urged, without releasing her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew it away quietly. "What is your idea of being good friends?" she
+returned with a slight smile. "Making love to me without asking me to
+marry you?" Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose. I can't help making love
+to you&mdash;I don't see how any man could; but I don't mean to ask you to
+marry me as long as I can keep out of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She continued to smile. "I like your frankness; but I am afraid our
+friendship can hardly continue on those terms." She turned away, as
+though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and he
+followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having after all
+kept the game in her own hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Lily&mdash;&mdash;" he began impulsively; but she walked on without seeming
+to hear him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand on
+her arm. "Miss Lily&mdash;don't hurry away like that. You're beastly hard on a
+fellow; but if you don't mind speaking the truth I don't see why you
+shouldn't allow me to do the same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away instinctively
+from his touch, though she made no effort to evade his words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was under the impression," she rejoined, "that you had done so without
+waiting for my permission."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well&mdash;why shouldn't you hear my reasons for doing it, then? We're
+neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going to
+hurt us. I'm all broken up on you: there's nothing new in that. I'm more
+in love with you than I was this time last year; but I've got to face the
+fact that the situation is changed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic composure.
+"You mean to say that I'm not as desirable a match as you thought me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; that's what I do mean," he answered resolutely. "I won't go into
+what's happened. I don't believe the stories about you&mdash;I don't WANT to
+believe them. But they're there, and my not believing them ain't going to
+alter the situation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked the
+retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly. "If they are
+not true," she said, "doesn't THAT alter the situation?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes, which made
+her feel herself no more than some superfine human merchandise. "I
+believe it does in novels; but I'm certain it don't in real life. You
+know that as well as I do: if we're speaking the truth, let's speak the
+whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at
+me: this year&mdash;well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in
+the interval? Your situation, that's all. Then you thought you could do
+better; now&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think you can?" broke from her ironically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is." He stood before her, his hands in
+his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid waistcoat.
+"It's this way, you see: I've had a pretty steady grind of it these last
+years, working up my social position. Think it's funny I should say
+that? Why should I mind saying I want to get into society? A man ain't
+ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery.
+Well, a taste for society's just another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want
+to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year&mdash;put
+it that way if it sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the
+best houses; and I'm getting it too, little by little. But I know the
+quickest way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with
+the wrong ones; and that's the reason I want to avoid mistakes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have
+expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his candour, and
+after a moment's pause he went on: "There it is, you see. I'm more in
+love with you than ever, but if I married you now I'd queer myself for
+good and all, and everything I've worked for all these years would be
+wasted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had
+faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long
+moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed
+expediency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand you," she said. "A year ago I should have been of use to
+you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you for telling me so
+quite honestly." She extended her hand with a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale's
+self-command. "By George, you're a dead game sport, you are!" he
+exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
+suddenly&mdash;"Miss Lily&mdash;stop. You know I don't believe those stories&mdash;I
+believe they were all got up by a woman who didn't hesitate to sacrifice
+you to her own convenience&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to endure
+his insolence than his commiseration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are very kind; but I don't think we need discuss the matter farther."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Rosedale's natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him to
+brush such resistance aside. "I don't want to discuss anything; I just
+want to put a plain case before you," he persisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose in his
+look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly upon her: "The
+wonder to me is that you've waited so long to get square with that woman,
+when you've had the power in your hands." She continued silent under the
+rush of astonishment that his words produced, and he moved a step closer
+to ask with low-toned directness: "Why don't you use those letters of
+hers you bought last year?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In the words
+preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to her supposed
+influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the
+reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale's resorting to it. But now
+she saw how far short of the mark she had fallen; and the surprise of
+learning that he had discovered the secret of the letters left her, for
+the moment, unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of
+putting his knowledge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his point;
+and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer control of the
+situation: "You see I know where you stand&mdash;I know how completely she's
+in your power. That sounds like stage-talk, don't it?&mdash;but there's a lot
+of truth in some of those old gags; and I don't suppose you bought those
+letters simply because you're collecting autographs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her only
+clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're wondering how I found out about 'em?" he went on, answering her
+look with a note of conscious pride. "Perhaps you've forgotten that I'm
+the owner of the Benedick&mdash;but never mind about that now. Getting on to
+things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I've simply
+extended it to my private affairs. For this IS partly my affair, you
+see&mdash;at least, it depends on you to make it so. Let's look the situation
+straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for reasons we needn't go into, did you
+a beastly bad turn last spring. Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and
+her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath where their own interests
+were concerned; but as long as they're out of the row it's much easier to
+follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been
+sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn't that a pretty fair
+statement of the case?&mdash;Well, some people say you've got the neatest kind
+of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would marry you tomorrow,
+if you'd tell him all you know, and give him the chance to show the lady
+the door. I daresay he would; but you don't seem to care for that
+particular form of getting even, and, taking a purely business view of
+the question, I think you're right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out
+with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to
+get Bertha Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time for the
+expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed on, expounding
+and elucidating his idea with the directness of the man who has no doubts
+of his cause, she found the indignation gradually freezing on her lip,
+found herself held fast in the grasp of his argument by the mere cold
+strength of its presentation. There was no time now to wonder how he had
+heard of her obtaining the letters: all her world was dark outside the
+monstrous glare of his scheme for using them. And it was not, after the
+first moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-bound, subdued
+to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
+cravings. He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha Dorset's
+friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the
+tacit retractation of all that had caused its withdrawal, she had only to
+put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously
+delivered into her hands. Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this
+course over that which poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The other plan
+depended for its success on the infliction of an open injury, while this
+reduced the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third
+person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of
+business-like give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless air
+of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision of
+boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual
+adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every concession had its
+recognized equivalent: Lily's tired mind was fascinated by this escape
+from fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and
+measures.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only a
+gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching
+perception of the chances it offered; for as she continued to stand
+before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return upon
+himself: "You see how simple it is, don't you? Well, don't be carried
+away by the idea that it's TOO simple. It isn't exactly as if you'd
+started in with a clean bill of health. Now we're talking let's call
+things by their right names, and clear the whole business up. You know
+well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn't have touched you if there hadn't
+been&mdash;well&mdash;questions asked before&mdash;little points of interrogation, eh?
+Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with stingy relatives, I suppose;
+anyhow, they DID happen, and she found the ground prepared for her. Do
+you see where I'm coming out? You don't want these little questions
+cropping up again. It's one thing to get Bertha Dorset into line&mdash;but
+what you want is to keep her there. You can frighten her fast enough&mdash;but
+how are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you're as
+powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won't do that for you as
+you are now; but with a big backing behind you, you'll keep her just
+where you want her to be. That's MY share in the business&mdash;that's what
+I'm offering you. You can't put the thing through without me&mdash;don't run
+away with any idea that you can. In six months you'd be back again among
+your old worries, or worse ones; and here I am, ready to lift you out of
+'em tomorrow if you say so. DO you say so, Miss Lily?" he added, moving
+suddenly nearer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to startle
+Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which she had
+insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the groping
+consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perception
+that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of course, the
+likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying to cheat him of his
+share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the
+whole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential
+baseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a voice that
+was a surprise to her own ears: "You are mistaken&mdash;quite mistaken&mdash;both
+in the facts and in what you infer from them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction so
+different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting him guide
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each other!"
+he exclaimed; and to her murmur of "Ah, we do NOW," he retorted with a
+sudden burst of violence: "I suppose it's because the letters are to HIM,
+then? Well, I'll be damned if I see what thanks you've got from him!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0208"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 8
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was in
+transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted at
+the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream of
+carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to consciousness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing semblance
+of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants with a human display
+of the same costly and high-stepping kind as circled daily about its
+ring. In Miss Bart's world the Horse Show, and the public it attracted,
+had ostensibly come to be classed among the spectacles disdained of the
+elect; but, as the feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance on
+his village green, so society, unofficially and incidentally, still
+condescended to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was
+not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
+horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her
+friend's side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this
+lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a
+change in the relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning
+discrimination, a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs.
+Gormer's chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should
+constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once
+the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift of fashionable life
+would facilitate Mattie's detachment from her. She had, in short, failed
+to make herself indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been
+thwarted by an influence stronger than any she could exert. That
+influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha
+Dorset's social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own
+position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered: once
+Bertha's match in material resources, her superior gifts would make it
+easy for her to dominate her adversary. An understanding of what such
+domination would mean, and of the disadvantages accruing from her
+rejection of it, was brought home to Lily with increasing clearness
+during the early weeks of the winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a
+semblance of movement outside the main flow of the social current; but
+with the return to town, and the concentrating of scattered activities,
+the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life
+marked her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a
+part of the season's fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void of
+social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never
+really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different centre:
+it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find
+any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her,
+and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value
+suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her
+former life. Its very drudgeries had a charm now that she was
+involuntarily released from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced
+civilities to the dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious
+dinners&mdash;how pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness
+of her days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with
+a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world; nor did
+she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes produce a wholesome
+reaction of contempt in their victim. Society did not turn away from her,
+it simply drifted by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to
+the full measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the
+creature of its favour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had rejected Rosedale's suggestion with a promptness of scorn almost
+surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for high flashes of
+indignation. But she could not breathe long on the heights; there had
+been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength:
+what she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in
+which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her
+intermittent impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her
+self-respect. If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only
+afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a
+slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without conscious
+effort; her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet
+perceive that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to
+live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
+discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle were
+already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages Lily
+had already given to expediency; but she saw her passionately and
+irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of "keeping up." Gerty could
+smile now at her own early dream of her friend's renovation through
+adversity: she understood clearly enough that Lily was not of those to
+whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost. But this
+very fact, to Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid,
+the more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
+conscious of needing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish's
+stairs. There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation
+of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real difficulties of her situation to
+be incommunicable to any one whose theory of values was so different from
+her own, and the restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the
+charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
+her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon, she put
+into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend, this sense of
+shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual intensity. The walk up
+Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the brilliance of the hard winter
+sunlight, an interminable procession of fastidiously-equipped
+carriages&mdash;giving her, through the little squares of brougham-windows,
+peeps of familiar profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands
+dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen&mdash;this glimpse of the
+ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than
+ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's stairs, and of
+the cramped blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined
+to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures
+were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very
+moment&mdash;figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged
+lady in limp black who descended Gerty's flight as Lily climbed to it!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was poor Miss Jane Silverton&mdash;she came to talk things over with me:
+she and her sister want to do something to support themselves," Gerty
+explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To support themselves? Are they so hard up?" Miss Bart asked with a
+touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of other
+people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid they have nothing left: Ned's debts have swallowed up
+everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carry
+Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good influence,
+because she doesn't care for cards, and&mdash;well, she talked quite
+beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger
+brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have
+a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up his literary work again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her
+departing visitor. "But that isn't all; it isn't even the worst. It seems
+that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won't allow
+him to see her, and he is so unhappy about it that he has taken to
+gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And
+cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of having had a very bad influence
+on Freddy, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with
+Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
+Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that
+Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had
+introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he's
+of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt&mdash;she
+came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something
+to do she could earn enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away&mdash;I'm
+afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his
+evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from
+the cruise&mdash;I can't see why he should have spent so much more money under
+Bertha's influence than Carry's: can you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. "My dear Gerty, I always
+understand how people can spend much more money&mdash;never how they can spend
+any less!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty's easy-chair, while
+her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what can they do&mdash;the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to support
+themselves?" she asked, conscious that the note of irritation still
+persisted in her voice. It was the very last topic she had meant to
+discuss&mdash;it really did not interest her in the least&mdash;but she was seized
+by a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colourless shrinking
+victims of young Silverton's sentimental experiments meant to cope with
+the grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know&mdash;I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane reads
+aloud very nicely&mdash;but it's so hard to find any one who is willing to be
+read to. And Miss Annie paints a little&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know&mdash;apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of thing I
+shall be doing myself before long!" exclaimed Lily, starting up with a
+vehemence of movement that threatened destruction to Miss Farish's
+fragile tea-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her seat.
+"I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in&mdash;how beautifully one
+does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I wasn't meant to be
+good," she sighed out incoherently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the eyes
+shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give you this
+cushion to lean against."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an
+impatient hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't give me that! I don't want to lean back&mdash;I shall go to sleep if I
+do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse," Gerty urged
+affectionately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;no; don't be quiet; talk to me&mdash;keep me awake! I don't sleep at
+night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't sleep at night? Since when?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know&mdash;I can't remember." She rose and put the empty cup on the
+tea-tray. "Another, and stronger, please; if I don't keep awake now I
+shall see horrors tonight&mdash;perfect horrors!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no&mdash;give it to me; and don't preach, please," Lily returned
+imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed that her
+hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you look so tired: I'm sure you must be ill&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. "Do I look ill? Does my face
+show it?" She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror above the
+writing-table. "What a horrid looking-glass&mdash;it's all blotched and
+discoloured. Any one would look ghastly in it!" She turned back, fixing
+her plaintive eyes on Gerty. "You stupid dear, why do you say such odious
+things to me? It's enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
+looking ill means looking ugly." She caught Gerty's wrists, and drew her
+close to the window. "After all, I'd rather know the truth. Look me
+straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I perfectly frightful?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and your
+cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, they WERE pale, then&mdash;ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don't you
+tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright now because I'm so
+nervous&mdash;but in the mornings they look like lead. And I can see the lines
+coming in my face&mdash;the lines of worry and disappointment and failure!
+Every sleepless night leaves a new one&mdash;and how can I sleep, when I have
+such dreadful things to think about?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dreadful things&mdash;what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her wrists
+from her friend's feverish fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What things? Well, poverty, for one&mdash;and I don't know any that's more
+dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness into the
+easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if I could
+understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I
+understand&mdash;he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live ON
+the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense&mdash;but it's a
+privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine,
+and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes
+and their private cars&mdash;yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of
+those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing
+cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;lots of other
+things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too&mdash;oh, yes, I've
+had to take up bridge again&mdash;and by going to the best dress-makers, and
+having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping
+herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her
+pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her fagged
+brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the change in her
+face&mdash;of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish
+its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't&mdash;I'm sick to death
+of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills me&mdash;it's what
+keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for your strong tea. For I
+can't go on in this way much longer, you know&mdash;I'm nearly at the end of
+my tether. And then what can I do&mdash;how on earth am I to keep myself
+alive? I see myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton
+woman&mdash;slinking about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
+blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands
+of women trying to do the same thing already, and not one of the number
+who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I have!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. "It's late, and I must
+be off&mdash;I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don't look so worried,
+you dear thing&mdash;don't think too much about the nonsense I've been
+talking." She was before the mirror again, adjusting her hair with a
+light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a dexterous touch to her
+furs. "Of course, you know, it hasn't come to the employment agencies and
+the painted blotting-pads yet; but I'm rather hard-up just for the
+moment, and if I could find something to do&mdash;notes to write and
+visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing&mdash;it would tide me over
+till the legacy is paid. And Carry has promised to find somebody who
+wants a kind of social secretary&mdash;you know she makes a specialty of the
+helpless rich."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her anxiety. She
+was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money: money to meet the
+vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor evaded. To give
+up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the
+provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an
+expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it
+seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find
+some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do this
+was one which she had never before seriously considered, and the
+discovery that, as a bread-winner, she was likely to prove as helpless
+and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe shock to her
+self-confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation, as a
+person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate any situation
+in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that such gifts would be
+of value to seekers after social guidance; but there was unfortunately no
+specific head under which the art of saying and doing the right thing
+could be offered in the market, and even Mrs. Fisher's resourcefulness
+failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague
+wealth of Lily's graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedients for
+enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously assert
+that she had put several opportunities of this kind before Lily; but more
+legitimate methods of bread-winning were as much out of her line as they
+were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she was generally called upon
+to assist. Lily's failure to profit by the chances already afforded her
+might, moreover, have justified the abandonment of farther effort on her
+behalf; but Mrs. Fisher's inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at
+creating artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the
+pursuance of this end she at once started on a voyage of discovery in
+Miss Bart's behalf; and as the result of her explorations she now
+summoned the latter with the announcement that she had "found something."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend's plight, and
+her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her that Lily, for the
+present, had no wish for the kind of help she could give. Miss Farish
+could see no hope for her friend but in a life completely reorganized and
+detached from its old associations; whereas all Lily's energies were
+centred in the determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to
+keep herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion could
+be maintained. Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gerty, she could
+not judge it as harshly as Selden, for instance, might have done. She had
+not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in each
+other's arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart's blood passing
+into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough;
+no trace remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour; but
+Gerty's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with obscure and
+inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with a silent
+forbearance which took no account of time. She could not, however, deny
+herself the solace of taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden, with
+whom, since his return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of
+cousinly confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their relation. He
+found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding and devoted, but with
+a quickened intelligence of the heart which he recognized without seeking
+to explain it. To Gerty herself it would once have seemed impossible that
+she should ever again talk freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had
+passed in the secrecy of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when
+the mist of the struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of
+self, a deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
+current of human understanding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gerty had
+the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden. The latter, having
+presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through the
+dowdy animation of his cousin's tea-hour, conscious of something in her
+voice and eye which solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last
+visitor was gone Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen
+Miss Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't seen her at all&mdash;I've perpetually missed seeing her since she
+came back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
+hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by adding:
+"I've wanted to see her&mdash;but she seems to have been absorbed by the
+Gormer set since her return from Europe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all the more reason: she's been very unhappy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unhappy at being with the Gormers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is at an
+end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha
+Dorset quarrelled with her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;&mdash;" Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where
+he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin
+continued to explain: "Judy Trenor and her own family have deserted her
+too&mdash;and all because Bertha Dorset has said such horrible things. And she
+is very poor&mdash;you know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy,
+after giving her to understand that she was to have everything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;I know," Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room, but
+only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between
+door and window. "Yes&mdash;she's been abominably treated; but it's
+unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy
+can't say to her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. "There would be
+other ways of showing your sympathy," she suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which
+projected from the hearth. "What are you thinking of, you incorrigible
+missionary?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty's colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer.
+Then she made it more explicit by saying: "I am thinking of the fact that
+you and she used to be great friends&mdash;that she used to care immensely for
+what you thought of her&mdash;and that, if she takes your staying away as a
+sign of what you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
+unhappiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear child, don't add to it still more&mdash;at least to your conception
+of it&mdash;by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own."
+Selden, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice;
+but he met Gerty's look of perplexity by saying more mildly: "But, though
+you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss
+Bart, you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it&mdash;if you ask me to." He
+laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the
+current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which fill
+the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the feeling that he
+measured the cost of her request as plainly as she read the significance
+of his reply; and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them
+made her next words easier to find.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you had been
+a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has never needed it
+before. You know how dependent she has always been on ease and
+luxury&mdash;how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and uncomfortable. She
+can't help it&mdash;she was brought up with those ideas, and has never been
+able to find her way out of them. But now all the things she cared for
+have been taken from her, and the people who taught her to care for them
+have abandoned her too; and it seems to me that if some one could reach
+out a hand and show her the other side&mdash;show her how much is left in life
+and in herself&mdash;&mdash;" Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own
+eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to
+her vague yearning for her friend's retrieval. "I can't help her myself:
+she's passed out of my reach," she continued. "I think she's afraid of
+being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed
+dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher was trying to
+find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that she had
+taken a position as private secretary, and that I was not to be anxious,
+for everything was all right, and she would come in and tell me about it
+when she had time; but she has never come, and I don't like to go to her,
+because I am afraid of forcing myself on her when I'm not wanted. Once,
+when we were children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and
+thrown my arms about her, she said: 'Please don't kiss me unless I ask
+you to, Gerty'&mdash;and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since then I've
+always waited to be asked."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which his thin
+dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against any involuntary
+change of expression. When his cousin ended, he said with a slight smile:
+"Since you've learned the wisdom of waiting, I don't see why you urge me
+to rush in&mdash;" but the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add, as he
+rose to take leave: "Still, I'll do what you wish, and not hold you
+responsible for my failure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden's avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he had
+allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory of their
+last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his indignation, he
+had anxiously watched for her return; but she had disappointed him by
+lingering in England, and when she finally reappeared it happened that
+business had called him to the West, whence he came back only to learn
+that she was starting for Alaska with the Gormers. The revelation of this
+suddenly-established intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her.
+If, at a moment when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could
+cheerfully commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no reason
+why such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step she
+took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where, once or
+twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the recognition of
+this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a
+sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart
+by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had
+thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made
+the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely, confirmed the sense of
+relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Gerty Farish's words had sufficed to make him see how little this
+view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live quietly
+with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in need of help&mdash;even
+such vague help as he could offer&mdash;was to be at once repossessed by that
+thought; and by the time he reached the street he had sufficiently
+convinced himself of the urgency of his cousin's appeal to turn his steps
+directly toward Lily's hotel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart had
+moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk remembered that
+she had left an address, for which he presently began to search through
+his books.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step without
+letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden waited with a vague
+sense of uneasiness while the address was sought for. The process lasted
+long enough for uneasiness to turn to apprehension; but when at length a
+slip of paper was handed him, and he read on it: "Care of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch, Emporium Hotel," his apprehension passed into an incredulous
+stare, and this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper
+in two, and turned to walk quickly homeward.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0209"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 9
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
+Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The
+force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more
+in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at a
+breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection
+might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the
+excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture.
+The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense
+mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest
+note of criticism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady to whom
+Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of entering a new
+world. Carry's vague presentment of Mrs. Norma Hatch (whose reversion to
+her Christian name was explained as the result of her latest divorce),
+left her under the implication of coming "from the West," with the not
+unusual extenuation of having brought a great deal of money with her. She
+was, in short, rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily's
+hand. Mrs. Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
+owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she "knew about" through
+Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the Falstaff of a
+certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr. Stancy might have
+been said to form a connecting link between the Gormer world and the more
+dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart now found herself entering. It was,
+however, only figuratively that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch's world
+could be described as dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a
+blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornamental
+excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which
+she rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
+appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity of
+something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude the
+immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her visitor, and
+that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of her dress and
+voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence which, in ladies of
+her nationality, so curiously coexists with startling extremes of
+experience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her as its
+inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New
+York hotel&mdash;a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with
+mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements,
+while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a
+desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as
+richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
+permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from
+restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from "art
+exhibit" to dress-maker's opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately
+equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
+distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of their
+sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the hotel routine.
+Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was
+doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves
+were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies,
+diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had
+no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering that Mrs.
+Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though still floating
+in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing an outline; and in this
+endeavour she was actively seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr.
+Stancy, a man of large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial
+occasions and of a chivalry finding expression in "first-night" boxes and
+thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the
+scene of her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
+metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she had
+taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the photographer
+whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament of "Sunday
+Supplements," and had got together the group which constituted her social
+world. It was a small group still, with heterogeneous figures suspended
+in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily did not take long to learn that its
+regulation was no longer in Mr. Stancy's hands. As often happens, the
+pupil had outstripped the teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of
+heights of elegance as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the
+Emporium. This discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher
+guidance, for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
+to her correspondence, the right "look" to her hats, the right succession
+to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the regulator of a
+germinating social life that Miss Bart's guidance was required; her
+ostensible duties as secretary being restricted by the fact that Mrs.
+Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The daily details of Mrs. Hatch's existence were as strange to Lily as
+its general tenor. The lady's habits were marked by an Oriental indolence
+and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion. Mrs. Hatch and her
+friends seemed to float together outside the bounds of time and space. No
+definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day
+flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements,
+so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner
+was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
+Hatch's vigil till daylight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange throng
+of hangers-on&mdash;manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers, teachers of
+bridge, of French, of "physical development": figures sometimes
+indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs. Hatch's relation to
+them, from the visitors constituting her recognized society. But
+strangest of all to Lily was the encounter, in this latter group, of
+several of her acquaintances. She had supposed, and not without relief,
+that she was passing, for the moment, completely out of her own circle;
+but she found that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence
+overlapped the edge of Mrs. Fisher's world, had drawn several of its
+brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned
+Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room was
+one of Lily's first astonishments; but she soon discovered that he was
+not Mr. Stancy's most important recruit. It was on little Freddy Van
+Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh millions, that the
+attention of Mrs. Hatch's group was centred. Freddy, barely out of
+college, had risen above the horizon since Lily's eclipse, and she now
+saw with surprise what an effulgence he shed on the outer twilight of
+Mrs. Hatch's existence. This, then, was one of the things that young men
+"went in" for when released from the official social routine; this was
+the kind of "previous engagement" that so frequently caused them to
+disappoint the hopes of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being
+behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted
+and the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
+the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease and
+unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience of the irony
+of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions
+from the long disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of
+Mrs. Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed packed
+with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible pretty woman of her
+acquaintance had her inherited obligations, her conventional
+benevolences, her share in the working of the great civic machine; and
+all hung together in the solidarity of these traditional functions. The
+performance of specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart's
+position; but the vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its
+perplexities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs. Hatch showed
+from the first an almost touching desire for Lily's approval. Far from
+asserting the superiority of wealth, her beautiful eyes seemed to urge
+the plea of inexperience: she wanted to do what was "nice," to be taught
+how to be "lovely." The difficulty was to find any point of contact
+between her ideals and Lily's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of aspirations
+culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion journals, and a gaudy
+world of sport still more completely beyond her companion's ken. To
+separate from these confused conceptions those most likely to advance the
+lady on her way, was Lily's obvious duty; but its performance was
+hampered by rapidly-growing doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and
+more aware of a certain ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she
+had, in the conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch's
+irreproachableness. The lady's offences were always against taste rather
+than conduct; her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than
+ethical conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from a
+wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not mind her
+detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the "Beauty-Doctor" a
+seat in Freddy Van Osburgh's box at the play, she was not equally at ease
+in regard to some less apparent lapses from convention. Ned Silverton's
+relation to Stancy seemed, for instance, closer and less clear than any
+natural affinities would warrant; and both appeared united in the effort
+to cultivate Freddy Van Osburgh's growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was
+as yet nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve
+itself into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a
+vague sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
+and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
+Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the social
+development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his part, a
+permanent interest in the lady's future. There were moments when Lily
+found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The thought of
+launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious bosom of society
+was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even beguiled her leisure with
+visions of the fair Norma introduced for the first time to a family
+banquet at the Van Osburghs'. But the thought of being personally
+connected with the transaction was less agreeable; and her momentary
+flashes of amusement were followed by increasing periods of doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon, she was
+surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her alone in the
+wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch's world the tea-hour was not
+dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in the hands of her masseuse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden's entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment; but
+his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her self-possession,
+and she took at once the tone of surprise and pleasure, wondering frankly
+that he should have traced her to so unlikely a place, and asking what
+had inspired him to make the search.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him so
+little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
+obstructions she might put in his way. "I wanted to see you," he said;
+and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept his wishes
+under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long absence as one
+of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his desertion had wounded
+sensibilities far below the surface of her pride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden met the challenge with directness. "Why should I have come, unless
+I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for imagining
+you could want me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash of
+keenness to her answer. "Then you have come now because you think you can
+be of use to me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hesitated again. "Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to talk
+things over with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the idea that
+his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a personal
+significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing him. Even under
+the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always made itself felt: she
+might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room.
+She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the
+light fell on his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his
+clothes&mdash;she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven
+with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her,
+and the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
+this stealing influence now prompted her to say: "It's very good of you
+to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think I have
+anything particular to talk about?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was
+framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and
+for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one
+which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling;
+and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of
+such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into
+resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they
+faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's
+elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its
+monstrous mates, served at length to suggest the turn of Selden's reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch's secretary; and I knew
+she was anxious to hear how you were getting on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. "Why
+didn't she look me up herself, then?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because, as you didn't send her your address, she was afraid of being
+importunate." Selden continued with a smile: "You see no such scruples
+restrained me; but then I haven't as much to risk if I incur your
+displeasure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily answered his smile. "You haven't incurred it as yet; but I have an
+idea that you are going to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That rests with you, doesn't it? You see my initiative doesn't go beyond
+putting myself at your disposal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?" she asked in the same
+light tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room; then he said, with
+a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection:
+"You are to let me take you away from here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it
+and said coldly: "And may I ask where you mean me to go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is
+that it should be away from here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words
+cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own
+were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at
+a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and
+unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of
+authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very much obliged to you," she said, "for taking such an interest
+in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention
+of leaving."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
+uncontrollable expectancy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That simply means that you don't know where you are!" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. "If you have come here to
+say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of. She
+has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to
+seeing me starve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
+always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose
+you mean&mdash;till my aunt's legacy is paid?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do mean that; Gerty told me of it," Selden acknowledged without
+embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
+constraint in speaking his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Gerty does not happen to know," Miss Bart rejoined, "that I owe
+every penny of that legacy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good God!" Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
+abruptness of the statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every penny of it, and more too," Lily repeated; "and you now perhaps
+see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of
+Gerty's kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I
+must earn something more to keep myself alive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone: "But with
+your income and Gerty's&mdash;since you allow me to go so far into the details
+of the situation&mdash;you and she could surely contrive a life together which
+would put you beyond the need of having to support yourself. Gerty, I
+know, is eager to make such an arrangement, and would be quite happy in
+it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I should not," Miss Bart interposed. "There are many reasons why it
+would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself." She paused a moment,
+and as he seemed to await a farther explanation, added with a quick lift
+of her head: "You will perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no claim to know them," Selden answered, ignoring her tone; "no
+claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have already
+made. And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to
+enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false
+position."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled. "I suppose," she rejoined, "that by a false position you
+mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember that I
+had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before I met Mrs.
+Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real difference in being
+inside or out, and I remember your once telling me that it was only those
+inside who took the difference seriously."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
+memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of the
+nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of the
+experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion to
+deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer fulness of
+emphasis: "The question of being inside or out is, as you say, a small
+one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the case, except in so far
+as Mrs. Hatch's desire to be inside may put you in the position I call
+false."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect
+of confirming Lily's resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused
+hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of
+personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his
+attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her
+appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference.
+The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits
+he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her
+aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth farther
+into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be,
+she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," she said, when he had ceased to speak, "why you imagine
+me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always told me that
+the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to teach a girl to get
+what she wants, why not assume that that is precisely what I am doing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier
+raised against farther confidences: its brightness held him at such a
+distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing as he
+rejoined: "I am not sure that I have ever called you a successful example
+of that kind of bringing-up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled herself with
+a light laugh. "Ah, wait a little longer&mdash;give me a little more time
+before you decide!" And as he wavered before her, still watching for a
+break in the impenetrable front she presented: "Don't give me up; I may
+still do credit to my training!" she affirmed.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0210"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 10
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Look at those spangles, Miss Bart&mdash;every one of 'em sewed on crooked."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned
+structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side, and passed on to
+the next figure in the line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles, under
+exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of
+their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this
+creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood.
+Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and
+sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were
+employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well
+clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
+colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only one
+skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned
+with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman's comment,
+began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached
+when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats. Instances of
+young lady-milliners establishing themselves under fashionable patronage,
+and imparting to their "creations" that indefinable touch which the
+professional hand can never give, had flattered Gerty's visions of the
+future, and convinced even Lily that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch
+need not reduce her to dependence on her friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and would have
+taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance set up in Lily by
+his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of being involved in a
+transaction she would not have cared to examine too closely had soon
+afterward defined itself in the light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if
+she "saw them through," she would have no reason to be sorry. The
+implication that such loyalty would meet with a direct reward had
+hastened her flight, and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the
+broad bosom of Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
+there prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once revived her
+hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that her
+charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their
+capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of
+course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
+fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes
+and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front
+shop&mdash;a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings&mdash;where
+her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on
+their stands like birds just poising for flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
+green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of fashion
+had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere attraction of a
+name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but these privileged beings
+could command a faith in their powers materially expressed by the
+readiness to pay their shop-rent and advance a handsome sum for current
+expenses. Where was Lily to find such support? And even could it have
+been found, how were the ladies on whose approval she depended to be
+induced to give her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy
+her friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
+imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again,
+Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her
+self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy Van Osburgh
+was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh
+hour&mdash;some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale&mdash;and despatched
+to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always
+be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a
+summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was
+a relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves thus
+justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her connection
+with the Hatch case in order to show that they had been right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
+resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her
+share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish's, they met
+with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender
+ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely
+to her friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
+others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you
+done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she
+flamed out about some money you'd got from Gus; I never knew her so hot
+before. You know she'll let him do anything but spend money on his
+friends: the only reason she's decent to me now is that she knows I'm not
+hard up.&mdash;He speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had
+no business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth&mdash;but I never
+COULD understand you, Lily!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs.
+Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their
+friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina's renowned
+millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without
+considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
+untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
+owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher's
+influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the
+show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a
+valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which
+Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced,
+but resigned to this latest proof of Lily's unreason, agreed that perhaps
+in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To
+Regina's work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
+Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty's watchfulness
+continued to hover over her at a distance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later,
+and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a
+hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the
+tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the
+other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history&mdash;the exact
+situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all
+the others&mdash;but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense
+of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
+still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire
+that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had
+hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show
+herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was
+humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still
+betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might
+aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
+experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and
+trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the
+routine of preparatory work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the
+buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss
+Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss
+Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during
+the noon recess; and Lily's head was so heavy with the weight of a
+sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of
+a dream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I TOLD her he'd never look at her again; and he didn't. I wouldn't have,
+either&mdash;I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion
+Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She's taken ten bottles, and
+her headaches don't seem no better&mdash;but she's written a testimonial to
+say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture
+in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor's hat? The one with the green Paradise?
+Here, Miss Haines&mdash;it'll be ready right off.... That was one of the
+Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How'd I know? Why,
+Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat&mdash;the blue tulle:
+she's tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out&mdash;a good deal like Mamie
+Leach, on'y thinner...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
+startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
+It was the strangest part of Lily's strange experience, the hearing of
+these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world
+she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls' minds. She
+had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and
+contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
+underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
+Every girl in Mme. Regina's work-room knew to whom the headgear in her
+hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a
+definite knowledge of the latter's place in the social system. That Lily
+was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
+curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had
+fallen, she had "gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they
+were awed only by success&mdash;by the gross tangible image of material
+achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
+them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
+whom it was an effort to talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I guess you'd
+better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
+sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
+clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
+physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
+her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
+took it with a suppressed smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
+Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
+workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
+Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
+pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily slipped out
+last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
+mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
+irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
+all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days&mdash;how distant they
+now seemed!&mdash;when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish, she
+had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
+because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
+her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
+point of view was less interesting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
+"Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
+you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
+real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
+AM clumsy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy paused
+irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever try
+orangeine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you&mdash;I mean to go
+home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say.
+Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home
+with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent&mdash;even kindness, the sort
+of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just
+then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street
+where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty's offer
+of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce shrinking from
+observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the
+promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole,
+less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she
+could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had
+been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now,
+perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about
+by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
+ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done, she
+dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wallpaper and
+shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the
+degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from
+fashion to commerce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's at the
+corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had
+usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn
+toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower
+crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the
+street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her
+before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no
+question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch's,
+obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist. Lily was confident that the
+clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a
+refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her
+restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked
+on the glass case before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of
+handing out the bottle he paused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked. Lily's
+heart contracted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What did he mean by looking at her in that way?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off
+you go&mdash;the doctors don't know why."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked
+the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged
+safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her
+relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the
+delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her
+momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already
+stealing over her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the
+last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name
+uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and
+prosperous&mdash;but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through
+a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account for the
+phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with
+scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions
+seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
+wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he exclaimed; and
+she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm a little tired&mdash;it's nothing. Stay with me a moment, please," she
+faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with
+the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons
+contending hideously in their ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea. The
+LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no one there at this
+hour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed
+for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to
+the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was
+seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss
+Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for
+the lady's back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It was the
+temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen
+stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep&mdash;the
+midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But
+today, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it
+to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude,
+though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning
+life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty.
+The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined
+pallour of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips,
+as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull
+chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head
+stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit ball-room. He
+looked at her with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty
+were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
+unawares.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why, Miss Lily,
+I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had become of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications
+to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her he had heard of her;
+he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and of the talk resulting from
+it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was one which he had once assiduously frequented,
+and now as devoutly shunned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what
+was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You would not be
+likely to know about me. I have joined the working classes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean&mdash;? Why, what on earth are
+you doing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Learning to be a milliner&mdash;at least TRYING to learn," she hastily
+qualified the statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off&mdash;you ain't
+serious, are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I understood&mdash;I thought you were with Norma Hatch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill her cup.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for
+him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I left her two
+months ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt
+sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
+Rosedale did not hear?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too soft&mdash;one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm on the
+edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
+looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
+to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
+herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
+might make things too easy for one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
+lost on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
+the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
+depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
+looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
+settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
+Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh&mdash;who is not in the least too good for
+her&mdash;and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
+have stayed where I was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Freddy&mdash;&mdash;" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
+unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
+acquired. "Freddy don't count&mdash;but I knew YOU weren't mixed up in that.
+It ain't your style."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
+gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
+and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale. But the old habit of
+observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
+colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a minute&mdash;don't go
+yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
+And you haven't told me&mdash;&mdash;" He broke off, conscious of going farther
+than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
+also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
+face, he began again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just
+now that you were learning to be a milliner?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good Lord&mdash;YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs.
+Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next
+summer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, but&mdash;look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on
+his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some
+money for me in stocks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he
+remembered something of the kind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same tone of
+eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that he was
+speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew
+nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had NOT used my
+money&mdash;that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It
+was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation
+one could remain under. Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
+discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back.
+That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the
+sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer's
+mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth
+about this transaction, and also that the rumour of her intention to
+repay the money should reach Judy Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly
+occurred to her that Rosedale, who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was
+the fitting person to receive and transmit her version of the facts. She
+had even felt a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving
+herself of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
+telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep blush of
+misery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took the
+turn she had least expected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But see here&mdash;if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her act;
+as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to precipitate
+her into a fresh act of folly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Altogether&mdash;yes," she calmly agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little puzzled
+eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See here&mdash;that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no&mdash;it's merely a
+bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her feather scarf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
+movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing&mdash;I like pluck&mdash;&mdash;" broke
+from him disconnectedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a tremendous
+backing. I feel equal to anything now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but her
+companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his short
+arms into his expensive overcoat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait a minute&mdash;you've got to let me walk home with you," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of his
+change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she
+led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the
+distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the
+DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking
+contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which
+she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss Farish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped
+with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy
+vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible
+effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being
+frankly touched by it. "Thank you&mdash;I shall be very glad," she made
+answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+That evening in her own room Miss Bart&mdash;who had fled early from the heavy
+fumes of the basement dinner-table&mdash;sat musing upon the impulse which had
+led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath it she discovered an
+increasing sense of loneliness&mdash;a dread of returning to the solitude of
+her room, while she could be anywhere else, or in any company but her
+own. Circumstances, of late, had combined to cut her off more and more
+from her few remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
+perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily's
+behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room, Mrs. Fisher
+seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding the
+reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come dangerously near to
+being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some
+verbal ingenuity to extricate herself. She frankly owned to having
+brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch&mdash;she had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch&mdash;and besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was
+old enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
+brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest bosom
+friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of
+her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose
+house she could count on the "jolly parties" which had become a necessity
+to her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of
+view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it. Carry
+had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps only a
+friendship like Gerty's could be proof against such an increasing strain.
+Gerty's friendship did indeed hold fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid
+her also. For she could not go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden;
+and to meet him now would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think
+of him, whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
+thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur of her
+tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
+Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams
+he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness;
+and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her
+courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below
+such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation
+from which she woke each morning with an obliterated past.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return; but
+at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug gave her a
+momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she drew strength to
+take up her daily work. The strength was more and more needed as the
+perplexities of her future increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs.
+Fisher she was only passing through a temporary period of probation,
+since they believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme.
+Regina's would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
+realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller competence
+acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the
+legacy could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed a
+wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she could ever
+learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their special work,
+the small pay she received would not be a sufficient addition to her
+income to compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
+fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to use the
+legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and in command of
+her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to
+attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
+gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor. But the
+task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued to stint
+herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the
+weight of an intolerable obligation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked the
+secret dread that the obligation might not always remain intolerable.
+She knew she could not count on her continuity of purpose, and what
+really frightened her was the thought that she might gradually
+accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she
+had accommodated herself to the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as
+she had so nearly drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the
+advancement of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old
+incurable dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
+tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned
+her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood that
+Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take advantage
+of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of course impossible
+to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered
+temptingly before her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her
+again, and almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point
+of offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected. Would
+she still reject them if they were offered? More and more, with every
+fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the
+shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her
+papers, lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
+scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
+returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost; she
+could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless night.
+Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue and
+loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained of bodily
+strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only
+hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much
+longer that hope would last she dared not conjecture.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0211"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 11
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the afternoon
+spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April, and the sweetness
+of spring was in the air. It mitigated the ugliness of the long crowded
+thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the
+discouraging perspective of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry
+to the delicate haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the passing
+carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had disbanded; but
+a few still lingered, delaying their departure for Europe, or passing
+through town on their return from the South. Among them was Mrs. Van
+Osburgh, swaying majestically in her C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy
+Gryce at her side, and the new heir to the Gryce millions enthroned
+before them on his nurse's knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch's
+electric victoria, in which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of
+a spring toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
+came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
+annual tarpon fishing and a dip into "the street."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense of
+aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She had nothing
+to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to come; for the season
+was over in millinery as well as in society, and a week earlier Mme.
+Regina had notified her that her services were no longer required. Mme.
+Regina always reduced her staff on the first of May, and Miss Bart's
+attendance had of late been so irregular&mdash;she had so often been unwell,
+and had done so little work when she came&mdash;that it was only as a favour
+that her dismissal had hitherto been deferred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was conscious of
+having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It was bitter to
+acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the fact had been
+brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could never compete with
+professional ability. Since she had been brought up to be ornamental,
+she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical
+purpose; but the discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
+efficiency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the fact
+that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning. The luxury of
+lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the life of ease; it had no
+part in the utilitarian existence of the boarding-house. She liked to
+leave her room early, and to return to it as late as possible; and she
+was walking slowly now in order to postpone the detested approach to her
+doorstep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest from
+the fact that it was occupied&mdash;and indeed filled&mdash;by the conspicuous
+figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take on an added
+amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph. Rosedale,
+a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to enquire if she had
+recovered from her indisposition; but since then she had not seen or
+heard from him, and his absence seemed to betoken a struggle to keep
+away, to let her pass once more out of his life. If this were the case,
+his return showed that the struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew
+he was not the man to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental
+dalliance. He was too busy, too practical, and above all too much
+preoccupied with his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable
+asides.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas grass, and
+discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes, he looked about him
+with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat distrustfully on the dusty
+console adorned with a Rogers statuette.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he deposited
+himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched antimacassar which
+scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of skin above his collar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My goodness&mdash;you can't go on living here!" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily smiled at his tone. "I am not sure that I can; but I have gone over
+my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able to manage
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be able to manage it? That's not what I mean&mdash;it's no place for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out of work&mdash;out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea of your
+having to work&mdash;it's preposterous." He brought out his sentences in short
+violent jerks, as though they were forced up from a deep inner crater of
+indignation. "It's a farce&mdash;a crazy farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed
+on the long vista of the room reflected in the blotched glass between the
+windows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. "I don't know why
+I should regard myself as an exception&mdash;&mdash;" she began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because you ARE; that's why; and your being in a place like this is a
+damnable outrage. I can't talk of it calmly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual glibness; and
+there was something almost moving to her in his inarticulate struggle
+with his emotions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its beam
+ends, and placed himself squarely before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Miss Lily, I'm going to Europe next week: going over to Paris
+and London for a couple of months&mdash;and I can't leave you like this. I
+can't do it. I know it's none of my business&mdash;you've let me understand
+that often enough; but things are worse with you now than they have been
+before, and you must see that you've got to accept help from somebody.
+You spoke to me the other day about some debt to Trenor. I know what you
+mean&mdash;and I respect you for feeling as you do about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A blush of surprise rose to Lily's pale face, but before she could
+interrupt him he had continued eagerly: "Well, I'll lend you the money to
+pay Trenor; and I won't&mdash;I&mdash;see here, don't take me up till I've
+finished. What I mean is, it'll be a plain business arrangement, such as
+one man would make with another. Now, what have you got to say against
+that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude were
+mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the unexpected
+gentleness of her reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that I can
+never again be sure of understanding the plainest business arrangement."
+Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ of injustice, she
+added, even more kindly: "Not that I don't appreciate your kindness&mdash;that
+I'm not grateful for it. But a business arrangement between us would in
+any case be impossible, because I shall have no security to give when my
+debt to Gus Trenor has been paid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the note
+of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as closing the
+question between them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing through
+his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the inexorableness of her
+course&mdash;however little he penetrated its motive&mdash;she saw that it
+unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold over him. It was as though the
+sense in her of unexplained scruples and resistances had the same
+attraction as the delicacy of feature, the fastidiousness of manner,
+which gave her an external rarity, an air of being impossible to match.
+As he advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
+greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had learned to
+distinguish minor differences of design and quality in some long-coveted
+object.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at once, on
+the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset; and the
+temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little by little,
+circumstances were breaking down her dislike for Rosedale. The dislike,
+indeed, still subsisted; but it was penetrated here and there by the
+perception of mitigating qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness,
+a rather helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
+through the hard surface of his material ambitions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a gesture
+which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you'd only let me, I'd set you up over them all&mdash;I'd put you where
+you could wipe your feet on 'em!" he declared; and it touched her oddly
+to see that his new passion had not altered his old standard of values.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
+situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on it. In
+fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had she not
+sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that might be
+called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt did she owe to
+a social order which had condemned and banished her without trial? She
+had never been heard in her own defence; she was innocent of the charge
+on which she had been found guilty; and the irregularity of her
+conviction might seem to justify the use of methods as irregular in
+recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not
+scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to
+make private use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all,
+half the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it. Call
+it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no
+one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he
+must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of
+the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the
+passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of
+society. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude
+nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a
+worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by
+her unregarded. She could not hold herself much to blame for this
+ineffectiveness, and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed.
+Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
+highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its
+narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been
+fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the
+rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast? And was it her fault that
+the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
+among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be
+hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their battle
+in her breast during the long watches of the night; and when she rose the
+next morning she hardly knew where the victory lay. She was exhausted by
+the reaction of a night without sleep, coming after many nights of rest
+artificially obtained; and in the distorting light of fatigue the future
+stretched out before her grey, interminable and desolate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
+friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the intimate
+domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings of the street.
+Her week of idleness had brought home to her with exaggerated force these
+small aggravations of the boarding-house world, and she yearned for that
+other luxurious world, whose machinery is so carefully concealed that one
+scene flows into another without perceptible agency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's she had
+spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial
+promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical
+fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not
+decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from
+the milliner's, and she was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey sky
+threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals up and
+down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Park, hoping to
+find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the wind chilled her, and
+after an hour's wandering under the tossing boughs she yielded to her
+increasing weariness, and took refuge in a little restaurant in
+Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and had meant to go without
+luncheon; but she was too tired to return home, and the long perspective
+of white tables showed alluringly through the windows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the rapid
+absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of shrill voices
+reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little
+circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had
+lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken
+to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a
+responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the
+sallow preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
+music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who sat by
+themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring magazines
+between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was stranded in a great
+waste of disoccupation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion of
+stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when she emerged
+once more into the street. She realized now that, as she sat in the
+restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The
+discovery gave her an immediate illusion of activity: it was exhilarating
+to think that she had actually a reason for hurrying home. To prolong
+her enjoyment of the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was
+so great that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
+way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that
+time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it,
+cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters;
+but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
+break into a wild irrational gallop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
+enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting her plan
+into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her resolve. She
+was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved force of resolution
+which she felt within herself: she saw it was going to be easier, a great
+deal easier, than she had imagined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At five o'clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a sealed
+packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even the contact
+with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had half-expected it
+would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of indifference, as though
+the vigorous exertion of her will had finally benumbed her finer
+sensibilities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and went
+out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still high, but a
+threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook the signs projecting
+from the basement shops along the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and
+began to walk slowly northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs.
+Dorset's habits to know that she could always be found at home after
+five. She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
+visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that she had
+guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a note which she
+meant to send up with her name, and which she thought would secure her
+admission.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset's, thinking that the
+quick movement through the cold evening air would help to steady her
+nerves; but she really felt no need of being tranquillized. Her survey of
+the situation remained calm and unwavering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and a rush of
+cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella and the moisture
+quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She was still half a mile from
+her destination, and she decided to walk across to Madison Avenue and
+take the electric car. As she turned into the side street, a vague memory
+stirred in her. The row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone
+house-fronts, the Georgian flat-house with flowerboxes on its balconies,
+were merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was down
+this street that she had walked with Selden, that September day two years
+ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered together. The
+recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations&mdash;longings, regrets,
+imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever
+known. It was strange to find herself passing his house on such an
+errand. She seemed suddenly to see her action as he would see it&mdash;and the
+fact of his own connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she
+must trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
+blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day of
+their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in the path
+she was now following&mdash;even then she had resisted the hand he had held
+out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
+overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to help
+her&mdash;to help her by loving her, as he had said&mdash;and if, the third time,
+he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse?&#8230;
+Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts
+still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see him remained; it grew to
+hunger as she paused on the pavement opposite his door. The street was
+dark and empty, swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of
+the bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a
+light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0212"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 12
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps made
+tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire flickered
+on the hearth, and Selden's easy-chair, which stood near it, had been
+pushed aside when he rose to admit her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent, waiting
+for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the threshold, assailed by
+a rush of memories.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from which he
+had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the chair he had
+leaned against while she examined the precious volume. But then the wide
+September light had filled the room, making it seem a part of the outer
+world: now the shaded lamps and the warm hearth, detaching it from the
+gathering darkness of the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden's silence, Lily
+turned to him and said simply: "I came to tell you that I was sorry for
+the way we parted&mdash;for what I said to you that day at Mrs. Hatch's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs,
+she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now
+felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung
+between them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden returned her look with a smile. "I was sorry too that we should
+have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn't bring it on myself.
+Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So that you really didn't care&mdash;&mdash;?" broke from her with a flash of her
+old irony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So that I was prepared for the consequences," he corrected
+good-humouredly. "But we'll talk of all this later. Do come and sit by
+the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you'll let me put a cushion
+behind you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and paused
+near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward, cast exaggerated
+shadows on the pallour of her delicately-hollowed face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You look tired&mdash;do sit down," he repeated gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not seem to hear the request. "I wanted you to know that I left
+Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you," she said, as though continuing
+her confession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;yes; I know," he assented, with a rising tinge of embarrassment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had already
+begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with her&mdash;for the
+reasons you gave me; but I wouldn't admit it&mdash;I wouldn't let you see that
+I understood what you meant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out&mdash;don't overwhelm
+me with the sense of my officiousness!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have
+recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on
+her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of
+extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of
+the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it
+necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and
+evasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was not that&mdash;I was not ungrateful," she insisted. But the power of
+expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat, and two
+tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden moved forward and took her hand. "You are very tired. Why won't
+you sit down and let me make you comfortable?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion behind
+her shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have that
+amount of hospitality at my command."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not weep
+easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself, though she
+was still too tremulous to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes," Selden
+continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they had sat
+together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her future. There
+were moments when that day seemed more remote than any other event in her
+life; and yet she could always relive it in its minutest detail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made a gesture of refusal. "No: I drink too much tea. I would rather
+sit quiet&mdash;I must go in a moment," she added confusedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The
+tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under
+the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her
+to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more
+putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming
+an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an
+immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining
+impulse was still lacking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had
+passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every
+demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it
+elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned.
+But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw
+herself forever shut out from Selden's inmost self. She had come to him
+with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her;
+but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in
+its death-pang.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must go," she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. "But I
+may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I
+have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that
+sometimes&mdash;sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them&mdash;they
+have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming
+what many people have thought me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would
+not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without
+trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the
+seeming ruin of her life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A change had come over Selden's face as she spoke. Its guarded look had
+yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion, but full of
+a gentle understanding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really
+made the difference. The difference is in yourself&mdash;it will always be
+there. And since it IS there, it can't really matter to you what people
+think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, don't say that&mdash;don't say that what you have told me has made no
+difference. It seems to shut me out&mdash;to leave me all alone with the other
+people." She had risen and stood before him, once more completely
+mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The consciousness of his
+half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether he wished it or not, he
+must see her wholly for once before they parted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the eyes
+as she continued. "Once&mdash;twice&mdash;you gave me the chance to escape from my
+life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I
+saw my mistake&mdash;I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me
+before. But it was too late: you had judged me&mdash;I understood. It was too
+late for happiness&mdash;but not too late to be helped by the thought of what
+I had missed. That is all I have lived on&mdash;don't take it from me now!
+Even in my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
+Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the
+help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great
+temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I
+remembered&mdash;I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy
+me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what you
+did for me&mdash;that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you
+that I have always remembered; and that I have tried&mdash;tried hard&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing out her
+handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds of her dress. A
+wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on her lips. Then she
+lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have tried hard&mdash;but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
+person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just
+a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped
+out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one
+finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be
+thrown out into the rubbish heap&mdash;and you don't know what it's like in
+the rubbish heap!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her lips wavered into a smile&mdash;she had been distracted by the whimsical
+remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two years earlier, in
+that very room. Then she had been planning to marry Percy Gryce&mdash;what was
+it she was planning now?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The blood had risen strongly under Selden's dark skin, but his emotion
+showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have something to tell me&mdash;do you mean to marry?" he said abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily's eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
+self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the light of
+his question, she had paused to ask herself if her decision had really
+been taken when she entered the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!" she
+said with a faint smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you have come to it now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall have to come to it&mdash;presently. But there is something else I
+must come to first." She paused again, trying to transmit to her voice
+the steadiness of her recovered smile. "There is some one I must say
+goodbye to. Oh, not YOU&mdash;we are sure to see each other again&mdash;but the
+Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are
+going to part, and I have brought her back to you&mdash;I am going to leave
+her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like
+to think that she has stayed with you&mdash;and she'll be no trouble, she'll
+take up no room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will you let
+her stay with you?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling that had
+not yet risen to his lips. "Lily&mdash;can't I help you?" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me once?
+That you could help me only by loving me? Well&mdash;you did love me for a
+moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the moment is
+gone&mdash;it was I who let it go. And one must go on living. Goodbye."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind
+of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death. Something
+in truth lay dead between them&mdash;the love she had killed in him and could
+no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped
+up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had
+kindled, the passion of her soul for his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
+understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self with
+him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must still
+continue to be hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with a
+strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation had
+vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as one of
+those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as they pass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I can't
+let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may change&mdash;but
+they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see that now.
+Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe, whatever happens."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing at present&mdash;except that I am very cold, and that before I go you
+must make up the fire for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers. Puzzled
+by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered a handful of
+wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he did so, he noticed
+how thin her hands looked against the rising light of the flames. He saw
+too, under the loose lines of her dress, how the curves of her figure had
+shrunk to angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of
+the flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the
+blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes.
+She knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
+not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something from
+her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at
+the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the
+word to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
+shoulders. "Goodbye," she said, and as he bent over her she touched his
+forehead with her lips.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0213"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 13
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was a
+momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on unconscious
+of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant ether which
+emanates from the high moments of life. But gradually it shrank away from
+her and she felt the dull pavement beneath her feet. The sense of
+weariness returned with accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that
+she could walk no farther. She had reached the corner of Forty-first
+Street and Fifth Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there
+were seats where she might rest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she entered it,
+and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of an electric
+street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of her veins, and she
+told herself that she must not sit long in the penetrating dampness which
+struck up from the wet asphalt. But her will-power seemed to have spent
+itself in a last great effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction
+which follows on an unwonted expenditure of energy. And besides, what was
+there to go home to? Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room&mdash;that
+silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the
+most discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral by her bed. The
+thought of the chloral was the only spot of light in the dark prospect:
+she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her already. But she
+was troubled by the thought that it was losing its power&mdash;she dared not
+go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been
+more broken and less profound; there had been nights when she was
+perpetually floating up through it to consciousness. What if the effect
+of the drug should gradually fail, as all narcotics were said to fail?
+She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the dose; and she
+had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug.
+Her dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she
+lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the waning
+power of the chloral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second Street
+was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the lingering
+occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and then a stray
+figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path where Lily sat, looming
+black for a moment in the white circle of electric light. One or two of
+these passers-by slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely
+figure; but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows
+remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming asphalt;
+and raising her eyes she saw a young woman bending over her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me&mdash;are you sick?&mdash;Why, it's Miss Bart!" a half-familiar voice
+exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with a
+bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome refinement
+which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its common prettiness was
+redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't remember me," she continued, brightening with the pleasure of
+recognition, "but I'd know you anywhere, I've thought of you such a lot.
+I guess my folks all know your name by heart. I was one of the girls at
+Miss Farish's club&mdash;you helped me to go to the country that time I had
+lung-trouble. My name's Nettie Struther. It was Nettie Crane then&mdash;but I
+daresay you don't remember that either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane's timely
+rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her
+connection with Gerty's charitable work. She had furnished the girl with
+the means to go to a sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with
+a peculiar irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not forgotten; but
+her voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself sinking under a
+great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther, with a startled
+exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad arm behind her back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you feel
+better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from the
+pressure of the supporting arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm only tired&mdash;it is nothing," she found voice to say in a moment; and
+then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion's eyes, she added
+involuntarily: "I have been unhappy&mdash;in great trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"YOU in trouble? I've always thought of you as being so high up, where
+everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean, and got to
+wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world, I used to
+remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and that seemed to
+show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But you mustn't sit here too
+long&mdash;it's fearfully damp. Don't you feel strong enough to walk on a
+little ways now?" she broke off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;yes; I must go home," Lily murmured, rising.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side. She
+had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of over-work and
+anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to
+be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so
+lately expressed her dread. But Nettie Struther's frail envelope was now
+alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her,
+she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very glad to have seen you," Lily continued, summoning a smile to
+her unsteady lips. "It'll be my turn to think of you as happy&mdash;and the
+world will seem a less unjust place to me too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but I can't leave you like this&mdash;you're not fit to go home alone.
+And I can't go with you either!" Nettie Struther wailed with a start of
+recollection. "You see, it's my husband's night-shift&mdash;he's a
+motor-man&mdash;and the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to
+get HER husband's supper at seven. I didn't tell you I had a baby, did I?
+She'll be four months old day after tomorrow, and to look at her you
+wouldn't think I'd ever had a sick day. I'd give anything to show you the
+baby, Miss Bart, and we live right down the street here&mdash;it's only three
+blocks off." She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily's face, and then
+added with a burst of courage: "Why won't you get right into the cars and
+come home with me while I get baby's supper? It's real warm in our
+kitchen, and you can rest there, and I'll take YOU home as soon as ever
+she drops off to sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther's match had made
+a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as
+extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through
+the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which
+a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for
+expression on a countenance still placid with sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and
+excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return,
+Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the
+rocking-chair near the stove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've got a parlour too," she explained with pardonable pride; "but I
+guess it's warmer in here, and I don't want to leave you alone while I'm
+getting baby's supper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On receiving Lily's assurance that she much preferred the friendly
+proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a
+bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby's
+impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated
+herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're sure you won't let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss
+Bart? There's some of baby's fresh milk left over&mdash;well, maybe you'd
+rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It's too lovely having you
+here. I've thought of it so often that I can't believe it's really come
+true. I've said to George again and again: 'I just wish Miss Bart could
+see me NOW&mdash;' and I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we'd
+talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses
+you wore. I haven't seen your name for a long time, though, and I began
+to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I'd get
+sick myself, fretting about it." Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile.
+"Well, I can't afford to be sick again, that's a fact: the last spell
+nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I'd
+come back alive, and I didn't much care if I did. You see I didn't know
+about George and the baby then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused to readjust the bottle to the child's bubbling mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You precious&mdash;don't you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with
+mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto'nette&mdash;that's what we
+call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden&mdash;I told
+George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy the
+name&nbsp;&#8230; I never thought I'd get married, you know, and I'd never have
+had the heart to go on working just for myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily's eyes, went
+on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: "You see I wasn't only
+just SICK that time you sent me off&mdash;I was dreadfully unhappy too. I'd
+known a gentleman where I was employed&mdash;I don't know as you remember I
+did type-writing in a big importing firm&mdash;and&mdash;well&mdash;I thought we were to
+be married: he'd gone steady with me six months and given me his mother's
+wedding ring. But I presume he was too stylish for me&mdash;he travelled for
+the firm, and had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren't looked
+after the way you are, and they don't always know how to look after
+themselves. I didn't&nbsp;&#8230; and it pretty near killed me when he went away
+and left off writing&nbsp;&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was then I came down sick&mdash;I thought it was the end of everything. I
+guess it would have been if you hadn't sent me off. But when I found I
+was getting well I began to take heart in spite of myself. And then,
+when I got back home, George came round and asked me to marry him. At
+first I thought I couldn't, because we'd been brought up together, and I
+knew he knew about me. But after a while I began to see that that made it
+easier. I never could have told another man, and I'd never have married
+without telling; but if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I
+didn't see why I shouldn't begin over again&mdash;and I did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted her
+irradiated face from the child on her knees. "But, mercy, I didn't mean
+to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there looking so fagged
+out. Only it's so lovely having you here, and letting you see just how
+you've helped me." The baby had sunk back blissfully replete, and Mrs.
+Struther softly rose to lay the bottle aside. Then she paused before Miss
+Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I only wish I could help YOU&mdash;but I suppose there's nothing on earth I
+could do," she murmured wistfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her arms; and
+the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage, made an
+instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing influences of
+digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight sink trustfully
+against her breast. The child's confidence in its safety thrilled her
+with a sense of warmth and returning life, and she bent over, wondering
+at the rosy blur of the little face, the empty clearness of the eyes, the
+vague tendrilly motions of the folding and unfolding fingers. At first
+the burden in her arms seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down,
+but as she continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper, and
+penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though the child
+entered into her and became a part of herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked up, and saw Nettie's eyes resting on her with tenderness and
+exultation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to be just
+like you? Of course I know she never COULD&mdash;but mothers are always
+dreaming the craziest things for their children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in her
+mother's arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she must not do that&mdash;I should be afraid to come and see her too
+often!" she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs. Struther's
+anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the promise that of
+course she would come back soon, and make George's acquaintance, and see
+the baby in her bath, she passed out of the kitchen and went alone down
+the tenement stairs.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger and
+happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the first time she
+had ever come across the results of her spasmodic benevolence, and the
+surprised sense of human fellowship took the mortal chill from her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction of a
+deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o'clock, and the light and
+odours proceeding from the basement made it manifest that the
+boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room, lit the
+gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself any longer,
+to go without food because her surroundings made it unpalatable. Since it
+was her fate to live in a boarding-house, she must learn to fall in with
+the conditions of the life. Nevertheless she was glad that, when she
+descended to the heat and glare of the dining-room, the repast was nearly
+over.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of activity.
+For weeks past she had been too listless and indifferent to set her
+possessions in order, but now she began to examine systematically the
+contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a few handsome dresses
+left&mdash;survivals of her last phase of splendour, on the Sabrina and in
+London&mdash;but when she had been obliged to part with her maid she had given
+the woman a generous share of her cast-off apparel. The remaining
+dresses, though they had lost their freshness, still kept the long
+unerring lines, the sweep and amplitude of the great artist's stroke, and
+as she spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn
+rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
+of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her
+past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life
+enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had been made for:
+every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it, all
+her interests and activities had been taught to centre around it. She
+was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every
+bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white
+drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress
+she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been impossible for her to give
+it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long
+flexible folds, as she shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets
+which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she
+had stood with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the
+dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note
+of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was
+still in a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of
+the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dress
+when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irish
+maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, Lily
+read with surprise the address stamped on the upper corner of the
+envelope. It was a business communication from the office of her aunt's
+executors, and she wondered what unexpected development had caused them
+to break silence before the appointed time. She opened the envelope and a
+cheque fluttered to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up the blood
+rushed to her face. The cheque represented the full amount of Mrs.
+Peniston's legacy, and the letter accompanying it explained that the
+executors, having adjusted the business of the estate with less delay
+than they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the
+payment of the bequests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out
+the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it
+in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had
+represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed
+in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of
+the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the
+visions mounting to her brain, and after a while she lifted the lid of
+the desk and slipped the magic formula out of sight. It was easier to
+think without those five figures dancing before her eyes; and she had a
+great deal of thinking to do before she slept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious calculations as
+had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night when she had decided to
+marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies book-keeping, and her financial
+situation was easier to ascertain than it had been then; but she had not
+yet learned the control of money, and during her transient phase of
+luxury at the Emporium she had slipped back into habits of extravagance
+which still impaired her slender balance. A careful examination of her
+cheque-book, and of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that, when the
+latter had been settled, she would have barely enough to live on for the
+next three or four months; and even after that, if she were to continue
+her present way of living, without earning any additional money, all
+incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point. She hid her
+eyes with a shudder, beholding herself at the entrance of that
+ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss Silverton's dowdy
+figure take its despondent way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she
+turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper
+empoverishment&mdash;of an inner destitution compared to which outward
+conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be
+poor&mdash;to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary
+degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy
+communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more
+miserable still&mdash;it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of
+being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the
+years. That was the feeling which possessed her now&mdash;the feeling of being
+something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface
+of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self
+could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back
+she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real
+relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and
+thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to
+shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without
+any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no
+centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her
+heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and
+tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives
+in the blood&mdash;whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with
+visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands,
+but made up of inherited passions and loyalties&mdash;it has the same power of
+broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by
+mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to Lily.
+She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
+mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
+influences of the life about her. All the men and women she knew were
+like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance:
+her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening
+in Nettie Struther's kitchen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the
+fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to
+Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre
+enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for
+possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious
+permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff&mdash;a mere wisp of
+leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may
+hang safely over the abyss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes&mdash;but it had taken two to build the nest; the man's faith as well as
+the woman's courage. Lily remembered Nettie's words: I KNEW HE KNEW ABOUT
+ME. Her husband's faith in her had made her renewal possible&mdash;it is so
+easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be!
+Well&mdash;Selden had twice been ready to stake his faith on Lily Bart; but
+the third trial had been too severe for his endurance. The very quality
+of his love had made it the more impossible to recall to life. If it had
+been a simple instinct of the blood, the power of her beauty might have
+revived it. But the fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably
+wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as
+impossible to restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed.
+Selden had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of
+an uncritical return to former states of feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his
+faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on
+her memories. As she held Nettie Struther's child in her arms the frozen
+currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins: the
+old life-hunger possessed her, and all her being clamoured for its share
+of personal happiness. Yes&mdash;it was happiness she still wanted, and the
+glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by
+one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw
+that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed her.
+It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful fatigue, a
+wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities of the future
+were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled by the intense
+cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken through the merciful
+veil which intervenes between intention and action, and to see exactly
+what she would do in all the long days to come. There was the cheque in
+her desk, for instance&mdash;she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor;
+but she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing so,
+would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified
+her&mdash;she dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
+Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the
+strength of the opposing impulses-she could feel the countless hands of
+habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an
+intense longing to prolong, to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of
+her spirit. If only life could end now&mdash;end on this tragic yet sweet
+vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all
+the loving and foregoing in the world!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her writing-desk,
+enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to her bank. She then
+wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it, without an accompanying
+word, in an envelope inscribed with his name, laid the two letters side
+by side on her desk. After that she continued to sit at the table,
+sorting her papers and writing, till the intense silence of the house
+reminded her of the lateness of the hour. In the street the noise of
+wheels had ceased, and the rumble of the "elevated" came only at long
+intervals through the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal
+separation from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more
+strangely confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel,
+and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands against her
+eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her
+future&mdash;she felt as though the house, the street, the world were all
+empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless universe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But this was the verge of delirium&nbsp;&#8230; she had never hung so near the
+dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted&mdash;she remembered that
+she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The little bottle was at her
+bed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon her. She rose and undressed
+hastily, hungering now for the touch of her pillow. She felt so
+profoundly tired that she thought she must fall asleep at once; but as
+soon as she had lain down every nerve started once more into separate
+wakefulness. It was as though a great blaze of electric light had been
+turned on in her head, and her poor little anguished self shrank and
+cowered in it, without knowing where to take refuge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness was
+possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred different
+points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could still this legion
+of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion would have been sweet
+compared to this shrill beat of activities; but weariness had dropped
+from her as though some cruel stimulant had been forced into her veins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could bear it&mdash;yes, she could bear it; but what strength would be
+left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared&mdash;the next day pressed
+close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to follow&mdash;they
+swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut them out for a few
+hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion. She put out her hand, and
+measured the soothing drops into a glass; but as she did so, she knew
+they would be powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain.
+She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she
+felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing
+so&mdash;she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might
+be a sleep without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a
+hundred: the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a
+few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for
+her the rest she so desperately needed....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely&mdash;the physical
+craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her mind shrank from
+the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes contract in a blaze of
+light&mdash;darkness, darkness was what she must have at any cost. She raised
+herself in bed and swallowed the contents of the glass; then she blew out
+her candle and lay down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first
+effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would
+take&mdash;the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of
+passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in
+the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect increased its
+fascination: it was delicious to lean over and look down into the dim
+abysses of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug seemed to work more slowly
+than usual: each passionate pulse had to be stilled in turn, and it was
+long before she felt them dropping into abeyance, like sentinels falling
+asleep at their posts. But gradually the sense of complete subjugation
+came over her, and she wondered languidly what had made her feel so
+uneasy and excited. She saw now that there was nothing to be excited
+about&mdash;she had returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be
+so difficult after all: she felt sure that she would have the strength to
+meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had been afraid
+to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her. She had been
+unhappy, and now she was happy&mdash;she had felt herself alone, and now the
+sense of loneliness had vanished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she suddenly
+understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was odd&mdash;but Nettie
+Struther's child was lying on her arm: she felt the pressure of its
+little head against her shoulder. She did not know how it had come there,
+but she felt no great surprise at the fact, only a gentle penetrating
+thrill of warmth and pleasure. She settled herself into an easier
+position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round downy head, and holding
+her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must
+tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life clear between
+them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered vague and luminous on
+the far edge of thought&mdash;she was afraid of not remembering it when she
+woke; and if she could only remember it and say it to him, she felt that
+everything would be well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold her. She
+struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought to keep awake on
+account of the baby; but even this feeling was gradually lost in an
+indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through which, of a sudden, a dark
+flash of loneliness and terror tore its way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a moment she
+seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no&mdash;she was mistaken&mdash;the
+tender pressure of its body was still close to hers: the recovered warmth
+flowed through her once more, she yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0214"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Chapter 14
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the
+air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the
+blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step,
+and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication in
+its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the squalor of
+its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a youthful sense of
+adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and
+launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and
+measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart's boarding-house;
+but its shabby door-step had suddenly become the threshold of the
+untried. As he approached he looked up at the triple row of windows,
+wondering boyishly which one of them was hers. It was nine o'clock, and
+the house, being tenanted by workers, already showed an awakened front to
+the street. He remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind
+was down. He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the
+window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
+inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the
+dingy scene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nine o'clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed beyond
+all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily
+Bart at once&mdash;he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could
+not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come
+to his lips sooner&mdash;that he had let her pass from him the evening before
+without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new
+day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in his
+state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door
+should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he
+entered, that it had been opened by Gerty Farish&mdash;and that behind her, in
+an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lawrence!" Gerty cried in a strange voice, "how could you get here so
+quickly?"&mdash;and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to
+close about his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture&mdash;he saw the
+landlady's imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but he shrank
+back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically mounted the steep
+black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately aware that his cousin
+was about to lead him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
+minute&mdash;and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one else
+exclaimed: "It was the greatest mercy&mdash;" then Selden felt that Gerty had
+taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be suffered to go up
+alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage
+to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went in after her.
+Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a tempered
+golden flood into the room, and in its light Selden saw a narrow bed
+along the wall, and on the bed, with motionless hands and calm
+unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied. Her real
+self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier&mdash;what had he to
+do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the first time,
+neither paled nor brightened at his coming?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of one who
+has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking gently, as if
+transmitting a final message.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The doctor found a bottle of chloral&mdash;she had been sleeping badly for a
+long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake.... There is no
+doubt of that&mdash;no doubt&mdash;there will be no question&mdash;he has been very
+kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left alone with her&mdash;to
+go over her things before any one else comes. I know it is what she would
+have wished."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down on
+the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable mask
+over the living lineaments he had known. He felt that the real Lily was
+still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible; and the
+tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense of
+helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier
+between them&mdash;and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart! And now,
+though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened
+to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in vain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
+aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by the
+extraordinary light in his cousin's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that there
+shall be no trouble&mdash;but of course the formalities must be gone through.
+And I asked him to give us time to look through her things first&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. "It won't take
+long," she concluded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;it won't take long," he agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last look at
+the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold she paused to
+add: "You will find me downstairs if you want me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden roused himself to detain her. "But why are you going? She would
+have wished&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gerty shook her head with a smile. "No: this is what she would have
+wished&mdash;&mdash;" and as she spoke a light broke through Selden's stony misery,
+and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless sleeper
+on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall on his knees,
+and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful cheek on the pillow.
+They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself
+drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he remembered Gerty's warning words&mdash;he knew that, though time had
+ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly toward the
+door. Gerty had given him this supreme half-hour, and he must use it as
+she willed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to regain his
+consciousness of outward things. There was very little furniture in the
+room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover, and set
+out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured
+pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hair-pins&mdash;he shrank
+from the poignant intimacy of these trifles, and from the blank surface
+of the toilet-mirror above them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the minute
+observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her other
+renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality
+about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the
+scant articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small
+writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the
+empty bottle and glass, and from these also he averted his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he
+took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped and
+sealed, Selden, after a moment's hesitation, laid it aside. On the other
+letter he read Gus Trenor's name; and the flap of the envelope was still
+ungummed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered under it,
+steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been writing to
+Trenor&mdash;writing, presumably, just after their parting of the previous
+evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of that last hour, made a mock
+of the word he had come to speak, and defiled even the reconciling
+silence upon which it fell. He felt himself flung back on all the ugly
+uncertainties from which he thought he had cast loose forever. After all,
+what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him,
+and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was! By what
+right&mdash;the letter in his hand seemed to ask&mdash;by what right was it he who
+now passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
+unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last hour
+together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in his hand.
+Yes&mdash;but what if the letter to Trenor had been written afterward?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips, addressed
+himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After all, that task
+would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was
+annulled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book and a few
+packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly precision which
+characterized all her personal habits. He looked through the letters
+first, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved to
+be few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotion
+of the heart, the note he had written her the day after the Brys'
+entertainment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When may I come to you?"&mdash;his words overwhelmed him with a realization
+of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of
+attainment. Yes&mdash;he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to
+disown his cowardice now; for had not all his old doubts started to life
+again at the mere sight of Trenor's name?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
+something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
+growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
+examination of the papers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there was
+not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book, and saw
+that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand dollars from Mrs.
+Peniston's executors had been entered in it. The legacy, then, had been
+paid sooner than Gerty had led him to expect. But, turning another page
+or two, he discovered with astonishment that, in spite of this recent
+accession of funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars. A
+rapid glance at the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date
+of the previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
+the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the remaining
+thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at the same time, to
+Charles Augustus Trenor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the desk. He
+leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands. The bitter waters
+of life surged high about him, their sterile taste was on his lips. Did
+the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery or deepen it? At first his mind
+refused to act&mdash;he felt only the taint of such a transaction between a
+man like Trenor and a girl like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled
+vision cleared, old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the
+very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
+of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from Trenor;
+but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared, that the
+obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the first opportunity
+she had freed herself from it, though the act left her face to face with
+bare unmitigated poverty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was all he knew&mdash;all he could hope to unravel of the story. The
+mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this&mdash;unless indeed they
+had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes,
+he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find
+there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for
+having failed to reach the height of his opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart;
+since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her
+had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult
+for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he HAD loved her&mdash;had
+been willing to stake his future on his faith in her&mdash;and if the moment
+had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now
+that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which
+had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had reached out
+to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and
+in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and
+reconciled to her side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its
+lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made
+all clear.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="finis">
+THE END
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Notes:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do n't
+becomes don't, etc.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and colour.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+3. I found and corrected one instance of the name "Gertie," which I
+changed to "Gerty" to be consistent with rest of the book.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Linda Ruoff
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
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+</pre>
+
+</BODY>
+
+</HTML>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: House of Mirth
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2008 [EBook #284]
+[Last updated: January 12, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSE OF MIRTH ***
+
+
+
+
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+
+
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+
+
+The House of Mirth
+
+BY
+
+EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK ONE
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central
+Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.
+
+It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from
+a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at
+that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have
+inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and
+another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close
+of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood
+apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the
+street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
+be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she
+was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him.
+There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
+a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
+always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of
+far-reaching intentions.
+
+An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door,
+and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she
+would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her
+skill to the test.
+
+"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"
+
+She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him.
+One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss
+Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his
+last train.
+
+Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against
+the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a
+ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish
+smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after
+eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really
+eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached
+the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?
+
+"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my rescue!"
+
+He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked
+what form the rescue was to take.
+
+"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One sits
+out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit hotter here than
+in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of the women are not a bit
+uglier." She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to
+town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had
+missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another
+till half-past five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her
+laces. "Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
+My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on
+to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is closed, and I don't
+know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively about the station. "It IS
+hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after all. If you can spare the time, do
+take me somewhere for a breath of air."
+
+He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as
+diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his
+course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a
+moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.
+
+"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"
+
+She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.
+
+"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet a lot of
+bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any
+difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not," she objected gaily. "I'm
+dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter place?"
+
+He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
+interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that
+both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In judging Miss
+Bart, he had always made use of the "argument from design."
+
+"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll find a
+hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her through the
+throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in
+preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles
+and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race?
+The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him
+feel how highly specialized she was.
+
+A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung refreshingly
+over the moist street.
+
+"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged from the
+station.
+
+They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As she
+moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was conscious of
+taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the modelling of her
+little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair--was it ever so slightly
+brightened by art?--and the thick planting of her straight black lashes.
+Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong
+and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to
+make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious
+way, have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
+distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as
+though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to
+vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture
+will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material
+was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?
+
+As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and her
+lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she paused
+with a sigh.
+
+"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty--and what a hideous place New York is!"
+She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare. "Other
+cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in
+its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered down one of the side-streets.
+"Someone has had the humanity to plant a few trees over there. Let us go
+into the shade."
+
+"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as they
+turned the corner.
+
+"Your street? Do you live here?"
+
+She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
+fantastically varied in obedience to the American craving for novelty,
+but fresh and inviting with their awnings and flower-boxes.
+
+"Ah, yes--to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building! I
+don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
+flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade. "Which are
+your windows? Those with the awnings down?"
+
+"On the top floor--yes."
+
+"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!"
+
+He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give you a
+cup of tea in no time--and you won't meet any bores."
+
+Her colour deepened--she still had the art of blushing at the right
+time--but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
+
+"Why not? It's too tempting--I'll take the risk," she declared.
+
+"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he had never
+liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without
+afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there
+was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.
+
+On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.
+
+"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the
+mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out the tea-things and
+provided some cake."
+
+He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed
+the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks;
+then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its
+walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he
+had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had
+sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent
+of mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.
+
+Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.
+
+"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What a
+miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a luxury of
+discontent.
+
+Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
+
+"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges of a
+flat."
+
+"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable,
+marriageable girls!"
+
+"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."
+
+She sat up in surprise. "You do?"
+
+"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for
+cake.
+
+"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little unkindly. "But I
+said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no
+maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the
+food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know."
+
+"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting the cake.
+
+They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the
+kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green
+glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its
+slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he
+was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin
+Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the
+civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet
+seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
+
+She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that of
+Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was your
+cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I
+like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I
+daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure
+bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the
+horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt's drawing-room I
+know I should be a better woman."
+
+"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
+filled.
+
+"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come oftener?"
+
+"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."
+
+"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on so well
+when we meet."
+
+"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I haven't
+any cream, you know--shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?"
+
+"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a
+thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason," she insisted.
+
+"The reason for what?"
+
+"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in
+her charming eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could make you out. Of course
+I know there are men who don't like me--one can tell that at a glance.
+And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry
+them." She smiled up at him frankly. "But I don't think you dislike
+me--and you can't possibly think I want to marry you."
+
+"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.
+
+"Well, then----?"
+
+He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against the
+chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement.
+The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement--he had not supposed
+she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only
+keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation
+but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he
+had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.
+
+"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard it as
+such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt a slight shiver down
+his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured him.
+
+"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you to make
+love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She leaned back, sipping
+her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that, if they had been in
+her aunt's drawing-room, he might almost have tried to disprove her
+deduction.
+
+"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
+pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't be
+afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have
+fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except that you are
+neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't have to pretend with
+you or be on my guard against you." Her voice had dropped to a note of
+seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a
+child.
+
+"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My aunt is
+full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in
+the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them would include
+wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other women--my best
+friends--well, they use me or abuse me; but they don't care a straw what
+happens to me. I've been about too long--people are getting tired of me;
+they are beginning to say I ought to marry."
+
+There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or two
+replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he
+rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why don't you?"
+
+She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all, and that
+is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."
+
+"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably. "Isn't
+marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought up for?"
+
+She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"
+
+"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the first
+man who came along."
+
+"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there
+must be some one with the requisite qualifications."
+
+She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances when I
+first came out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly
+poor--and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money."
+
+Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.
+
+"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all the
+family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn't do over
+the drawing-room."
+
+"The very thing you are marrying for!"
+
+"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."
+
+"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."
+
+He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting
+one between her lips and slipping the others into a little gold case
+attached to her long pearl chain.
+
+"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of
+her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal
+enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids,
+and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of
+the cheek.
+
+She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between
+the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints
+of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes lingered on them
+caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the
+pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost
+susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory
+enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.
+
+"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and things?"
+
+"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up
+something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the big sales."
+
+She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept
+them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.
+
+"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"
+
+Selden stared and laughed.
+
+"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector, you see; I
+simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of."
+
+She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?"
+
+"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real collector
+values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana
+sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn't."
+
+She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch fabulous
+prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly
+badly-printed book that one is never going to read! And I suppose most
+of the owners of Americana are not historians either?"
+
+"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use
+those in the public libraries or in private collections. It seems to be
+the mere rarity that attracts the average collector."
+
+He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing,
+and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes,
+whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finest
+in the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a single
+volume.
+
+It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted now one
+book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her
+fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined against the warm
+background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder
+at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never
+be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing,
+and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
+the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her
+next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before him
+with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
+familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.
+
+"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy
+all the books you want?"
+
+He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby
+walls.
+
+"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"
+
+"And having to work--do you mind that?"
+
+"Oh, the work itself is not so bad--I'm rather fond of the law."
+
+"No; but the being tied down: the routine--don't you ever want to get
+away, to see new places and people?"
+
+"Horribly--especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer."
+
+She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough--to marry to get
+out of it?"
+
+Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.
+
+She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.
+
+"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must, a man may if he chooses." She
+surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little shabby--but who cares? It
+doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one
+would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for
+herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they
+don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman?
+We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and if we
+can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership."
+
+Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with her
+lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her case.
+
+"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for such an
+investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the Trenors'."
+
+She returned his look interrogatively.
+
+"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity! But there
+are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls, Lady
+Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."
+
+She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her
+lashes; but he remained imperturbable.
+
+"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the week; and
+those big parties bore me."
+
+"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.
+
+"Then why go?"
+
+"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't, I
+should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."
+
+"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they both
+laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."
+
+She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while
+she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her
+slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline--as
+though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the
+drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan
+freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.
+
+He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
+threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.
+
+"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."
+
+"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"
+
+"No; good bye here, please."
+
+She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.
+
+"Good bye, then--and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening the door
+for her.
+
+On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
+chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and
+she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of
+prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a char-woman who was
+scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and its surrounding implements
+took up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts
+and brush against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work
+and looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth
+she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly
+pitted with small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her
+scalp shone unpleasantly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to convey a
+criticism of the other's manner.
+
+The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued to
+stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings. Lily felt
+herself flushing under the look. What did the creature suppose? Could one
+never do the simplest, the most harmless thing, without subjecting one's
+self to some odious conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled
+to think that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
+was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE such
+apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with
+the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it
+occurred to her that the woman's persistent gaze implied a groping among
+past associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
+fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for a
+hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she ran
+against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat, who
+raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.
+
+"Miss Bart? Well--of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and she
+caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Rosedale--how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
+irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden intimacy
+of his smile.
+
+Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He was a
+plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes
+fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the
+air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. He glanced up
+interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.
+
+"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a tone
+which had the familiarity of a touch.
+
+Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
+precipitate explanations.
+
+"Yes--I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch the
+train to the Trenors'."
+
+"Ah--your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know there
+were any dress-makers in the Benedick."
+
+"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of this
+building?"
+
+"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor, isn't it?
+I happen to own the building--that's the way I know." His smile deepened
+as he added with increasing assurance: "But you must let me take you to
+the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of course? You've barely time
+to catch the five-forty. The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."
+
+Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.
+
+"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a hansom
+drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a desperate gesture.
+
+"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you," she said,
+extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his protestations,
+she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out a breathless order
+to the driver.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so dearly
+for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing
+without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice? She had
+yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence Selden's rooms, and it
+was so seldom that she could allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This
+one, at any rate, was going to cost her rather more than she could
+afford. She was vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of
+vigilance, she had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story
+about her dress-maker was bad enough--it would have been so simple to
+tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere
+statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having
+let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the
+witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to let
+Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have purchased
+his silence. He had his race's accuracy in the appraisal of values, and
+to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the
+company of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as he
+might himself have phrased it. He knew, of course, that there would be a
+large house-party at Bellomont, and the possibility of being taken for
+one of Mrs. Trenor's guests was doubtless included in his calculations.
+Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage in his social ascent when it was of
+importance to produce such impressions.
+
+The provoking part was that Lily knew all this--knew how easy it would
+have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it might be to do
+so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who made it his business to
+know everything about every one, whose idea of showing himself to be at
+home in society was to display an inconvenient familiarity with the
+habits of those with whom he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure
+that within twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker
+at the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's
+acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and
+ignored him. On his first appearance--when her improvident cousin, Jack
+Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too easily guessed)
+a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"--Rosedale,
+with that mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which
+characterizes his race, had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She
+understood his motives, for her own course was guided by as nice
+calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be hospitable to
+newcomers, since the most unpromising might be useful later on, and there
+were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But
+some intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social
+discipline, had made her push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a
+trial. He had left behind only the ripple of amusement which his speedy
+despatch had caused among her friends; and though later (to shift the
+metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in fleeting
+glimpses, with long submergences between.
+
+Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set Mr.
+Rosedale had been pronounced "impossible," and Jack Stepney roundly
+snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner invitations. Even Mrs.
+Trenor, whose taste for variety had led her into some hazardous
+experiments, resisted Jack's attempts to disguise Mr. Rosedale as a
+novelty, and declared that he was the same little Jew who had been served
+up and rejected at the social board a dozen times within her memory; and
+while Judy Trenor was obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale's
+penetrating beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave
+up the contest with a laughing "You'll see," and, sticking manfully to
+his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable restaurants, in
+company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who are
+available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been vain, and
+as Rosedale undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh remained with his
+debtor.
+
+Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
+feared--unless one put one's self in his power. And this was precisely
+what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see that she had
+something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score to settle with her.
+Something in his smile told her he had not forgotten. She turned from the
+thought with a little shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the
+station, and dogged her down the platform with the persistency of Mr.
+Rosedale himself.
+
+She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but having
+arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive feeling for effect
+which never forsook her, she glanced about in the hope of seeing some
+other member of the Trenors' party. She wanted to get away from herself,
+and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.
+
+Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man with a
+soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the carriage, appeared to be
+dissembling himself behind an unfolded newspaper. Lily's eye brightened,
+and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines of her mouth. She had known
+that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at Bellomont, but she had not counted on
+the luck of having him to herself in the train; and the fact banished all
+perturbing thoughts of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to
+end more favourably than it had begun.
+
+She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her prey
+through downcast lashes while she organized a method of attack.
+Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told her that he was
+aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite so engrossed in an
+evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy to come up to her, and
+that she would have to devise some means of approach which should not
+appear to be an advance on her part. It amused her to think that any one
+as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce should be shy; but she was gifted with
+treasures of indulgence for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his
+timidity might serve her purpose better than too much assurance. She had
+the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not
+equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
+
+She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was racing
+between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as it lowered its
+speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and drifted slowly down the
+carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the train gave a lurch, and he was
+aware of a slender hand gripping the back of his chair. He rose with a
+start, his ingenuous face looking as though it had been dipped in
+crimson: even the reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen. The train
+swayed again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms.
+
+She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was enveloped in
+the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her fugitive touch.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I'm so sorry--I was trying to find the porter
+and get some tea."
+
+She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they stood
+exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes--he was going to Bellomont. He
+had heard she was to be of the party--he blushed again as he admitted it.
+And was he to be there for a whole week? How delightful!
+
+But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last station
+forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat to her seat.
+
+"The chair next to mine is empty--do take it," she said over her
+shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded in
+effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and his bags
+to her side.
+
+"Ah--and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea."
+
+She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that
+seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little table had
+been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to bestow his
+encumbering properties beneath it.
+
+When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her hands
+flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast
+to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed wonderful to him that any
+one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making
+tea in public in a lurching train. He would never have dared to order it
+for himself, lest he should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers;
+but, secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky
+draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration.
+
+Lily, with the flavour of Selden's caravan tea on her lips, had no great
+fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such nectar to her
+companion; but, rightly judging that one of the charms of tea is the fact
+of drinking it together, she proceeded to give the last touch to Mr.
+Gryce's enjoyment by smiling at him across her lifted cup.
+
+"Is it quite right--I haven't made it too strong?" she asked
+solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never tasted
+better tea.
+
+"I daresay it is true," she reflected; and her imagination was fired by
+the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the depths of the most
+complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually taking his first journey
+alone with a pretty woman.
+
+It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument of his
+initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage him. They would
+have over-emphasized the novelty of the adventure, trying to make him
+feel in it the zest of an escapade. But Lily's methods were more
+delicate. She remembered that her cousin Jack Stepney had once defined
+Mr. Gryce as the young man who had promised his mother never to go out in
+the rain without his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to
+impart a gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her
+companion, instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or
+unusual, would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always having a
+companion to make one's tea in the train.
+
+But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray had been
+removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement of Mr. Gryce's
+limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity but imagination that he
+lacked: he had a mental palate which would never learn to distinguish
+between railway tea and nectar. There was, however, one topic she could
+rely on: one spring that she had only to touch to set his simple
+machinery in motion. She had refrained from touching it because it was a
+last resource, and she had relied on other arts to stimulate other
+sensations; but as a settled look of dulness began to creep over his
+candid features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary.
+
+"And how," she said, leaning forward, "are you getting on with your
+Americana?"
+
+His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient film
+had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful operator.
+
+"I've got a few new things," he said, suffused with pleasure, but
+lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers might be in
+league to despoil him.
+
+She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn on to talk
+of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which enabled him to
+forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember himself without
+constraint, because he was at home in it, and could assert a superiority
+that there were few to dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared for
+Americana, or knew anything about them; and the consciousness of this
+ignorance threw Mr. Gryce's knowledge into agreeable relief. The only
+difficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the front; most
+people showed no desire to have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Gryce
+was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable
+commodity.
+
+But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about Americana; and
+moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to make the task of
+farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable. She questioned him
+intelligently, she heard him submissively; and, prepared for the look of
+lassitude which usually crept over his listeners' faces, he grew eloquent
+under her receptive gaze. The "points" she had had the presence of mind
+to glean from Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were
+serving her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him
+had been the luckiest incident of the day. She had once more shown her
+talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the
+advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the surface of
+smiling attention which she continued to present to her companion.
+
+Mr. Gryce's sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable. He
+felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms welcome the
+gratification of their needs, and all his senses floundered in a vague
+well-being, through which Miss Bart's personality was dimly but
+pleasantly perceptible.
+
+Mr. Gryce's interest in Americana had not originated with himself: it was
+impossible to think of him as evolving any taste of his own. An uncle had
+left him a collection already noted among bibliophiles; the existence of
+the collection was the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of
+Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it
+had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such,
+and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any
+reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal
+notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so
+exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking
+from publicity.
+
+To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all the
+reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American history in
+particular, and as allusions to his library abounded in the pages of
+these journals, which formed his only reading, he came to regard himself
+as figuring prominently in the public eye, and to enjoy the thought of
+the interest which would be excited if the persons he met in the street,
+or sat among in travelling, were suddenly to be told that he was the
+possessor of the Gryce Americana.
+
+Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
+discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
+proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident person
+she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or to show such
+exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly guessed that Mr. Gryce's
+egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring constant nurture from without. Miss
+Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she
+appeared to be sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case
+her mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce's
+future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but
+lately introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
+after old Jefferson Gryce's death, to take possession of his house in
+Madison Avenue--an appalling house, all brown stone without and black
+walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked
+like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce's
+arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl
+has no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
+herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself in the
+young man's way, but had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a
+monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied
+with the iniquities of her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs.
+Peniston and learn from that lady how she managed to prevent the
+kitchen-maid's smuggling groceries out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a
+kind of impersonal benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded
+with suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their annual
+reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties were manifold,
+for they extended from furtive inspections of the servants' bedrooms to
+unannounced descents to the cellar; but she had never allowed herself
+many pleasures. Once, however, she had had a special edition of the Sarum
+Rule printed in rubric and presented to every clergyman in the diocese;
+and the gilt album in which their letters of thanks were pasted formed
+the chief ornament of her drawing-room table.
+
+Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a woman
+was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion had been
+grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious, with the result
+that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs. Gryce to extract his
+promise about the overshoes, so little likely was he to hazard himself
+abroad in the rain. After attaining his majority, and coming into the
+fortune which the late Mr. Gryce had made out of a patent device for
+excluding fresh air from hotels, the young man continued to live with his
+mother in Albany; but on Jefferson Gryce's death, when another large
+property passed into her son's hands, Mrs. Gryce thought that what she
+called his "interests" demanded his presence in New York. She accordingly
+installed herself in the Madison Avenue house, and Percy, whose sense of
+duty was not inferior to his mother's, spent all his week days in the
+handsome Broad Street office where a batch of pale men on small salaries
+had grown grey in the management of the Gryce estate, and where he was
+initiated with becoming reverence into every detail of the art of
+accumulation.
+
+As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce's only
+occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it not too hard
+a task to interest a young man who had been kept on such low diet. At
+any rate, she felt herself so completely in command of the situation that
+she yielded to a sense of security in which all fear of Mr. Rosedale, and
+of the difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
+the edge of thought.
+
+The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted her from
+these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of distress in her
+companion's eye. His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he
+had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance; a fact confirmed
+by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own
+entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.
+
+She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed by the
+high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train accompanied by a
+maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering under a load of bags and
+dressing-cases.
+
+"Oh, Lily--are you going to Bellomont? Then you can't let me have your
+seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this carriage--porter, you
+must find me a place at once. Can't some one be put somewhere else? I
+want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make
+him understand that I must have a seat next to you and Lily."
+
+Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller with a
+carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by getting out of
+the train, stood in the middle of the aisle, diffusing about her that
+general sense of exasperation which a pretty woman on her travels not
+infrequently creates.
+
+She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of
+pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like
+the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small pale face seemed the mere
+setting of a pair of dark exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze
+contrasted curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that,
+as one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who
+took up a great deal of room.
+
+Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart's was at her
+disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther displacement of her
+surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had come across from Mount
+Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had been kicking her heels for
+an hour at Garrisons, without even the alleviation of a cigarette, her
+brute of a husband having neglected to replenish her case before they
+parted that morning.
+
+"And at this hour of the day I don't suppose you've a single one left,
+have you, Lily?" she plaintively concluded.
+
+Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own lips
+were never defiled by tobacco.
+
+"What an absurd question, Bertha!" she exclaimed, blushing at the thought
+of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden's.
+
+"Why, don't you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What--you
+never---- And you don't either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course--how stupid of
+me--I understand."
+
+And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a smile
+which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her own.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily
+went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good.
+
+Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her room,
+she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the hall below,
+where the last card-players were grouped about the tray of tall glasses
+and silver-collared decanters which the butler had just placed on a low
+table near the fire.
+
+The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale yellow
+marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped against a background
+of dark foliage in the angles of the walls. On the crimson carpet a
+deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire,
+and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness
+on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.
+
+There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified
+her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life;
+there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her
+own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast
+was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset,
+glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a
+confidential nook beneath the gallery.
+
+It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired hold
+over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but she had
+neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture. She was too
+self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his shyness, and besides, why
+should she care to give herself the trouble? At most it might amuse her
+to make sport of his simplicity for an evening--after that he would be
+merely a burden to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
+encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a
+man up and toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as
+a possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had been
+bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce--the mere thought seemed to waken
+an echo of his droning voice--but she could not ignore him on the morrow,
+she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be
+ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare
+chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her
+for life.
+
+It was a hateful fate--but how escape from it? What choice had she? To be
+herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her bedroom, with its
+softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across the silken
+bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the fire, a vase of
+carnations filling the air with perfume, and the last novels and
+magazines lying uncut on a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a
+vision of Miss Farish's cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and
+hideous wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby
+surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being
+dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required,
+the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not
+what she wanted. A few years ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her
+daily meed of pleasure without caring who provided it. Now she was
+beginning to chafe at the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere
+pensioner on the splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There
+were even moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.
+
+For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she could not
+afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive a taste. She had
+seen the danger exemplified in more than one of her associates--in young
+Ned Silverton, for instance, the charming fair boy now seated in abject
+rapture at the elbow of Mrs. Fisher, a striking divorcee with eyes and
+gowns as emphatic as the head-lines of her "case." Lily could remember
+when young Silverton had stumbled into their circle, with the air of a
+strayed Arcadian who has published charming sonnets in his college journal.
+Since then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and bridge, and the
+latter at least had involved him in expenses from which he had been more
+than once rescued by harassed maiden sisters, who treasured the sonnets,
+and went without sugar in their tea to keep their darling afloat. Ned's
+case was familiar to Lily: she had seen his charming eyes--which had a
+good deal more poetry in them than the sonnets--change from surprise to
+amusement, and from amusement to anxiety, as he passed under the spell
+of the terrible god of chance; and she was afraid of discovering the
+same symptoms in her own case.
+
+For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to
+take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay
+for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses and trinkets which
+occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe. And since she had
+played regularly the passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she
+had won a large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
+spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
+imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove
+her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse
+herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one
+must either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
+that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
+surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.
+
+Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold purse
+which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she returned to her
+room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her jewel-case, looked
+under the tray for the roll of bills from which she had replenished the
+purse before going down to dinner. Only twenty dollars were left: the
+discovery was so startling that for a moment she fancied she must have
+been robbed. Then she took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the
+writing-table, tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her
+head was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again
+and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three
+hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
+balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred in the
+other direction. Then she returned to her calculations; but figure as she
+would, she could not conjure back the vanished three hundred dollars. It
+was the sum she had set aside to pacify her dress-maker--unless she
+should decide to use it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so
+many uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play high
+in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost--she who needed
+every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her,
+must have pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
+afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching such a
+heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with her guests
+when they bade her good night.
+
+A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily
+Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a
+universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.
+
+She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had sent to
+bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people's pleasure to be
+considerate of those who depended on hers, and in her bitter moods it
+sometimes struck her that she and her maid were in the same position,
+except that the latter received her wages more regularly.
+
+As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollow
+and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth,
+faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.
+
+"Oh, I must stop worrying!" she exclaimed. "Unless it's the electric
+light----" she reflected, springing up from her seat and lighting the
+candles on the dressing-table.
+
+She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
+candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a
+background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but
+the two lines about the mouth remained.
+
+Lily rose and undressed in haste.
+
+"It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
+about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty
+cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence
+against them.
+
+But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She returned
+wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy
+load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost sure she had
+"landed" him: a few days' work and she would win her reward. But the
+reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she could get no zest from
+the thought of victory. It would be a rest from worry, no more--and how
+little that would have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions
+had shrunk gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
+failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?
+
+She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used to
+say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But you'll get it all
+back--you'll get it all back, with your face." . . . The remembrance
+roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the darkness
+reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.
+
+A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was "company"; a
+door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered with square
+envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong envelopes which were
+allowed to gather dust in the depths of a bronze jar; a series of French
+and English maids giving warning amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked
+wardrobes and dress-closets; an equally changing dynasty of nurses and
+footmen; quarrels in the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room;
+precipitate trips to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
+interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer
+should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
+expense--such was the setting of Lily Bart's first memories.
+
+Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and determined
+figure of a mother still young enough to dance her ball-dresses to rags,
+while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted father filled an intermediate
+space between the butler and the man who came to wind the clocks. Even to
+the eyes of infancy, Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could
+not recall the time when her father had not been bald and slightly
+stooping, with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
+shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
+mother.
+
+Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down town"; and
+in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on
+the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would kiss her in
+silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or the governess; then
+Mrs. Bart's maid would come to remind him that he was dining out, and he
+would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
+Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent
+than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours
+staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the
+clatter of his wife's existence went on unheeded a few feet off.
+Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
+before the steamer was half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the
+horizon. Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected
+to forward Mrs. Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never
+mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure presented itself
+on the New York dock as a buffer between the magnitude of his wife's
+luggage and the restrictions of the American custom-house.
+
+In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily's teens:
+a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid
+current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need--the
+need of more money. Lily could not recall the time when there had been
+money enough, and in some vague way her father seemed always to blame for
+the deficiency. It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who
+was spoken of by her friends as a "wonderful manager." Mrs. Bart was
+famous for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to the
+lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though
+one were much richer than one's bank-book denoted.
+
+Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line: she had
+been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must have a good
+cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst
+reproach to her husband was to ask him if he expected her to "live like a
+pig"; and his replying in the negative was always regarded as a
+justification for cabling to Paris for an extra dress or two, and
+telephoning to the jeweller that he might, after all, send home the
+turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.
+
+Lily knew people who "lived like pigs," and their appearance and
+surroundings justified her mother's repugnance to that form of existence.
+They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy houses with engravings from
+Cole's Voyage of Life on the drawing-room walls, and slatternly
+parlour-maids who said "I'll go and see" to visitors calling at an hour
+when all right-minded persons are conventionally if not actually out. The
+disgusting part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that
+Lily imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from choice,
+and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct. This gave her a
+sense of reflected superiority, and she did not need Mrs. Bart's comments
+on the family frumps and misers to foster her naturally lively taste for
+splendour.
+
+Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view of the
+universe.
+
+The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy
+thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on the
+horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke. The
+suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times when Lily
+relived with painful vividness every detail of the day on which the blow
+fell. She and her mother had been seated at the luncheon-table, over the
+CHAUFROIX and cold salmon of the previous night's dinner: it was one of
+Mrs. Bart's few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of
+her hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is youth's
+penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite of a few lines
+about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her temples, was as alert,
+determined and high in colour as if she had risen from an untroubled
+sleep.
+
+In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES and
+candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their vigorous
+stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but their rose-colour
+had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily's sense of fitness was
+disturbed by their reappearance on the luncheon-table.
+
+"I really think, mother," she said reproachfully, "we might afford a few
+fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or lilies-of-the-valley--"
+
+Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the world,
+and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when there was no one
+present at it but the family. But she smiled at her daughter's innocence.
+
+"Lilies-of-the-valley," she said calmly, "cost two dollars a dozen at
+this season."
+
+Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of money.
+
+"It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl," she argued.
+
+"Six dozen what?" asked her father's voice in the doorway.
+
+The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday, the sight
+of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But neither his wife nor his
+daughter was sufficiently interested to ask an explanation.
+
+Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the fragment of
+jellied salmon which the butler had placed before him.
+
+"I was only saying," Lily began, "that I hate to see faded flowers at
+luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley would not cost
+more than twelve dollars. Mayn't I tell the florist to send a few every
+day?"
+
+She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her anything,
+and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her own entreaties
+failed.
+
+Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and his
+lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his thin hair lay
+in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he looked at his daughter and
+laughed. The laugh was so strange that Lily coloured under it: she
+disliked being ridiculed, and her father seemed to see something
+ridiculous in the request. Perhaps he thought it foolish that she should
+trouble him about such a trifle.
+
+"Twelve dollars--twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly, my
+dear--give him an order for twelve hundred." He continued to laugh.
+
+Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.
+
+"You needn't wait, Poleworth--I will ring for you," she said to the
+butler.
+
+The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving the
+remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.
+
+"What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?" said Mrs. Bart severely.
+
+She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making, and it
+was odious to her that her husband should make a show of himself before
+the servants.
+
+"Are you ill?" she repeated.
+
+"Ill?---- No, I'm ruined," he said.
+
+Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her feet.
+
+"Ruined----?" she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she turned a
+calm face to Lily.
+
+"Shut the pantry door," she said.
+
+Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father was
+sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon between them,
+and his head bowed on his hands.
+
+Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
+unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached: her look
+was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly cheerfulness.
+
+"Your father is not well--he doesn't know what he is saying. It is
+nothing--but you had better go upstairs; and don't talk to the servants,"
+she added.
+
+Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that voice. She
+had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart's words: she knew at once that they
+were ruined. In the dark hours which followed, that awful fact
+overshadowed even her father's slow and difficult dying. To his wife he
+no longer counted: he had become extinct when he ceased to fulfil his
+purpose, and she sat at his side with the provisional air of a traveller
+who waits for a belated train to start. Lily's feelings were softer: she
+pitied him in a frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for
+the most part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into
+the room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a
+stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home till after
+dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a blur--first of
+sleepiness, then of distance and indifference--and now the fog had
+thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. If she could have
+performed any little services for him, or have exchanged with him a few
+of those affecting words which an extensive perusal of fiction had led
+her to connect with such occasions, the filial instinct might have
+stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active expression, remained in a
+state of spectatorship, overshadowed by her mother's grim unflagging
+resentment. Every look and act of Mrs. Bart's seemed to say: "You are
+sorry for him now--but you will feel differently when you see what he has
+done to us."
+
+It was a relief to Lily when her father died.
+
+Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to Mrs.
+Bart it seemed worse than nothing--the mere mockery of what she was
+entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to live like a pig?
+She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against
+fate. Her faculty for "managing" deserted her, or she no longer took
+sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was well enough to "manage" when
+by so doing one could keep one's own carriage; but when one's best
+contrivance did not conceal the fact that one had to go on foot, the
+effort was no longer worth making.
+
+Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long visits
+to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and who deplored
+the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the girl had no
+prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap continental refuges,
+where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof from the frugal tea-tables of
+her companions in misfortune. She was especially careful to avoid her old
+friends and the scenes of her former successes. To be poor seemed to her
+such a confession of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she
+detected a note of condescension in the friendliest advances.
+
+Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily's
+beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some
+weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset
+in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt.
+She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its
+mere custodian; and she tried to instil into the latter a sense of the
+responsibility that such a charge involved. She followed in imagination
+the career of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might be
+achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of those
+who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to Mrs. Bart,
+only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement of some of her
+examples. She was not above the inconsistency of charging fate, rather
+than herself, with her own misfortunes; but she inveighed so
+acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own
+marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured
+her that she had been "talked into it"--by whom, she never made clear.
+
+Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities. The
+dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the existence
+to which she felt herself entitled. To a less illuminated intelligence
+Mrs. Bart's counsels might have been dangerous; but Lily understood that
+beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into
+success other arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of
+superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother denounced, and
+it did not take her long to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the
+possessor of an average set of features.
+
+Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart's. It had been among that
+lady's grievances that her husband--in the early days, before he was too
+tired--had wasted his evenings in what she vaguely described as "reading
+poetry"; and among the effects packed off to auction after his death were
+a score or two of dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among
+the boots and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
+Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source, which
+gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think
+of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to
+attain a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague
+diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures and
+flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help thinking that
+the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages.
+She would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she
+was secretly ashamed of her mother's crude passion for money. Lily's
+preference would have been for an English nobleman with political
+ambitions and vast estates; or, for second choice, an Italian prince with
+a castle in the Apennines and an hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost
+causes had a romantic charm for her, and she liked to picture herself as
+standing aloof from the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her
+pleasure to the claims of an immemorial tradition. . . .
+
+How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were hardly
+more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had centred about
+the possession of a French jointed doll with real hair. Was it only ten
+years since she had wavered in imagination between the English earl and
+the Italian prince? Relentlessly her mind travelled on over the dreary
+interval. . . .
+
+After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died----died of a deep
+disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be dingy. Her
+visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded after the first year.
+
+"People can't marry you if they don't see you--and how can they see you
+in these holes where we're stuck?" That was the burden of her lament; and
+her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from dinginess if she
+could.
+
+"Don't let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way out of it
+somehow--you're young and can do it," she insisted.
+
+She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and there Lily
+at once became the centre of a family council composed of the wealthy
+relatives whom she had been taught to despise for living like pigs. It
+may be that they had an inkling of the sentiments in which she had been
+brought up, for none of them manifested a very lively desire for her
+company; indeed, the question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs.
+Peniston with a sigh announced: "I'll try her for a year."
+
+Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their surprise, lest
+Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into reconsidering her decision.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart's widowed sister, and if she was by no means
+the richest of the family group, its other members nevertheless abounded
+in reasons why she was clearly destined by Providence to assume the
+charge of Lily. In the first place she was alone, and it would be
+charming for her to have a young companion. Then she sometimes travelled,
+and Lily's familiarity with foreign customs--deplored as a misfortune by
+her more conservative relatives--would at least enable her to act as a
+kind of courier. But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not been
+affected by these considerations. She had taken the girl simply because
+no one else would have her, and because she had the kind of moral
+MAUVAISE HONTE which makes the public display of selfishness difficult,
+though it does not interfere with its private indulgence. It would have
+been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but
+with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in
+her act.
+
+She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and found
+an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected to find Lily
+headstrong, critical and "foreign"--for even Mrs. Peniston, though she
+occasionally went abroad, had the family dread of foreignness--but the
+girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more penetrating mind than her aunt's,
+might have been less reassuring than the open selfishness of youth.
+Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable
+substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece's adaptability.
+Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her aunt's good nature. She
+was in truth grateful for the refuge offered her: Mrs. Peniston's opulent
+interior was at least not externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality
+which assumes all manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as
+latent in the expensive routine of her aunt's life as in the makeshift
+existence of a continental pension.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the padding of
+life. It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus
+of activities. The most vivid thing about her was the fact that her
+grandmother had been a Van Alstyne. This connection with the well-fed and
+industrious stock of early New York revealed itself in the glacial
+neatness of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room and in the excellence of her
+cuisine. She belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always
+lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these
+inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always
+been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little
+mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper
+windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they
+might see what was happening in the street.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she had
+never lived there since her husband's death--a remote event, which
+appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in the
+personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation. She
+was a woman who remembered dates with intensity, and could tell at a
+moment's notice whether the drawing-room curtains had been renewed before
+or after Mr. Peniston's last illness.
+
+Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and cherished a
+vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such contingencies she
+frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself
+impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting
+screen of her verandah. In the care of such a guardian, it soon became
+clear to Lily that she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good
+food and expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
+would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her to
+regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother's fierce
+energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled with Mrs.
+Peniston's resources. Lily had abundant energy of her own, but it was
+restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to her aunt's habits. She
+saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs.
+Bart would have phrased it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no
+mind for the vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to
+Mrs. Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive
+attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt
+into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
+Mrs. Peniston against which her niece's efforts spent themselves in vain.
+To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging
+at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor. She did not,
+indeed, expect Lily to remain equally immovable: she had all the American
+guardian's indulgence for the volatility of youth.
+
+She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece's. It
+seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on dress, and
+she supplemented the girl's scanty income by occasional "handsome
+presents" meant to be applied to the same purpose. Lily, who was
+intensely practical, would have preferred a fixed allowance; but Mrs.
+Peniston liked the periodical recurrence of gratitude evoked by
+unexpected cheques, and was perhaps shrewd enough to perceive that such a
+method of giving kept alive in her niece a salutary sense of dependence.
+
+Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do anything for
+her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her take the field. Lily
+had taken it, at first with the confidence of assured possessorship, then
+with gradually narrowing demands, till now she found herself actually
+struggling for a foothold on the broad space which had once seemed her
+own for the asking. How it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she
+thought it was because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she
+feared it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she
+shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy
+and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or
+absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total of her
+failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by dozens, and
+she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.
+
+She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she
+longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself.
+But what manner of life would it be? She had barely enough money to pay
+her dress-makers' bills and her gambling debts; and none of the desultory
+interests which she dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced
+enough to enable her to live contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no--she was
+too intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she hated
+dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she
+meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its
+flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented
+such a slippery surface to her clutch.
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note from her
+hostess.
+
+"Dearest Lily," it ran, "if it is not too much of a bore to be down by
+ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some tiresome
+things?"
+
+Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh. It
+WAS a bore to be down by ten--an hour regarded at Bellomont as vaguely
+synchronous with sunrise--and she knew too well the nature of the
+tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary, had been called
+away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards to write, lost addresses
+to hunt up, and other social drudgery to perform. It was understood that
+Miss Bart should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
+recognized the obligation without a murmur.
+
+Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the previous
+night's review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything in her
+surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity. The windows
+stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September morning, and
+between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of hedges and
+parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to the free
+undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little fire on the
+hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted
+across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old
+marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray,
+with its harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
+slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters. There
+was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied luxury; but, though
+they formed a part of her atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to
+their charm. Mere display left her with a sense of superior distinction;
+but she felt an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.
+
+Mrs. Trenor's summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
+dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that she
+was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions leave
+lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had meant to take
+warning by the little creases which her midnight survey had revealed.
+
+The matter-of-course tone of Mrs. Trenor's greeting deepened her
+irritation. If one did drag one's self out of bed at such an hour, and
+come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing, some special
+recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs. Trenor's tone
+showed no consciousness of the fact.
+
+"Oh, Lily, that's nice of you," she merely sighed across the chaos of
+letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave an incongruously
+commercial touch to the slender elegance of her writing-table.
+
+"There are such lots of horrors this morning," she added, clearing a
+space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat to Miss
+Bart.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her from
+redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile
+activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished
+play of feature. It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she
+seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated
+instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a
+crowd. The collective nature of her interests exempted her from the
+ordinary rivalries of her sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than
+that of hatred for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have
+more amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by
+Mr. Trenor's bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph in
+such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous good
+nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart's utilitarian
+classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as the woman who was
+least likely to "go back" on her.
+
+"It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor declared, as
+her friend seated herself at the desk. "She says her sister is going to
+have a baby--as if that were anything to having a house-party! I'm sure I
+shall get most horribly mixed up and there will be some awful rows. When
+I was down at Tuxedo I asked a lot of people for next week, and I've
+mislaid the list and can't remember who is coming. And this week is going
+to be a horrid failure too--and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell
+her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls--that
+was a blunder of Gus's. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
+one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get that
+second divorce--Carry always overdoes things--but she said the only way
+to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony.
+And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It's really absurd of Alice
+Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks of what
+society is coming to. Some one said the other day that there was a
+divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows. Besides,
+Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in a good humour when we have
+bores in the house. Have you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All,
+I mean, except her own. It's rather clever of her to have made a
+specialty of devoting herself to dull people--the field is such a large
+one, and she has it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no
+doubt--I know she borrows money of Gus--but then I'd PAY her to keep him
+in a good humour, so I can't complain, after all."
+
+Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart's efforts to
+unravel her tangled correspondence.
+
+"But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry," she resumed, with a fresh note
+of lament. "The truth is, I'm awfully disappointed in Lady Cressida
+Raith."
+
+"Disappointed? Had you known her before?"
+
+"Mercy, no--never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her over with
+letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van Osburgh was
+asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought it would be fun to
+get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her in India, managed it for me.
+Maria was furious, and actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite
+herself here, so that they shouldn't be QUITE out of it--if I'd known
+what Lady Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
+thought any friend of the Skiddaws' was sure to be amusing. You remember
+what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send the
+girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess of
+Beltshire's sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same sort; but
+you never can tell in those English families. They are so big that
+there's room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the
+moral one--married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East End.
+Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman's wife, who
+wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take her all through the
+glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to death by asking him the names
+of the plants. Fancy treating Gus as if he were the gardener!"
+
+Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.
+
+"Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to meeting
+Carry Fisher," said Miss Bart pacifically.
+
+"I'm sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and if she
+takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will be too
+depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so useful at the
+right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once a year, and she
+would have given just the right tone to things. I always have horrid luck
+about the Bishop's visits," added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was
+being fed by a rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; "last year, when he
+came, Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
+Wintons and the Farleys--five divorces and six sets of children between
+them!"
+
+"When is Lady Cressida going?" Lily enquired.
+
+Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. "My dear, if one only knew! I
+was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I actually forgot to
+name a date, and Gus says she told some one she meant to stop here all
+winter."
+
+"To stop here? In this house?"
+
+"Don't be silly--in America. But if no one else asks her--you know they
+NEVER go to hotels."
+
+"Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you."
+
+"No--I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put in
+while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You should have
+seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you know--if she stays here
+all the autumn she'll spoil everything, and Maria Van Osburgh will simply
+exult."
+
+At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor's voice trembled with self-pity.
+
+"Oh, Judy--as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!" Miss Bart
+tactfully protested. "You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van Osburgh
+were to get all the right people and leave you with all the wrong ones,
+you'd manage to make things go off, and she wouldn't."
+
+Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor's complacency;
+but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.
+
+"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented. "Everything has gone wrong
+this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me."
+
+"Furious with you? Why?"
+
+"Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he wouldn't,
+after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think it's my fault."
+
+Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she had
+begun.
+
+"I thought that was all over," she said.
+
+"So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since. But I
+fancy she's out of a job just at present--and some one gave me a hint
+that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him--but I couldn't make
+him come; and now I suppose she'll take it out of me by being perfectly
+nasty to every one else."
+
+"Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming--to some one
+else."
+
+Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. "She knows he wouldn't mind. And
+who else is there? Alice Wetherall won't let Lucius out of her sight.
+Ned Silverton can't take his eyes off Carry Fisher--poor boy! Gus is
+bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well--and--well, to be sure,
+there's Percy Gryce!"
+
+She sat up smiling at the thought.
+
+Miss Bart's countenance did not reflect the smile.
+
+"Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off."
+
+"You mean that she'd shock him and he'd bore her? Well, that's not such a
+bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won't take it into her head to be
+nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for you."
+
+Lily laughed. "MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
+against Bertha."
+
+"Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I'm not really, you know. Every one
+knows you're a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than Bertha; but
+then you're not nasty. And for always getting what she wants in the long
+run, commend me to a nasty woman."
+
+Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. "I thought you were so fond of
+Bertha."
+
+"Oh, I am--it's much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she IS
+dangerous--and if I ever saw her up to mischief it's now. I can tell by
+poor George's manner. That man is a perfect barometer--he always knows
+when Bertha is going to----"
+
+"To fall?" Miss Bart suggested.
+
+"Don't be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of course I
+don't say there's any real harm in Bertha. Only she delights in making
+people miserable, and especially poor George."
+
+"Well, he seems cut out for the part--I don't wonder she likes more
+cheerful companionship."
+
+"Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him he
+would be quite different. Or if she'd leave him alone, and let him
+arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn't dare lose her hold of him
+on account of the money, and so when HE isn't jealous she pretends to be."
+
+Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following her
+train of thought with frowning intensity.
+
+"Do you know," she exclaimed after a long pause, "I believe I'll call up
+Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?"
+
+"Oh, don't," said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
+surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though not
+commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with puzzled
+eyes.
+
+"Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him so
+much?"
+
+"Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
+intention of protecting me from Bertha--I don't think I need your
+protection."
+
+Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. "Lily!----PERCY? Do you mean to
+say you've actually done it?"
+
+Miss Bart smiled. "I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are getting to
+be very good friends."
+
+"H'm--I see." Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know they say
+he has eight hundred thousand a year--and spends nothing, except on some
+rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and will leave him a
+lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY," her friend adjured her.
+
+Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. "I shouldn't, for
+instance," she remarked, "be in any haste to tell him that he had a lot
+of rubbishy old books."
+
+"No, of course not; I know you're wonderful about getting up people's
+subjects. But he's horribly shy, and easily shocked, and--and----"
+
+"Why don't you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the hunt
+for a rich husband?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that; he wouldn't believe it of you--at first," said
+Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. "But you know things are rather
+lively here at times--I must give Jack and Gus a hint--and if he thought
+you were what his mother would call fast--oh, well, you know what I mean.
+Don't wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don't smoke if you
+can help it, Lily dear!"
+
+Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. "You're very kind,
+Judy: I'll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year's dress you sent
+me this morning. And if you are really interested in my career, perhaps
+you'll be kind enough not to ask me to play bridge again this evening."
+
+"Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life you'll
+lead! But of course I won't--why didn't you give me a hint last night?
+There's nothing I wouldn't do, you poor duck, to see you happy!"
+
+And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex's eagerness to smooth the course of
+true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.
+
+"You're quite sure," she added solicitously, as the latter extricated
+herself, "that you wouldn't like me to telephone for Lawrence Selden?"
+
+"Quite sure," said Lily.
+
+
+
+The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction Miss
+Bart's ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.
+
+As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont, she
+smiled at Mrs. Trenor's fear that she might go too fast. If such a
+warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a salutary
+lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to adapt her pace
+to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well
+to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively and luring him on from depth
+to depth of unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was
+propitious to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word,
+had shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had even
+hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no surprise at
+her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint, Lily found herself
+the centre of that feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in
+the mating season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
+existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater
+readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
+attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a sympathetic
+comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in her esteem as she saw
+the consideration he inspired.
+
+The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot propitious
+to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning against the
+balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little distance from the
+animated group about the tea-table, she might have been lost in the mazes
+of an inarticulate happiness. In reality, her thoughts were finding
+definite utterance in the tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in
+store for her. From where she stood she could see them embodied in the
+form of Mr. Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
+nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the
+energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to endow
+her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of municipal
+reform.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been preceded by
+an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced an energetic
+advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was small, fiery and dramatic;
+and her hands and eyes were admirable instruments in the service of
+whatever causes she happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault
+common to enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part
+of her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
+resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce's attitude. Lily
+herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold
+if he remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
+he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a paper
+to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what he called
+"committing himself," and tenderly as he cherished his health, he
+evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink
+till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast
+agonized glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was
+to sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had learned
+the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief, and was fully
+aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's volubility was enhancing her
+own repose.
+
+She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
+Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning across the garden
+from the tennis court.
+
+The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance in which
+Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in contemplating
+what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation. Miss Van Osburgh
+was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had
+once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste
+was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger
+makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
+been reduced to a crust.
+
+Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl's
+turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled,
+while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching
+boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile.
+
+"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to get
+everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas
+I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were
+going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me
+hopelessly out of time."
+
+As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
+likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
+resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way--he looked
+like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast--while Gwen's
+countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.
+But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices
+and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent
+by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they
+had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
+range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for
+each other by every law of moral and physical correspondence----"Yet they
+wouldn't look at each other," Lily mused, "they never do. Each of them
+wants a creature of a different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all
+sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even
+guess the existence of. And they always get what they want."
+
+She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a slight
+cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly amenities were
+subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the necessity of not
+exciting enmities at this crucial point of her career, dropped aside
+while the happy couple proceeded toward the tea-table.
+
+Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her head
+against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The fragrance of the
+late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil scene, a landscape
+tutored to the last degree of rural elegance. In the foreground glowed
+the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal
+pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle;
+and through a long glade the river widened like a lake under the silver
+light of September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
+tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she was
+content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty
+that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load
+from her mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal
+not to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence might
+have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be
+able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
+security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns
+than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would
+be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the
+relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered;
+instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old
+scores she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
+she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr. Gryce
+was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses and emotions.
+He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice
+the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily had known the species before:
+she was aware that such a guarded nature must find one huge outlet of
+egoism, and she determined to be to him what his Americana had hitherto
+been: the one possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money
+on it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
+meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her husband's
+vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form
+of self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort to
+some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended it should
+free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she would be able to
+play the game in her own way. How should she have distrusted her powers?
+Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have
+been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
+she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of
+permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end.
+
+And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she
+had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this
+crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her
+poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people whom she had ridiculed
+and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed circle
+about which all her desires revolved. They were not as brutal and
+self-engrossed as she had fancied--or rather, since it would no longer be
+necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature became
+less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged
+according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was
+turning its illuminated face to Lily.
+
+In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
+qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of
+emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness
+now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the
+only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks
+and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing
+allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a
+disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
+the people who were not able to live as they lived.
+
+The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs of the
+long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of wheels, and
+divined that more visitors were approaching. There was a movement behind
+her, a scattering of steps and voices: it was evident that the party
+about the tea-table was breaking up. Presently she heard a tread behind
+her on the terrace. She supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means
+to escape from his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his
+coming to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fire-side.
+
+She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved; but her
+greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who had approached
+her was Lawrence Selden.
+
+"You see I came after all," he said; but before she had time to answer,
+Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with her host, had
+stepped between them with a little gesture of appropriation.
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the punctual
+appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the household to the
+little church at the gates. Whether any one got into the omnibus or not
+was a matter of secondary importance, since by standing there it not only
+bore witness to the orthodox intentions of the family, but made Mrs.
+Trenor feel, when she finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow
+vicariously made use of it.
+
+It was Mrs. Trenor's theory that her daughters actually did go to church
+every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions calling her to the
+rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping their mother in her room
+till luncheon, there was seldom any one present to verify the fact. Now
+and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue--when the house had been too
+uproarious over night--Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight
+frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually,
+as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the
+church bells were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven
+away empty.
+
+Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious observances
+was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during her visits to
+Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda to church. This
+tallied with the assurance, also confidentially imparted, that, never
+having played bridge before, she had been "dragged into it" on the night
+of her arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in consequence
+of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of betting. Mr. Gryce was
+undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the
+life, and the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of
+rich and conspicuous people. But he thought it a very materialistic
+society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the men
+and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for
+all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
+atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to learn that
+she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors to church on Sunday
+morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep before the door, his light
+overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he
+reflected agreeably on the strength of character which kept her true to
+her early training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.
+
+For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
+themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference on the
+part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the hope that Miss
+Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes were flying, however;
+the big chestnuts pawed the ground and flecked their impatient sides with
+foam; the coachman seemed to be slowly petrifying on the box, and the
+groom on the doorstep; and still the lady did not come. Suddenly,
+however, there was a sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the
+doorway, and Mr. Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a
+nervous start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
+into the carriage.
+
+The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of
+human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single
+one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. It is true that
+the Bellomont puppets did not go to church; but others equally important
+did--and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall's circle was so large that God was
+included in their visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and
+resigned, with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after
+them Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's veils
+and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church with
+her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that they didn't
+mind doing it to please her, though they couldn't fancy what had put the
+idea in her head, and though for their own part they would much rather
+have played lawn tennis with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she
+was coming. The Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
+weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on
+seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were not to walk
+across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall's horrified protest that the
+church was a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
+other's heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce
+found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare
+he felt not the least concern.
+
+It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known that Miss
+Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen earlier than
+usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea that the sight of
+her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her famous lashes drooped
+above a prayer-book, would put the finishing touch to Mr. Gryce's
+subjugation, and render inevitable a certain incident which she had
+resolved should form a part of the walk they were to take together after
+luncheon. Her intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor
+Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
+as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
+people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies,
+hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant
+in the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was
+carrying her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see
+herself or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that
+moment, should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
+with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons of
+his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the ill-humour
+of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she learned from Mrs. Trenor
+that Selden had come of his own accord. "He didn't even wire me--he just
+happened to find the trap at the station. Perhaps it's not over with
+Bertha after all," Mrs. Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to
+arrange her dinner-cards accordingly.
+
+Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless she had
+lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset's call, it was at her
+own that he would stay. So much the previous evening had told her. Mrs.
+Trenor, true to her simple principle of making her married friends happy,
+had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in
+obedience to the time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had
+separated Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset,
+while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.
+
+George Dorset's talk did not interfere with the range of his neighbour's
+thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on finding out the
+deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted from this care only by
+the sound of his wife's voice. On this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset
+took no part in the general conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs
+with Selden, and turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her
+host, who, far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
+the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset,
+however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such evident concern that,
+when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist
+bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin
+neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.
+
+Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on opposite
+sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe Mrs. Dorset
+also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to set up a rapid
+comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison
+which was her undoing. Why else had she suddenly grown interested in
+Selden? She had known him for eight years or more: ever since her return
+to America he had formed a part of her background. She had always been
+glad to sit next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
+men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful
+to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
+affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories of
+life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw that her
+sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that his presence
+shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant
+or exceptional; in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one
+man who had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
+had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the
+show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage
+in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the
+world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on
+her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always
+open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
+once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's
+distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.
+
+That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily, turning
+her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world through his
+retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut off and the dusty
+daylight let in. She looked down the long table, studying its occupants
+one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between
+his shoulders, as he preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the
+opposite end of the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
+good-looks, of a jeweller's window lit by electricity. And between the
+two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people
+were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
+her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a
+"spicy paragraph"; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
+proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had
+become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list,
+whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and
+the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod
+of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they
+were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes,
+half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all
+the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that
+there is no one richer than her father.
+
+Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had
+seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was
+gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon
+they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were
+merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she
+saw the poverty of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to
+be more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
+picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which, a few
+hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their standards. She
+closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine of the life she had
+chosen stretched before her like a long white road without dip or
+turning: it was true she was to roll over it in a carriage instead of
+trudging it on foot, but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of
+a short cut which is denied to those on wheels.
+
+She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from the
+depths of his lean throat.
+
+"I say, do look at her," he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
+lugubrious merriment--"I beg your pardon, but do just look at my wife
+making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really suppose she
+was gone on him--and it's all the other way round, I assure you."
+
+Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was affording
+Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared, as he said, that
+Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in the scene: her neighbour
+seemed to receive her advances with a temperate zest which did not
+distract him from his dinner. The sight restored Lily's good humour, and
+knowing the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset's marital fears assumed,
+she asked gaily: "Aren't you horribly jealous of her?"
+
+Dorset greeted the sally with delight. "Oh, abominably--you've just hit
+it--keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's what has knocked
+my digestion out--being so infernally jealous of her.--I can't eat a
+mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added suddenly, pushing back his
+plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable,
+accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other
+people's cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of
+melted butter.
+
+It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man as well
+as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances into it he was
+not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he engaged Lily so long
+that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other
+side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering
+Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was
+jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a handspring.
+
+"And of course you'll have Sim Rosedale as best man!" Lily heard her
+fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney responded,
+as if struck: "Jove, that's an idea. What a thumping present I'd get out
+of him!"
+
+SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive, obtruded
+itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one of the many hated
+possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If she did not marry Percy
+Gryce, the day might come when she would have to be civil to such men as
+Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM? But she meant to marry him--she was
+sure of him and sure of herself. She drew back with a shiver from the
+pleasant paths in which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet
+once more in the middle of the long white road.... When she went
+upstairs that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
+batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
+forwarded them all to Bellomont.
+
+Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
+conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself betimes
+from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast-tray, rang to have her grey
+gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs.
+Trenor.
+
+But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of
+rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused a
+smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to kindle Lily's
+imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the borrowed prayer-book
+flashed a long light down the years. She would have to go to church with
+Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have a front pew in the most
+expensive church in New York, and his name would figure handsomely in the
+list of parish charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would
+be made a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
+her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES
+were included, except those who had showed signs of penitence by being
+re-married to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in
+this round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
+great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent
+to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and her bath had
+filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected in the
+clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this morning, or else the
+glass was at a happier angle.
+
+And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and
+truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold; below the dewy bloom
+of the lawns the woodlands blushed and smouldered, and the hills across
+the river swam in molten blue. Every drop of blood in Lily's veins
+invited her to happiness.
+
+The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning behind her
+shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She was too late,
+then--but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr. Gryce's
+crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely in absenting
+herself, since the disappointment he so candidly betrayed would surely
+whet his appetite for the afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to
+miss; one glance at the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall
+its necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could
+muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough
+with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free
+field till luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and
+Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be
+having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her
+host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of
+young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
+tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left
+only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never came down till
+luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden her to expose herself
+to the crude air of the morning.
+
+To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
+wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her plans.
+These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress somewhat more
+rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she had first selected,
+and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a
+lady in quest of exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of
+dogs by the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
+Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship. She put
+aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and assuring the
+joyous volunteers that she might presently have a use for their company,
+sauntered on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of
+the house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the old
+manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions
+of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
+the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass urns. A
+few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies
+with large head-dresses and small bodies, hung between the shelves lined
+with pleasantly-shabby books: books mostly contemporaneous with the
+ancestors in question, and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no
+perceptible additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used
+for reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking-room or a
+quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however, that it
+might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only member of the
+party in the least likely to put it to its original use. She advanced
+noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered with easy-chairs, and before
+she reached the middle of the room she saw that she had not been
+mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in fact seated at its farther end; but
+though a book lay on his knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but
+directed to a lady whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an
+adjoining chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
+dusky leather upholstery.
+
+Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she seemed
+about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she announced her
+approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made the couple raise
+their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank displeasure, and Selden
+with his usual quiet smile. The sight of his composure had a disturbing
+effect on Lily; but to be disturbed was in her case to make a more
+brilliant effort at self-possession.
+
+"Dear me, am I late?" she asked, putting a hand in his as he advanced to
+greet her.
+
+"Late for what?" enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. "Not for luncheon,
+certainly--but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?"
+
+"Yes, I had," said Lily confidingly.
+
+"Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely at
+your disposal." Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her antagonist felt
+a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.
+
+"Oh, dear, no--do stay," she said good-humouredly. "I don't in the least
+want to drive you away."
+
+"You're awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden's
+engagements."
+
+The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost on
+its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping to pick
+up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach. The latter's eyes widened
+charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.
+
+"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go to
+church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS it
+started, do you know?"
+
+She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away some
+time since.
+
+"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go to
+church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well, I shall
+have the credit of trying, at any rate--and the advantage of escaping
+part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself, after all!"
+
+And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss Bart
+strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling grace down the
+long perspective of the garden walk.
+
+She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a fact not
+lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway looking after her
+with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is that she was conscious of
+a somewhat keen shock of disappointment. All her plans for the day had
+been built on the assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come
+to Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to find him on
+the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in a situation which
+might well denote that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it
+possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
+acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when she
+never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw
+no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden
+might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of
+town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their
+judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted; competition put
+her on her mettle, and she reflected that Selden's coming, if it did not
+declare him to be still in Mrs. Dorset's toils, showed him to be so
+completely free from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.
+
+These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to
+carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from
+the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to
+sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and
+Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence
+enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude
+except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
+scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
+profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
+rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked;
+the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her
+lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to
+find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a
+vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness
+about her.
+
+Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the
+ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade. As she did so a
+step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.
+
+"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch up with
+you."
+
+She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been sitting
+under that tree for an hour."
+
+"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:
+
+"Well--waiting to see if you would come."
+
+"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the one
+involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should come?"
+
+"If I waited long enough--but you see I had only a limited time to give
+to the experiment."
+
+"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"
+
+"No; by my other engagement."
+
+"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"
+
+"No; but to come home from church with another person."
+
+"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives.
+And is the other person coming home this way?"
+
+Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find out, it
+is my business to get to church before the service is over."
+
+"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case
+the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve
+of driving back in the omnibus."
+
+Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the
+bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in such an
+emergency?" she enquired.
+
+Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you," he
+cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"
+
+"Walking a mile in an hour--you must own that the omnibus would be
+quicker!"
+
+"Ah--but will he find you in the end? That's the only test of success."
+
+They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had
+felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily's
+face changed, and she said: "Well, if it is, he has succeeded."
+
+Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
+toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had
+evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the church-goers had
+thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily's companion looked rapidly
+from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking
+respectfully at Lady Cressida's side with his little sidelong look of
+nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs.
+Wetherall and the Trenors.
+
+"Ah--now I see why you were getting up your Americana!" Selden exclaimed
+with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with which the sally
+was received checked whatever amplifications he had meant to give it.
+
+That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors, or even
+about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden that he had a
+momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number of possibilities; but
+she rose gallantly to the defence of her confusion, by saying, as its
+object approached: "That was why I was waiting for you--to thank you for
+having given me so many points!"
+
+"Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short time," said
+Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart; and while she
+signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he added quickly:
+"Won't you devote your afternoon to it? You know I must be off tomorrow
+morning. We'll take a walk, and you can thank me at your leisure."
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air, and the
+glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which diffused the
+brightness without dulling it.
+
+In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill; but as
+the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long slopes
+beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone of lingering
+summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered trees; then it
+dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling sprays of bramble,
+whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves, the country unrolled
+itself in pastoral distances.
+
+Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the creeping
+glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang it, and the
+shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove. The boles of the
+trees stood well apart, with only a light feathering of undergrowth; the
+path wound along the edge of the wood, now and then looking out on a
+sunlit pasture or on an orchard spangled with fruit.
+
+Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the
+appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the
+fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below
+her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of
+herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the
+nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down
+was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of
+an oak-grove. Two or three red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees,
+and the white wooden spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder
+of the hill; while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran
+between the fields.
+
+"Let us sit here," Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge of
+rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.
+
+Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She sat
+quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes wandering
+peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape. Selden stretched
+himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat against the level
+sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head, which rested against
+the side of the rock. He had no wish to make her talk; her
+quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general hush and harmony of
+things. In his own mind there was only a lazy sense of pleasure, veiling
+the sharp edges of sensation as the September haze veiled the scene at
+their feet. But Lily, though her attitude was as calm as his, was
+throbbing inwardly with a rush of thoughts. There were in her at the
+moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration,
+the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But
+gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed
+to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
+quivered for flight.
+
+She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed
+to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it
+love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts
+and sensations? How much of it was owing to the spell of the perfect
+afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the thought of the dulness she
+had fled from? Lily had no definite experience by which to test the
+quality of her feelings. She had several times been in love with
+fortunes or careers, but only once with a man. That was years ago, when
+she first came out, and had been smitten with a romantic passion for a
+young gentleman named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave
+in his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
+securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest Miss Van
+Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was given to
+telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled this early emotion
+it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only
+point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which
+she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a
+conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance. She had
+not known again till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now
+it was something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
+charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she could put
+her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing them together.
+Though his popularity was of the quiet kind, felt rather than actively
+expressed among his friends, she had never mistaken his inconspicuousness
+for obscurity. His reputed cultivation was generally regarded as a slight
+obstacle to easy intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her
+broad-minded recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam
+in her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she felt
+would have had its distinction in an older society. It was, moreover, one
+of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which lifted his head
+above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark features which, in a land
+of amorphous types, gave him the air of belonging to a more specialized
+race, of carrying the impress of a concentrated past. Expansive persons
+found him a little dry, and very young girls thought him sarcastic; but
+this air of friendly aloofness, as far removed as possible from any
+assertion of personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily's
+interest. Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in
+her taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed to
+her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being able to
+convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever
+met.
+
+It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her to say
+presently, with a laugh: "I have broken two engagements for you today.
+How many have you broken for me?"
+
+"None," said Selden calmly. "My only engagement at Bellomont was with
+you."
+
+She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.
+
+"Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?"
+
+"Of course I did."
+
+Her look deepened meditatively. "Why?" she murmured, with an accent which
+took all tinge of coquetry from the question.
+
+"Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you
+are doing."
+
+"How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?"
+
+Selden smiled. "I don't flatter myself that my coming has deflected your
+course of action by a hair's breadth."
+
+"That's absurd--since, if you were not here, I could obviously not be
+taking a walk with you."
+
+"No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making use of
+your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you
+are using today. It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce
+premeditated effects extemporaneously."
+
+Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense of
+humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his presence as
+part of a very definite effect; or that, at least, was the secret pretext
+she had found for breaking her promise to walk with Mr. Gryce. She had
+sometimes been accused of being too eager--even Judy Trenor had warned
+her to go slowly. Well, she would not be too eager in this case; she
+would give her suitor a longer taste of suspense. Where duty and
+inclination jumped together, it was not in Lily's nature to hold them
+asunder. She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a headache:
+the horrid headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
+church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
+languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her
+hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered rather
+nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the
+future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not
+to expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of
+exposure.
+
+Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him, since
+she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the party who, after
+luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit to the Van Osburghs at
+Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her disinterestedness, and, to escape
+from the threatened vacuity of the afternoon, had taken her advice and
+departed mournfully, in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged
+down the avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
+had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to
+his suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as her
+plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included in it.
+The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the stair and
+strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.
+
+She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at her
+feet.
+
+"I thought, after all, the air might do me good," she explained; and he
+agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
+
+The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and Selden had
+the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of leisure and safety gave
+the last touch of lightness to her spirit. With so much time to talk, and
+no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of
+mental vagrancy.
+
+She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge with a
+touch of resentment.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "why you are always accusing me of
+premeditation."
+
+"I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you had to
+follow a certain line--and if one does a thing at all it is a merit to do
+it thoroughly."
+
+"If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged to
+think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation. But you
+must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I never yield to
+an impulse."
+
+"Ah, but I don't suppose that: haven't I told you that your genius lies
+in converting impulses into intentions?"
+
+"My genius?" she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. "Is there any
+final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven't succeeded."
+
+Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her. "Success--what
+is success? I shall be interested to have your definition."
+
+"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I
+suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"
+
+"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his
+elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of
+success," he said, "is personal freedom."
+
+"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
+
+"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from
+all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
+spirit--that's what I call success."
+
+She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know--I know--it's
+strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."
+
+He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling so rare
+with you?" he said.
+
+She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly sordid, don't
+you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any choice. There was no
+one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit."
+
+"There never is--it's a country one has to find the way to one's self."
+
+"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told me."
+
+"Ah, there are sign-posts--but one has to know how to read them."
+
+"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of eagerness.
+"Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign--and
+yesterday--last evening at dinner--I suddenly saw a little way into your
+republic."
+
+Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had
+found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a
+reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.
+His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have
+been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should
+interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this
+weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on
+her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
+altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm.
+THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and
+the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It
+was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
+spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning
+intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be
+the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
+even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.
+
+"Well," he said, "did it make you want to see more? Are you going to
+become one of us?"
+
+He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand
+toward the case.
+
+"Oh, do give me one--I haven't smoked for days!"
+
+"Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont."
+
+"Yes--but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER; and at
+the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER."
+
+"Ah, then I'm afraid we can't let you into the republic."
+
+"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"
+
+"Not in the least, though I'm bound to say there are not many married
+people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it's as hard for
+rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven."
+
+"That's unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
+conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the
+only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."
+
+"You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to
+have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs
+are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich
+people--they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all
+the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and
+gasp!"
+
+Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.
+
+"It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal of your
+time in the element you disapprove of."
+
+Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried
+to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in
+another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back
+again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your
+friends have lost."
+
+Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that the
+people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and
+not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only
+use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at
+them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
+intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"
+
+"That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is
+that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not
+the critics on the fence. It's just the other way with most shows--the
+audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is
+on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an
+escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes
+the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden
+raised himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
+underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of
+splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it
+is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we're all the
+raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that
+tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society
+like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of
+purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton--he's really too good to be used
+to refurbish anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out
+to discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding it in
+Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"
+
+"Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to
+write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society
+that he is likely to lose them?"
+
+Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our generous ideas
+illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a sufficient condemnation
+of society to find one's self accepting such phraseology? I very nearly
+acquired the jargon at Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter
+the colour of beliefs."
+
+She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
+habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and
+compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory
+where his faiths were formed.
+
+"Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed; "why do you
+call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create
+arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."
+
+"It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D'ETAT and seat
+you on the throne."
+
+"Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the
+threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions--you
+think them unworthy of me!"
+
+Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I think
+them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."
+
+She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible that, if I
+had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better use of them?
+Money stands for all kinds of things--its purchasing quality isn't
+limited to diamonds and motor-cars."
+
+
+"Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by founding a
+hospital."
+
+"But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must think my
+ambitions are good enough for me."
+
+Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am not
+divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you are trying
+to get!"
+
+"Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get them I
+probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath. "What a miserable
+future you foresee for me!"
+
+"Well--have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour rose to
+her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the deep wells of
+feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had produced it.
+
+"Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when you show
+it to me!"
+
+He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat silent,
+while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of the air.
+
+But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do you do
+this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have chosen seem
+hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?"
+
+The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had fallen. He
+himself did not know why he had led their talk along such lines; it was
+the last use he would have imagined himself making of an afternoon's
+solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one of those moments when neither
+seemed to speak deliberately, when an indwelling voice in each called to
+the other across unsounded depths of feeling.
+
+"No, I have nothing to give you instead," he said, sitting up and turning
+so that he faced her. "If I had, it should be yours, you know."
+
+She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than the
+manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he saw that
+for a moment she wept.
+
+It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and drew
+down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she turned on
+him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he said to
+himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.
+
+The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and irony:
+"Isn't it natural that I should try to belittle all the things I can't
+offer you?"
+
+Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with a
+gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which she had
+no claim.
+
+"But you belittle ME, don't you," she returned gently, "in being so sure
+they are the only things I care for?"
+
+Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
+egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: "But you do care for
+them, don't you? And no wishing of mine can alter that."
+
+He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry him,
+that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned on him a
+face sparkling with derision.
+
+"Ah," she cried, "for all your fine phrases you're really as great a
+coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if you hadn't been
+so sure of my answer."
+
+The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden's
+wavering intentions.
+
+"I am not so sure of your answer," he said quietly. "And I do you the
+justice to believe that you are not either."
+
+It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a moment--"Do you
+want to marry me?" she asked.
+
+He broke into a laugh. "No, I don't want to--but perhaps I should if you
+did!"
+
+"That's what I told you--you're so sure of me that you can amuse yourself
+with experiments." She drew back the hand he had regained, and sat
+looking down on him sadly.
+
+"I am not making experiments," he returned. "Or if I am, it is not on you
+but on myself. I don't know what effect they are going to have on me--but
+if marrying you is one of them, I will take the risk."
+
+She smiled faintly. "It would be a great risk, certainly--I have never
+concealed from you how great."
+
+"Ah, it's you who are the coward!" he exclaimed.
+
+She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The soft
+isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed lifted into a
+finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their
+veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to
+the earth.
+
+"It's you who are the coward," he repeated, catching her hands in his.
+
+She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings: he felt
+as though her heart were beating rather with the stress of a long flight
+than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing back with a little smile
+of warning--"I shall look hideous in dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own
+hats," she declared.
+
+They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other like
+adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which
+they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling
+itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser
+blue.
+
+Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect, and
+following the high-road, which wound whiter through the surrounding
+twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.
+
+Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and she
+began to move toward the lane.
+
+"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after dark," she
+said, almost impatiently.
+
+Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to regain
+his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable note of
+dryness: "That was not one of our party; the motor was going the other
+way."
+
+"I know--I know----" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
+twilight. "But I told them I was not well--that I should not go out. Let
+us go down!" she murmured.
+
+Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his
+pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that
+moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered
+hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion
+see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.
+
+She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held
+out the cigarettes to her.
+
+She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned
+forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red
+gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble
+into a smile.
+
+"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she
+might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without
+having time to select the just note. Selden's voice was under better
+control. "Why not?" he returned. "You see I took no risks in being so."
+And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort,
+he added quickly: "Let us go down."
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice,
+in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
+she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.
+
+"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back,
+sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
+indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while
+she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case,
+the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.
+
+"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but I'm sure
+you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to
+let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don't
+suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine
+your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And
+I'm sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even
+Bertha kept her hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and
+you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
+retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known Lawrence
+Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just discovered him?
+If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it--you
+could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you
+Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
+Lawrence's turning up put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her
+think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you
+this trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"
+
+Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
+impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own
+conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's reproachful accents.
+But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence.
+"I only took a day off--I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and
+I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning."
+
+Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its
+weakness.
+
+"He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's run away
+from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him thoroughly."
+
+Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake him!"
+
+Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily, do
+nothing!"
+
+Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean, literally, to
+take the next train. There are ways----" But she did not go on to specify
+them.
+
+Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty of
+them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don't
+deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to
+his mother, and she'll protect him!"
+
+"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
+
+"How you can LAUGH----" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
+soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha
+really told him?"
+
+"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you
+know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose
+she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord Hubert--and there was some
+story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"
+
+"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.
+
+"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
+she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their
+tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity
+comes they remember everything."
+
+Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money
+I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course."
+
+"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
+gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man--she knew
+just what to tell him!"
+
+In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
+friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
+temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
+had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
+people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
+as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
+statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
+thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
+in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was
+certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
+gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's
+words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
+herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
+imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
+poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
+consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
+have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
+of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
+were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
+char-woman. Mrs. Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the
+situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her
+friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
+she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of
+indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had
+driven her out again on those dark seas?
+
+If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was
+the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive
+her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of
+occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in
+which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long
+hours of subjection.
+
+She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm sorry to
+have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have
+some letters for me to answer--let me at least be useful."
+
+She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption
+of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had
+proved herself unfit for higher uses.
+
+The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney
+and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony
+that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady
+Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to
+lunch at a distant country-house. At such moments of diminished interest
+it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on
+this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed
+and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.
+
+She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few of us are
+left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish the men would
+always stop away--it's really much nicer without them. Oh, you don't
+count, George: one doesn't have to talk to one's husband. But I thought
+Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?" she added enquiringly.
+"Didn't he intend to, Judy? He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove
+him away? He is rather shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he
+has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he
+told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you
+doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and
+always has a lot left over to invest!"
+
+Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some one's duty
+to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to
+realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to
+study the laws of his country."
+
+Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the divorce
+laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a
+petition against divorce."
+
+Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing
+glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to
+tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard."
+
+His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed
+with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship that will do for
+him, it's the crew."
+
+"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated a voyage
+with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold."
+
+Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate
+expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at him; I think he's very
+nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a girl who married him would
+always have enough to be comfortable."
+
+She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but
+it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the
+breast of one of her hearers.
+
+Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than
+any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the
+heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her
+mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to
+her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut
+deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no
+one else--not even Judy Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly.
+
+She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered
+request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the
+luncheon-table.
+
+"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher
+that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at
+four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I'm very
+glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him
+rather severely since she's been here, and she is so keen about going to
+fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
+It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her
+alimony is paid by other women's husbands!"
+
+Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
+friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself. Why should
+she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
+elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
+unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
+their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
+married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
+for a married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
+implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
+the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
+private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
+society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
+could of course borrow from her women friends--a hundred here or there,
+at the utmost--but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
+looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
+Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
+were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
+to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations was the
+decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
+without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
+continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
+difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
+necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
+next morning for Richfield.
+
+At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
+unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
+which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
+crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't
+often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
+to do."
+
+The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
+conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
+caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
+of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from
+the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and
+slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.
+
+The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not often I
+have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with
+me."
+
+"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won the race,
+anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent you. Now didn't
+she?"
+
+He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could
+not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth.
+
+"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with; and she's
+quite right," she rejoined.
+
+"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste your time
+on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can
+get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who've kept a free foot. Let
+me light a cigar, will you? I've had a beastly day of it."
+
+He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to
+her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand
+cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with
+a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him
+handsome!
+
+As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you have
+such a lot of tiresome things to do?"
+
+"I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by
+his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a
+confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow has to hustle to keep
+this kind of thing going." He waved his whip in the direction of the
+Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations.
+"Judy has no idea of what she spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep
+the thing going," he interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his
+eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to
+live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
+too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know where I
+should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then. The women all
+think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but to go down town once a
+month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of
+hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain
+to-day, though," he went on after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke
+of business, thanks to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily,
+I wish you'd try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
+going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she'd
+only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him.
+The man is mad to know the people who don't want to know him, and when a
+fellow's in that state there is nothing he won't do for the first woman
+who takes him up."
+
+Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's discourse had
+started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by
+the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She uttered a faint protest.
+
+"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible."
+
+"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner! Well,
+all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him
+now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he'll be in
+it whether we want him or not, and then he won't be giving away a
+half-a-million tip for a dinner."
+
+Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale
+to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first words. This vast
+mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and "deals"--might she not find in
+it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard
+of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more
+notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and
+its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed,
+imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a "tip" from Mr.
+Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
+commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in
+a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.
+
+In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal
+instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of
+explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always
+scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal
+fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of
+inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not
+open.
+
+As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile.
+"The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me a little
+farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day, and it's so restful to
+be away from people, with some one who won't mind if I'm a little dull."
+
+She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
+trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
+himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him--not
+battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would
+have given their boots to get such a look from.
+
+"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is your
+last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of
+everything at bridge last night?"
+
+Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet; and
+bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of the things
+my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I
+don't play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as
+the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about
+my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a
+favour--the very greatest of favours."
+
+Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of
+apprehension that she read in them.
+
+"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage----" He broke off, and she
+guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs.
+Fisher's methods.
+
+"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is, Judy is
+angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."
+
+"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense----" his relief broke through in a
+laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."
+
+"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her.
+But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her
+heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great deal of money."
+
+She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning
+abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
+
+"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce? What--you do?
+Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust me to keep my mouth
+shut--but Gryce--good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring
+yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And
+so you gave him the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the
+first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther
+across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
+discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I
+could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!"
+
+Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that men
+understand a woman's motives better than other women do."
+
+"Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he repeated,
+exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
+
+"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to you,"
+Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage; it's impossible.
+But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost
+entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she
+makes me no regular allowance, and lately I've lost money at cards, and I
+don't dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but
+there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
+my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income
+of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in
+less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know
+if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a
+moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all
+this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can't, at
+present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away
+tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the
+rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
+clothes."
+
+At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was
+heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of
+indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his
+wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart's future, he would
+have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better
+marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of
+discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that
+he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the
+assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
+that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he
+was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
+disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if
+she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and
+approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she
+was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
+find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
+Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
+titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
+much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
+her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
+
+Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
+before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
+her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
+money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
+too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
+understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
+certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
+transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
+general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
+that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
+risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
+within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
+and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.
+
+Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
+repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
+resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
+the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
+herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
+immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
+nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
+shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
+appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
+inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
+consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
+claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
+his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
+which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
+him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
+scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
+degree to which it effaced her debts.
+
+The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
+absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
+this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
+she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
+order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
+disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
+orders without making the payment!
+
+She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
+listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
+seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
+with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
+hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing
+intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
+kindness.
+
+"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
+approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
+with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
+listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he is telling the same ones
+still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
+keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she
+hasn't the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for
+her, and I'm sure she never pays when she loses."
+
+Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
+of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
+There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
+had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
+cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
+Rosedale's "tip," and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
+there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood therefore
+that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
+owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
+demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
+borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
+did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
+of the next "big rise."
+
+The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on the
+occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
+the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
+had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
+attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group. The
+truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
+there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
+pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
+before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
+youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.
+
+The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
+paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple country wedding" to
+which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
+the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
+While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
+fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
+threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
+presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
+apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
+often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
+the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
+mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
+her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
+that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
+possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
+rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
+her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
+could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
+enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
+easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.
+
+A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
+in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
+Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
+large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
+After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
+ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
+weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
+brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
+man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
+imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
+Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
+prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
+her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
+did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
+blunder and bring him once more to her feet.
+
+The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
+for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
+their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
+and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
+his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
+cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
+Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
+the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
+him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
+else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
+luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
+more than it was worth.
+
+"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
+delightful had just happened to you!"
+
+The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
+did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities. Miss
+Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
+there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
+freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
+observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
+grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her wavered
+between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
+acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
+dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
+consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
+occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
+inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
+acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty
+Farish's gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to
+let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
+proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
+
+Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have
+taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was something
+irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no higher pleasures,
+and that one might get as much interest and excitement out of life in a
+cramped flat as in the splendours of the Van Osburgh establishment.
+Today, however, her chirping enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They
+seemed only to throw her own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and
+give a soaring vastness to her scheme of life.
+
+"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else leaves
+the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in her friend's.
+It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental and unenvious interest
+in all the details of a wedding: she was the kind of person who always
+kept her handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a
+box of wedding-cake.
+
+"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered the
+distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van Osburgh's bridal
+spoils. "I always say no one does things better than cousin Grace! Did
+you ever taste anything more delicious than that MOUSSE of lobster with
+champagne sauce? I made up my mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this
+wedding, and just fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence
+Selden heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving
+me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him
+at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
+myself!"
+
+Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
+cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time in such
+an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a vague pleasure.
+
+"Do you see him often?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and then we
+do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of him. He doesn't
+look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled. The dear fellow! I do
+wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so today, but he said he
+didn't care for the really nice ones, and the other kind didn't care for
+him--but that was just his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl
+who WASN'T nice. Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"
+
+They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
+displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught the
+refraction of light from their surfaces--the milky gleam of perfectly
+matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet,
+the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding
+diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied
+art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like
+wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized
+the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and
+refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and
+the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.
+
+"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant--it's as big as a
+dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent short-sightedly
+over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE. What, that horrid man?
+Oh, yes--I remember he's a friend of Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace
+had to ask him here today; but she must rather hate having to let Gwen
+accept such a present from him."
+
+Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of
+Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the
+persons least likely to be encumbered by them.
+
+"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always exchange
+it for something else," she remarked.
+
+"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued. "Do
+look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person who chose it
+must have taken particular pains. What is the name? Percy Gryce? Ah,
+then I'm not surprised!" She smiled significantly as she replaced the
+card. "Of course you've heard that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van
+Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about it--it's quite a romance! He
+met her first at the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's
+just the nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
+money--of course she has plenty of her own--but she's such a quiet
+stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so
+they are exactly suited to each other."
+
+Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed.
+Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her
+brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull
+and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness,
+had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls
+who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love--a mother who knows how to
+contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage
+of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
+cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned,
+may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it
+takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
+safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.
+
+Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of failure.
+Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy Gryce's millions be
+joined to another great fortune, why should this clumsy girl be put in
+possession of powers she would never know how to use?
+
+She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her arm,
+and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of vexation:
+what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had wandered off to
+the next table, and they were alone.
+
+Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
+unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
+undisguised approval.
+
+"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly into
+the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the right moment
+to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and women called each
+other by their Christian names; it was only on Trenor's lips that the
+familiar address had an unpleasant significance.
+
+"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance, "have
+you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean to
+duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for you in my pocket
+that will go a long way in that line!"
+
+Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual, and the
+room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance assured her
+that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of pleasure replaced her
+apprehension.
+
+"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the desire
+not to be overheard.
+
+"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off four thou'
+for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you'll begin to think
+you're a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you won't think poor old
+Gus such an awful ass as some people do."
+
+"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you properly now."
+
+She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
+hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone--and how glad she
+was that they were not! The news filled her with the glow produced by a
+sudden cessation of physical pain. The world was not so stupid and
+blundering after all: now and then a stroke of luck came to the
+unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began to rise: it was
+characteristic of her that one trifling piece of good fortune should give
+wings to all her hopes. Instantly came the reflection that Percy Gryce
+was not irretrievably lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of
+recapturing him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
+have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping
+to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
+countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an
+air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence
+was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of the room.
+
+Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily quickly
+transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of her gratitude
+seemed not to have brought the complete gratification she had meant it to
+give.
+
+"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like the
+chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I thought you
+were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I've hardly laid eyes
+on you for the last month. Why can't you come back to Bellomont this
+evening? We're all alone, and Judy is as cross as two sticks. Do come and
+cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you
+can telephone your maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."
+
+Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish I
+could--but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and I
+must be with her for the next few days."
+
+"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be such pals
+than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he continued with
+unconscious penetration.
+
+"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you say the
+most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would tire of me
+much sooner than Judy--but come and see me at my aunt's the next
+afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet talk, and you
+can tell me how I had better invest my fortune."
+
+It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had absented
+herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other visits to pay; but
+she now began to feel that the reckoning she had thus contrived to evade
+had rolled up interest in the interval.
+
+The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing to
+Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he said:
+"Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a fresh tip every day. But
+there's one thing you might do for me; and that is, just to be a little
+civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to dine when we get to
+town, but I can't induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would
+let me bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
+believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can tell you
+he's a chap it pays to be decent to."
+
+Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words which
+seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an unexpectedly easy
+way of acquitting her debt; and had she not reasons of her own for
+wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?
+
+"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can get a tip
+out of him on my own account."
+
+Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with a look
+which made her change colour.
+
+"I say, you know--you'll please remember he's a blooming bounder," he
+said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window near
+which they had been standing.
+
+The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for space and
+fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where only a few men
+were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while scattered couples
+strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted borders of the
+flower-garden.
+
+As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and she
+found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which his
+nearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.
+They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that
+episode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to be
+less conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than the
+satisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in
+masculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
+reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor,
+and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant
+to rest a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
+Selden's manner always conveyed.
+
+"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be able to
+have a word with you before the special snatches us away. I came with
+Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train, but I am sure
+she is still extracting sentimental solace from the wedding presents. She
+appears to regard their number and value as evidence of the disinterested
+affection of the contracting parties."
+
+There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and as he
+spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and letting his
+eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace, she felt with a
+faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the
+footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her
+vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to
+him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
+diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her
+reply.
+
+"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with
+romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my
+self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions
+were."
+
+The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity. It
+seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.
+
+"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had been the
+means of proving they were more important to you than anything else."
+
+It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden
+obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly,
+like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the
+faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go
+alone!
+
+The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latent
+chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that
+his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood
+to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in a world
+apart with her.
+
+"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she exclaimed
+with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the flow of
+comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the reappearance of Gus
+Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his wake.
+
+"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I have
+been hunting all over for you!"
+
+His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
+detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and the
+idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.
+
+She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful by
+the sense of Selden's surprise that she should number Rosedale among her
+acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued to
+stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smile
+at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the
+privilege of being seen with her.
+
+It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but
+Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene,
+and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to
+exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any
+need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial
+phrases of politeness. Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant
+attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level
+with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
+silence implied.
+
+He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered the
+plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his moustache;
+then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said, with a
+side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a more ripping get-up.
+Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go to see at the
+Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don't go to her too!"
+
+The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she saw in a
+flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In ordinary talk
+they might have passed unheeded; but following on her prolonged pause
+they acquired a special meaning. She felt, without looking, that Selden
+had immediately seized it, and would inevitably connect the allusion with
+her visit to himself. The consciousness increased her irritation against
+Rosedale, but also her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
+propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.
+
+"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
+returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my friends!"
+
+Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this privileged
+circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification, and a knowing
+smile drew up his moustache.
+
+"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the whole
+outfit and win at a canter!"
+
+"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would carry
+me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or some innocent
+drink before we all have to rush for the train."
+
+She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through the
+gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her throbbed with
+the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of the scene.
+
+But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the light
+surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted: she did not
+mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth about Percy Gryce.
+Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty
+withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most
+of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few
+minutes--the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life
+which she most wished him to ignore--increased her longing for shelter,
+for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation
+would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in
+an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.
+
+Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of an
+audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal actors had
+left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily could discover
+neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh. That both should be
+missing struck her with foreboding; and she charmed Mr. Rosedale by
+proposing that they should make their way to the conservatories at the
+farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long
+suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of
+being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off
+as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
+self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen
+with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search.
+The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and
+Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for
+a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came
+upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the
+consciousness of duty performed.
+
+She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the tired
+hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots in a
+kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly fixed, and
+she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture. "My dear Lily, I
+haven't had time for a word with you, and now I suppose you are just off.
+Have you seen Evie? She's been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to
+tell you her little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already.
+The engagement is not to be announced till next week--but you are such a
+friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the first to know
+of their happiness."
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+In Mrs. Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
+therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue
+residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze
+who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey of that
+deserted thoroughfare.
+
+The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the
+domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She "went through" the linen
+and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner
+folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for
+lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield
+up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths
+and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed
+in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.
+
+It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on the
+afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The journey back to
+town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves. Though Evie Van
+Osburgh's engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which
+the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed;
+and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and
+anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of
+innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation
+evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included
+a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in
+the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear
+herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner
+between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
+by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to feel
+the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed
+to a deeper self-disgust.
+
+
+As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a physical
+outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She revolted from
+the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston's black walnut, from the
+slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the mingled odour of sapolio
+and furniture-polish that met her at the door.
+
+The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she was
+arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds. Gathering up
+her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture; and as she did so
+she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same
+situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was
+again descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to
+remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met
+by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar
+circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on
+crimson elbows, examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the
+same apparent reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss
+Bart was on her own ground.
+
+"Don't you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail," she said
+sharply.
+
+The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of excuse,
+she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth across the
+landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter swept by. It was
+insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such creatures about the
+house; and Lily entered her room resolved that the woman should be
+dismissed that evening.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance:
+since early morning she had been shut up with her maid, going over her
+furs, a process which formed the culminating episode in the drama of
+household renovation. In the evening also Lily found herself alone, for
+her aunt, who rarely dined out, had responded to the summons of a Van
+Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
+unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
+turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
+the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
+buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.
+
+She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
+domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
+had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
+that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
+been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
+of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
+time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
+as she had said to Selden--people were tired of her. They would welcome
+her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart. She
+knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story. There were
+moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
+remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
+beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
+herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
+sheds perfume.
+
+Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
+returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
+dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
+Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
+Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
+of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.
+
+Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
+as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
+confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
+a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
+the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
+Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
+manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston
+when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
+dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
+admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in
+the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented
+the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston's temperate career.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her
+excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the
+person who performs them. She greatly preferred the brilliant and
+unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the
+other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that
+the drawing-room should be "done over." But when it came to hunting for
+missing napkins, or helping to decide whether the backstairs needed
+re-carpeting, Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to
+mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
+soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean of
+itself, without extraneous assistance.
+
+Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier--Mrs.
+Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was "company"--Lily seemed to
+watch her own figure retreating down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to
+a middle age like Grace Stepney's. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor
+and her friends she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston;
+whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims
+of others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.
+
+A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty house,
+roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was as though all
+the weariness of the past months had culminated in the vacuity of that
+interminable evening. If only the ring meant a summons from the outer
+world--a token that she was still remembered and wanted!
+
+After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announcement
+that there was a person outside who was asking to see Miss Bart; and on
+Lily's pressing for a more specific description, she added:
+
+"It's Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants."
+
+Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman in
+a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light. The
+glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face and
+the reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.
+Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise.
+
+"Do you wish to see me?" she asked.
+
+"I should like to say a word to you, Miss." The tone was neither
+aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker's errand.
+Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to withdraw beyond
+ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.
+
+She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and closed
+the door when they had entered.
+
+"What is it that you wish?" she enquired.
+
+The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms folded
+in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small parcel wrapped
+in dirty newspaper.
+
+"I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart." She spoke
+the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a
+part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like a
+threat.
+
+"You have found something belonging to me?" she asked, extending her hand.
+
+Mrs. Haffen drew back. "Well, if it comes to that, I guess it's mine as
+much as anybody's," she returned.
+
+Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her visitor's
+manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in certain directions,
+there was nothing in her experience to prepare her for the exact
+significance of the present scene. She felt, however, that it must be
+ended as promptly as possible.
+
+"I don't understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked for
+me?"
+
+The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared to
+answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way back to make a
+beginning, and it was only after a pause that she replied: "My husband
+was janitor to the Benedick till the first of the month; since then he
+can't get nothing to do."
+
+Lily remained silent and she continued: "It wasn't no fault of our own,
+neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for, and we was
+put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had a long sickness
+last winter, and an operation that ate up all we'd put by; and it's hard
+for me and the children, Haffen being so long out of a job."
+
+After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a place for
+her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady's intervention
+with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always getting what she
+wanted that she was used to being appealed to as an intermediary, and,
+relieved of her vague apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional
+formula.
+
+"I am sorry you have been in trouble," she said.
+
+"Oh, that we have, Miss, and it's on'y just beginning. If on'y we'd 'a
+got another situation--but the agent, he's dead against us. It ain't no
+fault of ours, neither, but----"
+
+At this point Lily's impatience overcame her. "If you have anything to
+say to me----" she interposed.
+
+The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.
+
+"Yes, Miss; I'm coming to that," she said. She paused again, with her
+eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When
+we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms;
+leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays. Some of the gentlemen got the
+greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper
+baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers falling over on the floor.
+Maybe havin' so many is how they get so careless. Some of 'em is worse
+than others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
+carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore 'em in little bits in
+summer. But sometimes he'd have so many he'd just bunch 'em together, the
+way the others did, and tear the lot through once--like this."
+
+While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her hand,
+and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table between Miss
+Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn in two; but with a
+rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together and smoothed out the page.
+
+A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the presence
+of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured--the kind of vileness of
+which people whispered, but which she had never thought of as touching
+her own life. She drew back with a motion of disgust, but her withdrawal
+was checked by a sudden discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston's
+chandelier she had recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a
+large disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly
+disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
+pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily's ear as though she had heard them
+spoken.
+
+At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
+understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha Dorset,
+and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was no date, but the
+blackness of the ink proved the writing to be comparatively recent. The
+packet in Mrs. Haffen's hand doubtless contained more letters of the same
+kind--a dozen, Lily conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her
+was short, but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she
+was conscious of reading them, told a long history--a history over which,
+for the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
+shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless "good situations"
+of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the
+volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo
+glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek.
+Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given
+its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for
+having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender
+who is found out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The
+code of Lily's world decreed that a woman's husband should be the only
+judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while she had
+the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man
+of George Dorset's temper there could be no thought of condonation--the
+possessor of his wife's letters could overthrow with a touch the whole
+structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha Dorset's secret
+had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged
+Lily's disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust
+prevailed--all her instinctive resistances, of taste, of training, of
+blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest
+sense was one of personal contamination.
+
+She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible between
+herself and her visitor. "I know nothing of these letters," she said; "I
+have no idea why you have brought them here."
+
+Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. "I'll tell you why, Miss. I brought 'em
+to you to sell, because I ain't got no other way of raising money, and if
+we don't pay our rent by tomorrow night we'll be put out. I never done
+anythin' of the kind before, and if you'd speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr.
+Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on again at the Benedick--I seen you
+talking to Mr. Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr.
+Selden's rooms----"
+
+The blood rushed to Lily's forehead. She understood now--Mrs. Haffen
+supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap of her
+anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but an obscure
+impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden's name had started a new
+train of thought. Bertha Dorset's letters were nothing to her--they might
+go where the current of chance carried them! But Selden was inextricably
+involved in their fate. Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such
+exposure; and in this instance the flash of divination which had carried
+the meaning of the letters to Lily's brain had revealed also that they
+were appeals--repeated and therefore probably unanswered--for the renewal
+of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact that
+the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands would
+convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world holds it least
+pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider where a man of
+Dorset's ticklish balance was concerned.
+
+If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was aware only
+of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued, and that therefore
+she must obtain possession of them. Beyond that her mind did not travel.
+She had, indeed, a quick vision of returning the packet to Bertha Dorset,
+and of the opportunities the restitution offered; but this thought lit up
+abysses from which she shrank back ashamed.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had already
+opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All the letters
+had been pieced together with strips of thin paper. Some were in small
+fragments, the others merely torn in half. Though there were not many,
+thus spread out they nearly covered the table. Lily's glance fell on a
+word here and there--then she said in a low voice: "What do you wish me
+to pay you?"
+
+Mrs. Haffen's face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that the
+young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman to make
+the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than she had
+foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.
+
+But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
+expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price named,
+and after a moment's hesitation, met it by a counter-offer of half the
+amount.
+
+Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
+outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to restore
+them to their wrapping.
+
+"I guess they're worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor has got
+to live as well as the rich," she observed sententiously.
+
+
+Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
+resistance.
+
+"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have offered all I am
+willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
+them."
+
+Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
+know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
+rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
+a word of this commanding young lady's might set in motion.
+
+She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
+that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
+she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
+honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
+letters mustn't go any farther.
+
+Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
+greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones. The
+idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
+that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
+original demand.
+
+She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
+the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
+minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
+her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
+closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.
+
+She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's
+dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
+do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
+them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
+keep them--to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
+their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
+be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
+drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
+lamps, was never lit except when there was company.
+
+Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
+opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
+Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
+trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
+clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
+always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
+kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
+was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
+being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
+
+She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.
+"I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it's
+extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly."
+
+Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the
+glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in
+it.
+
+Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. "My dear, you look tired; I
+suppose it's the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full
+of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us
+about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the CONSOMME: a
+wedding breakfast should always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn't care
+for the bridesmaids' dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
+they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste's, but she says they
+didn't look it. I'm glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade
+of salmon-pink wouldn't have suited you." Mrs. Peniston delighted in
+discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
+part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue
+of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in
+the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
+extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably
+careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed
+to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh's gown, and could not even say
+whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table:
+Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener
+than as a narrator.
+
+"Really, Lily, I don't see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding,
+if you don't remember what happened or whom you saw there. When I was a
+girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went to, and write the
+names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion
+favours till after your uncle's death, when it seemed unsuitable to have
+so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I
+remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van
+Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it's wonderful how she
+notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress
+was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must
+have come from Paquin."
+
+Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
+surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece
+between two malachite vases, passed her lace handkerchief between the
+helmet and its visor.
+
+"I knew it--the parlour-maid never dusts there!" she exclaimed,
+triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
+reseating herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
+best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID cost more
+than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea--a combination of
+sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who
+won't take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa
+at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject's home life--a most
+peculiar arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
+herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things and she
+was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better;
+she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
+Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
+influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in that
+silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has
+been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really
+engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it
+all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven--she had almost
+despaired of marrying Evie."
+
+Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed itself,
+not to the furniture, but to her niece.
+
+"Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you were to
+marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they had stopped
+with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite sure there was an
+engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left unexpectedly one morning,
+they all thought he had rushed to town for the ring."
+
+Lily rose and moved toward the door.
+
+"I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed," she said; and Mrs.
+Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel sustaining
+the late Mr. Peniston's crayon-portrait was not exactly in line with the
+sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded brow to her kiss.
+
+In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the grate.
+It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at least she
+could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her aunt's
+disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however, but dropping
+into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was large and
+comfortably-furnished--it was the envy and admiration of poor Grace
+Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious
+appointments of the guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily's existence
+were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
+bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston's bedroom, and
+the magenta "flock" wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early 'sixties,
+was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had
+tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches,
+in the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
+surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as
+she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the
+setting she had pictured for herself--an apartment which should surpass
+the complicated luxury of her friends' surroundings by the whole extent
+of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior;
+in which every tint and line should combine to enhance her beauty and
+give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical
+ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
+the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle.
+
+Her aunt's words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
+vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding her up
+to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of their little
+group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than any other
+sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon which could flay
+its victims without the shedding of blood. Her cheek burned at the
+recollection, and she rose and caught up the letters. She no longer meant
+to destroy them: that intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion
+of Mrs. Peniston's words.
+
+Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed
+the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and
+deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a
+flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of
+buying them.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or two
+notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to Bellomont;
+but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to remain with her
+aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of her solitary existence
+with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement of spending her
+newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the days.
+
+All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in, and
+whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting aside a
+part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of the risks of the
+opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to feel that, for a few
+months at least, she would be independent of her friends' bounty, that
+she could show herself abroad without wondering whether some penetrating
+eye would detect in her dress the traces of Judy Trenor's refurbished
+splendour. The fact that the money freed her temporarily from all minor
+obligations obscured her sense of the greater one it represented, and
+having never before known what it was to command so large a sum, she
+lingered delectably over the amusement of spending it.
+
+It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she had spent
+an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most complicated
+elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered the same
+establishment with the modest object of having her watch repaired. Lily
+was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to defer the purchase of
+the dressing-case till she should receive the bill for her new
+opera-cloak, and the resolve made her feel much richer than when she had
+entered the shop. In this mood of self-approval she had a sympathetic eye
+for others, and she was struck by her friend's air of dejection.
+
+Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting of a
+struggling charity in which she was interested. The object of the
+association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a reading-room and
+other modest distractions, where young women of the class employed in
+down town offices might find a home when out of work, or in need of rest,
+and the first year's financial report showed so deplorably small a
+balance that Miss Farish, who was convinced of the urgency of the work,
+felt proportionately discouraged by the small amount of interest it
+aroused. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily,
+and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's philanthropic
+efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast
+between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty's
+"cases." These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps pretty, some
+not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself
+leading such a life as theirs--a life in which achievement seemed as
+squalid as failure--and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
+price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing out her
+little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the amount into Miss
+Farish's hand.
+
+The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
+moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a
+person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing
+good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her
+horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy. Moreover,
+by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of
+generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in
+which she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish's surprise and
+gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense
+of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.
+
+About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend the
+Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation was one
+which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready response, for the
+party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was ostensibly given by a lady of
+obscure origin and indomitable social ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily
+had hitherto avoided. Now, however, she was disposed to coincide with
+Mrs. Fisher's view, that it didn't matter who gave the party, as long as
+things were well done; and doing things well (under competent direction)
+was Mrs. Wellington Bry's strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
+as "Welly" Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had already
+sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to her
+determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry Fisher, she
+was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing herself entirely
+to that lady's guidance. Everything, accordingly, was well done, for
+there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher's prodigality when she was not spending
+her own money, and as she remarked to her pupil, a good cook was the best
+introduction to society. If the company was not as select as the CUISINE,
+the Welly Brys at least had the satisfaction of figuring for the first
+time in the society columns in company with one or two noticeable names;
+and foremost among these was of course Miss Bart's. The young lady was
+treated by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the
+mood when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
+Bry's admiration was a mirror in which Lily's self-complacency recovered
+its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those
+which will sustain the weight of human vanity; and the sense of being of
+importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the
+gratifying consciousness of power. If these people paid court to her it
+proved that she was still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired;
+and she was not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her
+fineness, in developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.
+
+Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware from
+the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp cold and
+hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the influences of the
+winter woods. She returned to town in a glow of rejuvenation, conscious
+of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a fresh elasticity in her muscles. The
+future seemed full of a vague promise, and all her apprehensions were
+swept out of sight on the buoyant current of her mood.
+
+A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise of a
+visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential hour when the
+tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly expectancy; and his
+manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to the intimacy of the occasion.
+
+Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her lucky
+speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but there was
+something in the quality of his geniality which chilled her own, and she
+was conscious of marking each step in their acquaintance by a fresh
+blunder.
+
+Mr. Rosedale--making himself promptly at home in an adjoining easy-chair,
+and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: "You ought to go to my
+man for something really good"--appeared totally unconscious of the
+repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness behind the urn. It was
+perhaps her very manner of holding herself aloof that appealed to his
+collector's passion for the rare and unattainable. He gave, at any rate,
+no sign of resenting it and seemed prepared to supply in his own manner
+all the ease that was lacking in hers.
+
+His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box on the
+opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively: "Mrs. Fisher
+is coming, and I've secured a tremendous admirer of yours, who'll never
+forgive me if you don't accept."
+
+As Lily's silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he added with
+a confidential smile: "Gus Trenor has promised to come to town on
+purpose. I fancy he'd go a good deal farther for the pleasure of seeing
+you."
+
+Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful enough
+to hear her name coupled with Trenor's, and on Rosedale's lips the
+allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.
+
+"The Trenors are my best friends--I think we should all go a long way to
+see each other," she said, absorbing herself in the preparation of fresh
+tea.
+
+Her visitor's smile grew increasingly intimate. "Well, I wasn't thinking
+of Mrs. Trenor at the moment--they say Gus doesn't always, you know."
+Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right note, he added,
+with a well-meant effort at diversion: "How's your luck been going in
+Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a nice little pile for you
+last month."
+
+Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that her
+hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady them; but
+her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid the tremor might
+communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke, however, it was in a
+tone of perfect lightness.
+
+"Ah, yes--I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor, who
+helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks instead of a
+mortgage, as my aunt's agent wanted me to do; and as it happened, I made
+a lucky 'turn'--is that what you call it? For you make a great many
+yourself, I believe."
+
+She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her attitude,
+and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance and manner, a
+step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct always nerved her
+to successful dissimulation, and it was not the first time she had used
+her beauty to divert attention from an inconvenient topic.
+
+When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
+acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having comported
+himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He had always believed
+he had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt manner
+in which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had "come into line,"
+confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Her
+way of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a
+tribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The
+girl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
+advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage of
+her nervousness.
+
+He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible that
+Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With all his faults,
+Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions, and was the less likely to
+overstep them because they were so purely instinctive. But Lily recalled
+with a pang that there were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided
+to her, Gus "talked foolishly": in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word
+had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
+shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit
+enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not
+uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of
+supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general
+dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane,
+the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial
+conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions
+with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr.
+Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him
+with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
+flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice
+to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt of the
+expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening night of the
+opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised to take him up that
+winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of being first in the field.
+
+For a day or two after Rosedale's visit, Lily's thoughts were dogged by
+the consciousness of Trenor's shadowy claim, and she wished she had a
+clearer notion of the exact nature of the transaction which seemed to
+have put her in his power; but her mind shrank from any unusual
+application, and she was always helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover
+she had not seen Trenor since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in
+his continued absence the trace of Rosedale's words was soon effaced by
+other impressions.
+
+When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
+completely vanished that the sight of Trenor's ruddy countenance in the
+back of Mr. Rosedale's box filled her with a sense of pleasant
+reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity of
+appearing as Rosedale's guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and it was a
+relief to find herself supported by any one of her own set--for Mrs.
+Fisher's social habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify
+Miss Bart's.
+
+To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty in
+public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of dress, the
+insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the general stream of
+admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to
+be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength
+and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one's self
+lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
+counterpart of genius!
+
+All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happy
+shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, the
+cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. But
+brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt
+to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still
+performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If
+Lily's poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought
+that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor,
+the latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight of
+these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily look
+smarter in her life, that there wasn't a woman in the house who showed
+off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the
+opportunity of making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of
+gazing at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.
+
+It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the back of
+the box, where they found themselves alone between two acts, Trenor said,
+without preamble, and in a tone of sulky authority: "Look here, Lily, how
+is a fellow ever to see anything of you? I'm in town three or four days
+in the week, and you know a line to the club will always find me, but you
+don't seem to remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip
+out of me."
+
+The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any
+easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment
+for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows
+by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.
+
+"I'm very much flattered by your wanting to see me," she returned,
+essaying lightness instead, "but, unless you have mislaid my address, it
+would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt's--in fact, I
+rather expected you to look me up there."
+
+If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a
+failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows
+that made him look his dullest when he was angry: "Hang going to your
+aunt's, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps
+talking to you! You know I'm not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw--I'd
+always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on. But why
+can't we go off somewhere on a little lark together--a nice quiet little
+expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the
+station?"
+
+He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she
+fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on
+his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.
+
+The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
+tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: "I
+don't see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not
+always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what
+afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice
+quiet talk."
+
+"Hang talking! That's what you always say," returned Trenor, whose
+expletives lacked variety. "You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh
+wedding--but the plain English of it is that, now you've got what you
+wanted out of me, you'd rather have any other fellow about."
+
+His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with
+annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive
+hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Gus; I can't let you talk to me in that ridiculous
+way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn't we take a walk in the
+Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it's amusing to be rustic in
+town, and if you like I'll meet you there, and we'll go and feed the
+squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola."
+
+She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took
+the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.
+
+"All right, then: that's a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three
+o'clock, at the end of the Mall. I'll be there sharp, remember; you won't
+go back on me, Lily?"
+
+But to Miss Bart's relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by
+the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
+
+Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on
+the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at
+Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled
+the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom
+the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and
+distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions.
+But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily's intuitions sent out
+thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she
+was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the
+trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to
+him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
+kindness.
+
+"Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling," he began
+complainingly. "Not a shade of difference between this year and last,
+except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven't got
+new voices. My wife's musical, you know--puts me through a course of this
+every winter. It isn't so bad on Italian nights--then she comes late, and
+there's time to digest. But when they give Wagner we have to rush
+dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable--asphyxia in
+front and pleurisy in the back. There's Trenor leaving the box without
+drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don't make any
+difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you'd wonder why
+he's alive; I suppose he's leather inside too.--But I came to say that my
+wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven's
+sake say yes. She's got a lot of bores coming--intellectual ones, I mean;
+that's her new line, you know, and I'm not sure it ain't worse than the
+music. Some of 'em have long hair, and they start an argument with the
+soup, and don't notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is
+the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton
+brings them to the house--he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he
+are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of 'em if
+she chose, and I don't blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I
+say is: 'Don't let me see 'em eat!'"
+
+The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of
+pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing
+surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont
+episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a
+start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died
+out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST
+INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the
+apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset's letters, she might have
+continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession
+had fed her resentment to satiety.
+
+She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie an
+escape from Trenor's importunities.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning. Fifth
+Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging upward to the
+fashionable quarters about the Park, where illuminated windows and
+outspread awnings betokened the usual routine of hospitality. Other
+tributary currents crossed the mainstream, bearing their freight to the
+theatres, restaurants or opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded
+watch-tower of her upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the
+chronic volume of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward
+a Van Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
+that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry's.
+
+Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as keenly
+as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she
+enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who
+take part must proverbially forego. No one could have kept a more
+accurate record of social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring
+finger on the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
+extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special
+memory for the vicissitudes of the "new people" who rose to the surface
+with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or
+landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers; and she was apt
+to display a remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate,
+so that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost always
+able to say to Grace Stepney--the recipient of her prophecies--that she
+had known exactly what would happen.
+
+This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as that in
+which everybody "felt poor" except the Welly Brys and Mr. Simon Rosedale.
+It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where prices fell in accordance
+with that peculiar law which proves railway stocks and bales of cotton to
+be more sensitive to the allotment of executive power than many estimable
+citizens trained to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes
+supposed to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
+dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion
+sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito, general
+entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners
+became the fashion.
+
+But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of
+the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any
+magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the
+golden coach. The mere fact of growing richer at a time when most
+people's investments are shrinking, is calculated to attract envious
+attention; and according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale
+had found the secret of performing this miracle.
+
+Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and there
+was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the victims of
+the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had made the same
+number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue, filled a
+picture-gallery with old masters, entertained all New York in it, and
+been smuggled out of the country between a trained nurse and a doctor,
+while his creditors mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests
+explained to each other that they had dined with him only because they
+wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
+career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his
+race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was
+prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season afforded him an
+unusual opportunity to shine, and he set about with patient industry to
+form a background for his growing glory. Mrs. Fisher was of immense
+service to him at this period. She had set off so many newcomers on the
+social stage that she was like one of those pieces of stock scenery which
+tell the experienced spectator exactly what is going to take place. But
+Mr. Rosedale wanted, in the long run, a more individual environment. He
+was sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never have
+credited him with perceiving, because he had no corresponding variations
+of manner; and it was becoming more and more clear to him that Miss Bart
+herself possessed precisely the complementary qualities needed to round
+off his social personality.
+
+Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston's vision.
+Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to overlook the MINUTIAE
+of the foreground, and she was much more likely to know where Carry
+Fisher had found the Welly Brys' CHEF for them, than what was happening
+to her own niece. She was not, however, without purveyors of information
+ready to supplement her deficiencies. Grace Stepney's mind was like a
+kind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn
+by a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
+inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how many
+trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney's head. She
+was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed
+that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for
+brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state. She knew that
+Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she
+inspired the same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a
+Gerty Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.
+
+In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they differed
+from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss Farish's heart was a
+fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney's a precise register of facts
+as manifested in their relation to herself. She had sensibilities which,
+to Lily, would have seemed comic in a person with a freckled nose and red
+eyelids, who lived in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston's
+drawing-room; but poor Grace's limitations gave them a more concentrated
+inner life, as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser
+efflorescence. She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did
+not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant, but
+because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less mortifying to
+believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to
+assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. Even such
+scant civilities as Lily accorded to Mr. Rosedale would have made Miss
+Stepney her friend for life; but how could she foresee that such a friend
+was worth cultivating? How, moreover, can a young woman who has never
+been ignored measure the pang which this injury inflicts? And, lastly,
+how could Lily, accustomed to choose between a pressure of engagements,
+guess that she had mortally offended Miss Stepney by causing her to be
+excluded from one of Mrs. Peniston's infrequent dinner-parties?
+
+Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense of family
+obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their honeymoon she
+felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room lamps and extract
+her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston's rare
+entertainments were preceded by days of heart-rending vacillation as to
+every detail of the feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern
+of the table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary
+discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as
+the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in it. For a week
+the prospect had lighted up Miss Stepney's colourless existence; then she
+had been given to understand that it would be more convenient to have her
+another day. Miss Stepney knew exactly what had happened. Lily, to whom
+family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her
+aunt that a dinner of "smart" people would be much more to the taste of
+the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her niece
+in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce Grace's exile.
+After all, Grace could come any other day; why should she mind being put
+off?
+
+It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other day--and
+because she knew her relations were in the secret of her unoccupied
+evenings--that this incident loomed gigantically on her horizon. She was
+aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and dull resentment was turned
+to active animosity.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the dinner,
+laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+"Gus Trenor?--Lily and Gus Trenor?" she said, growing so suddenly pale
+that her visitor was almost alarmed.
+
+"Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don't mean . . ."
+
+"I don't know what you DO mean," said Mrs. Peniston, with a frightened
+quiver in her small fretful voice. "Such things were never heard of in my
+day. And my own niece! I'm not sure I understand you. Do people say he's
+in love with her?"
+
+Mrs. Peniston's horror was genuine. Though she boasted an unequalled
+familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she had the innocence
+of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a part of "history," and to
+whom it never occurs that the scandals she reads of in lesson-hours may
+be repeating themselves in the next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her
+imagination shrouded, like the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of
+course, that society was "very much changed," and that many women her
+mother would have thought "peculiar" were now in a position to be
+critical about their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils of
+divorce with her rector, and had felt thankful at times that Lily was
+still unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could attach to a young
+girl's name, above all that it could be lightly coupled with that of a
+married man, was so new to her that she was as much aghast as if she had
+been accused of leaving her carpets down all summer, or of violating any
+of the other cardinal laws of housekeeping.
+
+Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel the
+superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was really pitiable
+to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston! She smiled at the
+latter's question. "People always say unpleasant things--and certainly
+they're a great deal together. A friend of mine met them the other
+afternoon in the Park--quite late, after the lamps were lit. It's a pity
+Lily makes herself so conspicuous."
+
+"CONSPICUOUS!" gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her voice
+to mitigate the horror. "What sort of things do they say? That he means
+to get a divorce and marry her?"
+
+Grace Stepney laughed outright. "Dear me, no! He would hardly do that.
+It--it's a flirtation--nothing more."
+
+"A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to tell me
+that, with Lily's looks and advantages, she could find no better use for
+her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost old enough to be her
+father?" This argument had such a convincing ring that it gave Mrs.
+Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up her work, while she waited for
+Grace Stepney to rally her scattered forces.
+
+But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. "That's the worst of
+it--people say she isn't wasting her time! Every one knows, as you say,
+that Lily is too handsome and--and charming--to devote herself to a man
+like Gus Trenor unless--"
+
+"Unless?" echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath nervously. It was
+agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to the verge of
+anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar with the classic drama
+to have recalled in advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially
+received, but she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a
+reduced wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To
+the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more
+personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to
+boast of her niece's charms.
+
+"Unless," said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned emphasis,
+"unless there are material advantages to be gained by making herself
+agreeable to him."
+
+She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly that
+Mrs. Peniston's black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would have been
+hers at the end of the season.
+
+Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same idea
+had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath her dignity
+to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who wore her old
+clothes.
+
+"If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations," she
+said coldly, "you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than
+just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large dinner."
+
+The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney's last scruples. "I
+don't know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling you
+about Lily. I was sure I shouldn't get any thanks for it," she returned
+with a flare of temper. "But I have some family feeling left, and as you
+are the only person who has any authority over Lily, I thought you ought
+to know what is being said of her."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Peniston, "what I complain of is that you haven't told
+me yet what IS being said."
+
+"I didn't suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say that Gus
+Trenor pays her bills."
+
+"Pays her bills--her bills?" Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. "I can't
+imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has her own
+income--and I provide for her very handsomely--"
+
+"Oh, we all know that," interposed Miss Stepney drily. "But Lily wears a
+great many smart gowns--"
+
+"I like her to be well-dressed--it's only suitable!"
+
+"Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides."
+
+Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this point; but
+Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She was like the
+stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must be annihilated to be
+convinced.
+
+"Gambling debts? Lily?" Mrs. Peniston's voice shook with anger and
+bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of her
+mind. "What do you mean by her gambling debts?"
+
+"Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily's set one is liable to
+lose a great deal--and I don't suppose Lily always wins."
+
+"Who told you that my niece played cards for money?"
+
+"Mercy, cousin Julia, don't look at me as if I were trying to turn you
+against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs. Gryce told
+me herself that it was her gambling that frightened Percy Gryce--it seems
+he was really taken with her at first. But, of course, among Lily's
+friends it's quite the custom for girls to play for money. In fact,
+people are inclined to excuse her on that account----"
+
+"To excuse her for what?"
+
+"For being hard up--and accepting attentions from men like Gus
+Trenor--and George Dorset----"
+
+Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. "George Dorset? Is there any one else? I
+should like to know the worst, if you please."
+
+"Don't put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a good deal
+with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her--but of course that's only
+natural. And I'm sure there is no truth in the horrid things people say;
+but she HAS been spending a great deal of money this winter. Evie Van
+Osburgh was at Celeste's ordering her trousseau the other day--yes, the
+marriage takes place next month--and she told me that Celeste showed her
+the most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And people
+say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I'm
+sure I'm sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness."
+
+Mrs. Peniston's genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney
+with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect of succeeding to
+the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason have generally some
+crack through which suspicion filters, and her visitor's insinuations did
+not glide off as easily as she had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked
+scenes, and her determination to avoid them had always led her to hold
+herself aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls had
+not been supposed to require close supervision. They were generally
+assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and
+marriage, and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural
+guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator's suddenly
+joining in a game. There had of course been "fast" girls even in Mrs.
+Peniston's early experience; but their fastness, at worst, was understood
+to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which there could be no
+graver charge than that of being "unladylike." The modern fastness
+appeared synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was
+as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the drawing-room:
+it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to admit.
+
+She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had heard,
+or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of discreet
+interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and a scene, in the
+shaken state of Mrs. Peniston's nerves, with the effects of her dinner
+not worn off, and her mind still tremulous with new impressions, was a
+risk she deemed it her duty to avoid. But there remained in her thoughts
+a settled deposit of resentment against her niece, all the denser because
+it was not to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible
+of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the
+charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.
+Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the
+house, and she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated
+furniture.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her
+critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had
+a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another,
+without ever perceiving the right road till it was too late to take it.
+
+Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not imagined
+that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money for her would
+ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in itself still seemed
+harmless enough; only it was a fertile source of harmful complications.
+As she exhausted the amusement of spending the money these complications
+became more pressing, and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in
+tracing the causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the
+thought that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
+This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of friendliness
+between the two women. Lily's visit to the Dorsets had resulted, for
+both, in the discovery that they could be of use to each other; and the
+civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its
+antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in
+a new sentimental experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher's late property, Ned
+Silverton, was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had
+once remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband's
+attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his
+self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather these were
+especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy
+Gryce stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset's humours, and if
+the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her
+situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.
+
+Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such difficulties on
+the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy Trenor's lavish impulses,
+and Dorset's admiration was not likely to express itself in financial
+"tips," even had Lily cared to renew her experiences in that line. What
+she required, for the moment, of the Dorsets' friendship, was simply its
+social sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but
+this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set
+such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a
+married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her
+opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk in
+the Park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and since his
+marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the form of the
+sentimental small-talk which doubles upon itself like the paths in a
+maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led
+back to the same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually
+losing control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
+mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been somewhat
+heavily "touched" by the fall in stocks; his household expenses weighed
+on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all sides, a sullen opposition to
+his wishes, instead of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open, and
+descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but preferring
+the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the restrictions of a
+dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged Lily to return to
+Bellomont, and the first time they met in town Lily fancied there was a
+shade of coldness in her manner. Was it merely the expression of her
+displeasure at Miss Bart's neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached
+her? The latter contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a
+sense of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere,
+it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity
+of her friend's affection, though it sometimes showed itself in
+self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from any
+risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly conscious of
+the way in which such an estrangement would react on herself. The fact
+that Gus Trenor was Judy's husband was at times Lily's strongest reason
+for disliking him, and for resenting the obligation under which he had
+placed her. To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New
+Year, "proposed" herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in
+advance that the presence of a large party would protect her from too
+great assiduity on Trenor's part, and his wife's telegraphic "come by all
+means" seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.
+
+Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always prevailed
+over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her hostess's manner.
+Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the experiment of coming to
+Bellomont was destined not to be successful. The party was made up of
+what Mrs. Trenor called "poky people"--her generic name for persons who
+did not play bridge--and, it being her habit to group all such
+obstructionists in one class, she usually invited them together,
+regardless of their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an
+irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in common than
+their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group
+lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in this
+case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed boredom of their
+host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to
+Lily to fuse the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a
+service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her accustomed
+zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts.
+If Mrs. Trenor's manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a
+faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic
+allusion to "your friends the Wellington Brys," or to "the little Jew who
+has bought the Greiner house--some one told us you knew him, Miss
+Bart,"--showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of
+society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the
+right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The indication was
+a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have smiled at it, trusting to
+the charm of her personality to dispel any prejudice against her. But now
+she had grown more sensitive to criticism and less confident in her power
+of disarming it. She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont
+permitted themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
+they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind her
+back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor's manner should seem to
+justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for avoiding him,
+and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in every purpose which
+had taken her there.
+
+In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had the
+happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly Brys, after
+much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly acquired friends, had
+decided on the bold move of giving a general entertainment. To attack
+society collectively, when one's means of approach are limited to a few
+acquaintances, is like advancing into a strange country with an
+insufficient number of scouts; but such rash tactics have sometimes led
+to brilliant victories, and the Brys had determined to put their fate to
+the touch. Mrs. Fisher, to whom they had entrusted the conduct of the
+affair, had decided that TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music were the
+two baits most likely to attract the desired prey, and after prolonged
+negotiations, and the kind of wire-pulling in which she was known to
+excel, she had induced a dozen fashionable women to exhibit themselves in
+a series of pictures which, by a farther miracle of persuasion, the
+distinguished portrait painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed upon to
+organize.
+
+Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth's guidance her
+vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than
+dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal of
+draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights and shadows.
+Her dramatic instinct was roused by the choice of subjects, and the
+gorgeous reproductions of historic dress stirred an imagination which
+only visual impressions could reach. But keenest of all was the
+exhilaration of displaying her own beauty under a new aspect: of showing
+that her loveliness was no mere fixed quality, but an element shaping all
+emotions to fresh forms of grace.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's measures had been well-taken, and society, surprised in a
+dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs. Bry's hospitality. The
+protesting minority were forgotten in the throng which abjured and came;
+and the audience was almost as brilliant as the show.
+
+Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
+inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom that a
+man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long since learned
+that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small group of the
+like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and was not insensible
+to the part money plays in their production: all he asked was that the
+very rich should live up to their calling as stage-managers, and not
+spend their money in a dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be
+charged with doing. Their recently built house, whatever it might lack as
+a frame for domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the display of a
+festal assemblage as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian
+architects improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of
+improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so
+rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the
+marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat one's self in
+one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it was not painted
+against the wall.
+
+Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself, from
+an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank enjoyment. The
+company, in obedience to the decorative instinct which calls for fine
+clothes in fine surroundings, had dressed rather with an eye to Mrs.
+Bry's background than to herself. The seated throng, filling the immense
+room without undue crowding, presented a surface of rich tissues and
+jewelled shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and
+the flushed splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of the
+room a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch curtained with
+folds of old damask; but in the pause before the parting of the folds
+there was little thought of what they might reveal, for every woman who
+had accepted Mrs. Bry's invitation was engaged in trying to find out how
+many of her friends had done the same.
+
+Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that indiscriminate and
+uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss Bart's finer perceptions. It
+may be that Selden's nearness had something to do with the quality of his
+cousin's pleasure; but Miss Farish was so little accustomed to refer her
+enjoyment of such scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely
+conscious of a deeper sense of contentment.
+
+"Wasn't it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course it would never
+have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list, and I should have
+been so sorry to miss seeing it all--and especially Lily herself. Some
+one told me the ceiling was by Veronese--you would know, of course,
+Lawrence. I suppose it's very beautiful, but his women are so dreadfully
+fat. Goddesses? Well, I can only say that if they'd been mortals and had
+to wear corsets, it would have been better for them. I think our women
+are much handsomer. And this room is wonderfully becoming--every one
+looks so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George
+Dorset's pearls--I suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent of our
+Girls' Club for a year. Not that I ought to complain about the club;
+every one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you that Lily had
+given us three hundred dollars? Wasn't it splendid of her? And then she
+collected a lot of money from her friends--Mrs. Bry gave us five hundred,
+and Mr. Rosedale a thousand. I wish Lily were not so nice to Mr.
+Rosedale, but she says it's no use being rude to him, because he doesn't
+see the difference. She really can't bear to hurt people's feelings--it
+makes me so angry when I hear her called cold and conceited! The girls at
+the club don't call her that. Do you know she has been there with me
+twice?--yes, Lily! And you should have seen their eyes! One of them said
+it was as good as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat
+there, and laughed and talked with them--not a bit as if she were being
+CHARITABLE, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did. They've
+been asking ever since when she's coming back; and she's promised
+me----oh!"
+
+Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of the curtain on
+the first TABLEAU--a group of nymphs dancing across flower-strewn sward
+in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend
+for their effect not only on the happy disposal of lights and the
+delusive-interposition of layers of gauze, but on a corresponding
+adjustment of the mental vision. To unfurnished minds they remain, in
+spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but
+to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary
+world between fact and imagination. Selden's mind was of this order: he
+could yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
+spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry's TABLEAUX wanted none of the qualities
+which go to the producing of such illusions, and under Morpeth's
+organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other with the rhythmic march
+of some splendid frieze, in which the fugitive curves of living flesh and
+the wandering light of young eyes have been subdued to plastic harmony
+without losing the charm of life.
+
+The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had been
+cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No one, for
+instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry Fisher, with her
+short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of her eyes, the
+provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant Miss Smedden from
+Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous curves of Titian's Daughter,
+lifting her gold salver laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of
+rippled hair and rich brocade, and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed
+the frailer Dutch type, with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes and
+lashes, made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a
+curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar
+of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and
+marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians,
+lounging by a fountain in a sunlit glade.
+
+Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in Selden,
+leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even Gerty Farish's
+running commentary--"Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson looks!" or: "That must be
+Kate Corby, to the right there, in purple"--did not break the spell of
+the illusion. Indeed, so skilfully had the personality of the actors been
+subdued to the scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of
+the audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
+suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly the
+portrait of Miss Bart.
+
+Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of personality--the
+unanimous "Oh!" of the spectators was a tribute, not to the brush-work of
+Reynolds's "Mrs. Lloyd" but to the flesh and blood loveliness of Lily
+Bart. She had shown her artistic intelligence in selecting a type so like
+her own that she could embody the person represented without ceasing to
+be herself. It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into,
+Reynolds's canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams
+of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a splendid
+setting--she had thought for a moment of representing Tiepolo's
+Cleopatra--had yielded to the truer instinct of trusting to her
+unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a picture without
+distracting accessories of dress or surroundings. Her pale draperies,
+and the background of foliage against which she stood, served only to
+relieve the long dryad-like curves that swept upward from her poised foot
+to her lifted arm. The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of
+soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden
+always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
+her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to
+see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her
+little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of
+which her beauty was a part.
+
+"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there isn't
+a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to know it!"
+
+These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
+Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden's shoulder
+whenever the parting of the curtains presented any exceptional
+opportunity for the study of the female outline, affected their hearer in
+an unexpected way. It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily's
+beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of the comments had
+imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of
+indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the
+standards by which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban
+for a judgment on Miranda?
+
+In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole
+tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all
+that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him
+from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where
+he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again.
+
+He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. "Wasn't she too
+beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple dress? It
+makes her look like the real Lily--the Lily I know."
+
+He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he corrected;
+and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding, exclaimed joyfully:
+"I'll tell her that! She always says you dislike her."
+
+The performance over, Selden's first impulse was to seek Miss Bart.
+During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX, the actors
+had seated themselves here and there in the audience, diversifying its
+conventional appearance by the varied picturesqueness of their dress.
+Lily, however, was not among them, and her absence served to protract the
+effect she had produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see
+her too soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
+detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding,
+and on his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however, he
+knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her side; and
+though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither it would, without
+making an immediate effort to reach her, his procrastination was not due
+to any lingering resistance, but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in
+the sense of complete surrender.
+
+Lily had not an instant's doubt as to the meaning of the murmur greeting
+her appearance. No other tableau had been received with that precise note
+of approval: it had obviously been called forth by herself, and not by
+the picture she impersonated. She had feared at the last moment that she
+was risking too much in dispensing with the advantages of a more
+sumptuous setting, and the completeness of her triumph gave her an
+intoxicating sense of recovered power. Not caring to diminish the
+impression she had produced, she held herself aloof from the audience
+till the movement of dispersal before supper, and thus had a second
+opportunity of showing herself to advantage, as the throng poured slowly
+into the empty drawing-room where she was standing.
+
+She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed itself as
+the circulation became general, and the individual comments on her
+success were a delightful prolongation of the collective applause. At
+such moments she lost something of her natural fastidiousness, and cared
+less for the quality of the admiration received than for its quantity.
+Differences of personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in
+which her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
+approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning on Ned
+Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of capturing for
+himself.
+
+Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher, as
+whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the group
+before Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two of the men
+wandered off in search of their partners for supper, and the others,
+noticing Selden's approach, gave way to him in accordance with the tacit
+freemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he
+reached her; and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the
+satisfaction of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen
+as it rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
+felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced. She
+read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation of her
+triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she
+cared to be beautiful.
+
+Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in silence,
+and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but against the tide
+which was setting thither. The faces about her flowed by like the
+streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was leading
+her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the long
+suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden.
+Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent
+dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the
+depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
+lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash
+of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might
+have been blown across a sleeping lake.
+
+Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a
+part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them
+to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the
+boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude
+about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it
+together. At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so
+that her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of the
+branches. Selden followed her, and still without speaking they seated
+themselves on a bench beside the fountain.
+
+Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a child.
+"You never speak to me--you think hard things of me," she murmured.
+
+"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.
+
+"Then why do we never see each other? Why can't we be friends? You
+promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as though the
+words were drawn from her unwillingly.
+
+"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a low
+voice.
+
+She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion of a
+flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips touched. She drew back and
+rose from her seat. Selden rose too, and they stood facing each other.
+Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a moment against her cheek.
+
+"Ah, love me, love me--but don't tell me so!" she sighed with her eyes in
+his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped through the
+arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the room beyond.
+
+Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the transiency of
+exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but presently he reentered
+the house and made his way through the deserted rooms to the door. A few
+sumptuously-cloaked ladies were already gathered in the marble vestibule,
+and in the coat-room he found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.
+
+The former, at Selden's approach, paused in the careful selection of a
+cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near the door.
+
+"Hallo, Selden, going too? You're an Epicurean like myself, I see: you
+don't want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin. Gad, what a
+show of good-looking women; but not one of 'em could touch that little
+cousin of mine. Talk of jewels--what's a woman want with jewels when
+she's got herself to show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they
+wear cover up their figures when they've got 'em. I never knew till
+tonight what an outline Lily has."
+
+"It's not her fault if everybody don't know it now," growled Trenor,
+flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined coat. "Damned bad
+taste, I call it--no, no cigar for me. You can't tell what you're smoking
+in one of these new houses--likely as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay
+for supper? Not if I know it! When people crowd their rooms so that you
+can't get near any one you want to speak to, I'd as soon sup in the
+elevated at the rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says
+life's too short to spend it in breaking in new people."
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bedside.
+
+One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town that
+afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dine
+with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly that an important
+case called him to Albany, whence he would be unable to return till the
+evening, and asked Lily to let him know at what hour on the following day
+she would see him.
+
+Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his letter. The
+scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part of her dreams; she
+had not expected to wake to such evidence of its reality. Her first
+movement was one of annoyance: this unforeseen act of Selden's added
+another complication to life. It was so unlike him to yield to such an
+irrational impulse! Did he really mean to ask her to marry him? She had
+once shown him the impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent
+behaviour seemed to prove that he had accepted the situation with a
+reasonableness somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more
+agreeable to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the
+cost of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
+sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the episode
+of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could not marry him, it
+would be kinder to him, as well as easier for herself, to write a line
+amicably evading his request to see her: he was not the man to mistake
+such a hint, and when next they met it would be on their usual friendly
+footing.
+
+Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted to
+write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her resolve. She
+was still languid from her brief sleep and the exhilaration of the
+evening, and the sight of Selden's writing brought back the culminating
+moment of her triumph: the moment when she had read in his eyes that no
+philosophy was proof against her power. It would be pleasant to have that
+sensation again . . . no one else could give it to her in its fulness;
+and she could not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection by an
+act of definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily: "TOMORROW
+AT FOUR;" murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet into its
+envelope: "I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes."
+
+
+
+Judy Trenor's summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first time she
+had received a direct communication from Bellomont since the close of her
+last visit there, and she was still visited by the dread of having
+incurred Judy's displeasure. But this characteristic command seemed to
+reestablish their former relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that
+her friend had probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys'
+entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast, perhaps
+for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband, perhaps because, as
+Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she "couldn't bear new people
+when she hadn't discovered them herself." At any rate, though she
+remained haughtily at Bellomont, Lily suspected in her a devouring
+eagerness to hear of what she had missed, and to learn exactly in what
+measure Mrs. Wellington Bry had surpassed all previous competitors for
+social recognition. Lily was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but
+it happened that she was dining out. She determined, however, to see Mrs.
+Trenor for a few moments, and ringing for her maid she despatched a
+telegram to say that she would be with her friend that evening at ten.
+
+She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal feast a
+few of the performers of the previous evening. There was to be plantation
+music in the studio after dinner--for Mrs. Fisher, despairing of the
+republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to her small crowded house
+a spacious apartment, which, whatever its uses in her hours of plastic
+inspiration, served at other times for the exercise of an indefatigable
+hospitality. Lily was reluctant to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and
+she would have liked to lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but
+she could not break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten she
+asked her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth Avenue to the
+Trenors'.
+
+She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that Judy's presence in
+town was not signalized by a greater promptness in admitting her; and her
+surprise was increased when, instead of the expected footman, pushing his
+shoulders into a tardy coat, a shabby care-taking person in calico let
+her into the shrouded hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the
+threshold of the drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual volubility
+while he relieved her of her cloak and drew her into the room.
+
+"Come along to the den; it's the only comfortable place in the house.
+Doesn't this room look as if it was waiting for the body to be brought
+down? Can't see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up in this awful
+slippery white stuff--it's enough to give a fellow pneumonia to walk
+through these rooms on a cold day. You look a little pinched yourself, by
+the way: it's rather a sharp night out. I noticed it walking up from the
+club. Come along, and I'll give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast
+yourself over the fire and try some of my new Egyptians--that little
+Turkish chap at the Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try,
+and if you like 'em I'll get out a lot for you: they don't have 'em here
+yet, but I'll cable."
+
+He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where Mrs.
+Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there was an air of
+occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers, newspapers, a littered
+writing-table, and a general aspect of lamp-lit familiarity, so that it
+was a surprise not to see Judy's energetic figure start up from the
+arm-chair near the fire.
+
+It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat in
+question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and near it
+stood one of those intricate folding tables which British ingenuity has
+devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco and spirits. The sight
+of such appliances in a drawing-room was not unusual in Lily's set, where
+smoking and drinking were unrestricted by considerations of time and
+place, and her first movement was to help herself to one of the
+cigarettes recommended by Trenor, while she checked his loquacity by
+asking, with a surprised glance: "Where's Judy?"
+
+Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and perhaps by
+prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending over the latter to
+decipher their silver labels.
+
+"Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy water--you do
+look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your nose is red. I'll take
+another glass to keep you company--Judy?--Why, you see, Judy's got a
+devil of a head ache--quite knocked out with it, poor thing--she asked me
+to explain--make it all right, you know--Do come up to the fire, though;
+you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me make you comfortable, there's a
+good girl."
+
+He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her toward a low
+seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed herself quietly.
+
+"Do you mean to say that Judy's not well enough to see me? Doesn't she
+want me to go upstairs?"
+
+Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to set it
+down before he answered.
+
+"Why, no--the fact is, she's not up to seeing anybody. It came on
+suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully sorry she
+was--if she'd known where you were dining she'd have sent you word."
+
+"She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram. But it
+doesn't matter, of course. I suppose if she's so poorly she won't go back
+to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and see her then."
+
+"Yes: exactly--that's capital. I'll tell her you'll pop in tomorrow
+morning. And now do sit down a minute, there's a dear, and let's have a
+nice quiet jaw together. You won't take a drop, just for sociability?
+Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why, don't you like it? What
+are you chucking it away for?"
+
+"I am chucking it away because I must go, if you'll have the goodness to
+call a cab for me," Lily returned with a smile.
+
+She did not like Trenor's unusual excitability, with its too evident
+explanation, and the thought of being alone with him, with her friend out
+of reach upstairs, at the other end of the great empty house, did not
+conduce to a desire to prolong their TETE-A-TETE.
+
+But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved between
+herself and the door.
+
+"Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy'd been here you'd have
+sat gossiping till all hours--and you can't even give me five minutes!
+It's always the same story. Last night I couldn't get near you--I went to
+that damned vulgar party just to see you, and there was everybody talking
+about you, and asking me if I'd ever seen anything so stunning, and when
+I tried to come up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just
+went on laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be
+able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when you were
+mentioned."
+
+He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in which
+resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she had regained
+her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the middle of the room,
+while her slight smile seemed to put an ever increasing distance between
+herself and Trenor.
+
+Across it she said: "Don't be absurd, Gus. It's past eleven, and I must
+really ask you to ring for a cab."
+
+He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown to detest.
+
+"And supposing I won't ring for one--what'll you do then?"
+
+"I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her."
+
+Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. "Look here, Lily:
+won't you give me five minutes of your own accord?"
+
+"Not tonight, Gus: you----"
+
+"Very good, then: I'll take 'em. And as many more as I want." He had
+squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
+He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.
+
+"Go and sit down there, please: I've got a word to say to you."
+
+Lily's quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew herself
+up and moved toward the door.
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time. I
+shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once."
+
+He burst into a laugh. "Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you won't
+find Judy. She ain't there."
+
+Lily cast a startled look upon him. "Do you mean that Judy is not in the
+house--not in town?" she exclaimed.
+
+"That's just what I do mean," returned Trenor, his bluster sinking to
+sullenness under her look.
+
+"Nonsense--I don't believe you. I am going upstairs," she said
+impatiently.
+
+He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold unimpeded.
+
+"Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont."
+
+But Lily had a flash of reassurance. "If she hadn't come she would have
+sent me word----"
+
+"She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know."
+
+"I received no message."
+
+"I didn't send any."
+
+The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her opponent
+through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations indistinct.
+
+"I can't imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on me; but if
+you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour I must again ask
+you to send for a cab."
+
+It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung by irony
+it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry streaks on Trenor's
+face might have been raised by an actual lash.
+
+"Look here, Lily, don't take that high and mighty tone with me." He had
+again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive shrinking from him
+she let him regain command of the threshold. "I DID play a trick on you;
+I own up to it; but if you think I'm ashamed you're mistaken. Lord knows
+I've been patient enough--I've hung round and looked like an ass. And
+all the while you were letting a lot of other fellows make up to
+you . . . letting 'em make fun of me, I daresay . . . I'm not sharp, and
+can't dress my friends up to look funny, as you do . . . but I can tell
+when it's being done to me . . . I can tell fast enough when I'm made a
+fool of . . ."
+
+"Ah, I shouldn't have thought that!" flashed from Lily; but her laugh
+dropped to silence under his look.
+
+"No; you wouldn't have thought it; but you'll know better now. That's
+what you're here for tonight. I've been waiting for a quiet time to talk
+things over, and now I've got it I mean to make you hear me out."
+
+His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
+steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily than the
+excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind forsook her.
+She had more than once been in situations where a quick sword-play of wit
+had been needful to cover her retreat; but her frightened heart-throbs
+told her that here such skill would not avail.
+
+To gain time she repeated: "I don't understand what you want."
+
+Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw himself
+in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
+
+"I'll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I stand.
+Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally allowed to have a
+seat at table."
+
+She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of having to
+conciliate where she longed to humble.
+
+"I don't know what you mean--but you must see, Gus, that I can't stay
+here talking to you at this hour----"
+
+"Gad, you go to men's houses fast enough in broad day light--strikes me
+you're not always so deuced careful of appearances."
+
+The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that follows
+on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then--this was the way men talked
+of her--She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there was a throb of
+self-pity in her throat. But all the while another self was sharpening
+her to vigilance, whispering the terrified warning that every word and
+gesture must be measured.
+
+"If you have brought me here to say insulting things----" she began.
+
+Trenor laughed. "Don't talk stage-rot. I don't want to insult you. But a
+man's got his feelings--and you've played with mine too long. I didn't
+begin this business--kept out of the way, and left the track clear for
+the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set to work to make an ass
+of me--and an easy job you had of it, too. That's the trouble--it was too
+easy for you--you got reckless--thought you could turn me inside out, and
+chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that ain't
+playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. Of course I know now
+what you wanted--it wasn't my beautiful eyes you were after--but I tell
+you what, Miss Lily, you've got to pay up for making me think so----"
+
+He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward her with
+a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every nerve tore at
+her to retreat as he advanced.
+
+"Pay up?" she faltered. "Do you mean that I owe you money?"
+
+He laughed again. "Oh, I'm not asking for payment in kind. But there's
+such a thing as fair play--and interest on one's money--and hang me if
+I've had as much as a look from you----"
+
+"Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me how to
+invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of business . . .
+you told me it was all right----"
+
+"It WAS all right--it is, Lily: you're welcome to all of it, and ten
+times more. I'm only asking for a word of thanks from you." He was closer
+still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened self in her
+was dragging the other down.
+
+"I HAVE thanked you; I've shown I was grateful. What more have you done
+than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?"
+
+Trenor caught her up with a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted as much
+before--and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to chuck me. I don't
+care how you settled your score with them--if you fooled 'em I'm that
+much to the good. Don't stare at me like that--I know I'm not talking the
+way a man is supposed to talk to a girl--but, hang it, if you don't like
+it you can stop me quick enough--you know I'm mad about you--damn the
+money, there's plenty more of it--if THAT bothers you . . . I was a
+brute, Lily--Lily!--just look at me----"
+
+Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke--wave crashing on wave so
+close that the moral shame was one with the physical dread. It seemed to
+her that self-esteem would have made her invulnerable--that it was her
+own dishonour which put a fearful solitude about her.
+
+His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back from
+him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
+
+"I've told you I don't understand--but if I owe you money you shall be
+paid----"
+
+Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called out
+the primitive man.
+
+"Ah--you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale--and take your chances of
+fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless--unless you've settled your
+other scores already--and I'm the only one left out in the cold!"
+
+She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words--the words were worse
+than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body--in her throat,
+her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes travelled despairingly
+about the room--they lit on the bell, and she remembered that help was in
+call. Yes, but scandal with it--a hideous mustering of tongues. No, she
+must fight her way out alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to
+be in the house with Trenor--there must be nothing to excite conjecture
+in her way of leaving it.
+
+She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
+
+"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to say?"
+
+To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare. With
+his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him chill and
+humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the fumes of his
+libations, and the situation loomed before him black and naked as the
+ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the hand of inherited order,
+plucked back the bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts.
+Trenor's eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
+ledge.
+
+"Go home! Go away from here"----he stammered, and turning his back on her
+walked toward the hearth.
+
+The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate lucidity.
+The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and she heard herself,
+in a voice that was her own yet outside herself, bidding him ring for the
+servant, bidding him give the order for a hansom, directing him to put
+her in it when it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but
+an insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly, and
+nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light
+words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while
+all the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
+street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as
+the prisoner's first draught of free air; but the clearness of brain
+continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
+lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there
+something half-familiar in its outline?--which, as she entered the
+hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the obscurity of
+the side street.
+
+But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness
+closed on her. "I can't think--I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her
+head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to
+herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always
+known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She
+had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of
+the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of
+the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
+huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might
+sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners,
+and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her
+brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing--the familiar
+alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was
+a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past
+seemed simple, natural, full of daylight--and she was alone in a place of
+darkness and pollution.--Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened
+her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she
+saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
+eleven--there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend
+them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled
+from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her
+through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
+vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed--and the darkness would
+frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the
+room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated
+her room at Mrs. Peniston's--its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact
+that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human
+nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four
+walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
+
+Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
+superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even
+had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs.
+Peniston's mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as
+Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that
+questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the
+darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but
+compassion holding its breath.
+
+She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!--they
+were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach there before this
+labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips--if only she could
+feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she shook in the ague-fit of fear
+that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door in the roof and called
+the address to the driver. It was not so late--Gerty might still be
+waking. And even if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate
+every recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend's
+call.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys' entertainment, woke
+from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were less vivid in hue, more
+subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they
+were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such
+flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was
+accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through
+the cracks of other people's lives.
+
+Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but
+unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to
+herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If
+these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine
+psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite
+in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to
+look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends. Now that
+she was enjoying a little private feast of her own, it would have seemed
+incredibly selfish not to lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one
+with whom she would rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.
+
+As to the nature of Selden's growing kindness, Gerty would no more have
+dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a butterfly's
+colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize on the wonder would
+be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it fade and stiffen in her
+hand: better the sense of beauty palpitating out of reach, while she held
+her breath and watched where it would alight. Yet Selden's manner at the
+Brys' had brought the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be
+beating in her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
+so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
+absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for, as the
+liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but she was quick
+to feel in him a change implying that for once she could give pleasure as
+well as receive it.
+
+And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should be
+reached through their interest in Lily Bart!
+
+Gerty's affection for her friend--a sentiment that had learned to keep
+itself alive on the scantiest diet--had grown to active adoration since
+Lily's restless curiosity had drawn her into the circle of Miss Farish's
+work. Lily's taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite
+for well-doing. Her visit to the Girls' Club had first brought her in
+contact with the dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with
+philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled
+on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay all
+around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life reached
+its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter night enclose
+a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this was in the natural
+order of things, and the orchid basking in its artificially created
+atmosphere could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by
+the ice on the panes.
+
+But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of
+poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments.
+Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the
+mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable
+separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure,
+her own fierce revulsions from pain--that some of these bundles of
+feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to
+look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love--this discovery gave
+Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a
+life. Lily's nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
+demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which did not
+press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was drawn out of
+herself by the interest of her direct relation with a world so unlike her
+own. She had supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or
+two of Miss Farish's most appealing subjects, and the admiration and
+interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club
+ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.
+
+Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to disentangle
+the mixed threads of which Lily's philanthropy was woven. She supposed
+her beautiful friend to be actuated by the same motive as herself--that
+sharpening of the moral vision which makes all human suffering so near
+and insistent that the other aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty
+lived by such simple formulas that she did not hesitate to class her
+friend's state with the emotional "change of heart" to which her dealings
+with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
+she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer
+to all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real
+Lily," and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her
+placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities--a
+sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the receipt of
+a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine with her that evening.
+
+While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement produced
+in her small household, Selden was at one with her in thinking with
+intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him to Albany was not
+complicated enough to absorb all his attention, and he had the
+professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind free when its services
+were not needed. This part--which at the moment seemed dangerously like
+the whole--was filled to the brim with the sensations of the previous
+evening. Selden understood the symptoms: he recognized the fact that he
+was paying up, as there had always been a chance of his having to pay up,
+for the voluntary exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from
+permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a
+different way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment.
+There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
+had never wanted to marry a "nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his
+cousin's vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to
+preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a
+charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still
+emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind
+of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her,
+and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for
+money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little
+more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely
+kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
+on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
+understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and
+discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the
+bills mounted up.
+
+Though many of Selden's friends would have called his parents poor, he
+had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt only as a
+check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions were so good that
+their rarity gave them a merited relief, and abstinence was combined with
+elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs. Selden's knack of wearing her old
+velvet as if it were new. A man has the advantage of being delivered
+early from the home point of view, and before Selden left college he had
+learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as
+of spending it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that
+practised at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
+the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of "values."
+It was from her that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side
+of life: the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the
+Epicurean's pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling appeared to
+him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending of the two
+ingredients so essential as in the character of a pretty woman.
+
+It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
+besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of a
+love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central fact of
+life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the makeshift
+alternative of a relation that should be less than this: that should
+leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it put an undue
+strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield to the growth of an
+affection which might appeal to pity yet leave the understanding
+untouched: sympathy should no more delude him than a trick of the eyes,
+the grace of helplessness than a curve of the cheek.
+
+But now--that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows. His
+reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less important
+than the question as to when Lily would receive his note! He yielded
+himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations, wondering at what hour
+her reply would be sent, with what words it would begin. As to its import
+he had no doubt--he was as sure of her surrender as of his own. And so
+he had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on
+a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel
+gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
+him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation
+to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before of what was
+said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he knew from the
+vulgar estimate of her. His mind turned to Gerty Farish's words, and the
+wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of
+innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD--even
+the hidden god in their neighbour's breast! Selden was in the state of
+impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces.
+His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should
+justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth
+to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday
+recess, but seized a moment's leisure in court to scribble his telegram
+to Gerty Farish.
+
+Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a note
+from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only a line of
+rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away disappointed when he
+was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.
+
+"Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me--I've ordered a
+canvas-back."
+
+He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall glass at
+his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.
+
+Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.
+
+"Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight. I shall
+have the club to myself. You know how I'm living this winter, rattling
+round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town today, but she's
+put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine alone in a room with the
+looking-glasses covered, and nothing but a bottle of Harvey sauce on the
+side-board? I say, Lawrence, chuck your engagement and take pity on
+me--it gives me the blue devils to dine alone, and there's nobody but
+that canting ass Wetherall in the club."
+
+"Sorry, Gus--I can't do it."
+
+As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor's face, the
+unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way his jewelled
+rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red fingers. Certainly the
+beast was predominating--the beast at the bottom of the glass. And he had
+heard this man's name coupled with Lily's! Bah--the thought sickened him;
+all the way back to his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor's fat
+creased hands----
+
+On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew what
+was in it before he broke the seal--a grey seal with BEYOND! beneath a
+flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond--beyond the ugliness, the
+pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul----
+
+
+
+Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden entered it.
+Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and ingenuity, spoke to him
+in the language just then sweetest to his ear. It is surprising how
+little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul
+has suddenly been raised. Gerty sparkled too; or at least shone with a
+tempered radiance. He had never before noticed that she had
+"points"--really, some good fellow might do worse . . . Over the little
+dinner (and here, again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she
+ought to marry--he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had
+made the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such
+gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim
+her own hats--she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.
+
+He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little repast he
+kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being the centre of
+observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she had manufactured for
+the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household
+arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had
+utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
+about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in
+a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a
+large establishment.
+
+When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as snugly as
+bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and poured it into her
+grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he leaned back, basking in the
+warm fragrance, lighted on a recent photograph of Miss Bart, and the
+desired transition was effected without an effort. The photograph was
+well enough--but to catch her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed
+with him--never had she been so radiant. But could photography capture
+that light? There had been a new look in her face--something different;
+yes, Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was so
+exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to the watery
+stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare,
+alternating with the equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A
+man who lived in lodgings missed the best part of life--he pictured the
+flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's compassion
+for the man . . . But to return to Lily--and again and again he returned,
+questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts
+of their stored tenderness for her friend.
+
+At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
+communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped to
+confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on the fact
+that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous impulses--her
+restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life had never satisfied
+her proved that she was made for better things. She might have married
+more than once--the conventional rich marriage which she had been taught
+to consider the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she
+had always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love
+with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her
+dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce
+incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not to be instantly adopted
+by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once seemed
+the obvious solution. If rejection there had been--and he wondered now
+that he had ever doubted it!--then he held the key to the secret, and the
+hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with dawn. It
+was he who had wavered and disowned the face of opportunity--and the joy
+now warming his breast might have been a familiar inmate if he had
+captured it in its first flight.
+
+It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings in
+Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing Selden,
+repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been understood----" and all
+the while she herself seemed to be sitting in the centre of a great glare
+of comprehension. The little confidential room, where a moment ago their
+thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly
+vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length of her new vision
+of the future--and that future stretched out interminably, with her
+lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.
+
+"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them," she
+heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't you?" and:
+"She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to be--you'll help
+her by believing the best of her?"
+
+The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language which has
+seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to be
+unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily--that was all! There
+had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had
+taken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to
+her own part in the talk--but it was all as meaningless as the boom of
+waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
+sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
+
+Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she could
+yield to the blessed waves.
+
+"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music afterward; I
+believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the foolish pink-faced
+clock that was drumming out this hideous hour. "A quarter past ten? I
+might look in there now; the Fisher evenings are amusing. I haven't kept
+you up too late, Gerty? You look tired--I've rambled on and bored you."
+And in the unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss
+upon her cheek.
+
+
+
+At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen voices
+greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he dropped into a
+seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search of Miss Bart. But she
+was not there, and the discovery gave him a pang out of all proportion to
+its seriousness; since the note in his breast-pocket assured him that at
+four the next day they would meet. To his impatience it seemed
+immeasurably long to wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to
+Mrs. Fisher to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with
+her.
+
+"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where. Wasn't she
+wonderful last night?"
+
+"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a neighbouring
+arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when it comes to a girl
+standing there as if she was up at auction--I thought seriously of
+speaking to cousin Julia."
+
+"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher said to
+Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the general derision:
+"But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's married--TOWN TALK was
+full of her this morning."
+
+"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking his
+moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the dirty sheet? No, of
+course not; some fellow showed it to me--but I'd heard the stories
+before. When a girl's as good-looking as that she'd better marry; then no
+questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized society there is no
+provision as yet for the young woman who claims the privileges of
+marriage without assuming its obligations."
+
+"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of Mr.
+Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.
+
+"Rosedale--good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his eye-glass.
+"Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on us."
+
+"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our family,"
+Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive bridal
+finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the judicial
+reflection: "In Lily's circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a
+standard."
+
+"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs. Fisher
+rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off his head. What do
+you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? 'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I
+could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that, the picture'd appreciate a
+hundred per cent in ten years.'"
+
+"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
+restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.
+
+"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs. Where
+was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't heard of anything."
+
+"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish who had
+arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she gave the
+driver the Trenors' address."
+
+"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
+closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."
+
+"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come now,
+Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no head for
+numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining foot, and
+the smile that circled the room.
+
+In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with his
+hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why he had
+stayed in it so long.
+
+On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's: "It seems
+to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you disapprove of."
+
+Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
+element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That
+BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's
+task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are
+numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with
+dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had
+strength for both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him.
+It was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a
+clogging morass of old associations and habits, and for the moment its
+vapours were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in
+her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar
+which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor
+with which he was trying to build up a defence against the influences of
+the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
+which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so swayed by
+them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view
+of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?
+
+The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he
+strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
+At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of
+company.
+
+"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now that
+women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine. It would be a
+curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the
+sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to
+obscure the moral issue."
+
+Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van
+Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined
+himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control. Happily
+Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of social aspects, and with
+Selden for audience was eager to show the sureness of his touch. Mrs.
+Fisher lived in an East side street near the Park, and as the two men
+walked down Fifth Avenue the new architectural developments of that
+versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne's comment.
+
+"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder! The man
+who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table
+at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a
+style his friends might have thought the money had given out. Not a bad
+purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western
+sight-seer. By and bye he'll get out of that phase, and want something
+that the crowd will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he
+marries my clever cousin----"
+
+Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'? Rather
+clever of its kind, don't you think?"
+
+They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich restraint of
+line, which suggested the clever corseting of a redundant figure.
+
+"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to Europe,
+and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a copy of the
+TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt furniture is thought to
+be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever chap that architect is,
+though--how he takes his client's measure! He has put the whole of Mrs.
+Bry in his use of the composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember,
+he chose the Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
+Trenor house is one of his best things--doesn't look like a
+banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out
+a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at
+Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys' ball-room must rankle: you may be
+sure she knows 'em as well as if she'd been there last night with a
+yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She
+isn't, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I
+suppose Gus lives in the back."
+
+He had halted opposite the Trenors' corner, and Selden perforce stayed
+his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited; only an oblong
+gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.
+
+"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and fifty
+feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's to be, with a
+gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above. I suggested
+changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room across the whole
+Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door corresponds with the
+windows----"
+
+The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped to a
+startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures were seen
+silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom halted at
+the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it in a haze of
+evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky, remained
+persistently projected against the light.
+
+For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
+silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the whole
+scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.
+
+Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.
+
+"A--hem--nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I may
+count on you--appearances are deceptive--and Fifth Avenue is so
+imperfectly lighted----"
+
+"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street without
+seeing the other's extended hand.
+
+
+
+Alone with her cousin's kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He had
+kissed her before--but not with another woman on his lips. If he had
+spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming the dark flood
+as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot through with glory, and
+it was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness. Gerty hid her face
+from the light, but it pierced to the crannies of her soul. She had been
+so contented, life had seemed so simple and sufficient--why had he come
+to trouble her with new hopes? And Lily--Lily, her best friend!
+Woman-like, she accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily,
+her fond imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
+her--had understood and sympathized with the modest independence of her
+life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice
+balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his
+view of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
+at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door barred
+against her by Lily's hand! Lily, for whose admission there she herself
+had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She
+knew Selden--she saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped
+to dispel his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
+him--she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known to each
+other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient;
+he had never guessed her foolish secret; but Lily--Lily must have known!
+When, in such matters, are a woman's perceptions at fault? And if she
+knew, then she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere
+wantonness of power, since, even to Gerty's suddenly flaming jealousy, it
+seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden's wife. Lily might
+be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of
+living without it, and Selden's eager investigations into the small
+economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as tragically duped
+as herself.
+
+She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were crumbling to
+cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade. Just beneath it stood
+the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out imperially on the cheap
+gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the little room. Could Selden picture
+her in such an interior? Gerty felt the poverty, the insignificance of
+her surroundings: she beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the
+cruelty of Lily's judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
+dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily ever
+really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was the taste of
+new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature experimenting in a
+laboratory.
+
+The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with a
+start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a district
+visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered the fire, and
+went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass above her
+dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the shadows of the
+room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right had she to dream the
+dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly
+as she undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
+setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life must be
+taken up as though there had been no break in its routine. Her servant
+did not come till eight o'clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and
+placed it beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat,
+extinguished her light and lay down. But on her bed sleep would not
+come, and she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
+closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be blindly
+grappled with. Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight
+forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
+wanted happiness--wanted it as fiercely and unscrupulously as Lily did,
+but without Lily's power of obtaining it. And in her conscious impotence
+she lay shivering, and hated her friend----
+
+A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a light and
+stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat incoherently, then
+she felt the sobering touch of fact, and remembered that such calls were
+not unknown in her charitable work. She flung on her dressing-gown to
+answer the summons, and unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision
+of Lily Bart.
+
+Gerty's first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as though
+Lily's presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then she
+heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend's face, and felt
+herself caught and clung to.
+
+"Lily--what is it?" she exclaimed.
+
+Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who has
+gained shelter after a long flight.
+
+"I was so cold--I couldn't go home. Have you a fire?"
+
+Gerty's compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of habit,
+swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one who needed
+help--for what reason, there was no time to pause and conjecture:
+disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty's lips, and made her
+draw her friend silently into the sitting-room and seat her by the
+darkened hearth.
+
+"There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute."
+
+She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed
+strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on
+the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at each other in silence;
+then Lily repeated: "I couldn't go home."
+
+"No--no--you came here, dear! You're cold and tired--sit quiet, and I'll
+make you some tea."
+
+Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade: all
+personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and experience had
+taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed.
+
+Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
+soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
+wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed it
+away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.
+
+"I came here because I couldn't bear to be alone," she said.
+
+Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.
+
+"Lily! Something has happened--can't you tell me?"
+
+"I couldn't bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my room at
+Aunt Julia's--so I came here----"
+
+She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in a
+fresh burst of fear.
+
+"Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their wings--alone, at
+night, in the dark? But you don't know--there is nothing to make the dark
+dreadful to you----"
+
+The words, flashing back on Gerty's last hours, struck from her a faint
+derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery, was blinded to
+everything outside it.
+
+"You'll let me stay? I shan't mind when daylight comes--Is it late? Is
+the night nearly over? It must be awful to be sleepless--everything
+stands by the bed and stares----"
+
+Miss Farish caught her straying hands. "Lily, look at me! Something has
+happened--an accident? You have been frightened--what has frightened you?
+Tell me if you can--a word or two--so that I can help you."
+
+Lily shook her head.
+
+"I am not frightened: that's not the word. Can you imagine looking into
+your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement--some hideous change
+that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that--I
+can't bear to see myself in my own thoughts--I hate ugliness, you
+know--I've always turned from it--but I can't explain to you--you
+wouldn't understand."
+
+She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.
+
+"How long the night is! And I know I shan't sleep tomorrow. Some one told
+me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors. And he was not
+wicked, only unfortunate--and I see now how he must have suffered, lying
+alone with his thoughts! But I am bad--a bad girl--all my thoughts are
+bad--I have always had bad people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought
+I could manage my own life--I was proud--proud! but now I'm on their
+level----"
+
+Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.
+
+Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of experience,
+till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech. She had first
+imagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, since
+Lily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher's; but she now saw
+that other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back from
+conjecture.
+
+Lily's sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.
+
+"There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me--do they ever pick themselves
+up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?"
+
+"Lily! you mustn't speak so--you're dreaming."
+
+"Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your
+old self rejects you, and shuts you out."
+
+She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness. "Go to
+bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I'll watch here by the fire,
+and you'll leave the light, and your door open. All I want is to feel
+that you are near me." She laid both hands on Gerty's shoulders, with a
+smile that was like sunrise on a sea strewn with wreckage.
+
+"I can't leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
+frozen--you must undress and be made warm." Gerty paused with sudden
+compunction. "But Mrs. Peniston--it's past midnight! What will she think?"
+
+"She goes to bed. I have a latch-key. It doesn't matter--I can't go back
+there."
+
+"There's no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me where you
+have been. Listen, Lily--it will help you to speak!" She regained Miss
+Bart's hands, and pressed them against her. "Try to tell me--it will
+clear your poor head. Listen--you were dining at Carry Fisher's." Gerty
+paused and added with a flash of heroism: "Lawrence Selden went from here
+to find you."
+
+At the word, Lily's face melted from locked anguish to the open misery of
+a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with tears.
+
+"He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help me.
+He told me--he warned me long ago--he foresaw that I should grow hateful
+to myself!"
+
+The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened the
+springs of self-pity in her friend's dry breast, and tear by tear Lily
+poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped sideways in
+Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden's had leaned,
+in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty's aching senses the
+inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on
+Lily's part to rob her of her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was
+to see in it a natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to
+such as Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they
+despoil. But if Selden's infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect
+that his name produced shook Gerty's steadfastness with a last pang. Men
+pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
+probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would have
+welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed the sufferer
+back to tolerance of life! But Lily's self-betrayal took this last hope
+from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who
+loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.
+
+Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. "Gerty, you know
+him--you understand him--tell me; if I went to him, if I told him
+everything--if I said: 'I am bad through and through--I want admiration,
+I want excitement, I want money--' yes, MONEY! That's my shame,
+Gerty--and it's known, it's said of me--it's what men think of me--If I
+said it all to him--told him the whole story--said plainly: 'I've sunk
+lower than the lowest, for I've taken what they take, and not paid as
+they pay'--oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him
+everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me,
+and save me from loathing myself?"
+
+Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had
+come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river
+sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge
+past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: "He is
+like other men?" She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so
+would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before
+herself in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of
+her own passion.
+
+"Yes: I know him; he will help you," she said; and in a moment Lily's
+passion was weeping itself out against her breast.
+
+There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on
+it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily's dress and persuaded her to
+put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in
+the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to
+avoid contact with her bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be
+caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses
+toward her friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily's
+nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet
+stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand of
+her hair swept Gerty's cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was
+warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as
+rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her
+side, in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs
+from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped
+for her friend's, and held it fast.
+
+"Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things," she moaned; and
+Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow
+as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay
+still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to
+Gerty's as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers
+relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she
+slept.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in
+the room.
+
+She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; then
+memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the cold
+slant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building,
+she saw her evening dress and opera cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a
+chair. Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and
+it occurred to Lily that, at home, her maid's vigilance had always spared
+her the sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and
+with the constriction of her attitude in Gerty's bed. All through her
+troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss in, and
+the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if she had spent
+her night in a train.
+
+This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then
+she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration, a languor
+of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The
+thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast
+roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the
+slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the
+dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But
+she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay
+back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical
+distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no
+freshness through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil
+of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door.
+
+The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of
+tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull
+hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.
+
+She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she felt;
+Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up to drink
+the tea.
+
+"I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous attack
+in the carriage," she said, as the drink brought clearness to her
+sluggish thoughts.
+
+"You were not well; I am so glad you came here," Gerty returned.
+
+"But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia--?"
+
+"She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your things.
+But won't you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself."
+
+Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress under
+her maid's searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty was obliged
+to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a trace of the
+previous night's emotion.
+
+Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace
+Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of enquiries as
+best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her
+way back from Carry Fisher's; that, fearing she would not have strength
+to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish's instead; but that a quiet
+night had restored her, and that she had no need of a doctor.
+
+This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to her own
+symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her aunt's panacea for
+all physical and moral disorders. In the solitude of her own room she was
+brought back to a sharp contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them
+necessarily differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged
+furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea.
+But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
+besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced herself
+to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and the result of
+this hateful computation was the discovery that she had, in all, received
+nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been
+given and received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame: she knew that
+not a penny of it was her own, and that to restore her self-respect she
+must at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her
+outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
+realizing for the first time that a woman's dignity may cost more to keep
+up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute
+should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more
+sordid place than she had conceived it.
+
+After luncheon, when Grace Stepney's prying eyes had been removed, Lily
+asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the
+sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin
+arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a
+bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for
+these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the
+fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
+confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
+associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs.
+Peniston's lips. That lady's dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness
+which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since
+it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing
+this, Lily seldom ventured to assail it. She had never felt less like
+making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in
+vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.
+
+Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. "You're a bad colour, Lily: this
+incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you," she said.
+
+Miss Bart saw an opening. "I don't think it's that, Aunt Julia; I've had
+worries," she replied.
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse
+closing against a beggar.
+
+"I'm sorry to bother you with them," Lily continued, "but I really
+believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
+thoughts--"
+
+"I should have said Carry Fisher's cook was enough to account for it.
+She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891--the spring of the year
+we went to Aix--and I remember dining there two days before we sailed,
+and feeling SURE the coppers hadn't been scoured."
+
+"I don't think I ate much; I can't eat or sleep." Lily paused, and then
+said abruptly: "The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money."
+
+Mrs. Peniston's face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
+astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced
+to continue: "I have been foolish----"
+
+"No doubt you have: extremely foolish," Mrs. Peniston interposed. "I
+fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses--not to mention
+the handsome presents I've always given you----"
+
+"Oh, you've been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your
+kindness. But perhaps you don't quite realize the expense a girl is put
+to nowadays----"
+
+"I don't realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your clothes
+and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid
+Celeste's bill for you last October."
+
+Lily hesitated: her aunt's implacable memory had never been more
+inconvenient. "You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few
+things since----"
+
+"What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the
+bill--I daresay the woman is swindling you."
+
+"Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and
+one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and
+skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo----"
+
+"Let me see the bill," Mrs. Peniston repeated.
+
+Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet sent
+in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a
+fraction of the sum that Lily needed.
+
+"She hasn't sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it's large;
+and there are one or two other things; I've been careless and
+imprudent--I'm frightened to think of what I owe----"
+
+She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly
+hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without
+effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs.
+Peniston shrink back apprehensively.
+
+"Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after
+frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at
+least choose a better time to worry me with such matters." Mrs. Peniston
+glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of digitalis. "If you owe
+Celeste another thousand, she may send me her account," she added, as
+though to end the discussion at any cost.
+
+"I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time; but I
+have really no choice--I ought to have spoken sooner--I owe a great deal
+more than a thousand dollars."
+
+"A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!"
+
+"I told you it was not only Celeste. I--there are other bills--more
+pressing--that must be settled."
+
+"What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your
+head," said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. "But if you have run into debt,
+you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till
+your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead
+of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all,
+and surely in four or five months you can settle the rest of your bills
+if I pay the dress-maker now."
+
+Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract even a
+thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of paying Celeste's
+bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the dress-maker's account,
+and would make out the cheque to her and not to Lily. And yet the money
+must be obtained before the day was over!
+
+"The debts I speak of are--different--not like tradesmen's bills," she
+began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston's look made her almost afraid to
+continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything? The idea
+precipitated Lily's avowal.
+
+"The fact is, I've played cards a good deal--bridge; the women all do it;
+girls too--it's expected. Sometimes I've won--won a good deal--but lately
+I've been unlucky--and of course such debts can't be paid off
+gradually----"
+
+She paused: Mrs. Peniston's face seemed to be petrifying as she listened.
+
+"Cards--you've played cards for money? It's true, then: when I was told
+so I wouldn't believe it. I won't ask if the other horrors I was told
+were true too; I've heard enough for the state of my nerves. When I think
+of the example you've had in this house! But I suppose it's your foreign
+bringing-up--no one knew where your mother picked up her friends. And her
+Sundays were a scandal--that I know."
+
+Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. "You play cards on Sunday?"
+
+Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at Bellomont
+and with the Dorsets.
+
+"You're hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for cards, but
+a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and one drifts into
+doing what the others do. I've had a dreadful lesson, and if you'll help
+me out this time I promise you--"
+
+Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. "You needn't make any promises:
+it's unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn't undertake to pay
+your gambling debts."
+
+"Aunt Julia! You don't mean that you won't help me?"
+
+"I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
+countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker, I will
+settle with her--beyond that I recognize no obligation to assume your
+debts."
+
+Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
+stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: "Aunt
+Julia, I shall be disgraced--I--" But she could go no farther. If her
+aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts, in
+what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?
+
+"I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct far
+more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded you to play
+cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson too. They can
+probably afford to lose a little money--and at any rate, I am not going
+to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I must ask you to leave
+me--this scene has been extremely painful, and I have my own health to
+consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and tell Jennings I will see no
+one this afternoon but Grace Stepney."
+
+Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling with
+fear and anger--the rush of the furies' wings was in her ears. She walked
+up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The last door of escape
+was closed--she felt herself shut in with her dishonour.
+
+Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
+chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she remembered
+that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant to put him off with
+a word--but now her heart leaped at the thought of seeing him. Was there
+not a promise of rescue in his love? As she had lain at Gerty's side the
+night before, she had thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of
+weeping out her pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear
+herself of its consequences before she met him--she had never really
+doubted that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
+in the full storm of her misery, that Selden's love could not be her
+ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment's shelter
+there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.
+
+But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
+wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive as the
+river's flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be terrible--but
+afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered Gerty's words: "I
+know him--he will help you"; and her mind clung to them as a sick person
+might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if he really understood--if he would
+help her to gather up her broken life, and put it together in some new
+semblance in which no trace of the past should remain! He had always made
+her feel that she was worthy of better things, and she had never been in
+greater need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
+imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she needed--it
+would take the glow of passion to weld together the shattered fragments
+of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty's words and held fast to
+them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden's feeling for her, and it had
+never dawned upon her blindness that Gerty's own judgment of him was
+coloured by emotions far more ardent than her own.
+
+Four o'clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that Selden
+would be punctual. But the hour came and passed--it moved on feverishly,
+measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had time to take a fresh
+survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate anew between the impulse to
+confide in Selden and the dread of destroying his illusions. But as the
+minutes passed the need of throwing herself on his comprehension became
+more urgent: she could not bear the weight of her misery alone. There
+would be a perilous moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her
+beauty to bridge it over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?
+
+But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
+detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the four for
+a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after five confirmed
+this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to write more legibly in
+future. The sound of steps in the hall, and of the butler's voice
+preceding them, poured fresh energy into her veins. She felt herself once
+more the alert and competent moulder of emergencies, and the remembrance
+of her power over Selden flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the
+drawing-room door opened it was Rosedale who came in.
+
+The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing movement of
+irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her own carelessness in not
+denying the door to all but Selden, she controlled herself and greeted
+Rosedale amicably. It was annoying that Selden, when he came, should find
+that particular visitor in possession, but Lily was mistress of the art
+of ridding herself of superfluous company, and to her present mood
+Rosedale seemed distinctly negligible.
+
+His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few moments'
+conversation. She had caught at the Brys' entertainment as an easy
+impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval till Selden
+appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside the tea-table, his
+hands in his pockets, his legs a little too freely extended, at once gave
+the topic a personal turn.
+
+"Pretty well done--well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry's got his back
+up and don't mean to let go till he's got the hang of the thing. Of
+course, there were things here and there--things Mrs. Fisher couldn't be
+expected to see to--the champagne wasn't cold, and the coats got mixed in
+the coat-room. I would have spent more money on the music. But that's my
+character: if I want a thing I'm willing to pay: I don't go up to the
+counter, and then wonder if the article's worth the price. I wouldn't be
+satisfied to entertain like the Welly Brys; I'd want something that would
+look more easy and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it
+takes just two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman
+to spend it."
+
+He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to rearrange
+the tea-cups.
+
+"I've got the money," he continued, clearing his throat, "and what I want
+is the woman--and I mean to have her too."
+
+He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
+walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne's type bring their hats
+and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added a touch of
+elegant familiarity to their appearance.
+
+Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on his
+face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would take some
+time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before the moment of
+refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of a mind withdrawn yet
+not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of a subtle encouragement. He
+would not have liked any evidence of eagerness.
+
+"I mean to have her too," he repeated, with a laugh intended to
+strengthen his self-assurance. "I generally HAVE got what I wanted in
+life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I've got more than I know how to
+invest; and now the money doesn't seem to be of any account unless I can
+spend it on the right woman. That's what I want to do with it: I want my
+wife to make all the other women feel small. I'd never grudge a dollar
+that was spent on that. But it isn't every woman can do it, no matter how
+much you spend on her. There was a girl in some history book who wanted
+gold shields, or something, and the fellows threw 'em at her, and she was
+crushed under 'em: they killed her. Well, that's true enough: some women
+looked buried under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who'll hold her
+head higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
+other night at the Brys', in that plain white dress, looking as if you
+had a crown on, I said to myself: 'By gad, if she had one she'd wear it
+as if it grew on her.'"
+
+Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme: "Tell
+you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than all the rest
+of 'em put together. If a woman's going to ignore her pearls, they want
+to be better than anybody else's--and so it is with everything else. You
+know what I mean--you know it's only the showy things that are cheap.
+Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if
+she wanted to. I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and that's
+the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in
+that way." He paused, and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an
+earlier manner: "I guess you know the lady I've got in view, Miss Bart."
+
+Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge. Even
+through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr. Rosedale's
+millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of them to cancel
+her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly
+repugnant in the light of Selden's expected coming. The contrast was too
+grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided
+that directness would be best.
+
+"If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful--very much flattered;
+but I don't know what I have ever done to make you think--"
+
+"Oh, if you mean you're not dead in love with me, I've got sense enough
+left to see that. And I ain't talking to you as if you were--I presume I
+know the kind of talk that's expected under those circumstances. I'm
+confoundedly gone on you--that's about the size of it--and I'm just
+giving you a plain business statement of the consequences. You're not
+very fond of me--YET--but you're fond of luxury, and style, and
+amusement, and of not having to worry about cash. You like to have a good
+time, and not have to settle for it; and what I propose to do is to
+provide for the good time and do the settling."
+
+He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: "You are mistaken in
+one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared to settle for."
+
+She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words implied
+a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was prepared to meet and
+repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning it failed to abash him,
+and he went on in the same tone: "I didn't mean to give offence; excuse
+me if I've spoken too plainly. But why ain't you straight with me--why do
+you put up that kind of bluff? You know there've been times when you were
+bothered--damned bothered--and as a girl gets older, and things keep
+moving along, why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable
+to move past her and not come back. I don't say it's anywhere near that
+with you yet; but you've had a taste of bothers that a girl like yourself
+ought never to have known about, and what I'm offering you is the chance
+to turn your back on them once for all."
+
+The colour burned in Lily's face as he ended; there was no mistaking the
+point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass unheeded was a fatal
+confession of weakness, while to resent it too openly was to risk
+offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation quivered on her lip; but
+it was quelled by the secret voice which warned her that she must not
+quarrel with him. He knew too much about her, and even at the moment when
+it was essential that he should show himself at his best, he did not
+scruple to let her see how much he knew. How then would he use his power
+when her expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for
+restraint? Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she
+had to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as a
+breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try to
+decide coolly which turn to take.
+
+"You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am grateful
+to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always easy to be
+quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor and lives among
+rich people; I have been careless about money, and have worried about my
+bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful if I made that a reason for
+accepting all you offer, with no better return to make than the desire to
+be free from my anxieties. You must give me time--time to think of your
+kindness--and of what I could give you in return for it----"
+
+She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal was
+shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale rise in
+obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for success, and
+disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept what was conceded,
+without undue haste to press for more. Something in his prompt
+acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the stored force of a
+patience that might subdue the strongest will. But at least they had
+parted amicably, and he was out of the house without meeting
+Selden--Selden, whose continued absence now smote her with a new alarm.
+Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she understood that it was now
+too late to hope for Selden. He would write explaining his absence, of
+course; there would be a note from him by the late post. But her
+confession would have to be postponed; and the chill of the delay settled
+heavily on her fagged spirit.
+
+It lay heavier when the postman's last ring brought no note for her, and
+she had to go upstairs to a lonely night--a night as grim and sleepless
+as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty. She had never learned to
+live with her own thoughts, and to be confronted with them through such
+hours of lucid misery made the confused wretchedness of her previous
+vigil seem easily bearable.
+
+Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her that she
+would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed without his
+writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and dining alone with
+her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the heart, and talked icily on
+general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to bed early, and when she had gone
+Lily sat down and wrote a note to Selden. She was about to ring for a
+messenger to despatch it when her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening
+paper which lay at her elbow: "Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the
+passengers sailing this afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the
+Windward Liner Antilles."
+
+She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note. She
+understood now that he was never coming--that he had gone away because he
+was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking across the floor
+stood gazing at herself for a long time in the brightly-lit mirror above
+the mantel-piece. The lines in her face came out terribly--she looked
+old; and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she look to other
+people? She moved away, and began to wander aimlessly about the room,
+fitting her steps with mechanical precision between the monstrous roses
+of Mrs. Peniston's Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with
+which she had written to Selden still rested against the uncovered
+inkstand. She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
+it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and sat over
+it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write the date, and
+"Dear Mr. Rosedale"--but after that her inspiration flagged. She meant to
+tell him to come to her, but the words refused to shape themselves. At
+length she began: "I have been thinking----" then she laid the pen down,
+and sat with her elbows on the table and her face hidden in her hands.
+
+Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was not
+late--barely ten o'clock--and there might still be a note from Selden, or
+a message--or he might be there himself, on the other side of the door!
+The announcement of his sailing might have been a mistake--it might be
+another Lawrence Selden who had gone to Havana--all these possibilities
+had time to flash through her mind, and build up the conviction that she
+was after all to see or hear from him, before the drawing-room door
+opened to admit a servant carrying a telegram.
+
+Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset's name below
+the message: "Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us on a cruise
+in Mediterranean?"
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK TWO
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo had, more
+than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating itself to each
+man's humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a festive readiness of
+welcome that might well, in a disenchanted eye, have turned to paint and
+facility. So frank an appeal for participation--so outspoken a
+recognition of the holiday vein in human nature--struck refreshingly on a
+mind jaded by prolonged hard work in surroundings made for the discipline
+of the senses. As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry
+of architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
+loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which suggested a
+sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting of scenes--as he
+took in the whole outspread effect of light and leisure, he felt a
+movement of revulsion from the last few months of his life.
+
+The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
+snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and furious
+air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the gritty wind ground
+into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work, had told himself that
+external conditions did not matter to a man in his state, and that cold
+and ugliness were a good tonic for relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent
+case summoned him abroad to confer with a client in Paris, he broke
+reluctantly with the routine of the office; and it was only now that,
+having despatched his business, and slipped away for a week in the south,
+he began to feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is the solace of
+those who take an objective interest in life.
+
+The multiplicity of its appeals--the perpetual surprise of its contrasts
+and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the show were upon him
+with a spring as he descended the Casino steps and paused on the pavement
+at its doors. He had not been abroad for seven years--and what changes
+the renewed contact produced! If the central depths were untouched,
+hardly a pin-point of surface remained the same. And this was the very
+place to bring out the completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the
+perpetuities, might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a
+day's revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his fixed sky.
+
+It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its climax
+and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens would soon
+dissolve and re-form in other scenes. Meanwhile the last moments of the
+performance seemed to gain an added brightness from the hovering threat
+of the curtain. The quality of the air, the exuberance of the flowers,
+the blue intensity of sea and sky, produced the effect of a closing
+TABLEAU, when all the lights are turned on at once. This impression was
+presently heightened by the way in which a consciously conspicuous group
+of people advanced to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the
+air of the chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the
+final effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had
+been staged regardless of expense, and emphasized its resemblance to one
+of those "costume-plays" in which the protagonists walk through the
+passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood in unrelated
+attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the men hung about
+them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors are named in the
+programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly fused the group by
+arresting the attention of one of its members.
+
+"Why, Mr. Selden!" Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a gesture
+toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added plaintively:
+"We're starving to death because we can't decide where to lunch."
+
+Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their difficulty,
+Selden learned with amusement that there were several places where one
+might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit something by lunching;
+so that eating actually became a minor consideration on the very spot
+consecrated to its rites.
+
+"Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE--but that looks as if
+one hadn't any other reason for being there: the Americans who don't know
+any one always rush for the best food. And the Duchess of Beltshire has
+taken up Becassin's lately," Mrs. Bry earnestly summed up.
+
+Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher's despair, had not progressed beyond the point
+of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could not acquire the
+air of doing things because she wanted to, and making her choice the
+final seal of their fitness.
+
+Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure clothes, met
+the dilemma hilariously.
+
+"I guess the Duchess goes where it's cheapest, unless she can get her
+meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE she'd turn
+up fast enough."
+
+But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. "The Grand Dukes go to that little
+place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it's the only restaurant in
+Europe where they can cook peas."
+
+Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn
+smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy
+to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis: "It's quite that."
+
+"PEAS?" said Mr. Bry contemptuously. "Can they cook terrapin? It just
+shows," he continued, "what these European markets are, when a fellow can
+make a reputation cooking peas!"
+
+Jack Stepney intervened with authority. "I don't know that I quite agree
+with Dacey: there's a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire--but in
+any case, I can't advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at least not with ladies."
+
+Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as the Van
+Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and
+discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness of gait which left
+him trailing breathlessly in her wake.
+
+"That's where we'll go then!" she declared, with a heavy toss of her
+plumage. "I'm so tired of the TERRASSE: it's as dull as one of mother's
+dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who all the awful people
+are at the other place--hasn't he, Carry? Now, Jack, don't look so
+solemn!"
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Bry, "all I want to know is who their dress-makers are."
+
+"No doubt Dacey can tell you that too," remarked Stepney, with an ironic
+intention which the other received with the light murmur, "I can at least
+FIND OUT, my dear fellow"; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn't
+walk another step, the party hailed two or three of the light phaetons
+which hover attentively on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off
+in procession toward the Condamine.
+
+Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging the
+boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
+intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they
+presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue
+curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to
+the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its
+church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the
+gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a
+light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the
+culminating moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great
+steam-yacht drew the company's attention from the peas.
+
+"By Jove, I believe that's the Dorsets back!" Stepney exclaimed; and Lord
+Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated: "It's the
+Sabrina--yes."
+
+"So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily," Mrs. Fisher observed.
+
+"I guess they feel as if they had: there's only one up-to-date hotel in
+the whole place," said Mr. Bry disparagingly.
+
+"It was Ned Silverton's idea--but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must have
+been horribly bored." Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to Selden: "I do
+hope there hasn't been a row."
+
+"It's most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back," said Lord Hubert, in his
+mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: "I daresay the
+Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily's here."
+
+"The Duchess admires her immensely: I'm sure she'd be charmed to have it
+arranged," Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional promptness of the
+man accustomed to draw his profit from facilitating social contacts:
+Selden was struck by the businesslike change in his manner.
+
+"Lily has been a tremendous success here," Mrs. Fisher continued, still
+addressing herself confidentially to Selden. "She looks ten years
+younger--I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her everywhere in
+Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her to stop for a week at
+Cimiez. People say that was one reason why Bertha whisked the yacht off
+to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn't take much notice of her, and she
+couldn't bear to look on at Lily's triumph."
+
+Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was cruising in
+the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that
+there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the
+season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating
+his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in
+his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really
+affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments
+of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings,
+and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight of the
+Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that his three months
+of engrossing professional work, following on the sharp shock of his
+disillusionment, had cleared his mind of its sentimental vapours. The
+feeling he had nourished and given prominence to was one of thankfulness
+for his escape: he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a
+dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises.
+Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he had
+not come off unhurt.
+
+An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher's side in the Casino gardens, he was trying
+to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in the
+contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed with the
+loitering indecision characteristic of social movements at Monte Carlo,
+where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to
+offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally
+gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with
+the delicate negotiation of securing that lady's presence at dinner, the
+Stepneys had left for Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed
+to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment
+engaging his highest faculties.
+
+Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after luncheon,
+had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to withdraw to her
+hotel for an hour's repose; and Selden and his companion were thus left
+to a stroll propitious to confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself
+into a tranquil session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian
+roses, from which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble
+balusters, and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like
+from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of
+the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of
+many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
+Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had
+come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the
+inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first
+success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the
+Riviera as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their
+course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital, and a
+facility for picking them up again after long absences; and the carefully
+disseminated rumour of the Brys' wealth had at once gathered about them a
+group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.
+
+"But things are not going as well as I expected," Mrs. Fisher frankly
+admitted. "It's all very well to say that every body with money can get
+into society; but it would be truer to say that NEARLY everybody can.
+And the London market is so glutted with new Americans that, to succeed
+there now, they must be either very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are
+neither. HE would get on well enough if she'd let him alone; they like
+his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by
+trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she'd be natural
+herself--fat and vulgar and bouncing--it would be all right; but as soon
+as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She
+tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled.
+I've done my best to make her see her mistake--I've said to her again and
+again: 'Just let yourself go, Louisa'; but she keeps up the humbug even
+with me--I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the
+door shut.
+
+"The worst of it is," Mrs. Fisher went on, "that she thinks it's all MY
+fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and everybody began
+to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa thought that if she'd
+had Lily in tow instead of me she would have been hob-nobbing with all
+the royalties by this time. She doesn't realize that it's Lily's beauty
+that does it: Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than
+when he knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously
+admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to
+marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned
+up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her
+marriage-settlements with the step-father were being drawn up. Some
+people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal:
+there was an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
+so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
+elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks that Aix
+didn't suit her, and mentions her having been sent there as proof of the
+incompetence of French doctors. That's Lily all over, you know: she works
+like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she
+ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a
+picnic."
+
+Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of sea
+between the cactus-flowers. "Sometimes," she added, "I think it's just
+flightiness--and sometimes I think it's because, at heart, she despises
+the things she's trying for. And it's the difficulty of deciding that
+makes her such an interesting study." She glanced tentatively at Selden's
+motionless profile, and resumed with a slight sigh: "Well, all I can say
+is, I wish she'd give ME some of her discarded opportunities. I wish we
+could change places now, for instance. She could make a very good thing
+out of the Brys if she managed them properly, and I should know just how
+to look after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy
+Silverton."
+
+She met Selden's sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance. "Well,
+what's the use of mincing matters? We all know that's what Bertha brought
+her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good time she has to provide
+occupation for George. At first I thought Lily was going to play her
+cards well THIS time, but there are rumours that Bertha is jealous of her
+success here and at Cannes, and I shouldn't be surprised if there were a
+break any day. Lily's only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly--oh,
+very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it's necessary
+that George's attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And I'm
+bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he'd marry her tomorrow if
+he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But you know him--he's
+as blind as he's jealous; and of course Lily's present business is to
+keep him blind. A clever woman might know just the right moment to tear
+off the bandage: but Lily isn't clever in that way, and when George does
+open his eyes she'll probably contrive not to be in his line of vision."
+
+Selden tossed away his cigarette. "By Jove--it's time for my train," he
+exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs. Fisher's
+surprised comment--"Why, I thought of course you were at Monte!"--a
+murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his head-quarters.
+
+"The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now," he heard irrelevantly flung
+after him.
+
+Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel overlooking
+the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of gaping
+portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to transport them to the
+cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to
+the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Nice; and not
+till he was installed in the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim
+to himself, with a reaction of self-contempt: "What the deuce am I
+running away from?"
+
+The pertinence of the question checked Selden's fugitive impulse before
+the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like an emotional
+coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered. He had instructed
+his bankers to forward some important business letters to Nice, and at
+Nice he would quietly await them. He was already annoyed with himself for
+having left Monte Carlo, where he had intended to pass the week which
+remained to him before sailing; but it would now be difficult to return
+on his steps without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride
+recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the
+probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself
+from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance; and
+viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a reassuring
+object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated mention of her
+name, would send his thoughts back into grooves from which he had
+resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could be entirely excluded from
+his life, the pressure of new and varied impressions, with which no
+thought of her was connected, would soon complete the work of separation.
+Mrs. Fisher's conversation had, indeed, operated to that end; but the
+treatment was too painful to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies
+were untried; and Selden thought he could trust himself to return
+gradually to a reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.
+
+Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in his
+reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned him that
+he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment there was a
+hand on the door, and he turned to confront the very face he was fleeing.
+
+Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the
+train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and Lord
+Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage, and
+envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before the
+whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were hastening to
+Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the Duchess of
+Beltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan evidently
+improvised--in spite of Lord Hubert's protesting "Oh, I say, you
+know,"--for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry's endeavour to
+capture the Duchess.
+
+During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time for a
+rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself opposite to him in
+the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three months had elapsed since he
+had parted from her on the threshold of the Brys' conservatory; but a
+subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty. Then it had had
+a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were
+sometimes tragically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a
+process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
+brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation:
+to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm
+fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape.
+
+He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
+competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she took up
+the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had not been
+snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such facility
+sickened him--but he told himself that it was with the pang which
+precedes recovery. Now he would really get well--would eject the last
+drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt himself calmer in her
+presence than he had learned to be in the thought of her. Her assumptions
+and elisions, her short-cuts and long DETOURS, the skill with which she
+contrived to meet him at a point from which no inconvenient glimpses of
+the past were visible, suggested what opportunities she had had for
+practising such arts since their last meeting. He felt that she had at
+last arrived at an understanding with herself: had made a pact with her
+rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government,
+under which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced
+into the service of the state.
+
+And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had adjusted itself
+to the hidden intricacies of a situation in which, even after Mrs.
+Fisher's elucidating flashes, he still felt himself agrope. Surely Mrs.
+Fisher could no longer charge Miss Bart with neglecting her
+opportunities! To Selden's exasperated observation she was only too
+completely alive to them. She was "perfect" to every one: subservient to
+Bertha's anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods,
+brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her
+on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton,
+portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something
+vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of
+manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed
+on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be
+desperate. She was on the edge of something--that was the impression left
+with him. He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one
+graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ground was
+failing her.
+
+On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for the
+half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of the general
+insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism. How any one
+could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera--any one with a grain of
+imagination--with the whole Mediterranean to choose from: but then, if
+one's estimate of a place depended on the way they broiled a spring
+chicken! Gad! what a study might be made of the tyranny of the
+stomach--the way a sluggish liver or insufficient gastric juices might
+affect the whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in
+reach--chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the "statutory causes"; a
+woman's life might be ruined by a man's inability to digest fresh bread.
+Grotesque? Yes--and tragic--like most absurdities. There's nothing
+grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he?
+Oh--the reason they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well--partly, no
+doubt, Miss Bart's desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a
+stone to art and poetry--the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And
+of course she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for him. Oh,
+she could make him believe anything--ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset was aware of
+it--oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn't see! But she could hold her
+tongue--she'd had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an intimate friend--she
+wouldn't hear a word against her. Only it hurts a woman's pride--there
+are some things one doesn't get used to . . . All this in confidence, of
+course? Ah--and there were the ladies signalling from the balcony of the
+hotel.... He plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative
+cigar.
+
+The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the evening, by
+some of those faint corroborative hints that generate a light of their
+own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden, stumbling on a chance
+acquaintance, had dined with him, and adjourned, still in his company, to
+the brightly lit Promenade, where a line of crowded stands commanded the
+glittering darkness of the waters. The night was soft and persuasive.
+Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from
+the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent
+across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red
+glitter of the illuminated boats. Down the lantern-hung Promenade,
+snatches of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft
+tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and the
+backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the
+vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of the
+season.
+
+Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the stands facing
+the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng, and then found a point
+of vantage on a high garden-parapet above the Promenade. Thence they
+caught but a triangular glimpse of the water, and of the flashing play of
+boats across its surface; but the crowd in the street was under their
+immediate view, and seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than
+the show itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and,
+dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and
+turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls
+overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty cab
+trailed along the deserted thoroughfare, and presently Selden saw two
+persons emerge from the opposite shadows, signal to the cab, and drive
+off in it toward the centre of the town. The moonlight touched them as
+they paused to enter the carriage, and he recognized Mrs. Dorset and
+young Silverton.
+
+Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw that the
+time was close on eleven. He took another cross street, and without
+breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way to the fashionable
+club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here, amid the blaze of crowded
+baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord Hubert Dacey, seated with his
+habitual worn smile behind a rapidly dwindling heap of gold. The heap
+being in due course wiped out, Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining
+Selden, adjourned with him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was
+now past midnight, and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the
+long trails of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky
+repossessed by the tranquil splendour of the moon.
+
+Lord Hubert looked at his watch. "By Jove, I promised to join the Duchess
+for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it's past twelve, and I suppose
+they've all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the crowd soon after
+dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They had seats on one of the
+stands, but of course they couldn't stop quiet: the Duchess never can.
+She and Miss Bart went off in quest of what they call adventures--gad, it
+ain't their fault if they don't have some queer ones!" He added
+tentatively, after pausing to grope for a cigarette: "Miss Bart's an old
+friend of yours, I believe? So she told me.--Ah, thanks--I don't seem to
+have one left." He lit Selden's proffered cigarette, and continued, in
+his high-pitched drawling tone: "None of my business, of course, but I
+didn't introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess, you
+understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a liberal
+education."
+
+Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert broke
+out again: "Sort of thing one can't communicate to the young lady--though
+young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for themselves; but in
+this case--I'm an old friend too, you know . . . and there seemed no one
+else to speak to. The whole situation's a little mixed, as I see it--but
+there used to be an aunt somewhere, a diffuse and innocent person, who
+was great at bridging over chasms she didn't see . . . Ah, in New York,
+is she? Pity New York's such a long way off!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found herself
+alone on the deck of the Sabrina. The cushioned chairs, disposed
+expectantly under the wide awning, showed no signs of recent occupancy,
+and she presently learned from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet
+appeared, and that the gentlemen--separately--had gone ashore as soon as
+they had breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over
+the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
+before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath of
+purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of foam at
+the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences, hotels and villas
+flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and eucalyptus; and the
+background of bare and finely-pencilled mountains quivered in a pale
+intensity of light.
+
+
+How beautiful it was--and how she loved beauty! She had always felt that
+her sensibility in this direction made up for certain obtusenesses of
+feeling of which she was less proud; and during the last three months she
+had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets' invitation to go abroad with
+them had come as an almost miraculous release from crushing difficulties;
+and her faculty for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off
+problems of conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had
+arisen, made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a
+postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed
+for her only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
+to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they changed
+their background. She could not have remained in New York without
+repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious
+debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident
+of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them
+dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled
+past them.
+
+Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to aid this
+illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new scenes, and had found
+in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions. The cruise itself charmed
+her as a romantic adventure. She was vaguely touched by the names and
+scenes amid which she moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading
+Theocritus by moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories,
+with a thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
+superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given her more
+pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high company, and of
+making her own ascendency felt there, so that she found herself figuring
+once more as the "beautiful Miss Bart" in the interesting journal devoted
+to recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions--all
+these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of memory
+the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had escaped.
+
+If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her
+ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only
+problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.
+Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of the skill with which she had
+adapted herself to somewhat delicate conditions. She had reason to think
+that she had made herself equally necessary to her host and hostess; and
+if only she had seen any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a
+financial profit from the situation, there would have been no cloud on
+her horizon. The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently
+low; and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
+be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could worry
+along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some happy
+change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was gay and
+beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not unworthily in
+such a setting.
+
+She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of Beltshire,
+and at twelve o'clock she asked to be set ashore in the gig. Before this
+she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see Mrs. Dorset; but the
+reply came back that the latter was tired, and trying to sleep. Lily
+thought she understood the reason of the rebuff. Her hostess had not been
+included in the Duchess's invitation, though she herself had made the
+most loyal efforts in that direction. But her grace was impervious to
+hints, and invited or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily's fault if
+Mrs. Dorset's complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess's
+easy gait. The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated
+her objection beyond saying: "She's rather a bore, you know. The only one
+of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry--HE'S funny--" but Lily
+knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether sorry to be
+thus distinguished at her friend's expense. Bertha certainly HAD grown
+tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned Silverton.
+
+On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from the
+Sabrina; and the Duchess's little breakfast, organized by Lord Hubert
+with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter to Lily for not
+including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of late, had grown more than
+usually morose and incalculable, and Ned Silverton went about with an air
+that seemed to challenge the universe. The freedom and lightness of the
+ducal intercourse made an agreeable change from these complications, and
+Lily was tempted, after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her
+companions to the hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to
+play; her diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure;
+but it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of the
+Duchess's back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a neighbouring
+table.
+
+The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the afternoon
+hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the Sunday crowd in a
+lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass, identities were hardly
+distinguishable; but Lily presently saw Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined
+way through the doors, and, in the broad wake she left, the light figure
+of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug.
+Mrs. Bry pressed on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain
+point in the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
+towing-line, and let herself float to the girl's side.
+
+"Lose her?" she echoed the latter's query, with an indifferent glance at
+Mrs. Bry's retreating back. "I daresay--it doesn't matter: I HAVE lost
+her already." And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: "We had an awful row
+this morning. You know, of course, that the Duchess chucked her at dinner
+last night, and she thinks it was my fault--my want of management. The
+worst of it is, the message--just a mere word by telephone--came so late
+that the dinner HAD to be paid for; and Becassin HAD run it up--it had
+been so drummed into him that the Duchess was coming!" Mrs. Fisher
+indulged in a faint laugh at the remembrance. "Paying for what she
+doesn't get rankles so dreadfully with Louisa: I can't make her see that
+it's one of the preliminary steps to getting what you haven't paid
+for--and as I was the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms,
+poor dear!"
+
+Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came naturally to
+her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to Mrs. Fisher.
+
+"If there's anything I can do--if it's only a question of meeting the
+Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing----"
+
+But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. "My dear, I have my
+pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn't manage the Duchess, and I can't
+palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I've taken the final step: I
+go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers. THEY'RE still in the elementary
+stage; an Italian Prince is a great deal more than a Prince to them, and
+they're always on the brink of taking a courier for one. To save them
+from that is my present mission." She laughed again at the picture. "But
+before I go I want to make my last will and testament--I want to leave
+you the Brys."
+
+"Me?" Miss Bart joined in her amusement. "It's charming of you to
+remember me, dear; but really----"
+
+"You're already so well provided for?" Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp glance
+at her. "ARE you, though, Lily--to the point of rejecting my offer?"
+
+Miss Bart coloured slowly. "What I really meant was, that the Brys
+wouldn't in the least care to be so disposed of."
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye.
+"What you really meant was that you've snubbed the Brys horribly; and you
+know that they know----"
+
+"Carry!"
+
+"Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you'd even
+managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina--especially when royalties
+were coming! But it's not too late," she ended earnestly, "it's not too
+late for either of you."
+
+Lily smiled. "Stay over, and I'll get the Duchess to dine with them."
+
+"I shan't stay over--the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT," said Mrs.
+Fisher with simplicity. "But get the Duchess to dine with them all the
+same."
+
+Lily's smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend's importunity
+was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. "I'm sorry I have been
+negligent about the Brys----" she began.
+
+"Oh, as to the Brys--it's you I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Fisher
+abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice:
+"You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess chucked us.
+It was Louisa's idea--I told her what I thought of it."
+
+Miss Bart assented. "Yes--I caught sight of you on the way back, at the
+station."
+
+"Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset--that
+horrid little Dabham who does 'Society Notes from the Riviera'--had been
+dining with us at Nice. And he's telling everybody that you and Dorset
+came back alone after midnight."
+
+"Alone--? When he was with us?" Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into
+gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher's look. "We DID
+come back alone--if that's so very dreadful! But whose fault was it? The
+Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown Princess; Bertha
+got bored with the show, and went off early, promising to meet us at the
+station. We turned up on time, but she didn't--she didn't turn up at all!"
+
+Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with
+careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher received it
+in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have lost sight of her
+friend's part in the incident: her inward vision had taken another slant.
+
+"Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?"
+
+"Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for the
+FETE. At any rate, I know she's safe on the yacht, though I haven't yet
+seen her; but you see it was not my fault," Lily summed up.
+
+"Not your fault that Bertha didn't turn up? My poor child, if only you
+don't have to pay for it!" Mrs. Fisher rose--she had seen Mrs. Bry
+surging back in her direction. "There's Louisa, and I must be off--oh,
+we're on the best of terms externally; we're lunching together; but at
+heart it's ME she's lunching on," she explained; and with a last
+hand-clasp and a last look, she added: "Remember, I leave her to you;
+she's hovering now, ready to take you in."
+
+
+
+Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher's leave-taking away with her
+from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving, the first
+step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry's good graces. An affable
+advance--a vague murmur that they must see more of each other--an
+allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include the Duchess as
+well as the Sabrina--how easily it was all done, if one possessed the
+knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as she had so often
+wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not more consistently
+exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful--and sometimes, could it be
+that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious of
+a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to the point of
+suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps,
+that he might really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE
+undertook to have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his
+help, with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
+way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more
+for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as she
+advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it been
+produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden? She thought
+not--time and change seemed so completely to have relegated him to his
+proper distance. The sudden and exquisite reaction from her anxieties had
+had the effect of throwing the recent past so far back that even Selden,
+as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so
+clear that they were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down
+to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
+No--that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
+fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
+uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.
+
+They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
+descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her across the
+square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and regain the yacht; but
+she now had the immediate impression that something more was to happen
+first.
+
+"Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?" he began, putting the
+second question before the first was answered, and not waiting for a
+reply to either before he directed her silently toward the comparative
+seclusion of the lower gardens.
+
+She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension.
+The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its sallowness had
+paled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and long
+reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine effect. His appearance,
+in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious.
+
+He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till they
+reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then, pulling up
+abruptly, he said: "Have you seen Bertha?"
+
+"No--when I left the yacht she was not yet up."
+
+He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
+clock. "Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time she
+came on board? This morning at seven!" he exclaimed.
+
+"At seven?" Lily started. "What happened--an accident to the train?"
+
+He laughed again. "They missed the train--all the trains--they had to
+drive back."
+
+"Well----?" She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this necessity
+accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.
+
+"Well, they couldn't get a carriage at once--at that time of night, you
+know--" the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he were
+putting the case for his wife--"and when they finally did, it was only a
+one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!"
+
+"How tiresome! I see," she affirmed, with the more earnestness because
+she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after a pause she
+added: "I'm so sorry--but ought we to have waited?"
+
+"Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the four of
+us, do you think?"
+
+She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh intended
+to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of it. "Well, it
+would have been difficult; we should have had to walk by turns. But it
+would have been jolly to see the sunrise."
+
+"Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly," he agreed.
+
+"Was it? You saw it, then?"
+
+"I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them."
+
+"Naturally--I suppose you were worried. Why didn't you call on me to
+share your vigil?"
+
+He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. "I
+don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said with sudden
+grimness.
+
+Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as in
+one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping her
+sense of it out of her eyes.
+
+"DENOUEMENT--isn't that too big a word for such a small incident? The
+worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has probably slept
+off by this time."
+
+She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to her
+in the glare of his miserable eyes.
+
+"Don't--don't----!" he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and while
+she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore any cause for
+it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he dropped down on the bench
+near which they had paused, and poured out the wretchedness of his soul.
+
+It was a dreadful hour--an hour from which she emerged shrinking and
+seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was
+not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak; but
+rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface
+of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had
+always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the
+situation had presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid
+image--that of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping
+road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending,
+and wondering what would give way first. Well--everything had given way
+now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so long.
+Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it
+from the road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his
+furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made her feel
+the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his life. But for her,
+what ear would have been open to his cries? And what hand but hers could
+drag him up again to a footing of sanity and self-respect? All through
+the stress of the struggle with him, she had been conscious of something
+faintly maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
+present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to
+feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted her to suffer
+with him, not to help him to suffer less.
+
+Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
+frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy so
+deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would think it
+the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But Monte Carlo is,
+of all places, the one where the human bond is least close, and odd
+sights are the least arresting. If a glance or two lingered on the
+couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed them; and it was Lily herself who
+broke the silence by rising from her seat. With the clearing of her
+vision the sweep of peril had extended, and she saw that the post of
+danger was no longer at Dorset's side.
+
+"If you won't go back, I must--don't make me leave you!" she urged.
+
+But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: "What are you going to
+do? You really can't sit here all night."
+
+"I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers." He sat up, roused by
+a new thought. "By Jove, Selden's at Nice--I'll send for Selden!"
+
+Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. "No, no, NO!" she
+protested.
+
+He swung round on her distrustfully. "Why not Selden? He's a lawyer isn't
+he? One will do as well as another in a case like this."
+
+"As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help you."
+
+"You do--by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn't been for you
+I'd have ended the thing long ago. But now it's got to end." He rose
+suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. "You can't want to see
+me ridiculous."
+
+She looked at him kindly. "That's just it." Then, after a moment's
+pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
+inspiration: "Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You'll have time to do it
+before dinner."
+
+"Oh, DINNER----" he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
+rejoinder: "Dinner on board, remember; we'll put it off till nine if you
+like."
+
+It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the quay, and
+she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her, she began to wonder
+what had been happening on the yacht. Of Silverton's whereabouts there
+had been no mention. Had he returned to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha--the
+dread alternative sprang on her suddenly--could Bertha, left to herself,
+have gone ashore to rejoin him? Lily's heart stood still at the thought.
+All her concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
+in such affairs, the woman's instinct is to side with the man, but
+because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was so
+desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of so
+different a quality from Bertha's, though hers too was desperate enough.
+The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about herself, while
+he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual crisis, this
+difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution on Bertha's side,
+since at least he had her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any
+rate, viewed less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were
+for the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went out.
+She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of
+obligation, the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain
+it. Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the last
+months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction of which
+Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more urgent that she
+should work undividedly in her friend's interest.
+
+It was in Bertha's interest, certainly, that she had despatched Dorset to
+consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of the situation
+accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the safest in which Dorset
+could find himself. Who but Selden could thus miraculously combine the
+skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? The consciousness
+that much skill would be required made Lily rest thankfully in the
+greatness of the obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through
+she could trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust
+in the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.
+
+Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the conviction
+strengthened her for the task that remained. She and Bertha had never
+been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis the barriers of reserve
+must surely fall: Dorset's wild allusions to the scene of the morning
+made Lily feel that they were down already, and that any attempt to
+rebuild them would be beyond Bertha's strength. She pictured the poor
+creature shivering behind her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense
+the moment when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered.
+If only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
+traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily grew
+more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her long absence.
+What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long hours no soul to
+turn to--but by this time Lily's eager foot was on the side-ladder, and
+her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be
+unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck, the
+wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated elegance, sat
+dispensing tea to the Duchess of Beltshire and Lord Hubert.
+
+The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that Bertha, at
+least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was proportionately
+disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned. But in an instant she
+saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to look blank before the others,
+and that, to mitigate the effect of her own surprise, she must at once
+produce some simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions
+made it easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess: "Why, I thought you'd
+gone back to the Princess!" and this sufficed for the lady she addressed,
+if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert.
+
+At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the Duchess
+was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first rushed out to the
+yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject of tomorrow's
+dinner--the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert had finally
+insisted on dragging them.
+
+"To save my neck, you know!" he explained, with a glance that appealed to
+Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the Duchess added, with
+her noble candour: "Mr. Bry has promised him a tip, and he says if we go
+he'll pass it onto us."
+
+This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to Lily, Mrs.
+Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the close of which
+Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder, called back, with an air
+of numbering heads: "And of course we may count on Dorset too?"
+
+"Oh, count on him," his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up well to
+the last--but as she turned back from waving her adieux over the side,
+Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul of fear look
+out.
+
+Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady her
+muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control when,
+dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she remarked to
+Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: "I suppose I ought to say good
+morning."
+
+If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the vaguest
+sense of what was expected of her in return. There was something
+unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset's composure, and she had to
+force the light tone in which she answered: "I tried to see you this
+morning, but you were not yet up."
+
+"No--I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought we
+ought to wait for you till the last train." She spoke very gently, but
+with just the least tinge of reproach.
+
+"You missed us? You waited for us at the station?" Now indeed Lily was
+too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other's words or keep watch
+on her own. "But I thought you didn't get to the station till after the
+last train had left!"
+
+Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
+immediate query: "Who told you that?"
+
+"George--I saw him just now in the gardens."
+
+"Ah, is that George's version? Poor George--he was in no state to
+remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this morning,
+and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he found him?"
+
+Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset settled
+herself indolently in her seat. "He'll wait to see him; he was horribly
+frightened about himself. It's very bad for him to be worried, and
+whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings on an attack."
+
+This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was
+put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air
+of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully:
+"Anything upsetting?"
+
+"Yes--such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
+hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big responsibility in such a
+scandalous place after midnight."
+
+At that--at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable audacity of
+it--Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished laugh.
+
+"Well, really--considering it was you who burdened him with the
+responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. "By not having the
+superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush for the
+train? Or the imagination to believe that you'd take it without us--you
+and he all alone--instead of waiting quietly in the station till we DID
+manage to meet you?"
+
+Lily's colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was pursuing
+an object, following a line she had marked out for herself. Only, with
+such a doom impending, why waste time in these childish efforts to avert
+it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed Lily's indignation: did it not
+prove how horribly the poor creature was frightened?
+
+"No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice," she returned.
+
+"Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity to
+rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are not a
+child to be led by the hand!"
+
+"No--nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that's what you are doing to
+me now."
+
+Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. "Lecture you--I? Heaven forbid!
+I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it's usually the
+other way round, isn't it? I'm expected to take hints, not to give them:
+I've positively lived on them all these last months."
+
+"Hints--from me to you?" Lily repeated.
+
+"Oh, negative ones merely--what not to be and to do and to see. And I
+think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you'll let me say
+so, I didn't understand that one of my negative duties was NOT to warn
+you when you carried your imprudence too far."
+
+A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery
+that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a
+moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this
+outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to
+cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to
+exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double and turn--come straight back to me,
+and we'll find a way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable
+insolence of Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it
+quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its
+accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to
+her cabin.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Miss Bart's telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his hotel; and
+having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The message
+necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he had recently
+heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On the whole he was
+surprised; for though he had perceived that the situation contained all
+the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his
+personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into
+harmlessness. Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless
+disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and
+it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from
+a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to
+safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for either lay in
+repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had
+only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his
+desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
+There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished to
+spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the
+public washing of the Dorset linen.
+
+How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more
+vividly after his two hours' talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out
+at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as
+left him, after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling
+open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come
+out; and happily for his side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced
+together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a
+homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit--there were
+missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
+was naturally Selden's business to make the most of in putting them under
+his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's mood the completest
+demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the
+moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize, to offer sympathy and
+to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with the
+sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly
+noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted
+for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not
+long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset,
+the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a
+little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such
+natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
+telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
+"Assume that everything is as usual."
+
+On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was
+lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's imperative bidding,
+had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast
+had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of
+the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called
+his "attacks" that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this
+cause; but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to
+make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt
+of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a
+grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one
+herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
+perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak
+flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of
+"appearances," her own attention was perpetually distracted by the
+question: "What on earth can she be driving at?" There was something
+positively exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If
+only she would have given her friend a hint they might still have worked
+together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while she was thus
+obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she
+honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but for the Dorsets'. She had
+not thought of her own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in
+trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary
+evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
+tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of
+his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who
+should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the
+infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing
+hand.
+
+Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it
+seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an
+hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage
+and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the
+same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the
+confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were
+all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned
+Silverton. No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject
+kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
+another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset now
+avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was repenting his
+rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only trying, in his clumsy
+way, to conform to Selden's counsel to behave "as usual." Such
+instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the
+photographer's behest to "look natural"; and in a creature as unconscious
+as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to
+maintain a pose was sure to result in queer contortions.
+
+It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
+resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset was
+still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and feeling
+too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried ashore.
+Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a group of
+acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in whose company she
+was returning to the rooms when she encountered Selden crossing the
+square. She could not, at the moment, separate herself definitely from
+her party, who had hospitably assumed that she would remain with them
+till they took their departure; but she found time for a momentary pause
+of enquiry, to which he promptly returned: "I've seen him again--he's
+just left me."
+
+She waited before him anxiously. "Well? what has happened? What WILL
+happen?"
+
+"Nothing as yet--and nothing in the future, I think."
+
+"It's over, then? It's settled? You're sure?"
+
+He smiled. "Give me time. I'm not sure--but I'm a good deal surer." And
+with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the expectant
+group on the steps.
+
+Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness, had even
+stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And now, as he
+turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station, that anxiety
+remained with him as the visible justification of his own. It was not,
+indeed, anything specific that he feared: there had been a literal truth
+in his declaration that he did not think anything would happen. What
+troubled him was that, though Dorset's attitude had perceptibly changed,
+the change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been
+produced by Selden's arguments, or by the action of his own soberer
+reason. Five minutes' talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
+been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment as
+weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of apathy, like a
+dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however
+exerted, it worked for the general safety: the question was how long it
+would last, and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On
+these points Selden could gain no light; for he saw that one effect of
+the transformation had been to shut him off from free communion with
+Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the irresistible desire to
+discuss his wrong; but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn
+tenacity, Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
+expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
+impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden began to
+feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of
+the sequel.
+
+It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station
+when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his brief word with
+her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual
+change in his purpose. The change had been produced by the look in her
+eyes; and in his eagerness to define the nature of that look, he dropped
+into a seat in the gardens, and sat brooding upon the question. It was
+natural enough, in all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a
+young woman placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
+couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her concern for
+her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her own position. The
+worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss Bart's state of mind, so many
+alternative readings were possible; and one of these, in Selden's
+troubled mind, took the ugly form suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl
+was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what
+degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being
+fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs.
+Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
+Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are
+generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with
+the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs.
+Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the likelihood of Dorset's marrying
+Miss Bart if "anything happened"; and though Mrs. Fisher's conclusions
+were notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from
+which they were drawn. Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the
+girl, and this interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife's
+struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
+last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
+combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences. She could
+be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was reckless in
+courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely
+to be used as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just
+what course she was likely to take, but his perplexity increased his
+apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must speak
+again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the situation--and he had
+always honestly tried to resist judging her by her surroundings--however
+free she might be from any personal connection with it, she would be
+better out of the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to
+him for help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.
+
+This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him back to
+the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her disappearing; but
+a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed to put him on her traces. He
+saw instead, to his surprise, Ned Silverton loitering somewhat
+ostentatiously about the tables; and the discovery that this actor in the
+drama was not only hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the
+exposure of the footlights, though it might have seemed to imply that all
+peril was over, served rather to deepen Selden's sense of foreboding.
+Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see
+Miss Bart move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably
+to do at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for a
+glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that she had
+gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow her there, and
+still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a
+private word; and he had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative
+of writing, when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled
+before him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.
+
+Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord Hubert that
+Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset's company; an
+announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Bry, after a
+glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a
+spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet
+his friends at dinner that evening--"At Becassin's--a little dinner to
+the Duchess," she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the
+pressure.
+
+Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought
+him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused
+to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace.
+There, while the Brys hovered within over the last agitating alternatives
+of the MENU, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length
+rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw
+and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss
+Bart on the pretext of a moment's glance into one of the brilliant shops
+along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
+white dazzle of a jeweller's window: "I stopped over to see you--to beg
+of you to leave the yacht."
+
+The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. "To
+leave--? What do you mean? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?"
+
+The glare from the jeweller's window, deepening the pallour of her face,
+gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. "Nothing
+will, I am sure; but while there's even a doubt left, how can you think I
+would leave Bertha?"
+
+The words rang out on a note of contempt--was it possibly of contempt for
+himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of
+insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest: "You have yourself
+to think of, you know--" to which, with a strange fall of sadness in her
+voice, she answered, meeting his eyes: "If you knew how little difference
+that makes!"
+
+"Oh, well, nothing WILL happen," he said, more for his own reassurance
+than for hers; and "Nothing, nothing, of course!" she valiantly assented,
+as they turned to overtake their companions.
+
+In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry's
+illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the
+familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife once
+more presenting their customary faces to the world, she engrossed in
+establishing her relation with an intensely new gown, he shrinking with
+dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations of the MENU. The mere
+fact that they thus showed themselves together, with the utmost openness
+the place afforded, seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their
+differences were composed. How this end had been attained was still
+matter for wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested
+confidently in the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by
+telling himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler
+than his own.
+
+Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses, in
+which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away from
+Lord Hubert's restraining hand, Selden's general watchfulness began to
+lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days
+when she was so handsome that to be handsome was enough, and all the
+rest--her grace, her quickness, her social felicities--seemed the
+overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the
+way in which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable shades, from
+the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such
+company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired
+to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace
+cheapening the other women's smartness as her finely-discriminated
+silences made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had
+restored to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
+in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her voice
+and eyes. Yes, she was matchless--it was the one word for her; and he
+could give his admiration the freer play because so little personal
+feeling remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not
+at the lurid moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light
+of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the
+crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt
+in her. It was before him again in its completeness--the choice in which
+she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the
+showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived
+at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
+setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a
+special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of
+the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where
+conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become
+the roll of fame.
+
+It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham, wedged
+in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours, suddenly became
+the centre of Selden's scrutiny. How much did he know of what was going
+on, and how much, for his purpose, was still worth finding out? His
+little eyes were like tentacles thrown out to catch the floating
+intimations with which, to Selden, the air at moments seemed thick; then
+again it cleared to its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it
+for the journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies' gowns.
+Mrs. Dorset's, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham's
+vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he would have
+called "the literary style." At first, as Selden had noticed, it had been
+almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now she was in full command of
+it, and was even producing her effects with unwonted freedom. Was she
+not, indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was not
+Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too
+jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always
+jerky; but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him
+farther from his centre.
+
+The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evident
+satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between Lord
+Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher to
+witness her achievement. Short of Mrs. Fisher her audience might have
+been called complete; for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainly
+gathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as
+to the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry,
+conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
+each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
+pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
+catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
+organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to adorn
+it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore herself, he
+smiled to think that he should have fancied her in need of help. Never
+had she appeared more serenely mistress of the situation than when, at
+the moment of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about
+the table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the shoulders
+to receive her cloak from Dorset.
+
+The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry's exceptional cigars and a
+bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables were empty;
+but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to give relief to the
+leave-taking of Mrs. Bry's distinguished guests. This ceremony was drawn
+out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the
+Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite farewells, and pledges of speedy
+reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes
+on the way to England. The quality of Mrs. Bry's hospitality, and of the
+tips her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the
+English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over
+their hostess's future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
+also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy worth
+their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.
+
+A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister that
+they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry of this
+departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the door, offered to
+convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The offer was accepted,
+and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband in attendance. Miss Bart had
+lingered for a last word with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry
+was pressing a final, and still more expensive, cigar, called out: "Come
+on, Lily, if you're going back to the yacht."
+
+Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused on
+her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.
+
+"Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht," she said in a voice of
+singular distinctness.
+
+A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the verge of
+congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her husband, and
+Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was mainly conscious of
+a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and fling him out into the street.
+
+Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife's side. His face was
+white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes. "Bertha!--Miss
+Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some mistake . . ."
+
+"Miss Bart remains here," his wife rejoined incisively. "And, I think,
+George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer."
+
+Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable
+erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her. She
+had paled a little under the shock of the insult, but the discomposure of
+the surrounding faces was not reflected in her own. The faint disdain of
+her smile seemed to lift her high above her antagonist's reach, and it
+was not till she had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance
+between them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess.
+
+"I am joining the Duchess tomorrow," she explained, "and it seemed easier
+for me to remain on shore for the night."
+
+She held firmly to Mrs. Bry's wavering eye while she gave this
+explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative glance
+from one to another of the women's faces. She read their incredulity in
+their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness of the men behind them,
+and for a miserable half-second he thought she quivered on the brink of
+failure. Then, turning to him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery
+of her recovered smile--"Dear Mr. Selden," she said, "you promised to see
+me to my cab."
+
+
+
+Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden moved
+toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of warm rain
+blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab had been
+tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till
+the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a
+bench, he said: "Sit down a moment."
+
+She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at the
+bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her face.
+Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful lest any
+word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and kept also from
+free utterance by the wretched doubt which had slowly renewed itself
+within him. What had brought her to this pass? What weakness had placed
+her so abominably at her enemy's mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have
+turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the
+support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of
+husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind,
+reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
+fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the corroboration of his own
+impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint,
+since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked
+by the fear of committing a blunder.
+
+Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as
+that of the men he had despised for turning from her; but before he could
+find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question.
+
+"Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning."
+
+"An hotel--HERE--that you can go to alone? It's not possible."
+
+She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. "What IS, then?
+It's too wet to sleep in the gardens."
+
+"But there must be some one----"
+
+"Some one to whom I can go? Of course--any number--but at THIS hour? You
+see my change of plan was rather sudden----"
+
+"Good God--if you'd listened to me!" he cried, venting his helplessness
+in a burst of anger.
+
+She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. "But haven't
+I?" she rejoined. "You advised me to leave the yacht, and I'm leaving it."
+
+He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to
+explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had
+forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past.
+
+She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like
+some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.
+
+"Lily!" he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but--"Oh, not
+now," she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her
+recovered composure: "Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since
+you're so kindly here to help me----"
+
+He gathered himself up at the challenge. "You will do as I tell you?
+There's but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the
+Stepneys."
+
+"Oh--" broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he
+insisted: "Come--it's late, and you must appear to have gone there
+directly."
+
+He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last
+gesture of protest. "I can't--I can't--not that--you don't know Gwen: you
+mustn't ask me!"
+
+"I MUST ask you--you must obey me," he persisted, though infected at
+heart by her own fear.
+
+Her voice sank to a whisper: "And if she refuses?"--but, "Oh, trust
+me--trust me!" he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch,
+she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square.
+
+In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which
+carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys' hotel. Here he
+left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was
+sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter's
+descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the
+gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew
+up with a last flare of reluctance.
+
+"It's understood, then?" he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
+Selden's arm. "She leaves tomorrow by the early train--and my wife's
+asleep, and can't be disturbed."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The blinds of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down against the
+oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her
+assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were
+all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons--even a stray Peniston or
+two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of
+remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in
+fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's property
+"went back"; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal
+of his widow's private fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent.
+Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took
+the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
+and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude
+and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the
+insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her
+in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to
+conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and
+smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I
+couldn't BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere else!"
+
+A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the
+door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with
+Gerty Farish at her side. The women's faces, as she paused
+interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two
+made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either
+by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others
+meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney,
+with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily,
+ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney's official attempt to
+direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
+herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from
+the others.
+
+It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from
+Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their
+welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of
+her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard
+from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated,
+almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
+be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable
+uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had
+vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
+her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The
+certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the
+prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have
+repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of
+undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
+long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, "always
+understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece;
+and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized
+into fact.
+
+"She gets everything, of course--I don't see what we're here for," Mrs.
+Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the
+latter's deprecating murmur--"Julia was always a just woman"--might have
+been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.
+
+"Well, it's only about four hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney rejoined with
+a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer's
+preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They won't find a towel
+missing--I went over them with her the very day----"
+
+Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh
+mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, solemnly
+erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle
+through the preamble of the will.
+
+"It's like being in church," she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen
+Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had
+grown--he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a
+few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on
+his stick.
+
+"I wonder why rich people always grow fat--I suppose it's because there's
+nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my
+figure," she mused, while the lawyer droned on through a labyrinth of
+legacies. The servants came first, then a few charitable institutions,
+then several remoter Melsons and Stepneys, who stirred consciously as
+their names rang out, and then subsided into a state of impassiveness
+befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney,
+and a cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few
+thousands: Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she
+heard her own name--"to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars--" and
+after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
+periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling
+distinctness: "and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and
+name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney."
+
+There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a
+surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed
+out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged
+handkerchief.
+
+Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first
+time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware of her
+presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance. And under
+her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes
+deceived. Disinherited--she had been disinherited--and for Grace
+Stepney! She met Gerty's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing
+effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There was
+something to be done before she left the house: to be done with all the
+nobility she knew how to put into such gestures. She advanced to the
+group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her hand said simply: "Dear
+Grace, I am so glad."
+
+The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space created
+itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no one advanced to
+fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about her, calmly taking the
+measure of her situation. She heard some one ask a question about the
+date of the will; she caught a fragment of the lawyer's answer--something
+about a sudden summons, and an "earlier instrument." Then the tide of
+dispersal began to drift past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert
+Melson stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group
+escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should
+take, though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
+found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which more than
+ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family vault, in which
+the last corpse had just been decently deposited.
+
+
+
+In Gerty Farish's sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the two
+friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of laughter: it
+struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt's legacy should so
+nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor. The need of
+discharging that debt had reasserted itself with increased urgency since
+her return to America, and she spoke her first thought in saying to the
+anxiously hovering Gerty: "I wonder when the legacies will be paid."
+
+But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into a
+larger indignation. "Oh, Lily, it's unjust; it's cruel--Grace Stepney
+must FEEL she has no right to all that money!"
+
+"Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her money,"
+Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.
+
+"But she was devoted to you--she led every one to think--" Gerty checked
+herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to her with a
+direct look. "Gerty, be honest: this will was made only six weeks ago.
+She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?"
+
+"Every one heard, of course, that there had been some disagreement--some
+misunderstanding----"
+
+"Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?"
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry George
+Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn't that what
+she told Gwen Stepney?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't listen to such horrors."
+
+"I MUST listen to them--I must know where I stand." She paused, and again
+sounded a faint note of derision. "Did you notice the women? They were
+afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get the
+money--afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague." Gerty
+remained silent, and she continued: "I stayed on to see what would
+happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu Melson--I saw them
+watching to see what Gwen would do.--Gerty, I must know just what is
+being said of me."
+
+"I tell you I don't listen----"
+
+"One hears such things without listening." She rose and laid her resolute
+hands on Miss Farish's shoulders. "Gerty, are people going to cut me?"
+
+"Your FRIENDS, Lily--how can you think it?"
+
+"Who are one's friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor trustful
+darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!" She kissed Gerty with
+a whimsical murmur. "You'd never let it make any difference--but then
+you're fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the irreclaimable ones,
+though? For I'm absolutely impenitent, you know."
+
+She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty, towering
+like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty, who could only
+falter out: "Lily, Lily--how can you laugh about such things?"
+
+"So as not to weep, perhaps. But no--I'm not of the tearful order. I
+discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has
+helped me through several painful episodes." She took a restless turn
+about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted the bright mockery of
+her eyes to Gerty's anxious countenance.
+
+"I shouldn't have minded, you know, if I'd got the money--" and at Miss
+Farish's protesting "Oh!" she repeated calmly: "Not a straw, my dear;
+for, in the first place, they wouldn't have quite dared to ignore me; and
+if they had, it wouldn't have mattered, because I should have been
+independent of them. But now--!" The irony faded from her eyes, and she
+bent a clouded face upon her friend.
+
+"How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours,
+but after all that makes no difference. The important thing----" Gerty
+paused, and then continued firmly: "The important thing is that you
+should clear yourself--should tell your friends the whole truth."
+
+"The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth? Where a woman is
+concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a
+great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she
+has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms
+with her."
+
+Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. "But what IS your
+story, Lily? I don't believe any one knows it yet."
+
+"My story?--I don't believe I know it myself. You see I never thought of
+preparing a version in advance as Bertha did--and if I had, I don't think
+I should take the trouble to use it now."
+
+But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: "I don't want a
+version prepared in advance--but I want you to tell me exactly what
+happened from the beginning."
+
+"From the beginning?" Miss Bart gently mimicked her. "Dear Gerty, how
+little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my
+cradle, I suppose--in the way I was brought up, and the things I was
+taught to care for. Or no--I won't blame anybody for my faults: I'll say
+it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving
+ancestress, who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and
+wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!" And as Miss Farish
+continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: "You
+asked me just now for the truth--well, the truth about any girl is that
+once she's talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her
+case the worse it looks.--My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a
+cigarette about you?"
+
+
+
+In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily
+Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June,
+and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed
+on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston's will, had taken
+flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of
+them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in
+her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at
+the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
+sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
+catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and
+under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to
+London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which
+asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously
+how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
+parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her
+aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded
+in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess's
+championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she
+was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in
+favour of a new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America.
+But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
+that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys,
+the Brys--all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama--had
+preceded her with their version of the case; and, even had she seen the
+least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and
+reluctance would have restrained her. She knew it was not by
+explanations and counter-charges that she could ever hope to recover her
+lost standing; but even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy,
+she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her
+from defending herself to Gerty Farish--a feeling that was half pride and
+half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed
+to Bertha Dorset's determination to win back her husband, and though her
+own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
+she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair
+was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from
+his wife. That was what she was "there for": it was the price she had
+chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her
+habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of
+introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the
+situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had
+carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a
+handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.
+
+She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences
+resulting from that failure; and these became clearer to her with every
+day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort
+of Gerty Farish's nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go.
+She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must
+set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the
+first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on
+how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
+Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were
+amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the
+still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy,
+though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart's return, had not even
+recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend's
+bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily's side might have been
+perilous: there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an
+accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there
+was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent
+passages through town.
+
+To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
+frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
+luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.
+
+"My dear Gerty, you wouldn't have me let the head-waiter see that I've
+nothing to live on but Aunt Julia's legacy? Think of Grace Stepney's
+satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea!
+What sweet shall we have today, dear--COUPE JACQUES or PECHES A LA MELBA?"
+
+She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour, and
+Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an inner
+room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It was
+impossible for these ladies and their companions--among whom Lily had at
+once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale--not to pass, in going out,
+the table at which the two girls were seated; and Gerty's sense of the
+fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss
+Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace,
+and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for
+them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could
+impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown
+was on Mrs. Trenor's side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
+exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed
+pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization,
+which included neither enquiries as to her future nor the expression of a
+definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed in the language of
+these omissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other
+members of the party: even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the
+importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs.
+Trenor's cordiality, and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss
+Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the
+pretext of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group
+soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor's wake.
+
+It was over in a moment--the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on the
+result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA MELBA--but
+Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy
+Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily had the doomed sense of
+the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.
+
+In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor's complaints of Carry Fisher's
+rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her
+husband's private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life
+at Bellomont, where no one seemed to have time to observe any one else,
+and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the
+rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from
+inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money
+of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily's
+part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly jealous of
+his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The
+immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay
+back her debt to Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a
+thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston's legacy left, and nothing to live on
+but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish's
+wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative
+claim of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first;
+after that she would take thought for the future.
+
+In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that her
+legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt's
+will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to enquire the
+cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Peniston's
+lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that,
+some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will,
+he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till
+the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement.
+Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
+appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
+powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the
+law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight
+of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney,
+who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of "going
+over" her benefactress's effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a
+favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one
+morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston's, where Grace, for the
+facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.
+
+The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so
+long commanded, increased Lily's desire to shorten the ordeal; and when
+Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best
+quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the point: would she be
+willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy?
+
+Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
+inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realized
+the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think that only the
+payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss Stepney herself had
+not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent--yes,
+actually!--for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her.
+She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have
+wished--she had told the executors so to their faces; but they were
+inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily
+take example by her, and be patient--let them both remember how
+beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.
+
+Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this
+example. "But you will have everything, Grace--it would be easy for you
+to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for."
+
+"Borrow--easy for me to borrow?" Grace Stepney rose up before her in
+sable wrath. "Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my
+expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable
+horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the
+truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her
+illness--you remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I
+don't know the particulars, of course--I don't WANT to know them--but
+there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy--no one
+could be with her without seeing that. I can't help it if you are
+offended by my telling you this now--if I can do anything to make you
+realize the folly of your course, and how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I
+shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss."
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was
+taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her
+dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities
+showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did
+not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she
+reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a hansom which pulled up at
+sight of her.
+
+From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a signalling
+hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had
+folded her in a demonstrative embrace.
+
+"My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town? When I saw you the
+other day at Sherry's I didn't have time to ask----" She broke off, and
+added with a burst of frankness: "The truth is I was HORRID, Lily, and
+I've wanted to tell you so ever since."
+
+"Oh----" Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp; but
+Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: "Look here, Lily, don't
+let's beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is caused by
+pretending there isn't any. That's not my way, and I can only say I'm
+thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other women's lead. But
+we'll talk of that by and bye--tell me now where you're staying and what
+your plans are. I don't suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace
+Stepney, eh?--and it struck me you might be rather at loose ends."
+
+In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of
+this appeal, and she said with a smile: "I am at loose ends for the
+moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and she's good enough to let
+me be with her whenever she can spare the time."
+
+Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "H'm--that's a temperate joy. Oh, I
+know--Gerty's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together; but A
+LA LONGUE you're used to a little higher seasoning, aren't you, dear?
+And besides, I suppose she'll be off herself before long--the first of
+August, you say? Well, look here, you can't spend your summer in town;
+we'll talk of that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a
+few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers'
+tonight?"
+
+And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she
+continued with her easy laugh: "You don't know them and they don't know
+you; but that don't make a rap of difference. They've taken the Van
+Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I've got CARTE BLANCHE to bring my friends
+down there--the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and
+there's to be rather a jolly party there this week----" she broke off,
+checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart's expression. "Oh, I don't
+mean YOUR particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but very
+good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their
+own: what they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own
+way. They gave the other thing a few months' trial, under my
+distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely
+well--getting on a good deal faster than the Brys, just because they
+didn't care as much--but suddenly they decided that the whole business
+bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel
+at home with. Rather original of them, don't you think so? Mattie Gormer
+HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she's awfully
+easy-going, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be the most
+important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous
+performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody
+is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs. I think
+it's awfully good fun myself--some of the artistic set, you know, any
+pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they
+have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in 'The Winning of
+Winny'; and Paul Morpeth--he's painting Mattie Gormer--and the Dick
+Bellingers, and Kate Corby--well, every one you can think of who's jolly
+and makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my
+dear--it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and
+you'll find clever people as well as noisy ones--Morpeth, who admires
+Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set."
+
+Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority. "Jump
+in now, there's a dear, and we'll drive round to your hotel and have your
+things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at
+the train."
+
+
+
+It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town--of that no
+doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy verandah,
+she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward picturesquely dotted
+with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men in tennis flannels. The
+huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their
+fullest capacity with the Gormers' week-end guests, who now, in the
+radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the
+grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded:
+distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from
+bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches without.
+Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as
+carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde
+and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly
+assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented
+the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for
+the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The
+train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed--life whizzed on with a
+deafening' rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a
+welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU
+represented a social out-skirt which Lily had always fastidiously
+avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant
+copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the
+"society play" approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people
+about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
+the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner,
+from the pattern of the men's waistcoats to the inflexion of the women's
+voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of
+each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more
+familiarity--but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher
+capacity for enjoyment.
+
+Miss Bart's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness
+that first irritated her pride and then brought her to a sharp sense of
+her own situation--of the place in life which, for the moment, she must
+accept and make the best of. These people knew her story--of that her
+first long talk with Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly
+branded as the heroine of a "queer" episode--but instead of shrinking
+from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question
+into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as
+easily as they did Miss Anstell's, and with no apparent sense of any
+difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was that she
+should--in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of
+gifts--contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful
+actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied
+order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be "stuck-up," to mark a
+sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance
+in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms--and into such a
+world!--was hard enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized,
+with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
+all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious
+charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was
+smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty
+deserted city to the space and luxury of a great country-house fanned by
+sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude agreeable enough
+after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For
+the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved--after
+that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her
+dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the
+unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and
+courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions.
+But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of
+indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities,
+and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.
+
+On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux, the
+return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was
+leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence
+in a different setting: some at Newport, some at Bar Harbour, some in the
+elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who
+welcomed Lily's return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to
+join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily
+herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
+great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
+transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a
+day or two on the way to the Brys' camp, came to the rescue with a new
+suggestion.
+
+"Look here, Lily--I'll tell you what it is: I want you to take my place
+with Mattie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out to Alaska next
+month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the laziest woman alive,
+wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging
+things; but the Brys want me too--oh, yes, we've made it up: didn't I
+tell you?--and, to put it frankly, though I like the Gormers best,
+there's more profit for me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try
+Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them they--well,
+they'll make it a success for me." Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands
+enthusiastically. "Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the
+better I like it--quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have
+both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska
+is--well--the very thing I should want for you just at present."
+
+Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. "To take me out of my
+friends' way, you mean?" she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher responded with
+a deprecating kiss: "To keep you out of their sight till they realize how
+much they miss you."
+
+
+
+Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if it did
+not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the
+negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre of criticism and
+discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with all the energy of her
+somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit
+to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would
+renounce her journey; but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this
+plan under a sufficiently valid reason.
+
+"You dear innocent, don't you see," she protested, "that Carry is quite
+right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people
+as much as possible? If my old friends choose to believe lies about me I
+shall have to make new ones, that's all; and you know beggars mustn't be
+choosers. Not that I don't like Mattie Gormer--I DO like her: she's kind
+and honest and unaffected; and don't you suppose I feel grateful to her
+for making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own
+family have unanimously washed their hands of me?"
+
+Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was
+cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have
+cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former
+manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from
+it. Gerty had but an obscure conception of what Lily's actual experience
+had been: but its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity
+since the memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to
+her friend's extremity. To characters like Gerty's such a sacrifice
+constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it
+has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her;
+and helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring of
+such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the
+amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York
+August, mitigated only by poor Gerty's presence, her worldly wisdom would
+have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that
+Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be the first step
+toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of
+season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers' tumultuous
+progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view
+of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury--the daily waking to an
+assured absence of care and presence of material ease--gradually blunted
+her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void
+they could not fill. Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating good-nature, and
+the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as
+they treated each other--all these characteristic notes of difference
+began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in
+her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
+The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed
+idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
+perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her
+pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to
+cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in
+the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of
+adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be
+blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her
+craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
+resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy
+elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the
+band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
+her; but Mattie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that
+they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If
+Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity,
+had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where
+the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man
+could either break his engagements, or keep them in a painting-jacket and
+slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his
+appreciation of graces he had no time to cultivate. During the
+preparations for the Brys' TABLEAUX he had been immensely struck by
+Lily's plastic possibilities--"not the face: too self-controlled for
+expression; but the rest of her--gad, what a model she'd make!"--and
+though his abhorrence of the world in which he had seen her was too great
+for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the
+privilege of having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in
+Mattie Gormer's dishevelled drawing-room.
+
+Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus
+of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course in
+lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor was she without pale
+glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking-up of the
+Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island.
+Kate Corby, whose tastes made her as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was
+rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers,
+where, after a first stare of surprise, she took Lily's presence almost
+too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in
+the neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
+what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
+latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk
+with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence it was
+impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher
+conveniently took for granted.
+
+Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to
+probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to view it from the
+outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and these conclusions, at
+the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the
+succinct remark: "You must marry as soon as you can."
+
+Lily uttered a faint laugh--for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. "Do
+you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of 'a
+good man's love'?"
+
+"No--I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that
+description," said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.
+
+"Either? Are there actually two?"
+
+"Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half--for the moment."
+
+Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. "Other things being
+equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?"
+
+"Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons--George Dorset."
+
+"Oh----" Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
+unrebuffed. "Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when they
+first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them
+again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and
+George's powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They're at their
+place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly
+party--no one else but poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a
+galley-slave (they used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy!)--and
+after luncheon George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end
+would have to come soon."
+
+Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. "As far as that goes, the end will
+never come--Bertha will always know how to get him back when she wants
+him."
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. "Not if he has any one
+else to turn to! Yes--that's just what it comes to: the poor creature
+can't stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow, full of life
+and enthusiasm." She paused, and went on, dropping her glance from
+Lily's: "He wouldn't stay with her ten minutes if he KNEW----"
+
+"Knew----?" Miss Bart repeated.
+
+"What YOU must, for instance--with the opportunities you've had! If he
+had positive proof, I mean----"
+
+Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. "Please let us
+drop the subject, Carry: it's too odious to me." And to divert her
+companion's attention she added, with an attempt at lightness: "And your
+second candidate? We must not forget him."
+
+Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. "I wonder if you'll cry out just as loud if
+I say--Sim Rosedale?"
+
+Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her
+friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a possibility which,
+in the last weeks, had more than once recurred to her; but after a moment
+she said carelessly: "Mr. Rosedale wants a wife who can establish him in
+the bosom of the Van Osburghs and Trenors."
+
+Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. "And so YOU could--with his money!
+Don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you both?"
+
+"I don't see any way of making him see it," Lily returned, with a laugh
+intended to dismiss the subject.
+
+But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had taken
+leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her annexation by the
+Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner
+Paradise from which she was now excluded; but once or twice, when nothing
+better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he
+had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation. That he still
+admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer
+circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no
+puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
+was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of
+her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known "Miss
+Lily"--she was "Miss Lily" to him now--before they had had the faintest
+social existence: enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with
+the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt
+that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social
+current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and
+manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.
+
+The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of
+meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was
+deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with
+Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most
+unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her
+wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest
+construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at
+Carry Fisher's suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she
+disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
+gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always
+less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency
+which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
+mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he
+had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of
+affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth
+Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure
+on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
+distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable
+clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or
+twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right
+note of disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was
+a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
+ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his
+affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the
+goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of
+the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her
+in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her--she could
+distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And the
+twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a
+faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosedale's
+wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination.
+She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he
+dared to admire her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the
+other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please
+him--he had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if
+she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had
+felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he
+had no other reason for marrying her?
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were engaged
+in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a part of Miss
+Bart's duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits of inspection to the
+new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged into problems of lighting
+and sanitation, Lily had leisure to wander, in the bright autumn air,
+along the tree-fringed bay to which the land declined. Little as she was
+addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a
+welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being
+swept passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she had
+no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and squander
+money, while she felt herself of no more account among them than an
+expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.
+
+It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one
+morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon
+the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in the immediate
+neighbourhood of the Gormers' newly-acquired estate, and in her
+motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught one or two
+passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so different an orbit
+that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter.
+
+Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did not see
+Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight, instead of bringing
+him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent him toward her with an
+eagerness which found expression in his opening words.
+
+"Miss Bart!--You'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to meet
+you--I should have written to you if I'd dared." His face, with its
+tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look, as
+though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts
+at his heels.
+
+The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed
+on, as if encouraged by her tone: "I wanted to apologize--to ask you to
+forgive me for the miserable part I played----"
+
+She checked him with a quick gesture. "Don't let us speak of it: I was
+very sorry for you," she said, with a tinge of disdain which, as she
+instantly perceived, was not lost on him.
+
+He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the
+thrust. "You might well be; you don't know--you must let me explain. I
+was deceived: abominably deceived----"
+
+"I am still more sorry for you, then," she interposed, without irony;
+"but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject
+can be discussed."
+
+He met this with a look of genuine wonder. "Why not? Isn't it to you, of
+all people, that I owe an explanation----"
+
+"No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to me."
+
+"Ah----" he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute hand
+switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement
+to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: "Miss Bart, for God's sake
+don't turn from me! We used to be good friends--you were always kind to
+me--and you don't know how I need a friend now."
+
+The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily's
+breast. She too needed friends--she had tasted the pang of loneliness;
+and her resentment of Bertha Dorset's cruelty softened her heart to the
+poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha's victims.
+
+"I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you," she said. "But
+you must understand that after what has happened we can't be friends
+again--we can't see each other."
+
+"Ah, you ARE kind--you're merciful--you always were!" He fixed his
+miserable gaze on her. "But why can't we be friends--why not, when I've
+repented in dust and ashes? Isn't it hard that you should condemn me to
+suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough
+at the time--is there to be no respite for me?"
+
+"I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
+reconciliation which was effected at my expense," Lily began, with
+renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: "Don't put it in that
+way--when that's been the worst of my punishment. My God! what could I
+do--wasn't I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice: any word I
+might have said would have been turned against you----"
+
+"I have told you I don't blame you; all I ask you to understand is that,
+after the use Bertha chose to make of me--after all that her behaviour
+has since implied--it's impossible that you and I should meet."
+
+He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. "Is it--need it
+be? Mightn't there be circumstances----?" he checked himself, slashing at
+the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again: "Miss Bart,
+listen--give me a minute. If we're not to meet again, at least let me
+have a hearing now. You say we can't be friends after--after what has
+happened. But can't I at least appeal to your pity? Can't I move you if I
+ask you to think of me as a prisoner--a prisoner you alone can set free?"
+
+Lily's inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it possible
+that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher's adumbrations?
+
+"I can't see how I can possibly be of any help to you," she murmured,
+drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.
+
+Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest
+moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an
+abrupt drop to docility: "You WOULD see, if you'd be as merciful as you
+used to be: and heaven knows I've never needed it more!"
+
+She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her
+influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering, and the
+sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for
+his weakness.
+
+"I am very sorry for you--I would help you willingly; but you must have
+other friends, other advisers."
+
+"I never had a friend like you," he answered simply. "And besides--can't
+you see?--you're the only person"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"the
+only person who knows."
+
+Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in precipitate
+throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her
+entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You understand? I'm desperate--I'm
+at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know
+you can. You don't want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't
+want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind--your eyes
+are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to
+show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you back. You
+understand, of course--there wouldn't be a hint of publicity--not a sound
+or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that,
+you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: 'I know this--and
+this--and this'--and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and
+the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second."
+
+He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
+between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the
+shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For
+there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal;
+she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's
+insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his
+loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he
+would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to
+make him so lay in her hand--lay there in a completeness he could not
+even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a
+stroke--there was something dazzling in the completeness of the
+opportunity.
+
+She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the
+deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her--fear of herself, and of
+the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like
+so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had
+already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.
+
+"Goodbye--I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."
+
+"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that you
+abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved
+me!"
+
+"Goodbye--goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she
+heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At least you'll let me see
+you once more?"
+
+
+
+Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the lawn
+toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her hostess might be
+speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of her delay; for, like
+many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.
+
+As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a
+high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the
+gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective
+pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to
+an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh: "Did you see my
+visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George
+Dorset--she said she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call."
+
+Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience
+of Bertha's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the
+neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer, relieved to see that
+she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh: "Of
+course what really brought her was curiosity--she made me take her all
+over the house. But no one could have been nicer--no airs, you know, and
+so good-natured: I can quite see why people think her so fascinating."
+
+This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with
+Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck
+Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha's habits to
+be neighbourly, much less to make advances to any one outside the
+immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored
+the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members
+only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
+capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them
+special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this
+now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable complacency, and in the happy
+irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted Bertha's
+opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret
+ambitions which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence, and the attitude of her
+companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating afresh in the
+glow of Bertha's advances; and whatever the cause of the latter, Lily saw
+that, if they were followed up, they were likely to have a disturbing
+effect upon her own future.
+
+She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new friends by
+one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent; and on her return
+from this somewhat depressing excursion she was immediately conscious
+that Mrs. Dorset's influence was still in the air. There had been another
+exchange of visits, a tea at a country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball;
+there was even a rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer,
+with an unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
+conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.
+
+The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell Sunday
+with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish's aid, had discovered a small
+private hotel where she might establish herself for the winter. The
+hotel being on the edge of a fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the
+few square feet she was to occupy was considerably in excess of her
+means; but she found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters
+in the argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
+importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible
+for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
+lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish's. She had never been so
+near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage to meet her
+weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts
+out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair
+margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
+enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her
+rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and
+fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged
+ceiling and haunting smell of coffee--all these material discomforts,
+which were yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be
+withdrawn, kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
+her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels. Beat
+about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was that she
+must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was fortified by
+an unexpected visit from George Dorset.
+
+She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her
+narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with
+which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances; but the sight of
+her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn't come to bother
+her--that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of
+anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
+himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that
+had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
+herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint
+realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his
+self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had
+actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there
+was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn't more than
+enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The
+fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
+intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might
+mean--and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way
+in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.
+
+When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must dress for
+dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to blurt out: "It's
+been such a comfort--do say you'll let me see you again--" But to this
+direct appeal it was impossible to give an assent; and she said with
+friendly decisiveness: "I'm sorry--but you know why I can't."
+
+He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
+embarrassed but insistent. "I know how you might, if you would--if things
+were different--and it lies with you to make them so. It's just a word to
+say, and you put me out of my misery!"
+
+Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of
+the temptation. "You're mistaken; I know nothing; I saw nothing," she
+exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration, to build a barrier
+between herself and her peril; and as he turned away, groaning out "You
+sacrifice us both," she continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: "I
+know nothing--absolutely nothing."
+
+
+
+Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with Mrs.
+Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met she was
+conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour. There could be no
+doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested
+with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear
+down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one;
+but neither was it easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the
+thought of what George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness
+for baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when a
+marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her
+difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day
+of plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
+well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
+mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were
+certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at
+any cost be exorcised--and one of these was the image of herself as
+Rosedale's wife.
+
+Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys' Newport
+success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; and
+thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset's visit. Though it was
+nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was still out, and the
+firelit quiet of the small silent house descended on her spirit with a
+sense of peace and familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had
+ever before been evoked by Carry Fisher's surroundings; but, contrasted
+to the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of repose
+and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in the quiet
+competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her room. Mrs. Fisher's
+unconventionality was, after all, a merely superficial divergence from an
+inherited social creed, while the manners of the Gormer circle
+represented their first attempt to formulate such a creed for themselves.
+
+It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had found
+herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of familiar
+associations had almost prepared her, as she descended the stairs before
+dinner, to enter upon a group of her old acquaintances. But this
+expectation was instantly checked by the reflection that the friends who
+remained loyal were precisely those who would be least willing to expose
+her to such encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
+instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth
+before his hostess's little girl.
+
+Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily; yet she
+could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to the
+child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctory
+endearments of the guest under his hostess's eye, for he and the little
+girl had the room to themselves; and something in his attitude made him
+seem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creature
+who endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind--Lily, from the threshold,
+had time to feel--kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way
+of the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which
+to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her
+repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for at
+sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid and
+dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer's drawing-room.
+
+It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her only
+fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter's
+tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness which
+enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant course through a world of
+antagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of her
+friends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she
+actively gleaned her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real
+sympathies were on the other side--with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
+unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of
+success.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of exposing
+Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression of Rosedale's
+personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped in to dinner, and
+Lily, alive to every detail of her friend's method, saw that such
+opportunities as had been contrived for her were to be deferred till she
+had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
+sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer
+resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic
+helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs.
+Fisher followed her upstairs.
+
+"May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in my
+room we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about her with the
+eye of the solicitous hostess. "I hope you've managed to make yourself
+comfortable, dear? Isn't it a jolly little house? It's such a blessing to
+have a few quiet weeks with the baby."
+
+Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively maternal
+that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time and
+money enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter.
+
+"It's a well-earned rest: I'll say that for myself," she continued,
+sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near the fire.
+"Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to wish myself back with
+the Gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious--it's
+nothing to social ambition! Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering
+whether the women who called on us called on ME because I was with her,
+or on HER because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to
+find out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
+rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
+acquaintance--when, all the while, that was what she had me there for,
+and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season was over!"
+
+Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause, and the
+practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an occasional
+resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial moments, the
+purpose of the juggler's chatter while he shifts the contents of his
+sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette smoke she continued to gaze
+meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
+toilet-table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened undulations of
+her hair.
+
+"Your hair's wonderful, Lily. Thinner--? What does that matter, when it's
+so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go straight to their
+hair--but yours looks as if there had never been an anxious thought under
+it. I never saw you look better than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer
+told me that Morpeth wanted to paint you--why don't you let him?"
+
+Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to the
+reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she said, with a
+slight touch of irritation: "I don't care to accept a portrait from Paul
+Morpeth."
+
+Mrs. Fisher mused. "N--no. And just now, especially--well, he can do you
+after you're married." She waited a moment, and then went on: "By the
+way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned up here last
+Sunday--and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the world!"
+
+She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
+hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained its
+unwavering stroke from brow to nape.
+
+"I never was more astonished," Mrs. Fisher pursued. "I don't know two
+women less predestined to intimacy--from Bertha's standpoint, that is;
+for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that she should be
+singled out--I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the
+anaconda. Well, you know I've always told you that Mattie secretly longed
+to bore herself with the really fashionable; and now that the chance has
+come, I see that she's capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it."
+
+Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
+friend. "Including ME?" she suggested.
+
+"Ah, my dear," murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from the
+hearth.
+
+"That's what Bertha means, isn't it?" Miss Bart went on steadily. "For
+of course she always means something; and before I left Long Island I saw
+that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie."
+
+Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate. To
+think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only a subtler form of
+snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe anything she
+pleases--and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor child, by insinuating
+horrors about you."
+
+Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. "The world is too
+vile," she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's anxious scrutiny.
+
+"It's not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to
+fight it on its own terms--and above all, my dear, not alone!" Mrs.
+Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp.
+"You've told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening;
+but in the rush we all live in there's no time to keep on hating any one
+without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure
+you with other people it must be because she's still afraid of you. From
+her standpoint there's only one reason for being afraid of you; and my
+own idea is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
+hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don't
+care for that particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you
+from Bertha is to marry somebody else."
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the cheerless
+distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts with a cold
+precision unmodified by shade or colour, and refracted, as it were, from
+the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she had opened windows
+from which no sky was ever visible. But the idealist subdued to vulgar
+necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he
+cannot stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her
+case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with it, however,
+she went the full length of its consequences; and these had never been
+more clearly present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out
+for a walk with Rosedale.
+
+It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the
+light of summer, and something in the lines of the landscape, and in the
+golden haze which bathed them, recalled to Miss Bart the September
+afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellomont with Selden. The
+importunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her
+present situation, since her walk with Selden had represented an
+irresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion was
+designed to bring about. But other memories importuned her also; the
+recollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through
+some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always
+failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now.
+She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and
+against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in breaking up
+her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for shelter and security
+was intensified by the passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only
+wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of
+Rosedale--the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create--she would at
+least present an invulnerable front to her enemy.
+
+She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to keep
+up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending.
+As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which
+his look and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this
+momentary endurance of his mood was the price she must pay for her
+ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which
+concession must turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be
+made equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
+impenetrable to such hints, and she had a sense of something hard and
+self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner.
+
+They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above
+the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned
+period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her gaze.
+
+"I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale," she said quietly; "and I am
+ready to marry you whenever you wish."
+
+Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
+announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted
+before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.
+
+"For I suppose that is what you do wish," she continued, in the same
+quiet tone. "And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in
+this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust
+my happiness to your hands."
+
+She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such
+occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown across the
+tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient brightness
+Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious that every avenue
+of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.
+
+Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in which,
+with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped cigarette.
+Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying: "My
+dear Miss Lily, I'm sorry if there's been any little misapprehension
+between us-but you made me feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really
+no intention of renewing it."
+
+Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked
+the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: "I
+have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my
+decision was final."
+
+Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in
+puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest
+inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I
+want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did."
+
+The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a
+vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the
+sense of distance she could convey without a hint of disdain, that made
+it most difficult for him to give her up.
+
+"Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain't we going to be good friends all
+the same?" he urged, without releasing her hand.
+
+She drew it away quietly. "What is your idea of being good friends?" she
+returned with a slight smile. "Making love to me without asking me to
+marry you?" Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease.
+
+"Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose. I can't help making love
+to you--I don't see how any man could; but I don't mean to ask you to
+marry me as long as I can keep out of it."
+
+She continued to smile. "I like your frankness; but I am afraid our
+friendship can hardly continue on those terms." She turned away, as
+though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and he
+followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having after all
+kept the game in her own hands.
+
+"Miss Lily----" he began impulsively; but she walked on without seeming
+to hear him.
+
+He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand on
+her arm. "Miss Lily--don't hurry away like that. You're beastly hard on a
+fellow; but if you don't mind speaking the truth I don't see why you
+shouldn't allow me to do the same."
+
+She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away instinctively
+from his touch, though she made no effort to evade his words.
+
+"I was under the impression," she rejoined, "that you had done so without
+waiting for my permission."
+
+"Well--why shouldn't you hear my reasons for doing it, then? We're
+neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going to
+hurt us. I'm all broken up on you: there's nothing new in that. I'm more
+in love with you than I was this time last year; but I've got to face the
+fact that the situation is changed."
+
+She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic composure.
+"You mean to say that I'm not as desirable a match as you thought me?"
+
+"Yes; that's what I do mean," he answered resolutely. "I won't go into
+what's happened. I don't believe the stories about you--I don't WANT to
+believe them. But they're there, and my not believing them ain't going to
+alter the situation."
+
+She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked the
+retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly. "If they are
+not true," she said, "doesn't THAT alter the situation?"
+
+He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes, which made
+her feel herself no more than some superfine human merchandise. "I
+believe it does in novels; but I'm certain it don't in real life. You
+know that as well as I do: if we're speaking the truth, let's speak the
+whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at
+me: this year--well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in
+the interval? Your situation, that's all. Then you thought you could do
+better; now----"
+
+"You think you can?" broke from her ironically.
+
+"Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is." He stood before her, his hands in
+his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid waistcoat.
+"It's this way, you see: I've had a pretty steady grind of it these last
+years, working up my social position. Think it's funny I should say
+that? Why should I mind saying I want to get into society? A man ain't
+ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery.
+Well, a taste for society's just another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want
+to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year--put
+it that way if it sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the
+best houses; and I'm getting it too, little by little. But I know the
+quickest way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with
+the wrong ones; and that's the reason I want to avoid mistakes."
+
+Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have
+expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his candour, and
+after a moment's pause he went on: "There it is, you see. I'm more in
+love with you than ever, but if I married you now I'd queer myself for
+good and all, and everything I've worked for all these years would be
+wasted."
+
+She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had
+faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long
+moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed
+expediency.
+
+"I understand you," she said. "A year ago I should have been of use to
+you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you for telling me so
+quite honestly." She extended her hand with a smile.
+
+Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale's
+self-command. "By George, you're a dead game sport, you are!" he
+exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
+suddenly--"Miss Lily--stop. You know I don't believe those stories--I
+believe they were all got up by a woman who didn't hesitate to sacrifice
+you to her own convenience----"
+
+Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to endure
+his insolence than his commiseration.
+
+"You are very kind; but I don't think we need discuss the matter farther."
+
+But Rosedale's natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him to
+brush such resistance aside. "I don't want to discuss anything; I just
+want to put a plain case before you," he persisted.
+
+She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose in his
+look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly upon her: "The
+wonder to me is that you've waited so long to get square with that woman,
+when you've had the power in your hands." She continued silent under the
+rush of astonishment that his words produced, and he moved a step closer
+to ask with low-toned directness: "Why don't you use those letters of
+hers you bought last year?"
+
+Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In the words
+preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to her supposed
+influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the
+reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale's resorting to it. But now
+she saw how far short of the mark she had fallen; and the surprise of
+learning that he had discovered the secret of the letters left her, for
+the moment, unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of
+putting his knowledge.
+
+Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his point;
+and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer control of the
+situation: "You see I know where you stand--I know how completely she's
+in your power. That sounds like stage-talk, don't it?--but there's a lot
+of truth in some of those old gags; and I don't suppose you bought those
+letters simply because you're collecting autographs."
+
+She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her only
+clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his power.
+
+"You're wondering how I found out about 'em?" he went on, answering her
+look with a note of conscious pride. "Perhaps you've forgotten that I'm
+the owner of the Benedick--but never mind about that now. Getting on to
+things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I've simply
+extended it to my private affairs. For this IS partly my affair, you
+see--at least, it depends on you to make it so. Let's look the situation
+straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for reasons we needn't go into, did you
+a beastly bad turn last spring. Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and
+her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath where their own interests
+were concerned; but as long as they're out of the row it's much easier to
+follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been
+sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn't that a pretty fair
+statement of the case?--Well, some people say you've got the neatest kind
+of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would marry you tomorrow,
+if you'd tell him all you know, and give him the chance to show the lady
+the door. I daresay he would; but you don't seem to care for that
+particular form of getting even, and, taking a purely business view of
+the question, I think you're right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out
+with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to
+get Bertha Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her."
+
+He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time for the
+expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed on, expounding
+and elucidating his idea with the directness of the man who has no doubts
+of his cause, she found the indignation gradually freezing on her lip,
+found herself held fast in the grasp of his argument by the mere cold
+strength of its presentation. There was no time now to wonder how he had
+heard of her obtaining the letters: all her world was dark outside the
+monstrous glare of his scheme for using them. And it was not, after the
+first moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-bound, subdued
+to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
+cravings. He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha Dorset's
+friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the
+tacit retractation of all that had caused its withdrawal, she had only to
+put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously
+delivered into her hands. Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this
+course over that which poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The other plan
+depended for its success on the infliction of an open injury, while this
+reduced the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third
+person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of
+business-like give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless air
+of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision of
+boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual
+adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every concession had its
+recognized equivalent: Lily's tired mind was fascinated by this escape
+from fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and
+measures.
+
+Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only a
+gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching
+perception of the chances it offered; for as she continued to stand
+before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return upon
+himself: "You see how simple it is, don't you? Well, don't be carried
+away by the idea that it's TOO simple. It isn't exactly as if you'd
+started in with a clean bill of health. Now we're talking let's call
+things by their right names, and clear the whole business up. You know
+well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn't have touched you if there hadn't
+been--well--questions asked before--little points of interrogation, eh?
+Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with stingy relatives, I suppose;
+anyhow, they DID happen, and she found the ground prepared for her. Do
+you see where I'm coming out? You don't want these little questions
+cropping up again. It's one thing to get Bertha Dorset into line--but
+what you want is to keep her there. You can frighten her fast enough--but
+how are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you're as
+powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won't do that for you as
+you are now; but with a big backing behind you, you'll keep her just
+where you want her to be. That's MY share in the business--that's what
+I'm offering you. You can't put the thing through without me--don't run
+away with any idea that you can. In six months you'd be back again among
+your old worries, or worse ones; and here I am, ready to lift you out of
+'em tomorrow if you say so. DO you say so, Miss Lily?" he added, moving
+suddenly nearer.
+
+The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to startle
+Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which she had
+insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the groping
+consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perception
+that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of course, the
+likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying to cheat him of his
+share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the
+whole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential
+baseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk.
+
+She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a voice that
+was a surprise to her own ears: "You are mistaken--quite mistaken--both
+in the facts and in what you infer from them."
+
+Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction so
+different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting him guide
+her.
+
+"Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each other!"
+he exclaimed; and to her murmur of "Ah, we do NOW," he retorted with a
+sudden burst of violence: "I suppose it's because the letters are to HIM,
+then? Well, I'll be damned if I see what thanks you've got from him!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was in
+transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted at
+the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream of
+carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to consciousness.
+
+The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing semblance
+of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants with a human display
+of the same costly and high-stepping kind as circled daily about its
+ring. In Miss Bart's world the Horse Show, and the public it attracted,
+had ostensibly come to be classed among the spectacles disdained of the
+elect; but, as the feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance on
+his village green, so society, unofficially and incidentally, still
+condescended to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was
+not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
+horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her
+friend's side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this
+lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a
+change in the relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning
+discrimination, a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs.
+Gormer's chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should
+constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once
+the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift of fashionable life
+would facilitate Mattie's detachment from her. She had, in short, failed
+to make herself indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been
+thwarted by an influence stronger than any she could exert. That
+influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha
+Dorset's social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.
+
+Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own
+position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered: once
+Bertha's match in material resources, her superior gifts would make it
+easy for her to dominate her adversary. An understanding of what such
+domination would mean, and of the disadvantages accruing from her
+rejection of it, was brought home to Lily with increasing clearness
+during the early weeks of the winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a
+semblance of movement outside the main flow of the social current; but
+with the return to town, and the concentrating of scattered activities,
+the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life
+marked her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a
+part of the season's fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void of
+social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never
+really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different centre:
+it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find
+any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her,
+and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value
+suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her
+former life. Its very drudgeries had a charm now that she was
+involuntarily released from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced
+civilities to the dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious
+dinners--how pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness
+of her days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with
+a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world; nor did
+she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes produce a wholesome
+reaction of contempt in their victim. Society did not turn away from her,
+it simply drifted by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to
+the full measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the
+creature of its favour.
+
+She had rejected Rosedale's suggestion with a promptness of scorn almost
+surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for high flashes of
+indignation. But she could not breathe long on the heights; there had
+been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength:
+what she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in
+which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her
+intermittent impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her
+self-respect. If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only
+afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a
+slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without conscious
+effort; her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet
+perceive that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to
+live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.
+
+
+
+
+To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
+discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle were
+already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages Lily
+had already given to expediency; but she saw her passionately and
+irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of "keeping up." Gerty could
+smile now at her own early dream of her friend's renovation through
+adversity: she understood clearly enough that Lily was not of those to
+whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost. But this
+very fact, to Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid,
+the more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
+conscious of needing.
+
+Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish's
+stairs. There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation
+of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real difficulties of her situation to
+be incommunicable to any one whose theory of values was so different from
+her own, and the restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the
+charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
+her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon, she put
+into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend, this sense of
+shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual intensity. The walk up
+Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the brilliance of the hard winter
+sunlight, an interminable procession of fastidiously-equipped
+carriages--giving her, through the little squares of brougham-windows,
+peeps of familiar profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands
+dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen--this glimpse of the
+ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than
+ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's stairs, and of
+the cramped blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined
+to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures
+were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very
+moment--figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged
+lady in limp black who descended Gerty's flight as Lily climbed to it!
+
+"That was poor Miss Jane Silverton--she came to talk things over with me:
+she and her sister want to do something to support themselves," Gerty
+explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room.
+
+"To support themselves? Are they so hard up?" Miss Bart asked with a
+touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of other
+people.
+
+"I'm afraid they have nothing left: Ned's debts have swallowed up
+everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carry
+Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good influence,
+because she doesn't care for cards, and--well, she talked quite
+beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger
+brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have
+a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up his literary work again."
+
+Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her
+departing visitor. "But that isn't all; it isn't even the worst. It seems
+that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won't allow
+him to see her, and he is so unhappy about it that he has taken to
+gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And
+cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of having had a very bad influence
+on Freddy, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with
+Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
+Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that
+Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had
+introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he's
+of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt--she
+came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something
+to do she could earn enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away--I'm
+afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his
+evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from
+the cruise--I can't see why he should have spent so much more money under
+Bertha's influence than Carry's: can you?"
+
+Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. "My dear Gerty, I always
+understand how people can spend much more money--never how they can spend
+any less!"
+
+She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty's easy-chair, while
+her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
+
+"But what can they do--the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to support
+themselves?" she asked, conscious that the note of irritation still
+persisted in her voice. It was the very last topic she had meant to
+discuss--it really did not interest her in the least--but she was seized
+by a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colourless shrinking
+victims of young Silverton's sentimental experiments meant to cope with
+the grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
+
+"I don't know--I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane reads
+aloud very nicely--but it's so hard to find any one who is willing to be
+read to. And Miss Annie paints a little----"
+
+"Oh, I know--apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of thing I
+shall be doing myself before long!" exclaimed Lily, starting up with a
+vehemence of movement that threatened destruction to Miss Farish's
+fragile tea-table.
+
+Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her seat.
+"I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in--how beautifully one
+does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I wasn't meant to be
+good," she sighed out incoherently.
+
+Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the eyes
+shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
+
+"You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give you this
+cushion to lean against."
+
+Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an
+impatient hand.
+
+"Don't give me that! I don't want to lean back--I shall go to sleep if I
+do."
+
+"Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse," Gerty urged
+affectionately.
+
+"No--no; don't be quiet; talk to me--keep me awake! I don't sleep at
+night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me."
+
+"You don't sleep at night? Since when?"
+
+"I don't know--I can't remember." She rose and put the empty cup on the
+tea-tray. "Another, and stronger, please; if I don't keep awake now I
+shall see horrors tonight--perfect horrors!"
+
+"But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea."
+
+"No, no--give it to me; and don't preach, please," Lily returned
+imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed that her
+hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
+
+"But you look so tired: I'm sure you must be ill----"
+
+Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. "Do I look ill? Does my face
+show it?" She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror above the
+writing-table. "What a horrid looking-glass--it's all blotched and
+discoloured. Any one would look ghastly in it!" She turned back, fixing
+her plaintive eyes on Gerty. "You stupid dear, why do you say such odious
+things to me? It's enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
+looking ill means looking ugly." She caught Gerty's wrists, and drew her
+close to the window. "After all, I'd rather know the truth. Look me
+straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I perfectly frightful?"
+
+"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and your
+cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden----"
+
+"Ah, they WERE pale, then--ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don't you
+tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright now because I'm so
+nervous--but in the mornings they look like lead. And I can see the lines
+coming in my face--the lines of worry and disappointment and failure!
+Every sleepless night leaves a new one--and how can I sleep, when I have
+such dreadful things to think about?"
+
+"Dreadful things--what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her wrists
+from her friend's feverish fingers.
+
+"What things? Well, poverty, for one--and I don't know any that's more
+dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness into the
+easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if I could
+understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I
+understand--he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live ON
+the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense--but it's a
+privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine,
+and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes
+and their private cars--yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of
+those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing
+cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents--and--and--lots of other
+things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too--oh, yes, I've
+had to take up bridge again--and by going to the best dress-makers, and
+having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping
+herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"
+
+She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her
+pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her fagged
+brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the change in her
+face--of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish
+its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished.
+
+"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't--I'm sick to death
+of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills me--it's what
+keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for your strong tea. For I
+can't go on in this way much longer, you know--I'm nearly at the end of
+my tether. And then what can I do--how on earth am I to keep myself
+alive? I see myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton
+woman--slinking about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
+blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands
+of women trying to do the same thing already, and not one of the number
+who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I have!"
+
+She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. "It's late, and I must
+be off--I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don't look so worried,
+you dear thing--don't think too much about the nonsense I've been
+talking." She was before the mirror again, adjusting her hair with a
+light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a dexterous touch to her
+furs. "Of course, you know, it hasn't come to the employment agencies and
+the painted blotting-pads yet; but I'm rather hard-up just for the
+moment, and if I could find something to do--notes to write and
+visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing--it would tide me over
+till the legacy is paid. And Carry has promised to find somebody who
+wants a kind of social secretary--you know she makes a specialty of the
+helpless rich."
+
+
+
+
+Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her anxiety. She
+was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money: money to meet the
+vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor evaded. To give
+up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the
+provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an
+expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it
+seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find
+some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do this
+was one which she had never before seriously considered, and the
+discovery that, as a bread-winner, she was likely to prove as helpless
+and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe shock to her
+self-confidence.
+
+Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation, as a
+person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate any situation
+in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that such gifts would be
+of value to seekers after social guidance; but there was unfortunately no
+specific head under which the art of saying and doing the right thing
+could be offered in the market, and even Mrs. Fisher's resourcefulness
+failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague
+wealth of Lily's graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedients for
+enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously assert
+that she had put several opportunities of this kind before Lily; but more
+legitimate methods of bread-winning were as much out of her line as they
+were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she was generally called upon
+to assist. Lily's failure to profit by the chances already afforded her
+might, moreover, have justified the abandonment of farther effort on her
+behalf; but Mrs. Fisher's inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at
+creating artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the
+pursuance of this end she at once started on a voyage of discovery in
+Miss Bart's behalf; and as the result of her explorations she now
+summoned the latter with the announcement that she had "found something."
+
+
+
+
+Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend's plight, and
+her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her that Lily, for the
+present, had no wish for the kind of help she could give. Miss Farish
+could see no hope for her friend but in a life completely reorganized and
+detached from its old associations; whereas all Lily's energies were
+centred in the determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to
+keep herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion could
+be maintained. Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gerty, she could
+not judge it as harshly as Selden, for instance, might have done. She had
+not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in each
+other's arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart's blood passing
+into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough;
+no trace remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour; but
+Gerty's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with obscure and
+inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with a silent
+forbearance which took no account of time. She could not, however, deny
+herself the solace of taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden, with
+whom, since his return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of
+cousinly confidence.
+
+Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their relation. He
+found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding and devoted, but with
+a quickened intelligence of the heart which he recognized without seeking
+to explain it. To Gerty herself it would once have seemed impossible that
+she should ever again talk freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had
+passed in the secrecy of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when
+the mist of the struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of
+self, a deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
+current of human understanding.
+
+It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gerty had
+the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden. The latter, having
+presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through the
+dowdy animation of his cousin's tea-hour, conscious of something in her
+voice and eye which solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last
+visitor was gone Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen
+Miss Bart.
+
+Selden's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of surprise.
+
+"I haven't seen her at all--I've perpetually missed seeing her since she
+came back."
+
+This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
+hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by adding:
+"I've wanted to see her--but she seems to have been absorbed by the
+Gormer set since her return from Europe."
+
+"That's all the more reason: she's been very unhappy."
+
+"Unhappy at being with the Gormers?"
+
+"Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is at an
+end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha
+Dorset quarrelled with her."
+
+"Ah----" Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where
+he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin
+continued to explain: "Judy Trenor and her own family have deserted her
+too--and all because Bertha Dorset has said such horrible things. And she
+is very poor--you know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy,
+after giving her to understand that she was to have everything."
+
+"Yes--I know," Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room, but
+only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between
+door and window. "Yes--she's been abominably treated; but it's
+unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy
+can't say to her."
+
+His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. "There would be
+other ways of showing your sympathy," she suggested.
+
+Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which
+projected from the hearth. "What are you thinking of, you incorrigible
+missionary?" he asked.
+
+Gerty's colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer.
+Then she made it more explicit by saying: "I am thinking of the fact that
+you and she used to be great friends--that she used to care immensely for
+what you thought of her--and that, if she takes your staying away as a
+sign of what you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
+unhappiness."
+
+"My dear child, don't add to it still more--at least to your conception
+of it--by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own."
+Selden, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice;
+but he met Gerty's look of perplexity by saying more mildly: "But, though
+you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss
+Bart, you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it--if you ask me to." He
+laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the
+current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which fill
+the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the feeling that he
+measured the cost of her request as plainly as she read the significance
+of his reply; and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them
+made her next words easier to find.
+
+"I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you had been
+a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has never needed it
+before. You know how dependent she has always been on ease and
+luxury--how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and uncomfortable. She
+can't help it--she was brought up with those ideas, and has never been
+able to find her way out of them. But now all the things she cared for
+have been taken from her, and the people who taught her to care for them
+have abandoned her too; and it seems to me that if some one could reach
+out a hand and show her the other side--show her how much is left in life
+and in herself----" Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own
+eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to
+her vague yearning for her friend's retrieval. "I can't help her myself:
+she's passed out of my reach," she continued. "I think she's afraid of
+being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed
+dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher was trying to
+find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that she had
+taken a position as private secretary, and that I was not to be anxious,
+for everything was all right, and she would come in and tell me about it
+when she had time; but she has never come, and I don't like to go to her,
+because I am afraid of forcing myself on her when I'm not wanted. Once,
+when we were children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and
+thrown my arms about her, she said: 'Please don't kiss me unless I ask
+you to, Gerty'--and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since then I've
+always waited to be asked."
+
+Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which his thin
+dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against any involuntary
+change of expression. When his cousin ended, he said with a slight smile:
+"Since you've learned the wisdom of waiting, I don't see why you urge me
+to rush in--" but the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add, as he
+rose to take leave: "Still, I'll do what you wish, and not hold you
+responsible for my failure."
+
+Selden's avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he had
+allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory of their
+last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his indignation, he
+had anxiously watched for her return; but she had disappointed him by
+lingering in England, and when she finally reappeared it happened that
+business had called him to the West, whence he came back only to learn
+that she was starting for Alaska with the Gormers. The revelation of this
+suddenly-established intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her.
+If, at a moment when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could
+cheerfully commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no reason
+why such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step she
+took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where, once or
+twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the recognition of
+this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a
+sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart
+by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had
+thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made
+the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely, confirmed the sense of
+relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her.
+
+But Gerty Farish's words had sufficed to make him see how little this
+view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live quietly
+with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in need of help--even
+such vague help as he could offer--was to be at once repossessed by that
+thought; and by the time he reached the street he had sufficiently
+convinced himself of the urgency of his cousin's appeal to turn his steps
+directly toward Lily's hotel.
+
+There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart had
+moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk remembered that
+she had left an address, for which he presently began to search through
+his books.
+
+It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step without
+letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden waited with a vague
+sense of uneasiness while the address was sought for. The process lasted
+long enough for uneasiness to turn to apprehension; but when at length a
+slip of paper was handed him, and he read on it: "Care of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch, Emporium Hotel," his apprehension passed into an incredulous
+stare, and this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper
+in two, and turned to walk quickly homeward.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
+Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The
+force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more
+in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at a
+breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection
+might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the
+excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture.
+The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense
+mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest
+note of criticism.
+
+When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady to whom
+Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of entering a new
+world. Carry's vague presentment of Mrs. Norma Hatch (whose reversion to
+her Christian name was explained as the result of her latest divorce),
+left her under the implication of coming "from the West," with the not
+unusual extenuation of having brought a great deal of money with her. She
+was, in short, rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily's
+hand. Mrs. Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
+owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she "knew about" through
+Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the Falstaff of a
+certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr. Stancy might have
+been said to form a connecting link between the Gormer world and the more
+dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart now found herself entering. It was,
+however, only figuratively that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch's world
+could be described as dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a
+blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornamental
+excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which
+she rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
+appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity of
+something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude the
+immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her visitor, and
+that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of her dress and
+voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence which, in ladies of
+her nationality, so curiously coexists with startling extremes of
+experience.
+
+The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her as its
+inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New
+York hotel--a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with
+mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements,
+while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a
+desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as
+richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
+permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from
+restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from "art
+exhibit" to dress-maker's opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately
+equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
+distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of their
+sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the hotel routine.
+Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was
+doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves
+were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies,
+diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had
+no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.
+
+Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering that Mrs.
+Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though still floating
+in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing an outline; and in this
+endeavour she was actively seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr.
+Stancy, a man of large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial
+occasions and of a chivalry finding expression in "first-night" boxes and
+thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the
+scene of her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
+metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she had
+taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the photographer
+whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament of "Sunday
+Supplements," and had got together the group which constituted her social
+world. It was a small group still, with heterogeneous figures suspended
+in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily did not take long to learn that its
+regulation was no longer in Mr. Stancy's hands. As often happens, the
+pupil had outstripped the teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of
+heights of elegance as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the
+Emporium. This discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher
+guidance, for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
+to her correspondence, the right "look" to her hats, the right succession
+to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the regulator of a
+germinating social life that Miss Bart's guidance was required; her
+ostensible duties as secretary being restricted by the fact that Mrs.
+Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write to.
+
+The daily details of Mrs. Hatch's existence were as strange to Lily as
+its general tenor. The lady's habits were marked by an Oriental indolence
+and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion. Mrs. Hatch and her
+friends seemed to float together outside the bounds of time and space. No
+definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day
+flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements,
+so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner
+was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
+Hatch's vigil till daylight.
+
+Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange throng
+of hangers-on--manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers, teachers of
+bridge, of French, of "physical development": figures sometimes
+indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs. Hatch's relation to
+them, from the visitors constituting her recognized society. But
+strangest of all to Lily was the encounter, in this latter group, of
+several of her acquaintances. She had supposed, and not without relief,
+that she was passing, for the moment, completely out of her own circle;
+but she found that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence
+overlapped the edge of Mrs. Fisher's world, had drawn several of its
+brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned
+Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room was
+one of Lily's first astonishments; but she soon discovered that he was
+not Mr. Stancy's most important recruit. It was on little Freddy Van
+Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh millions, that the
+attention of Mrs. Hatch's group was centred. Freddy, barely out of
+college, had risen above the horizon since Lily's eclipse, and she now
+saw with surprise what an effulgence he shed on the outer twilight of
+Mrs. Hatch's existence. This, then, was one of the things that young men
+"went in" for when released from the official social routine; this was
+the kind of "previous engagement" that so frequently caused them to
+disappoint the hopes of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being
+behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted
+and the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
+the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease and
+unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience of the irony
+of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions
+from the long disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of
+Mrs. Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed packed
+with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible pretty woman of her
+acquaintance had her inherited obligations, her conventional
+benevolences, her share in the working of the great civic machine; and
+all hung together in the solidarity of these traditional functions. The
+performance of specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart's
+position; but the vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its
+perplexities.
+
+It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs. Hatch showed
+from the first an almost touching desire for Lily's approval. Far from
+asserting the superiority of wealth, her beautiful eyes seemed to urge
+the plea of inexperience: she wanted to do what was "nice," to be taught
+how to be "lovely." The difficulty was to find any point of contact
+between her ideals and Lily's.
+
+Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of aspirations
+culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion journals, and a gaudy
+world of sport still more completely beyond her companion's ken. To
+separate from these confused conceptions those most likely to advance the
+lady on her way, was Lily's obvious duty; but its performance was
+hampered by rapidly-growing doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and
+more aware of a certain ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she
+had, in the conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch's
+irreproachableness. The lady's offences were always against taste rather
+than conduct; her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than
+ethical conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from a
+wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not mind her
+detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the "Beauty-Doctor" a
+seat in Freddy Van Osburgh's box at the play, she was not equally at ease
+in regard to some less apparent lapses from convention. Ned Silverton's
+relation to Stancy seemed, for instance, closer and less clear than any
+natural affinities would warrant; and both appeared united in the effort
+to cultivate Freddy Van Osburgh's growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was
+as yet nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve
+itself into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a
+vague sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
+and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
+Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the social
+development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his part, a
+permanent interest in the lady's future. There were moments when Lily
+found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The thought of
+launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious bosom of society
+was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even beguiled her leisure with
+visions of the fair Norma introduced for the first time to a family
+banquet at the Van Osburghs'. But the thought of being personally
+connected with the transaction was less agreeable; and her momentary
+flashes of amusement were followed by increasing periods of doubt.
+
+The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon, she was
+surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her alone in the
+wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch's world the tea-hour was not
+dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in the hands of her masseuse.
+
+Selden's entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment; but
+his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her self-possession,
+and she took at once the tone of surprise and pleasure, wondering frankly
+that he should have traced her to so unlikely a place, and asking what
+had inspired him to make the search.
+
+Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him so
+little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
+obstructions she might put in his way. "I wanted to see you," he said;
+and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept his wishes
+under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long absence as one
+of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his desertion had wounded
+sensibilities far below the surface of her pride.
+
+Selden met the challenge with directness. "Why should I have come, unless
+I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for imagining
+you could want me."
+
+This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash of
+keenness to her answer. "Then you have come now because you think you can
+be of use to me?"
+
+He hesitated again. "Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to talk
+things over with."
+
+For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the idea that
+his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a personal
+significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing him. Even under
+the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always made itself felt: she
+might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room.
+She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the
+light fell on his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his
+clothes--she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven
+with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her,
+and the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
+this stealing influence now prompted her to say: "It's very good of you
+to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think I have
+anything particular to talk about?"
+
+Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was
+framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and
+for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one
+which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling;
+and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of
+such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into
+resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they
+faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's
+elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its
+monstrous mates, served at length to suggest the turn of Selden's reply.
+
+"Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch's secretary; and I knew
+she was anxious to hear how you were getting on."
+
+Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. "Why
+didn't she look me up herself, then?" she asked.
+
+"Because, as you didn't send her your address, she was afraid of being
+importunate." Selden continued with a smile: "You see no such scruples
+restrained me; but then I haven't as much to risk if I incur your
+displeasure."
+
+Lily answered his smile. "You haven't incurred it as yet; but I have an
+idea that you are going to."
+
+"That rests with you, doesn't it? You see my initiative doesn't go beyond
+putting myself at your disposal."
+
+"But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?" she asked in the same
+light tone.
+
+Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room; then he said, with
+a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection:
+"You are to let me take you away from here."
+
+Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it
+and said coldly: "And may I ask where you mean me to go?"
+
+"Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is
+that it should be away from here."
+
+The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words
+cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own
+were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at
+a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and
+unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of
+authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," she said, "for taking such an interest
+in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention
+of leaving."
+
+Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
+uncontrollable expectancy.
+
+"That simply means that you don't know where you are!" he exclaimed.
+
+Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. "If you have come here to
+say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch----"
+
+"It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned."
+
+"My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of. She
+has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to
+seeing me starve."
+
+"Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
+always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again."
+
+"You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose
+you mean--till my aunt's legacy is paid?"
+
+"I do mean that; Gerty told me of it," Selden acknowledged without
+embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
+constraint in speaking his mind.
+
+"But Gerty does not happen to know," Miss Bart rejoined, "that I owe
+every penny of that legacy."
+
+"Good God!" Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
+abruptness of the statement.
+
+"Every penny of it, and more too," Lily repeated; "and you now perhaps
+see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of
+Gerty's kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I
+must earn something more to keep myself alive."
+
+Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone: "But with
+your income and Gerty's--since you allow me to go so far into the details
+of the situation--you and she could surely contrive a life together which
+would put you beyond the need of having to support yourself. Gerty, I
+know, is eager to make such an arrangement, and would be quite happy in
+it----"
+
+"But I should not," Miss Bart interposed. "There are many reasons why it
+would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself." She paused a moment,
+and as he seemed to await a farther explanation, added with a quick lift
+of her head: "You will perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons."
+
+"I have no claim to know them," Selden answered, ignoring her tone; "no
+claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have already
+made. And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to
+enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false
+position."
+
+Lily smiled. "I suppose," she rejoined, "that by a false position you
+mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember that I
+had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before I met Mrs.
+Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real difference in being
+inside or out, and I remember your once telling me that it was only those
+inside who took the difference seriously."
+
+She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
+memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of the
+nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of the
+experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion to
+deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer fulness of
+emphasis: "The question of being inside or out is, as you say, a small
+one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the case, except in so far
+as Mrs. Hatch's desire to be inside may put you in the position I call
+false."
+
+In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect
+of confirming Lily's resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused
+hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of
+personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his
+attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her
+appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference.
+The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits
+he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her
+aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth farther
+into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be,
+she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.
+
+"I don't know," she said, when he had ceased to speak, "why you imagine
+me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always told me that
+the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to teach a girl to get
+what she wants, why not assume that that is precisely what I am doing?"
+
+The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier
+raised against farther confidences: its brightness held him at such a
+distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing as he
+rejoined: "I am not sure that I have ever called you a successful example
+of that kind of bringing-up."
+
+Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled herself with
+a light laugh. "Ah, wait a little longer--give me a little more time
+before you decide!" And as he wavered before her, still watching for a
+break in the impenetrable front she presented: "Don't give me up; I may
+still do credit to my training!" she affirmed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+"Look at those spangles, Miss Bart--every one of 'em sewed on crooked."
+
+The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned
+structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side, and passed on to
+the next figure in the line.
+
+There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles, under
+exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of
+their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this
+creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood.
+Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and
+sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were
+employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well
+clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
+colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only one
+skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned
+with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman's comment,
+began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.
+
+To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached
+when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats. Instances of
+young lady-milliners establishing themselves under fashionable patronage,
+and imparting to their "creations" that indefinable touch which the
+professional hand can never give, had flattered Gerty's visions of the
+future, and convinced even Lily that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch
+need not reduce her to dependence on her friends.
+
+The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and would have
+taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance set up in Lily by
+his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of being involved in a
+transaction she would not have cared to examine too closely had soon
+afterward defined itself in the light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if
+she "saw them through," she would have no reason to be sorry. The
+implication that such loyalty would meet with a direct reward had
+hastened her flight, and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the
+broad bosom of Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
+there prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once revived her
+hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that her
+charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their
+capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of
+course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
+fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes
+and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front
+shop--a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings--where
+her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on
+their stands like birds just poising for flight.
+
+But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
+green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of fashion
+had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere attraction of a
+name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but these privileged beings
+could command a faith in their powers materially expressed by the
+readiness to pay their shop-rent and advance a handsome sum for current
+expenses. Where was Lily to find such support? And even could it have
+been found, how were the ladies on whose approval she depended to be
+induced to give her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy
+her friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
+imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again,
+Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her
+self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy Van Osburgh
+was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh
+hour--some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale--and despatched
+to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always
+be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a
+summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was
+a relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves thus
+justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her connection
+with the Hatch case in order to show that they had been right.
+
+Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
+resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her
+share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish's, they met
+with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender
+ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely
+to her friend.
+
+"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
+others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you
+done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she
+flamed out about some money you'd got from Gus; I never knew her so hot
+before. You know she'll let him do anything but spend money on his
+friends: the only reason she's decent to me now is that she knows I'm not
+hard up.--He speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had
+no business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth--but I never
+COULD understand you, Lily!"
+
+The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs.
+Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their
+friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina's renowned
+millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without
+considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
+untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
+owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher's
+influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the
+show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a
+valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which
+Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced,
+but resigned to this latest proof of Lily's unreason, agreed that perhaps
+in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To
+Regina's work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
+Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty's watchfulness
+continued to hover over her at a distance.
+
+Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later,
+and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a
+hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the
+tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the
+other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history--the exact
+situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all
+the others--but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense
+of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
+still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire
+that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had
+hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show
+herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was
+humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still
+betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might
+aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
+experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and
+trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the
+routine of preparatory work.
+
+She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the
+buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss
+Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss
+Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during
+the noon recess; and Lily's head was so heavy with the weight of a
+sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of
+a dream.
+
+"I TOLD her he'd never look at her again; and he didn't. I wouldn't have,
+either--I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion
+Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She's taken ten bottles, and
+her headaches don't seem no better--but she's written a testimonial to
+say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture
+in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor's hat? The one with the green Paradise?
+Here, Miss Haines--it'll be ready right off.... That was one of the
+Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How'd I know? Why,
+Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat--the blue tulle:
+she's tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out--a good deal like Mamie
+Leach, on'y thinner...."
+
+On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
+startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
+It was the strangest part of Lily's strange experience, the hearing of
+these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world
+she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls' minds. She
+had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and
+contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
+underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
+Every girl in Mme. Regina's work-room knew to whom the headgear in her
+hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a
+definite knowledge of the latter's place in the social system. That Lily
+was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
+curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had
+fallen, she had "gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they
+were awed only by success--by the gross tangible image of material
+achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
+them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
+whom it was an effort to talk.
+
+"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I guess you'd
+better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."
+
+Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
+sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
+clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
+physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
+her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
+took it with a suppressed smile.
+
+"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.
+
+Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
+Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
+workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
+Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
+pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.
+
+"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily slipped out
+last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
+mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
+irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
+all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they
+now seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish, she
+had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
+because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
+her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
+point of view was less interesting.
+
+She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
+"Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
+you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair to you."
+
+Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
+real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.
+
+"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
+AM clumsy."
+
+"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy paused
+irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever try
+orangeine?"
+
+"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I mean to go
+home."
+
+She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say.
+Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home
+with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent--even kindness, the sort
+of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just
+then.
+
+"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.
+
+She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street
+where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty's offer
+of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce shrinking from
+observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the
+promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole,
+less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she
+could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had
+been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now,
+perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about
+by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
+ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done, she
+dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wallpaper and
+shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the
+degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from
+fashion to commerce.
+
+But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's at the
+corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had
+usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn
+toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower
+crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the
+street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.
+
+Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her
+before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no
+question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch's,
+obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist. Lily was confident that the
+clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a
+refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her
+restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked
+on the glass case before her.
+
+The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of
+handing out the bottle he paused.
+
+"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked. Lily's
+heart contracted.
+
+What did he mean by looking at her in that way?
+
+"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.
+
+"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off
+you go--the doctors don't know why."
+
+The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked
+the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged
+safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her
+relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the
+delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her
+momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already
+stealing over her.
+
+In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the
+last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name
+uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and
+prosperous--but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through
+a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account for the
+phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with
+scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions
+seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
+wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he exclaimed; and
+she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.
+
+"I'm a little tired--it's nothing. Stay with me a moment, please," she
+faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!
+
+He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with
+the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons
+contending hideously in their ears.
+
+"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea. The
+LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no one there at this
+hour."
+
+A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed
+for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to
+the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was
+seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between
+them.
+
+"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss
+Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for
+the lady's back."
+
+Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It was the
+temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen
+stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep--the
+midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But
+today, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it
+to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.
+
+As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude,
+though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning
+life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty.
+The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined
+pallour of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips,
+as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull
+chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head
+stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit ball-room. He
+looked at her with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty
+were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
+unawares.
+
+To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why, Miss Lily,
+I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had become of you."
+
+As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications
+to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her he had heard of her;
+he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and of the talk resulting from
+it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was one which he had once assiduously frequented,
+and now as devoutly shunned.
+
+Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what
+was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You would not be
+likely to know about me. I have joined the working classes."
+
+He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean--? Why, what on earth are
+you doing?"
+
+"Learning to be a milliner--at least TRYING to learn," she hastily
+qualified the statement.
+
+Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off--you ain't
+serious, are you?"
+
+"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."
+
+"But I understood--I thought you were with Norma Hatch."
+
+"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"
+
+"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill her cup.
+
+Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for
+him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I left her two
+months ago."
+
+Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt
+sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
+Rosedale did not hear?
+
+"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.
+
+"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm on the
+edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
+looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
+to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
+herself.
+
+"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
+might make things too easy for one."
+
+Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
+lost on him.
+
+"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
+the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
+depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
+looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
+settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.
+
+"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
+Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least too good for
+her--and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
+have stayed where I was."
+
+"Oh, Freddy----" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
+unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
+acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed up in that.
+It ain't your style."
+
+Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
+gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
+and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale. But the old habit of
+observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
+colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.
+
+Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a minute--don't go
+yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
+And you haven't told me----" He broke off, conscious of going farther
+than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
+also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
+face, he began again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just
+now that you were learning to be a milliner?"
+
+"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."
+
+"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs.
+Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her----"
+
+"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next
+summer."
+
+"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted."
+
+She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."
+
+"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"
+
+"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on
+his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some
+money for me in stocks."
+
+She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he
+remembered something of the kind.
+
+"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same tone of
+eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that he was
+speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew
+nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had NOT used my
+money--that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It
+was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation
+one could remain under. Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
+discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back.
+That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."
+
+She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the
+sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer's
+mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth
+about this transaction, and also that the rumour of her intention to
+repay the money should reach Judy Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly
+occurred to her that Rosedale, who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was
+the fitting person to receive and transmit her version of the facts. She
+had even felt a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving
+herself of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
+telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep blush of
+misery.
+
+Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took the
+turn she had least expected.
+
+"But see here--if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"
+
+He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her act;
+as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to precipitate
+her into a fresh act of folly.
+
+"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.
+
+He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little puzzled
+eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
+
+"See here--that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.
+
+Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no--it's merely a
+bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her feather scarf.
+
+Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
+movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing--I like pluck----" broke
+from him disconnectedly.
+
+"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a tremendous
+backing. I feel equal to anything now."
+
+Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but her
+companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his short
+arms into his expensive overcoat.
+
+"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he said.
+
+Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of his
+change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she
+led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the
+distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the
+DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking
+contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which
+she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
+
+"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss Farish."
+
+"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."
+
+He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped
+with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy
+vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible
+effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"
+
+She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being
+frankly touched by it. "Thank you--I shall be very glad," she made
+answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.
+
+
+
+That evening in her own room Miss Bart--who had fled early from the heavy
+fumes of the basement dinner-table--sat musing upon the impulse which had
+led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath it she discovered an
+increasing sense of loneliness--a dread of returning to the solitude of
+her room, while she could be anywhere else, or in any company but her
+own. Circumstances, of late, had combined to cut her off more and more
+from her few remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
+perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily's
+behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room, Mrs. Fisher
+seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding the
+reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come dangerously near to
+being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some
+verbal ingenuity to extricate herself. She frankly owned to having
+brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch--she had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch--and besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was
+old enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
+brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest bosom
+friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of
+her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose
+house she could count on the "jolly parties" which had become a necessity
+to her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of
+view.
+
+Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it. Carry
+had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps only a
+friendship like Gerty's could be proof against such an increasing strain.
+Gerty's friendship did indeed hold fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid
+her also. For she could not go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden;
+and to meet him now would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think
+of him, whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
+thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur of her
+tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
+Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams
+he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness;
+and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her
+courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below
+such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation
+from which she woke each morning with an obliterated past.
+
+Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return; but
+at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug gave her a
+momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she drew strength to
+take up her daily work. The strength was more and more needed as the
+perplexities of her future increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs.
+Fisher she was only passing through a temporary period of probation,
+since they believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme.
+Regina's would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
+realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller competence
+acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the
+legacy could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed a
+wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she could ever
+learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their special work,
+the small pay she received would not be a sufficient addition to her
+income to compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
+fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to use the
+legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and in command of
+her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to
+attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
+gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor. But the
+task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued to stint
+herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the
+weight of an intolerable obligation.
+
+These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked the
+secret dread that the obligation might not always remain intolerable.
+She knew she could not count on her continuity of purpose, and what
+really frightened her was the thought that she might gradually
+accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she
+had accommodated herself to the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as
+she had so nearly drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the
+advancement of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old
+incurable dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
+tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned
+her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood that
+Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take advantage
+of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of course impossible
+to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered
+temptingly before her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her
+again, and almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point
+of offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected. Would
+she still reject them if they were offered? More and more, with every
+fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the
+shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her
+papers, lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
+scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
+returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?
+
+What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost; she
+could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless night.
+Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue and
+loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained of bodily
+strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only
+hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much
+longer that hope would last she dared not conjecture.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the afternoon
+spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April, and the sweetness
+of spring was in the air. It mitigated the ugliness of the long crowded
+thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the
+discouraging perspective of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry
+to the delicate haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
+
+As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the passing
+carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had disbanded; but
+a few still lingered, delaying their departure for Europe, or passing
+through town on their return from the South. Among them was Mrs. Van
+Osburgh, swaying majestically in her C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy
+Gryce at her side, and the new heir to the Gryce millions enthroned
+before them on his nurse's knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch's
+electric victoria, in which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of
+a spring toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
+came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
+annual tarpon fishing and a dip into "the street."
+
+This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense of
+aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She had nothing
+to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to come; for the season
+was over in millinery as well as in society, and a week earlier Mme.
+Regina had notified her that her services were no longer required. Mme.
+Regina always reduced her staff on the first of May, and Miss Bart's
+attendance had of late been so irregular--she had so often been unwell,
+and had done so little work when she came--that it was only as a favour
+that her dismissal had hitherto been deferred.
+
+Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was conscious of
+having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It was bitter to
+acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the fact had been
+brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could never compete with
+professional ability. Since she had been brought up to be ornamental,
+she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical
+purpose; but the discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
+efficiency.
+
+As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the fact
+that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning. The luxury of
+lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the life of ease; it had no
+part in the utilitarian existence of the boarding-house. She liked to
+leave her room early, and to return to it as late as possible; and she
+was walking slowly now in order to postpone the detested approach to her
+doorstep.
+
+But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest from
+the fact that it was occupied--and indeed filled--by the conspicuous
+figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take on an added
+amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.
+
+The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph. Rosedale,
+a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to enquire if she had
+recovered from her indisposition; but since then she had not seen or
+heard from him, and his absence seemed to betoken a struggle to keep
+away, to let her pass once more out of his life. If this were the case,
+his return showed that the struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew
+he was not the man to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental
+dalliance. He was too busy, too practical, and above all too much
+preoccupied with his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable
+asides.
+
+In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas grass, and
+discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes, he looked about him
+with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat distrustfully on the dusty
+console adorned with a Rogers statuette.
+
+Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he deposited
+himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched antimacassar which
+scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of skin above his collar.
+
+"My goodness--you can't go on living here!" he exclaimed.
+
+Lily smiled at his tone. "I am not sure that I can; but I have gone over
+my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able to manage
+it."
+
+"Be able to manage it? That's not what I mean--it's no place for you!"
+
+"It's what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week."
+
+"Out of work--out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea of your
+having to work--it's preposterous." He brought out his sentences in short
+violent jerks, as though they were forced up from a deep inner crater of
+indignation. "It's a farce--a crazy farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed
+on the long vista of the room reflected in the blotched glass between the
+windows.
+
+Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. "I don't know why
+I should regard myself as an exception----" she began.
+
+"Because you ARE; that's why; and your being in a place like this is a
+damnable outrage. I can't talk of it calmly."
+
+She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual glibness; and
+there was something almost moving to her in his inarticulate struggle
+with his emotions.
+
+He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its beam
+ends, and placed himself squarely before her.
+
+"Look here, Miss Lily, I'm going to Europe next week: going over to Paris
+and London for a couple of months--and I can't leave you like this. I
+can't do it. I know it's none of my business--you've let me understand
+that often enough; but things are worse with you now than they have been
+before, and you must see that you've got to accept help from somebody.
+You spoke to me the other day about some debt to Trenor. I know what you
+mean--and I respect you for feeling as you do about it."
+
+A blush of surprise rose to Lily's pale face, but before she could
+interrupt him he had continued eagerly: "Well, I'll lend you the money to
+pay Trenor; and I won't--I--see here, don't take me up till I've
+finished. What I mean is, it'll be a plain business arrangement, such as
+one man would make with another. Now, what have you got to say against
+that?"
+
+Lily's blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude were
+mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the unexpected
+gentleness of her reply.
+
+"Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that I can
+never again be sure of understanding the plainest business arrangement."
+Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ of injustice, she
+added, even more kindly: "Not that I don't appreciate your kindness--that
+I'm not grateful for it. But a business arrangement between us would in
+any case be impossible, because I shall have no security to give when my
+debt to Gus Trenor has been paid."
+
+Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the note
+of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as closing the
+question between them.
+
+In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing through
+his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the inexorableness of her
+course--however little he penetrated its motive--she saw that it
+unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold over him. It was as though the
+sense in her of unexplained scruples and resistances had the same
+attraction as the delicacy of feature, the fastidiousness of manner,
+which gave her an external rarity, an air of being impossible to match.
+As he advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
+greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had learned to
+distinguish minor differences of design and quality in some long-coveted
+object.
+
+Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at once, on
+the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset; and the
+temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little by little,
+circumstances were breaking down her dislike for Rosedale. The dislike,
+indeed, still subsisted; but it was penetrated here and there by the
+perception of mitigating qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness,
+a rather helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
+through the hard surface of his material ambitions.
+
+Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a gesture
+which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.
+
+"If you'd only let me, I'd set you up over them all--I'd put you where
+you could wipe your feet on 'em!" he declared; and it touched her oddly
+to see that his new passion had not altered his old standard of values.
+
+
+
+Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
+situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on it. In
+fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had she not
+sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that might be
+called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt did she owe to
+a social order which had condemned and banished her without trial? She
+had never been heard in her own defence; she was innocent of the charge
+on which she had been found guilty; and the irregularity of her
+conviction might seem to justify the use of methods as irregular in
+recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not
+scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to
+make private use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all,
+half the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it. Call
+it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no
+one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he
+must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.
+
+The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of
+the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the
+passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of
+society. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude
+nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a
+worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by
+her unregarded. She could not hold herself much to blame for this
+ineffectiveness, and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed.
+Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
+highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its
+narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been
+fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the
+rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast? And was it her fault that
+the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
+among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be
+hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?
+
+These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their battle
+in her breast during the long watches of the night; and when she rose the
+next morning she hardly knew where the victory lay. She was exhausted by
+the reaction of a night without sleep, coming after many nights of rest
+artificially obtained; and in the distorting light of fatigue the future
+stretched out before her grey, interminable and desolate.
+
+She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
+friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the intimate
+domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings of the street.
+Her week of idleness had brought home to her with exaggerated force these
+small aggravations of the boarding-house world, and she yearned for that
+other luxurious world, whose machinery is so carefully concealed that one
+scene flows into another without perceptible agency.
+
+At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's she had
+spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial
+promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical
+fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not
+decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from
+the milliner's, and she was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.
+
+The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey sky
+threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals up and
+down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Park, hoping to
+find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the wind chilled her, and
+after an hour's wandering under the tossing boughs she yielded to her
+increasing weariness, and took refuge in a little restaurant in
+Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and had meant to go without
+luncheon; but she was too tired to return home, and the long perspective
+of white tables showed alluringly through the windows.
+
+The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the rapid
+absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of shrill voices
+reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little
+circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had
+lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken
+to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a
+responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the
+sallow preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
+music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who sat by
+themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring magazines
+between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was stranded in a great
+waste of disoccupation.
+
+She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion of
+stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when she emerged
+once more into the street. She realized now that, as she sat in the
+restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The
+discovery gave her an immediate illusion of activity: it was exhilarating
+to think that she had actually a reason for hurrying home. To prolong
+her enjoyment of the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was
+so great that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
+way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that
+time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it,
+cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters;
+but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
+break into a wild irrational gallop.
+
+She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
+enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting her plan
+into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her resolve. She
+was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved force of resolution
+which she felt within herself: she saw it was going to be easier, a great
+deal easier, than she had imagined.
+
+At five o'clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a sealed
+packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even the contact
+with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had half-expected it
+would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of indifference, as though
+the vigorous exertion of her will had finally benumbed her finer
+sensibilities.
+
+She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and went
+out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still high, but a
+threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook the signs projecting
+from the basement shops along the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and
+began to walk slowly northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs.
+Dorset's habits to know that she could always be found at home after
+five. She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
+visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that she had
+guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a note which she
+meant to send up with her name, and which she thought would secure her
+admission.
+
+She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset's, thinking that the
+quick movement through the cold evening air would help to steady her
+nerves; but she really felt no need of being tranquillized. Her survey of
+the situation remained calm and unwavering.
+
+As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and a rush of
+cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella and the moisture
+quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She was still half a mile from
+her destination, and she decided to walk across to Madison Avenue and
+take the electric car. As she turned into the side street, a vague memory
+stirred in her. The row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone
+house-fronts, the Georgian flat-house with flowerboxes on its balconies,
+were merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was down
+this street that she had walked with Selden, that September day two years
+ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered together. The
+recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations--longings, regrets,
+imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever
+known. It was strange to find herself passing his house on such an
+errand. She seemed suddenly to see her action as he would see it--and the
+fact of his own connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she
+must trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
+blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day of
+their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in the path
+she was now following--even then she had resisted the hand he had held
+out.
+
+All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
+overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to help
+her--to help her by loving her, as he had said--and if, the third time,
+he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse? . . .
+Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts
+still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see him remained; it grew to
+hunger as she paused on the pavement opposite his door. The street was
+dark and empty, swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of
+the bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a
+light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps made
+tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire flickered
+on the hearth, and Selden's easy-chair, which stood near it, had been
+pushed aside when he rose to admit her.
+
+He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent, waiting
+for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the threshold, assailed by
+a rush of memories.
+
+The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from which he
+had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the chair he had
+leaned against while she examined the precious volume. But then the wide
+September light had filled the room, making it seem a part of the outer
+world: now the shaded lamps and the warm hearth, detaching it from the
+gathering darkness of the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.
+
+Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden's silence, Lily
+turned to him and said simply: "I came to tell you that I was sorry for
+the way we parted--for what I said to you that day at Mrs. Hatch's."
+
+The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs,
+she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now
+felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung
+between them.
+
+Selden returned her look with a smile. "I was sorry too that we should
+have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn't bring it on myself.
+Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking----"
+
+"So that you really didn't care----?" broke from her with a flash of her
+old irony.
+
+"So that I was prepared for the consequences," he corrected
+good-humouredly. "But we'll talk of all this later. Do come and sit by
+the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you'll let me put a cushion
+behind you."
+
+While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and paused
+near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward, cast exaggerated
+shadows on the pallour of her delicately-hollowed face.
+
+"You look tired--do sit down," he repeated gently.
+
+She did not seem to hear the request. "I wanted you to know that I left
+Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you," she said, as though continuing
+her confession.
+
+"Yes--yes; I know," he assented, with a rising tinge of embarrassment.
+
+"And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had already
+begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with her--for the
+reasons you gave me; but I wouldn't admit it--I wouldn't let you see that
+I understood what you meant."
+
+"Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out--don't overwhelm
+me with the sense of my officiousness!"
+
+His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have
+recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on
+her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of
+extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of
+the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it
+necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and
+evasion.
+
+"It was not that--I was not ungrateful," she insisted. But the power of
+expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat, and two
+tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.
+
+Selden moved forward and took her hand. "You are very tired. Why won't
+you sit down and let me make you comfortable?"
+
+He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion behind
+her shoulders.
+
+"And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have that
+amount of hospitality at my command."
+
+She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not weep
+easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself, though she
+was still too tremulous to speak.
+
+"You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes," Selden
+continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.
+
+His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they had sat
+together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her future. There
+were moments when that day seemed more remote than any other event in her
+life; and yet she could always relive it in its minutest detail.
+
+She made a gesture of refusal. "No: I drink too much tea. I would rather
+sit quiet--I must go in a moment," she added confusedly.
+
+Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The
+tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under
+the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her
+to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more
+putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming
+an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an
+immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining
+impulse was still lacking.
+
+The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had
+passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every
+demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it
+elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned.
+But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw
+herself forever shut out from Selden's inmost self. She had come to him
+with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her;
+but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in
+its death-pang.
+
+"I must go," she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. "But I
+may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I
+have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that
+sometimes--sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them--they
+have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming
+what many people have thought me."
+
+Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would
+not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without
+trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the
+seeming ruin of her life.
+
+A change had come over Selden's face as she spoke. Its guarded look had
+yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion, but full of
+a gentle understanding.
+
+"I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really
+made the difference. The difference is in yourself--it will always be
+there. And since it IS there, it can't really matter to you what people
+think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you."
+
+"Ah, don't say that--don't say that what you have told me has made no
+difference. It seems to shut me out--to leave me all alone with the other
+people." She had risen and stood before him, once more completely
+mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The consciousness of his
+half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether he wished it or not, he
+must see her wholly for once before they parted.
+
+Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the eyes
+as she continued. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my
+life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I
+saw my mistake--I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me
+before. But it was too late: you had judged me--I understood. It was too
+late for happiness--but not too late to be helped by the thought of what
+I had missed. That is all I have lived on--don't take it from me now!
+Even in my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
+Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the
+help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great
+temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I
+remembered--I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy
+me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what you
+did for me--that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you
+that I have always remembered; and that I have tried--tried hard . . ."
+
+She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing out her
+handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds of her dress. A
+wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on her lips. Then she
+lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered voice.
+
+"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
+person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just
+a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped
+out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one
+finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be
+thrown out into the rubbish heap--and you don't know what it's like in
+the rubbish heap!"
+
+Her lips wavered into a smile--she had been distracted by the whimsical
+remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two years earlier, in
+that very room. Then she had been planning to marry Percy Gryce--what was
+it she was planning now?
+
+The blood had risen strongly under Selden's dark skin, but his emotion
+showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.
+
+"You have something to tell me--do you mean to marry?" he said abruptly.
+
+Lily's eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
+self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the light of
+his question, she had paused to ask herself if her decision had really
+been taken when she entered the room.
+
+"You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!" she
+said with a faint smile.
+
+"And you have come to it now?"
+
+"I shall have to come to it--presently. But there is something else I
+must come to first." She paused again, trying to transmit to her voice
+the steadiness of her recovered smile. "There is some one I must say
+goodbye to. Oh, not YOU--we are sure to see each other again--but the
+Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are
+going to part, and I have brought her back to you--I am going to leave
+her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like
+to think that she has stayed with you--and she'll be no trouble, she'll
+take up no room."
+
+She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will you let
+her stay with you?" she asked.
+
+He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling that had
+not yet risen to his lips. "Lily--can't I help you?" he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me once?
+That you could help me only by loving me? Well--you did love me for a
+moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the moment is
+gone--it was I who let it go. And one must go on living. Goodbye."
+
+She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind
+of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death. Something
+in truth lay dead between them--the love she had killed in him and could
+no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped
+up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had
+kindled, the passion of her soul for his.
+
+In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
+understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self with
+him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must still
+continue to be hers.
+
+Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with a
+strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation had
+vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as one of
+those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as they pass.
+
+"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I can't
+let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may change--but
+they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."
+
+She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see that now.
+Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe, whatever happens."
+
+"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"
+
+She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.
+
+"Nothing at present--except that I am very cold, and that before I go you
+must make up the fire for me."
+
+She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers. Puzzled
+by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered a handful of
+wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he did so, he noticed
+how thin her hands looked against the rising light of the flames. He saw
+too, under the loose lines of her dress, how the curves of her figure had
+shrunk to angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of
+the flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the
+blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes.
+She knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
+not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something from
+her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at
+the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the
+word to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
+shoulders. "Goodbye," she said, and as he bent over her she touched his
+forehead with her lips.
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was a
+momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on unconscious
+of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant ether which
+emanates from the high moments of life. But gradually it shrank away from
+her and she felt the dull pavement beneath her feet. The sense of
+weariness returned with accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that
+she could walk no farther. She had reached the corner of Forty-first
+Street and Fifth Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there
+were seats where she might rest.
+
+That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she entered it,
+and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of an electric
+street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of her veins, and she
+told herself that she must not sit long in the penetrating dampness which
+struck up from the wet asphalt. But her will-power seemed to have spent
+itself in a last great effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction
+which follows on an unwonted expenditure of energy. And besides, what was
+there to go home to? Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room--that
+silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the
+most discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral by her bed. The
+thought of the chloral was the only spot of light in the dark prospect:
+she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her already. But she
+was troubled by the thought that it was losing its power--she dared not
+go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been
+more broken and less profound; there had been nights when she was
+perpetually floating up through it to consciousness. What if the effect
+of the drug should gradually fail, as all narcotics were said to fail?
+She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the dose; and she
+had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug.
+Her dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she
+lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the waning
+power of the chloral.
+
+Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second Street
+was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the lingering
+occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and then a stray
+figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path where Lily sat, looming
+black for a moment in the white circle of electric light. One or two of
+these passers-by slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely
+figure; but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny.
+
+Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows
+remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming asphalt;
+and raising her eyes she saw a young woman bending over her.
+
+"Excuse me--are you sick?--Why, it's Miss Bart!" a half-familiar voice
+exclaimed.
+
+Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with a
+bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome refinement
+which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its common prettiness was
+redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips.
+
+"You don't remember me," she continued, brightening with the pleasure of
+recognition, "but I'd know you anywhere, I've thought of you such a lot.
+I guess my folks all know your name by heart. I was one of the girls at
+Miss Farish's club--you helped me to go to the country that time I had
+lung-trouble. My name's Nettie Struther. It was Nettie Crane then--but I
+daresay you don't remember that either."
+
+Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane's timely
+rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her
+connection with Gerty's charitable work. She had furnished the girl with
+the means to go to a sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with
+a peculiar irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor's.
+
+She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not forgotten; but
+her voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself sinking under a
+great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther, with a startled
+exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad arm behind her back.
+
+"Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you feel
+better."
+
+A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from the
+pressure of the supporting arm.
+
+"I'm only tired--it is nothing," she found voice to say in a moment; and
+then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion's eyes, she added
+involuntarily: "I have been unhappy--in great trouble."
+
+"YOU in trouble? I've always thought of you as being so high up, where
+everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean, and got to
+wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world, I used to
+remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and that seemed to
+show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But you mustn't sit here too
+long--it's fearfully damp. Don't you feel strong enough to walk on a
+little ways now?" she broke off.
+
+"Yes--yes; I must go home," Lily murmured, rising.
+
+Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side. She
+had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of over-work and
+anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to
+be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so
+lately expressed her dread. But Nettie Struther's frail envelope was now
+alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her,
+she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.
+
+"I am very glad to have seen you," Lily continued, summoning a smile to
+her unsteady lips. "It'll be my turn to think of you as happy--and the
+world will seem a less unjust place to me too."
+
+"Oh, but I can't leave you like this--you're not fit to go home alone.
+And I can't go with you either!" Nettie Struther wailed with a start of
+recollection. "You see, it's my husband's night-shift--he's a
+motor-man--and the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to
+get HER husband's supper at seven. I didn't tell you I had a baby, did I?
+She'll be four months old day after tomorrow, and to look at her you
+wouldn't think I'd ever had a sick day. I'd give anything to show you the
+baby, Miss Bart, and we live right down the street here--it's only three
+blocks off." She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily's face, and then
+added with a burst of courage: "Why won't you get right into the cars and
+come home with me while I get baby's supper? It's real warm in our
+kitchen, and you can rest there, and I'll take YOU home as soon as ever
+she drops off to sleep."
+
+It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther's match had made
+a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as
+extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through
+the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which
+a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for
+expression on a countenance still placid with sleep.
+
+Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and
+excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return,
+Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the
+rocking-chair near the stove.
+
+"We've got a parlour too," she explained with pardonable pride; "but I
+guess it's warmer in here, and I don't want to leave you alone while I'm
+getting baby's supper."
+
+On receiving Lily's assurance that she much preferred the friendly
+proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a
+bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby's
+impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated
+herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.
+
+"You're sure you won't let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss
+Bart? There's some of baby's fresh milk left over--well, maybe you'd
+rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It's too lovely having you
+here. I've thought of it so often that I can't believe it's really come
+true. I've said to George again and again: 'I just wish Miss Bart could
+see me NOW--' and I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we'd
+talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses
+you wore. I haven't seen your name for a long time, though, and I began
+to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I'd get
+sick myself, fretting about it." Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile.
+"Well, I can't afford to be sick again, that's a fact: the last spell
+nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I'd
+come back alive, and I didn't much care if I did. You see I didn't know
+about George and the baby then."
+
+She paused to readjust the bottle to the child's bubbling mouth.
+
+"You precious--don't you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with
+mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto'nette--that's what we
+call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden--I told
+George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy the
+name . . . I never thought I'd get married, you know, and I'd never have
+had the heart to go on working just for myself."
+
+She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily's eyes, went
+on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: "You see I wasn't only
+just SICK that time you sent me off--I was dreadfully unhappy too. I'd
+known a gentleman where I was employed--I don't know as you remember I
+did type-writing in a big importing firm--and--well--I thought we were to
+be married: he'd gone steady with me six months and given me his mother's
+wedding ring. But I presume he was too stylish for me--he travelled for
+the firm, and had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren't looked
+after the way you are, and they don't always know how to look after
+themselves. I didn't . . . and it pretty near killed me when he went away
+and left off writing . . .
+
+"It was then I came down sick--I thought it was the end of everything. I
+guess it would have been if you hadn't sent me off. But when I found I
+was getting well I began to take heart in spite of myself. And then,
+when I got back home, George came round and asked me to marry him. At
+first I thought I couldn't, because we'd been brought up together, and I
+knew he knew about me. But after a while I began to see that that made it
+easier. I never could have told another man, and I'd never have married
+without telling; but if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I
+didn't see why I shouldn't begin over again--and I did."
+
+The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted her
+irradiated face from the child on her knees. "But, mercy, I didn't mean
+to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there looking so fagged
+out. Only it's so lovely having you here, and letting you see just how
+you've helped me." The baby had sunk back blissfully replete, and Mrs.
+Struther softly rose to lay the bottle aside. Then she paused before Miss
+Bart.
+
+"I only wish I could help YOU--but I suppose there's nothing on earth I
+could do," she murmured wistfully.
+
+Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her arms; and
+the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in them.
+
+The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage, made an
+instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing influences of
+digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight sink trustfully
+against her breast. The child's confidence in its safety thrilled her
+with a sense of warmth and returning life, and she bent over, wondering
+at the rosy blur of the little face, the empty clearness of the eyes, the
+vague tendrilly motions of the folding and unfolding fingers. At first
+the burden in her arms seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down,
+but as she continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper, and
+penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though the child
+entered into her and became a part of herself.
+
+She looked up, and saw Nettie's eyes resting on her with tenderness and
+exultation.
+
+"Wouldn't it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to be just
+like you? Of course I know she never COULD--but mothers are always
+dreaming the craziest things for their children."
+
+Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in her
+mother's arms.
+
+"Oh, she must not do that--I should be afraid to come and see her too
+often!" she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs. Struther's
+anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the promise that of
+course she would come back soon, and make George's acquaintance, and see
+the baby in her bath, she passed out of the kitchen and went alone down
+the tenement stairs.
+
+
+
+As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger and
+happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the first time she
+had ever come across the results of her spasmodic benevolence, and the
+surprised sense of human fellowship took the mortal chill from her heart.
+
+It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction of a
+deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o'clock, and the light and
+odours proceeding from the basement made it manifest that the
+boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room, lit the
+gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself any longer,
+to go without food because her surroundings made it unpalatable. Since it
+was her fate to live in a boarding-house, she must learn to fall in with
+the conditions of the life. Nevertheless she was glad that, when she
+descended to the heat and glare of the dining-room, the repast was nearly
+over.
+
+
+
+In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of activity.
+For weeks past she had been too listless and indifferent to set her
+possessions in order, but now she began to examine systematically the
+contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a few handsome dresses
+left--survivals of her last phase of splendour, on the Sabrina and in
+London--but when she had been obliged to part with her maid she had given
+the woman a generous share of her cast-off apparel. The remaining
+dresses, though they had lost their freshness, still kept the long
+unerring lines, the sweep and amplitude of the great artist's stroke, and
+as she spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn
+rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
+of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her
+past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life
+enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had been made for:
+every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it, all
+her interests and activities had been taught to centre around it. She
+was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every
+bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.
+
+Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white
+drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress
+she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been impossible for her to give
+it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long
+flexible folds, as she shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets
+which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she
+had stood with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the
+dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note
+of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was
+still in a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of
+the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.
+
+She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dress
+when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irish
+maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, Lily
+read with surprise the address stamped on the upper corner of the
+envelope. It was a business communication from the office of her aunt's
+executors, and she wondered what unexpected development had caused them
+to break silence before the appointed time. She opened the envelope and a
+cheque fluttered to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up the blood
+rushed to her face. The cheque represented the full amount of Mrs.
+Peniston's legacy, and the letter accompanying it explained that the
+executors, having adjusted the business of the estate with less delay
+than they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the
+payment of the bequests.
+
+Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out
+the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it
+in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had
+represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed
+in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of
+the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the
+visions mounting to her brain, and after a while she lifted the lid of
+the desk and slipped the magic formula out of sight. It was easier to
+think without those five figures dancing before her eyes; and she had a
+great deal of thinking to do before she slept.
+
+She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious calculations as
+had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night when she had decided to
+marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies book-keeping, and her financial
+situation was easier to ascertain than it had been then; but she had not
+yet learned the control of money, and during her transient phase of
+luxury at the Emporium she had slipped back into habits of extravagance
+which still impaired her slender balance. A careful examination of her
+cheque-book, and of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that, when the
+latter had been settled, she would have barely enough to live on for the
+next three or four months; and even after that, if she were to continue
+her present way of living, without earning any additional money, all
+incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point. She hid her
+eyes with a shudder, beholding herself at the entrance of that
+ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss Silverton's dowdy
+figure take its despondent way.
+
+It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she
+turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper
+empoverishment--of an inner destitution compared to which outward
+conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be
+poor--to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary
+degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy
+communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more
+miserable still--it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of
+being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the
+years. That was the feeling which possessed her now--the feeling of being
+something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface
+of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self
+could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back
+she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real
+relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and
+thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to
+shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without
+any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no
+centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her
+heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and
+tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives
+in the blood--whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with
+visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands,
+but made up of inherited passions and loyalties--it has the same power of
+broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by
+mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving.
+
+Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to Lily.
+She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
+mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
+influences of the life about her. All the men and women she knew were
+like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance:
+her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening
+in Nettie Struther's kitchen.
+
+The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the
+fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to
+Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre
+enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for
+possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious
+permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff--a mere wisp of
+leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may
+hang safely over the abyss.
+
+Yes--but it had taken two to build the nest; the man's faith as well as
+the woman's courage. Lily remembered Nettie's words: I KNEW HE KNEW ABOUT
+ME. Her husband's faith in her had made her renewal possible--it is so
+easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be!
+Well--Selden had twice been ready to stake his faith on Lily Bart; but
+the third trial had been too severe for his endurance. The very quality
+of his love had made it the more impossible to recall to life. If it had
+been a simple instinct of the blood, the power of her beauty might have
+revived it. But the fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably
+wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as
+impossible to restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed.
+Selden had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of
+an uncritical return to former states of feeling.
+
+There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his
+faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on
+her memories. As she held Nettie Struther's child in her arms the frozen
+currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins: the
+old life-hunger possessed her, and all her being clamoured for its share
+of personal happiness. Yes--it was happiness she still wanted, and the
+glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by
+one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw
+that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.
+
+It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed her.
+It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful fatigue, a
+wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities of the future
+were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled by the intense
+cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken through the merciful
+veil which intervenes between intention and action, and to see exactly
+what she would do in all the long days to come. There was the cheque in
+her desk, for instance--she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor;
+but she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing so,
+would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified
+her--she dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
+Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the
+strength of the opposing impulses-she could feel the countless hands of
+habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an
+intense longing to prolong, to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of
+her spirit. If only life could end now--end on this tragic yet sweet
+vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all
+the loving and foregoing in the world!
+
+She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her writing-desk,
+enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to her bank. She then
+wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it, without an accompanying
+word, in an envelope inscribed with his name, laid the two letters side
+by side on her desk. After that she continued to sit at the table,
+sorting her papers and writing, till the intense silence of the house
+reminded her of the lateness of the hour. In the street the noise of
+wheels had ceased, and the rumble of the "elevated" came only at long
+intervals through the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal
+separation from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more
+strangely confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel,
+and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands against her
+eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her
+future--she felt as though the house, the street, the world were all
+empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless universe.
+
+But this was the verge of delirium . . . she had never hung so near the
+dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted--she remembered that
+she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The little bottle was at her
+bed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon her. She rose and undressed
+hastily, hungering now for the touch of her pillow. She felt so
+profoundly tired that she thought she must fall asleep at once; but as
+soon as she had lain down every nerve started once more into separate
+wakefulness. It was as though a great blaze of electric light had been
+turned on in her head, and her poor little anguished self shrank and
+cowered in it, without knowing where to take refuge.
+
+She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness was
+possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred different
+points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could still this legion
+of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion would have been sweet
+compared to this shrill beat of activities; but weariness had dropped
+from her as though some cruel stimulant had been forced into her veins.
+
+She could bear it--yes, she could bear it; but what strength would be
+left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared--the next day pressed
+close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to follow--they
+swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut them out for a few
+hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion. She put out her hand, and
+measured the soothing drops into a glass; but as she did so, she knew
+they would be powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain.
+She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she
+felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing
+so--she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might
+be a sleep without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a
+hundred: the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a
+few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for
+her the rest she so desperately needed....
+
+She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely--the physical
+craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her mind shrank from
+the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes contract in a blaze of
+light--darkness, darkness was what she must have at any cost. She raised
+herself in bed and swallowed the contents of the glass; then she blew out
+her candle and lay down.
+
+She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first
+effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would
+take--the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of
+passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in
+the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect increased its
+fascination: it was delicious to lean over and look down into the dim
+abysses of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug seemed to work more slowly
+than usual: each passionate pulse had to be stilled in turn, and it was
+long before she felt them dropping into abeyance, like sentinels falling
+asleep at their posts. But gradually the sense of complete subjugation
+came over her, and she wondered languidly what had made her feel so
+uneasy and excited. She saw now that there was nothing to be excited
+about--she had returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be
+so difficult after all: she felt sure that she would have the strength to
+meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had been afraid
+to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her. She had been
+unhappy, and now she was happy--she had felt herself alone, and now the
+sense of loneliness had vanished.
+
+She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she suddenly
+understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was odd--but Nettie
+Struther's child was lying on her arm: she felt the pressure of its
+little head against her shoulder. She did not know how it had come there,
+but she felt no great surprise at the fact, only a gentle penetrating
+thrill of warmth and pleasure. She settled herself into an easier
+position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round downy head, and holding
+her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child.
+
+As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must
+tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life clear between
+them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered vague and luminous on
+the far edge of thought--she was afraid of not remembering it when she
+woke; and if she could only remember it and say it to him, she felt that
+everything would be well.
+
+Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold her. She
+struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought to keep awake on
+account of the baby; but even this feeling was gradually lost in an
+indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through which, of a sudden, a dark
+flash of loneliness and terror tore its way.
+
+She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a moment she
+seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no--she was mistaken--the
+tender pressure of its body was still close to hers: the recovered warmth
+flowed through her once more, she yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the
+air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the
+blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step,
+and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window.
+
+When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication in
+its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the squalor of
+its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a youthful sense of
+adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and
+launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and
+measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars.
+
+That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart's boarding-house;
+but its shabby door-step had suddenly become the threshold of the
+untried. As he approached he looked up at the triple row of windows,
+wondering boyishly which one of them was hers. It was nine o'clock, and
+the house, being tenanted by workers, already showed an awakened front to
+the street. He remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind
+was down. He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the
+window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
+inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the
+dingy scene.
+
+Nine o'clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed beyond
+all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily
+Bart at once--he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could
+not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come
+to his lips sooner--that he had let her pass from him the evening before
+without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new
+day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning.
+
+Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in his
+state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door
+should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he
+entered, that it had been opened by Gerty Farish--and that behind her, in
+an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed.
+
+"Lawrence!" Gerty cried in a strange voice, "how could you get here so
+quickly?"--and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to
+close about his heart.
+
+He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture--he saw the
+landlady's imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but he shrank
+back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically mounted the steep
+black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately aware that his cousin
+was about to lead him.
+
+A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
+minute--and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one else
+exclaimed: "It was the greatest mercy--" then Selden felt that Gerty had
+taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be suffered to go up
+alone.
+
+In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage
+to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went in after her.
+Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a tempered
+golden flood into the room, and in its light Selden saw a narrow bed
+along the wall, and on the bed, with motionless hands and calm
+unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart.
+
+That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied. Her real
+self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier--what had he to
+do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the first time,
+neither paled nor brightened at his coming?
+
+Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of one who
+has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking gently, as if
+transmitting a final message.
+
+"The doctor found a bottle of chloral--she had been sleeping badly for a
+long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake.... There is no
+doubt of that--no doubt--there will be no question--he has been very
+kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left alone with her--to
+go over her things before any one else comes. I know it is what she would
+have wished."
+
+Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down on
+the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable mask
+over the living lineaments he had known. He felt that the real Lily was
+still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible; and the
+tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense of
+helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier
+between them--and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart! And now,
+though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened
+to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in vain.
+
+He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
+aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by the
+extraordinary light in his cousin's face.
+
+"You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that there
+shall be no trouble--but of course the formalities must be gone through.
+And I asked him to give us time to look through her things first----"
+
+He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. "It won't take
+long," she concluded.
+
+"No--it won't take long," he agreed.
+
+She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last look at
+the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold she paused to
+add: "You will find me downstairs if you want me."
+
+Selden roused himself to detain her. "But why are you going? She would
+have wished----"
+
+Gerty shook her head with a smile. "No: this is what she would have
+wished----" and as she spoke a light broke through Selden's stony misery,
+and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.
+
+The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless sleeper
+on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall on his knees,
+and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful cheek on the pillow.
+They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself
+drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.
+
+But he remembered Gerty's warning words--he knew that, though time had
+ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly toward the
+door. Gerty had given him this supreme half-hour, and he must use it as
+she willed.
+
+He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to regain his
+consciousness of outward things. There was very little furniture in the
+room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover, and set
+out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured
+pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hair-pins--he shrank
+from the poignant intimacy of these trifles, and from the blank surface
+of the toilet-mirror above them.
+
+These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the minute
+observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her other
+renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality
+about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the
+scant articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small
+writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the
+empty bottle and glass, and from these also he averted his eyes.
+
+The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he
+took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped and
+sealed, Selden, after a moment's hesitation, laid it aside. On the other
+letter he read Gus Trenor's name; and the flap of the envelope was still
+ungummed.
+
+Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered under it,
+steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been writing to
+Trenor--writing, presumably, just after their parting of the previous
+evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of that last hour, made a mock
+of the word he had come to speak, and defiled even the reconciling
+silence upon which it fell. He felt himself flung back on all the ugly
+uncertainties from which he thought he had cast loose forever. After all,
+what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him,
+and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was! By what
+right--the letter in his hand seemed to ask--by what right was it he who
+now passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
+unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last hour
+together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in his hand.
+Yes--but what if the letter to Trenor had been written afterward?
+
+He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips, addressed
+himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After all, that task
+would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was
+annulled.
+
+He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book and a few
+packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly precision which
+characterized all her personal habits. He looked through the letters
+first, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved to
+be few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotion
+of the heart, the note he had written her the day after the Brys'
+entertainment.
+
+"When may I come to you?"--his words overwhelmed him with a realization
+of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of
+attainment. Yes--he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to
+disown his cowardice now; for had not all his old doubts started to life
+again at the mere sight of Trenor's name?
+
+He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
+something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
+growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
+examination of the papers.
+
+To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there was
+not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book, and saw
+that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand dollars from Mrs.
+Peniston's executors had been entered in it. The legacy, then, had been
+paid sooner than Gerty had led him to expect. But, turning another page
+or two, he discovered with astonishment that, in spite of this recent
+accession of funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars. A
+rapid glance at the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date
+of the previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
+the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the remaining
+thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at the same time, to
+Charles Augustus Trenor.
+
+Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the desk. He
+leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands. The bitter waters
+of life surged high about him, their sterile taste was on his lips. Did
+the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery or deepen it? At first his mind
+refused to act--he felt only the taint of such a transaction between a
+man like Trenor and a girl like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled
+vision cleared, old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the
+very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
+of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from Trenor;
+but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared, that the
+obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the first opportunity
+she had freed herself from it, though the act left her face to face with
+bare unmitigated poverty.
+
+That was all he knew--all he could hope to unravel of the story. The
+mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this--unless indeed they
+had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes,
+he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find
+there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for
+having failed to reach the height of his opportunity.
+
+He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart;
+since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her
+had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult
+for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he HAD loved her--had
+been willing to stake his future on his faith in her--and if the moment
+had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now
+that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.
+
+It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which
+had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had reached out
+to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and
+in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and
+reconciled to her side.
+
+He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its
+lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made
+all clear.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Notes:
+
+1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do n't
+becomes don't, etc.
+
+2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and colour.
+
+3. I found and corrected one instance of the name "Gertie," which I
+changed to "Gerty" to be consistent with rest of the book.
+
+Linda Ruoff
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The house of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The house of Mirth
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: June 1, 1995 [eBook #284]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF MIRTH ***
+
+
+
+
+ The House of Mirth
+
+ BY
+
+ EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+
+Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand
+Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss
+Lily Bart.
+
+It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his
+work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart
+doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a
+train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act
+of transition between one and another of the country houses which
+disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but
+her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd,
+letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing
+an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of
+a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting
+for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him. There
+was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
+a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
+always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result
+of far-reaching intentions.
+
+An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the
+door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be
+seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of
+putting her skill to the test.
+
+“Mr. Selden—what good luck!”
+
+She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept
+him. One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look;
+for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller
+rushing to his last train.
+
+Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved
+against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than
+in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the
+girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to
+lose after eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing.
+Was it really eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had
+she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her
+rivals credited her?
+
+“What luck!” she repeated. “How nice of you to come to my rescue!”
+
+He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and
+asked what form the rescue was to take.
+
+“Oh, almost any—even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One
+sits out a cotillion—why not sit out a train? It isn’t a bit hotter
+here than in Mrs. Van Osburgh’s conservatory—and some of the women
+are not a bit uglier.” She broke off, laughing, to explain that she
+had come up to town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors’ at
+Bellomont, and had missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck.
+“And there isn’t another till half-past five.” She consulted the
+little jewelled watch among her laces. “Just two hours to wait. And
+I don’t know what to do with myself. My maid came up this morning
+to do some shopping for me, and was to go on to Bellomont at one
+o’clock, and my aunt’s house is closed, and I don’t know a soul in
+town.” She glanced plaintively about the station. “It IS hotter
+than Mrs. Van Osburgh’s, after all. If you can spare the time, do
+take me somewhere for a breath of air.”
+
+He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck
+him as diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart;
+and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to
+be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal
+implied.
+
+“Shall we go over to Sherry’s for a cup of tea?”
+
+She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.
+
+“So many people come up to town on a Monday—one is sure to meet a
+lot of bores. I’m as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not
+to make any difference; but if I’M old enough, you’re not,” she
+objected gaily. “I’m dying for tea—but isn’t there a quieter place?”
+
+He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
+interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure
+that both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In
+judging Miss Bart, he had always made use of the “argument from
+design.”
+
+“The resources of New York are rather meagre,” he said; “but I’ll
+find a hansom first, and then we’ll invent something.” He led her
+through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced
+girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with
+paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged
+to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this average
+section of womanhood made him feel how highly specialized she was.
+
+A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung
+refreshingly over the moist street.
+
+“How delicious! Let us walk a little,” she said as they emerged
+from the station.
+
+They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward.
+As she moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was
+conscious of taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the
+modelling of her little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair—was
+it ever so slightly brightened by art?—and the thick planting
+of her straight black lashes. Everything about her was at once
+vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused
+sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great
+many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have
+been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
+distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external:
+as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been
+applied to vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a
+coarse texture will not take a high finish; and was it not possible
+that the material was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it
+into a futile shape?
+
+As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and
+her lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she
+paused with a sigh.
+
+“Oh, dear, I’m so hot and thirsty—and what a hideous place New York
+is!” She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare.
+“Other cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York
+seems to sit in its shirtsleeves.” Her eyes wandered down one of
+the side streets. “Someone has had the humanity to plant a few
+trees over there. Let us go into the shade.”
+
+“I am glad my street meets with your approval,” said Selden as they
+turned the corner.
+
+“Your street? Do you live here?”
+
+She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone
+house-fronts, fantastically varied in obedience to the American
+craving for novelty, but fresh and inviting with their awnings and
+flower-boxes.
+
+“Ah, yes—to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building!
+I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.” She looked across at the
+flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade. “Which
+are your windows? Those with the awnings down?”
+
+“On the top floor—yes.”
+
+“And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!”
+
+He paused a moment. “Come up and see,” he suggested. “I can give
+you a cup of tea in no time—and you won’t meet any bores.”
+
+Her colour deepened—she still had the art of blushing at the right
+time—but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
+
+“Why not? It’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk,” she declared.
+
+“Oh, I’m not dangerous,” he said in the same key. In truth, he
+had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had
+accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her
+calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in
+the spontaneity of her consent.
+
+On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.
+
+“There’s no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come
+in the mornings, and it’s just possible he may have put out the
+tea-things and provided some cake.”
+
+He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She
+noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves
+and sticks; then she found herself in a small library, dark but
+cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug,
+a littered desk and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table
+near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying inward the muslin
+curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of mignonette and petunias
+from the flower-box on the balcony.
+
+Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.
+
+“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a
+miserable thing it is to be a woman.” She leaned back in a luxury
+of discontent.
+
+Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
+
+“Even women,” he said, “have been known to enjoy the privileges of
+a flat.”
+
+“Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable,
+marriageable girls!”
+
+“I even know a girl who lives in a flat.”
+
+She sat up in surprise. “You do?”
+
+“I do,” he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the
+sought-for cake.
+
+“Oh, I know—you mean Gerty Farish.” She smiled a little unkindly.
+“But I said MARRIAGEABLE—and besides, she has a horrid little
+place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the
+washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know.”
+
+“You shouldn’t dine with her on wash-days,” said Selden, cutting
+the cake.
+
+They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp
+under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little
+tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a
+bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire
+bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony
+of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish
+had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization
+which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like
+manacles chaining her to her fate.
+
+She seemed to read his thought. “It was horrid of me to say that of
+Gerty,” she said with charming compunction. “I forgot she was your
+cousin. But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good,
+and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If
+I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It
+must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and
+give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my
+aunt’s drawing-room I know I should be a better woman.”
+
+“Is it so very bad?” he asked sympathetically.
+
+She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
+filled.
+
+“That shows how seldom you come there. Why don’t you come oftener?”
+
+“When I do come, it’s not to look at Mrs. Peniston’s furniture.”
+
+“Nonsense,” she said. “You don’t come at all—and yet we get on so
+well when we meet.”
+
+“Perhaps that’s the reason,” he answered promptly. “I’m afraid
+I haven’t any cream, you know—shall you mind a slice of lemon
+instead?”
+
+“I shall like it better.” She waited while he cut the lemon and
+dropped a thin disk into her cup. “But that is not the reason,” she
+insisted.
+
+“The reason for what?”
+
+“For your never coming.” She leaned forward with a shade of
+perplexity in her charming eyes. “I wish I knew—I wish I could make
+you out. Of course I know there are men who don’t like me—one can
+tell that at a glance. And there are others who are afraid of me:
+they think I want to marry them.” She smiled up at him frankly.
+“But I don’t think you dislike me—and you can’t possibly think I
+want to marry you.”
+
+“No—I absolve you of that,” he agreed.
+
+“Well, then——?”
+
+He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against
+the chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent
+amusement. The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he
+had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but
+perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her
+type had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she
+was amazingly pretty, and he had asked her to tea and must live up
+to his obligations.
+
+“Well, then,” he said with a plunge, “perhaps THAT’S the reason.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“The fact that you don’t want to marry me. Perhaps I don’t regard
+it as such a strong inducement to go and see you.” He felt a slight
+shiver down his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured
+him.
+
+“Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn’t worthy of you. It’s stupid of you to
+make love to me, and it isn’t like you to be stupid.” She leaned
+back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that,
+if they had been in her aunt’s drawing-room, he might almost have
+tried to disprove her deduction.
+
+“Don’t you see,” she continued, “that there are men enough to say
+pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won’t
+be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I
+have fancied you might be that friend—I don’t know why, except that
+you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn’t have
+to pretend with you or be on my guard against you.” Her voice had
+dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with
+the troubled gravity of a child.
+
+“You don’t know how much I need such a friend,” she said. “My aunt
+is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to
+conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them
+would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other
+women—my best friends—well, they use me or abuse me; but they don’t
+care a straw what happens to me. I’ve been about too long—people
+are getting tired of me; they are beginning to say I ought to marry.”
+
+There was a moment’s pause, during which Selden meditated one or
+two replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation;
+but he rejected them in favour of the simple question: “Well, why
+don’t you?”
+
+She coloured and laughed. “Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all,
+and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for.”
+
+“It wasn’t meant to be disagreeable,” he returned amicably. “Isn’t
+marriage your vocation? Isn’t it what you’re all brought up for?”
+
+She sighed. “I suppose so. What else is there?”
+
+“Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. “You speak as if I ought to marry the
+first man who came along.”
+
+“I didn’t mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But
+there must be some one with the requisite qualifications.”
+
+She shook her head wearily. “I threw away one or two good chances
+when I first came out—I suppose every girl does; and you know I
+am horribly poor—and very expensive. I must have a great deal of
+money.”
+
+Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.
+
+“What’s become of Dillworth?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, his mother was frightened—she was afraid I should have all the
+family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t
+do over the drawing-room.”
+
+“The very thing you are marrying for!”
+
+“Exactly. So she packed him off to India.”
+
+“Hard luck—but you can do better than Dillworth.”
+
+He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes,
+putting one between her lips and slipping the others into a little
+gold case attached to her long pearl chain.
+
+“Have I time? Just a whiff, then.” She leaned forward, holding the
+tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely
+impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her
+smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted
+into the pure pallor of the cheek.
+
+She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves
+between the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes
+had the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes
+lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the
+expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that
+was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression
+changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture, and she
+turned to Selden with a question.
+
+“You collect, don’t you—you know about first editions and things?”
+
+“As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I
+pick up something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the
+big sales.”
+
+She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now
+swept them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with
+a new idea.
+
+“And Americana—do you collect Americana?”
+
+Selden stared and laughed.
+
+“No, that’s rather out of my line. I’m not really a collector, you
+see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of.”
+
+She made a slight grimace. “And Americana are horribly dull, I
+suppose?”
+
+“I should fancy so—except to the historian. But your real collector
+values a thing for its rarity. I don’t suppose the buyers of
+Americana sit up reading them all night—old Jefferson Gryce
+certainly didn’t.”
+
+She was listening with keen attention. “And yet they fetch fabulous
+prices, don’t they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an
+ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read! And I
+suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians either?”
+
+“No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have
+to use those in the public libraries or in private collections. It
+seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average collector.”
+
+He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was
+standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were the
+rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really
+considered the finest in the world, and what was the largest price
+ever fetched by a single volume.
+
+It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted
+now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the
+pages between her fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined
+against the warm background of old bindings, that he talked on
+without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive
+a subject. But he could never be long with her without trying to
+find a reason for what she was doing, and as she replaced his
+first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from the bookcases,
+he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her next
+question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before
+him with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
+familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.
+
+“Don’t you ever mind,” she asked suddenly, “not being rich enough
+to buy all the books you want?”
+
+He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and
+shabby walls.
+
+“Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?”
+
+“And having to work—do you mind that?”
+
+“Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I’m rather fond of the law.”
+
+“No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to
+get away, to see new places and people?”
+
+“Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the
+steamer.”
+
+She drew a sympathetic breath. “But do you mind enough—to marry to
+get out of it?”
+
+Selden broke into a laugh. “God forbid!” he declared.
+
+She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.
+
+“Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.”
+She surveyed him critically. “Your coat’s a little shabby—but who
+cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were
+shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for
+her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the
+frame, if you like: they don’t make success, but they are a part
+of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and
+well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have
+to go into partnership.”
+
+Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with
+her lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her
+case.
+
+“Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for
+such an investment. Perhaps you’ll meet your fate tonight at the
+Trenors’.”
+
+She returned his look interrogatively.
+
+“I thought you might be going there—oh, not in that capacity! But
+there are to be a lot of your set—Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls,
+Lady Cressida Raith—and the George Dorsets.”
+
+She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through
+her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.
+
+“Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can’t get away till the end of the
+week; and those big parties bore me.”
+
+“Ah, so they do me,” she exclaimed.
+
+“Then why go?”
+
+“It’s part of the business—you forget! And besides, if I didn’t, I
+should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs.”
+
+“That’s almost as bad as marrying Dillworth,” he agreed, and they
+both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+“Dear me! I must be off. It’s after five.”
+
+She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror
+while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope
+of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to
+her outline—as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the
+conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was
+the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such
+savour to her artificiality.
+
+He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
+threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.
+
+“It’s been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit.”
+
+“But don’t you want me to see you to the station?”
+
+“No; good bye here, please.”
+
+She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.
+
+“Good bye, then—and good luck at Bellomont!” he said, opening the
+door for her.
+
+On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
+chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never
+tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent
+reaction of prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a
+char-woman who was scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and
+its surrounding implements took up so much room that Lily, to pass
+her, had to gather up her skirts and brush against the wall. As
+she did so, the woman paused in her work and looked up curiously,
+resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth she had just drawn
+from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly pitted with
+small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her scalp
+shone unpleasantly.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Lily, intending by her politeness to
+convey a criticism of the other’s manner.
+
+The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued
+to stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings.
+Lily felt herself flushing under the look. What did the creature
+suppose? Could one never do the simplest, the most harmless thing,
+without subjecting one’s self to some odious conjecture? Half way
+down the next flight, she smiled to think that a char-woman’s stare
+should so perturb her. The poor thing was probably dazzled by such
+an unwonted apparition. But WERE such apparitions unwonted on
+Selden’s stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with the moral code of
+bachelors’ flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it occurred to
+her that the woman’s persistent gaze implied a groping among past
+associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
+fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab
+short of Fifth Avenue.
+
+Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for
+a hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she
+ran against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat,
+who raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.
+
+“Miss Bart? Well—of all people! This IS luck,” he declared; and she
+caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Rosedale—how are you?” she said, perceiving that the
+irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden
+intimacy of his smile.
+
+Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He
+was a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London
+clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which
+gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac.
+He glanced up interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.
+
+“Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?” he said, in a
+tone which had the familiarity of a touch.
+
+Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
+precipitate explanations.
+
+“Yes—I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch
+the train to the Trenors’.”
+
+“Ah—your dress-maker; just so,” he said blandly. “I didn’t know
+there were any dress-makers in the Benedick.”
+
+“The Benedick?” She looked gently puzzled. “Is that the name of
+this building?”
+
+“Yes, that’s the name: I believe it’s an old word for bachelor,
+isn’t it? I happen to own the building—that’s the way I know.” His
+smile deepened as he added with increasing assurance: “But you must
+let me take you to the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of
+course? You’ve barely time to catch the five-forty. The dress-maker
+kept you waiting, I suppose.”
+
+Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.
+
+“Oh, thanks,” she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught
+a hansom drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a
+desperate gesture.
+
+“You’re very kind; but I couldn’t think of troubling you,” she
+said, extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his
+protestations, she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out
+a breathless order to the driver.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+
+In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so
+dearly for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do
+a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of
+artifice? She had yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence
+Selden’s rooms, and it was so seldom that she could allow herself
+the luxury of an impulse! This one, at any rate, was going to cost
+her rather more than she could afford. She was vexed to see that,
+in spite of so many years of vigilance, she had blundered twice
+within five minutes. That stupid story about her dress-maker was
+bad enough—it would have been so simple to tell Rosedale that she
+had been taking tea with Selden! The mere statement of the fact
+would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having let herself
+be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the
+witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to
+let Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have
+purchased his silence. He had his race’s accuracy in the appraisal
+of values, and to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded
+afternoon hour in the company of Miss Lily Bart would have been
+money in his pocket, as he might himself have phrased it. He knew,
+of course, that there would be a large house-party at Bellomont,
+and the possibility of being taken for one of Mrs. Trenor’s guests
+was doubtless included in his calculations. Mr. Rosedale was still
+at a stage in his social ascent when it was of importance to
+produce such impressions.
+
+The provoking part was that Lily knew all this—knew how easy it
+would have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it
+might be to do so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who
+made it his business to know everything about every one, whose
+idea of showing himself to be at home in society was to display
+an inconvenient familiarity with the habits of those with whom
+he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure that within
+twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker at
+the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale’s
+acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and
+ignored him. On his first appearance—when her improvident cousin,
+Jack Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too
+easily guessed) a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh
+“crushes”—Rosedale, with that mixture of artistic sensibility and
+business astuteness which characterizes his race, had instantly
+gravitated toward Miss Bart. She understood his motives, for
+her own course was guided by as nice calculations. Training and
+experience had taught her to be hospitable to newcomers, since the
+most unpromising might be useful later on, and there were plenty
+of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But
+some intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social
+discipline, had made her push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE
+without a trial. He had left behind only the ripple of amusement
+which his speedy despatch had caused among her friends; and though
+later (to shift the metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream,
+it was only in fleeting glimpses, with long submergences between.
+
+Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set
+Mr. Rosedale had been pronounced “impossible,” and Jack Stepney
+roundly snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner
+invitations. Even Mrs. Trenor, whose taste for variety had led
+her into some hazardous experiments, resisted Jack’s attempts to
+disguise Mr. Rosedale as a novelty, and declared that he was the
+same little Jew who had been served up and rejected at the social
+board a dozen times within her memory; and while Judy Trenor was
+obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale’s penetrating
+beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave up the
+contest with a laughing “You’ll see,” and, sticking manfully to his
+guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable restaurants,
+in company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who
+are available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been
+vain, and as Rosedale undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh
+remained with his debtor.
+
+Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
+feared—unless one put one’s self in his power. And this was
+precisely what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see
+that she had something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score
+to settle with her. Something in his smile told her he had not
+forgotten. She turned from the thought with a little shiver, but
+it hung on her all the way to the station, and dogged her down the
+platform with the persistency of Mr. Rosedale himself.
+
+She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but
+having arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive feeling
+for effect which never forsook her, she glanced about in the hope
+of seeing some other member of the Trenors’ party. She wanted to
+get away from herself, and conversation was the only means of
+escape that she knew.
+
+Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man
+with a soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the carriage,
+appeared to be dissembling himself behind an unfolded newspaper.
+Lily’s eye brightened, and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines
+of her mouth. She had known that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at
+Bellomont, but she had not counted on the luck of having him to
+herself in the train; and the fact banished all perturbing thoughts
+of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to end more
+favourably than it had begun.
+
+She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her
+prey through downcast lashes while she organized a method of
+attack. Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told
+her that he was aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite
+so engrossed in an evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy
+to come up to her, and that she would have to devise some means
+of approach which should not appear to be an advance on her part.
+It amused her to think that any one as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce
+should be shy; but she was gifted with treasures of indulgence for
+such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his timidity might serve her
+purpose better than too much assurance. She had the art of giving
+self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not equally sure of
+being able to embarrass the self-confident.
+
+She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was
+racing between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then,
+as it lowered its speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and
+drifted slowly down the carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the
+train gave a lurch, and he was aware of a slender hand gripping the
+back of his chair. He rose with a start, his ingenuous face looking
+as though it had been dipped in crimson: even the reddish tint in
+his beard seemed to deepen. The train swayed again, almost flinging
+Miss Bart into his arms.
+
+She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was
+enveloped in the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her
+fugitive touch.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I’m so sorry—I was trying to find the
+porter and get some tea.”
+
+She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they
+stood exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes—he was going to
+Bellomont. He had heard she was to be of the party—he blushed again
+as he admitted it. And was he to be there for a whole week? How
+delightful!
+
+But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last
+station forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat
+to her seat.
+
+“The chair next to mine is empty—do take it,” she said over her
+shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded
+in effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and
+his bags to her side.
+
+“Ah—and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea.”
+
+She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that
+seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little table
+had been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to
+bestow his encumbering properties beneath it.
+
+When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while
+her hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and
+slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed
+wonderful to him that any one should perform with such careless
+ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a lurching
+train. He would never have dared to order it for himself, lest he
+should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers; but, secure in
+the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with
+a delicious sense of exhilaration.
+
+Lily, with the flavour of Selden’s caravan tea on her lips, had
+no great fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such
+nectar to her companion; but, rightly judging that one of the
+charms of tea is the fact of drinking it together, she proceeded
+to give the last touch to Mr. Gryce’s enjoyment by smiling at him
+across her lifted cup.
+
+“Is it quite right—I haven’t made it too strong?” she asked
+solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never
+tasted better tea.
+
+“I daresay it is true,” she reflected; and her imagination was
+fired by the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the
+depths of the most complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually
+taking his first journey alone with a pretty woman.
+
+It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument
+of his initiation. Some girls would not have known how to
+manage him. They would have over-emphasized the novelty of the
+adventure, trying to make him feel in it the zest of an escapade.
+But Lily’s methods were more delicate. She remembered that her
+cousin Jack Stepney had once defined Mr. Gryce as the young man
+who had promised his mother never to go out in the rain without
+his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to impart a
+gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her companion,
+instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or unusual,
+would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always having a
+companion to make one’s tea in the train.
+
+But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray
+had been removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement
+of Mr. Gryce’s limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity but
+imagination that he lacked: he had a mental palate which would
+never learn to distinguish between railway tea and nectar. There
+was, however, one topic she could rely on: one spring that she
+had only to touch to set his simple machinery in motion. She had
+refrained from touching it because it was a last resource, and she
+had relied on other arts to stimulate other sensations; but as a
+settled look of dulness began to creep over his candid features,
+she saw that extreme measures were necessary.
+
+“And how,” she said, leaning forward, “are you getting on with your
+Americana?”
+
+His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient
+film had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful
+operator.
+
+“I’ve got a few new things,” he said, suffused with pleasure, but
+lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers might
+be in league to despoil him.
+
+She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn
+on to talk of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which
+enabled him to forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember
+himself without constraint, because he was at home in it, and could
+assert a superiority that there were few to dispute. Hardly any of
+his acquaintances cared for Americana, or knew anything about them;
+and the consciousness of this ignorance threw Mr. Gryce’s knowledge
+into agreeable relief. The only difficulty was to introduce the
+topic and to keep it to the front; most people showed no desire to
+have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Gryce was like a merchant
+whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable commodity.
+
+But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about
+Americana; and moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to
+make the task of farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable.
+She questioned him intelligently, she heard him submissively; and,
+prepared for the look of lassitude which usually crept over his
+listeners’ faces, he grew eloquent under her receptive gaze. The
+“points” she had had the presence of mind to glean from Selden, in
+anticipation of this very contingency, were serving her to such
+good purpose that she began to think her visit to him had been the
+luckiest incident of the day. She had once more shown her talent
+for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the
+advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the
+surface of smiling attention which she continued to present to her
+companion.
+
+Mr. Gryce’s sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable.
+He felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms
+welcome the gratification of their needs, and all his senses
+floundered in a vague well-being, through which Miss Bart’s
+personality was dimly but pleasantly perceptible.
+
+Mr. Gryce’s interest in Americana had not originated with himself:
+it was impossible to think of him as evolving any taste of his
+own. An uncle had left him a collection already noted among
+bibliophiles; the existence of the collection was the only fact
+that had ever shed glory on the name of Gryce, and the nephew took
+as much pride in his inheritance as though it had been his own
+work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such, and to feel a
+sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any reference to
+the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal notice, he
+took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so exquisite
+and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking from
+publicity.
+
+To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all
+the reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American
+history in particular, and as allusions to his library abounded
+in the pages of these journals, which formed his only reading, he
+came to regard himself as figuring prominently in the public eye,
+and to enjoy the thought of the interest which would be excited
+if the persons he met in the street, or sat among in travelling,
+were suddenly to be told that he was the possessor of the Gryce
+Americana.
+
+Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
+discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
+proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident
+person she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic,
+or to show such exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly
+guessed that Mr. Gryce’s egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring
+constant nurture from without. Miss Bart had the gift of following
+an undercurrent of thought while she appeared to be sailing on the
+surface of conversation; and in this case her mental excursion
+took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce’s future as
+combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but lately
+introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
+after old Jefferson Gryce’s death, to take possession of his house
+in Madison Avenue—an appalling house, all brown stone without and
+black walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex
+that looked like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them:
+young Mr. Gryce’s arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of
+New York, and when a girl has no mother to palpitate for her she
+must needs be on the alert for herself. Lily, therefore, had not
+only contrived to put herself in the young man’s way, but had made
+the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a monumental woman with the voice
+of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied with the iniquities of
+her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs. Peniston and
+learn from that lady how she managed to prevent the kitchen-maid’s
+smuggling groceries out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a kind of
+impersonal benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded
+with suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their
+annual reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties
+were manifold, for they extended from furtive inspections of the
+servants’ bedrooms to unannounced descents to the cellar; but she
+had never allowed herself many pleasures. Once, however, she had
+had a special edition of the Sarum Rule printed in rubric and
+presented to every clergyman in the diocese; and the gilt album in
+which their letters of thanks were pasted formed the chief ornament
+of her drawing-room table.
+
+Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a
+woman was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion
+had been grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious,
+with the result that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs.
+Gryce to extract his promise about the overshoes, so little likely
+was he to hazard himself abroad in the rain. After attaining his
+majority, and coming into the fortune which the late Mr. Gryce had
+made out of a patent device for excluding fresh air from hotels,
+the young man continued to live with his mother in Albany; but
+on Jefferson Gryce’s death, when another large property passed
+into her son’s hands, Mrs. Gryce thought that what she called his
+“interests” demanded his presence in New York. She accordingly
+installed herself in the Madison Avenue house, and Percy, whose
+sense of duty was not inferior to his mother’s, spent all his week
+days in the handsome Broad Street office where a batch of pale men
+on small salaries had grown grey in the management of the Gryce
+estate, and where he was initiated with becoming reverence into
+every detail of the art of accumulation.
+
+As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce’s only
+occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it not
+too hard a task to interest a young man who had been kept on such
+low diet. At any rate, she felt herself so completely in command of
+the situation that she yielded to a sense of security in which all
+fear of Mr. Rosedale, and of the difficulties on which that fear
+was contingent, vanished beyond the edge of thought.
+
+The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted
+her from these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of
+distress in her companion’s eye. His seat faced toward the door,
+and she guessed that he had been perturbed by the approach of an
+acquaintance; a fact confirmed by the turning of heads and general
+sense of commotion which her own entrance into a railway-carriage
+was apt to produce.
+
+She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed
+by the high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train
+accompanied by a maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering
+under a load of bags and dressing-cases.
+
+“Oh, Lily—are you going to Bellomont? Then you can’t let me
+have your seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this
+carriage—porter, you must find me a place at once. Can’t some one
+be put somewhere else? I want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you
+do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make him understand that I must have a
+seat next to you and Lily.”
+
+Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller
+with a carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her
+by getting out of the train, stood in the middle of the aisle,
+diffusing about her that general sense of exasperation which a
+pretty woman on her travels not infrequently creates.
+
+She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless
+pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run
+through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small
+pale face seemed the mere setting of a pair of dark exaggerated
+eyes, of which the visionary gaze contrasted curiously with her
+self-assertive tone and gestures; so that, as one of her friends
+observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who took up a great
+deal of room.
+
+Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart’s
+was at her disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther
+displacement of her surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had
+come across from Mount Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had
+been kicking her heels for an hour at Garrisons, without even the
+alleviation of a cigarette, her brute of a husband having neglected
+to replenish her case before they parted that morning.
+
+“And at this hour of the day I don’t suppose you’ve a single one
+left, have you, Lily?” she plaintively concluded.
+
+Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own
+lips were never defiled by tobacco.
+
+“What an absurd question, Bertha!” she exclaimed, blushing at the
+thought of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden’s.
+
+“Why, don’t you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What—you
+never—— And you don’t either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course—how stupid
+of me—I understand.”
+
+And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a
+smile which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her
+own.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+
+Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when
+Lily went to bed that night she had played too long for her own
+good.
+
+Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her
+room, she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the
+hall below, where the last card-players were grouped about the tray
+of tall glasses and silver-collared decanters which the butler had
+just placed on a low table near the fire.
+
+The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of
+pale yellow marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped
+against a background of dark foliage in the angles of the walls.
+On the crimson carpet a deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed
+luxuriously before the fire, and the light from the great central
+lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women’s hair and struck
+sparks from their jewels as they moved.
+
+There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they
+gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external
+finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge
+to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the
+moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned
+away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine
+spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a confidential nook
+beneath the gallery.
+
+It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired
+hold over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him,
+but she had neither the skill nor the patience to effect his
+capture. She was too self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of
+his shyness, and besides, why should she care to give herself the
+trouble? At most it might amuse her to make sport of his simplicity
+for an evening—after that he would be merely a burden to her, and
+knowing this, she was far too experienced to encourage him. But
+the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a man up and
+toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as a
+possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had
+been bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce—the mere thought seemed
+to waken an echo of his droning voice—but she could not ignore him
+on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more
+boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities,
+and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do
+her the honour of boring her for life.
+
+It was a hateful fate—but how escape from it? What choice had she?
+To be herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her bedroom, with
+its softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across
+the silken bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the
+fire, a vase of carnations filling the air with perfume, and
+the last novels and magazines lying uncut on a table beside the
+reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish’s cramped flat, with
+its cheap conveniences and hideous wall-papers. No; she was not
+made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises
+of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it
+was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe
+in. But the luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years
+ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her daily meed of pleasure
+without caring who provided it. Now she was beginning to chafe at
+the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere pensioner on the
+splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There were even
+moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.
+
+For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she could
+not afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive a
+taste. She had seen the danger exemplified in more than one of her
+associates—in young Ned Silverton, for instance, the charming fair
+boy now seated in abject rapture at the elbow of Mrs. Fisher, a
+striking divorcee with eyes and gowns as emphatic as the head-lines
+of her “case.” Lily could remember when young Silverton had
+stumbled into their circle, with the air of a strayed Arcadian
+who has published charming sonnets in his college journal. Since
+then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and bridge, and the
+latter at least had involved him in expenses from which he had been
+more than once rescued by harassed maiden sisters, who treasured
+the sonnets, and went without sugar in their tea to keep their
+darling afloat. Ned’s case was familiar to Lily: she had seen his
+charming eyes—which had a good deal more poetry in them than the
+sonnets—change from surprise to amusement, and from amusement
+to anxiety, as he passed under the spell of the terrible god of
+chance; and she was afraid of discovering the same symptoms in her
+own case.
+
+For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her
+to take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she
+had to pay for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses
+and trinkets which occasionally replenished her insufficient
+wardrobe. And since she had played regularly the passion had grown
+on her. Once or twice of late she had won a large sum, and instead
+of keeping it against future losses, had spent it in dress or
+jewelry; and the desire to atone for this imprudence, combined
+with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove her to risk
+higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse herself
+on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one must
+either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
+that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
+surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.
+
+Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold
+purse which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she
+returned to her room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her
+jewel-case, looked under the tray for the roll of bills from which
+she had replenished the purse before going down to dinner. Only
+twenty dollars were left: the discovery was so startling that for a
+moment she fancied she must have been robbed. Then she took paper
+and pencil, and seating herself at the writing-table, tried to
+reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her head was throbbing
+with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again and again;
+but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three hundred
+dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
+balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred
+in the other direction. Then she returned to her calculations;
+but figure as she would, she could not conjure back the vanished
+three hundred dollars. It was the sum she had set aside to pacify
+her dress-maker—unless she should decide to use it as a sop to the
+jeweller. At any rate, she had so many uses for it that its very
+insufficiency had caused her to play high in the hope of doubling
+it. But of course she had lost—she who needed every penny, while
+Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her, must have
+pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
+afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching
+such a heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with
+her guests when they bade her good night.
+
+A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place
+to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the
+laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its
+calculations.
+
+She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had
+sent to bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people’s
+pleasure to be considerate of those who depended on hers, and in
+her bitter moods it sometimes struck her that she and her maid were
+in the same position, except that the latter received her wages
+more regularly.
+
+As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked
+hollow and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near
+her mouth, faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.
+
+“Oh, I must stop worrying!” she exclaimed. “Unless it’s the
+electric light——” she reflected, springing up from her seat and
+lighting the candles on the dressing-table.
+
+She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
+candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from
+a background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a
+haze; but the two lines about the mouth remained.
+
+Lily rose and undressed in haste.
+
+“It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
+about,” she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that
+petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only
+defence against them.
+
+But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She
+returned wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks
+up a heavy load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost
+sure she had “landed” him: a few days’ work and she would win her
+reward. But the reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she
+could get no zest from the thought of victory. It would be a rest
+from worry, no more—and how little that would have seemed to her
+a few years earlier! Her ambitions had shrunk gradually in the
+desiccating air of failure. But why had she failed? Was it her own
+fault or that of destiny?
+
+She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used
+to say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: “But you’ll get
+it all back—you’ll get it all back, with your face.”... The
+remembrance roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the
+darkness reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.
+
+A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was
+“company”; a door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered
+with square envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong
+envelopes which were allowed to gather dust in the depths of a
+bronze jar; a series of French and English maids giving warning
+amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked wardrobes and dress-closets;
+an equally changing dynasty of nurses and footmen; quarrels in the
+pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room; precipitate trips to
+Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of interminable
+unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer should
+be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
+expense—such was the setting of Lily Bart’s first memories.
+
+Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and
+determined figure of a mother still young enough to dance her
+ball-dresses to rags, while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted
+father filled an intermediate space between the butler and the man
+who came to wind the clocks. Even to the eyes of infancy, Mrs.
+Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could not recall the time
+when her father had not been bald and slightly stooping, with
+streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a shock to
+her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
+mother.
+
+Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was “downtown”;
+and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged
+step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would
+kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or
+the governess; then Mrs. Bart’s maid would come to remind him that
+he was dining out, and he would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In
+summer, when he joined them for a Sunday at Newport or Southampton,
+he was even more effaced and silent than in winter. It seemed
+to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours staring at the
+sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the clatter of
+his wife’s existence went on unheeded a few feet off. Generally,
+however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
+before the steamer was half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the
+horizon. Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having
+neglected to forward Mrs. Bart’s remittances; but for the most part
+he was never mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping
+figure presented itself on the New York dock as a buffer between
+the magnitude of his wife’s luggage and the restrictions of the
+American custom-house.
+
+In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily’s
+teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided
+on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of
+a perpetual need—the need of more money. Lily could not recall
+the time when there had been money enough, and in some vague way
+her father seemed always to blame for the deficiency. It could
+certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who was spoken of by her
+friends as a “wonderful manager.” Mrs. Bart was famous for the
+unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to the lady and
+her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though
+one were much richer than one’s bank-book denoted.
+
+Lily was naturally proud of her mother’s aptitude in this line: she
+had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must
+have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called “decently dressed.”
+Mrs. Bart’s worst reproach to her husband was to ask him if he
+expected her to “live like a pig”; and his replying in the negative
+was always regarded as a justification for cabling to Paris for an
+extra dress or two, and telephoning to the jeweller that he might,
+after all, send home the turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had
+looked at that morning.
+
+Lily knew people who “lived like pigs,” and their appearance and
+surroundings justified her mother’s repugnance to that form of
+existence. They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy houses
+with engravings from Cole’s Voyage of Life on the drawing-room
+walls, and slatternly parlour-maids who said “I’ll go and see”
+to visitors calling at an hour when all right-minded persons are
+conventionally if not actually out. The disgusting part of it was
+that many of these cousins were rich, so that Lily imbibed the idea
+that if people lived like pigs it was from choice, and through the
+lack of any proper standard of conduct. This gave her a sense of
+reflected superiority, and she did not need Mrs. Bart’s comments on
+the family frumps and misers to foster her naturally lively taste
+for splendour.
+
+Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view
+of the universe.
+
+The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy
+thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on
+the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke.
+The suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times
+when Lily relived with painful vividness every detail of the day
+on which the blow fell. She and her mother had been seated at the
+luncheon-table, over the CHAUFROIX and cold salmon of the previous
+night’s dinner: it was one of Mrs. Bart’s few economies to consume
+in private the expensive remnants of her hospitality. Lily was
+feeling the pleasant languor which is youth’s penalty for dancing
+till dawn; but her mother, in spite of a few lines about the mouth,
+and under the yellow waves on her temples, was as alert, determined
+and high in colour as if she had risen from an untroubled sleep.
+
+In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES
+and candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their
+vigorous stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but
+their rose-colour had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily’s
+sense of fitness was disturbed by their reappearance on the
+luncheon-table.
+
+“I really think, mother,” she said reproachfully, “we might
+afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or
+lilies-of-the-valley—”
+
+Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the
+world, and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when
+there was no one present at it but the family. But she smiled at
+her daughter’s innocence.
+
+“Lilies-of-the-valley,” she said calmly, “cost two dollars a dozen
+at this season.”
+
+Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of money.
+
+“It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl,” she
+argued.
+
+“Six dozen what?” asked her father’s voice in the doorway.
+
+The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday, the
+sight of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But neither
+his wife nor his daughter was sufficiently interested to ask an
+explanation.
+
+Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the
+fragment of jellied salmon which the butler had placed before him.
+
+“I was only saying,” Lily began, “that I hate to see faded flowers
+at luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley would
+not cost more than twelve dollars. Mayn’t I tell the florist to
+send a few every day?”
+
+She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her
+anything, and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her
+own entreaties failed.
+
+Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and
+his lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his
+thin hair lay in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he looked
+at his daughter and laughed. The laugh was so strange that Lily
+coloured under it: she disliked being ridiculed, and her father
+seemed to see something ridiculous in the request. Perhaps he
+thought it foolish that she should trouble him about such a trifle.
+
+“Twelve dollars—twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly, my
+dear—give him an order for twelve hundred.” He continued to laugh.
+
+Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.
+
+“You needn’t wait, Poleworth—I will ring for you,” she said to the
+butler.
+
+The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving the
+remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.
+
+“What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?” said Mrs. Bart severely.
+
+She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making,
+and it was odious to her that her husband should make a show of
+himself before the servants.
+
+“Are you ill?” she repeated.
+
+“Ill?—— No, I’m ruined,” he said.
+
+Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her feet.
+
+“Ruined——?” she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she
+turned a calm face to Lily.
+
+“Shut the pantry door,” she said.
+
+Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father was
+sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon between
+them, and his head bowed on his hands.
+
+Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
+unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached:
+her look was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly
+cheerfulness.
+
+“Your father is not well—he doesn’t know what he is saying. It
+is nothing—but you had better go upstairs; and don’t talk to the
+servants,” she added.
+
+Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that
+voice. She had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart’s words: she knew
+at once that they were ruined. In the dark hours which followed,
+that awful fact overshadowed even her father’s slow and difficult
+dying. To his wife he no longer counted: he had become extinct
+when he ceased to fulfil his purpose, and she sat at his side
+with the provisional air of a traveller who waits for a belated
+train to start. Lily’s feelings were softer: she pitied him in a
+frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for the most
+part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into the
+room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a
+stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home till
+after dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a blur—first
+of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference—and now the fog
+had thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. If she could
+have performed any little services for him, or have exchanged with
+him a few of those affecting words which an extensive perusal of
+fiction had led her to connect with such occasions, the filial
+instinct might have stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active
+expression, remained in a state of spectatorship, overshadowed by
+her mother’s grim unflagging resentment. Every look and act of Mrs.
+Bart’s seemed to say: “You are sorry for him now—but you will feel
+differently when you see what he has done to us.”
+
+It was a relief to Lily when her father died.
+
+Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to
+Mrs. Bart it seemed worse than nothing—the mere mockery of what
+she was entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to live
+like a pig? She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of
+inert anger against fate. Her faculty for “managing” deserted her,
+or she no longer took sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was
+well enough to “manage” when by so doing one could keep one’s own
+carriage; but when one’s best contrivance did not conceal the fact
+that one had to go on foot, the effort was no longer worth making.
+
+Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long
+visits to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and
+who deplored the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the
+girl had no prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap
+continental refuges, where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof
+from the frugal tea-tables of her companions in misfortune. She was
+especially careful to avoid her old friends and the scenes of her
+former successes. To be poor seemed to her such a confession of
+failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she detected a note of
+condescension in the friendliest advances.
+
+Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of
+Lily’s beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though
+it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance.
+It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which
+their life was to be rebuilt. She watched it jealously, as though
+it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she
+tried to instil into the latter a sense of the responsibility that
+such a charge involved. She followed in imagination the career
+of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might be
+achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of
+those who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to
+Mrs. Bart, only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement
+of some of her examples. She was not above the inconsistency of
+charging fate, rather than herself, with her own misfortunes; but
+she inveighed so acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would
+have fancied her own marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs.
+Bart frequently assured her that she had been “talked into it”—by
+whom, she never made clear.
+
+Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities. The
+dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the
+existence to which she felt herself entitled. To a less illuminated
+intelligence Mrs. Bart’s counsels might have been dangerous; but
+Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest,
+and that to convert it into success other arts are required. She
+knew that to betray any sense of superiority was a subtler form of
+the stupidity her mother denounced, and it did not take her long
+to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the possessor of an
+average set of features.
+
+Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart’s. It had been among
+that lady’s grievances that her husband—in the early days, before
+he was too tired—had wasted his evenings in what she vaguely
+described as “reading poetry”; and among the effects packed off to
+auction after his death were a score or two of dingy volumes which
+had struggled for existence among the boots and medicine bottles of
+his dressing-room shelves. There was in Lily a vein of sentiment,
+perhaps transmitted from this source, which gave an idealizing
+touch to her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think of her
+beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to attain
+a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague
+diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures
+and flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help
+thinking that the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for
+worldly advantages. She would not indeed have cared to marry a man
+who was merely rich: she was secretly ashamed of her mother’s crude
+passion for money. Lily’s preference would have been for an English
+nobleman with political ambitions and vast estates; or, for second
+choice, an Italian prince with a castle in the Apennines and an
+hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost causes had a romantic charm
+for her, and she liked to picture herself as standing aloof from
+the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her pleasure to
+the claims of an immemorial tradition....
+
+How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were
+hardly more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had
+centred about the possession of a French jointed doll with real
+hair. Was it only ten years since she had wavered in imagination
+between the English earl and the Italian prince? Relentlessly her
+mind travelled on over the dreary interval....
+
+After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died——died of a
+deep disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be
+dingy. Her visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded after
+the first year.
+
+“People can’t marry you if they don’t see you—and how can they see
+you in these holes where we’re stuck?” That was the burden of her
+lament; and her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from
+dinginess if she could.
+
+“Don’t let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way out
+of it somehow—you’re young and can do it,” she insisted.
+
+She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and
+there Lily at once became the centre of a family council composed
+of the wealthy relatives whom she had been taught to despise
+for living like pigs. It may be that they had an inkling of the
+sentiments in which she had been brought up, for none of them
+manifested a very lively desire for her company; indeed, the
+question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs. Peniston with a
+sigh announced: “I’ll try her for a year.”
+
+Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their surprise,
+lest Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into reconsidering her
+decision.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart’s widowed sister, and if she was by
+no means the richest of the family group, its other members
+nevertheless abounded in reasons why she was clearly destined by
+Providence to assume the charge of Lily. In the first place she was
+alone, and it would be charming for her to have a young companion.
+Then she sometimes travelled, and Lily’s familiarity with foreign
+customs—deplored as a misfortune by her more conservative
+relatives—would at least enable her to act as a kind of courier.
+But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not been affected by
+these considerations. She had taken the girl simply because no one
+else would have her, and because she had the kind of moral MAUVAISE
+HONTE which makes the public display of selfishness difficult,
+though it does not interfere with its private indulgence. It would
+have been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert
+island, but with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a
+certain pleasure in her act.
+
+She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled,
+and found an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected
+to find Lily headstrong, critical and “foreign”—for even Mrs.
+Peniston, though she occasionally went abroad, had the family dread
+of foreignness—but the girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more
+penetrating mind than her aunt’s, might have been less reassuring
+than the open selfishness of youth. Misfortune had made Lily supple
+instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to
+break than a stiff one.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece’s
+adaptability. Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her
+aunt’s good-nature. She was in truth grateful for the refuge
+offered her: Mrs. Peniston’s opulent interior was at least not
+externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality which assumes all
+manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as latent
+in the expensive routine of her aunt’s life as in the makeshift
+existence of a continental pension.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the
+padding of life. It was impossible to believe that she had herself
+ever been a focus of activities. The most vivid thing about her
+was the fact that her grandmother had been a Van Alstyne. This
+connection with the well-fed and industrious stock of early New
+York revealed itself in the glacial neatness of Mrs. Peniston’s
+drawing-room and in the excellence of her cuisine. She belonged
+to the class of old New Yorkers who have always lived well,
+dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these inherited
+obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always
+been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those
+little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix
+to their upper windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable
+domesticity they might see what was happening in the street.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey,
+but she had never lived there since her husband’s death—a remote
+event, which appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing
+point in the personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her
+conversation. She was a woman who remembered dates with intensity,
+and could tell at a moment’s notice whether the drawing-room
+curtains had been renewed before or after Mr. Peniston’s last
+illness.
+
+Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and
+cherished a vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such
+contingencies she frequented the more populous watering-places,
+where she installed herself impersonally in a hired house and
+looked on at life through the matting screen of her verandah. In
+the care of such a guardian, it soon became clear to Lily that
+she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good food and
+expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
+would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her
+to regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother’s
+fierce energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled
+with Mrs. Peniston’s resources. Lily had abundant energy of her
+own, but it was restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to
+her aunt’s habits. She saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs.
+Peniston’s favour till, as Mrs. Bart would have phrased it, she
+could stand on her own legs. Lily had no mind for the vagabond life
+of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to Mrs. Peniston she
+had, to some degree, to assume that lady’s passive attitude. She
+had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt into
+the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
+Mrs. Peniston against which her niece’s efforts spent themselves
+in vain. To attempt to bring her into active relation with life
+was like tugging at a piece of furniture which has been screwed
+to the floor. She did not, indeed, expect Lily to remain equally
+immovable: she had all the American guardian’s indulgence for the
+volatility of youth.
+
+She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece’s.
+It seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on
+dress, and she supplemented the girl’s scanty income by occasional
+“handsome presents” meant to be applied to the same purpose.
+Lily, who was intensely practical, would have preferred a fixed
+allowance; but Mrs. Peniston liked the periodical recurrence of
+gratitude evoked by unexpected cheques, and was perhaps shrewd
+enough to perceive that such a method of giving kept alive in her
+niece a salutary sense of dependence.
+
+Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do anything
+for her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her take the
+field. Lily had taken it, at first with the confidence of assured
+possessorship, then with gradually narrowing demands, till now
+she found herself actually struggling for a foothold on the
+broad space which had once seemed her own for the asking. How it
+happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she thought it was because
+Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she feared it was
+because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she shown an
+undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy and
+dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or
+absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total
+of her failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by
+dozens, and she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.
+
+She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate,
+when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent
+life for herself. But what manner of life would it be? She had
+barely enough money to pay her dress-makers’ bills and her gambling
+debts; and none of the desultory interests which she dignified with
+the name of tastes was pronounced enough to enable her to live
+contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no—she was too intelligent not to be
+honest with herself. She knew that she hated dinginess as much as
+her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she meant to fight
+against it, dragging herself up again and again above its flood
+till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented
+such a slippery surface to her clutch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+
+The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note
+from her hostess.
+
+“Dearest Lily,” it ran, “if it is not too much of a bore to be
+down by ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some
+tiresome things?”
+
+Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh.
+It WAS a bore to be down by ten—an hour regarded at Bellomont as
+vaguely synchronous with sunrise—and she knew too well the nature
+of the tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary,
+had been called away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards
+to write, lost addresses to hunt up, and other social drudgery to
+perform. It was understood that Miss Bart should fill the gap in
+such emergencies, and she usually recognized the obligation without
+a murmur.
+
+Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the
+previous night’s review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything
+in her surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity.
+The windows stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September
+morning, and between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of
+hedges and parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to
+the free undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little
+fire on the hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight
+which slanted across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved
+sides of an old marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding
+her breakfast tray, with its harmonious porcelain and silver,
+a handful of violets in a slender glass, and the morning paper
+folded beneath her letters. There was nothing new to Lily in these
+tokens of a studied luxury; but, though they formed a part of her
+atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to their charm. Mere
+display left her with a sense of superior distinction; but she felt
+an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.
+
+Mrs. Trenor’s summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
+dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that
+she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions
+leave lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had
+meant to take warning by the little creases which her midnight
+survey had revealed.
+
+The matter of course tone of Mrs. Trenor’s greeting deepened her
+irritation. If one did drag one’s self out of bed at such an hour,
+and come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing,
+some special recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs.
+Trenor’s tone showed no consciousness of the fact.
+
+“Oh, Lily, that’s nice of you,” she merely sighed across the
+chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave
+an incongruously commercial touch to the slender elegance of her
+writing-table.
+
+“There are such lots of horrors this morning,” she added, clearing
+a space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat
+to Miss Bart.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her
+from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years
+of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except
+in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her
+beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so
+much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she
+could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature
+of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her
+sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than that of hatred for
+the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have more amusing
+house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by Mr.
+Trenor’s bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph
+in such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous
+good nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart’s
+utilitarian classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as
+the woman who was least likely to “go back” on her.
+
+“It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now,” Mrs. Trenor
+declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk. “She says her
+sister is going to have a baby—as if that were anything to having
+a house-party! I’m sure I shall get most horribly mixed up and
+there will be some awful rows. When I was down at Tuxedo I asked a
+lot of people for next week, and I’ve mislaid the list and can’t
+remember who is coming. And this week is going to be a horrid
+failure too—and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell her mother
+how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls—that was a
+blunder of Gus’s. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
+one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get
+that second divorce—Carry always overdoes things—but she said the
+only way to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make
+him pay alimony. And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It’s
+really absurd of Alice Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting
+her, when one thinks of what society is coming to. Some one said
+the other day that there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis
+in every family one knows. Besides, Carry is the only person who
+can keep Gus in a good humour when we have bores in the house. Have
+you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All, I mean, except her
+own. It’s rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting
+herself to dull people—the field is such a large one, and she has
+it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt—I know
+she borrows money of Gus—but then I’d PAY her to keep him in a good
+humour, so I can’t complain, after all.”
+
+Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart’s efforts to
+unravel her tangled correspondence.
+
+“But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry,” she resumed, with a
+fresh note of lament. “The truth is, I’m awfully disappointed in
+Lady Cressida Raith.”
+
+“Disappointed? Had you known her before?”
+
+“Mercy, no—never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her
+over with letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van
+Osburgh was asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought
+it would be fun to get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her
+in India, managed it for me. Maria was furious, and actually had
+the impudence to make Gwen invite herself here, so that they
+shouldn’t be QUITE out of it—if I’d known what Lady Cressida was
+like, they could have had her and welcome! But I thought any
+friend of the Skiddaws’ was sure to be amusing. You remember what
+fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send
+the girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess
+of Beltshire’s sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same
+sort; but you never can tell in those English families. They are
+so big that there’s room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady
+Cressida is the moral one—married a clergyman and does missionary
+work in the East End. Think of my taking such a lot of trouble
+about a clergyman’s wife, who wears Indian jewelry and botanizes!
+She made Gus take her all through the glass-houses yesterday, and
+bothered him to death by asking him the names of the plants. Fancy
+treating Gus as if he were the gardener!”
+
+Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.
+
+“Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to
+meeting Carry Fisher,” said Miss Bart pacifically.
+
+“I’m sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and
+if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will
+be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so
+useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once
+a year, and she would have given just the right tone to things.
+I always have horrid luck about the Bishop’s visits,” added Mrs.
+Trenor, whose present misery was being fed by a rapidly rising tide
+of reminiscence; “last year, when he came, Gus forgot all about his
+being here, and brought home the Ned Wintons and the Farleys—five
+divorces and six sets of children between them!”
+
+“When is Lady Cressida going?” Lily enquired.
+
+Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. “My dear, if one only
+knew! I was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I
+actually forgot to name a date, and Gus says she told some one she
+meant to stop here all winter.”
+
+“To stop here? In this house?”
+
+“Don’t be silly—in America. But if no one else asks her—you know
+they NEVER go to hotels.”
+
+“Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you.”
+
+“No—I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put
+in while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You
+should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it’s no joke, you know—if
+she stays here all the autumn she’ll spoil everything, and Maria
+Van Osburgh will simply exult.”
+
+At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor’s voice trembled with
+self-pity.
+
+“Oh, Judy—as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!” Miss Bart
+tactfully protested. “You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van
+Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you with all the
+wrong ones, you’d manage to make things go off, and she wouldn’t.”
+
+Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor’s
+complacency; but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from
+her brow.
+
+“It isn’t only Lady Cressida,” she lamented. “Everything has gone
+wrong this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me.”
+
+“Furious with you? Why?”
+
+“Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he
+wouldn’t, after all, and she’s quite unreasonable enough to think
+it’s my fault.”
+
+Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she
+had begun.
+
+“I thought that was all over,” she said.
+
+“So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.
+But I fancy she’s out of a job just at present—and some one gave me
+a hint that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him—but I
+couldn’t make him come; and now I suppose she’ll take it out of me
+by being perfectly nasty to every one else.”
+
+“Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming—to some
+one else.”
+
+Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. “She knows he wouldn’t mind.
+And who else is there? Alice Wetherall won’t let Lucius out of her
+sight. Ned Silverton can’t take his eyes off Carry Fisher—poor boy!
+Gus is bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well—and—well,
+to be sure, there’s Percy Gryce!”
+
+She sat up smiling at the thought.
+
+Miss Bart’s countenance did not reflect the smile.
+
+“Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off.”
+
+“You mean that she’d shock him and he’d bore her? Well, that’s not
+such a bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won’t take it into
+her head to be nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for
+you.”
+
+Lily laughed. “MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
+against Bertha.”
+
+“Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I’m not really, you know. Every
+one knows you’re a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than
+Bertha; but then you’re not nasty. And for always getting what she
+wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman.”
+
+Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. “I thought you were so fond
+of Bertha.”
+
+“Oh, I am—it’s much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she
+IS dangerous—and if I ever saw her up to mischief it’s now. I can
+tell by poor George’s manner. That man is a perfect barometer—he
+always knows when Bertha is going to——”
+
+“To fall?” Miss Bart suggested.
+
+“Don’t be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of
+course I don’t say there’s any real harm in Bertha. Only she
+delights in making people miserable, and especially poor George.”
+
+“Well, he seems cut out for the part—I don’t wonder she likes more
+cheerful companionship.”
+
+“Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him
+he would be quite different. Or if she’d leave him alone, and let
+him arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn’t dare lose her
+hold of him on account of the money, and so when HE isn’t jealous
+she pretends to be.”
+
+Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following
+her train of thought with frowning intensity.
+
+“Do you know,” she exclaimed after a long pause, “I believe I’ll
+call up Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?”
+
+“Oh, don’t,” said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
+surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though
+not commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with
+puzzled eyes.
+
+“Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him
+so much?”
+
+“Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
+intention of protecting me from Bertha—I don’t think I need your
+protection.”
+
+Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. “Lily!——PERCY? Do you mean
+to say you’ve actually done it?”
+
+Miss Bart smiled. “I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are
+getting to be very good friends.”
+
+“H’m—I see.” Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. “You know they
+say he has eight hundred thousand a year—and spends nothing, except
+on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and
+will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY,” her friend
+adjured her.
+
+Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. “I shouldn’t, for
+instance,” she remarked, “be in any haste to tell him that he had a
+lot of rubbishy old books.”
+
+“No, of course not; I know you’re wonderful about getting up
+people’s subjects. But he’s horribly shy, and easily shocked,
+and—and——”
+
+“Why don’t you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the
+hunt for a rich husband?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mean that; he wouldn’t believe it of you—at first,”
+said Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. “But you know things are
+rather lively here at times—I must give Jack and Gus a hint—and
+if he thought you were what his mother would call fast—oh, well,
+you know what I mean. Don’t wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for
+dinner, and don’t smoke if you can help it, Lily dear!”
+
+Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. “You’re very
+kind, Judy: I’ll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year’s
+dress you sent me this morning. And if you are really interested
+in my career, perhaps you’ll be kind enough not to ask me to play
+bridge again this evening.”
+
+“Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life
+you’ll lead! But of course I won’t—why didn’t you give me a hint
+last night? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, you poor duck, to see
+you happy!”
+
+And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex’s eagerness to smooth the
+course of true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.
+
+“You’re quite sure,” she added solicitously, as the latter
+extricated herself, “that you wouldn’t like me to telephone for
+Lawrence Selden?”
+
+“Quite sure,” said Lily.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction
+Miss Bart’s ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.
+
+As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont,
+she smiled at Mrs. Trenor’s fear that she might go too fast. If
+such a warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a
+salutary lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to
+adapt her pace to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce
+she had found it well to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively
+and luring him on from depth to depth of unconscious intimacy. The
+surrounding atmosphere was propitious to this scheme of courtship.
+Mrs. Trenor, true to her word, had shown no signs of expecting Lily
+at the bridge-table, and had even hinted to the other card-players
+that they were to betray no surprise at her unwonted defection. In
+consequence of this hint, Lily found herself the centre of that
+feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in the mating
+season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
+existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a
+greater readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned
+with all the attributes of romance. In Lily’s set this conduct
+implied a sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce
+rose in her esteem as she saw the consideration he inspired.
+
+The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot
+propitious to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning
+against the balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little
+distance from the animated group about the tea-table, she might
+have been lost in the mazes of an inarticulate happiness. In
+reality, her thoughts were finding definite utterance in the
+tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in store for her. From
+where she stood she could see them embodied in the form of Mr.
+Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat nervously
+on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the energy
+of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to
+endow her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of
+municipal reform.
+
+Mrs. Fisher’s latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been
+preceded by an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced
+an energetic advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was
+small, fiery and dramatic; and her hands and eyes were admirable
+instruments in the service of whatever causes she happened to
+espouse. She had, however, the fault common to enthusiasts of
+ignoring any slackness of response on the part of her hearers, and
+Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the resistance displayed
+in every angle of Mr. Gryce’s attitude. Lily herself knew that
+his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold if he
+remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
+he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a
+paper to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what
+he called “committing himself,” and tenderly as he cherished his
+health, he evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of
+reach of pen and ink till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher’s
+toils. Meanwhile he cast agonized glances in the direction of Miss
+Bart, whose only response was to sink into an attitude of more
+graceful abstraction. She had learned the value of contrast in
+throwing her charms into relief, and was fully aware of the extent
+to which Mrs. Fisher’s volubility was enhancing her own repose.
+
+She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
+Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh’s side, was returning across the
+garden from the tennis court.
+
+The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance
+in which Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in
+contemplating what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation.
+Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high
+lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she was as reliable
+as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and
+more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and
+there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust.
+
+Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the
+girl’s turned toward her companion’s like an empty plate held up to
+be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the
+encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of
+his smile.
+
+“How impatient men are!” Lily reflected. “All Jack has to do to get
+everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him;
+whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance,
+as if I were going through an intricate dance, where one misstep
+would throw me hopelessly out of time.”
+
+As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
+likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
+resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he
+looked like a clever pupil’s drawing from a plaster-cast—while
+Gwen’s countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on
+a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two
+had the same prejudices and ideals, and the same quality of making
+other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was
+common to most of Lily’s set: they had a force of negation which
+eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. Gryce
+and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for each other by every
+law of moral and physical correspondence——“Yet they wouldn’t look
+at each other,” Lily mused, “they never do. Each of them wants a
+creature of a different race, of Jack’s race and mine, with all
+sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don’t
+even guess the existence of. And they always get what they want.”
+
+She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a
+slight cloud on the latter’s brow advised her that even cousinly
+amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the
+necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of her
+career, dropped aside while the happy couple proceeded toward the
+tea-table.
+
+Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned
+her head against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The
+fragrance of the late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil
+scene, a landscape tutored to the last degree of rural elegance.
+In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the
+lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped
+pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long glade the river
+widened like a lake under the silver light of September. Lily did
+not want to join the circle about the tea-table. They represented
+the future she had chosen, and she was content with it, but in no
+haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty that she could marry
+Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load from her
+mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal not
+to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence
+might have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end.
+She would be able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar
+into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate.
+She would have smarter gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more
+jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would be free forever from the
+shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor.
+Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of
+being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores
+she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
+she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr.
+Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses
+and emotions. He had the kind of character in which prudence is
+a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily
+had known the species before: she was aware that such a guarded
+nature must find one huge outlet of egoism, and she determined to
+be to him what his Americana had hitherto been: the one possession
+in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on it. She knew
+that this generosity to self is one of the forms of meanness, and
+she resolved so to identify herself with her husband’s vanity that
+to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form of
+self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort
+to some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended
+it should free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she
+would be able to play the game in her own way. How should she have
+distrusted her powers? Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral
+possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her
+skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made
+of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence. She felt she could
+trust it to carry her through to the end.
+
+And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery
+she had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after
+all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a
+time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people
+whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to make a place for
+her in the charmed circle about which all her desires revolved.
+They were not as brutal and self-engrossed as she had fancied—or
+rather, since it would no longer be necessary to flatter and humour
+them, that side of their nature became less conspicuous. Society is
+a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place
+in each man’s heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated
+face to Lily.
+
+In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
+qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack
+of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like
+obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They
+were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to
+admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already
+she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an
+acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did
+not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not
+able to live as they lived.
+
+The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs
+of the long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of
+wheels, and divined that more visitors were approaching. There
+was a movement behind her, a scattering of steps and voices:
+it was evident that the party about the tea-table was breaking
+up. Presently she heard a tread behind her on the terrace. She
+supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means to escape from his
+predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his coming to
+join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fireside.
+
+She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved;
+but her greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who
+had approached her was Lawrence Selden.
+
+“You see I came after all,” he said; but before she had time
+to answer, Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy
+with her host, had stepped between them with a little gesture of
+appropriation.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+
+The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the
+punctual appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the
+household to the little church at the gates. Whether any one got
+into the omnibus or not was a matter of secondary importance,
+since by standing there it not only bore witness to the orthodox
+intentions of the family, but made Mrs. Trenor feel, when she
+finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow vicariously made
+use of it.
+
+It was Mrs. Trenor’s theory that her daughters actually did go
+to church every Sunday; but their French governess’s convictions
+calling her to the rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping
+their mother in her room till luncheon, there was seldom any one
+present to verify the fact. Now and then, in a spasmodic burst of
+virtue—when the house had been too uproarious over night—Gus Trenor
+forced his genial bulk into a tight frock-coat and routed his
+daughters from their slumbers; but habitually, as Lily explained to
+Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the church bells
+were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven away empty.
+
+Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious
+observances was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during
+her visits to Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda
+to church. This tallied with the assurance, also confidentially
+imparted, that, never having played bridge before, she had been
+“dragged into it” on the night of her arrival, and had lost an
+appalling amount of money in consequence of her ignorance of
+the game and of the rules of betting. Mr. Gryce was undoubtedly
+enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the life, and
+the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of rich
+and conspicuous people. But he thought it a very materialistic
+society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the
+men and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss
+Bart, for all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so
+ambiguous an atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially
+pleased to learn that she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors
+to church on Sunday morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep
+before the door, his light overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book
+in one carefully-gloved hand, he reflected agreeably on the
+strength of character which kept her true to her early training in
+surroundings so subversive to religious principles.
+
+For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
+themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference
+on the part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the
+hope that Miss Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes
+were flying, however; the big chestnuts pawed the ground and
+flecked their impatient sides with foam; the coachman seemed to be
+slowly petrifying on the box, and the groom on the doorstep; and
+still the lady did not come. Suddenly, however, there was a sound
+of voices and a rustle of skirts in the doorway, and Mr. Gryce,
+restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a nervous start;
+but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall into the
+carriage.
+
+The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast
+group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to
+perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding
+puppets. It is true that the Bellomont puppets did not go to
+church; but others equally important did—and Mr. and Mrs.
+Wetherall’s circle was so large that God was included in their
+visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and resigned,
+with the air of people bound for a dull “At Home,” and after them
+Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other’s veils
+and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church
+with her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that
+they didn’t mind doing it to please her, though they couldn’t
+fancy what had put the idea in her head, and though for their own
+part they would much rather have played lawn tennis with Jack and
+Gwen, if she hadn’t told them she was coming. The Misses Trenor
+were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a weather-beaten person in
+Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on seeing the omnibus,
+expressed her surprise that they were not to walk across the park;
+but at Mrs. Wetherall’s horrified protest that the church was
+a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
+other’s heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor
+Mr. Gryce found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose
+spiritual welfare he felt not the least concern.
+
+It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known
+that Miss Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen
+earlier than usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea
+that the sight of her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her
+famous lashes drooped above a prayer-book, would put the finishing
+touch to Mr. Gryce’s subjugation, and render inevitable a certain
+incident which she had resolved should form a part of the walk they
+were to take together after luncheon. Her intentions in short had
+never been more definite; but poor Lily, for all the hard glaze of
+her exterior, was inwardly as malleable as wax. Her faculty for
+adapting herself, for entering into other people’s feelings, if it
+served her now and then in small contingencies, hampered her in the
+decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant in the flux
+of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was carrying
+her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see herself
+or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that moment,
+should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
+with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing
+summons of his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself
+and the ill-humour of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she
+learned from Mrs. Trenor that Selden had come of his own accord.
+“He didn’t even wire me—he just happened to find the trap at the
+station. Perhaps it’s not over with Bertha after all,” Mrs. Trenor
+musingly concluded; and went away to arrange her dinner-cards
+accordingly.
+
+Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless
+she had lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset’s call,
+it was at her own that he would stay. So much the previous evening
+had told her. Mrs. Trenor, true to her simple principle of making
+her married friends happy, had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next
+to each other at dinner; but, in obedience to the time-honoured
+traditions of the match-maker, she had separated Lily and Mr.
+Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset, while Mr. Gryce
+was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.
+
+George Dorset’s talk did not interfere with the range of his
+neighbour’s thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on
+finding out the deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted
+from this care only by the sound of his wife’s voice. On this
+occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset took no part in the general
+conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs with Selden, and
+turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her host, who,
+far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
+the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr.
+Dorset, however, his wife’s attitude was a subject of such evident
+concern that, when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or
+scooping the moist bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he
+sat straining his thin neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.
+
+Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on
+opposite sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe
+Mrs. Dorset also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to
+set up a rapid comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce.
+It was that comparison which was her undoing. Why else had she
+suddenly grown interested in Selden? She had known him for eight
+years or more: ever since her return to America he had formed a
+part of her background. She had always been glad to sit next to
+him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most men, and had
+vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful to
+fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
+affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories
+of life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw
+that her sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that
+his presence shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was
+notably brilliant or exceptional; in his own profession he was
+surpassed by more than one man who had bored Lily through many a
+weary dinner. It was rather that he had preserved a certain social
+detachment, a happy air of viewing the show objectively, of having
+points of contact outside the great gilt cage in which they were
+all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the world outside
+the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In
+reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open;
+but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
+once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden’s
+distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.
+
+That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily,
+turning her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world
+through his retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut
+off and the dusty daylight let in. She looked down the long table,
+studying its occupants one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his
+heavy carnivorous head sunk between his shoulders, as he preyed
+on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the opposite end of the long
+bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring good-looks, of a
+jeweller’s window lit by electricity. And between the two, what a
+long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people were!
+Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
+her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying
+a “spicy paragraph”; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
+proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends
+and had become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated
+visiting-list, whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording
+of invitations and the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with
+his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with
+people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his
+confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and
+an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of
+a young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer
+than her father.
+
+Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different
+they had seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized
+what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving
+up. That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant
+qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way.
+Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty
+of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to be
+more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
+picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which,
+a few hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their
+standards. She closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine
+of the life she had chosen stretched before her like a long white
+road without dip or turning: it was true she was to roll over it
+in a carriage instead of trudging it on foot, but sometimes the
+pedestrian enjoys the diversion of a short cut which is denied to
+those on wheels.
+
+She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from
+the depths of his lean throat.
+
+“I say, do look at her,” he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
+lugubrious merriment—“I beg your pardon, but do just look at my
+wife making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really
+suppose she was gone on him—and it’s all the other way round, I
+assure you.”
+
+Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was
+affording Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared,
+as he said, that Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in
+the scene: her neighbour seemed to receive her advances with a
+temperate zest which did not distract him from his dinner. The
+sight restored Lily’s good humour, and knowing the peculiar
+disguise which Mr. Dorset’s marital fears assumed, she asked gaily:
+“Aren’t you horribly jealous of her?”
+
+Dorset greeted the sally with delight. “Oh, abominably—you’ve
+just hit it—keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that’s
+what has knocked my digestion out—being so infernally jealous of
+her.—I can’t eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know,” he added
+suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance;
+and Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention
+to his prolonged denunciation of other people’s cooks, with a
+supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of melted butter.
+
+It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man
+as well as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances
+into it he was not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he
+engaged Lily so long that the sweets were being handed when she
+caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic
+woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching
+engagement. Miss Corby’s role was jocularity: she always entered
+the conversation with a handspring.
+
+“And of course you’ll have Sim Rosedale as best man!” Lily heard
+her fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney
+responded, as if struck: “Jove, that’s an idea. What a thumping
+present I’d get out of him!”
+
+SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive,
+obtruded itself on Lily’s thoughts like a leer. It stood for one
+of the many hated possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If
+she did not marry Percy Gryce, the day might come when she would
+have to be civil to such men as Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY
+HIM? But she meant to marry him—she was sure of him and sure of
+herself. She drew back with a shiver from the pleasant paths in
+which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet once more in
+the middle of the long white road.... When she went upstairs that
+night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh batch of
+bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had forwarded
+them all to Bellomont.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
+conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself
+betimes from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast tray, rang to
+have her grey gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a
+prayer-book from Mrs. Trenor.
+
+But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs
+of rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused
+a smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to
+kindle Lily’s imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the
+borrowed prayer-book flashed a long light down the years. She would
+have to go to church with Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have
+a front pew in the most expensive church in New York, and his name
+would figure handsomely in the list of parish charities. In a few
+years, when he grew stouter, he would be made a warden. Once in the
+winter the rector would come to dine, and her husband would beg
+her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES were included,
+except those who had showed signs of penitence by being re-married
+to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in this
+round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
+great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could
+consent to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and
+her bath had filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly
+reflected in the clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible
+this morning, or else the glass was at a happier angle.
+
+And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for
+impulse and truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold;
+below the dewy bloom of the lawns the woodlands blushed and
+smouldered, and the hills across the river swam in molten blue.
+Every drop of blood in Lily’s veins invited her to happiness.
+
+The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning
+behind her shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She
+was too late, then—but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr.
+Gryce’s crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely
+in absenting herself, since the disappointment he so candidly
+betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the afternoon walk.
+That walk she did not mean to miss; one glance at the bills on her
+writing-table was enough to recall its necessity. But meanwhile
+she had the morning to herself, and could muse pleasantly on the
+disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough with the habits of
+Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free field till
+luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and Lady
+Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to
+be having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried
+off her host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking
+the cigarette of young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby
+was certain to be playing tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van
+Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for,
+and Mrs. Dorset never came down till luncheon: her doctors, she
+averred, had forbidden her to expose herself to the crude air of
+the morning.
+
+To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
+wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her
+plans. These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress
+somewhat more rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she
+had first selected, and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with
+the disengaged air of a lady in quest of exercise. The great hall
+was empty but for the knot of dogs by the fire, who, taking in at
+a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss Bart, were upon her at once
+with lavish offers of companionship. She put aside the ramming paws
+which conveyed these offers, and assuring the joyous volunteers
+that she might presently have a use for their company, sauntered
+on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of the
+house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the
+old manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the
+traditions of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors,
+the Dutch tiles of the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with
+its shining brass urns. A few family portraits of lantern-jawed
+gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies with large head-dresses and small
+bodies, hung between the shelves lined with pleasantly-shabby
+books: books mostly contemporaneous with the ancestors in question,
+and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no perceptible
+additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used for
+reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking room or
+a quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however,
+that it might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only
+member of the party in the least likely to put it to its original
+use. She advanced noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered
+with easy-chairs, and before she reached the middle of the room
+she saw that she had not been mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in
+fact seated at its farther end; but though a book lay on his knee,
+his attention was not engaged with it, but directed to a lady
+whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an adjoining chair,
+detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the dusky leather
+upholstery.
+
+Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she
+seemed about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she
+announced her approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made
+the couple raise their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank
+displeasure, and Selden with his usual quiet smile. The sight of
+his composure had a disturbing effect on Lily; but to be disturbed
+was in her case to make a more brilliant effort at self-possession.
+
+“Dear me, am I late?” she asked, putting a hand in his as he
+advanced to greet her.
+
+“Late for what?” enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. “Not for luncheon,
+certainly—but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?”
+
+“Yes, I had,” said Lily confidingly.
+
+“Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely
+at your disposal.” Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her
+antagonist felt a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.
+
+“Oh, dear, no—do stay,” she said good-humouredly. “I don’t in the
+least want to drive you away.”
+
+“You’re awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden’s
+engagements.”
+
+The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost
+on its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping
+to pick up the book he had dropped at Lily’s approach. The latter’s
+eyes widened charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.
+
+“But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go
+to church; and I’m afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS
+it started, do you know?”
+
+She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away
+some time since.
+
+“Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go
+to church with them. It’s too late to walk there, you say? Well, I
+shall have the credit of trying, at any rate—and the advantage of
+escaping part of the service. I’m not so sorry for myself, after
+all!”
+
+And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss
+Bart strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling
+grace down the long perspective of the garden walk.
+
+She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a
+fact not lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway
+looking after her with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is
+that she was conscious of a somewhat keen shock of disappointment.
+All her plans for the day had been built on the assumption that it
+was to see her that Selden had come to Bellomont. She had expected,
+when she came downstairs, to find him on the watch for her; and
+she had found him, instead, in a situation which might well denote
+that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it possible,
+after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
+acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when
+she never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the
+moment, saw no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur
+to her that Selden might have been actuated merely by the desire
+to spend a Sunday out of town: women never learn to dispense with
+the sentimental motive in their judgments of men. But Lily was not
+easily disconcerted; competition put her on her mettle, and she
+reflected that Selden’s coming, if it did not declare him to be
+still in Mrs. Dorset’s toils, showed him to be so completely free
+from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.
+
+These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly
+likely to carry her to church before the sermon, and at length,
+having passed from the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far
+forgot her intention as to sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the
+walk. The spot was charming, and Lily was not insensible to the
+charm, or to the fact that her presence enhanced it; but she was
+not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company,
+and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic scene struck
+her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to profit
+by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
+rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she
+walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life
+was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking,
+or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her
+sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner
+isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.
+
+Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead,
+digging the ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade.
+As she did so a step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her
+side.
+
+“How fast you walk!” he remarked. “I thought I should never catch
+up with you.”
+
+She answered gaily: “You must be quite breathless! I’ve been
+sitting under that tree for an hour.”
+
+“Waiting for me, I hope?” he rejoined; and she said with a vague
+laugh:
+
+“Well—waiting to see if you would come.”
+
+“I seize the distinction, but I don’t mind it, since doing the one
+involved doing the other. But weren’t you sure that I should come?”
+
+“If I waited long enough—but you see I had only a limited time to
+give to the experiment.”
+
+“Why limited? Limited by luncheon?”
+
+“No; by my other engagement.”
+
+“Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?”
+
+“No; but to come home from church with another person.”
+
+“Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with
+alternatives. And is the other person coming home this way?”
+
+Lily laughed again. “That’s just what I don’t know; and to find
+out, it is my business to get to church before the service is over.”
+
+“Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which
+case the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the
+desperate resolve of driving back in the omnibus.”
+
+Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like
+the bubbling of her inner mood. “Is that what you would do in such
+an emergency?” she enquired.
+
+Selden looked at her with solemnity. “I am here to prove to you,”
+he cried, “what I am capable of doing in an emergency!”
+
+“Walking a mile in an hour—you must own that the omnibus would be
+quicker!”
+
+“Ah—but will he find you in the end? That’s the only test of
+success.”
+
+They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that
+they had felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but
+suddenly Lily’s face changed, and she said: “Well, if it is, he has
+succeeded.”
+
+Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
+toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida
+had evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the
+church-goers had thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily’s
+companion looked rapidly from one to the other of the two men of
+the party; Wetherall walking respectfully at Lady Cressida’s side
+with his little sidelong look of nervous attention, and Percy Gryce
+bringing-up the rear with Mrs. Wetherall and the Trenors.
+
+“Ah—now I see why you were getting up your Americana!” Selden
+exclaimed with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with
+which the sally was received checked whatever amplifications he had
+meant to give it.
+
+That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors,
+or even about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden
+that he had a momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number
+of possibilities; but she rose gallantly to the defence of her
+confusion, by saying, as its object approached: “That was why I was
+waiting for you—to thank you for having given me so many points!”
+
+“Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short
+time,” said Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart;
+and while she signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he
+added quickly: “Won’t you devote your afternoon to it? You know I
+must be off tomorrow morning. We’ll take a walk, and you can thank
+me at your leisure.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+
+The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air,
+and the glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which
+diffused the brightness without dulling it.
+
+In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill;
+but as the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long
+slopes beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone
+of lingering summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered
+trees; then it dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling
+sprays of bramble, whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves,
+the country unrolled itself in pastoral distances.
+
+Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the
+creeping glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang
+it, and the shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove.
+The boles of the trees stood well apart, with only a light
+feathering of undergrowth; the path wound along the edge of the
+wood, now and then looking out on a sunlit pasture or on an orchard
+spangled with fruit.
+
+Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for
+the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which
+was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape
+outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and
+she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, its
+long free reaches. On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered
+like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey orchards, and
+here and there the lingering green of an oak-grove. Two or three
+red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees, and the white wooden
+spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder of the hill;
+while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran between the
+fields.
+
+“Let us sit here,” Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge
+of rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.
+
+Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She
+sat quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes
+wandering peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape.
+Selden stretched himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat
+against the level sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head,
+which rested against the side of the rock. He had no wish to make
+her talk; her quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general
+hush and harmony of things. In his own mind there was only a lazy
+sense of pleasure, veiling the sharp edges of sensation as the
+September haze veiled the scene at their feet. But Lily, though her
+attitude was as calm as his, was throbbing inwardly with a rush of
+thoughts. There were in her at the moment two beings, one drawing
+deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for
+air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the
+captive’s gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them:
+the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
+quivered for flight.
+
+She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which
+seemed to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her
+feet. Was it love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination
+of happy thoughts and sensations? How much of it was owing to the
+spell of the perfect afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the
+thought of the dulness she had fled from? Lily had no definite
+experience by which to test the quality of her feelings. She had
+several times been in love with fortunes or careers, but only
+once with a man. That was years ago, when she first came out, and
+had been smitten with a romantic passion for a young gentleman
+named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave in
+his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
+securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest
+Miss Van Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was
+given to telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled
+this early emotion it was not to compare it with that which now
+possessed her; the only point of comparison was the sense of
+lightness, of emancipation, which she remembered feeling, in the
+whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a conservatory, during the
+brief course of her youthful romance. She had not known again
+till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now it was
+something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
+charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she
+could put her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing
+them together. Though his popularity was of the quiet kind,
+felt rather than actively expressed among his friends, she had
+never mistaken his inconspicuousness for obscurity. His reputed
+cultivation was generally regarded as a slight obstacle to easy
+intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her broad-minded
+recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam in
+her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she
+felt would have had its distinction in an older society. It was,
+moreover, one of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which
+lifted his head above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark
+features which, in a land of amorphous types, gave him the air of
+belonging to a more specialized race, of carrying the impress of a
+concentrated past. Expansive persons found him a little dry, and
+very young girls thought him sarcastic; but this air of friendly
+aloofness, as far removed as possible from any assertion of
+personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily’s interest.
+Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in her
+taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed
+to her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being
+able to convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest
+man she had ever met.
+
+It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her
+to say presently, with a laugh: “I have broken two engagements for
+you today. How many have you broken for me?”
+
+“None,” said Selden calmly. “My only engagement at Bellomont was
+with you.”
+
+She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.
+
+“Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?”
+
+“Of course I did.”
+
+Her look deepened meditatively. “Why?” she murmured, with an accent
+which took all tinge of coquetry from the question.
+
+“Because you’re such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see
+what you are doing.”
+
+“How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?”
+
+Selden smiled. “I don’t flatter myself that my coming has deflected
+your course of action by a hair’s breadth.”
+
+“That’s absurd—since, if you were not here, I could obviously not
+be taking a walk with you.”
+
+“No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making
+use of your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit
+of colour you are using today. It’s a part of your cleverness to be
+able to produce premeditated effects extemporaneously.”
+
+Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense
+of humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his
+presence as part of a very definite effect; or that, at least,
+was the secret pretext she had found for breaking her promise to
+walk with Mr. Gryce. She had sometimes been accused of being too
+eager—even Judy Trenor had warned her to go slowly. Well, she would
+not be too eager in this case; she would give her suitor a longer
+taste of suspense. Where duty and inclination jumped together, it
+was not in Lily’s nature to hold them asunder. She had excused
+herself from the walk on the plea of a headache: the horrid
+headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
+church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
+languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle
+in her hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered
+rather nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears
+about the future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he
+besought her not to expose herself: he always connected the outer
+air with ideas of exposure.
+
+Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him,
+since she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the
+party who, after luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit
+to the Van Osburghs at Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her
+disinterestedness, and, to escape from the threatened vacuity of
+the afternoon, had taken her advice and departed mournfully, in a
+dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged down the avenue she
+smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden had watched
+her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to his
+suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as
+her plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included
+in it. The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the
+stair and strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.
+
+She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at
+her feet.
+
+“I thought, after all, the air might do me good,” she explained;
+and he agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
+
+The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and
+Selden had the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of
+leisure and safety gave the last touch of lightness to her spirit.
+With so much time to talk, and no definite object to be led up to,
+she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy.
+
+She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge
+with a touch of resentment.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, “why you are always accusing me of
+premeditation.”
+
+“I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you
+had to follow a certain line—and if one does a thing at all it is a
+merit to do it thoroughly.”
+
+“If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged
+to think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation.
+But you must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I
+never yield to an impulse.”
+
+“Ah, but I don’t suppose that: haven’t I told you that your genius
+lies in converting impulses into intentions?”
+
+“My genius?” she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. “Is there
+any final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven’t
+succeeded.”
+
+Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her.
+“Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your
+definition.”
+
+“Success?” She hesitated. “Why, to get as much as one can out of
+life, I suppose. It’s a relative quality, after all. Isn’t that
+your idea of it?”
+
+“My idea of it? God forbid!” He sat up with sudden energy, resting
+his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. “My
+idea of success,” he said, “is personal freedom.”
+
+“Freedom? Freedom from worries?”
+
+“From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety,
+from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
+spirit—that’s what I call success.”
+
+She leaned forward with a responsive flash. “I know—I know—it’s
+strange; but that’s just what I’ve been feeling today.”
+
+He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. “Is the feeling
+so rare with you?” he said.
+
+She blushed a little under his gaze. “You think me horribly sordid,
+don’t you? But perhaps it’s rather that I never had any choice.
+There was no one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the
+spirit.”
+
+“There never is—it’s a country one has to find the way to one’s
+self.”
+
+“But I should never have found my way there if you hadn’t told me.”
+
+“Ah, there are sign-posts—but one has to know how to read them.”
+
+“Well, I have known, I have known!” she cried with a glow of
+eagerness. “Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter
+of the sign—and yesterday—last evening at dinner—I suddenly saw a
+little way into your republic.”
+
+Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto
+he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement
+which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with
+pretty women. His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship,
+and he would have been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional
+weakness which should interfere with the fulfilment of her aims.
+But now the hint of this weakness had become the most interesting
+thing about her. He had come on her that morning in a moment of
+disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution
+of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS
+WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and the second was
+to note in her the change which his coming produced. It was the
+danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
+spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their
+dawning intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of
+life; and to be the unforeseen element in a career so accurately
+planned was stimulating even to a man who had renounced sentimental
+experiments.
+
+“Well,” he said, “did it make you want to see more? Are you going
+to become one of us?”
+
+He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her
+hand toward the case.
+
+“Oh, do give me one—I haven’t smoked for days!”
+
+“Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.”
+
+“Yes—but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER;
+and at the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER.”
+
+“Ah, then I’m afraid we can’t let you into the republic.”
+
+“Why not? Is it a celibate order?”
+
+“Not in the least, though I’m bound to say there are not many
+married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and
+it’s as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven.”
+
+“That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
+conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and
+the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of
+it.”
+
+“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is
+to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your
+lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with
+your rich people—they may not be thinking of money, but they’re
+breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see
+how they squirm and gasp!”
+
+Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her
+cigarette-smoke.
+
+“It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal
+of your time in the element you disapprove of.”
+
+Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have
+tried to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs
+can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able
+to turn gold back again into something else; and that’s the secret
+that most of your friends have lost.”
+
+Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that
+the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as
+an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak
+as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t
+it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used
+either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the
+user?”
+
+“That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society
+is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it,
+and not the critics on the fence. It’s just the other way with most
+shows—the audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know
+that real life is on the other side of the footlights. The people
+who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its
+proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts
+all the relations of life.” Selden raised himself on his elbow.
+“Good heavens!” he went on, “I don’t underrate the decorative side
+of life. It seems to me the sense of splendour has justified itself
+by what it has produced. The worst of it is that so much human
+nature is used up in the process. If we’re all the raw stuff of the
+cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that tempers a sword
+than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours
+wastes such good material in producing its little patch of purple!
+Look at a boy like Ned Silverton—he’s really too good to be used to
+refurbish anybody’s social shabbiness. There’s a lad just setting
+out to discover the universe: isn’t it a pity he should end by
+finding it in Mrs. Fisher’s drawing-room?”
+
+“Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long
+enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is
+only in society that he is likely to lose them?”
+
+Selden answered her with a shrug. “Why do we call all our generous
+ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn’t it a sufficient
+condemnation of society to find one’s self accepting such
+phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at Silverton’s age,
+and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.”
+
+She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
+habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over
+and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the
+laboratory where his faiths were formed.
+
+“Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians,” she exclaimed; “why
+do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation,
+and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out.”
+
+“It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D’ETAT and
+seat you on the throne.”
+
+“Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across
+the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my
+ambitions—you think them unworthy of me!”
+
+Selden smiled, but not ironically. “Well, isn’t that a tribute? I
+think them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them.”
+
+She had turned to gaze on him gravely. “But isn’t it possible that,
+if I had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better
+use of them? Money stands for all kinds of things—its purchasing
+quality isn’t limited to diamonds and motor-cars.”
+
+
+“Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by
+founding a hospital.”
+
+“But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must
+think my ambitions are good enough for me.”
+
+Selden met this appeal with a laugh. “Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am
+not divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you
+are trying to get!”
+
+“Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get
+them I probably shan’t like them?” She drew a deep breath. “What a
+miserable future you foresee for me!”
+
+“Well—have you never foreseen it for yourself?” The slow colour
+rose to her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the
+deep wells of feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had
+produced it.
+
+“Often and often,” she said. “But it looks so much darker when you
+show it to me!”
+
+He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat
+silent, while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of
+the air.
+
+But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. “Why do
+you do this to me?” she cried. “Why do you make the things I have
+chosen seem hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?”
+
+The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had
+fallen. He himself did not know why he had led their talk along
+such lines; it was the last use he would have imagined himself
+making of an afternoon’s solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one
+of those moments when neither seemed to speak deliberately, when
+an indwelling voice in each called to the other across unsounded
+depths of feeling.
+
+“No, I have nothing to give you instead,” he said, sitting up and
+turning so that he faced her. “If I had, it should be yours, you
+know.”
+
+She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than
+the manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he
+saw that for a moment she wept.
+
+It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and
+drew down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she
+turned on him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he
+said to himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.
+
+The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and
+irony: “Isn’t it natural that I should try to belittle all the
+things I can’t offer you?”
+
+Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with
+a gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which
+she had no claim.
+
+“But you belittle ME, don’t you,” she returned gently, “in being so
+sure they are the only things I care for?”
+
+Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
+egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: “But you do care
+for them, don’t you? And no wishing of mine can alter that.”
+
+He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry
+him, that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned
+on him a face sparkling with derision.
+
+“Ah,” she cried, “for all your fine phrases you’re really as great
+a coward as I am, for you wouldn’t have made one of them if you
+hadn’t been so sure of my answer.”
+
+The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden’s
+wavering intentions.
+
+“I am not so sure of your answer,” he said quietly. “And I do you
+the justice to believe that you are not either.”
+
+It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a
+moment—“Do you want to marry me?” she asked.
+
+He broke into a laugh. “No, I don’t want to—but perhaps I should if
+you did!”
+
+“That’s what I told you—you’re so sure of me that you can amuse
+yourself with experiments.” She drew back the hand he had regained,
+and sat looking down on him sadly.
+
+“I am not making experiments,” he returned. “Or if I am, it is
+not on you but on myself. I don’t know what effect they are going
+to have on me—but if marrying you is one of them, I will take the
+risk.”
+
+She smiled faintly. “It would be a great risk, certainly—I have
+never concealed from you how great.”
+
+“Ah, it’s you who are the coward!” he exclaimed.
+
+She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The
+soft isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed
+lifted into a finer air. All the exquisite influences of the
+hour trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the
+loosened leaves were drawn to the earth.
+
+“It’s you who are the coward,” he repeated, catching her hands in
+his.
+
+She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings:
+he felt as though her heart were beating rather with the stress
+of a long flight than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing
+back with a little smile of warning—“I shall look hideous in dowdy
+clothes; but I can trim my own hats,” she declared.
+
+They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other
+like adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height
+from which they discover a new world. The actual world at their
+feet was veiling itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear
+moon rose in the denser blue.
+
+Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect,
+and following the high-road, which wound whiter through the
+surrounding twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.
+
+Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and
+she began to move toward the lane.
+
+“I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after
+dark,” she said, almost impatiently.
+
+Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to
+regain his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable
+note of dryness: “That was not one of our party; the motor was
+going the other way.”
+
+“I know—I know——” She paused, and he saw her redden through the
+twilight. “But I told them I was not well—that I should not go out.
+Let us go down!” she murmured.
+
+Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case
+from his pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him
+necessary, at that moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture
+of this sort, his recovered hold on the actual: he had an almost
+puerile wish to let his companion see that, their flight over, he
+had landed on his feet.
+
+She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he
+held out the cigarettes to her.
+
+She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips,
+leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness
+the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw
+her mouth tremble into a smile.
+
+“Were you serious?” she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety
+which she might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock
+inflections, without having time to select the just note. Selden’s
+voice was under better control. “Why not?” he returned. “You see I
+took no risks in being so.” And as she continued to stand before
+him, a little pale under the retort, he added quickly: “Let us go
+down.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+
+It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor’s friendship that her
+voice, in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal
+despair as if she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.
+
+“All I can say is, Lily, that I can’t make you out!” She leaned
+back, sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning
+an indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk,
+while she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up
+the case, the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.
+
+“If you hadn’t told me you were going in for him seriously—but I’m
+sure you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did
+you ask me to let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate
+Corby? I don’t suppose you did it because he amused you; we could
+none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment unless
+you meant to marry him. And I’m sure everybody played fair! They
+all wanted to help it along. Even Bertha kept her hands off—I will
+say that—till Lawrence came down and you dragged him away from
+her. After that she had a right to retaliate—why on earth did you
+interfere with her? You’ve known Lawrence Selden for years—why did
+you behave as if you had just discovered him? If you had a grudge
+against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it—you could have paid
+her back just as well after you were married! I told you Bertha
+was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
+Lawrence’s turning up put her in a good humour, and if you’d only
+let her think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her
+to play you this trick. Oh, Lily, you’ll never do anything if
+you’re not serious!”
+
+Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
+impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice
+of her own conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor’s
+reproachful accents. But even to her own conscience she must trump
+up a semblance of defence. “I only took a day off—I thought he
+meant to stay on all this week, and I knew Mr. Selden was leaving
+this morning.”
+
+Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare
+its weakness.
+
+“He did mean to stay—that’s the worst of it. It shows that he’s
+run away from you; that Bertha’s done her work and poisoned him
+thoroughly.”
+
+Lily gave a slight laugh. “Oh, if he’s running I’ll overtake him!”
+
+Her friend threw out an arresting hand. “Whatever you do, Lily, do
+nothing!”
+
+Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. “I don’t mean,
+literally, to take the next train. There are ways——” But she did
+not go on to specify them.
+
+Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. “There WERE ways—plenty
+of them! I didn’t suppose you needed to have them pointed out.
+But don’t deceive yourself—he’s thoroughly frightened. He has run
+straight home to his mother, and she’ll protect him!”
+
+“Oh, to the death,” Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
+
+“How you can LAUGH——” her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back
+to a soberer perception of things with the question: “What was it
+Bertha really told him?”
+
+“Don’t ask me—horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh,
+you know what I mean—of course there isn’t anything, REALLY; but
+I suppose she brought in Prince Varigliano—and Lord Hubert—and
+there was some story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van
+Alstyne: did you ever?”
+
+“He is my father’s cousin,” Miss Bart interposed.
+
+“Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher;
+and she told Bertha, naturally. They’re all alike, you know: they
+hold their tongues for years, and you think you’re safe, but when
+their opportunity comes they remember everything.”
+
+Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. “It was
+some money I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs’. I repaid it, of
+course.”
+
+“Ah, well, they wouldn’t remember that; besides, it was the idea
+of the gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her
+man—she knew just what to tell him!”
+
+In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish
+her friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her
+naturally good temper had been disciplined by years of enforced
+compliance, since she had almost always had to attain her ends
+by the circuitous path of other people’s; and, being naturally
+inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they presented
+themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial statement of
+what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own thoughts
+were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
+in the light of Mrs. Trenor’s vigorous comments, the reckoning
+was certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found
+herself gradually reverting to her friend’s view of the situation.
+Mrs. Trenor’s words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by
+anxieties which she herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless
+stimulated by a keen imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of
+the practical strain of poverty. Judy knew it must be “horrid” for
+poor Lily to have to stop to consider whether she could afford
+real lace on her petticoats, and not to have a motor-car and a
+steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction of unpaid bills,
+the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure, were trials
+as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
+char-woman. Mrs. Trenor’s unconsciousness of the real stress of the
+situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While
+her friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse
+her rivals, she was once more battling in imagination with the
+mounting tide of indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped.
+What wind of folly had driven her out again on those dark seas?
+
+If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement
+it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again
+to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions
+above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of
+the familiar routine, in which moments of seeming brilliancy and
+freedom alternated with long hours of subjection.
+
+She laid a deprecating hand on her friend’s. “Dear Judy! I’m sorry
+to have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must
+have some letters for me to answer—let me at least be useful.”
+
+She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her
+resumption of the morning’s task with a sigh which implied that,
+after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses.
+
+The luncheon-table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack
+Stepney and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last
+touch of irony that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the
+same train), and Lady Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had
+been despatched by motor to lunch at a distant country-house. At
+such moments of diminished interest it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to
+keep her room till the afternoon; but on this occasion she drifted
+in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed and drooping, but
+with an edge of malice under her indifference.
+
+She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. “How few of
+us are left! I do so enjoy the quiet—don’t you, Lily? I wish the
+men would always stop away—it’s really much nicer without them.
+Oh, you don’t count, George: one doesn’t have to talk to one’s
+husband. But I thought Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the
+week?” she added enquiringly. “Didn’t he intend to, Judy? He’s such
+a nice boy—I wonder what drove him away? He is rather shy, and I’m
+afraid we may have shocked him: he has been brought up in such an
+old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he told me he had never seen
+a girl play cards for money till he saw you doing it the other
+night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and always has a
+lot left over to invest!”
+
+Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. “I do believe it is some one’s
+duty to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never
+been made to realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man
+should be compelled to study the laws of his country.”
+
+Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. “I think he HAS studied the
+divorce laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some
+kind of a petition against divorce.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with
+a laughing glance at Miss Bart: “I suppose he is thinking of
+marriage, and wants to tinker up the old ship before he goes
+aboard.”
+
+His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset
+exclaimed with a sardonic growl: “Poor devil! It isn’t the ship
+that will do for him, it’s the crew.”
+
+“Or the stowaways,” said Miss Corby brightly. “If I contemplated a
+voyage with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold.”
+
+Miss Van Osburgh’s vague feeling of pique was struggling for
+appropriate expression. “I’m sure I don’t see why you laugh at him;
+I think he’s very nice,” she exclaimed; “and, at any rate, a girl
+who married him would always have enough to be comfortable.”
+
+She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her
+words, but it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had
+sunk into the breast of one of her hearers.
+
+Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily
+Bart than any other in the language. She could not even pause to
+smile over the heiress’s view of a colossal fortune as a mere
+shelter against want: her mind was filled with the vision of what
+that shelter might have been to her. Mrs. Dorset’s pin-pricks did
+not smart, for her own irony cut deeper: no one could hurt her as
+much as she was hurting herself, for no one else—not even Judy
+Trenor—knew the full magnitude of her folly.
+
+She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a
+whispered request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left
+the luncheon-table.
+
+“Lily, dear, if you’ve nothing special to do, may I tell Carry
+Fisher that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He
+will be back at four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet
+him. Of course I’m very glad to have him amused, but I happen to
+know that she has bled him rather severely since she’s been here,
+and she is so keen about going to fetch him that I fancy she must
+have got a lot more bills this morning. It seems to me,” Mrs.
+Trenor feelingly concluded, “that most of her alimony is paid by
+other women’s husbands!”
+
+Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over
+her friend’s words, and their peculiar application to herself.
+Why should she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours,
+borrowed money of an elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry
+Fisher could make a living unrebuked from the good-nature of her
+men friends and the tolerance of their wives? It all turned on the
+tiresome distinction between what a married woman might, and a
+girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking for a married woman
+to borrow money—and Lily was expertly aware of the implication
+involved—but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which the
+world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
+private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation
+of society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were
+possible. She could of course borrow from her women friends—a
+hundred here or there, at the utmost—but they were more ready to
+give a gown or a trinket, and looked a little askance when she
+hinted her preference for a cheque. Women are not generous lenders,
+and those among whom her lot was cast were either in the same
+case as herself, or else too far removed from it to understand
+its necessities. The result of her meditations was the decision
+to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
+without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses;
+and to continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely
+prolong the same difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt
+retrenchment was necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull
+life. She would start the next morning for Richfield.
+
+At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not
+wholly unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the
+light runabout in which she had driven over, and as he climbed
+heavily to her side, crushing her into a scant third of the seat,
+he said: “Halloo! It isn’t often you honour me. You must have been
+uncommonly hard up for something to do.”
+
+The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
+conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture
+had caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the
+broad expanse of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was
+aware also, from the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact
+with her freshness and slenderness was as agreeable to him as the
+sight of a cooling beverage.
+
+The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: “It’s not
+often I have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the
+privilege with me.”
+
+“The privilege of driving me home? Well, I’m glad you won the race,
+anyhow. But I know what really happened—my wife sent you. Now
+didn’t she?”
+
+He had the dull man’s unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily
+could not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on
+the truth.
+
+“You see, Judy thinks I’m the safest person for you to be with; and
+she’s quite right,” she rejoined.
+
+“Oh, is she, though? If she is, it’s because you wouldn’t waste
+your time on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up
+with what we can get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps
+who’ve kept a free foot. Let me light a cigar, will you? I’ve had a
+beastly day of it.”
+
+He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the
+reins to her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame
+under his hand cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily
+averted her eyes with a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet
+some women thought him handsome!
+
+As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: “Did you
+have such a lot of tiresome things to do?”
+
+“I should say so—rather!” Trenor, who was seldom listened to,
+either by his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare
+enjoyment of a confidential talk. “You don’t know how a fellow
+has to hustle to keep this kind of thing going.” He waved his
+whip in the direction of the Bellomont acres, which lay outspread
+before them in opulent undulations. “Judy has no idea of what she
+spends—not that there isn’t plenty to keep the thing going,” he
+interrupted himself, “but a man has got to keep his eyes open and
+pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to live
+like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
+too—luckily for me—but at the pace we go now, I don’t know where I
+should be if it weren’t for taking a flyer now and then. The women
+all think—I mean Judy thinks—I’ve nothing to do but to go downtown
+once a month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a
+devilish lot of hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I
+ought to complain today, though,” he went on after a moment, “for
+I did a very neat stroke of business, thanks to Stepney’s friend
+Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily, I wish you’d try to persuade Judy
+to be decently civil to that chap. He’s going to be rich enough to
+buy us all out one of these days, and if she’d only ask him to dine
+now and then I could get almost anything out of him. The man is mad
+to know the people who don’t want to know him, and when a fellow’s
+in that state there is nothing he won’t do for the first woman who
+takes him up.”
+
+Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion’s
+discourse had started an interesting train of thought, which was
+rudely interrupted by the mention of Mr. Rosedale’s name. She
+uttered a faint protest.
+
+“But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was
+impossible.”
+
+“Oh, hang it—because he’s fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner!
+Well, all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be
+civil to him now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years
+from now he’ll be in it whether we want him or not, and then he
+won’t be giving away a half-a-million tip for a dinner.”
+
+Lily’s mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr.
+Rosedale to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor’s first
+words. This vast mysterious Wall Street world of “tips” and
+“deals”—might she not find in it the means of escape from her
+dreary predicament? She had often heard of women making money in
+this way through their friends: she had no more notion than most of
+her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and its vagueness
+seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed, imagine
+herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a “tip” from Mr.
+Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
+commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to
+her in a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.
+
+In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the
+fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this
+way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and
+she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself.
+Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she
+made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were certain closed
+doors she did not open.
+
+As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a
+smile. “The afternoon is so perfect—don’t you want to drive me a
+little farther? I’ve been rather out of spirits all day, and it’s
+so restful to be away from people, with some one who won’t mind if
+I’m a little dull.”
+
+She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
+trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
+himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated
+him—not battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that
+most men would have given their boots to get such a look from.
+
+“Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is
+your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out
+of everything at bridge last night?”
+
+Lily shook her head with a sigh. “I have had to give up Doucet;
+and bridge too—I can’t afford it. In fact I can’t afford any of
+the things my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a
+bore because I don’t play cards any longer, and because I am not as
+smartly dressed as the other women. But you will think me a bore
+too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention them
+because I want you to do me a favour—the very greatest of favours.”
+
+Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge
+of apprehension that she read in them.
+
+“Why, of course—if it’s anything I can manage——” He broke off, and
+she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of
+Mrs. Fisher’s methods.
+
+“The greatest of favours,” she rejoined gently. “The fact is, Judy
+is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace.”
+
+“Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense——” his relief broke through in
+a laugh. “Why, you know she’s devoted to you.”
+
+“She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to
+vex her. But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She
+has set her heart—poor dear—on my marrying—marrying a great deal of
+money.”
+
+She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor,
+turning abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
+
+“A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove—you don’t mean Gryce? What—you
+do? Oh, no, of course I won’t mention it—you can trust me to keep
+my mouth shut—but Gryce—good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you
+could bring yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you
+couldn’t, eh? And so you gave him the sack, and that’s the reason
+why he lit out by the first train this morning?” He leaned back,
+spreading himself farther across the seat, as if dilated by the
+joyful sense of his own discernment. “How on earth could Judy think
+you would do such a thing? I could have told her you’d never put up
+with such a little milksop!”
+
+Lily sighed more deeply. “I sometimes think,” she murmured, “that
+men understand a woman’s motives better than other women do.”
+
+“Some men—I’m certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy,” he repeated,
+exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
+
+“I thought you would understand; that’s why I wanted to speak to
+you,” Miss Bart rejoined. “I can’t make that kind of marriage; it’s
+impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women in my
+set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she
+is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance, and lately
+I’ve lost money at cards, and I don’t dare tell her about it. I
+have paid my card debts, of course, but there is hardly anything
+left for my other expenses, and if I go on with my present life I
+shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income of my own,
+but I’m afraid it’s badly invested, for it seems to bring in less
+every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don’t
+know if my aunt’s agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser.”
+She paused a moment, and added in a lighter tone: “I didn’t mean
+to bore you with all this, but I want your help in making Judy
+understand that I can’t, at present, go on living as one must
+live among you all. I am going away tomorrow to join my aunt at
+Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest of the autumn, and
+dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own clothes.”
+
+At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which
+was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a
+murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours
+earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
+Bart’s future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
+tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
+get; but with the subject of discussion at his side, turning to
+him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood her better
+than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance by the
+appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear that such
+a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he was
+bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
+disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection
+that if she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded
+by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice
+herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole cost of
+her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of such
+difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher, who was
+simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical titillations
+of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as much for
+a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought her
+troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
+
+Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset;
+and before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to
+prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a
+handsome sum of money for her without endangering the small amount
+she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations
+of the stock-market to understand his technical explanations, or
+even perhaps to perceive that certain points in them were slurred;
+the haziness enveloping the transaction served as a veil for her
+embarrassment, and through the general blur her hopes dilated like
+lamps in a fog. She understood only that her modest investments
+were to be mysteriously multiplied without risk to herself; and the
+assurance that this miracle would take place within a short time,
+that there would be no tedious interval for suspense and reaction,
+relieved her of her lingering scruples.
+
+Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release
+of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was
+easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in such
+straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded
+from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other
+demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting
+Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and rest
+his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary shiver
+of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
+appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
+inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
+consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of
+the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who,
+under all his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the
+costly show for which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it
+would be easy to hold him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation
+on his side.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+
+The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
+scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the
+exact degree to which it effaced her debts.
+
+The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
+how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive
+her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really
+virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the
+fact that a fresh order accompanied each payment did not lessen her
+sense of disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would
+have given the orders without making the payment!
+
+She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour.
+To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at
+his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and
+the complacency with which her hostess regarded these attentions
+freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently
+assumed that Lily’s growing intimacy with her husband was simply an
+indirect way of returning her own kindness.
+
+“I’m so glad you and Gus have become such good friends,” she said
+approvingly. “It’s too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and
+put up with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because
+I had to listen to them when we were engaged—I’m sure he is telling
+the same ones still. And now I shan’t always have to be asking
+Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good humour. She’s a perfect
+vulture, you know; and she hasn’t the least moral sense. She is
+always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I’m sure she never
+pays when she loses.”
+
+Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the
+embarrassment of a personal application. Her own position was
+surely quite different. There could be no question of her not
+paying when she lost, since Trenor had assured her that she was
+certain not to lose. In sending her the cheque he had explained
+that he had made five thousand for her out of Rosedale’s “tip,” and
+had put four thousand back in the same venture, as there was the
+promise of another “big rise”; she understood therefore that he
+was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
+owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
+demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
+borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her
+curiosity did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on
+the probable date of the next “big rise.”
+
+The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on
+the occasion of Jack Stepney’s marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As
+a cousin of the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as
+bridesmaid; but she had declined on the plea that, since she was
+much taller than the other attendant virgins, her presence might
+mar the symmetry of the group. The truth was, she had attended too
+many brides to the altar: when next seen there she meant to be the
+chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the pleasantries made at the
+expense of young girls who have been too long before the public,
+and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of youthfulness as
+might lead people to think her older than she really was.
+
+The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near
+the paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the “simple country
+wedding” to which guests are convoyed in special trains, and
+from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off by
+the intervention of the police. While these sylvan rites were
+taking place, in a church packed with fashion and festooned with
+orchids, the representatives of the press were threading their
+way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding presents,
+and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
+apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which
+Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and
+on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely a casual
+spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure occupying
+the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to assume the
+latter part before the year was over. The fact that her immediate
+anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a possibility of
+their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to rise once
+more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty, her
+power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny.
+It could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery
+and enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her
+mistakes looked easily reparable in the light of her restored
+self-confidence.
+
+A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the
+discovery, in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and
+neatly-trimmed beard of Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something
+almost bridal in his own aspect: his large white gardenia had a
+symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen. After all, seen
+in an assemblage of his kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a
+friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he
+was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings
+out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind
+of man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the
+conventional imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the
+seclusion of the Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully
+upon sensibilities thus prepared for her touch. In fact, when she
+looked at the other women about her, and recalled the image she
+had brought away from her own glass, it did not seem as though any
+special skill would be needed to repair her blunder and bring him
+once more to her feet.
+
+The sight of Selden’s dark head, in a pew almost facing her,
+disturbed for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of
+her blood as their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion,
+a wave of resistance and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him
+again, not because she feared his influence, but because his
+presence always had the effect of cheapening her aspirations, of
+throwing her whole world out of focus. Besides, he was a living
+reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and the fact that he
+had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward him. She
+could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all else
+being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch
+of luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely
+to cost more than it was worth.
+
+“Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if
+something delightful had just happened to you!”
+
+The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her
+brilliant friend did not, in her own person, suggest such happy
+possibilities. Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre
+and the ineffectual. If there were compensating qualities in her
+wide frank glance and the freshness of her smile, these were
+qualities which only the sympathetic observer would perceive
+before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday grey and her lips
+without haunting curves. Lily’s own view of her wavered between
+pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful acceptance
+of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in dinginess
+was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
+consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what
+the occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain
+and inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
+acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the “useful” colour of
+Gerty Farish’s gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost
+as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as
+to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
+
+Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to
+have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was
+something irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no
+higher pleasures, and that one might get as much interest and
+excitement out of life in a cramped flat as in the splendours
+of the Van Osburgh establishment. Today, however, her chirping
+enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They seemed only to throw her
+own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and give a soaring
+vastness to her scheme of life.
+
+“Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else
+leaves the dining-room!” suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in
+her friend’s. It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental
+and unenvious interest in all the details of a wedding: she was
+the kind of person who always kept her handkerchief out during the
+service, and departed clutching a box of wedding-cake.
+
+“Isn’t everything beautifully done?” she pursued, as they entered
+the distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van
+Osburgh’s bridal spoils. “I always say no one does things better
+than cousin Grace! Did you ever taste anything more delicious than
+that MOUSSE of lobster with champagne sauce? I made up my mind
+weeks ago that I wouldn’t miss this wedding, and just fancy how
+delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence Selden heard I was
+coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving me to the
+station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him at
+Sherry’s. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
+myself!”
+
+Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
+cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time
+in such an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a
+vague pleasure.
+
+“Do you see him often?” she asked.
+
+“Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and
+then we do a play together; but lately I haven’t seen much of him.
+He doesn’t look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled. The dear
+fellow! I do wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so
+today, but he said he didn’t care for the really nice ones, and
+the other kind didn’t care for him—but that was just his joke, of
+course. He could never marry a girl who WASN’T nice. Oh, my dear,
+did you ever see such pearls?”
+
+They had paused before the table on which the bride’s jewels were
+displayed, and Lily’s heart gave an envious throb as she caught
+the refraction of light from their surfaces—the milky gleam of
+perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against
+contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into
+light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced
+and deepened by the varied art of their setting. The glow of the
+stones warmed Lily’s veins like wine. More completely than any
+other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she longed to
+lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and refinement in which
+every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and the whole form
+a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.
+
+“Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant—it’s as big as
+a dinner-plate! Who can have given it?” Miss Farish bent
+short-sightedly over the accompanying card. “MR. SIMON ROSEDALE.
+What, that horrid man? Oh, yes—I remember he’s a friend of Jack’s,
+and I suppose cousin Grace had to ask him here today; but she must
+rather hate having to let Gwen accept such a present from him.”
+
+Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh’s reluctance, but was
+aware of Miss Farish’s habit of ascribing her own delicacies of
+feeling to the persons least likely to be encumbered by them.
+
+“Well, if Gwen doesn’t care to be seen wearing it she can always
+exchange it for something else,” she remarked.
+
+“Ah, here is something so much prettier,” Miss Farish continued.
+“Do look at this exquisite white sapphire. I’m sure the person who
+chose it must have taken particular pains. What is the name? Percy
+Gryce? Ah, then I’m not surprised!” She smiled significantly as
+she replaced the card. “Of course you’ve heard that he’s perfectly
+devoted to Evie Van Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about
+it—it’s quite a romance! He met her first at the George Dorsets’,
+only about six weeks ago, and it’s just the nicest possible
+marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don’t mean the money—of course she
+has plenty of her own—but she’s such a quiet stay-at-home kind of
+girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so they are exactly
+suited to each other.”
+
+Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet
+bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively
+through her brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest,
+dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh,
+with unsurpassed astuteness, had “placed” one by one in enviable
+niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the shelter of
+a mother’s love—a mother who knows how to contrive opportunities
+without conceding favours, how to take advantage of propinquity
+without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The cleverest girl
+may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned, may yield
+too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it takes
+a mother’s unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
+safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.
+
+Lily’s passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of
+failure. Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy
+Gryce’s millions be joined to another great fortune, why should
+this clumsy girl be put in possession of powers she would never
+know how to use?
+
+She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her
+arm, and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of
+vexation: what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had
+wandered off to the next table, and they were alone.
+
+Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
+unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
+undisguised approval.
+
+“By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!” He had slipped insensibly
+into the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the
+right moment to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and
+women called each other by their Christian names; it was only
+on Trenor’s lips that the familiar address had an unpleasant
+significance.
+
+“Well,” he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance,
+“have you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean
+to duplicate at Tiffany’s tomorrow? I’ve got a cheque for you in my
+pocket that will go a long way in that line!”
+
+Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual,
+and the room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance
+assured her that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of
+pleasure replaced her apprehension.
+
+“Another dividend?” she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the
+desire not to be overheard.
+
+“Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I’ve pulled off four
+thou’ for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you’ll
+begin to think you’re a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you
+won’t think poor old Gus such an awful ass as some people do.”
+
+“I think you the kindest of friends; but I can’t thank you properly
+now.”
+
+She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
+hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone—and how
+glad she was that they were not! The news filled her with the
+glow produced by a sudden cessation of physical pain. The world
+was not so stupid and blundering after all: now and then a stroke
+of luck came to the unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began
+to rise: it was characteristic of her that one trifling piece of
+good fortune should give wings to all her hopes. Instantly came
+the reflection that Percy Gryce was not irretrievably lost; and
+she smiled to think of the excitement of recapturing him from
+Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton have against
+her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping to
+catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
+countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd
+with an air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment
+his presence was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of
+the room.
+
+Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily
+quickly transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of
+her gratitude seemed not to have brought the complete gratification
+she had meant it to give.
+
+“Hang thanking me—I don’t want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like
+the chance to say two words to you now and then,” he grumbled. “I
+thought you were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I’ve
+hardly laid eyes on you for the last month. Why can’t you come back
+to Bellomont this evening? We’re all alone, and Judy is as cross
+as two sticks. Do come and cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I’ll
+run you over in the motor, and you can telephone your maid to bring
+your traps from town by the next train.”
+
+Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. “I wish I
+could—but it’s quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and
+I must be with her for the next few days.”
+
+“Well, I’ve seen a good deal less of you since we’ve got to be such
+pals than I used to when you were Judy’s friend,” he continued with
+unconscious penetration.
+
+“When I was Judy’s friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you
+say the most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would
+tire of me much sooner than Judy—but come and see me at my aunt’s
+the next afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet
+talk, and you can tell me how I had better invest my fortune.”
+
+It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had
+absented herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other
+visits to pay; but she now began to feel that the reckoning she had
+thus contrived to evade had rolled up interest in the interval.
+
+The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing
+to Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he
+said: “Oh, I don’t know that I can promise you a fresh tip every
+day. But there’s one thing you might do for me; and that is, just
+to be a little civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to
+dine when we get to town, but I can’t induce her to have him at
+Bellomont, and if you would let me bring him up now it would make
+a lot of difference. I don’t believe two women have spoken to him
+this afternoon, and I can tell you he’s a chap it pays to be decent
+to.”
+
+Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words
+which seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an
+unexpectedly easy way of acquitting her debt; and had she not
+reasons of her own for wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?
+
+“Oh, bring him by all means,” she said smiling; “perhaps I can get
+a tip out of him on my own account.”
+
+Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with
+a look which made her change colour.
+
+“I say, you know—you’ll please remember he’s a blooming bounder,”
+he said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window
+near which they had been standing.
+
+The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for
+space and fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where
+only a few men were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while
+scattered couples strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted
+borders of the flower-garden.
+
+As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers,
+and she found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the
+pulses which his nearness always caused was increased by a slight
+sense of constraint. They had not met since their Sunday afternoon
+walk at Bellomont, and that episode was still so vivid to her
+that she could hardly believe him to be less conscious of it. But
+his greeting expressed no more than the satisfaction which every
+pretty woman expects to see reflected in masculine eyes; and the
+discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was reassuring to her
+nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor, and the vague
+apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant to rest
+a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
+Selden’s manner always conveyed.
+
+“This is luck,” he said smiling. “I was wondering if I should be
+able to have a word with you before the special snatches us away. I
+came with Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train,
+but I am sure she is still extracting sentimental solace from the
+wedding presents. She appears to regard their number and value as
+evidence of the disinterested affection of the contracting parties.”
+
+There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and
+as he spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and
+letting his eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace,
+she felt with a faint chill of regret that he had gone back without
+an effort to the footing on which they had stood before their last
+talk together. Her vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed
+smile. She longed to be to him something more than a piece of
+sentient prettiness, a passing diversion to his eye and brain; and
+the longing betrayed itself in her reply.
+
+“Ah,” she said, “I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing
+up with romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have
+never recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and
+unimportant my ambitions were.”
+
+The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity. It
+seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.
+
+“I thought, on the contrary,” he returned lightly, “that I had been
+the means of proving they were more important to you than anything
+else.”
+
+It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by
+a sudden obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at
+him helplessly, like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of
+hers, which he had the faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so
+little accustomed to go alone!
+
+The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did,
+a latent chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him
+to discover that his nearness made her more brilliant, but this
+glimpse of a twilight mood to which he alone had the clue seemed
+once more to set him in a world apart with her.
+
+“At least you can’t think worse things of me than you say!” she
+exclaimed with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the
+flow of comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the
+reappearance of Gus Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his
+wake.
+
+“Hang it, Lily, I thought you’d given me the slip: Rosedale and I
+have been hunting all over for you!”
+
+His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
+detected in Rosedale’s eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and
+the idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.
+
+She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more
+disdainful by the sense of Selden’s surprise that she should number
+Rosedale among her acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his
+companion continued to stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant,
+his lips parted in a smile at whatever she might be about to say,
+and his very back conscious of the privilege of being seen with her.
+
+It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps;
+but Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer
+of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt
+herself powerless to exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden’s
+suspecting that there was any need for her to propitiate such a man
+as Rosedale checked the trivial phrases of politeness. Rosedale
+still stood before her in an expectant attitude, and she continued
+to face him in silence, her glance just level with his polished
+baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her silence
+implied.
+
+He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered
+the plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his
+moustache; then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said,
+with a side-glance at Selden: “Upon my soul, I never saw a more
+ripping get-up. Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go
+to see at the Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don’t
+go to her too!”
+
+The words were projected sharply against Lily’s silence, and she
+saw in a flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In
+ordinary talk they might have passed unheeded; but following on
+her prolonged pause they acquired a special meaning. She felt,
+without looking, that Selden had immediately seized it, and would
+inevitably connect the allusion with her visit to himself. The
+consciousness increased her irritation against Rosedale, but also
+her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to propitiate him,
+hateful as it was to do so in Selden’s presence.
+
+“How do you know the other women don’t go to my dress-maker?”
+she returned. “You see I’m not afraid to give her address to my
+friends!”
+
+Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this
+privileged circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification,
+and a knowing smile drew up his moustache.
+
+“By Jove, you needn’t be!” he declared. “You could give ’em the
+whole outfit and win at a canter!”
+
+“Ah, that’s nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would
+carry me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or
+some innocent drink before we all have to rush for the train.”
+
+She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through
+the gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her
+throbbed with the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of
+the scene.
+
+But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the
+light surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted:
+she did not mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth
+about Percy Gryce. Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept
+them apart since his hasty withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss
+Bart was an expert in making the most of the unexpected, and the
+distasteful incidents of the last few minutes—the revelation to
+Selden of precisely that part of her life which she most wished
+him to ignore—increased her longing for shelter, for escape from
+such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation would be
+more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in an
+attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.
+
+Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of
+an audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal
+actors had left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily
+could discover neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh.
+That both should be missing struck her with foreboding; and she
+charmed Mr. Rosedale by proposing that they should make their
+way to the conservatories at the farther end of the house.
+There were just enough people left in the long suite of rooms
+to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of being
+followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced
+off as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion’s
+self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about
+being seen with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the
+object of her search. The latter, however, was not discoverable
+in the conservatories, and Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction
+of failure, was casting about for a way to rid herself of her
+now superfluous companion, when they came upon Mrs. Van Osburgh,
+flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the consciousness of duty
+performed.
+
+She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the
+tired hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots
+in a kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly
+fixed, and she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture.
+“My dear Lily, I haven’t had time for a word with you, and now I
+suppose you are just off. Have you seen Evie? She’s been looking
+everywhere for you: she wanted to tell you her little secret;
+but I daresay you have guessed it already. The engagement is not
+to be announced till next week—but you are such a friend of Mr.
+Gryce’s that they both wished you to be the first to know of their
+happiness.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+
+In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
+therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth
+Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator
+in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey
+of that deserted thoroughfare.
+
+The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston
+the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through”
+the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent
+exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths
+as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The topmost
+shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and
+coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage
+in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in penitential
+white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.
+
+It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered
+on the afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The
+journey back to town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves.
+Though Evie Van Osburgh’s engagement was still officially a secret,
+it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of the family
+were already possessed; and the trainful of returning guests buzzed
+with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her
+own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality
+of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which
+her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such
+complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing
+a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear herself in
+difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner between
+victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
+by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to
+feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and
+she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust.
+
+
+As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a
+physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She
+revolted from the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston’s black
+walnut, from the slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the
+mingled odour of sapolio and furniture-polish that met her at the
+door.
+
+The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she
+was arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds.
+Gathering up her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture;
+and as she did so she had the odd sensation of having already found
+herself in the same situation but in different surroundings. It
+seemed to her that she was again descending the staircase from
+Selden’s rooms; and looking down to remonstrate with the dispenser
+of the soapy flood, she found herself met by a lifted stare which
+had once before confronted her under similar circumstances. It was
+the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows,
+examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the same apparent
+reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss Bart
+was on her own ground.
+
+“Don’t you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail,” she
+said sharply.
+
+The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of
+excuse, she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth
+across the landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter
+swept by. It was insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such
+creatures about the house; and Lily entered her room resolved that
+the woman should be dismissed that evening.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to
+remonstrance: since early morning she had been shut up with her
+maid, going over her furs, a process which formed the culminating
+episode in the drama of household renovation. In the evening also
+Lily found herself alone, for her aunt, who rarely dined out, had
+responded to the summons of a Van Alstyne cousin who was passing
+through town. The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness
+and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from
+her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the
+newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though
+she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s
+existence.
+
+She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season
+of domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety
+of reasons had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among
+them was the fact that she had fewer invitations than usual for
+the autumn. She had so long been accustomed to pass from one
+country-house to another, till the close of the holidays brought
+her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of time confronting
+her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was as she
+had said to Selden—people were tired of her. They would welcome
+her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.
+She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.
+There were moments when she longed blindly for anything different,
+anything strange, remote and untried; but the utmost reach of
+her imagination did not go beyond picturing her usual life in a
+new setting. She could not figure herself as anywhere but in a
+drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower sheds perfume.
+
+Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative
+of returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even
+the desolating dulness of New York in October, and the soapy
+discomforts of Mrs. Peniston’s interior, seemed preferable to what
+might await her at Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion
+she announced her intention of remaining with her aunt till the
+holidays.
+
+Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as
+mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to
+her confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with
+her at such a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought
+competent to see to the hanging of her own curtains), she would
+certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was
+an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests,
+who “ran in” to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined out too
+continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read
+out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely admired the purple
+satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in the window, and
+the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one
+artistic excess of Mr. Peniston’s temperate career.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by
+her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually
+is by the person who performs them. She greatly preferred the
+brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a
+crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her
+susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-room should be
+“done over.” But when it came to hunting for missing napkins, or
+helping to decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting,
+Grace’s judgment was certainly sounder than Lily’s: not to mention
+the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
+soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean
+of itself, without extraneous assistance.
+
+Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room
+chandelier—Mrs. Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was
+“company”—Lily seemed to watch her own figure retreating down
+vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a middle-age like Grace
+Stepney’s. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends she
+would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston; whichever way she
+looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims of others,
+never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.
+
+A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty
+house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was
+as though all the weariness of the past months had culminated in
+the vacuity of that interminable evening. If only the ring meant a
+summons from the outer world—a token that she was still remembered
+and wanted!
+
+After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the
+announcement that there was a person outside who was asking to see
+Miss Bart; and on Lily’s pressing for a more specific description,
+she added:
+
+“It’s Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won’t say what she wants.”
+
+Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a
+woman in a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the
+hall-light. The glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her
+pock-marked face and the reddish baldness visible through thin
+strands of straw-coloured hair. Lily looked at the char-woman in
+surprise.
+
+“Do you wish to see me?” she asked.
+
+“I should like to say a word to you, Miss.” The tone was neither
+aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker’s
+errand. Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to
+withdraw beyond ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.
+
+She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and
+closed the door when they had entered.
+
+“What is it that you wish?” she enquired.
+
+The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms
+folded in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small
+parcel wrapped in dirty newspaper.
+
+“I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart.”
+She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her
+knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the
+intonation sounded like a threat.
+
+“You have found something belonging to me?” she asked, extending
+her hand.
+
+Mrs. Haffen drew back. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess it’s
+mine as much as anybody’s,” she returned.
+
+Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her
+visitor’s manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in
+certain directions, there was nothing in her experience to prepare
+her for the exact significance of the present scene. She felt,
+however, that it must be ended as promptly as possible.
+
+“I don’t understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked
+for me?”
+
+The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared
+to answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way
+back to make a beginning, and it was only after a pause that she
+replied: “My husband was janitor to the Benedick till the first of
+the month; since then he can’t get nothing to do.”
+
+Lily remained silent and she continued: “It wasn’t no fault of our
+own, neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for,
+and we was put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had
+a long sickness last winter, and an operation that ate up all we’d
+put by; and it’s hard for me and the children, Haffen being so long
+out of a job.”
+
+After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a
+place for her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady’s
+intervention with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always
+getting what she wanted that she was used to being appealed to as
+an intermediary, and, relieved of her vague apprehension, she took
+refuge in the conventional formula.
+
+“I am sorry you have been in trouble,” she said.
+
+“Oh, that we have, Miss, and it’s on’y just beginning. If on’y we’d
+’a got another situation—but the agent, he’s dead against us. It
+ain’t no fault of ours, neither, but——”
+
+At this point Lily’s impatience overcame her. “If you have anything
+to say to me——” she interposed.
+
+The woman’s resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging
+ideas.
+
+“Yes, Miss; I’m coming to that,” she said. She paused again,
+with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse
+narrative: “When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the
+gentlemen’s rooms; leastways, I swep’ ’em out on Saturdays. Some
+of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw
+the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets ’d be fairly brimming,
+and papers falling over on the floor. Maybe havin’ so many is how
+they get so careless. Some of ’em is worse than others. Mr. Selden,
+Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the carefullest: burnt
+his letters in winter, and tore ’em in little bits in summer. But
+sometimes he’d have so many he’d just bunch ’em together, the way
+the others did, and tear the lot through once—like this.”
+
+While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her
+hand, and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table
+between Miss Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn
+in two; but with a rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together
+and smoothed out the page.
+
+A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the
+presence of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured—the kind
+of vileness of which people whispered, but which she had never
+thought of as touching her own life. She drew back with a motion
+of disgust, but her withdrawal was checked by a sudden discovery:
+under the glare of Mrs. Peniston’s chandelier she had recognized
+the hand-writing of the letter. It was a large disjointed hand,
+with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly disguised
+its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
+pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily’s ear as though she had heard
+them spoken.
+
+At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
+understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha
+Dorset, and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was
+no date, but the blackness of the ink proved the writing to be
+comparatively recent. The packet in Mrs. Haffen’s hand doubtless
+contained more letters of the same kind—a dozen, Lily conjectured
+from its thickness. The letter before her was short, but its few
+words, which had leapt into her brain before she was conscious
+of reading them, told a long history—a history over which, for
+the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
+shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless “good
+situations” of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented
+itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface over which
+conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the first fissure
+turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that there is nothing
+society resents so much as having given its protection to those who
+have not known how to profit by it: it is for having betrayed its
+connivance that the body social punishes the offender who is found
+out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The code
+of Lily’s world decreed that a woman’s husband should be the only
+judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while
+she had the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference.
+But with a man of George Dorset’s temper there could be no thought
+of condonation—the possessor of his wife’s letters could overthrow
+with a touch the whole structure of her existence. And into what
+hands Bertha Dorset’s secret had been delivered! For a moment the
+irony of the coincidence tinged Lily’s disgust with a confused
+sense of triumph. But the disgust prevailed—all her instinctive
+resistances, of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples,
+rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of
+personal contamination.
+
+She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible
+between herself and her visitor. “I know nothing of these letters,”
+she said; “I have no idea why you have brought them here.”
+
+Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. “I’ll tell you why, Miss. I brought
+’em to you to sell, because I ain’t got no other way of raising
+money, and if we don’t pay our rent by tomorrow night we’ll be put
+out. I never done anythin’ of the kind before, and if you’d speak
+to Mr. Selden or to Mr. Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on
+again at the Benedick—I seen you talking to Mr. Rosedale on the
+steps that day you come out of Mr. Selden’s rooms——”
+
+The blood rushed to Lily’s forehead. She understood now—Mrs. Haffen
+supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap
+of her anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but
+an obscure impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden’s name
+had started a new train of thought. Bertha Dorset’s letters were
+nothing to her—they might go where the current of chance carried
+them! But Selden was inextricably involved in their fate. Men
+do not, at worst, suffer much from such exposure; and in this
+instance the flash of divination which had carried the meaning
+of the letters to Lily’s brain had revealed also that they were
+appeals—repeated and therefore probably unanswered—for the renewal
+of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact
+that the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands
+would convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world
+holds it least pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider
+where a man of Dorset’s ticklish balance was concerned.
+
+If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was
+aware only of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued,
+and that therefore she must obtain possession of them. Beyond
+that her mind did not travel. She had, indeed, a quick vision of
+returning the packet to Bertha Dorset, and of the opportunities the
+restitution offered; but this thought lit up abysses from which she
+shrank back ashamed.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had
+already opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All
+the letters had been pieced together with strips of thin paper.
+Some were in small fragments, the others merely torn in half.
+Though there were not many, thus spread out they nearly covered the
+table. Lily’s glance fell on a word here and there—then she said in
+a low voice: “What do you wish me to pay you?”
+
+Mrs. Haffen’s face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that
+the young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman
+to make the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than
+she had foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.
+
+But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
+expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price
+named, and after a moment’s hesitation, met it by a counter-offer
+of half the amount.
+
+Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
+outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to
+restore them to their wrapping.
+
+“I guess they’re worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor
+has got to live as well as the rich,” she observed sententiously.
+
+
+Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
+resistance.
+
+“You are mistaken,” she said indifferently. “I have offered all I
+am willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of
+getting them.”
+
+Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not
+to know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as
+its rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of
+revenge which a word of this commanding young lady’s might set in
+motion.
+
+She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured
+through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but
+that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business
+before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen
+had thought of was that the letters mustn’t go any farther.
+
+Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman
+the greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low
+tones. The idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to
+her, but she knew that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen
+would at once increase her original demand.
+
+She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or
+what was the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time
+recorded in minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat
+of her pulses, put her in possession of the letters; she knew only
+that the door had finally closed, and that she stood alone with the
+packet in her hand.
+
+She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs.
+Haffen’s dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did
+she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters
+had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his
+intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen
+whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how
+destroy them so effectually that there should be no second risk of
+their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy drawing-room grate
+shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the lamps, was never
+lit except when there was company.
+
+Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she
+heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the
+drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a
+colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was
+arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new
+and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly
+fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who
+wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not
+cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
+being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
+
+She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute
+scrutiny. “I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I
+drove up: it’s extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to
+draw them down evenly.”
+
+Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of
+the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair,
+never in it.
+
+Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. “My dear, you look tired;
+I suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne
+was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a
+minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their serving
+melons before the CONSOMME: a wedding breakfast should always begin
+with CONSOMME. Molly didn’t care for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She
+had it straight from Julia Melson that they cost three hundred
+dollars apiece at Celeste’s, but she says they didn’t look it. I’m
+glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink
+wouldn’t have suited you.” Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing
+the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
+part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and
+fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her
+interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she
+now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however,
+had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the
+entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van
+Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh
+Sevres had been used at the bride’s table: Mrs. Peniston, in short,
+found that she was of more service as a listener than as a narrator.
+
+“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the
+wedding, if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there.
+When I was a girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went
+to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I never
+threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle’s death,
+when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things about
+the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can tell
+to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne reminds me
+of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she notices. She was
+able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress was cut, and
+we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must have come
+from Paquin.”
+
+Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu
+clock surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the
+chimney-piece between two malachite vases, passed her lace
+handkerchief between the helmet and its visor.
+
+“I knew it—the parlour-maid never dusts there!” she exclaimed,
+triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
+reseating herself, she went on: “Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
+best-dressed woman at the wedding. I’ve no doubt her dress DID
+cost more than any one else’s, but I can’t quite like the idea—a
+combination of sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new
+man in Paris, who won’t take an order till his client has spent a
+day with him at his villa at Neuilly. He says he must study his
+subject’s home life—a most peculiar arrangement, I should say!
+But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it herself: she said the villa
+was full of the most exquisite things and she was really sorry to
+leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better; she was in
+tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
+Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
+influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in
+that silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry
+Fisher, and has been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying,
+Evie is really engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy
+Gryce, and managed it all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh
+heaven—she had almost despaired of marrying Evie.”
+
+Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed
+itself, not to the furniture, but to her niece.
+
+“Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you
+were to marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they
+had stopped with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite
+sure there was an engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left
+unexpectedly one morning, they all thought he had rushed to town
+for the ring.”
+
+Lily rose and moved toward the door.
+
+“I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed,” she said; and
+Mrs. Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel
+sustaining the late Mr. Peniston’s crayon-portrait was not exactly
+in line with the sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded
+brow to her kiss.
+
+In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the
+grate. It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at
+least she could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her
+aunt’s disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however,
+but dropping into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was
+large and comfortably-furnished—it was the envy and admiration of
+poor Grace Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light
+tints and luxurious appointments of the guest-rooms where so many
+weeks of Lily’s existence were spent, it seemed as dreary as a
+prison. The monumental wardrobe and bedstead of black walnut had
+migrated from Mr. Peniston’s bedroom, and the magenta “flock”
+wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early ’sixties, was hung with
+large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had tried to
+mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches, in
+the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
+surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck
+her as she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle
+elegance of the setting she had pictured for herself—an apartment
+which should surpass the complicated luxury of her friends’
+surroundings by the whole extent of that artistic sensibility
+which made her feel herself their superior; in which every tint
+and line should combine to enhance her beauty and give distinction
+to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical ugliness
+was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
+the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive
+angle.
+
+Her aunt’s words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
+vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding
+her up to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of
+their little group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than
+any other sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon
+which could flay its victims without the shedding of blood. Her
+cheek burned at the recollection, and she rose and caught up the
+letters. She no longer meant to destroy them: that intention had
+been effaced by the quick corrosion of Mrs. Peniston’s words.
+
+Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied
+and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a
+despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so,
+it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus
+Trenor for the means of buying them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+
+The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or
+two notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to
+Bellomont; but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to
+remain with her aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of
+her solitary existence with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement
+of spending her newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the
+days.
+
+All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in,
+and whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting
+aside a part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of
+the risks of the opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to
+feel that, for a few months at least, she would be independent of
+her friends’ bounty, that she could show herself abroad without
+wondering whether some penetrating eye would detect in her dress
+the traces of Judy Trenor’s refurbished splendour. The fact that
+the money freed her temporarily from all minor obligations obscured
+her sense of the greater one it represented, and having never
+before known what it was to command so large a sum, she lingered
+delectably over the amusement of spending it.
+
+It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she
+had spent an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most
+complicated elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered
+the same establishment with the modest object of having her watch
+repaired. Lily was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to
+defer the purchase of the dressing-case till she should receive
+the bill for her new opera cloak, and the resolve made her feel
+much richer than when she had entered the shop. In this mood of
+self-approval she had a sympathetic eye for others, and she was
+struck by her friend’s air of dejection.
+
+Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting
+of a struggling charity in which she was interested. The object
+of the association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a
+reading-room and other modest distractions, where young women of
+the class employed in downtown offices might find a home when
+out of work, or in need of rest, and the first year’s financial
+report showed so deplorably small a balance that Miss Farish, who
+was convinced of the urgency of the work, felt proportionately
+discouraged by the small amount of interest it aroused. The
+other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily, and
+she was often bored by the relation of her friend’s philanthropic
+efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the
+contrast between her own situation and that represented by some of
+Gerty’s “cases.” These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps
+pretty, some not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She
+pictured herself leading such a life as theirs—a life in which
+achievement seemed as squalid as failure—and the vision made her
+shudder sympathetically. The price of the dressing-case was still
+in her pocket; and drawing out her little gold purse she slipped a
+liberal fraction of the amount into Miss Farish’s hand.
+
+The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
+moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as
+a person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of
+doing good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing,
+but now her horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal
+philanthropy. Moreover, by some obscure process of logic, she felt
+that her momentary burst of generosity had justified all previous
+extravagances, and excused any in which she might subsequently
+indulge. Miss Farish’s surprise and gratitude confirmed this
+feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense of self-esteem which
+she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.
+
+About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend
+the Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation
+was one which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready
+response, for the party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was
+ostensibly given by a lady of obscure origin and indomitable social
+ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily had hitherto avoided. Now,
+however, she was disposed to coincide with Mrs. Fisher’s view, that
+it didn’t matter who gave the party, as long as things were well
+done; and doing things well (under competent direction) was Mrs.
+Wellington Bry’s strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
+as “Welly” Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had
+already sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to
+her determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry
+Fisher, she was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing
+herself entirely to that lady’s guidance. Everything, accordingly,
+was well done, for there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher’s prodigality
+when she was not spending her own money, and as she remarked to her
+pupil, a good cook was the best introduction to society. If the
+company was not as select as the CUISINE, the Welly Brys at least
+had the satisfaction of figuring for the first time in the society
+columns in company with one or two noticeable names; and foremost
+among these was of course Miss Bart’s. The young lady was treated
+by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the mood
+when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
+Bry’s admiration was a mirror in which Lily’s self-complacency
+recovered its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads
+as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity;
+and the sense of being of importance among the insignificant was
+enough to restore to Miss Bart the gratifying consciousness of
+power. If these people paid court to her it proved that she was
+still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired; and she was
+not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her fineness, in
+developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.
+
+Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware
+from the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp
+cold and hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the
+influences of the winter woods. She returned to town in a glow
+of rejuvenation, conscious of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a
+fresh elasticity in her muscles. The future seemed full of a vague
+promise, and all her apprehensions were swept out of sight on the
+buoyant current of her mood.
+
+A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise
+of a visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential
+hour when the tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly
+expectancy; and his manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to
+the intimacy of the occasion.
+
+Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her
+lucky speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but
+there was something in the quality of his geniality which chilled
+her own, and she was conscious of marking each step in their
+acquaintance by a fresh blunder.
+
+Mr. Rosedale—making himself promptly at home in an adjoining
+easy-chair, and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: “You
+ought to go to my man for something really good”—appeared totally
+unconscious of the repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness
+behind the urn. It was perhaps her very manner of holding herself
+aloof that appealed to his collector’s passion for the rare and
+unattainable. He gave, at any rate, no sign of resenting it and
+seemed prepared to supply in his own manner all the ease that was
+lacking in hers.
+
+His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box
+on the opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively:
+“Mrs. Fisher is coming, and I’ve secured a tremendous admirer of
+yours, who’ll never forgive me if you don’t accept.”
+
+As Lily’s silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he
+added with a confidential smile: “Gus Trenor has promised to come
+to town on purpose. I fancy he’d go a good deal farther for the
+pleasure of seeing you.”
+
+Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful
+enough to hear her name coupled with Trenor’s, and on Rosedale’s
+lips the allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.
+
+“The Trenors are my best friends—I think we should all go a
+long way to see each other,” she said, absorbing herself in the
+preparation of fresh tea.
+
+Her visitor’s smile grew increasingly intimate. “Well, I wasn’t
+thinking of Mrs. Trenor at the moment—they say Gus doesn’t always,
+you know.” Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right
+note, he added, with a well-meant effort at diversion: “How’s your
+luck been going in Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a
+nice little pile for you last month.”
+
+Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that
+her hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady
+them; but her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid
+the tremor might communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke,
+however, it was in a tone of perfect lightness.
+
+“Ah, yes—I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor,
+who helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks
+instead of a mortgage, as my aunt’s agent wanted me to do; and as
+it happened, I made a lucky ‘turn’—is that what you call it? For
+you make a great many yourself, I believe.”
+
+She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her
+attitude, and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance
+and manner, a step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct
+always nerved her to successful dissimulation, and it was not the
+first time she had used her beauty to divert attention from an
+inconvenient topic.
+
+When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
+acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having
+comported himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He
+had always believed he had a light touch and a knowing way with
+women, and the prompt manner in which Miss Bart (as he would have
+phrased it) had “come into line,” confirmed his confidence in his
+powers of handling this skittish sex. Her way of glossing over the
+transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a tribute to his
+own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The girl was
+evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
+advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage
+of her nervousness.
+
+He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible
+that Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With
+all his faults, Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions,
+and was the less likely to overstep them because they were so
+purely instinctive. But Lily recalled with a pang that there
+were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided to her, Gus
+“talked foolishly”: in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word had
+slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
+shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually
+adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made
+the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits
+are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them
+quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs
+irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist
+may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable
+of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the
+accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr. Rosedale’s
+drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him with
+Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
+flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would
+suffice to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt
+of the expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening
+night of the opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised
+to take him up that winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of
+being first in the field.
+
+For a day or two after Rosedale’s visit, Lily’s thoughts were
+dogged by the consciousness of Trenor’s shadowy claim, and she
+wished she had a clearer notion of the exact nature of the
+transaction which seemed to have put her in his power; but her mind
+shrank from any unusual application, and she was always helplessly
+puzzled by figures. Moreover she had not seen Trenor since the day
+of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in his continued absence the trace
+of Rosedale’s words was soon effaced by other impressions.
+
+When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
+completely vanished that the sight of Trenor’s ruddy countenance in
+the back of Mr. Rosedale’s box filled her with a sense of pleasant
+reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity
+of appearing as Rosedale’s guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and
+it was a relief to find herself supported by any one of her own
+set—for Mrs. Fisher’s social habits were too promiscuous for her
+presence to justify Miss Bart’s.
+
+To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty
+in public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of
+dress, the insistency of Trenor’s gaze merged itself in the general
+stream of admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah,
+it was good to be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of
+slenderness, strength and elasticity, of well-poised lines and
+happy tints, to feel one’s self lifted to a height apart by that
+incommunicable grace which is the bodily counterpart of genius!
+
+All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a
+happy shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss
+Bart, the cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness
+of the effect. But brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by
+their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the modest satellite
+drowned in their light is still performing its own revolutions
+and generating heat at its own rate. If Lily’s poetic enjoyment
+of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought that her gown
+and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor, the
+latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight
+of these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily
+look smarter in her life, that there wasn’t a woman in the house
+who showed off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to
+whom she owed the opportunity of making this display, had reaped no
+return beyond that of gazing at her in company with several hundred
+other pairs of eyes.
+
+It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in
+the back of the box, where they found themselves alone between
+two acts, Trenor said, without preamble, and in a tone of sulky
+authority: “Look here, Lily, how is a fellow ever to see anything
+of you? I’m in town three or four days in the week, and you know
+a line to the club will always find me, but you don’t seem to
+remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip out of
+me.”
+
+The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make
+it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not
+the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised
+lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled incipient signs
+of familiarity.
+
+“I’m very much flattered by your wanting to see me,” she returned,
+essaying lightness instead, “but, unless you have mislaid my
+address, it would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my
+aunt’s—in fact, I rather expected you to look me up there.”
+
+If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt
+was a failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of
+the brows that made him look his dullest when he was angry: “Hang
+going to your aunt’s, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot
+of other chaps talking to you! You know I’m not the kind to sit
+in a crowd and jaw—I’d always rather clear out when that sort of
+circus is going on. But why can’t we go off somewhere on a little
+lark together—a nice quiet little expedition like that drive at
+Bellomont, the day you met me at the station?”
+
+He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion,
+and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the
+dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.
+
+The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
+tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh:
+“I don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but
+I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will
+let me know what afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so
+that we can have a nice quiet talk.”
+
+“Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose
+expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van
+Osburgh wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve
+got what you wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow
+about.”
+
+His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed
+with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a
+persuasive hand on his arm.
+
+“Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that
+ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we
+take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s
+amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I’ll meet you there,
+and we’ll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me out on
+the lake in the steam-gondola.”
+
+She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that
+took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to
+her will.
+
+“All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow
+at three o’clock, at the end of the Mall. I’ll be there sharp,
+remember; you won’t go back on me, Lily?”
+
+But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut
+short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
+
+Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile
+on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit
+at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that
+he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He
+was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily:
+his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded
+against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was
+concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as
+she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a
+dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to
+make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him
+at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
+kindness.
+
+“Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,”
+he began complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this
+year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the
+singers haven’t got new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me
+through a course of this every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian
+nights—then she comes late, and there’s time to digest. But when
+they give Wagner we have to rush dinner, and I pay up for it. And
+the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in front and pleurisy in the
+back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without drawing the curtain!
+With a hide like that draughts don’t make any difference. Did you
+ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why he’s alive; I
+suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my wife
+wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s
+sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones,
+I mean; that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t
+worse than the music. Some of ’em have long hair, and they start
+an argument with the soup, and don’t notice when things are handed
+to them. The consequence is the dinner gets cold, and I have
+dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton brings them to the house—he
+writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he are getting tremendously
+thick. She could write better than any of ’em if she chose, and I
+don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I say is:
+‘Don’t let me see ’em eat!’”
+
+The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill
+of pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been
+nothing surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since
+the Bellomont episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women
+apart. Now, with a start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst
+for retaliation had died out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY,
+says the Malay proverb, FIRST INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was
+experiencing the truth of the apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs.
+Dorset’s letters, she might have continued to hate her; but the
+fact that they remained in her possession had fed her resentment to
+satiety.
+
+She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie
+an escape from Trenor’s importunities.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+
+Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning.
+Fifth Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging
+upward to the fashionable quarters about the Park, where
+illuminated windows and outspread awnings betokened the usual
+routine of hospitality. Other tributary currents crossed the
+mainstream, bearing their freight to the theatres, restaurants or
+opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded watch-tower of her
+upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the chronic volume
+of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward a Van
+Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
+that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry’s.
+
+Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season
+as keenly as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and,
+as a looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and
+generalization such as those who take part must proverbially
+forego. No one could have kept a more accurate record of
+social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring finger on
+the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
+extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a
+special memory for the vicissitudes of the “new people” who rose
+to the surface with each recurring tide, and were either submerged
+beneath its rush or landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious
+breakers; and she was apt to display a remarkable retrospective
+insight into their ultimate fate, so that, when they had fulfilled
+their destiny, she was almost always able to say to Grace
+Stepney—the recipient of her prophecies—that she had known exactly
+what would happen.
+
+This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as
+that in which everybody “felt poor” except the Welly Brys and Mr.
+Simon Rosedale. It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where
+prices fell in accordance with that peculiar law which proves
+railway stocks and bales of cotton to be more sensitive to the
+allotment of executive power than many estimable citizens trained
+to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes supposed to
+be independent of the market either betrayed a secret dependence on
+it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion sulked in its
+country houses, or came to town incognito, general entertainments
+were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners became the
+fashion.
+
+But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon
+wearied of the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother
+in the shape of any magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken
+pumpkin back again into the golden coach. The mere fact of growing
+richer at a time when most people’s investments are shrinking, is
+calculated to attract envious attention; and according to Wall
+Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale had found the secret of
+performing this miracle.
+
+Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and
+there was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the
+victims of the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had
+made the same number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue,
+filled a picture gallery with old masters, entertained all New
+York in it, and been smuggled out of the country between a trained
+nurse and a doctor, while his creditors mounted guard over the old
+masters, and his guests explained to each other that they had dined
+with him only because they wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale
+meant to have a less meteoric career. He knew he should have to
+go slowly, and the instincts of his race fitted him to suffer
+rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was prompt to perceive
+that the general dulness of the season afforded him an unusual
+opportunity to shine, and he set about with patient industry to
+form a background for his growing glory. Mrs. Fisher was of immense
+service to him at this period. She had set off so many newcomers
+on the social stage that she was like one of those pieces of stock
+scenery which tell the experienced spectator exactly what is going
+to take place. But Mr. Rosedale wanted, in the long run, a more
+individual environment. He was sensitive to shades of difference
+which Miss Bart would never have credited him with perceiving,
+because he had no corresponding variations of manner; and it
+was becoming more and more clear to him that Miss Bart herself
+possessed precisely the complementary qualities needed to round off
+his social personality.
+
+Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston’s
+vision. Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to
+overlook the MINUTIAE of the foreground, and she was much more
+likely to know where Carry Fisher had found the Welly Brys’ CHEF
+for them, than what was happening to her own niece. She was not,
+however, without purveyors of information ready to supplement
+her deficiencies. Grace Stepney’s mind was like a kind of moral
+fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn by a
+fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
+inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how many
+trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney’s
+head. She was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people,
+but she assumed that there is only one form of dinginess, and
+that admiration for brilliancy is the natural expression of its
+inferior state. She knew that Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and
+therefore supposed that she inspired the same sentiments in Grace
+Stepney, whom she classified as a Gerty Farish without the saving
+traits of youth and enthusiasm.
+
+In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they
+differed from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss
+Farish’s heart was a fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney’s
+a precise register of facts as manifested in their relation to
+herself. She had sensibilities which, to Lily, would have seemed
+comic in a person with a freckled nose and red eyelids, who lived
+in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room; but
+poor Grace’s limitations gave them a more concentrated inner life,
+as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser efflorescence.
+She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did not
+dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant,
+but because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less
+mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and
+vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of
+unfriendliness. Even such scant civilities as Lily accorded to Mr.
+Rosedale would have made Miss Stepney her friend for life; but how
+could she foresee that such a friend was worth cultivating? How,
+moreover, can a young woman who has never been ignored measure
+the pang which this injury inflicts? And, lastly, how could Lily,
+accustomed to choose between a pressure of engagements, guess
+that she had mortally offended Miss Stepney by causing her to be
+excluded from one of Mrs. Peniston’s infrequent dinner-parties?
+
+Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense
+of family obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys’ return from their
+honeymoon she felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room
+lamps and extract her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults.
+Mrs. Peniston’s rare entertainments were preceded by days of
+heart-rending vacillation as to every detail of the feast, from
+the seating of the guests to the pattern of the table-cloth, and
+in the course of one of these preliminary discussions she had
+imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as the dinner was a
+family affair, she might be included in it. For a week the prospect
+had lighted up Miss Stepney’s colourless existence; then she had
+been given to understand that it would be more convenient to have
+her another day. Miss Stepney knew exactly what had happened.
+Lily, to whom family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness,
+had persuaded her aunt that a dinner of “smart” people would be
+much more to the taste of the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston,
+who leaned helplessly on her niece in social matters, had been
+prevailed upon to pronounce Grace’s exile. After all, Grace could
+come any other day; why should she mind being put off?
+
+It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other day—and
+because she knew her relations were in the secret of her unoccupied
+evenings—that this incident loomed gigantically on her horizon. She
+was aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and dull resentment
+was turned to active animosity.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the
+dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her
+oblique survey of Fifth Avenue.
+
+“Gus Trenor?—Lily and Gus Trenor?” she said, growing so suddenly
+pale that her visitor was almost alarmed.
+
+“Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don’t mean....”
+
+“I don’t know what you DO mean,” said Mrs. Peniston, with a
+frightened quiver in her small fretful voice. “Such things were
+never heard of in my day. And my own niece! I’m not sure I
+understand you. Do people say he’s in love with her?”
+
+Mrs. Peniston’s horror was genuine. Though she boasted an
+unequalled familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she
+had the innocence of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a
+part of “history,” and to whom it never occurs that the scandals
+she reads of in lesson-hours may be repeating themselves in the
+next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her imagination shrouded, like
+the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of course, that society was
+“very much changed,” and that many women her mother would have
+thought “peculiar” were now in a position to be critical about
+their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils of divorce with
+her rector, and had felt thankful at times that Lily was still
+unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could attach to a young
+girl’s name, above all that it could be lightly coupled with that
+of a married man, was so new to her that she was as much aghast as
+if she had been accused of leaving her carpets down all summer, or
+of violating any of the other cardinal laws of house-keeping.
+
+Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel
+the superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was
+really pitiable to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston!
+She smiled at the latter’s question. “People always say unpleasant
+things—and certainly they’re a great deal together. A friend of
+mine met them the other afternoon in the Park—quite late, after the
+lamps were lit. It’s a pity Lily makes herself so conspicuous.”
+
+“CONSPICUOUS!” gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her
+voice to mitigate the horror. “What sort of things do they say?
+That he means to get a divorce and marry her?”
+
+Grace Stepney laughed outright. “Dear me, no! He would hardly do
+that. It—it’s a flirtation—nothing more.”
+
+“A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to
+tell me that, with Lily’s looks and advantages, she could find no
+better use for her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost
+old enough to be her father?” This argument had such a convincing
+ring that it gave Mrs. Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up
+her work, while she waited for Grace Stepney to rally her scattered
+forces.
+
+But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. “That’s the worst
+of it—people say she isn’t wasting her time! Every one knows, as
+you say, that Lily is too handsome and—and charming—to devote
+herself to a man like Gus Trenor unless—”
+
+“Unless?” echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath nervously.
+It was agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to
+the verge of anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar
+with the classic drama to have recalled in advance how bearers
+of bad tidings are proverbially received, but she now had a
+rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a reduced wardrobe as the
+possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To the honour of
+her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more personal
+considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to boast
+of her niece’s charms.
+
+“Unless,” said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned
+emphasis, “unless there are material advantages to be gained by
+making herself agreeable to him.”
+
+She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly
+that Mrs. Peniston’s black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would
+have been hers at the end of the season.
+
+Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same
+idea had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath
+her dignity to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who
+wore her old clothes.
+
+“If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,”
+she said coldly, “you might at least have chosen a more suitable
+time than just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large
+dinner.”
+
+The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney’s last scruples.
+“I don’t know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling
+you about Lily. I was sure I shouldn’t get any thanks for it,” she
+returned with a flare of temper. “But I have some family feeling
+left, and as you are the only person who has any authority over
+Lily, I thought you ought to know what is being said of her.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Peniston, “what I complain of is that you haven’t
+told me yet what IS being said.”
+
+“I didn’t suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say
+that Gus Trenor pays her bills.”
+
+“Pays her bills—her bills?” Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. “I
+can’t imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has
+her own income—and I provide for her very handsomely—”
+
+“Oh, we all know that,” interposed Miss Stepney drily. “But Lily
+wears a great many smart gowns—”
+
+“I like her to be well-dressed—it’s only suitable!”
+
+“Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides.”
+
+Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this
+point; but Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She
+was like the stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must be
+annihilated to be convinced.
+
+“Gambling debts? Lily?” Mrs. Peniston’s voice shook with anger and
+bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of
+her mind. “What do you mean by her gambling debts?”
+
+“Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily’s set one is
+liable to lose a great deal—and I don’t suppose Lily always wins.”
+
+“Who told you that my niece played cards for money?”
+
+“Mercy, cousin Julia, don’t look at me as if I were trying to turn
+you against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs.
+Gryce told me herself that it was her gambling that frightened
+Percy Gryce—it seems he was really taken with her at first. But,
+of course, among Lily’s friends it’s quite the custom for girls to
+play for money. In fact, people are inclined to excuse her on that
+account——”
+
+“To excuse her for what?”
+
+“For being hard up—and accepting attentions from men like Gus
+Trenor—and George Dorset——”
+
+Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. “George Dorset? Is there any one
+else? I should like to know the worst, if you please.”
+
+“Don’t put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a
+good deal with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her—but of
+course that’s only natural. And I’m sure there is no truth in the
+horrid things people say; but she HAS been spending a great deal
+of money this winter. Evie Van Osburgh was at Celeste’s ordering
+her trousseau the other day—yes, the marriage takes place next
+month—and she told me that Celeste showed her the most exquisite
+things she was just sending home to Lily. And people say that Judy
+Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I’m sure I’m
+sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness.”
+
+Mrs. Peniston’s genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss
+Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady’s prospect of
+succeeding to the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason
+have generally some crack through which suspicion filters, and
+her visitor’s insinuations did not glide off as easily as she had
+expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked scenes, and her determination
+to avoid them had always led her to hold herself aloof from the
+details of Lily’s life. In her youth, girls had not been supposed
+to require close supervision. They were generally assumed to be
+taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and marriage,
+and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural
+guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator’s suddenly
+joining in a game. There had of course been “fast” girls even in
+Mrs. Peniston’s early experience; but their fastness, at worst, was
+understood to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which
+there could be no graver charge than that of being “unladylike.”
+The modern fastness appeared synonymous with immorality, and the
+mere idea of immorality was as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a
+smell of cooking in the drawing-room: it was one of the conceptions
+her mind refused to admit.
+
+She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she
+had heard, or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of
+discreet interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and
+a scene, in the shaken state of Mrs. Peniston’s nerves, with the
+effects of her dinner not worn off, and her mind still tremulous
+with new impressions, was a risk she deemed it her duty to avoid.
+But there remained in her thoughts a settled deposit of resentment
+against her niece, all the denser because it was not to be cleared
+by explanation or discussion. It was horrible of a young girl to
+let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against
+her, she must be to blame for their having been made. Mrs. Peniston
+felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the house, and
+she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated furniture.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+
+Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her
+critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but
+she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning
+to another, without ever perceiving the right road till it was too
+late to take it.
+
+Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not
+imagined that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money
+for her would ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact
+in itself still seemed harmless enough; only it was a fertile
+source of harmful complications. As she exhausted the amusement
+of spending the money these complications became more pressing,
+and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in tracing the
+causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the thought
+that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
+This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of
+friendliness between the two women. Lily’s visit to the Dorsets had
+resulted, for both, in the discovery that they could be of use to
+each other; and the civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in
+making use of its antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset
+was, in fact, engaged in a new sentimental experiment, of which
+Mrs. Fisher’s late property, Ned Silverton, was the rosy victim;
+and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had once remarked, she felt a
+peculiar need of distracting her husband’s attention. Dorset was
+as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his self-engrossment
+was not proof against Lily’s arts, or rather these were especially
+adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy Gryce
+stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset’s humours, and if
+the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her
+situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.
+
+Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such
+difficulties on the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy
+Trenor’s lavish impulses, and Dorset’s admiration was not likely to
+express itself in financial “tips,” even had Lily cared to renew
+her experiences in that line. What she required, for the moment,
+of the Dorsets’ friendship, was simply its social sanction. She
+knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but this fact did
+not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set such
+gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a
+married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her
+opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk
+in the Park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and
+since his marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the
+form of the sentimental small-talk which doubles upon itself like
+the paths in a maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to
+find himself always led back to the same starting-point, and Lily
+felt that she was gradually losing control of the situation. Trenor
+was in truth in an unmanageable mood. In spite of his understanding
+with Rosedale he had been somewhat heavily “touched” by the fall in
+stocks; his household expenses weighed on him, and he seemed to be
+meeting, on all sides, a sullen opposition to his wishes, instead
+of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open,
+and descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but
+preferring the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the
+restrictions of a dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged
+Lily to return to Bellomont, and the first time they met in town
+Lily fancied there was a shade of coldness in her manner. Was it
+merely the expression of her displeasure at Miss Bart’s neglect,
+or had disquieting rumours reached her? The latter contingency
+seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a sense of uneasiness.
+If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere, it was in
+her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity
+of her friend’s affection, though it sometimes showed itself in
+self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from
+any risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly
+conscious of the way in which such an estrangement would react on
+herself. The fact that Gus Trenor was Judy’s husband was at times
+Lily’s strongest reason for disliking him, and for resenting the
+obligation under which he had placed her. To set her doubts at
+rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New Year, “proposed” herself for a
+week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in advance that the presence
+of a large party would protect her from too great assiduity on
+Trenor’s part, and his wife’s telegraphic “come by all means”
+seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.
+
+Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always
+prevailed over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in
+her hostess’s manner. Nevertheless, she was soon aware that
+the experiment of coming to Bellomont was destined not to be
+successful. The party was made up of what Mrs. Trenor called “poky
+people”—her generic name for persons who did not play bridge—and,
+it being her habit to group all such obstructionists in one
+class, she usually invited them together, regardless of their
+other characteristics. The result was apt to be an irreducible
+combination of persons having no other quality in common than their
+abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group
+lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in
+this case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed
+boredom of their host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would
+usually have turned to Lily to fuse the discordant elements;
+and Miss Bart, assuming that such a service was expected of
+her, threw herself into it with her accustomed zeal. But at the
+outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts. If Mrs.
+Trenor’s manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a
+faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic
+allusion to “your friends the Wellington Brys,” or to “the little
+Jew who has bought the Greiner house—some one told us you knew him,
+Miss Bart,”—showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion
+of society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has
+assumed the right to decide what forms that amusement shall take.
+The indication was a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have
+smiled at it, trusting to the charm of her personality to dispel
+any prejudice against her. But now she had grown more sensitive
+to criticism and less confident in her power of disarming it.
+She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont permitted
+themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
+they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind
+her back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor’s manner should
+seem to justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for
+avoiding him, and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in
+every purpose which had taken her there.
+
+In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had
+the happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly Brys,
+after much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly-acquired
+friends, had decided on the bold move of giving a general
+entertainment. To attack society collectively, when one’s means of
+approach are limited to a few acquaintances, is like advancing into
+a strange country with an insufficient number of scouts; but such
+rash tactics have sometimes led to brilliant victories, and the
+Brys had determined to put their fate to the touch. Mrs. Fisher, to
+whom they had entrusted the conduct of the affair, had decided that
+TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music were the two baits most likely
+to attract the desired prey, and after prolonged negotiations,
+and the kind of wire-pulling in which she was known to excel, she
+had induced a dozen fashionable women to exhibit themselves in a
+series of pictures which, by a farther miracle of persuasion, the
+distinguished portrait painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed
+upon to organize.
+
+Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth’s guidance
+her vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than
+dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal
+of draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights
+and shadows. Her dramatic instinct was roused by the choice of
+subjects, and the gorgeous reproductions of historic dress stirred
+an imagination which only visual impressions could reach. But
+keenest of all was the exhilaration of displaying her own beauty
+under a new aspect: of showing that her loveliness was no mere
+fixed quality, but an element shaping all emotions to fresh forms
+of grace.
+
+Mrs. Fisher’s measures had been well-taken, and society, surprised
+in a dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs. Bry’s
+hospitality. The protesting minority were forgotten in the throng
+which abjured and came; and the audience was almost as brilliant as
+the show.
+
+Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
+inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom
+that a man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long
+since learned that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small
+group of the like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and
+was not insensible to the part money plays in their production: all
+he asked was that the very rich should live up to their calling
+as stage-managers, and not spend their money in a dull way. This
+the Brys could certainly not be charged with doing. Their recently
+built house, whatever it might lack as a frame for domesticity,
+was almost as well-designed for the display of a festal assemblage
+as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian architects
+improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of
+improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so
+rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch
+the marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat
+one’s self in one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it
+was not painted against the wall.
+
+Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself,
+from an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank
+enjoyment. The company, in obedience to the decorative instinct
+which calls for fine clothes in fine surroundings, had dressed
+rather with an eye to Mrs. Bry’s background than to herself. The
+seated throng, filling the immense room without undue crowding,
+presented a surface of rich tissues and jewelled shoulders in
+harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and the flushed
+splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of the room
+a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch curtained
+with folds of old damask; but in the pause before the parting of
+the folds there was little thought of what they might reveal, for
+every woman who had accepted Mrs. Bry’s invitation was engaged in
+trying to find out how many of her friends had done the same.
+
+Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that
+indiscriminate and uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss
+Bart’s finer perceptions. It may be that Selden’s nearness had
+something to do with the quality of his cousin’s pleasure; but Miss
+Farish was so little accustomed to refer her enjoyment of such
+scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely conscious of a
+deeper sense of contentment.
+
+“Wasn’t it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course it would
+never have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list, and I
+should have been so sorry to miss seeing it all—and especially
+Lily herself. Some one told me the ceiling was by Veronese—you
+would know, of course, Lawrence. I suppose it’s very beautiful,
+but his women are so dreadfully fat. Goddesses? Well, I can only
+say that if they’d been mortals and had to wear corsets, it would
+have been better for them. I think our women are much handsomer.
+And this room is wonderfully becoming—every one looks so well! Did
+you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George Dorset’s pearls—I
+suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent of our Girls’ Club
+for a year. Not that I ought to complain about the club; every
+one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you that Lily had
+given us three hundred dollars? Wasn’t it splendid of her? And
+then she collected a lot of money from her friends—Mrs. Bry gave
+us five hundred, and Mr. Rosedale a thousand. I wish Lily were not
+so nice to Mr. Rosedale, but she says it’s no use being rude to
+him, because he doesn’t see the difference. She really can’t bear
+to hurt people’s feelings—it makes me so angry when I hear her
+called cold and conceited! The girls at the club don’t call her
+that. Do you know she has been there with me twice?—yes, Lily! And
+you should have seen their eyes! One of them said it was as good
+as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat there,
+and laughed and talked with them—not a bit as if she were being
+CHARITABLE, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did.
+They’ve been asking ever since when she’s coming back; and she’s
+promised me——oh!”
+
+Miss Farish’s confidences were cut short by the parting of the
+curtain on the first TABLEAU—a group of nymphs dancing across
+flower-strewn sward in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli’s
+Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend for their effect not only on the
+happy disposal of lights and the delusive interposition of layers
+of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision.
+To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement
+of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive
+fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between
+fact and imagination. Selden’s mind was of this order: he could
+yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
+spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry’s TABLEAUX wanted none of the
+qualities which go to the producing of such illusions, and under
+Morpeth’s organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other with
+the rhythmic march of some splendid frieze, in which the fugitive
+curves of living flesh and the wandering light of young eyes have
+been subdued to plastic harmony without losing the charm of life.
+
+The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had
+been cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No
+one, for instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry
+Fisher, with her short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of
+her eyes, the provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant
+Miss Smedden from Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous
+curves of Titian’s Daughter, lifting her gold salver laden with
+grapes above the harmonizing gold of rippled hair and rich brocade,
+and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed the frailer Dutch type,
+with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes and lashes, made
+a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a curtained
+archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar of
+Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and
+marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians,
+lounging by a fountain in a sunlit glade.
+
+Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in
+Selden, leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even Gerty
+Farish’s running commentary—“Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson looks!”
+or: “That must be Kate Corby, to the right there, in purple”—did
+not break the spell of the illusion. Indeed, so skilfully had the
+personality of the actors been subdued to the scenes they figured
+in that even the least imaginative of the audience must have felt
+a thrill of contrast when the curtain suddenly parted on a picture
+which was simply and undisguisedly the portrait of Miss Bart.
+
+Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of
+personality—the unanimous “Oh!” of the spectators was a tribute,
+not to the brush-work of Reynolds’s “Mrs. Lloyd” but to the flesh
+and blood loveliness of Lily Bart. She had shown her artistic
+intelligence in selecting a type so like her own that she could
+embody the person represented without ceasing to be herself. It
+was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into, Reynolds’s
+canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams
+of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a splendid
+setting—she had thought for a moment of representing Tiepolo’s
+Cleopatra—had yielded to the truer instinct of trusting to her
+unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a picture without
+distracting accessories of dress or surroundings. Her pale
+draperies, and the background of foliage against which she stood,
+served only to relieve the long dryad-like curves that swept upward
+from her poised foot to her lifted arm. The noble buoyancy of her
+attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of
+poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet
+lost the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now
+so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the
+real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her little world,
+and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of which
+her beauty was a part.
+
+“Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there
+isn’t a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to
+know it!”
+
+These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned
+Van Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden’s
+shoulder whenever the parting of the curtains presented any
+exceptional opportunity for the study of the female outline,
+affected their hearer in an unexpected way. It was not the first
+time that Selden had heard Lily’s beauty lightly remarked on, and
+hitherto the tone of the comments had imperceptibly coloured his
+view of her. But now it woke only a motion of indignant contempt.
+This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by which
+she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban for a judgment
+on Miranda?
+
+In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel
+the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus
+detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out
+suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once
+met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing to be
+with her again.
+
+He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. “Wasn’t she too
+beautiful, Lawrence? Don’t you like her best in that simple dress?
+It makes her look like the real Lily—the Lily I know.”
+
+He met Gerty Farish’s brimming gaze. “The Lily we know,” he
+corrected; and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding,
+exclaimed joyfully: “I’ll tell her that! She always says you
+dislike her.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The performance over, Selden’s first impulse was to seek
+Miss Bart. During the interlude of music which succeeded the
+TABLEAUX, the actors had seated themselves here and there in the
+audience, diversifying its conventional appearance by the varied
+picturesqueness of their dress. Lily, however, was not among them,
+and her absence served to protract the effect she had produced
+on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see her too soon in
+the surroundings from which accident had so happily detached her.
+They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and on
+his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however,
+he knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her
+side; and though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither
+it would, without making an immediate effort to reach her, his
+procrastination was not due to any lingering resistance, but to the
+desire to luxuriate a moment in the sense of complete surrender.
+
+Lily had not an instant’s doubt as to the meaning of the murmur
+greeting her appearance. No other tableau had been received with
+that precise note of approval: it had obviously been called forth
+by herself, and not by the picture she impersonated. She had feared
+at the last moment that she was risking too much in dispensing with
+the advantages of a more sumptuous setting, and the completeness
+of her triumph gave her an intoxicating sense of recovered power.
+Not caring to diminish the impression she had produced, she held
+herself aloof from the audience till the movement of dispersal
+before supper, and thus had a second opportunity of showing
+herself to advantage, as the throng poured slowly into the empty
+drawing-room where she was standing.
+
+She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed
+itself as the circulation became general, and the individual
+comments on her success were a delightful prolongation of the
+collective applause. At such moments she lost something of
+her natural fastidiousness, and cared less for the quality of
+the admiration received than for its quantity. Differences of
+personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in which
+her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
+approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning
+on Ned Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of
+capturing for himself.
+
+Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher,
+as whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the
+group before Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two
+of the men wandered off in search of their partners for supper,
+and the others, noticing Selden’s approach, gave way to him in
+accordance with the tacit freemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was
+therefore standing alone when he reached her; and finding the
+expected look in her eye, he had the satisfaction of supposing he
+had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen as it rested on him, for
+even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily felt the quicker beat
+of life that his nearness always produced. She read, too, in his
+answering gaze the delicious confirmation of her triumph, and for
+the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she cared to
+be beautiful.
+
+Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in
+silence, and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but
+against the tide which was setting thither. The faces about her
+flowed by like the streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed
+where Selden was leading her, till they passed through a glass
+doorway at the end of the long suite of rooms and stood suddenly in
+the fragrant hush of a garden. Gravel grated beneath their feet,
+and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer night.
+Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the depths of foliage, and
+whitened the spray of a fountain falling among lilies. The magic
+place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash of the water
+on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might have been
+blown across a sleeping lake.
+
+Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene
+as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have
+surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see
+the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry
+sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the
+sweetness of being alone in it together. At length Lily withdrew
+her hand, and moved away a step, so that her white-robed slimness
+was outlined against the dusk of the branches. Selden followed her,
+and still without speaking they seated themselves on a bench beside
+the fountain.
+
+Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a
+child. “You never speak to me—you think hard things of me,” she
+murmured.
+
+“I think of you at any rate, God knows!” he said.
+
+“Then why do we never see each other? Why can’t we be friends?
+You promised once to help me,” she continued in the same tone, as
+though the words were drawn from her unwillingly.
+
+“The only way I can help you is by loving you,” Selden said in a
+low voice.
+
+She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion
+of a flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips touched. She
+drew back and rose from her seat. Selden rose too, and they stood
+facing each other. Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a
+moment against her cheek.
+
+“Ah, love me, love me—but don’t tell me so!” she sighed with her
+eyes in his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped
+through the arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the
+room beyond.
+
+Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the
+transiency of exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but
+presently he reentered the house and made his way through the
+deserted rooms to the door. A few sumptuously-cloaked ladies were
+already gathered in the marble vestibule, and in the coat-room he
+found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.
+
+The former, at Selden’s approach, paused in the careful selection
+of a cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near the
+door.
+
+“Hallo, Selden, going too? You’re an Epicurean like myself, I see:
+you don’t want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin. Gad,
+what a show of good-looking women; but not one of ’em could touch
+that little cousin of mine. Talk of jewels—what’s a woman want with
+jewels when she’s got herself to show? The trouble is that all
+these fal-bals they wear cover up their figures when they’ve got
+’em. I never knew till tonight what an outline Lily has.”
+
+“It’s not her fault if everybody don’t know it now,” growled
+Trenor, flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined
+coat. “Damned bad taste, I call it—no, no cigar for me. You can’t
+tell what you’re smoking in one of these new houses—likely as not
+the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay for supper? Not if I know it! When
+people crowd their rooms so that you can’t get near any one you
+want to speak to, I’d as soon sup in the elevated at the rush hour.
+My wife was dead right to stay away: she says life’s too short to
+spend it in breaking in new people.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+
+Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bed-side.
+
+One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town
+that afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be
+able to dine with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly
+that an important case called him to Albany, whence he would be
+unable to return till the evening, and asked Lily to let him know
+at what hour on the following day she would see him.
+
+Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his
+letter. The scene in the Brys’ conservatory had been like a part
+of her dreams; she had not expected to wake to such evidence
+of its reality. Her first movement was one of annoyance: this
+unforeseen act of Selden’s added another complication to life. It
+was so unlike him to yield to such an irrational impulse! Did he
+really mean to ask her to marry him? She had once shown him the
+impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent behaviour seemed
+to prove that he had accepted the situation with a reasonableness
+somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more agreeable
+to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the cost
+of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
+sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the
+episode of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could
+not marry him, it would be kinder to him, as well as easier for
+herself, to write a line amicably evading his request to see her:
+he was not the man to mistake such a hint, and when next they met
+it would be on their usual friendly footing.
+
+Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted
+to write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her
+resolve. She was still languid from her brief sleep and the
+exhilaration of the evening, and the sight of Selden’s writing
+brought back the culminating moment of her triumph: the moment
+when she had read in his eyes that no philosophy was proof against
+her power. It would be pleasant to have that sensation again . . .
+no one else could give it to her in its fulness; and she could
+not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection by an act of
+definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily: “TOMORROW
+AT FOUR;” murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet into its
+envelope: “I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Judy Trenor’s summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first
+time she had received a direct communication from Bellomont
+since the close of her last visit there, and she was still
+visited by the dread of having incurred Judy’s displeasure.
+But this characteristic command seemed to reestablish their
+former relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that her friend
+had probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys’
+entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast,
+perhaps for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband,
+perhaps because, as Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she
+“couldn’t bear new people when she hadn’t discovered them herself.”
+At any rate, though she remained haughtily at Bellomont, Lily
+suspected in her a devouring eagerness to hear of what she had
+missed, and to learn exactly in what measure Mrs. Wellington Bry
+had surpassed all previous competitors for social recognition. Lily
+was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but it happened that she
+was dining out. She determined, however, to see Mrs. Trenor for a
+few moments, and ringing for her maid she despatched a telegram to
+say that she would be with her friend that evening at ten.
+
+She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal
+feast a few of the performers of the previous evening. There was
+to be plantation music in the studio after dinner—for Mrs. Fisher,
+despairing of the republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to
+her small crowded house a spacious apartment, which, whatever its
+uses in her hours of plastic inspiration, served at other times for
+the exercise of an indefatigable hospitality. Lily was reluctant
+to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and she would have liked to
+lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but she could not
+break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten she asked
+her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth Avenue to the
+Trenors’.
+
+She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that Judy’s
+presence in town was not signalized by a greater promptness in
+admitting her; and her surprise was increased when, instead of
+the expected footman, pushing his shoulders into a tardy coat,
+a shabby care-taking person in calico let her into the shrouded
+hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the threshold of the
+drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual volubility while he
+relieved her of her cloak and drew her into the room.
+
+“Come along to the den; it’s the only comfortable place in the
+house. Doesn’t this room look as if it was waiting for the body
+to be brought down? Can’t see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up
+in this awful slippery white stuff—it’s enough to give a fellow
+pneumonia to walk through these rooms on a cold day. You look a
+little pinched yourself, by the way: it’s rather a sharp night
+out. I noticed it walking up from the club. Come along, and I’ll
+give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast yourself over the fire
+and try some of my new Egyptians—that little Turkish chap at the
+Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try, and if you
+like ’em I’ll get out a lot for you: they don’t have ’em here yet,
+but I’ll cable.”
+
+He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where
+Mrs. Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there was
+an air of occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers, newspapers,
+a littered writing-table, and a general aspect of lamp-lit
+familiarity, so that it was a surprise not to see Judy’s energetic
+figure start up from the arm-chair near the fire.
+
+It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat
+in question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and
+near it stood one of those intricate folding tables which British
+ingenuity has devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco and
+spirits. The sight of such appliances in a drawing-room was not
+unusual in Lily’s set, where smoking and drinking were unrestricted
+by considerations of time and place, and her first movement was
+to help herself to one of the cigarettes recommended by Trenor,
+while she checked his loquacity by asking, with a surprised glance:
+“Where’s Judy?”
+
+Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and perhaps
+by prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending over the
+latter to decipher their silver labels.
+
+“Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy water—you
+do look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your nose is red.
+I’ll take another glass to keep you company—Judy?—Why, you see,
+Judy’s got a devil of a head ache—quite knocked out with it, poor
+thing—she asked me to explain—make it all right, you know—Do come
+up to the fire, though; you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me
+make you comfortable, there’s a good girl.”
+
+He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her toward
+a low seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed herself quietly.
+
+“Do you mean to say that Judy’s not well enough to see me? Doesn’t
+she want me to go upstairs?”
+
+Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to
+set it down before he answered.
+
+“Why, no—the fact is, she’s not up to seeing anybody. It came on
+suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully sorry
+she was—if she’d known where you were dining she’d have sent you
+word.”
+
+“She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram.
+But it doesn’t matter, of course. I suppose if she’s so poorly she
+won’t go back to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and see
+her then.”
+
+“Yes: exactly—that’s capital. I’ll tell her you’ll pop in tomorrow
+morning. And now do sit down a minute, there’s a dear, and let’s
+have a nice quiet jaw together. You won’t take a drop, just for
+sociability? Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why, don’t
+you like it? What are you chucking it away for?”
+
+“I am chucking it away because I must go, if you’ll have the
+goodness to call a cab for me,” Lily returned with a smile.
+
+She did not like Trenor’s unusual excitability, with its too
+evident explanation, and the thought of being alone with him,
+with her friend out of reach upstairs, at the other end of the
+great empty house, did not conduce to a desire to prolong their
+TETE-A-TETE.
+
+But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved
+between herself and the door.
+
+“Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy’d been here you’d
+have sat gossiping till all hours—and you can’t even give me five
+minutes! It’s always the same story. Last night I couldn’t get near
+you—I went to that damned vulgar party just to see you, and there
+was everybody talking about you, and asking me if I’d ever seen
+anything so stunning, and when I tried to come up and say a word,
+you never took any notice, but just went on laughing and joking
+with a lot of asses who only wanted to be able to swagger about
+afterward, and look knowing when you were mentioned.”
+
+He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in
+which resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she
+had regained her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the
+middle of the room, while her slight smile seemed to put an ever
+increasing distance between herself and Trenor.
+
+Across it she said: “Don’t be absurd, Gus. It’s past eleven, and I
+must really ask you to ring for a cab.”
+
+He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown to
+detest.
+
+“And supposing I won’t ring for one—what’ll you do then?”
+
+“I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her.”
+
+Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. “Look here,
+Lily: won’t you give me five minutes of your own accord?”
+
+“Not tonight, Gus: you——”
+
+“Very good, then: I’ll take ’em. And as many more as I want.” He
+had squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in his
+pockets. He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.
+
+“Go and sit down there, please: I’ve got a word to say to you.”
+
+Lily’s quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew
+herself up and moved toward the door.
+
+“If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time. I
+shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once.”
+
+He burst into a laugh. “Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you
+won’t find Judy. She ain’t there.”
+
+Lily cast a startled look upon him. “Do you mean that Judy is not
+in the house—not in town?” she exclaimed.
+
+“That’s just what I do mean,” returned Trenor, his bluster sinking
+to sullenness under her look.
+
+“Nonsense—I don’t believe you. I am going upstairs,” she said
+impatiently.
+
+He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold
+unimpeded.
+
+“Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont.”
+
+But Lily had a flash of reassurance. “If she hadn’t come she would
+have sent me word——”
+
+“She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know.”
+
+“I received no message.”
+
+“I didn’t send any.”
+
+The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her
+opponent through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations
+indistinct.
+
+“I can’t imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on me;
+but if you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour I
+must again ask you to send for a cab.”
+
+It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung by
+irony it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry streaks
+on Trenor’s face might have been raised by an actual lash.
+
+“Look here, Lily, don’t take that high and mighty tone with me.” He
+had again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive shrinking
+from him she let him regain command of the threshold. “I DID play a
+trick on you; I own up to it; but if you think I’m ashamed you’re
+mistaken. Lord knows I’ve been patient enough—I’ve hung round and
+looked like an ass. And all the while you were letting a lot of
+other fellows make up to you . . . letting ’em make fun of me,
+I daresay . . . I’m not sharp, and can’t dress my friends up to
+look funny, as you do . . . but I can tell when it’s being done to
+me.... I can tell fast enough when I’m made a fool of....”
+
+“Ah, I shouldn’t have thought that!” flashed from Lily; but her
+laugh dropped to silence under his look.
+
+“No; you wouldn’t have thought it; but you’ll know better now.
+That’s what you’re here for tonight. I’ve been waiting for a quiet
+time to talk things over, and now I’ve got it I mean to make you
+hear me out.”
+
+His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
+steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily
+than the excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind
+forsook her. She had more than once been in situations where a
+quick sword-play of wit had been needful to cover her retreat; but
+her frightened heart-throbs told her that here such skill would not
+avail.
+
+To gain time she repeated: “I don’t understand what you want.”
+
+Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw
+himself in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and
+I stand. Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally
+allowed to have a seat at table.”
+
+She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of
+having to conciliate where she longed to humble.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean—but you must see, Gus, that I can’t
+stay here talking to you at this hour——”
+
+“Gad, you go to men’s houses fast enough in broad day light—strikes
+me you’re not always so deuced careful of appearances.”
+
+The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that
+follows on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then—this was the
+way men talked of her—She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there
+was a throb of self-pity in her throat. But all the while another
+self was sharpening her to vigilance, whispering the terrified
+warning that every word and gesture must be measured.
+
+“If you have brought me here to say insulting things——” she began.
+
+Trenor laughed. “Don’t talk stage-rot. I don’t want to insult you.
+But a man’s got his feelings—and you’ve played with mine too long.
+I didn’t begin this business—kept out of the way, and left the
+track clear for the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set
+to work to make an ass of me—and an easy job you had of it, too.
+That’s the trouble—it was too easy for you—you got reckless—thought
+you could turn me inside out, and chuck me in the gutter like an
+empty purse. But, by gad, that ain’t playing fair: that’s dodging
+the rules of the game. Of course I know now what you wanted—it
+wasn’t my beautiful eyes you were after—but I tell you what, Miss
+Lily, you’ve got to pay up for making me think so——”
+
+He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward
+her with a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every
+nerve tore at her to retreat as he advanced.
+
+“Pay up?” she faltered. “Do you mean that I owe you money?”
+
+He laughed again. “Oh, I’m not asking for payment in kind. But
+there’s such a thing as fair play—and interest on one’s money—and
+hang me if I’ve had as much as a look from you——”
+
+“Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me
+how to invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of
+business . . . you told me it was all right——”
+
+“It WAS all right—it is, Lily: you’re welcome to all of it, and ten
+times more. I’m only asking for a word of thanks from you.” He was
+closer still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened
+self in her was dragging the other down.
+
+“I HAVE thanked you; I’ve shown I was grateful. What more have you
+done than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?”
+
+Trenor caught her up with a sneer. “I don’t doubt you’ve accepted
+as much before—and chucked the other chaps as you’d like to chuck
+me. I don’t care how you settled your score with them—if you fooled
+’em I’m that much to the good. Don’t stare at me like that—I know
+I’m not talking the way a man is supposed to talk to a girl—but,
+hang it, if you don’t like it you can stop me quick enough—you know
+I’m mad about you—damn the money, there’s plenty more of it—if THAT
+bothers you.... I was a brute, Lily—Lily!—just look at me——”
+
+Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke—wave crashing on
+wave so close that the moral shame was one with the physical
+dread. It seemed to her that self-esteem would have made her
+invulnerable—that it was her own dishonour which put a fearful
+solitude about her.
+
+His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back
+from him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
+
+“I’ve told you I don’t understand—but if I owe you money you shall
+be paid——”
+
+Trenor’s face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called
+out the primitive man.
+
+“Ah—you’ll borrow from Selden or Rosedale—and take your chances of
+fooling them as you’ve fooled me! Unless—unless you’ve settled your
+other scores already—and I’m the only one left out in the cold!”
+
+She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words—the words were
+worse than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body—in
+her throat, her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes
+travelled despairingly about the room—they lit on the bell, and
+she remembered that help was in call. Yes, but scandal with it—a
+hideous mustering of tongues. No, she must fight her way out alone.
+It was enough that the servants knew her to be in the house with
+Trenor—there must be nothing to excite conjecture in her way of
+leaving it.
+
+She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
+
+“I am here alone with you,” she said. “What more have you to say?”
+
+To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare.
+With his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him
+chill and humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the
+fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed before him black
+and naked as the ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the
+hand of inherited order, plucked back the bewildered mind which
+passion had jolted from its ruts. Trenor’s eye had the haggard look
+of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly ledge.
+
+“Go home! Go away from here”——he stammered, and turning his back on
+her walked toward the hearth.
+
+The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate
+lucidity. The collapse of Trenor’s will left her in control, and
+she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside herself,
+bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the order for
+a hansom, directing him to put her in it when it came. Whence the
+strength came to her she knew not; but an insistent voice warned
+her that she must leave the house openly, and nerved her, in the
+hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light words with
+Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while all
+the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
+street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating
+as the prisoner’s first draught of free air; but the clearness of
+brain continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue,
+guessed at the lateness of the hour, and even observed a man’s
+figure—was there something half-familiar in its outline?—which,
+as she entered the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and
+vanished in the obscurity of the side street.
+
+But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering
+darkness closed on her. “I can’t think—I can’t think,” she moaned,
+and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab. She
+seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves
+in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being
+to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a
+house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and
+her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene
+where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
+huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour’s repose. Yes, the Furies
+might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the
+dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their
+wings was in her brain.... She opened her eyes and saw the streets
+passing—the familiar alien streets. All she looked on was the
+same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed between today
+and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed simple, natural,
+full of daylight—and she was alone in a place of darkness and
+pollution.—Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened her. Her
+eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she saw
+that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
+eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she
+must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft
+nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus
+of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the
+minutes on her head! She had a vision of herself lying on the
+black walnut bed—and the darkness would frighten her, and if she
+left the light burning the dreary details of the room would brand
+themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated her room at
+Mrs. Peniston’s—its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact that
+nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by
+human nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to
+whom no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours,
+expatriate everywhere.
+
+Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
+superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But
+even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think
+of Mrs. Peniston’s mind as offering shelter or comprehension to
+such misery as Lily’s. As the pain that can be told is but half a
+pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.
+What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the
+silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.
+
+She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!—they
+were nearing Gerty’s corner. If only she could reach there before
+this labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips—if only
+she could feel the hold of Gerty’s arms while she shook in the
+ague-fit of fear that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door
+in the roof and called the address to the driver. It was not
+so late—Gerty might still be waking. And even if she were not,
+the sound of the bell would penetrate every recess of her tiny
+apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend’s call.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+
+Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys’ entertainment,
+woke from dreams as happy as Lily’s. If they were less vivid in
+hue, more subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her
+experience, they were for that very reason better suited to her
+mental vision. Such flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have
+blinded Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in the way of happiness,
+to such scant light as shone through the cracks of other people’s
+lives.
+
+Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild
+but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden’s growing
+kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended his liking
+to Lily Bart. If these two factors seem incompatible to the student
+of feminine psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always
+been a parasite in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other
+tables, and content to look through the window at the banquet
+spread for her friends. Now that she was enjoying a little private
+feast of her own, it would have seemed incredibly selfish not to
+lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one with whom she would
+rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.
+
+As to the nature of Selden’s growing kindness, Gerty would no
+more have dared to define it than she would have tried to learn
+a butterfly’s colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To
+seize on the wonder would be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps
+see it fade and stiffen in her hand: better the sense of beauty
+palpitating out of reach, while she held her breath and watched
+where it would alight. Yet Selden’s manner at the Brys’ had brought
+the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be beating in
+her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
+so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
+absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for,
+as the liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but
+she was quick to feel in him a change implying that for once she
+could give pleasure as well as receive it.
+
+And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should
+be reached through their interest in Lily Bart!
+
+Gerty’s affection for her friend—a sentiment that had learned
+to keep itself alive on the scantiest diet—had grown to active
+adoration since Lily’s restless curiosity had drawn her into the
+circle of Miss Farish’s work. Lily’s taste of beneficence had
+wakened in her a momentary appetite for well-doing. Her visit to
+the Girls’ Club had first brought her in contact with the dramatic
+contrasts of life. She had always accepted with philosophic
+calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled on
+foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay
+all around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life
+reached its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter
+night enclose a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this
+was in the natural order of things, and the orchid basking in its
+artificially created atmosphere could round the delicate curves of
+its petals undisturbed by the ice on the panes.
+
+But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract
+conception of poverty, another to be brought in contact with its
+human embodiments. Lily had never conceived of these victims of
+fate otherwise than in the mass. That the mass was composed of
+individual lives, innumerable separate centres of sensation, with
+her own eager reachings for pleasure, her own fierce revulsions
+from pain—that some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in
+shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on gladness,
+and young lips shaped for love—this discovery gave Lily one of
+those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a life.
+Lily’s nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
+demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which
+did not press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was
+drawn out of herself by the interest of her direct relation with
+a world so unlike her own. She had supplemented her first gift by
+personal assistance to one or two of Miss Farish’s most appealing
+subjects, and the admiration and interest her presence excited
+among the tired workers at the club ministered in a new form to her
+insatiable desire to please.
+
+Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to
+disentangle the mixed threads of which Lily’s philanthropy was
+woven. She supposed her beautiful friend to be actuated by the
+same motive as herself—that sharpening of the moral vision which
+makes all human suffering so near and insistent that the other
+aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty lived by such simple
+formulas that she did not hesitate to class her friend’s state
+with the emotional “change of heart” to which her dealings with
+the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
+she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had
+an answer to all criticisms of Lily’s conduct: as she had said,
+she knew “the real Lily,” and the discovery that Selden shared her
+knowledge raised her placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense
+of its possibilities—a sense farther enlarged, in the course of the
+afternoon, by the receipt of a telegram from Selden asking if he
+might dine with her that evening.
+
+While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement
+produced in her small household, Selden was at one with her in
+thinking with intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him
+to Albany was not complicated enough to absorb all his attention,
+and he had the professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind
+free when its services were not needed. This part—which at the
+moment seemed dangerously like the whole—was filled to the brim
+with the sensations of the previous evening. Selden understood the
+symptoms: he recognized the fact that he was paying up, as there
+had always been a chance of his having to pay up, for the voluntary
+exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from permanent
+ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a different
+way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment. There
+had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
+had never wanted to marry a “nice” girl: the adjective connoting,
+in his cousin’s vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which
+are apt to preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden’s
+fate to have a charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles
+and Cashmere, still emitted a faded scent of the undefinable
+quality. His father was the kind of man who delights in a charming
+woman: who quotes her, stimulates her, and keeps her perennially
+charming. Neither one of the couple cared for money, but their
+disdain of it took the form of always spending a little more than
+was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely kept; if
+there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
+on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
+understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint
+and discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was
+that the bills mounted up.
+
+Though many of Selden’s friends would have called his parents poor,
+he had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt
+only as a check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions
+were so good that their rarity gave them a merited relief, and
+abstinence was combined with elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs.
+Selden’s knack of wearing her old velvet as if it were new. A man
+has the advantage of being delivered early from the home point of
+view, and before Selden left college he had learned that there
+are as many different ways of going without money as of spending
+it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that practised
+at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
+the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of
+“values.” It was from her that he inherited his detachment from
+the sumptuary side of life: the stoic’s carelessness of material
+things, combined with the Epicurean’s pleasure in them. Life shorn
+of either feeling appeared to him a diminished thing; and nowhere
+was the blending of the two ingredients so essential as in the
+character of a pretty woman.
+
+It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
+besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of
+a love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central
+fact of life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the
+makeshift alternative of a relation that should be less than this:
+that should leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it
+put an undue strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield
+to the growth of an affection which might appeal to pity yet leave
+the understanding untouched: sympathy should no more delude him
+than a trick of the eyes, the grace of helplessness than a curve of
+the cheek.
+
+But now—that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows.
+His reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less
+important than the question as to when Lily would receive his
+note! He yielded himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations,
+wondering at what hour her reply would be sent, with what words
+it would begin. As to its import he had no doubt—he was as sure
+of her surrender as of his own. And so he had leisure to muse on
+all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on a holiday morning,
+might lie still and watch the beam of light travel gradually
+across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
+him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own
+relation to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before
+of what was said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he
+knew from the vulgar estimate of her. His mind turned to Gerty
+Farish’s words, and the wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing
+beside the insight of innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART,
+FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD—even the hidden god in their neighbour’s
+breast! Selden was in the state of impassioned self-absorption
+that the first surrender to love produces. His craving was for the
+companionship of one whose point of view should justify his own,
+who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth to which
+his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday recess,
+but seized a moment’s leisure in court to scribble his telegram to
+Gerty Farish.
+
+Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a
+note from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only
+a line of rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away
+disappointed when he was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.
+
+“Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me—I’ve ordered a
+canvas-back.”
+
+He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall
+glass at his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.
+
+Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.
+
+“Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight. I
+shall have the club to myself. You know how I’m living this winter,
+rattling round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town
+today, but she’s put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine
+alone in a room with the looking-glasses covered, and nothing but
+a bottle of Harvey sauce on the sideboard? I say, Lawrence, chuck
+your engagement and take pity on me—it gives me the blue devils to
+dine alone, and there’s nobody but that canting ass Wetherall in
+the club.”
+
+“Sorry, Gus—I can’t do it.”
+
+As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor’s face,
+the unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way
+his jewelled rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red
+fingers. Certainly the beast was predominating—the beast at the
+bottom of the glass. And he had heard this man’s name coupled with
+Lily’s! Bah—the thought sickened him; all the way back to his rooms
+he was haunted by the sight of Trenor’s fat creased hands——
+
+On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew
+what was in it before he broke the seal—a grey seal with BEYOND!
+beneath a flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond—beyond the
+ugliness, the pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul——
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Gerty’s little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden
+entered it. Its modest “effects,” compact of enamel paint and
+ingenuity, spoke to him in the language just then sweetest to his
+ear. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling
+matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. Gerty
+sparkled too; or at least shone with a tempered radiance. He had
+never before noticed that she had “points”—really, some good fellow
+might do worse.... Over the little dinner (and here, again, the
+effects were wonderful) he told her she ought to marry—he was in a
+mood to pair off the whole world. She had made the caramel custard
+with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such gifts to herself.
+He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim her own
+hats—she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.
+
+He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little
+repast he kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being
+the centre of observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she
+had manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary
+interest in her household arrangements: complimented her on the
+ingenuity with which she had utilized every inch of her small
+quarters, asked how her servant managed about afternoons out,
+learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in a chafing-dish,
+and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a large
+establishment.
+
+When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as
+snugly as bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and
+poured it into her grandmother’s egg-shell cups, his eye, as he
+leaned back, basking in the warm fragrance, lighted on a recent
+photograph of Miss Bart, and the desired transition was effected
+without an effort. The photograph was well enough—but to catch
+her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed with him—never had
+she been so radiant. But could photography capture that light?
+There had been a new look in her face—something different; yes,
+Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was
+so exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to
+the watery stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his
+impersonal club fare, alternating with the equally impersonal
+CUISINE of the dinner-party! A man who lived in lodgings missed
+the best part of life—he pictured the flavourless solitude of
+Trenor’s repast, and felt a moment’s compassion for the man.... But
+to return to Lily—and again and again he returned, questioning,
+conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts of
+their stored tenderness for her friend.
+
+At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
+communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped
+to confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on
+the fact that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous
+impulses—her restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life
+had never satisfied her proved that she was made for better things.
+She might have married more than once—the conventional rich
+marriage which she had been taught to consider the sole end of
+existence—but when the opportunity came she had always shrunk from
+it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love with her—every one
+at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her dismissal
+of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce incident
+chimed too well with Selden’s mood not to be instantly adopted
+by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once
+seemed the obvious solution. If rejection there had been—and he
+wondered now that he had ever doubted it!—then he held the key to
+the secret, and the hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with
+sunset, but with dawn. It was he who had wavered and disowned the
+face of opportunity—and the joy now warming his breast might have
+been a familiar inmate if he had captured it in its first flight.
+
+It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its
+wings in Gerty’s heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat
+facing Selden, repeating mechanically: “No, she has never been
+understood——” and all the while she herself seemed to be sitting
+in the centre of a great glare of comprehension. The little
+confidential room, where a moment ago their thoughts had touched
+elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly vastness, separating
+her from Selden by all the length of her new vision of the
+future—and that future stretched out interminably, with her lonely
+figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.
+
+“She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them,”
+she heard Selden saying. And again: “Be good to her, Gerty, won’t
+you?” and: “She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to
+be—you’ll help her by believing the best of her?”
+
+The words beat on Gerty’s brain like the sound of a language which
+has seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to
+be unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily—that was all!
+There had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and
+that third had taken her own place. She tried to follow what he
+was saying, to cling to her own part in the talk—but it was all as
+meaningless as the boom of waves in a drowning head, and she felt,
+as the drowning may feel, that to sink would be nothing beside the
+pain of struggling to keep up.
+
+Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she
+could yield to the blessed waves.
+
+“Mrs. Fisher’s? You say she was dining there? There’s music
+afterward; I believe I had a card from her.” He glanced at the
+foolish pink-faced clock that was drumming out this hideous hour.
+“A quarter past ten? I might look in there now; the Fisher evenings
+are amusing. I haven’t kept you up too late, Gerty? You look
+tired—I’ve rambled on and bored you.” And in the unwonted overflow
+of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss upon her cheek.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+At Mrs. Fisher’s, through the cigar smoke of the studio, a dozen
+voices greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he
+dropped into a seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search
+of Miss Bart. But she was not there, and the discovery gave him a
+pang out of all proportion to its seriousness; since the note in
+his breast-pocket assured him that at four the next day they would
+meet. To his impatience it seemed immeasurably long to wait, and
+half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to Mrs. Fisher to ask, as
+the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with her.
+
+“Lily? She’s just gone. She had to run off, I forget where. Wasn’t
+she wonderful last night?”
+
+“Who’s that? Lily?” asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a
+neighbouring arm-chair. “Really, you know, I’m no prude, but when
+it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction—I
+thought seriously of speaking to cousin Julia.”
+
+“You didn’t know Jack had become our social censor?” Mrs. Fisher
+said to Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the
+general derision: “But she’s a cousin, hang it, and when a man’s
+married—TOWN TALK was full of her this morning.”
+
+“Yes: lively reading that was,” said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking
+his moustache to hide the smile behind it. “Buy the dirty sheet?
+No, of course not; some fellow showed it to me—but I’d heard the
+stories before. When a girl’s as good-looking as that she’d better
+marry; then no questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized
+society there is no provision as yet for the young woman who claims
+the privileges of marriage without assuming its obligations.”
+
+“Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of
+Mr. Rosedale,” Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.
+
+“Rosedale—good heavens!” exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his
+eye-glass. “Stepney, that’s your fault for foisting the brute on
+us.”
+
+“Oh, confound it, you know, we don’t MARRY Rosedale in our family,”
+Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive
+bridal finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the
+judicial reflection: “In Lily’s circumstances it’s a mistake to
+have too high a standard.”
+
+“I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately,” Mrs.
+Fisher rejoined; “but the sight of her last night sent him off his
+head. What do you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? ‘My God,
+Mrs. Fisher, if I could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that,
+the picture’d appreciate a hundred per cent in ten years.’”
+
+“By Jove,—but isn’t she about somewhere?” exclaimed Van Alstyne,
+restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.
+
+“No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs.
+Where was she going, by the way? What’s on tonight? I hadn’t heard
+of anything.”
+
+“Oh, not a party, I think,” said an inexperienced young Farish who
+had arrived late. “I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she
+gave the driver the Trenors’ address.”
+
+“The Trenors’?” exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. “Why, the house is
+closed—Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening.”
+
+“Did she? That’s queer. I’m sure I’m not mistaken. Well, come now,
+Trenor’s there, anyhow—I—oh, well—the fact is, I’ve no head for
+numbers,” he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining
+foot, and the smile that circled the room.
+
+In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with
+his hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why
+he had stayed in it so long.
+
+On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily’s:
+“It seems to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you
+disapprove of.”
+
+Well—what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
+element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond!
+That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew
+that Perseus’s task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda’s
+chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she cannot rise
+and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he beats back to
+land with his burden. Well, he had strength for both—it was her
+weakness which had put the strength in him. It was not, alas, a
+clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a clogging morass
+of old associations and habits, and for the moment its vapours
+were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in her
+presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the
+spar which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of
+metaphor with which he was trying to build up a defence against the
+influences of the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the
+mixed motives on which social judgments depend, should still feel
+himself so swayed by them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision
+of life, if his own view of her was to be coloured by any mind in
+which he saw her reflected?
+
+The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and
+he strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of
+the night. At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him
+with an offer of company.
+
+“Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one’s head. Now
+that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.
+It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on
+the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as
+divorce: both tend to obscure the moral issue.”
+
+Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden’s mood than
+Van Alstyne’s after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter
+confined himself to generalities his listener’s nerves were in
+control. Happily Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing-up of
+social aspects, and with Selden for audience was eager to show the
+sureness of his touch. Mrs. Fisher lived in an East side street
+near the Park, and as the two men walked down Fifth Avenue the new
+architectural developments of that versatile thoroughfare invited
+Van Alstyne’s comment.
+
+“That Greiner house, now—a typical rung in the social ladder! The
+man who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put
+on the table at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal;
+if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought the money
+had given out. Not a bad purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts
+attention, and awes the Western sight-seer. By and bye he’ll get
+out of that phase, and want something that the crowd will pass and
+the few pause before. Especially if he marries my clever cousin——”
+
+Selden dashed in with the query: “And the Wellington Brys’? Rather
+clever of its kind, don’t you think?”
+
+They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich
+restraint of line, which suggested the clever corseting of a
+redundant figure.
+
+“That’s the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to
+Europe, and has a standard. I’m sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house
+a copy of the TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt
+furniture is thought to be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever
+chap that architect is, though—how he takes his client’s measure!
+He has put the whole of Mrs. Bry in his use of the composite
+order. Now for the Trenors, you remember, he chose the Corinthian:
+exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The Trenor house is
+one of his best things—doesn’t look like a banqueting-hall turned
+inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out a new ball-room,
+and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at Bellomont.
+The dimensions of the Brys’ ball-room must rankle: you may be sure
+she knows ’em as well as if she’d been there last night with a
+yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish
+boy? She isn’t, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark,
+you see: I suppose Gus lives in the back.”
+
+He had halted opposite the Trenors’ corner, and Selden perforce
+stayed his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited;
+only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.
+
+“They’ve bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and
+fifty feet in the side street. There’s where the ball-room’s to
+be, with a gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above.
+I suggested changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room
+across the whole Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door
+corresponds with the windows——”
+
+The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped
+to a startled “Hallo!” as the door opened and two figures were seen
+silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom
+halted at the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it
+in a haze of evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky,
+remained persistently projected against the light.
+
+For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
+silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the
+whole scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.
+
+Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.
+
+“A—hem—nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I
+may count on you—appearances are deceptive—and Fifth Avenue is so
+imperfectly lighted——”
+
+“Goodnight,” said Selden, turning sharply down the side street
+without seeing the other’s extended hand.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Alone with her cousin’s kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He
+had kissed her before—but not with another woman on his lips. If
+he had spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming
+the dark flood as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot
+through with glory, and it was harder to drown at sunrise than in
+darkness. Gerty hid her face from the light, but it pierced to the
+crannies of her soul. She had been so contented, life had seemed
+so simple and sufficient—why had he come to trouble her with new
+hopes? And Lily—Lily, her best friend! Woman-like, she accused
+the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily, her fond imagining
+might have become truth. Selden had always liked her—had understood
+and sympathized with the modest independence of her life. He, who
+had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice balance of
+fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his view
+of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
+at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door
+barred against her by Lily’s hand! Lily, for whose admission there
+she herself had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary
+flash of irony. She knew Selden—she saw how the force of her faith
+in Lily must have helped to dispel his hesitations. She remembered,
+too, how Lily had talked of him—she saw herself bringing the two
+together, making them known to each other. On Selden’s part, no
+doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient; he had never guessed
+her foolish secret; but Lily—Lily must have known! When, in such
+matters, are a woman’s perceptions at fault? And if she knew, then
+she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere wantonness
+of power, since, even to Gerty’s suddenly flaming jealousy, it
+seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden’s wife. Lily
+might be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally
+incapable of living without it, and Selden’s eager investigations
+into the small economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty
+as tragically duped as herself.
+
+She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were
+crumbling to cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade.
+Just beneath it stood the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out
+imperially on the cheap gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the
+little room. Could Selden picture her in such an interior? Gerty
+felt the poverty, the insignificance of her surroundings: she
+beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the cruelty of
+Lily’s judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
+dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily
+ever really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was
+the taste of new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature
+experimenting in a laboratory.
+
+The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with
+a start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a
+district visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered
+the fire, and went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass
+above her dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the
+shadows of the room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right
+had she to dream the dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a
+dull fate. She cried quietly as she undressed, laying aside her
+clothes with her habitual precision, setting everything in order
+for the next day, when the old life must be taken up as though
+there had been no break in its routine. Her servant did not come
+till eight o’clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and placed it
+beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat, extinguished
+her light and lay down. But on her bed sleep would not come, and
+she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
+closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be
+blindly grappled with. Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the
+sane daylight forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for
+self-preservation. She wanted happiness—wanted it as fiercely and
+unscrupulously as Lily did, but without Lily’s power of obtaining
+it. And in her conscious impotence she lay shivering, and hated her
+friend——
+
+A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a
+light and stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat
+incoherently, then she felt the sobering touch of fact, and
+remembered that such calls were not unknown in her charitable work.
+She flung on her dressing-gown to answer the summons, and unlocking
+her door, confronted the shining vision of Lily Bart.
+
+Gerty’s first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as
+though Lily’s presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery.
+Then she heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend’s
+face, and felt herself caught and clung to.
+
+“Lily—what is it?” she exclaimed.
+
+Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who
+has gained shelter after a long flight.
+
+“I was so cold—I couldn’t go home. Have you a fire?”
+
+Gerty’s compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of
+habit, swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one
+who needed help—for what reason, there was no time to pause and
+conjecture: disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty’s
+lips, and made her draw her friend silently into the sitting-room
+and seat her by the darkened hearth.
+
+“There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute.”
+
+She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It
+flashed strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes,
+and smote on the white ruin of Lily’s face. The girls looked at
+each other in silence; then Lily repeated: “I couldn’t go home.”
+
+“No—no—you came here, dear! You’re cold and tired—sit quiet, and
+I’ll make you some tea.”
+
+Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade:
+all personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and
+experience had taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before
+the wound is probed.
+
+Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
+soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
+wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed
+it away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.
+
+“I came here because I couldn’t bear to be alone,” she said.
+
+Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.
+
+“Lily! Something has happened—can’t you tell me?”
+
+“I couldn’t bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my
+room at Aunt Julia’s—so I came here——”
+
+She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in
+a fresh burst of fear.
+
+“Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their
+wings—alone, at night, in the dark? But you don’t know—there is
+nothing to make the dark dreadful to you——”
+
+The words, flashing back on Gerty’s last hours, struck from her a
+faint derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery,
+was blinded to everything outside it.
+
+“You’ll let me stay? I shan’t mind when daylight comes—Is
+it late? Is the night nearly over? It must be awful to be
+sleepless—everything stands by the bed and stares——”
+
+Miss Farish caught her straying hands. “Lily, look at me! Something
+has happened—an accident? You have been frightened—what has
+frightened you? Tell me if you can—a word or two—so that I can help
+you.”
+
+Lily shook her head.
+
+“I am not frightened: that’s not the word. Can you imagine looking
+into your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement—some
+hideous change that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem
+to myself like that—I can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts—I
+hate ugliness, you know—I’ve always turned from it—but I can’t
+explain to you—you wouldn’t understand.”
+
+She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.
+
+“How long the night is! And I know I shan’t sleep tomorrow. Some
+one told me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors.
+And he was not wicked, only unfortunate—and I see now how he must
+have suffered, lying alone with his thoughts! But I am bad—a bad
+girl—all my thoughts are bad—I have always had bad people about
+me. Is that any excuse? I thought I could manage my own life—I was
+proud—proud! but now I’m on their level——”
+
+Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.
+
+Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of
+experience, till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech.
+She had first imagined some physical shock, some peril of the
+crowded streets, since Lily was presumably on her way home from
+Carry Fisher’s; but she now saw that other nerve-centres were
+smitten, and her mind trembled back from conjecture.
+
+Lily’s sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.
+
+“There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me—do they ever pick
+themselves up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?”
+
+“Lily! you mustn’t speak so—you’re dreaming.”
+
+“Don’t they always go from bad to worse? There’s no turning
+back—your old self rejects you, and shuts you out.”
+
+She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness.
+“Go to bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I’ll watch here
+by the fire, and you’ll leave the light, and your door open. All
+I want is to feel that you are near me.” She laid both hands on
+Gerty’s shoulders, with a smile that was like sunrise on a sea
+strewn with wreckage.
+
+“I can’t leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
+frozen—you must undress and be made warm.” Gerty paused with sudden
+compunction. “But Mrs. Peniston—it’s past midnight! What will she
+think?”
+
+“She goes to bed. I have a latchkey. It doesn’t matter—I can’t go
+back there.”
+
+“There’s no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me
+where you have been. Listen, Lily—it will help you to speak!” She
+regained Miss Bart’s hands, and pressed them against her. “Try to
+tell me—it will clear your poor head. Listen—you were dining at
+Carry Fisher’s.” Gerty paused and added with a flash of heroism:
+“Lawrence Selden went from here to find you.”
+
+At the word, Lily’s face melted from locked anguish to the open
+misery of a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with
+tears.
+
+“He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help
+me. He told me—he warned me long ago—he foresaw that I should grow
+hateful to myself!”
+
+The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened
+the springs of self-pity in her friend’s dry breast, and tear by
+tear Lily poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped
+sideways in Gerty’s big arm-chair, her head buried where lately
+Selden’s had leaned, in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to
+Gerty’s aching senses the inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah,
+it needed no deliberate purpose on Lily’s part to rob her of her
+dream! To look on that prone loveliness was to see in it a natural
+force, to recognize that love and power belong to such as Lily, as
+renunciation and service are the lot of those they despoil. But if
+Selden’s infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect that his
+name produced shook Gerty’s steadfastness with a last pang. Men
+pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
+probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would
+have welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed
+the sufferer back to tolerance of life! But Lily’s self-betrayal
+took this last hope from her. The mortal maid on the shore is
+helpless against the siren who loves her prey: such victims are
+floated back dead from their adventure.
+
+Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. “Gerty, you
+know him—you understand him—tell me; if I went to him, if I told
+him everything—if I said: ‘I am bad through and through—I want
+admiration, I want excitement, I want money—’ yes, MONEY! That’s my
+shame, Gerty—and it’s known, it’s said of me—it’s what men think of
+me—If I said it all to him—told him the whole story—said plainly:
+‘I’ve sunk lower than the lowest, for I’ve taken what they take,
+and not paid as they pay’—oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak
+for him: if I told him everything would he loathe me? Or would he
+pity me, and understand me, and save me from loathing myself?”
+
+Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation
+had come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a
+dark river sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of
+happiness surge past under a flash of temptation. What prevented
+her from saying: “He is like other men?” She was not so sure of
+him, after all! But to do so would have been like blaspheming her
+love. She could not put him before herself in any light but the
+noblest: she must trust him to the height of her own passion.
+
+“Yes: I know him; he will help you,” she said; and in a moment
+Lily’s passion was weeping itself out against her breast.
+
+There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay
+down on it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily’s dress
+and persuaded her to put her lips to the warm tea. The light
+extinguished, they lay still in the darkness, Gerty shrinking
+to the outer edge of the narrow couch to avoid contact with her
+bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be caressed, she had long
+ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses toward her friend.
+But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily’s nearness:
+it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet stir
+with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand
+of her hair swept Gerty’s cheek with its fragrance. Everything
+about her was warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her
+grief became her as rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay
+with arms drawn down her side, in the motionless narrowness of an
+effigy, she felt a stir of sobs from the breathing warmth beside
+her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped for her friend’s, and held
+it fast.
+
+“Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things,” she moaned;
+and Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in
+its hollow as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the
+warm hollow Lily lay still and her breathing grew low and regular.
+Her hand still clung to Gerty’s as if to ward off evil dreams, but
+the hold of her fingers relaxed, her head sank deeper into its
+shelter, and Gerty felt that she slept.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+
+When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was
+in the room.
+
+She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings;
+then memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver.
+In the cold slant of light reflected from the back wall of a
+neighbouring building, she saw her evening dress and opera
+cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a chair. Finery laid off is as
+unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily
+that, at home, her maid’s vigilance had always spared her the
+sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and with
+the constriction of her attitude in Gerty’s bed. All through her
+troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss
+in, and the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if
+she had spent her night in a train.
+
+This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself;
+then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration,
+a languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her
+disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this
+weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She
+must find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled:
+it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts
+that pressed on her the need of action. But she was unutterably
+tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay back, looking
+about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical distaste.
+The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no freshness
+through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil of
+dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the
+door.
+
+The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup
+of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and
+her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.
+
+She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she
+felt; Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up
+to drink the tea.
+
+“I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous
+attack in the carriage,” she said, as the drink brought clearness
+to her sluggish thoughts.
+
+“You were not well; I am so glad you came here,” Gerty returned.
+
+“But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia—?”
+
+“She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your
+things. But won’t you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself.”
+
+Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress
+under her maid’s searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty
+was obliged to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a
+trace of the previous night’s emotion.
+
+Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for
+Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of
+enquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had an attack
+of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher’s; that, fearing
+she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone to Miss
+Farish’s instead; but that a quiet night had restored her, and that
+she had no need of a doctor.
+
+This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up
+to her own symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down,
+her aunt’s panacea for all physical and moral disorders. In
+the solitude of her own room she was brought back to a sharp
+contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them necessarily
+differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged furies
+were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea. But
+her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
+besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced
+herself to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and
+the result of this hateful computation was the discovery that she
+had, in all, received nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy
+pretext on which it had been given and received shrivelled up
+in the blaze of her shame: she knew that not a penny of it was
+her own, and that to restore her self-respect she must at once
+repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her outraged
+feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
+realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more
+to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral
+attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world
+appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.
+
+After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been
+removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies
+went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated
+herself in her black satin arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons,
+beside a bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature
+of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the
+same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings
+of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
+confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
+associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from
+Mrs. Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an
+inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not
+have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of
+right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail
+it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the
+present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means of
+escape from an intolerable situation.
+
+Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily:
+this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.
+
+Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia;
+I’ve had worries,” she replied.
+
+“Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a
+purse closing against a beggar.
+
+“I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really
+believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
+thoughts—”
+
+“I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for
+it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of
+the year we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before
+we sailed, and feeling SURE the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”
+
+“I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and
+then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”
+
+Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
+astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was
+forced to continue: “I have been foolish——”
+
+“No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed.
+“I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to
+mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”
+
+“Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget
+your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a
+girl is put to nowadays——”
+
+“I don’t realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your
+clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely
+dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”
+
+Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more
+inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get
+a few things since——”
+
+“What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see
+the bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”
+
+“Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive;
+and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and
+golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”
+
+“Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.
+
+Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet
+sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was
+only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.
+
+“She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it’s
+large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless
+and imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”
+
+She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston,
+vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be
+without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of
+making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.
+
+“Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and
+after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you
+might at least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.”
+Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of
+digitalis. “If you owe Celeste another thousand, she may send me
+her account,” she added, as though to end the discussion at any
+cost.
+
+“I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time;
+but I have really no choice—I ought to have spoken sooner—I owe a
+great deal more than a thousand dollars.”
+
+“A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”
+
+“I told you it was not only Celeste. I—there are other bills—more
+pressing—that must be settled.”
+
+“What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone
+off your head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have
+run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your
+monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here
+until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country,
+you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four or five months
+you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the dress-maker now.”
+
+Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract
+even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of
+paying Celeste’s bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the
+dress-maker’s account, and would make out the cheque to her and not
+to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day was over!
+
+“The debts I speak of are—different—not like tradesmen’s bills,”
+she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost
+afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything?
+The idea precipitated Lily’s avowal.
+
+“The fact is, I’ve played cards a good deal—bridge; the women all
+do it; girls too—it’s expected. Sometimes I’ve won—won a good
+deal—but lately I’ve been unlucky—and of course such debts can’t be
+paid off gradually——”
+
+She paused: Mrs. Peniston’s face seemed to be petrifying as she
+listened.
+
+“Cards—you’ve played cards for money? It’s true, then: when I was
+told so I wouldn’t believe it. I won’t ask if the other horrors
+I was told were true too; I’ve heard enough for the state of my
+nerves. When I think of the example you’ve had in this house! But I
+suppose it’s your foreign bringing-up—no one knew where your mother
+picked up her friends. And her Sundays were a scandal—that I know.”
+
+Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. “You play cards on Sunday?”
+
+Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at
+Bellomont and with the Dorsets.
+
+“You’re hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for
+cards, but a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and
+one drifts into doing what the others do. I’ve had a dreadful
+lesson, and if you’ll help me out this time I promise you—”
+
+Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. “You needn’t make any
+promises: it’s unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn’t
+undertake to pay your gambling debts.”
+
+“Aunt Julia! You don’t mean that you won’t help me?”
+
+“I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
+countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker,
+I will settle with her—beyond that I recognize no obligation to
+assume your debts.”
+
+Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
+stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: “Aunt
+Julia, I shall be disgraced—I—” But she could go no farther. If her
+aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts,
+in what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?
+
+“I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct
+far more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded
+you to play cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson
+too. They can probably afford to lose a little money—and at any
+rate, I am not going to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I
+must ask you to leave me—this scene has been extremely painful, and
+I have my own health to consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and
+tell Jennings I will see no one this afternoon but Grace Stepney.”
+
+Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling
+with fear and anger—the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears.
+She walked up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The
+last door of escape was closed—she felt herself shut in with her
+dishonour.
+
+Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
+chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she
+remembered that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant
+to put him off with a word—but now her heart leaped at the
+thought of seeing him. Was there not a promise of rescue in his
+love? As she had lain at Gerty’s side the night before, she had
+thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of weeping out her
+pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear herself of
+its consequences before she met him—she had never really doubted
+that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
+in the full storm of her misery, that Selden’s love could not be
+her ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment’s
+shelter there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.
+
+But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
+wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive
+as the river’s flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be
+terrible—but afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered
+Gerty’s words: “I know him—he will help you”; and her mind clung
+to them as a sick person might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if
+he really understood—if he would help her to gather up her broken
+life, and put it together in some new semblance in which no trace
+of the past should remain! He had always made her feel that she
+was worthy of better things, and she had never been in greater
+need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
+imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she
+needed—it would take the glow of passion to weld together the
+shattered fragments of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty’s
+words and held fast to them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden’s
+feeling for her, and it had never dawned upon her blindness that
+Gerty’s own judgment of him was coloured by emotions far more
+ardent than her own.
+
+Four o’clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that
+Selden would be punctual. But the hour came and passed—it moved
+on feverishly, measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had
+time to take a fresh survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate
+anew between the impulse to confide in Selden and the dread of
+destroying his illusions. But as the minutes passed the need of
+throwing herself on his comprehension became more urgent: she could
+not bear the weight of her misery alone. There would be a perilous
+moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her beauty to bridge it
+over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?
+
+But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
+detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the
+four for a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after
+five confirmed this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to
+write more legibly in future. The sound of steps in the hall, and
+of the butler’s voice preceding them, poured fresh energy into her
+veins. She felt herself once more the alert and competent moulder
+of emergencies, and the remembrance of her power over Selden
+flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the drawing-room door
+opened it was Rosedale who came in.
+
+The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing
+movement of irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her
+own carelessness in not denying the door to all but Selden, she
+controlled herself and greeted Rosedale amicably. It was annoying
+that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in
+possession, but Lily was mistress of the art of ridding herself
+of superfluous company, and to her present mood Rosedale seemed
+distinctly negligible.
+
+His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few
+moments’ conversation. She had caught at the Brys’ entertainment as
+an easy impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval
+till Selden appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside
+the tea-table, his hands in his pockets, his legs a little too
+freely extended, at once gave the topic a personal turn.
+
+“Pretty well done—well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry’s got his
+back up and don’t mean to let go till he’s got the hang of the
+thing. Of course, there were things here and there—things Mrs.
+Fisher couldn’t be expected to see to—the champagne wasn’t cold,
+and the coats got mixed in the coat-room. I would have spent more
+money on the music. But that’s my character: if I want a thing I’m
+willing to pay: I don’t go up to the counter, and then wonder if
+the article’s worth the price. I wouldn’t be satisfied to entertain
+like the Welly Brys; I’d want something that would look more easy
+and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it takes just
+two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman to
+spend it.”
+
+He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to
+rearrange the tea-cups.
+
+“I’ve got the money,” he continued, clearing his throat, “and what
+I want is the woman—and I mean to have her too.”
+
+He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
+walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne’s type bring
+their hats and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added
+a touch of elegant familiarity to their appearance.
+
+Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on
+his face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would
+take some time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before
+the moment of refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of
+a mind withdrawn yet not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of
+a subtle encouragement. He would not have liked any evidence of
+eagerness.
+
+“I mean to have her too,” he repeated, with a laugh intended to
+strengthen his self-assurance. “I generally HAVE got what I wanted
+in life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I’ve got more than I know
+how to invest; and now the money doesn’t seem to be of any account
+unless I can spend it on the right woman. That’s what I want to do
+with it: I want my wife to make all the other women feel small. I’d
+never grudge a dollar that was spent on that. But it isn’t every
+woman can do it, no matter how much you spend on her. There was a
+girl in some history book who wanted gold shields, or something,
+and the fellows threw ’em at her, and she was crushed under ’em:
+they killed her. Well, that’s true enough: some women looked buried
+under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who’ll hold her head
+higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
+other night at the Brys’, in that plain white dress, looking as if
+you had a crown on, I said to myself: ‘By gad, if she had one she’d
+wear it as if it grew on her.’”
+
+Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme:
+“Tell you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than
+all the rest of ’em put together. If a woman’s going to ignore her
+pearls, they want to be better than anybody else’s—and so it is
+with everything else. You know what I mean—you know it’s only the
+showy things that are cheap. Well, I should want my wife to be able
+to take the earth for granted if she wanted to. I know there’s one
+thing vulgar about money, and that’s the thinking about it; and my
+wife would never have to demean herself in that way.” He paused,
+and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an earlier manner: “I
+guess you know the lady I’ve got in view, Miss Bart.”
+
+Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge.
+Even through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr.
+Rosedale’s millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of
+them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew
+increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden’s expected coming.
+The contrast was too grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the
+smile it provoked. She decided that directness would be best.
+
+“If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful—very much
+flattered; but I don’t know what I have ever done to make you
+think—”
+
+“Oh, if you mean you’re not dead in love with me, I’ve got sense
+enough left to see that. And I ain’t talking to you as if you
+were—I presume I know the kind of talk that’s expected under those
+circumstances. I’m confoundedly gone on you—that’s about the size
+of it—and I’m just giving you a plain business statement of the
+consequences. You’re not very fond of me—YET—but you’re fond of
+luxury, and style, and amusement, and of not having to worry about
+cash. You like to have a good time, and not have to settle for it;
+and what I propose to do is to provide for the good time and do the
+settling.”
+
+He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: “You are
+mistaken in one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared
+to settle for.”
+
+She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words
+implied a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was
+prepared to meet and repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning
+it failed to abash him, and he went on in the same tone: “I didn’t
+mean to give offence; excuse me if I’ve spoken too plainly. But
+why ain’t you straight with me—why do you put up that kind of
+bluff? You know there’ve been times when you were bothered—damned
+bothered—and as a girl gets older, and things keep moving along,
+why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable to move
+past her and not come back. I don’t say it’s anywhere near that
+with you yet; but you’ve had a taste of bothers that a girl like
+yourself ought never to have known about, and what I’m offering you
+is the chance to turn your back on them once for all.”
+
+The colour burned in Lily’s face as he ended; there was no
+mistaking the point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass
+unheeded was a fatal confession of weakness, while to resent it too
+openly was to risk offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation
+quivered on her lip; but it was quelled by the secret voice which
+warned her that she must not quarrel with him. He knew too much
+about her, and even at the moment when it was essential that he
+should show himself at his best, he did not scruple to let her
+see how much he knew. How then would he use his power when her
+expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for restraint?
+Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she had
+to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as
+a breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try
+to decide coolly which turn to take.
+
+“You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am
+grateful to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always
+easy to be quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor
+and lives among rich people; I have been careless about money, and
+have worried about my bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful
+if I made that a reason for accepting all you offer, with no better
+return to make than the desire to be free from my anxieties. You
+must give me time—time to think of your kindness—and of what I
+could give you in return for it——”
+
+She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal
+was shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale
+rise in obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for
+success, and disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept
+what was conceded, without undue haste to press for more. Something
+in his prompt acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the
+stored force of a patience that might subdue the strongest will.
+But at least they had parted amicably, and he was out of the house
+without meeting Selden—Selden, whose continued absence now smote
+her with a new alarm. Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she
+understood that it was now too late to hope for Selden. He would
+write explaining his absence, of course; there would be a note
+from him by the late post. But her confession would have to be
+postponed; and the chill of the delay settled heavily on her fagged
+spirit.
+
+It lay heavier when the postman’s last ring brought no note for
+her, and she had to go upstairs to a lonely night—a night as grim
+and sleepless as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty.
+She had never learned to live with her own thoughts, and to be
+confronted with them through such hours of lucid misery made the
+confused wretchedness of her previous vigil seem easily bearable.
+
+Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her
+that she would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed
+without his writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and
+dining alone with her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the
+heart, and talked icily on general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to
+bed early, and when she had gone Lily sat down and wrote a note to
+Selden. She was about to ring for a messenger to despatch it when
+her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening paper which lay at her
+elbow: “Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the passengers sailing this
+afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the Windward Liner
+Antilles.”
+
+She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note.
+She understood now that he was never coming—that he had gone away
+because he was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking
+across the floor stood gazing at herself for a long time in the
+brightly lit mirror above the mantelpiece. The lines in her face
+came out terribly—she looked old; and when a girl looks old to
+herself, how does she look to other people? She moved away, and
+began to wander aimlessly about the room, fitting her steps with
+mechanical precision between the monstrous roses of Mrs. Peniston’s
+Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with which she had
+written to Selden still rested against the uncovered inkstand.
+She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
+it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and
+sat over it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write
+the date, and “Dear Mr. Rosedale”—but after that her inspiration
+flagged. She meant to tell him to come to her, but the words
+refused to shape themselves. At length she began: “I have been
+thinking——” then she laid the pen down, and sat with her elbows on
+the table and her face hidden in her hands.
+
+Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was
+not late—barely ten o’clock—and there might still be a note from
+Selden, or a message—or he might be there himself, on the other
+side of the door! The announcement of his sailing might have been
+a mistake—it might be another Lawrence Selden who had gone to
+Havana—all these possibilities had time to flash through her mind,
+and build up the conviction that she was after all to see or hear
+from him, before the drawing-room door opened to admit a servant
+carrying a telegram.
+
+Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset’s name
+below the message: “Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us
+on a cruise in Mediterranean?”
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+
+It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo
+had, more than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating
+itself to each man’s humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a
+festive readiness of welcome that might well, in a disenchanted
+eye, have turned to paint and facility. So frank an appeal for
+participation—so outspoken a recognition of the holiday vein in
+human nature—struck refreshingly on a mind jaded by prolonged
+hard work in surroundings made for the discipline of the senses.
+As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry of
+architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
+loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which
+suggested a sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting
+of scenes—as he took in the whole outspread effect of light and
+leisure, he felt a movement of revulsion from the last few months
+of his life.
+
+The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
+snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and
+furious air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the
+gritty wind ground into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work,
+had told himself that external conditions did not matter to a man
+in his state, and that cold and ugliness were a good tonic for
+relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent case summoned him abroad
+to confer with a client in Paris, he broke reluctantly with the
+routine of the office; and it was only now that, having despatched
+his business, and slipped away for a week in the south, he began to
+feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is the solace of those
+who take an objective interest in life.
+
+The multiplicity of its appeals—the perpetual surprise of its
+contrasts and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the
+show were upon him with a spring as he descended the Casino steps
+and paused on the pavement at its doors. He had not been abroad
+for seven years—and what changes the renewed contact produced! If
+the central depths were untouched, hardly a pin-point of surface
+remained the same. And this was the very place to bring out the
+completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the perpetuities,
+might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a day’s
+revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his fixed sky.
+
+It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its
+climax and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens
+would soon dissolve and reform in other scenes. Meanwhile the last
+moments of the performance seemed to gain an added brightness
+from the hovering threat of the curtain. The quality of the air,
+the exuberance of the flowers, the blue intensity of sea and sky,
+produced the effect of a closing TABLEAU, when all the lights are
+turned on at once. This impression was presently heightened by the
+way in which a consciously conspicuous group of people advanced
+to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the air of the
+chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the final
+effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had
+been staged regardless of expense, and emphasized its resemblance
+to one of those “costume-plays” in which the protagonists walk
+through the passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood
+in unrelated attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the
+men hung about them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors
+are named in the programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly
+fused the group by arresting the attention of one of its members.
+
+“Why, Mr. Selden!” Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a
+gesture toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added
+plaintively: “We’re starving to death because we can’t decide where
+to lunch.”
+
+Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their
+difficulty, Selden learned with amusement that there were several
+places where one might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit
+something by lunching; so that eating actually became a minor
+consideration on the very spot consecrated to its rites.
+
+“Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE—but that looks
+as if one hadn’t any other reason for being there: the Americans
+who don’t know any one always rush for the best food. And the
+Duchess of Beltshire has taken up Becassin’s lately,” Mrs. Bry
+earnestly summed up.
+
+Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher’s despair, had not progressed beyond the
+point of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could not
+acquire the air of doing things because she wanted to, and making
+her choice the final seal of their fitness.
+
+Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure
+clothes, met the dilemma hilariously.
+
+“I guess the Duchess goes where it’s cheapest, unless she can get
+her meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE
+she’d turn up fast enough.”
+
+But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. “The Grand Dukes go to that
+little place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it’s the only
+restaurant in Europe where they can cook peas.”
+
+Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming
+worn smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting
+the wealthy to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis:
+“It’s quite that.”
+
+“PEAS?” said Mr. Bry contemptuously. “Can they cook terrapin? It
+just shows,” he continued, “what these European markets are, when a
+fellow can make a reputation cooking peas!”
+
+Jack Stepney intervened with authority. “I don’t know that I quite
+agree with Dacey: there’s a little hole in Paris, off the Quai
+Voltaire—but in any case, I can’t advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at
+least not with ladies.”
+
+Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as
+the Van Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his
+surprise and discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness
+of gait which left him trailing breathlessly in her wake.
+
+“That’s where we’ll go then!” she declared, with a heavy toss of
+her plumage. “I’m so tired of the TERRASSE: it’s as dull as one
+of mother’s dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who
+all the awful people are at the other place—hasn’t he, Carry? Now,
+Jack, don’t look so solemn!”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Bry, “all I want to know is who their
+dress-makers are.”
+
+“No doubt Dacey can tell you that too,” remarked Stepney, with an
+ironic intention which the other received with the light murmur,
+“I can at least FIND OUT, my dear fellow”; and Mrs. Bry having
+declared that she couldn’t walk another step, the party hailed
+two or three of the light phaetons which hover attentively on the
+confines of the gardens, and rattled off in procession toward the
+Condamine.
+
+Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging
+the boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
+intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which
+they presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the
+intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin
+promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the
+mediaeval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left the
+terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house. Between the two,
+the waters of the bay were furrowed by a light coming and going
+of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the culminating moment
+of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great steam-yacht drew the
+company’s attention from the peas.
+
+“By Jove, I believe that’s the Dorsets back!” Stepney exclaimed;
+and Lord Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated: “It’s
+the Sabrina—yes.”
+
+“So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily,” Mrs. Fisher
+observed.
+
+“I guess they feel as if they had: there’s only one up-to-date
+hotel in the whole place,” said Mr. Bry disparagingly.
+
+“It was Ned Silverton’s idea—but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must
+have been horribly bored.” Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to
+Selden: “I do hope there hasn’t been a row.”
+
+“It’s most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back,” said Lord Hubert,
+in his mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: “I
+daresay the Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily’s here.”
+
+“The Duchess admires her immensely: I’m sure she’d be charmed
+to have it arranged,” Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional
+promptness of the man accustomed to draw his profit from
+facilitating social contacts: Selden was struck by the businesslike
+change in his manner.
+
+“Lily has been a tremendous success here,” Mrs. Fisher continued,
+still addressing herself confidentially to Selden. “She looks ten
+years younger—I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her
+everywhere in Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her
+to stop for a week at Cimiez. People say that was one reason why
+Bertha whisked the yacht off to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn’t
+take much notice of her, and she couldn’t bear to look on at Lily’s
+triumph.”
+
+Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was
+cruising in the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not
+occurred to him that there was any chance of running across her on
+the Riviera, where the season was virtually at an end. As he leaned
+back, silently contemplating his filigree cup of Turkish coffee,
+he was trying to put some order in his thoughts, to tell himself
+how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He had a
+personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of emotional
+high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings, and
+he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight
+of the Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that
+his three months of engrossing professional work, following on
+the sharp shock of his disillusionment, had cleared his mind of
+its sentimental vapours. The feeling he had nourished and given
+prominence to was one of thankfulness for his escape: he was like a
+traveller so grateful for rescue from a dangerous accident that at
+first he is hardly conscious of his bruises. Now he suddenly felt
+the latent ache, and realized that after all he had not come off
+unhurt.
+
+An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher’s side in the Casino gardens, he was
+trying to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in
+the contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed
+with the loitering indecision characteristic of social movements
+at Monte Carlo, where the whole place, and the long gilded hours
+of the day, seem to offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord
+Hubert Dacey had finally gone off in quest of the Duchess of
+Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with the delicate negotiation of
+securing that lady’s presence at dinner, the Stepneys had left for
+Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed to take his place
+in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment engaging his
+highest faculties.
+
+Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after
+luncheon, had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to
+withdraw to her hotel for an hour’s repose; and Selden and his
+companion were thus left to a stroll propitious to confidences.
+The stroll soon resolved itself into a tranquil session on a bench
+overhung with laurel and Banksian roses, from which they caught a
+dazzle of blue sea between marble balusters, and the fiery shafts
+of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like from the rock. The soft
+shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of the air, were
+conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of many
+cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
+Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She
+had come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion
+flees the inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated
+by their first success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and
+Mrs. Fisher, viewing the Riviera as an easy introduction to London
+society, had guided their course thither. She had affiliations
+of her own in every capital, and a facility for picking them up
+again after long absences; and the carefully disseminated rumour
+of the Brys’ wealth had at once gathered about them a group of
+cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.
+
+“But things are not going as well as I expected,” Mrs. Fisher
+frankly admitted. “It’s all very well to say that every body with
+money can get into society; but it would be truer to say that
+NEARLY everybody can. And the London market is so glutted with new
+Americans that, to succeed there now, they must be either very
+clever or awfully queer. The Brys are neither. HE would get on well
+enough if she’d let him alone; they like his slang and his brag and
+his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by trying to repress him and
+put herself forward. If she’d be natural herself—fat and vulgar and
+bouncing—it would be all right; but as soon as she meets anybody
+smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She tried it with the
+Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled. I’ve done my
+best to make her see her mistake—I’ve said to her again and again:
+‘Just let yourself go, Louisa’; but she keeps up the humbug even
+with me—I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with
+the door shut.
+
+“The worst of it is,” Mrs. Fisher went on, “that she thinks it’s
+all MY fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and
+everybody began to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa
+thought that if she’d had Lily in tow instead of me she would have
+been hob-nobbing with all the royalties by this time. She doesn’t
+realize that it’s Lily’s beauty that does it: Lord Hubert tells me
+Lily is thought even handsomer than when he knew her at Aix ten
+years ago. It seems she was tremendously admired there. An Italian
+Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to marry her; but just at
+the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned up, and Lily
+was silly enough to flirt with him while her marriage-settlements
+with the step-father were being drawn up. Some people said the
+young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal: there was
+an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
+so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
+elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks
+that Aix didn’t suit her, and mentions her having been sent there
+as proof of the incompetence of French doctors. That’s Lily all
+over, you know: she works like a slave preparing the ground and
+sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest
+she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a picnic.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of
+sea between the cactus-flowers. “Sometimes,” she added, “I think
+it’s just flightiness—and sometimes I think it’s because, at heart,
+she despises the things she’s trying for. And it’s the difficulty
+of deciding that makes her such an interesting study.” She glanced
+tentatively at Selden’s motionless profile, and resumed with a
+slight sigh: “Well, all I can say is, I wish she’d give ME some of
+her discarded opportunities. I wish we could change places now,
+for instance. She could make a very good thing out of the Brys
+if she managed them properly, and I should know just how to look
+after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy
+Silverton.”
+
+She met Selden’s sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance.
+“Well, what’s the use of mincing matters? We all know that’s what
+Bertha brought her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good
+time she has to provide occupation for George. At first I thought
+Lily was going to play her cards well THIS time, but there are
+rumours that Bertha is jealous of her success here and at Cannes,
+and I shouldn’t be surprised if there were a break any day. Lily’s
+only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly—oh, very badly.
+The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it’s necessary that
+George’s attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And
+I’m bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he’d marry her
+tomorrow if he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But
+you know him—he’s as blind as he’s jealous; and of course Lily’s
+present business is to keep him blind. A clever woman might know
+just the right moment to tear off the bandage: but Lily isn’t
+clever in that way, and when George does open his eyes she’ll
+probably contrive not to be in his line of vision.”
+
+Selden tossed away his cigarette. “By Jove—it’s time for my train,”
+he exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs.
+Fisher’s surprised comment—“Why, I thought of course you were at
+Monte!”—a murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his
+head-quarters.
+
+“The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now,” he heard irrelevantly
+flung after him.
+
+Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel
+overlooking the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of
+gaping portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to transport
+them to the cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the
+steep white road to the station to land him safely in the afternoon
+express for Nice; and not till he was installed in the corner of
+an empty carriage, did he exclaim to himself, with a reaction of
+self-contempt: “What the deuce am I running away from?”
+
+The pertinence of the question checked Selden’s fugitive impulse
+before the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like
+an emotional coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered.
+He had instructed his bankers to forward some important business
+letters to Nice, and at Nice he would quietly await them. He was
+already annoyed with himself for having left Monte Carlo, where he
+had intended to pass the week which remained to him before sailing;
+but it would now be difficult to return on his steps without an
+appearance of inconsistency from which his pride recoiled. In his
+inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the probability
+of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself from
+her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance;
+and viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a
+reassuring object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated
+mention of her name, would send his thoughts back into grooves
+from which he had resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could
+be entirely excluded from his life, the pressure of new and varied
+impressions, with which no thought of her was connected, would soon
+complete the work of separation. Mrs. Fisher’s conversation had,
+indeed, operated to that end; but the treatment was too painful
+to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies were untried; and
+Selden thought he could trust himself to return gradually to a
+reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.
+
+Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in
+his reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned
+him that he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment
+there was a hand on the door, and he turned to confront the very
+face he was fleeing.
+
+Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the
+train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and
+Lord Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage,
+and envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before
+the whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were
+hastening to Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the
+Duchess of Beltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan
+evidently improvised—in spite of Lord Hubert’s protesting “Oh, I
+say, you know,”—for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry’s
+endeavour to capture the Duchess.
+
+During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time for
+a rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself opposite
+to him in the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three months had
+elapsed since he had parted from her on the threshold of the Brys’
+conservatory; but a subtle change had passed over the quality
+of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through which the
+fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically visible; now
+its impenetrable surface suggested a process of crystallization
+which had fused her whole being into one hard brilliant substance.
+The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation: to Selden it
+seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm fluidity
+of youth is chilled into its final shape.
+
+He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
+competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she
+took up the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had
+not been snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such
+facility sickened him—but he told himself that it was with the
+pang which precedes recovery. Now he would really get well—would
+eject the last drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt
+himself calmer in her presence than he had learned to be in the
+thought of her. Her assumptions and elisions, her short-cuts and
+long DETOURS, the skill with which she contrived to meet him at a
+point from which no inconvenient glimpses of the past were visible,
+suggested what opportunities she had had for practising such arts
+since their last meeting. He felt that she had at last arrived at
+an understanding with herself: had made a pact with her rebellious
+impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government, under
+which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced
+into the service of the state.
+
+And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had adjusted
+itself to the hidden intricacies of a situation in which, even
+after Mrs. Fisher’s elucidating flashes, he still felt himself
+agrope. Surely Mrs. Fisher could no longer charge Miss Bart with
+neglecting her opportunities! To Selden’s exasperated observation
+she was only too completely alive to them. She was “perfect”
+to every one: subservient to Bertha’s anxious predominance,
+good-naturedly watchful of Dorset’s moods, brightly companionable
+to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident
+footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously
+self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely
+obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of
+manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it
+flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation
+must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was
+the impression left with him. He seemed to see her poised on the
+brink of a chasm, with one graceful foot advanced to assert her
+unconsciousness that the ground was failing her.
+
+On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for
+the half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of the
+general insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism.
+How any one could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera—any
+one with a grain of imagination—with the whole Mediterranean to
+choose from: but then, if one’s estimate of a place depended on
+the way they broiled a spring chicken! Gad! what a study might be
+made of the tyranny of the stomach—the way a sluggish liver or
+insufficient gastric juices might affect the whole course of the
+universe, overshadow everything in reach—chronic dyspepsia ought
+to be among the “statutory causes”; a woman’s life might be ruined
+by a man’s inability to digest fresh bread. Grotesque? Yes—and
+tragic—like most absurdities. There’s nothing grimmer than the
+tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he? Oh—the reason
+they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well—partly, no doubt, Miss
+Bart’s desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a stone
+to art and poetry—the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And
+of course she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for
+him. Oh, she could make him believe anything—ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset
+was aware of it—oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn’t see! But she
+could hold her tongue—she’d had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an
+intimate friend—she wouldn’t hear a word against her. Only it hurts
+a woman’s pride—there are some things one doesn’t get used to....
+All this in confidence, of course? Ah—and there were the ladies
+signalling from the balcony of the hotel.... He plunged across the
+Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative cigar.
+
+The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the evening,
+by some of those faint corroborative hints that generate a light
+of their own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden, stumbling on
+a chance acquaintance, had dined with him, and adjourned, still
+in his company, to the brightly lit Promenade, where a line of
+crowded stands commanded the glittering darkness of the waters.
+The night was soft and persuasive. Overhead hung a summer sky
+furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from the east a late moon,
+pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay
+a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of
+the illuminated boats. Down the lantern-hung Promenade, snatches
+of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft
+tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and
+the backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the
+vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of
+the season.
+
+Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the stands
+facing the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng, and
+then found a point of vantage on a high garden-parapet above the
+Promenade. Thence they caught but a triangular glimpse of the
+water, and of the flashing play of boats across its surface; but
+the crowd in the street was under their immediate view, and seemed
+to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than the show itself.
+After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and, dropping
+alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and
+turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls
+overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty
+cab trailed along the deserted thoroughfare, and presently Selden
+saw two persons emerge from the opposite shadows, signal to the
+cab, and drive off in it toward the centre of the town. The
+moonlight touched them as they paused to enter the carriage, and he
+recognized Mrs. Dorset and young Silverton.
+
+Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw
+that the time was close on eleven. He took another cross street,
+and without breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way
+to the fashionable club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here,
+amid the blaze of crowded baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord
+Hubert Dacey, seated with his habitual worn smile behind a rapidly
+dwindling heap of gold. The heap being in due course wiped out,
+Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining Selden, adjourned with
+him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was now past midnight,
+and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the long trails
+of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky repossessed by
+the tranquil splendour of the moon.
+
+Lord Hubert looked at his watch. “By Jove, I promised to join the
+Duchess for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it’s past twelve, and
+I suppose they’ve all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the
+crowd soon after dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They
+had seats on one of the stands, but of course they couldn’t stop
+quiet: the Duchess never can. She and Miss Bart went off in quest
+of what they call adventures—gad, it ain’t their fault if they
+don’t have some queer ones!” He added tentatively, after pausing
+to grope for a cigarette: “Miss Bart’s an old friend of yours,
+I believe? So she told me.—Ah, thanks—I don’t seem to have one
+left.” He lit Selden’s proffered cigarette, and continued, in his
+high-pitched drawling tone: “None of my business, of course, but I
+didn’t introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess,
+you understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a
+liberal education.”
+
+Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert
+broke out again: “Sort of thing one can’t communicate to the young
+lady—though young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for
+themselves; but in this case—I’m an old friend too, you know . . .
+and there seemed no one else to speak to. The whole situation’s a
+little mixed, as I see it—but there used to be an aunt somewhere, a
+diffuse and innocent person, who was great at bridging over chasms
+she didn’t see.... Ah, in New York, is she? Pity New York’s such a
+long way off!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+
+Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found
+herself alone on the deck of the Sabrina.
+
+The cushioned chairs, disposed expectantly under the wide awning,
+showed no signs of recent occupancy, and she presently learned
+from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet appeared, and that
+the gentlemen—separately—had gone ashore as soon as they had
+breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over the
+side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
+before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath
+of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of
+foam at the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences,
+hotels and villas flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and
+eucalyptus; and the background of bare and finely-pencilled
+mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light.
+
+How beautiful it was—and how she loved beauty! She had always
+felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain
+obtusenesses of feeling of which she was less proud; and during the
+last three months she had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets’
+invitation to go abroad with them had come as an almost miraculous
+release from crushing difficulties; and her faculty for renewing
+herself in new scenes, and casting off problems of conduct as
+easily as the surroundings in which they had arisen, made the mere
+change from one place to another seem, not merely a postponement,
+but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed for her
+only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
+to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they
+changed their background. She could not have remained in New York
+without repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself
+of that odious debt she might even have faced a marriage with
+Rosedale; but the accident of placing the Atlantic between herself
+and her obligations made them dwindle out of sight as if they had
+been milestones and she had travelled past them.
+
+Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to
+aid this illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new
+scenes, and had found in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions.
+The cruise itself charmed her as a romantic adventure. She was
+vaguely touched by the names and scenes amid which she moved, and
+had listened to Ned Silverton reading Theocritus by moonlight,
+as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories, with a thrill
+of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
+superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given
+her more pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high
+company, and of making her own ascendency felt there, so that she
+found herself figuring once more as the “beautiful Miss Bart” in
+the interesting journal devoted to recording the least movements
+of her cosmopolitan companions—all these experiences tended to
+throw into the extreme background of memory the prosaic and sordid
+difficulties from which she had escaped.
+
+If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was
+sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to
+feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with
+which she was familiar. Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of
+the skill with which she had adapted herself to somewhat delicate
+conditions. She had reason to think that she had made herself
+equally necessary to her host and hostess; and if only she had seen
+any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a financial profit
+from the situation, there would have been no cloud on her horizon.
+The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently low;
+and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
+be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could
+worry along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some
+happy change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was
+gay and beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not
+unworthily in such a setting.
+
+She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of
+Beltshire, and at twelve o’clock she asked to be set ashore in the
+gig. Before this she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see
+Mrs. Dorset; but the reply came back that the latter was tired,
+and trying to sleep. Lily thought she understood the reason of
+the rebuff. Her hostess had not been included in the Duchess’s
+invitation, though she herself had made the most loyal efforts in
+that direction. But her grace was impervious to hints, and invited
+or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily’s fault if Mrs. Dorset’s
+complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess’s easy gait.
+The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated her
+objection beyond saying: “She’s rather a bore, you know. The only
+one of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry—HE’S funny—” but
+Lily knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether
+sorry to be thus distinguished at her friend’s expense. Bertha
+certainly HAD grown tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned
+Silverton.
+
+On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from
+the Sabrina; and the Duchess’s little breakfast, organized by
+Lord Hubert with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter
+to Lily for not including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of
+late, had grown more than usually morose and incalculable, and
+Ned Silverton went about with an air that seemed to challenge the
+universe. The freedom and lightness of the ducal intercourse made
+an agreeable change from these complications, and Lily was tempted,
+after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her companions to the
+hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to play; her
+diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure; but
+it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of
+the Duchess’s back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a
+neighbouring table.
+
+The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the
+afternoon hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the
+Sunday crowd in a lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass,
+identities were hardly distinguishable; but Lily presently saw
+Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in
+the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing
+after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug. Mrs. Bry pressed
+on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in
+the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
+towing-line, and let herself float to the girl’s side.
+
+“Lose her?” she echoed the latter’s query, with an indifferent
+glance at Mrs. Bry’s retreating back. “I daresay—it doesn’t matter:
+I HAVE lost her already.” And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: “We
+had an awful row this morning. You know, of course, that the
+Duchess chucked her at dinner last night, and she thinks it was my
+fault—my want of management. The worst of it is, the message—just a
+mere word by telephone—came so late that the dinner HAD to be paid
+for; and Becassin HAD run it up—it had been so drummed into him
+that the Duchess was coming!” Mrs. Fisher indulged in a faint laugh
+at the remembrance. “Paying for what she doesn’t get rankles so
+dreadfully with Louisa: I can’t make her see that it’s one of the
+preliminary steps to getting what you haven’t paid for—and as I was
+the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms, poor dear!”
+
+Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came
+naturally to her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to
+Mrs. Fisher.
+
+“If there’s anything I can do—if it’s only a question of meeting
+the Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing——”
+
+But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. “My dear,
+I have my pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn’t manage the
+Duchess, and I can’t palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I’ve
+taken the final step: I go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers.
+THEY’RE still in the elementary stage; an Italian Prince is a great
+deal more than a Prince to them, and they’re always on the brink
+of taking a courier for one. To save them from that is my present
+mission.” She laughed again at the picture. “But before I go I want
+to make my last will and testament—I want to leave you the Brys.”
+
+“Me?” Miss Bart joined in her amusement. “It’s charming of you to
+remember me, dear; but really——”
+
+“You’re already so well provided for?” Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp
+glance at her. “ARE you, though, Lily—to the point of rejecting my
+offer?”
+
+Miss Bart coloured slowly. “What I really meant was, that the Brys
+wouldn’t in the least care to be so disposed of.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an
+unflinching eye. “What you really meant was that you’ve snubbed the
+Brys horribly; and you know that they know——”
+
+“Carry!”
+
+“Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you’d
+even managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina—especially when
+royalties were coming! But it’s not too late,” she ended earnestly,
+“it’s not too late for either of you.”
+
+Lily smiled. “Stay over, and I’ll get the Duchess to dine with
+them.”
+
+“I shan’t stay over—the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT,” said
+Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. “But get the Duchess to dine with them
+all the same.”
+
+Lily’s smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend’s
+importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. “I’m sorry I
+have been negligent about the Brys——” she began.
+
+“Oh, as to the Brys—it’s you I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Fisher
+abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered
+voice: “You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess
+chucked us. It was Louisa’s idea—I told her what I thought of it.”
+
+Miss Bart assented. “Yes—I caught sight of you on the way back, at
+the station.”
+
+“Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George
+Dorset—that horrid little Dabham who does ‘Society Notes from
+the Riviera’—had been dining with us at Nice. And he’s telling
+everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight.”
+
+“Alone—? When he was with us?” Lily laughed, but her laugh faded
+into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher’s look.
+“We DID come back alone—if that’s so very dreadful! But whose fault
+was it? The Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown
+Princess; Bertha got bored with the show, and went off early,
+promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on time, but she
+didn’t—she didn’t turn up at all!”
+
+Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents,
+with careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher
+received it in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have
+lost sight of her friend’s part in the incident: her inward vision
+had taken another slant.
+
+“Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?”
+
+“Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for
+the FETE. At any rate, I know she’s safe on the yacht, though I
+haven’t yet seen her; but you see it was not my fault,” Lily summed
+up.
+
+“Not your fault that Bertha didn’t turn up? My poor child, if only
+you don’t have to pay for it!” Mrs. Fisher rose—she had seen Mrs.
+Bry surging back in her direction. “There’s Louisa, and I must
+be off—oh, we’re on the best of terms externally; we’re lunching
+together; but at heart it’s ME she’s lunching on,” she explained;
+and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I
+leave her to you; she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with
+her from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving,
+the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry’s good graces.
+An affable advance—a vague murmur that they must see more of each
+other—an allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include
+the Duchess as well as the Sabrina—how easily it was all done, if
+one possessed the knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as
+she had so often wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not
+more consistently exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful—and
+sometimes, could it be that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she
+had been vaguely conscious of a reason for sinking her pride, had
+in fact even sunk it to the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert
+Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps, that he might
+really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE undertook to
+have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help,
+with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
+way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much
+more for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before
+her as she advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted.
+Had it been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with
+Selden? She thought not—time and change seemed so completely to
+have relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite
+reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the
+recent past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained
+a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear that they
+were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down to Nice
+for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
+No—that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
+fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
+uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.
+
+They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
+descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her
+across the square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and
+regain the yacht; but she now had the immediate impression that
+something more was to happen first.
+
+“Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?” he began, putting
+the second question before the first was answered, and not waiting
+for a reply to either before he directed her silently toward the
+comparative seclusion of the lower gardens.
+
+She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous
+tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its
+sallowness had paled to a leaden white against which his irregular
+eyebrows and long reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine
+effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd mixture of the
+bedraggled and the ferocious.
+
+He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till
+they reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then,
+pulling up abruptly, he said: “Have you seen Bertha?”
+
+“No—when I left the yacht she was not yet up.”
+
+He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
+clock. “Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time
+she came on board? This morning at seven!” he exclaimed.
+
+“At seven?” Lily started. “What happened—an accident to the train?”
+
+He laughed again. “They missed the train—all the trains—they had to
+drive back.”
+
+“Well——?” She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this
+necessity accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.
+
+“Well, they couldn’t get a carriage at once—at that time of night,
+you know—” the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he
+were putting the case for his wife—“and when they finally did, it
+was only a one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!”
+
+“How tiresome! I see,” she affirmed, with the more earnestness
+because she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after
+a pause she added: “I’m so sorry—but ought we to have waited?”
+
+“Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the
+four of us, do you think?”
+
+She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh
+intended to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of
+it. “Well, it would have been difficult; we should have had to walk
+by turns. But it would have been jolly to see the sunrise.”
+
+“Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly,” he agreed.
+
+“Was it? You saw it, then?”
+
+“I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them.”
+
+“Naturally—I suppose you were worried. Why didn’t you call on me to
+share your vigil?”
+
+He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. “I
+don’t think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT,” he said with
+sudden grimness.
+
+Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and
+as in one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of
+keeping her sense of it out of her eyes.
+
+“DENOUEMENT—isn’t that too big a word for such a small incident?
+The worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has
+probably slept off by this time.”
+
+She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to
+her in the glare of his miserable eyes.
+
+“Don’t—don’t——!” he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and
+while she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore
+any cause for it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he
+dropped down on the bench near which they had paused, and poured
+out the wretchedness of his soul.
+
+It was a dreadful hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking
+and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual
+glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of
+such an outbreak; but rather because, here and there throughout
+the three months, the surface of life had shown such ominous
+cracks and vapours that her fears had always been on the alert
+for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation had
+presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid image—that of a
+shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping road, while
+she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending, and
+wondering what would give way first. Well—everything had given way
+now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so
+long. Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely
+witnessing it from the road, was intensified by the way in which
+Dorset, through his furies of denunciation and wild reactions of
+self-contempt, made her feel the need he had of her, the place she
+had taken in his life. But for her, what ear would have been open
+to his cries? And what hand but hers could drag him up again to a
+footing of sanity and self-respect? All through the stress of the
+struggle with him, she had been conscious of something faintly
+maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
+present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up,
+but to feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted
+her to suffer with him, not to help him to suffer less.
+
+Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
+frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy
+so deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would
+think it the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But
+Monte Carlo is, of all places, the one where the human bond is
+least close, and odd sights are the least arresting. If a glance
+or two lingered on the couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed
+them; and it was Lily herself who broke the silence by rising from
+her seat. With the clearing of her vision the sweep of peril had
+extended, and she saw that the post of danger was no longer at
+Dorset’s side.
+
+“If you won’t go back, I must—don’t make me leave you!” she urged.
+
+But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: “What are you
+going to do? You really can’t sit here all night.”
+
+“I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers.” He sat up,
+roused by a new thought. “By Jove, Selden’s at Nice—I’ll send for
+Selden!”
+
+Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. “No, no, NO!”
+she protested.
+
+He swung round on her distrustfully. “Why not Selden? He’s a lawyer
+isn’t he? One will do as well as another in a case like this.”
+
+“As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help
+you.”
+
+“You do—by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn’t been
+for you I’d have ended the thing long ago. But now it’s got to
+end.” He rose suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. “You
+can’t want to see me ridiculous.”
+
+She looked at him kindly. “That’s just it.” Then, after a moment’s
+pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
+inspiration: “Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You’ll have time to
+do it before dinner.”
+
+“Oh, DINNER——” he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
+rejoinder: “Dinner on board, remember; we’ll put it off till nine
+if you like.”
+
+It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the
+quay, and she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her,
+she began to wonder what had been happening on the yacht. Of
+Silverton’s whereabouts there had been no mention. Had he returned
+to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha—the dread alternative sprang on
+her suddenly—could Bertha, left to herself, have gone ashore to
+rejoin him? Lily’s heart stood still at the thought. All her
+concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
+in such affairs, the woman’s instinct is to side with the man, but
+because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was
+so desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of
+so different a quality from Bertha’s, though hers too was desperate
+enough. The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about
+herself, while he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual
+crisis, this difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution
+on Bertha’s side, since at least he had her to suffer for, and
+she had only herself. At any rate, viewed less ideally, all the
+disadvantages of such a situation were for the woman; and it was
+to Bertha that Lily’s sympathies now went out. She was not fond of
+Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of obligation,
+the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain it.
+Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the
+last months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction
+of which Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more
+urgent that she should work undividedly in her friend’s interest.
+
+It was in Bertha’s interest, certainly, that she had despatched
+Dorset to consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness
+of the situation accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was
+the safest in which Dorset could find himself. Who but Selden
+could thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the
+obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would
+be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the
+obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through she could
+trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust in
+the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.
+
+Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the
+conviction strengthened her for the task that remained. She and
+Bertha had never been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis
+the barriers of reserve must surely fall: Dorset’s wild allusions
+to the scene of the morning made Lily feel that they were down
+already, and that any attempt to rebuild them would be beyond
+Bertha’s strength. She pictured the poor creature shivering behind
+her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense the moment when
+she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered. If only
+that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
+traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily
+grew more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her
+long absence. What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long
+hours no soul to turn to—but by this time Lily’s eager foot was on
+the side-ladder, and her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst
+of her apprehensions to be unfounded; for there, in the luxurious
+shade of the after-deck, the wretched Bertha, in full command of
+her usual attenuated elegance, sat dispensing tea to the Duchess of
+Beltshire and Lord Hubert.
+
+The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that
+Bertha, at least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was
+proportionately disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned.
+But in an instant she saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to
+look blank before the others, and that, to mitigate the effect
+of her own surprise, she must at once produce some simple reason
+for it. The long habit of rapid transitions made it easy for her
+to exclaim to the Duchess: “Why, I thought you’d gone back to the
+Princess!” and this sufficed for the lady she addressed, if it was
+hardly enough for Lord Hubert.
+
+At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the
+Duchess was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first
+rushed out to the yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject
+of tomorrow’s dinner—the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert
+had finally insisted on dragging them.
+
+“To save my neck, you know!” he explained, with a glance that
+appealed to Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the
+Duchess added, with her noble candour: “Mr. Bry has promised him a
+tip, and he says if we go he’ll pass it onto us.”
+
+This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to
+Lily, Mrs. Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the
+close of which Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder,
+called back, with an air of numbering heads: “And of course we may
+count on Dorset too?”
+
+“Oh, count on him,” his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up
+well to the last—but as she turned back from waving her adieux over
+the side, Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul
+of fear look out.
+
+Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady
+her muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control
+when, dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she
+remarked to Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: “I suppose I
+ought to say good morning.”
+
+If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only
+the vaguest sense of what was expected of her in return. There
+was something unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset’s
+composure, and she had to force the light tone in which she
+answered: “I tried to see you this morning, but you were not yet
+up.”
+
+“No—I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought
+we ought to wait for you till the last train.” She spoke very
+gently, but with just the least tinge of reproach.
+
+“You missed us? You waited for us at the station?” Now indeed Lily
+was too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other’s words or
+keep watch on her own. “But I thought you didn’t get to the station
+till after the last train had left!”
+
+Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
+immediate query: “Who told you that?”
+
+“George—I saw him just now in the gardens.”
+
+“Ah, is that George’s version? Poor George—he was in no state to
+remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this
+morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he
+found him?”
+
+Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset
+settled herself indolently in her seat. “He’ll wait to see him; he
+was horribly frightened about himself. It’s very bad for him to be
+worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings
+on an attack.”
+
+This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her;
+but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so
+incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could
+only falter out doubtfully: “Anything upsetting?”
+
+“Yes—such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
+hours. You know, my dear, you’re rather a big responsibility in
+such a scandalous place after midnight.”
+
+At that—at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable
+audacity of it—Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished
+laugh.
+
+“Well, really—considering it was you who burdened him with the
+responsibility!”
+
+Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. “By not having
+the superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush
+for the train? Or the imagination to believe that you’d take it
+without us—you and he all alone—instead of waiting quietly in the
+station till we DID manage to meet you?”
+
+Lily’s colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was
+pursuing an object, following a line she had marked out for
+herself. Only, with such a doom impending, why waste time in these
+childish efforts to avert it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed
+Lily’s indignation: did it not prove how horribly the poor creature
+was frightened?
+
+“No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice,” she returned.
+
+“Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity
+to rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are
+not a child to be led by the hand!”
+
+“No—nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that’s what you are
+doing to me now.”
+
+Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. “Lecture you—I? Heaven
+forbid! I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it’s
+usually the other way round, isn’t it? I’m expected to take hints,
+not to give them: I’ve positively lived on them all these last
+months.”
+
+“Hints—from me to you?” Lily repeated.
+
+“Oh, negative ones merely—what not to be and to do and to see. And
+I think I’ve taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you’ll let
+me say so, I didn’t understand that one of my negative duties was
+NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence too far.”
+
+A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered
+treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But
+compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive
+recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the
+tracked creature’s attempt to cloud the medium through which it
+was fleeing? It was on Lily’s lips to exclaim: “You poor soul,
+don’t double and turn—come straight back to me, and we’ll find a
+way out!” But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of
+Bertha’s smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly,
+letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated
+falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to her
+cabin.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+
+Miss Bart’s telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his
+hotel; and having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The
+message necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he
+had recently heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On
+the whole he was surprised; for though he had perceived that the
+situation contained all the elements of an explosion, he had often
+enough, in the range of his personal experience, seen just such
+combinations subside into harmlessness. Still, Dorset’s spasmodic
+temper, and his wife’s reckless disregard of appearances, gave the
+situation a peculiar insecurity; and it was less from the sense of
+any special relation to the case than from a purely professional
+zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to safety. Whether, in
+the present instance, safety for either lay in repairing so damaged
+a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had only, on
+general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his desire
+to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
+There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished
+to spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected
+with the public washing of the Dorset linen.
+
+How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw
+even more vividly after his two hours’ talk with poor Dorset. If
+anything came out at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of
+accumulated moral rags as left him, after his visitor had gone,
+with the feeling that he must fling open the windows and have his
+room swept out. But nothing should come out; and happily for his
+side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced together, could
+not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a homogeneous
+grievance. The torn edges did not always fit—there were missing
+bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
+was naturally Selden’s business to make the most of in putting
+them under his client’s eye. But to a man in Dorset’s mood the
+completest demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw
+that for the moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize,
+to offer sympathy and to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart
+charged to the brim with the sense that, till their next meeting,
+he must maintain a strictly noncommittal attitude; that, in short,
+his share in the game consisted for the present in looking on.
+Selden knew, however, that he could not long keep such violences
+in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset, the next morning,
+at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a little on
+the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such natures,
+follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
+telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
+“Assume that everything is as usual.”
+
+On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day
+was lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily’s imperative
+bidding, had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the
+yacht. The repast had been the most difficult moment of the day.
+Dorset was sunk in one of the abysmal silences which so commonly
+followed on what his wife called his “attacks” that it was easy,
+before the servants, to refer it to this cause; but Bertha herself
+seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to make use of this
+obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt of the
+situation on her husband’s hands, as if too absorbed in a grievance
+of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one herself.
+To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
+perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the
+weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling
+structure of “appearances,” her own attention was perpetually
+distracted by the question: “What on earth can she be driving at?”
+There was something positively exasperating in Bertha’s attitude
+of isolated defiance. If only she would have given her friend a
+hint they might still have worked together successfully; but how
+could Lily be of use, while she was thus obstinately shut out from
+participation? To be of use was what she honestly wanted; and not
+for her own sake but for the Dorsets’. She had not thought of her
+own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in trying to put a
+little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary evening
+left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
+tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal
+of his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and
+who should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in
+the infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her
+rescuing hand.
+
+Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and
+it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that
+more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down
+the silent passage and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an
+apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of
+what had occurred between the confronted pair. One fact alone
+outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to
+ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton. No one
+referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept
+it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
+another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset
+now avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was
+repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only
+trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Selden’s counsel to behave
+“as usual.” Such instructions no more make for easiness of attitude
+than the photographer’s behest to “look natural”; and in a creature
+as unconscious as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually
+presented, the struggle to maintain a pose was sure to result in
+queer contortions.
+
+It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
+resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset
+was still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and
+feeling too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried
+ashore. Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a
+group of acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in
+whose company she was returning to the rooms when she encountered
+Selden crossing the square. She could not, at the moment, separate
+herself definitely from her party, who had hospitably assumed that
+she would remain with them till they took their departure; but she
+found time for a momentary pause of enquiry, to which he promptly
+returned: “I’ve seen him again—he’s just left me.”
+
+She waited before him anxiously. “Well? what has happened? What
+WILL happen?”
+
+“Nothing as yet—and nothing in the future, I think.”
+
+“It’s over, then? It’s settled? You’re sure?”
+
+He smiled. “Give me time. I’m not sure—but I’m a good deal surer.”
+And with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the
+expectant group on the steps.
+
+Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness,
+had even stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And
+now, as he turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station,
+that anxiety remained with him as the visible justification of
+his own. It was not, indeed, anything specific that he feared:
+there had been a literal truth in his declaration that he did not
+think anything would happen. What troubled him was that, though
+Dorset’s attitude had perceptibly changed, the change was not
+clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been produced by
+Selden’s arguments, or by the action of his own soberer reason.
+Five minutes’ talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
+been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment
+as weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of
+apathy, like a dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily,
+no doubt, however exerted, it worked for the general safety: the
+question was how long it would last, and by what kind of reaction
+it was likely to be followed. On these points Selden could gain no
+light; for he saw that one effect of the transformation had been to
+shut him off from free communion with Dorset. The latter, indeed,
+was still moved by the irresistible desire to discuss his wrong;
+but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn tenacity,
+Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
+expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
+impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden
+began to feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably
+wash his hands of the sequel.
+
+It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the
+station when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his
+brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was
+conscious of a gradual change in his purpose. The change had been
+produced by the look in her eyes; and in his eagerness to define
+the nature of that look, he dropped into a seat in the gardens,
+and sat brooding upon the question. It was natural enough, in
+all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a young woman
+placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
+couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her
+concern for her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her
+own position. The worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss
+Bart’s state of mind, so many alternative readings were possible;
+and one of these, in Selden’s troubled mind, took the ugly form
+suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl was afraid, was she afraid
+for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread of
+a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved
+in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs. Dorset,
+this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
+Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there
+are generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are
+brought with the greater audacity where the original grievance
+is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the
+likelihood of Dorset’s marrying Miss Bart if “anything happened”;
+and though Mrs. Fisher’s conclusions were notoriously rash, she
+was shrewd enough in reading the signs from which they were drawn.
+Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the girl, and this
+interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife’s struggle
+for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
+last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
+combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences.
+She could be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was
+reckless in courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such
+moments was likely to be used as a defensive missile. He did not,
+as yet, see clearly just what course she was likely to take, but
+his perplexity increased his apprehension, and with it the sense
+that, before leaving, he must speak again with Miss Bart. Whatever
+her share in the situation—and he had always honestly tried to
+resist judging her by her surroundings—however free she might be
+from any personal connection with it, she would be better out of
+the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to him for
+help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.
+
+This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him
+back to the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her
+disappearing; but a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed
+to put him on her traces. He saw instead, to his surprise, Ned
+Silverton loitering somewhat ostentatiously about the tables; and
+the discovery that this actor in the drama was not only hovering in
+the wings, but actually inviting the exposure of the footlights,
+though it might have seemed to imply that all peril was over,
+served rather to deepen Selden’s sense of foreboding. Charged with
+this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see Miss Bart
+move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably to do
+at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for
+a glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that
+she had gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow
+her there, and still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive
+the opportunity for a private word; and he had almost decided on
+the unsatisfactory alternative of writing, when the ceaseless
+diorama of the square suddenly unrolled before him the figures of
+Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.
+
+Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord
+Hubert that Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset’s
+company; an announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that
+Mrs. Bry, after a glance from her companion, which seemed to act
+like the pressure on a spring, brought forth the prompt proposal
+that he should come and meet his friends at dinner that evening—“At
+Becassin’s—a little dinner to the Duchess,” she flashed out before
+Lord Hubert had time to remove the pressure.
+
+Selden’s sense of the privilege of being included in such company
+brought him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant,
+where he paused to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the
+brightly lit terrace. There, while the Brys hovered within over
+the last agitating alternatives of the MENU, he kept watch for
+the guests from the Sabrina, who at length rose on the horizon in
+company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw and the Stepneys.
+From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss Bart on the
+pretext of a moment’s glance into one of the brilliant shops along
+the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
+white dazzle of a jeweller’s window: “I stopped over to see you—to
+beg of you to leave the yacht.”
+
+The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear.
+“To leave—? What do you mean? What has happened?”
+
+“Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?”
+
+The glare from the jeweller’s window, deepening the pallor of her
+face, gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask.
+“Nothing will, I am sure; but while there’s even a doubt left, how
+can you think I would leave Bertha?”
+
+The words rang out on a note of contempt—was it possibly of
+contempt for himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal
+to the extent of insisting, with an undeniable throb of added
+interest: “You have yourself to think of, you know—” to which, with
+a strange fall of sadness in her voice, she answered, meeting his
+eyes: “If you knew how little difference that makes!”
+
+“Oh, well, nothing WILL happen,” he said, more for his own
+reassurance than for hers; and “Nothing, nothing, of course!” she
+valiantly assented, as they turned to overtake their companions.
+
+In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry’s
+illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from
+the familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his
+wife once more presenting their customary faces to the world, she
+engrossed in establishing her relation with an intensely new gown,
+he shrinking with dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations
+of the MENU. The mere fact that they thus showed themselves
+together, with the utmost openness the place afforded, seemed
+to declare beyond a doubt that their differences were composed.
+How this end had been attained was still matter for wonder, but
+it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested confidently in
+the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by telling
+himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler than
+his own.
+
+Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses,
+in which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away
+from Lord Hubert’s restraining hand, Selden’s general watchfulness
+began to lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was
+one of the days when she was so handsome that to be handsome was
+enough, and all the rest—her grace, her quickness, her social
+felicities—seemed the overflow of a bounteous nature. But what
+especially struck him was the way in which she detached herself, by
+a hundred undefinable shades, from the persons who most abounded
+in her own style. It was in just such company, the fine flower
+and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that the
+differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening
+the other women’s smartness as her finely-discriminated silences
+made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had restored
+to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
+in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her
+voice and eyes. Yes, she was matchless—it was the one word for
+her; and he could give his admiration the freer play because so
+little personal feeling remained in it. His real detachment from
+her had taken place, not at the lurid moment of disenchantment,
+but now, in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw
+her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which
+seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before
+him again in its completeness—the choice in which she was content
+to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness
+of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit
+and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
+setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart
+in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little
+Dabham of the “Riviera Notes,” emphasized the ideals of a world
+where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society
+column had become the roll of fame.
+
+It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham,
+wedged in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours,
+suddenly became the centre of Selden’s scrutiny. How much did he
+know of what was going on, and how much, for his purpose, was still
+worth finding out? His little eyes were like tentacles thrown
+out to catch the floating intimations with which, to Selden, the
+air at moments seemed thick; then again it cleared to its normal
+emptiness, and he could see nothing in it for the journalist
+but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies’ gowns. Mrs.
+Dorset’s, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham’s
+vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he
+would have called “the literary style.” At first, as Selden had
+noticed, it had been almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now
+she was in full command of it, and was even producing her effects
+with unwonted freedom. Was she not, indeed, too free, too fluent,
+for perfect naturalness? And was not Dorset, to whom his glance
+had passed by a natural transition, too jerkily wavering between
+the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always jerky; but it seemed
+to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him farther from his
+centre.
+
+The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to
+the evident satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic
+majesty between Lord Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to
+be calling on Mrs. Fisher to witness her achievement. Short of
+Mrs. Fisher her audience might have been called complete; for the
+restaurant was crowded with persons mainly gathered there for the
+purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as to the names and
+faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry, conscious
+that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
+each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
+pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
+catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
+organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to
+adorn it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore
+herself, he smiled to think that he should have fancied her in
+need of help. Never had she appeared more serenely mistress of the
+situation than when, at the moment of dispersal, detaching herself
+a little from the group about the table, she turned with a smile
+and a graceful slant of the shoulders to receive her cloak from
+Dorset.
+
+The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry’s exceptional cigars
+and a bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables
+were empty; but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to
+give relief to the leave-taking of Mrs. Bry’s distinguished guests.
+This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact that it
+involved, on the part of the Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite
+farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where they were
+to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to England. The
+quality of Mrs. Bry’s hospitality, and of the tips her husband
+had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the English ladies
+a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over their
+hostess’s future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
+also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy
+worth their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.
+
+A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister
+that they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry
+of this departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the
+door, offered to convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The
+offer was accepted, and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband
+in attendance. Miss Bart had lingered for a last word with Lord
+Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry was pressing a final, and
+still more expensive, cigar, called out: “Come on, Lily, if you’re
+going back to the yacht.”
+
+Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused
+on her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.
+
+“Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht,” she said in a voice of
+singular distinctness.
+
+A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the
+verge of congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her
+husband, and Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was
+mainly conscious of a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and
+fling him out into the street.
+
+Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife’s side. His
+face was white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes.
+“Bertha!—Miss Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some
+mistake....”
+
+“Miss Bart remains here,” his wife rejoined incisively. “And, I
+think, George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer.”
+
+Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in
+admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group
+about her. She had paled a little under the shock of the insult,
+but the discomposure of the surrounding faces was not reflected in
+her own. The faint disdain of her smile seemed to lift her high
+above her antagonist’s reach, and it was not till she had given
+Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance between them that she
+turned and extended her hand to her hostess.
+
+“I am joining the Duchess tomorrow,” she explained, “and it seemed
+easier for me to remain on shore for the night.”
+
+She held firmly to Mrs. Bry’s wavering eye while she gave this
+explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative
+glance from one to another of the women’s faces. She read their
+incredulity in their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness
+of the men behind them, and for a miserable half-second he thought
+she quivered on the brink of failure. Then, turning to him with an
+easy gesture, and the pale bravery of her recovered smile—“Dear Mr.
+Selden,” she said, “you promised to see me to my cab.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden
+moved toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of
+warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab
+had been tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on
+his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and
+pausing beside a bench, he said: “Sit down a moment.”
+
+She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at
+the bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her
+face. Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful
+lest any word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and
+kept also from free utterance by the wretched doubt which had
+slowly renewed itself within him. What had brought her to this
+pass? What weakness had placed her so abominably at her enemy’s
+mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have turned into an enemy at
+the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her
+sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to
+their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason
+obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
+fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher’s hints, and the corroboration of
+his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased
+his constraint, since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for
+sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder.
+
+Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as
+accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from her;
+but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him short
+with a question.
+
+“Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the
+morning.”
+
+“An hotel—HERE—that you can go to alone? It’s not possible.”
+
+She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. “What IS,
+then? It’s too wet to sleep in the gardens.”
+
+“But there must be some one——”
+
+“Some one to whom I can go? Of course—any number—but at THIS hour?
+You see my change of plan was rather sudden——”
+
+“Good God—if you’d listened to me!” he cried, venting his
+helplessness in a burst of anger.
+
+She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. “But
+haven’t I?” she rejoined. “You advised me to leave the yacht, and
+I’m leaving it.”
+
+He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither
+to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he
+had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour
+was past.
+
+She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty,
+like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.
+
+“Lily!” he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but—“Oh,
+not now,” she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness
+of her recovered composure: “Since I must find shelter somewhere,
+and since you’re so kindly here to help me——”
+
+He gathered himself up at the challenge. “You will do as I tell
+you? There’s but one thing, then; you must go straight to your
+cousins, the Stepneys.”
+
+“Oh—” broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance;
+but he insisted: “Come—it’s late, and you must appear to have gone
+there directly.”
+
+He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a
+last gesture of protest. “I can’t—I can’t—not that—you don’t know
+Gwen: you mustn’t ask me!”
+
+“I MUST ask you—you must obey me,” he persisted, though infected at
+heart by her own fear.
+
+Her voice sank to a whisper: “And if she refuses?”—but, “Oh, trust
+me—trust me!” he could only insist in return; and yielding to his
+touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the
+square.
+
+In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive
+which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys’
+hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised
+hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy
+hall, awaiting the latter’s descent. Ten minutes later the two
+men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the
+threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a last flare
+of reluctance.
+
+“It’s understood, then?” he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
+Selden’s arm. “She leaves tomorrow by the early train—and my wife’s
+asleep, and can’t be disturbed.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+
+The blinds of Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room were drawn down against
+the oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of
+her assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement.
+They were all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons—even a
+stray Peniston or two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress
+and manner, the fact of remoter relationship and more settled
+hopes. The Peniston side was, in fact, secure in the knowledge that
+the bulk of Mr. Peniston’s property “went back”; while the direct
+connection hung suspended on the disposal of his widow’s private
+fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent. Jack Stepney, in
+his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took the lead,
+emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
+and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife’s bored
+attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress’s disregard of
+the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated
+next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his
+white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace
+Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to
+Mrs. Herbert Melson: “I couldn’t BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere
+else!”
+
+A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening
+of the door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black
+dress, with Gerty Farish at her side. The women’s faces, as
+she paused interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in
+hesitation. One or two made faint motions of recognition, which
+might have been subdued either by the solemnity of the scene, or by
+the doubt as to how far the others meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney
+gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney, with a sepulchral gesture,
+indicated a seat at her side. But Lily, ignoring the invitation, as
+well as Jack Stepney’s official attempt to direct her, moved across
+the room with her smooth free gait, and seated herself in a chair
+which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from the others.
+
+It was the first time that she had faced her family since her
+return from Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any
+uncertainty in their welcome, it served only to add a tinge of
+irony to the usual composure of her bearing. The shock of dismay
+with which, on the dock, she had heard from Gerty Farish of Mrs.
+Peniston’s sudden death, had been mitigated, almost at once, by
+the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would be able to
+pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable uneasiness
+to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had vehemently
+opposed her niece’s departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
+her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily’s absence.
+The certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets
+made the prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should
+Lily have repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that,
+instead of undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to
+enter gracefully on a long-assured inheritance? It had been, in
+the consecrated phrase, “always understood” that Mrs. Peniston was
+to provide handsomely for her niece; and in the latter’s mind the
+understanding had long since crystallized into fact.
+
+“She gets everything, of course—I don’t see what we’re here for,”
+Mrs. Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van
+Alstyne; and the latter’s deprecating murmur—“Julia was always
+a just woman”—might have been interpreted as signifying either
+acquiescence or doubt.
+
+“Well, it’s only about four hundred thousand,” Mrs. Stepney
+rejoined with a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by
+the lawyer’s preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: “They won’t
+find a towel missing—I went over them with her the very day——”
+
+Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour
+of fresh mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston’s
+lawyer, solemnly erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the
+room, began to rattle through the preamble of the will.
+
+“It’s like being in church,” she reflected, wondering vaguely where
+Gwen Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout
+Jack had grown—he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert
+Melson, who sat a few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his
+black-gloved hands on his stick.
+
+“I wonder why rich people always grow fat—I suppose it’s because
+there’s nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be
+careful of my figure,” she mused, while the lawyer droned on
+through a labyrinth of legacies. The servants came first, then
+a few charitable institutions, then several remoter Melsons and
+Stepneys, who stirred consciously as their names rang out, and then
+subsided into a state of impassiveness befitting the solemnity of
+the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney, and a cousin or two
+followed, each coupled with the mention of a few thousands: Lily
+wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she heard her
+own name—“to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars—” and after
+that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
+periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with
+startling distinctness: “and the residue of my estate to my dear
+cousin and name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney.”
+
+There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and
+a surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney
+wailed out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a
+black-edged handkerchief.
+
+Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the
+first time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware
+of her presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance.
+And under her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter
+pang of hopes deceived. Disinherited—she had been disinherited—and
+for Grace Stepney! She met Gerty’s lamentable eyes, fixed on her
+in a despairing effort at consolation, and the look brought her to
+herself. There was something to be done before she left the house:
+to be done with all the nobility she knew how to put into such
+gestures. She advanced to the group about Miss Stepney, and holding
+out her hand said simply: “Dear Grace, I am so glad.”
+
+The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space
+created itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no
+one advanced to fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about
+her, calmly taking the measure of her situation. She heard some one
+ask a question about the date of the will; she caught a fragment
+of the lawyer’s answer—something about a sudden summons, and an
+“earlier instrument.” Then the tide of dispersal began to drift
+past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert Melson stood on the
+doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group escorted Grace
+Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should take,
+though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
+found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which
+more than ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family
+vault, in which the last corpse had just been decently deposited.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In Gerty Farish’s sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the
+two friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of
+laughter: it struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt’s
+legacy should so nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor.
+The need of discharging that debt had reasserted itself with
+increased urgency since her return to America, and she spoke her
+first thought in saying to the anxiously hovering Gerty: “I wonder
+when the legacies will be paid.”
+
+But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into
+a larger indignation. “Oh, Lily, it’s unjust; it’s cruel—Grace
+Stepney must FEEL she has no right to all that money!”
+
+“Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her
+money,” Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.
+
+“But she was devoted to you—she led every one to think—” Gerty
+checked herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to
+her with a direct look. “Gerty, be honest: this will was made only
+six weeks ago. She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?”
+
+“Every one heard, of course, that there had been some
+disagreement—some misunderstanding——”
+
+“Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?”
+
+“Lily!”
+
+“That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry
+George Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn’t
+that what she told Gwen Stepney?”
+
+“I don’t know—I don’t listen to such horrors.”
+
+“I MUST listen to them—I must know where I stand.” She paused, and
+again sounded a faint note of derision. “Did you notice the women?
+They were afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get
+the money—afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague.”
+Gerty remained silent, and she continued: “I stayed on to see
+what would happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu
+Melson—I saw them watching to see what Gwen would do.—Gerty, I must
+know just what is being said of me.”
+
+“I tell you I don’t listen——”
+
+“One hears such things without listening.” She rose and laid her
+resolute hands on Miss Farish’s shoulders. “Gerty, are people going
+to cut me?”
+
+“Your FRIENDS, Lily—how can you think it?”
+
+“Who are one’s friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor
+trustful darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!” She
+kissed Gerty with a whimsical murmur. “You’d never let it make any
+difference—but then you’re fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the
+irreclaimable ones, though? For I’m absolutely impenitent, you
+know.”
+
+She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty,
+towering like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty,
+who could only falter out: “Lily, Lily—how can you laugh about such
+things?”
+
+“So as not to weep, perhaps. But no—I’m not of the tearful order. I
+discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge
+has helped me through several painful episodes.” She took a
+restless turn about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted
+the bright mockery of her eyes to Gerty’s anxious countenance.
+
+“I shouldn’t have minded, you know, if I’d got the money—” and at
+Miss Farish’s protesting “Oh!” she repeated calmly: “Not a straw,
+my dear; for, in the first place, they wouldn’t have quite dared
+to ignore me; and if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered, because
+I should have been independent of them. But now—!” The irony faded
+from her eyes, and she bent a clouded face upon her friend.
+
+“How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have
+been yours, but after all that makes no difference. The important
+thing——” Gerty paused, and then continued firmly: “The important
+thing is that you should clear yourself—should tell your friends
+the whole truth.”
+
+“The whole truth?” Miss Bart laughed. “What is truth? Where a woman
+is concerned, it’s the story that’s easiest to believe. In this
+case it’s a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset’s story
+than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it’s
+convenient to be on good terms with her.”
+
+Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. “But what IS your
+story, Lily? I don’t believe any one knows it yet.”
+
+“My story?—I don’t believe I know it myself. You see I never
+thought of preparing a version in advance as Bertha did—and if I
+had, I don’t think I should take the trouble to use it now.”
+
+But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: “I don’t want a
+version prepared in advance—but I want you to tell me exactly what
+happened from the beginning.”
+
+“From the beginning?” Miss Bart gently mimicked her. “Dear Gerty,
+how little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning
+was in my cradle, I suppose—in the way I was brought up, and the
+things I was taught to care for. Or no—I won’t blame anybody for
+my faults: I’ll say it was in my blood, that I got it from some
+wicked pleasure-loving ancestress, who reacted against the homely
+virtues of New Amsterdam, and wanted to be back at the court of
+the Charleses!” And as Miss Farish continued to press her with
+troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: “You asked me just now for
+the truth—well, the truth about any girl is that once she’s talked
+about she’s done for; and the more she explains her case the worse
+it looks.—My good Gerty, you don’t happen to have a cigarette about
+you?”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing,
+Lily Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week
+in June, and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives
+who had stayed on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston’s
+will, had taken flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long
+Island; and not one of them had made any proffer of hospitality
+to Lily. For the first time in her life she found herself utterly
+alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at the actual moment of
+her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a sense of
+its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
+catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection,
+and under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant
+progress to London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on
+in a society which asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without
+enquiring too curiously how she had acquired her gift for doing
+so; but Selden, before they parted, had pressed on her the urgent
+need of returning at once to her aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he
+presently reappeared in London, abounded in the same counsel. Lily
+did not need to be told that the Duchess’s championship was not the
+best road to social rehabilitation, and as she was besides aware
+that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in favour of a
+new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America. But she
+had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
+that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the
+Stepneys, the Brys—all the actors and witnesses in the miserable
+drama—had preceded her with their version of the case; and, even
+had she seen the least chance of gaining a hearing for her own,
+some obscure disdain and reluctance would have restrained her.
+She knew it was not by explanations and counter-charges that she
+could ever hope to recover her lost standing; but even had she felt
+the least trust in their efficacy, she would still have been held
+back by the feeling which had kept her from defending herself to
+Gerty Farish—a feeling that was half pride and half humiliation.
+For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed to Bertha
+Dorset’s determination to win back her husband, and though her own
+relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
+she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the
+affair was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset’s
+attention from his wife. That was what she was “there for”: it was
+the price she had chosen to pay for three months of luxury and
+freedom from care. Her habit of resolutely facing the facts, in
+her rare moments of introspection, did not now allow her to put
+any false gloss on the situation. She had suffered for the very
+faithfulness with which she had carried out her part of the tacit
+compact, but the part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw
+it now in all the ugliness of failure.
+
+She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of
+consequences resulting from that failure; and these became clearer
+to her with every day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed
+on partly for the comfort of Gerty Farish’s nearness, and partly
+for lack of knowing where to go. She understood well enough the
+nature of the task before her. She must set out to regain, little
+by little, the position she had lost; and the first step in the
+tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on how many
+of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
+Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those
+who were amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose
+existence the still small voice of detraction was slow to make
+itself heard. But Judy, though she must have been apprised of Miss
+Bart’s return, had not even recognized it by the formal note of
+condolence which her friend’s bereavement demanded. Any advance on
+Lily’s side might have been perilous: there was nothing to do but
+to trust to the happy chance of an accidental meeting, and Lily
+knew that, even so late in the season, there was always a hope of
+running across her friends in their frequent passages through town.
+
+To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
+frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
+luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.
+
+“My dear Gerty, you wouldn’t have me let the head-waiter see that
+I’ve nothing to live on but Aunt Julia’s legacy? Think of Grace
+Stepney’s satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold
+mutton and tea! What sweet shall we have today, dear—COUPE JACQUES
+or PECHES A LA MELBA?”
+
+She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour,
+and Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an
+inner room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It
+was impossible for these ladies and their companions—among whom
+Lily had at once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale—not to
+pass, in going out, the table at which the two girls were seated;
+and Gerty’s sense of the fact betrayed itself in the helpless
+trepidation of her manner. Miss Bart, on the contrary, borne
+forward on the wave of her buoyant grace, and neither shrinking
+from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for them, gave to
+the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could impart to
+the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown was
+on Mrs. Trenor’s side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
+exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly
+affirmed pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous
+generalization, which included neither enquiries as to her future
+nor the expression of a definite wish to see her again. Lily,
+well-versed in the language of these omissions, knew that they
+were equally intelligible to the other members of the party: even
+Rosedale, flushed as he was with the importance of keeping such
+company, at once took the temperature of Mrs. Trenor’s cordiality,
+and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss Bart. Trenor, red
+and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the pretext of
+a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group soon
+melted away in Mrs. Trenor’s wake.
+
+It was over in a moment—the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on
+the result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA
+MELBA—but Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her
+fate. Where Judy Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily
+had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to
+fleeing sails.
+
+In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor’s complaints of Carry
+Fisher’s rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected
+acquaintance with her husband’s private affairs. In the large
+tumultuous disorder of the life at Bellomont, where no one seemed
+to have time to observe any one else, and private aims and personal
+interests were swept along unheeded in the rush of collective
+activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from inconvenient
+scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money of
+her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on
+Lily’s part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly
+jealous of his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation
+of her rebuff. The immediate result of these conclusions was the
+passionate resolve to pay back her debt to Trenor. That obligation
+discharged, she would have but a thousand dollars of Mrs.
+Peniston’s legacy left, and nothing to live on but her own small
+income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish’s wretched
+pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative claim
+of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first;
+after that she would take thought for the future.
+
+In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that
+her legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading
+of her aunt’s will; and after an interval of anxious suspense,
+she wrote to enquire the cause of the delay. There was another
+interval before Mrs. Peniston’s lawyer, who was also one of the
+executors, replied to the effect that, some questions having arisen
+relative to the interpretation of the will, he and his associates
+might not be in a position to pay the legacies till the close of
+the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement. Bewildered
+and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
+appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
+powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes
+of the law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year
+under the weight of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to
+turn to Miss Stepney, who still lingered in town, immersed in the
+delectable duty of “going over” her benefactress’s effects. It
+was bitter enough for Lily to ask a favour of Grace Stepney, but
+the alternative was bitterer still; and one morning she presented
+herself at Mrs. Peniston’s, where Grace, for the facilitation of
+her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.
+
+The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had
+so long commanded, increased Lily’s desire to shorten the ordeal;
+and when Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling
+with the best quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the
+point: would she be willing to advance the amount of the expected
+legacy?
+
+Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
+inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not
+realized the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think
+that only the payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss
+Stepney herself had not received a penny of her inheritance, and
+was paying rent—yes, actually!—for the privilege of living in a
+house that belonged to her. She was sure it was not what poor dear
+cousin Julia would have wished—she had told the executors so to
+their faces; but they were inaccessible to reason, and there was
+nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily take example by her, and be
+patient—let them both remember how beautifully patient cousin Julia
+had always been.
+
+Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of
+this example. “But you will have everything, Grace—it would be easy
+for you to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for.”
+
+“Borrow—easy for me to borrow?” Grace Stepney rose up before her
+in sable wrath. “Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise
+money on my expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her
+unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if
+you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that
+brought on her illness—you remember she had a slight attack before
+you sailed. Oh, I don’t know the particulars, of course—I don’t
+WANT to know them—but there were rumours about your affairs that
+made her most unhappy—no one could be with her without seeing that.
+I can’t help it if you are offended by my telling you this now—if I
+can do anything to make you realize the folly of your course, and
+how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I shall feel it is the truest way
+of making up to you for her loss.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+
+It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston’s door closed on her, that she
+was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched
+before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue,
+and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in
+quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy
+was, however, disturbed as she reached the sidewalk by the rapid
+approach of a hansom which pulled up at sight of her.
+
+From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a
+signalling hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the
+street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace.
+
+“My dear, you don’t mean to say you’re still in town? When I saw
+you the other day at Sherry’s I didn’t have time to ask——” She
+broke off, and added with a burst of frankness: “The truth is I was
+HORRID, Lily, and I’ve wanted to tell you so ever since.”
+
+“Oh——” Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp;
+but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: “Look here,
+Lily, don’t let’s beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is
+caused by pretending there isn’t any. That’s not my way, and I can
+only say I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other
+women’s lead. But we’ll talk of that by and bye—tell me now where
+you’re staying and what your plans are. I don’t suppose you’re
+keeping house in there with Grace Stepney, eh?—and it struck me you
+might be rather at loose ends.”
+
+In Lily’s present mood there was no resisting the honest
+friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile: “I am at
+loose ends for the moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and
+she’s good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the
+time.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. “H’m—that’s a temperate joy. Oh,
+I know—Gerty’s a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together;
+but A LA LONGUE you’re used to a little higher seasoning, aren’t
+you, dear? And besides, I suppose she’ll be off herself before
+long—the first of August, you say? Well, look here, you can’t spend
+your summer in town; we’ll talk of that later too. But meanwhile,
+what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down
+with me to the Sam Gormers’ tonight?”
+
+And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion,
+she continued with her easy laugh: “You don’t know them and they
+don’t know you; but that don’t make a rap of difference. They’ve
+taken the Van Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I’ve got CARTE BLANCHE
+to bring my friends down there—the more the merrier. They do
+things awfully well, and there’s to be rather a jolly party there
+this week——” she broke off, checked by an undefinable change in
+Miss Bart’s expression. “Oh, I don’t mean YOUR particular set,
+you know: rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact
+is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own: what they
+want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They
+gave the other thing a few months’ trial, under my distinguished
+auspices, and they were really doing extremely well—getting on a
+good deal faster than the Brys, just because they didn’t care as
+much—but suddenly they decided that the whole business bored them,
+and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at
+home with. Rather original of them, don’t you think so? Mattie
+Gormer HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she’s
+awfully easy-going, and Sam won’t be bothered, and they both like
+to be the most important people in sight, so they’ve started a sort
+of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney
+Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and
+doesn’t put on airs. I think it’s awfully good fun myself—some
+of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that’s going,
+and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell,
+who made such a hit last spring in ‘The Winning of Winny’; and
+Paul Morpeth—he’s painting Mattie Gormer—and the Dick Bellingers,
+and Kate Corby—well, every one you can think of who’s jolly and
+makes a row. Now don’t stand there with your nose in the air, my
+dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town,
+and you’ll find clever people as well as noisy ones—Morpeth, who
+admires Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority.
+“Jump in now, there’s a dear, and we’ll drive round to your hotel
+and have your things packed, and then we’ll have tea, and the two
+maids can meet us at the train.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town—of that
+no doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy
+verandah, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward
+picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men
+in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling
+dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity with the
+Gormers’ week-end guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday
+forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of
+the various distractions the place afforded: distractions ranging
+from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from bridge and whiskey
+within doors to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the
+odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly
+as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and
+genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor,
+calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry
+Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving
+them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their
+station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened
+speed—life whizzed on with a deafening’ rattle and roar, in which
+one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of
+her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU represented a social out-skirt
+which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now
+that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world,
+a caricature approximating the real thing as the “society play”
+approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her
+were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
+the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and
+manner, from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflexion
+of the women’s voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key,
+and there was more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more
+champagne, more familiarity—but also greater good-nature, less
+rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment.
+
+Miss Bart’s arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical
+friendliness that first irritated her pride and then brought her
+to a sharp sense of her own situation—of the place in life which,
+for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people
+knew her story—of that her first long talk with Carry Fisher had
+left no doubt: she was publicly branded as the heroine of a “queer”
+episode—but instead of shrinking from her as her own friends had
+done, they received her without question into the easy promiscuity
+of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss
+Anstell’s, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size
+of the mouthful: all they asked was that she should—in her own way,
+for they recognized a diversity of gifts—contribute as much to the
+general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when
+off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once
+that any tendency to be “stuck-up,” to mark a sense of differences
+and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer
+set. To be taken in on such terms—and into such a world!—was hard
+enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized, with a
+pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
+all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the
+insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material
+difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling
+hotel in a dusty deserted city to the space and luxury of a great
+country-house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral
+lassitude agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical
+discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the
+refreshment her senses craved—after that she would reconsider her
+situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her
+surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration
+that she was accepting the hospitality and courting the approval
+of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was
+growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of indifference
+was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each
+concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.
+
+On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux,
+the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the
+life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take
+up the same existence in a different setting: some at Newport,
+some at Bar Harbour, some in the elaborate rusticity of an
+Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who welcomed Lily’s return
+with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt
+with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily herself
+remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
+great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
+transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch
+for a day or two on the way to the Brys’ camp, came to the rescue
+with a new suggestion.
+
+“Look here, Lily—I’ll tell you what it is: I want you to take my
+place with Mattie Gormer this summer. They’re taking a party out
+to Alaska next month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the
+laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her
+of the bother of arranging things; but the Brys want me too—oh,
+yes, we’ve made it up: didn’t I tell you?—and, to put it frankly,
+though I like the Gormers best, there’s more profit for me in
+the Brys. The fact is, they want to try Newport this summer, and
+if I can make it a success for them they—well, they’ll make it a
+success for me.” Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands enthusiastically.
+“Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the better I like
+it—quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have both taken
+a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska is—well—the very
+thing I should want for you just at present.”
+
+Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. “To take me out of
+my friends’ way, you mean?” she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher
+responded with a deprecating kiss: “To keep you out of their sight
+till they realize how much they miss you.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if
+it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at
+least the negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre
+of criticism and discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with
+all the energy of her somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even
+offered to give up her visit to Lake George, and remain in town
+with Miss Bart, if the latter would renounce her journey; but Lily
+could disguise her real distaste for this plan under a sufficiently
+valid reason.
+
+“You dear innocent, don’t you see,” she protested, “that Carry is
+quite right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about
+among people as much as possible? If my old friends choose to
+believe lies about me I shall have to make new ones, that’s all;
+and you know beggars mustn’t be choosers. Not that I don’t like
+Mattie Gormer—I DO like her: she’s kind and honest and unaffected;
+and don’t you suppose I feel grateful to her for making me welcome
+at a time when, as you’ve yourself seen, my own family have
+unanimously washed their hands of me?”
+
+Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that
+Lily was cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would
+never have cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now
+to her former manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance
+of ever escaping from it. Gerty had but an obscure conception
+of what Lily’s actual experience had been: but its consequences
+had established a lasting hold on her pity since the memorable
+night when she had offered up her own secret hope to her friend’s
+extremity. To characters like Gerty’s such a sacrifice constitutes
+a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it has been
+made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her; and
+helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring
+of such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste
+of the amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness
+of a New York August, mitigated only by poor Gerty’s presence,
+her worldly wisdom would have counselled her against such an act
+of abnegation. She knew that Carry Fisher was right: that an
+opportune absence might be the first step toward rehabilitation,
+and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of season was a
+fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers’ tumultuous progress
+across their native continent, she returned with an altered
+view of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury—the daily
+waking to an assured absence of care and presence of material
+ease—gradually blunted her appreciation of these values, and left
+her more conscious of the void they could not fill. Mattie Gormer’s
+undiscriminating good-nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her
+friends, who treated Lily precisely as they treated each other—all
+these characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her
+endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in her companions, the
+less justification she found for making use of them. The longing
+to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed idea;
+but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
+perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions
+from her pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of
+continuing to cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska.
+Little as she was in the key of their MILIEU, her immense social
+facility, her long habit of adapting herself to others without
+suffering her own outline to be blurred, the skilled manipulation
+of all the polished implements of her craft, had won for her an
+important place in the Gormer group. If their resonant hilarity
+could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy elegance more
+valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the band.
+Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
+her; but Mattie’s following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel
+that they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously
+lacked. If Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his
+artistic activity, had abandoned himself to the easy current of
+the Gormer existence, where the minor exactions of politeness were
+unknown or ignored, and a man could either break his engagements,
+or keep them in a painting-jacket and slippers, he still preserved
+his sense of differences, and his appreciation of graces he had no
+time to cultivate. During the preparations for the Brys’ TABLEAUX
+he had been immensely struck by Lily’s plastic possibilities—“not
+the face: too self-controlled for expression; but the rest of
+her—gad, what a model she’d make!”—and though his abhorrence of the
+world in which he had seen her was too great for him to think of
+seeking her there, he was fully alive to the privilege of having
+her to look at and listen to while he lounged in Mattie Gormer’s
+dishevelled drawing-room.
+
+Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little
+nucleus of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of
+her course in lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor
+was she without pale glimpses of her own world, especially since
+the breaking up of the Newport season had set the social current
+once more toward Long Island. Kate Corby, whose tastes made her
+as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was rendered by her necessities,
+occasionally descended on the Gormers, where, after a first
+stare of surprise, she took Lily’s presence almost too much as a
+matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in the
+neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
+what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
+latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet
+talk with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence
+it was impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs.
+Fisher conveniently took for granted.
+
+Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not
+wish to probe the inwardness of Lily’s situation, but simply to
+view it from the outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and
+these conclusions, at the end of a confidential talk, she summed up
+to her friend in the succinct remark: “You must marry as soon as
+you can.”
+
+Lily uttered a faint laugh—for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality.
+“Do you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea
+of ‘a good man’s love’?”
+
+“No—I don’t think either of my candidates would answer to that
+description,” said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.
+
+“Either? Are there actually two?”
+
+“Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half—for the moment.”
+
+Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. “Other things
+being equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?”
+
+“Don’t fly out at me till you hear my reasons—George Dorset.”
+
+“Oh——” Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
+unrebuffed. “Well, why not? They had a few weeks’ honeymoon when
+they first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly
+with them again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like
+a madwoman, and George’s powers of credulity are very nearly
+exhausted. They’re at their place here, you know, and I spent last
+Sunday with them. It was a ghastly party—no one else but poor Neddy
+Silverton, who looks like a galley-slave (they used to talk of my
+making that poor boy unhappy!)—and after luncheon George carried me
+off on a long walk, and told me the end would have to come soon.”
+
+Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. “As far as that goes, the
+end will never come—Bertha will always know how to get him back
+when she wants him.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. “Not if he has
+any one else to turn to! Yes—that’s just what it comes to: the poor
+creature can’t stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow,
+full of life and enthusiasm.” She paused, and went on, dropping her
+glance from Lily’s: “He wouldn’t stay with her ten minutes if he
+KNEW——”
+
+“Knew——?” Miss Bart repeated.
+
+“What YOU must, for instance—with the opportunities you’ve had! If
+he had positive proof, I mean——”
+
+Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. “Please let
+us drop the subject, Carry: it’s too odious to me.” And to divert
+her companion’s attention she added, with an attempt at lightness:
+“And your second candidate? We must not forget him.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. “I wonder if you’ll cry out just as
+loud if I say—Sim Rosedale?”
+
+Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully
+at her friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a
+possibility which, in the last weeks, had more than once recurred
+to her; but after a moment she said carelessly: “Mr. Rosedale wants
+a wife who can establish him in the bosom of the Van Osburghs and
+Trenors.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. “And so YOU could—with his
+money! Don’t you see how beautifully it would work out for you
+both?”
+
+“I don’t see any way of making him see it,” Lily returned, with a
+laugh intended to dismiss the subject.
+
+But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had
+taken leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her
+annexation by the Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on
+penetrating to the inner Paradise from which she was now excluded;
+but once or twice, when nothing better offered, he had turned up
+for a Sunday, and on these occasions he had left her in no doubt
+as to his view of her situation. That he still admired her was,
+more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer circle,
+where he expanded as in his native element, there were no puzzling
+conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
+was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd
+estimate of her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he
+had known “Miss Lily”—she was “Miss Lily” to him now—before they
+had had the faintest social existence: enjoyed more especially
+impressing Paul Morpeth with the distance to which their intimacy
+dated back. But he let it be felt that that intimacy was a
+mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social current, the
+kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and manifold
+preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.
+
+The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and
+of meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new
+friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than
+ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection
+rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact
+that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor,
+and was sure to put the basest construction on it, seemed to place
+her hopelessly in his power. Yet at Carry Fisher’s suggestion a
+new hope had stirred in her. Much as she disliked Rosedale, she
+no longer absolutely despised him. For he was gradually attaining
+his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always less despicable
+than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency which she
+had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
+mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly
+use he had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in
+the world of affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations
+which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In response to these claims,
+his name began to figure on municipal committees and charitable
+boards; he appeared at banquets to distinguished strangers, and
+his candidacy at one of the fashionable clubs was discussed with
+diminishing opposition. He had figured once or twice at the Trenor
+dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right note of
+disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was a
+wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
+ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed
+his affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted
+nearer to the goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the
+remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with the clearness of
+vision that came to her in moments of despondency. It was success
+that dazzled her—she could distinguish facts plainly enough in the
+twilight of failure. And the twilight, as she now sought to pierce
+it, was gradually lighted by a faint spark of reassurance. Under
+the utilitarian motive of Rosedale’s wooing she had felt, clearly
+enough, the heat of personal inclination. She would not have
+detested him so heartily had she not known that he dared to admire
+her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive
+had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him—he
+had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if she
+now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he
+had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now
+that he had no other reason for marrying her?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+
+As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were
+engaged in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a
+part of Miss Bart’s duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits
+of inspection to the new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged
+into problems of lighting and sanitation, Lily had leisure to
+wander, in the bright autumn air, along the tree-fringed bay to
+which the land declined. Little as she was addicted to solitude,
+there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape
+from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being swept
+passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she
+had no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and
+squander money, while she felt herself of no more account among
+them than an expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.
+
+It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore
+one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came
+suddenly upon the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in
+the immediate neighbourhood of the Gormers’ newly-acquired estate,
+and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught
+one or two passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so
+different an orbit that she had not considered the possibility of a
+direct encounter.
+
+Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did
+not see Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight,
+instead of bringing him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent
+him toward her with an eagerness which found expression in his
+opening words.
+
+“Miss Bart!—You’ll shake hands, won’t you? I’ve been hoping to meet
+you—I should have written to you if I’d dared.” His face, with its
+tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look,
+as though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the
+thoughts at his heels.
+
+The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he
+pressed on, as if encouraged by her tone: “I wanted to apologize—to
+ask you to forgive me for the miserable part I played——”
+
+She checked him with a quick gesture. “Don’t let us speak of it: I
+was very sorry for you,” she said, with a tinge of disdain which,
+as she instantly perceived, was not lost on him.
+
+He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she
+repented the thrust. “You might well be; you don’t know—you must
+let me explain. I was deceived: abominably deceived——”
+
+“I am still more sorry for you, then,” she interposed, without
+irony; “but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom
+the subject can be discussed.”
+
+He met this with a look of genuine wonder. “Why not? Isn’t it to
+you, of all people, that I owe an explanation——”
+
+“No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to
+me.”
+
+“Ah——” he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute
+hand switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a
+movement to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: “Miss Bart,
+for God’s sake don’t turn from me! We used to be good friends—you
+were always kind to me—and you don’t know how I need a friend now.”
+
+The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in
+Lily’s breast. She too needed friends—she had tasted the pang of
+loneliness; and her resentment of Bertha Dorset’s cruelty softened
+her heart to the poor wretch who was after all the chief of
+Bertha’s victims.
+
+“I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you,” she said.
+“But you must understand that after what has happened we can’t be
+friends again—we can’t see each other.”
+
+“Ah, you ARE kind—you’re merciful—you always were!” He fixed his
+miserable gaze on her. “But why can’t we be friends—why not, when
+I’ve repented in dust and ashes? Isn’t it hard that you should
+condemn me to suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I
+was punished enough at the time—is there to be no respite for me?”
+
+“I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
+reconciliation which was effected at my expense,” Lily began, with
+renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: “Don’t put it in
+that way—when that’s been the worst of my punishment. My God! what
+could I do—wasn’t I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice:
+any word I might have said would have been turned against you——”
+
+“I have told you I don’t blame you; all I ask you to understand is
+that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me—after all that her
+behaviour has since implied—it’s impossible that you and I should
+meet.”
+
+He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. “Is
+it—need it be? Mightn’t there be circumstances——?” he checked
+himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he
+began again: “Miss Bart, listen—give me a minute. If we’re not to
+meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can’t be
+friends after—after what has happened. But can’t I at least appeal
+to your pity? Can’t I move you if I ask you to think of me as a
+prisoner—a prisoner you alone can set free?”
+
+Lily’s inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it
+possible that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher’s
+adumbrations?
+
+“I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she
+murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his
+look.
+
+Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his
+stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he
+said, with an abrupt drop to docility: “You WOULD see, if you’d be
+as merciful as you used to be: and heaven knows I’ve never needed
+it more!”
+
+She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of
+her influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering,
+and the sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her
+contempt for his weakness.
+
+“I am very sorry for you—I would help you willingly; but you must
+have other friends, other advisers.”
+
+“I never had a friend like you,” he answered simply. “And
+besides—can’t you see?—you’re the only person”—his voice dropped to
+a whisper—“the only person who knows.”
+
+Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in
+precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his
+eyes to her entreatingly. “You do see, don’t you? You understand?
+I’m desperate—I’m at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and
+you can free me. I know you can. You don’t want to keep me bound
+fast in hell, do you? You can’t want to take such a vengeance as
+that. You were always kind—your eyes are kind now. You say you’re
+sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to show it; and heaven knows
+there’s nothing to keep you back. You understand, of course—there
+wouldn’t be a hint of publicity—not a sound or a syllable to
+connect you with the thing. It would never come to that, you know:
+all I need is to be able to say definitely: ‘I know this—and
+this—and this’—and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared,
+and the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second.”
+
+He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
+between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through
+the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and
+safety. For there was no mistaking the definite intention behind
+his vague appeal; she could have filled up the blanks without the
+help of Mrs. Fisher’s insinuations. Here was a man who turned to
+her in the extremity of his loneliness and his humiliation: if she
+came to him at such a moment he would be hers with all the force of
+his deluded faith. And the power to make him so lay in her hand—lay
+there in a completeness he could not even remotely conjecture.
+Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a stroke—there was
+something dazzling in the completeness of the opportunity.
+
+She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch
+of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of
+herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past
+weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward
+the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned quickly, and
+held out her hand to Dorset.
+
+“Goodbye—I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the world that I can do.”
+
+“Nothing? Ah, don’t say that,” he cried; “say what’s true: that you
+abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have
+saved me!”
+
+“Goodbye—goodbye,” she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away
+she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: “At least you’ll
+let me see you once more?”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the
+lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her
+hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of
+her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked
+to be kept waiting.
+
+As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton
+with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the
+direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with
+a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight
+of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said
+with a slight laugh: “Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought you
+came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset—she said she’d
+dropped in to make a neighbourly call.”
+
+Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her
+experience of Bertha’s idiosyncrasies would not have led her to
+include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer,
+relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with
+a deprecating laugh: “Of course what really brought her was
+curiosity—she made me take her all over the house. But no one could
+have been nicer—no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I can quite
+see why people think her so fascinating.”
+
+This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her
+meeting with Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had
+yet immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding.
+It was not in Bertha’s habits to be neighbourly, much less to
+make advances to any one outside the immediate circle of her
+affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of outer
+aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only when
+prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very capriciousness
+of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them special
+value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw
+this now in Mrs. Gormer’s unconcealable complacency, and in the
+happy irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted
+Bertha’s opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All
+the secret ambitions which Mrs. Gormer’s native indolence, and the
+attitude of her companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now
+germinating afresh in the glow of Bertha’s advances; and whatever
+the cause of the latter, Lily saw that, if they were followed up,
+they were likely to have a disturbing effect upon her own future.
+
+She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new
+friends by one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent;
+and on her return from this somewhat depressing excursion she was
+immediately conscious that Mrs. Dorset’s influence was still in
+the air. There had been another exchange of visits, a tea at a
+country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball; there was even a rumour
+of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer, with an unnatural
+effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the conversation
+whenever Miss Bart took part in it.
+
+The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell
+Sunday with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish’s aid, had
+discovered a small private hotel where she might establish herself
+for the winter. The hotel being on the edge of a fashionable
+neighbourhood, the price of the few square feet she was to
+occupy was considerably in excess of her means; but she found a
+justification for her dislike of poorer quarters in the argument
+that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost importance
+to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible for
+her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
+lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish’s. She had never
+been so near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage
+to meet her weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of
+her previous debts out of the money she had received from Trenor,
+she had a still fair margin of credit to go upon. The situation,
+however, was not agreeable enough to lull her to complete
+unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her rooms, with their cramped
+outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and fire-escapes, her
+lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged ceiling and
+haunting smell of coffee—all these material discomforts, which were
+yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be withdrawn,
+kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and her
+mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher’s counsels. Beat
+about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was
+that she must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was
+fortified by an unexpected visit from George Dorset.
+
+She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town,
+pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few
+knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush
+exuberances; but the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he said
+meekly that he hadn’t come to bother her—that he asked only to be
+allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked.
+In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject: himself and his
+wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn
+him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
+herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time,
+a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface
+of his self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an
+aunt had actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this
+because there was no one else for her to go to, and that she really
+hadn’t more than enough to keep alive on till the wretched little
+legacy was paid? The fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in
+him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse
+of what other sufferings might mean—and, as she perceived, an
+almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular
+misfortunes might serve him.
+
+When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must
+dress for dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to
+blurt out: “It’s been such a comfort—do say you’ll let me see you
+again—” But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give an
+assent; and she said with friendly decisiveness: “I’m sorry—but you
+know why I can’t.”
+
+He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
+embarrassed but insistent. “I know how you might, if you would—if
+things were different—and it lies with you to make them so. It’s
+just a word to say, and you put me out of my misery!”
+
+Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the
+nearness of the temptation. “You’re mistaken; I know nothing; I saw
+nothing,” she exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration,
+to build a barrier between herself and her peril; and as he turned
+away, groaning out “You sacrifice us both,” she continued to
+repeat, as if it were a charm: “I know nothing—absolutely nothing.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with
+Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met
+she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour.
+There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and
+she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to
+the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of
+expediency. The task was not an easy one; but neither was it easy,
+in her long sleepless nights, to face the thought of what George
+Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness for baseness, she
+hated the other least: there were even moments when a marriage with
+Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her difficulties.
+She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day of
+plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
+well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
+mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there
+were certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images
+that must at any cost be exorcised—and one of these was the image
+of herself as Rosedale’s wife.
+
+Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the
+Brys’ Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small
+house at Tuxedo; and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after
+Dorset’s visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived,
+her hostess was still out, and the firelit quiet of the small
+silent house descended on her spirit with a sense of peace and
+familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had ever before
+been evoked by Carry Fisher’s surroundings; but, contrasted to
+the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of
+repose and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in
+the quiet competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her
+room. Mrs. Fisher’s unconventionality was, after all, a merely
+superficial divergence from an inherited social creed, while the
+manners of the Gormer circle represented their first attempt to
+formulate such a creed for themselves.
+
+It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had
+found herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of
+familiar associations had almost prepared her, as she descended
+the stairs before dinner, to enter upon a group of her old
+acquaintances. But this expectation was instantly checked by the
+reflection that the friends who remained loyal were precisely those
+who would be least willing to expose her to such encounters; and
+it was hardly with surprise that she found, instead, Mr. Rosedale
+kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth before his
+hostess’s little girl.
+
+Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily;
+yet she could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his
+advances to the child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated
+and perfunctory endearments of the guest under his hostess’s
+eye, for he and the little girl had the room to themselves; and
+something in his attitude made him seem a simple and kindly being
+compared to the small critical creature who endured his homage.
+Yes, he would be kind—Lily, from the threshold, had time to
+feel—kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way of the
+predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which
+to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated
+her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate
+form; for at sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the
+florid and dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer’s drawing-room.
+
+It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her
+only fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since
+the latter’s tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that
+the acuteness which enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant
+course through a world of antagonistic forces was not infrequently
+exercised for the benefit of her friends. It was, in fact,
+characteristic of Carry that, while she actively gleaned her own
+stores from the fields of affluence, her real sympathies were on
+the other side—with the unlucky, the unpopular, the unsuccessful,
+with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of success.
+
+Mrs. Fisher’s experience guarded her against the mistake of
+exposing Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression
+of Rosedale’s personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped
+in to dinner, and Lily, alive to every detail of her friend’s
+method, saw that such opportunities as had been contrived for her
+were to be deferred till she had, as it were, gained courage to
+make effectual use of them. She had a sense of acquiescing in this
+plan with the passiveness of a sufferer resigned to the surgeon’s
+touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic helplessness continued
+when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs. Fisher followed her
+upstairs.
+
+“May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in
+my room we shall disturb the child.” Mrs. Fisher looked about her
+with the eye of the solicitous hostess. “I hope you’ve managed to
+make yourself comfortable, dear? Isn’t it a jolly little house?
+It’s such a blessing to have a few quiet weeks with the baby.”
+
+Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively
+maternal that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could
+ever get time and money enough, she would not end by devoting them
+both to her daughter.
+
+“It’s a well-earned rest: I’ll say that for myself,” she continued,
+sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near
+the fire. “Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to
+wish myself back with the Gormers. Talk of love making people
+jealous and suspicious—it’s nothing to social ambition! Louisa
+used to lie awake at night wondering whether the women who called
+on us called on ME because I was with her, or on HER because she
+was with me; and she was always laying traps to find out what
+I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends, rather
+than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
+acquaintance—when, all the while, that was what she had me there
+for, and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season
+was over!”
+
+Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause,
+and the practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an
+occasional resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial
+moments, the purpose of the juggler’s chatter while he shifts the
+contents of his sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette-smoke
+she continued to gaze meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having
+dismissed her maid, sat before the toilet table shaking out over
+her shoulders the loosened undulations of her hair.
+
+“Your hair’s wonderful, Lily. Thinner—? What does that matter,
+when it’s so light and alive? So many women’s worries seem to go
+straight to their hair—but yours looks as if there had never been
+an anxious thought under it. I never saw you look better than you
+did this evening. Mattie Gormer told me that Morpeth wanted to
+paint you—why don’t you let him?”
+
+Miss Bart’s immediate answer was to address a critical glance
+to the reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she
+said, with a slight touch of irritation: “I don’t care to accept a
+portrait from Paul Morpeth.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher mused. “N—no. And just now, especially—well, he can do
+you after you’re married.” She waited a moment, and then went on:
+“By the way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned
+up here last Sunday—and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the
+world!”
+
+She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
+hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart’s lifted hand maintained its
+unwavering stroke from brow to nape.
+
+“I never was more astonished,” Mrs. Fisher pursued. “I don’t know
+two women less predestined to intimacy—from Bertha’s standpoint,
+that is; for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that
+she should be singled out—I’ve no doubt the rabbit always thinks
+it is fascinating the anaconda. Well, you know I’ve always told
+you that Mattie secretly longed to bore herself with the really
+fashionable; and now that the chance has come, I see that she’s
+capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it.”
+
+Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
+friend. “Including ME?” she suggested.
+
+“Ah, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from
+the hearth.
+
+“That’s what Bertha means, isn’t it?” Miss Bart went on steadily.
+“For of course she always means something; and before I left Long
+Island I saw that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie.”
+
+Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. “She has her fast now, at any rate.
+To think of that loud independence of Mattie’s being only a
+subtler form of snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe
+anything she pleases—and I’m afraid she’s begun, my poor child, by
+insinuating horrors about you.”
+
+Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. “The world
+is too vile,” she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher’s
+anxious scrutiny.
+
+“It’s not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it
+is to fight it on its own terms—and above all, my dear, not alone!”
+Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute
+grasp. “You’ve told me so little that I can only guess what has
+been happening; but in the rush we all live in there’s no time to
+keep on hating any one without a cause, and if Bertha is still
+nasty enough to want to injure you with other people it must be
+because she’s still afraid of you. From her standpoint there’s only
+one reason for being afraid of you; and my own idea is that, if you
+want to punish her, you hold the means in your hand. I believe you
+can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don’t care for that
+particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you from
+Bertha is to marry somebody else.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+
+The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the
+cheerless distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts with
+a cold precision unmodified by shade or colour, and refracted, as
+it were, from the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she
+had opened windows from which no sky was ever visible. But the
+idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to
+draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop; and it was easier for
+Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her case than to put it plainly
+to herself. Once confronted with it, however, she went the full
+length of its consequences; and these had never been more clearly
+present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out for a
+walk with Rosedale.
+
+It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted
+with the light of summer, and something in the lines of the
+landscape, and in the golden haze which bathed them, recalled to
+Miss Bart the September afternoon when she had climbed the slopes
+of Bellomont with Selden. The importunate memory was kept before
+her by its ironic contrast to her present situation, since her walk
+with Selden had represented an irresistible flight from just such
+a climax as the present excursion was designed to bring about. But
+other memories importuned her also; the recollection of similar
+situations, as skillfully led up to, but through some malice of
+fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always failing of
+the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now. She
+saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again,
+and against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in
+breaking up her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for
+shelter and security was intensified by the passionate desire to
+triumph over Bertha, as only wealth and predominance could triumph
+over her. As the wife of Rosedale—the Rosedale she felt it in her
+power to create—she would at least present an invulnerable front to
+her enemy.
+
+She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to
+keep up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly
+tending. As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from
+the way in which his look and tone made free of her, yet telling
+herself that this momentary endurance of his mood was the price she
+must pay for her ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate
+the exact point at which concession must turn to resistance, and
+the price HE would have to pay be made equally clear to him. But
+his dapper self-confidence seemed impenetrable to such hints, and
+she had a sense of something hard and self-contained behind the
+superficial warmth of his manner.
+
+They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen
+above the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an
+impassioned period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her
+gaze.
+
+“I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale,” she said quietly; “and I
+am ready to marry you whenever you wish.”
+
+Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
+announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he
+halted before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.
+
+“For I suppose that is what you do wish,” she continued, in the
+same quiet tone. “And, though I was unable to consent when you
+spoke to me in this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so
+much better, to trust my happiness to your hands.”
+
+She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on
+such occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown
+across the tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient
+brightness Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious
+that every avenue of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.
+
+Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in
+which, with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped
+cigarette. Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment
+before saying: “My dear Miss Lily, I’m sorry if there’s been any
+little misapprehension between us—but you made me feel my suit was
+so hopeless that I had really no intention of renewing it.”
+
+Lily’s blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she
+checked the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle
+dignity: “I have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the
+impression that my decision was final.”
+
+Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him
+in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the
+faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: “Before we bid each
+other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought
+of me as you did.”
+
+The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look,
+thrilled a vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite
+inaccessibleness, the sense of distance she could convey without a
+hint of disdain, that made it most difficult for him to give her up.
+
+“Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain’t we going to be good
+friends all the same?” he urged, without releasing her hand.
+
+She drew it away quietly. “What is your idea of being good
+friends?” she returned with a slight smile. “Making love to me
+without asking me to marry you?” Rosedale laughed with a recovered
+sense of ease.
+
+“Well, that’s about the size of it, I suppose. I can’t help making
+love to you—I don’t see how any man could; but I don’t mean to ask
+you to marry me as long as I can keep out of it.”
+
+She continued to smile. “I like your frankness; but I am afraid our
+friendship can hardly continue on those terms.” She turned away, as
+though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and
+he followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having
+after all kept the game in her own hands.
+
+“Miss Lily——” he began impulsively; but she walked on without
+seeming to hear him.
+
+He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand
+on her arm. “Miss Lily—don’t hurry away like that. You’re beastly
+hard on a fellow; but if you don’t mind speaking the truth I don’t
+see why you shouldn’t allow me to do the same.”
+
+She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away
+instinctively from his touch, though she made no effort to evade
+his words.
+
+“I was under the impression,” she rejoined, “that you had done so
+without waiting for my permission.”
+
+“Well—why shouldn’t you hear my reasons for doing it, then? We’re
+neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going
+to hurt us. I’m all broken up on you: there’s nothing new in that.
+I’m more in love with you than I was this time last year; but I’ve
+got to face the fact that the situation is changed.”
+
+She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic
+composure. “You mean to say that I’m not as desirable a match as
+you thought me?”
+
+“Yes; that’s what I do mean,” he answered resolutely. “I won’t go
+into what’s happened. I don’t believe the stories about you—I don’t
+WANT to believe them. But they’re there, and my not believing them
+ain’t going to alter the situation.”
+
+She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked
+the retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly. “If
+they are not true,” she said, “doesn’t THAT alter the situation?”
+
+He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes,
+which made her feel herself no more than some superfine human
+merchandise. “I believe it does in novels; but I’m certain it don’t
+in real life. You know that as well as I do: if we’re speaking the
+truth, let’s speak the whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry
+you, and you wouldn’t look at me: this year—well, you appear to be
+willing. Now, what has changed in the interval? Your situation,
+that’s all. Then you thought you could do better; now——”
+
+“You think you can?” broke from her ironically.
+
+“Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is.” He stood before her, his
+hands in his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid
+waistcoat. “It’s this way, you see: I’ve had a pretty steady grind
+of it these last years, working up my social position. Think it’s
+funny I should say that? Why should I mind saying I want to get
+into society? A man ain’t ashamed to say he wants to own a racing
+stable or a picture gallery. Well, a taste for society’s just
+another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want to get even with some of
+the people who cold-shouldered me last year—put it that way if it
+sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the best houses;
+and I’m getting it too, little by little. But I know the quickest
+way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with the
+wrong ones; and that’s the reason I want to avoid mistakes.”
+
+Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might
+have expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his
+candour, and after a moment’s pause he went on: “There it is, you
+see. I’m more in love with you than ever, but if I married you now
+I’d queer myself for good and all, and everything I’ve worked for
+all these years would be wasted.”
+
+She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment
+had faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had
+so long moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of
+an avowed expediency.
+
+“I understand you,” she said. “A year ago I should have been of
+use to you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you for
+telling me so quite honestly.” She extended her hand with a smile.
+
+Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale’s
+self-command. “By George, you’re a dead game sport, you are!” he
+exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
+suddenly—“Miss Lily—stop. You know I don’t believe those stories—I
+believe they were all got up by a woman who didn’t hesitate to
+sacrifice you to her own convenience——”
+
+Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to
+endure his insolence than his commiseration.
+
+“You are very kind; but I don’t think we need discuss the matter
+farther.”
+
+But Rosedale’s natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him
+to brush such resistance aside. “I don’t want to discuss anything;
+I just want to put a plain case before you,” he persisted.
+
+She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose
+in his look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly
+upon her: “The wonder to me is that you’ve waited so long to get
+square with that woman, when you’ve had the power in your hands.”
+She continued silent under the rush of astonishment that his
+words produced, and he moved a step closer to ask with low-toned
+directness: “Why don’t you use those letters of hers you bought
+last year?”
+
+Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In the
+words preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to
+her supposed influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing
+indelicacy of the reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale’s
+resorting to it. But now she saw how far short of the mark she had
+fallen; and the surprise of learning that he had discovered the
+secret of the letters left her, for the moment, unconscious of the
+special use to which he was in the act of putting his knowledge.
+
+Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his
+point; and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer
+control of the situation: “You see I know where you stand—I know
+how completely she’s in your power. That sounds like stage-talk,
+don’t it?—but there’s a lot of truth in some of those old gags;
+and I don’t suppose you bought those letters simply because you’re
+collecting autographs.”
+
+She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her
+only clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his
+power.
+
+“You’re wondering how I found out about ’em?” he went on, answering
+her look with a note of conscious pride. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten
+that I’m the owner of the Benedick—but never mind about that now.
+Getting on to things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business,
+and I’ve simply extended it to my private affairs. For this IS
+partly my affair, you see—at least, it depends on you to make it
+so. Let’s look the situation straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for
+reasons we needn’t go into, did you a beastly bad turn last spring.
+Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and her best friends wouldn’t
+believe her on oath where their own interests were concerned; but
+as long as they’re out of the row it’s much easier to follow her
+lead than to set themselves against it, and you’ve simply been
+sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn’t that a pretty
+fair statement of the case?—Well, some people say you’ve got the
+neatest kind of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would
+marry you tomorrow, if you’d tell him all you know, and give him
+the chance to show the lady the door. I daresay he would; but you
+don’t seem to care for that particular form of getting even, and,
+taking a purely business view of the question, I think you’re
+right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out with perfectly clean
+hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to get Bertha
+Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her.”
+
+He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time
+for the expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed
+on, expounding and elucidating his idea with the directness of
+the man who has no doubts of his cause, she found the indignation
+gradually freezing on her lip, found herself held fast in the grasp
+of his argument by the mere cold strength of its presentation.
+There was no time now to wonder how he had heard of her obtaining
+the letters: all her world was dark outside the monstrous glare
+of his scheme for using them. And it was not, after the first
+moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-bound, subdued
+to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
+cravings. He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha
+Dorset’s friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that
+friendship, and the tacit retractation of all that had caused its
+withdrawal, she had only to put to the lady the latent menace
+contained in the packet so miraculously delivered into her hands.
+Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this course over that which
+poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The other plan depended for its
+success on the infliction of an open injury, while this reduced
+the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third
+person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of
+businesslike give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless
+air of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a
+revision of boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it
+as a perpetual adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every
+concession had its recognized equivalent: Lily’s tired mind was
+fascinated by this escape from fluctuating ethical estimates into a
+region of concrete weights and measures.
+
+Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only
+a gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching
+perception of the chances it offered; for as she continued to stand
+before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return
+upon himself: “You see how simple it is, don’t you? Well, don’t be
+carried away by the idea that it’s TOO simple. It isn’t exactly
+as if you’d started in with a clean bill of health. Now we’re
+talking let’s call things by their right names, and clear the whole
+business up. You know well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn’t have
+touched you if there hadn’t been—well—questions asked before—little
+points of interrogation, eh? Bound to happen to a good-looking girl
+with stingy relatives, I suppose; anyhow, they DID happen, and she
+found the ground prepared for her. Do you see where I’m coming out?
+You don’t want these little questions cropping up again. It’s one
+thing to get Bertha Dorset into line—but what you want is to keep
+her there. You can frighten her fast enough—but how are you going
+to keep her frightened? By showing her that you’re as powerful as
+she is. All the letters in the world won’t do that for you as you
+are now; but with a big backing behind you, you’ll keep her just
+where you want her to be. That’s MY share in the business—that’s
+what I’m offering you. You can’t put the thing through without
+me—don’t run away with any idea that you can. In six months you’d
+be back again among your old worries, or worse ones; and here I am,
+ready to lift you out of ’em tomorrow if you say so. DO you say so,
+Miss Lily?” he added, moving suddenly nearer.
+
+The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to
+startle Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which
+she had insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the
+groping consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted
+perception that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of
+course, the likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying
+to cheat him of his share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner
+mind seemed to present the whole transaction in a new aspect, and
+she saw that the essential baseness of the act lay in its freedom
+from risk.
+
+She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a
+voice that was a surprise to her own ears: “You are mistaken—quite
+mistaken—both in the facts and in what you infer from them.”
+
+Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction
+so different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting
+him guide her.
+
+“Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each
+other!” he exclaimed; and to her murmur of “Ah, we do NOW,” he
+retorted with a sudden burst of violence: “I suppose it’s because
+the letters are to HIM, then? Well, I’ll be damned if I see what
+thanks you’ve got from him!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+
+The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was
+in transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still
+deserted at the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening
+stream of carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to
+consciousness.
+
+The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing
+semblance of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants
+with a human display of the same costly and high-stepping kind as
+circled daily about its ring. In Miss Bart’s world the Horse Show,
+and the public it attracted, had ostensibly come to be classed
+among the spectacles disdained of the elect; but, as the feudal
+lord might sally forth to join in the dance on his village green,
+so society, unofficially and incidentally, still condescended
+to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was not
+above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
+horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at
+her friend’s side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded.
+But this lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more
+conscious of a change in the relation between Mattie and herself,
+of a dawning discrimination, a gradually formed social standard,
+emerging from Mrs. Gormer’s chaotic view of life. It was inevitable
+that Lily herself should constitute the first sacrifice to this
+new ideal, and she knew that, once the Gormers were established in
+town, the whole drift of fashionable life would facilitate Mattie’s
+detachment from her. She had, in short, failed to make herself
+indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been thwarted by
+an influence stronger than any she could exert. That influence, in
+its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha Dorset’s
+social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.
+
+Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty
+of her own position nor the completeness of the vindication he
+offered: once Bertha’s match in material resources, her superior
+gifts would make it easy for her to dominate her adversary. An
+understanding of what such domination would mean, and of the
+disadvantages accruing from her rejection of it, was brought home
+to Lily with increasing clearness during the early weeks of the
+winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a semblance of movement outside
+the main flow of the social current; but with the return to town,
+and the concentrating of scattered activities, the mere fact of
+not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life marked
+her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a
+part of the season’s fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void
+of social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming,
+had never really conceived the possibility of revolving about a
+different centre: it was easy enough to despise the world, but
+decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. Her sense
+of irony never quite deserted her, and she could still note, with
+self-directed derision, the abnormal value suddenly acquired by the
+most tiresome and insignificant details of her former life. Its
+very drudgeries had a charm now that she was involuntarily released
+from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced civilities to the
+dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious dinners—how
+pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness of her
+days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with
+a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world;
+nor did she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes
+produce a wholesome reaction of contempt in their victim. Society
+did not turn away from her, it simply drifted by, preoccupied and
+inattentive, letting her feel, to the full measure of her humbled
+pride, how completely she had been the creature of its favour.
+
+She had rejected Rosedale’s suggestion with a promptness of scorn
+almost surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for
+high flashes of indignation. But she could not breathe long on the
+heights; there had been nothing in her training to develop any
+continuity of moral strength: what she craved, and really felt
+herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude
+should also be the easiest. Hitherto her intermittent impulses
+of resistance had sufficed to maintain her self-respect. If she
+slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that
+she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower
+level. She had rejected Rosedale’s offer without conscious effort;
+her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet perceive
+that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to live
+with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
+discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher’s, the results of the struggle were
+already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages
+Lily had already given to expediency; but she saw her passionately
+and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of “keeping up.”
+Gerty could smile now at her own early dream of her friend’s
+renovation through adversity: she understood clearly enough that
+Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the unimportance of
+what they have lost. But this very fact, to Gerty, made her friend
+the more piteously in want of aid, the more exposed to the claims
+of a tenderness she was so little conscious of needing.
+
+Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss
+Farish’s stairs. There was something irritating to her in the
+mute interrogation of Gerty’s sympathy: she felt the real
+difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one
+whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the
+restrictions of Gerty’s life, which had once had the charm of
+contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
+her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon,
+she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend,
+this sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual
+intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the
+brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable procession
+of fastidiously-equipped carriages—giving her, through the little
+squares of brougham-windows, peeps of familiar profiles bent above
+visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing notes and cards to
+attendant footmen—this glimpse of the ever-revolving wheels of the
+great social machine made Lily more than ever conscious of the
+steepness and narrowness of Gerty’s stairs, and of the cramped
+blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined to
+be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant
+figures were going up and down such stairs all over the world at
+that very moment—figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the
+middle-aged lady in limp black who descended Gerty’s flight as Lily
+climbed to it!
+
+“That was poor Miss Jane Silverton—she came to talk things over
+with me: she and her sister want to do something to support
+themselves,” Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the
+sitting-room.
+
+“To support themselves? Are they so hard up?” Miss Bart asked with
+a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of
+other people.
+
+“I’m afraid they have nothing left: Ned’s debts have swallowed
+up everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away
+from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good
+influence, because she doesn’t care for cards, and—well, she talked
+quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were
+her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so
+that he might have a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up
+his literary work again.”
+
+Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of
+her departing visitor. “But that isn’t all; it isn’t even the
+worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at
+least Bertha won’t allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy about
+it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about with all
+sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of
+having had a very bad influence on Freddy, who left Harvard last
+spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever since. She sent
+for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and Jack Stepney and
+Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that Freddy was
+threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had introduced
+him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he’s of
+age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt—she
+came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her
+something to do she could earn enough to pay Ned’s debts and send
+him away—I’m afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to
+pay for one of his evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt
+when he came back from the cruise—I can’t see why he should have
+spent so much more money under Bertha’s influence than Carry’s: can
+you?”
+
+Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. “My dear Gerty, I
+always understand how people can spend much more money—never how
+they can spend any less!”
+
+She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty’s easy-chair,
+while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
+
+“But what can they do—the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean
+to support themselves?” she asked, conscious that the note of
+irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last
+topic she had meant to discuss—it really did not interest her in
+the least—but she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to
+know how the two colourless shrinking victims of young Silverton’s
+sentimental experiments meant to cope with the grim necessity which
+lurked so close to her own threshold.
+
+“I don’t know—I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane
+reads aloud very nicely—but it’s so hard to find any one who is
+willing to be read to. And Miss Annie paints a little——”
+
+“Oh, I know—apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of
+thing I shall be doing myself before long!” exclaimed Lily,
+starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened
+destruction to Miss Farish’s fragile tea-table.
+
+Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her
+seat. “I’d forgotten there was no room to dash about in—how
+beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I
+wasn’t meant to be good,” she sighed out incoherently.
+
+Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the
+eyes shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
+
+“You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give you
+this cushion to lean against.”
+
+Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an
+impatient hand.
+
+“Don’t give me that! I don’t want to lean back—I shall go to sleep
+if I do.”
+
+“Well, why not, dear? I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” Gerty urged
+affectionately.
+
+“No—no; don’t be quiet; talk to me—keep me awake! I don’t sleep at
+night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me.”
+
+“You don’t sleep at night? Since when?”
+
+“I don’t know—I can’t remember.” She rose and put the empty cup on
+the tea-tray. “Another, and stronger, please; if I don’t keep awake
+now I shall see horrors tonight—perfect horrors!”
+
+“But they’ll be worse if you drink too much tea.”
+
+“No, no—give it to me; and don’t preach, please,” Lily returned
+imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed that
+her hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
+
+“But you look so tired: I’m sure you must be ill——”
+
+Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. “Do I look ill? Does my
+face show it?” She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror
+above the writing-table. “What a horrid looking-glass—it’s all
+blotched and discoloured. Any one would look ghastly in it!” She
+turned back, fixing her plaintive eyes on Gerty. “You stupid dear,
+why do you say such odious things to me? It’s enough to make one
+ill to be told one looks so! And looking ill means looking ugly.”
+She caught Gerty’s wrists, and drew her close to the window. “After
+all, I’d rather know the truth. Look me straight in the face,
+Gerty, and tell me: am I perfectly frightful?”
+
+“You’re perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and
+your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden——”
+
+“Ah, they WERE pale, then—ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don’t
+you tell me frankly that I’m a wreck? My eyes are bright now
+because I’m so nervous—but in the mornings they look like lead.
+And I can see the lines coming in my face—the lines of worry and
+disappointment and failure! Every sleepless night leaves a new
+one—and how can I sleep, when I have such dreadful things to think
+about?”
+
+“Dreadful things—what things?” asked Gerty, gently detaching her
+wrists from her friend’s feverish fingers.
+
+“What things? Well, poverty, for one—and I don’t know any that’s
+more dreadful.” Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness
+into the easy-chair near the tea-table. “You asked me just now if I
+could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I
+understand—he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live
+ON the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense—but
+it’s a privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and
+drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their
+carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars—yes, but
+there’s a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays
+it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means,
+by flowers and presents—and—and—lots of other things that cost;
+the girl pays it by tips and cards too—oh, yes, I’ve had to take
+up bridge again—and by going to the best dress-makers, and having
+just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself
+fresh and exquisite and amusing!”
+
+She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat
+there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above
+her fagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the
+change in her face—of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed
+suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up,
+and the vision vanished.
+
+“It doesn’t sound very amusing, does it? And it isn’t—I’m sick to
+death of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills
+me—it’s what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for
+your strong tea. For I can’t go on in this way much longer, you
+know—I’m nearly at the end of my tether. And then what can I do—how
+on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see myself reduced to the
+fate of that poor Silverton woman—slinking about to employment
+agencies, and trying to sell painted blotting-pads to Women’s
+Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands of women trying to
+do the same thing already, and not one of the number who has less
+idea how to earn a dollar than I have!”
+
+She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. “It’s late, and
+I must be off—I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don’t look
+so worried, you dear thing—don’t think too much about the nonsense
+I’ve been talking.” She was before the mirror again, adjusting
+her hair with a light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a
+dexterous touch to her furs. “Of course, you know, it hasn’t come
+to the employment agencies and the painted blotting-pads yet;
+but I’m rather hard up just for the moment, and if I could find
+something to do—notes to write and visiting-lists to make up, or
+that kind of thing—it would tide me over till the legacy is paid.
+And Carry has promised to find somebody who wants a kind of social
+secretary—you know she makes a specialty of the helpless rich.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her anxiety.
+She was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money: money to
+meet the vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor
+evaded. To give up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a
+boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty
+Farish’s sitting-room, was an expedient which could only postpone
+the problem confronting her; and it seemed wiser as well as more
+agreeable to remain where she was and find some means of earning
+her living. The possibility of having to do this was one which she
+had never before seriously considered, and the discovery that, as a
+bread-winner, she was likely to prove as helpless and ineffectual
+as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe shock to her self-confidence.
+
+Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation,
+as a person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate
+any situation in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that
+such gifts would be of value to seekers after social guidance;
+but there was unfortunately no specific head under which the
+art of saying and doing the right thing could be offered in the
+market, and even Mrs. Fisher’s resourcefulness failed before the
+difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague wealth of
+Lily’s graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedients for
+enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously
+assert that she had put several opportunities of this kind before
+Lily; but more legitimate methods of bread-winning were as much out
+of her line as they were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she
+was generally called upon to assist. Lily’s failure to profit by
+the chances already afforded her might, moreover, have justified
+the abandonment of farther effort on her behalf; but Mrs. Fisher’s
+inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at creating artificial
+demands in response to an actual supply. In the pursuance of this
+end she at once started on a voyage of discovery in Miss Bart’s
+behalf; and as the result of her explorations she now summoned the
+latter with the announcement that she had “found something.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend’s
+plight, and her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her
+that Lily, for the present, had no wish for the kind of help she
+could give. Miss Farish could see no hope for her friend but in a
+life completely reorganized and detached from its old associations;
+whereas all Lily’s energies were centred in the determined effort
+to hold fast to those associations, to keep herself visibly
+identified with them, as long as the illusion could be maintained.
+Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gerty, she could not judge
+it as harshly as Selden, for instance, might have done. She had
+not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in
+each other’s arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart’s
+blood passing into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had
+seemed unavailing enough; no trace remained in Lily of the subduing
+influences of that hour; but Gerty’s tenderness, disciplined by
+long years of contact with obscure and inarticulate suffering,
+could wait on its object with a silent forbearance which took no
+account of time. She could not, however, deny herself the solace of
+taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden, with whom, since his
+return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of cousinly
+confidence.
+
+Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their
+relation. He found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding
+and devoted, but with a quickened intelligence of the heart which
+he recognized without seeking to explain it. To Gerty herself it
+would once have seemed impossible that she should ever again talk
+freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had passed in the secrecy
+of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when the mist of the
+struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of self, a
+deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general current
+of human understanding.
+
+It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that
+Gerty had the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden.
+The latter, having presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had
+lingered on through the dowdy animation of his cousin’s tea-hour,
+conscious of something in her voice and eye which solicited a word
+apart; and as soon as the last visitor was gone Gerty opened her
+case by asking how lately he had seen Miss Bart.
+
+Selden’s perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of
+surprise.
+
+“I haven’t seen her at all—I’ve perpetually missed seeing her since
+she came back.”
+
+This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
+hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by
+adding: “I’ve wanted to see her—but she seems to have been absorbed
+by the Gormer set since her return from Europe.”
+
+“That’s all the more reason: she’s been very unhappy.”
+
+“Unhappy at being with the Gormers?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is
+at an end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since
+Bertha Dorset quarrelled with her.”
+
+“Ah——” Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window,
+where he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while
+his cousin continued to explain: “Judy Trenor and her own family
+have deserted her too—and all because Bertha Dorset has said such
+horrible things. And she is very poor—you know Mrs. Peniston cut
+her off with a small legacy, after giving her to understand that
+she was to have everything.”
+
+“Yes—I know,” Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room,
+but only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed
+space between door and window. “Yes—she’s been abominably treated;
+but it’s unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to
+show his sympathy can’t say to her.”
+
+His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. “There
+would be other ways of showing your sympathy,” she suggested.
+
+Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa
+which projected from the hearth. “What are you thinking of, you
+incorrigible missionary?” he asked.
+
+Gerty’s colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only
+answer. Then she made it more explicit by saying: “I am thinking of
+the fact that you and she used to be great friends—that she used to
+care immensely for what you thought of her—and that, if she takes
+your staying away as a sign of what you think now, I can imagine
+its adding a great deal to her unhappiness.”
+
+“My dear child, don’t add to it still more—at least to
+your conception of it—by attributing to her all sorts of
+susceptibilities of your own.” Selden, for his life, could not
+keep a note of dryness out of his voice; but he met Gerty’s look
+of perplexity by saying more mildly: “But, though you immensely
+exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss Bart, you
+can’t exaggerate my readiness to do it—if you ask me to.” He laid
+his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on
+the current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning
+which fill the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the
+feeling that he measured the cost of her request as plainly as she
+read the significance of his reply; and the sense of all that was
+suddenly clear between them made her next words easier to find.
+
+“I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you
+had been a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has
+never needed it before. You know how dependent she has always been
+on ease and luxury—how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and
+uncomfortable. She can’t help it—she was brought up with those
+ideas, and has never been able to find her way out of them. But
+now all the things she cared for have been taken from her, and the
+people who taught her to care for them have abandoned her too; and
+it seems to me that if some one could reach out a hand and show her
+the other side—show her how much is left in life and in herself——”
+Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own eloquence, and
+impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to her vague
+yearning for her friend’s retrieval. “I can’t help her myself:
+she’s passed out of my reach,” she continued. “I think she’s afraid
+of being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she
+seemed dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher
+was trying to find something for her to do. A few days later she
+wrote me that she had taken a position as private secretary, and
+that I was not to be anxious, for everything was all right, and
+she would come in and tell me about it when she had time; but she
+has never come, and I don’t like to go to her, because I am afraid
+of forcing myself on her when I’m not wanted. Once, when we were
+children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and thrown
+my arms about her, she said: ‘Please don’t kiss me unless I ask you
+to, Gerty’—and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since then I’ve
+always waited to be asked.”
+
+Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which
+his thin dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against
+any involuntary change of expression. When his cousin ended, he
+said with a slight smile: “Since you’ve learned the wisdom of
+waiting, I don’t see why you urge me to rush in—” but the troubled
+appeal of her eyes made him add, as he rose to take leave: “Still,
+I’ll do what you wish, and not hold you responsible for my failure.”
+
+Selden’s avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he
+had allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory
+of their last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his
+indignation, he had anxiously watched for her return; but she had
+disappointed him by lingering in England, and when she finally
+reappeared it happened that business had called him to the West,
+whence he came back only to learn that she was starting for Alaska
+with the Gormers. The revelation of this suddenly-established
+intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her. If, at a moment
+when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could cheerfully
+commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no reason why
+such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step
+she took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where,
+once or twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the
+recognition of this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted,
+produced in him a sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for
+him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare
+deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way;
+and every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations
+more unlikely, confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned
+to the conventional view of her.
+
+But Gerty Farish’s words had sufficed to make him see how little
+this view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live
+quietly with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in
+need of help—even such vague help as he could offer—was to be at
+once repossessed by that thought; and by the time he reached the
+street he had sufficiently convinced himself of the urgency of his
+cousin’s appeal to turn his steps directly toward Lily’s hotel.
+
+There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart
+had moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk
+remembered that she had left an address, for which he presently
+began to search through his books.
+
+It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step
+without letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden
+waited with a vague sense of uneasiness while the address was
+sought for. The process lasted long enough for uneasiness to turn
+to apprehension; but when at length a slip of paper was handed him,
+and he read on it: “Care of Mrs. Norma Hatch, Emporium Hotel,” his
+apprehension passed into an incredulous stare, and this into the
+gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper in two, and turned
+to walk quickly homeward.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+
+When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
+Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction.
+The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying
+once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious
+sunlit room at a breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire.
+Analysis and introspection might come later; but for the moment
+she was not even troubled by the excesses of the upholstery or
+the restless convolutions of the furniture. The sense of being
+once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense mild medium
+impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest note
+of criticism.
+
+When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady
+to whom Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of
+entering a new world. Carry’s vague presentment of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch (whose reversion to her Christian name was explained as the
+result of her latest divorce), left her under the implication
+of coming “from the West,” with the not unusual extenuation of
+having brought a great deal of money with her. She was, in short,
+rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily’s hand. Mrs.
+Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
+owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she “knew about”
+through Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the
+Falstaff of a certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr.
+Stancy might have been said to form a connecting link between the
+Gormer world and the more dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart
+now found herself entering. It was, however, only figuratively
+that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch’s world could be described as
+dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a blaze of electric
+light, impartially projected from various ornamental excrescences
+on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she
+rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
+appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity
+of something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude
+the immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her
+visitor, and that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of
+her dress and voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence
+which, in ladies of her nationality, so curiously coexists with
+startling extremes of experience.
+
+The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her
+as its inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the
+fashionable New York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered,
+and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for the gratification
+of fantastic requirements, while the comforts of a civilized life
+were as unattainable as in a desert. Through this atmosphere of
+torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the
+furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations,
+who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to
+concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from “art exhibit” to
+dress-maker’s opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately equipped
+motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
+distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of
+their sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the
+hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in the background of their
+lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human
+activities: they themselves were probably the product of strong
+ambitions, persistent energies, diversified contacts with the
+wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no more real existence
+than the poet’s shades in limbo.
+
+Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering
+that Mrs. Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though
+still floating in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing
+an outline; and in this endeavour she was actively seconded by
+Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr. Stancy, a man of large resounding
+presence, suggestive of convivial occasions and of a chivalry
+finding expression in “first-night” boxes and thousand dollar
+bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the scene of
+her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
+metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she
+had taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the
+photographer whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament
+of “Sunday Supplements,” and had got together the group which
+constituted her social world. It was a small group still, with
+heterogeneous figures suspended in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily
+did not take long to learn that its regulation was no longer in Mr.
+Stancy’s hands. As often happens, the pupil had outstripped the
+teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of heights of elegance
+as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the Emporium. This
+discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher guidance,
+for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
+to her correspondence, the right “look” to her hats, the right
+succession to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the
+regulator of a germinating social life that Miss Bart’s guidance
+was required; her ostensible duties as secretary being restricted
+by the fact that Mrs. Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write
+to.
+
+The daily details of Mrs. Hatch’s existence were as strange to
+Lily as its general tenor. The lady’s habits were marked by an
+Oriental indolence and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion.
+Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together outside the
+bounds of time and space. No definite hours were kept; no fixed
+obligations existed: night and day flowed into one another in a
+blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that one had the
+impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often
+merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
+Hatch’s vigil till daylight.
+
+Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange
+throng of hangers-on—manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers,
+teachers of bridge, of French, of “physical development”: figures
+sometimes indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs.
+Hatch’s relation to them, from the visitors constituting her
+recognized society. But strangest of all to Lily was the encounter,
+in this latter group, of several of her acquaintances. She had
+supposed, and not without relief, that she was passing, for the
+moment, completely out of her own circle; but she found that Mr.
+Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence overlapped the
+edge of Mrs. Fisher’s world, had drawn several of its brightest
+ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned Silverton
+among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room
+was one of Lily’s first astonishments; but she soon discovered
+that he was not Mr. Stancy’s most important recruit. It was on
+little Freddy Van Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh
+millions, that the attention of Mrs. Hatch’s group was centred.
+Freddy, barely out of college, had risen above the horizon since
+Lily’s eclipse, and she now saw with surprise what an effulgence he
+shed on the outer twilight of Mrs. Hatch’s existence. This, then,
+was one of the things that young men “went in” for when released
+from the official social routine; this was the kind of “previous
+engagement” that so frequently caused them to disappoint the hopes
+of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being behind the
+social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted and
+the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
+the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease
+and unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience
+of the irony of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were
+but brief reactions from the long disgust of her days. Compared
+with the vast gilded void of Mrs. Hatch’s existence, the life of
+Lily’s former friends seemed packed with ordered activities. Even
+the most irresponsible pretty woman of her acquaintance had her
+inherited obligations, her conventional benevolences, her share in
+the working of the great civic machine; and all hung together in
+the solidarity of these traditional functions. The performance of
+specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart’s position; but the
+vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its perplexities.
+
+It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs.
+Hatch showed from the first an almost touching desire for Lily’s
+approval. Far from asserting the superiority of wealth, her
+beautiful eyes seemed to urge the plea of inexperience: she wanted
+to do what was “nice,” to be taught how to be “lovely.” The
+difficulty was to find any point of contact between her ideals and
+Lily’s.
+
+Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of
+aspirations culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion
+journals, and a gaudy world of sport still more completely beyond
+her companion’s ken. To separate from these confused conceptions
+those most likely to advance the lady on her way, was Lily’s
+obvious duty; but its performance was hampered by rapidly-growing
+doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and more aware of a certain
+ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she had, in the
+conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch’s irreproachableness.
+The lady’s offences were always against taste rather than conduct;
+her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than ethical
+conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from
+a wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not
+mind her detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the
+“Beauty-Doctor” a seat in Freddy Van Osburgh’s box at the play,
+she was not equally at ease in regard to some less apparent lapses
+from convention. Ned Silverton’s relation to Stancy seemed, for
+instance, closer and less clear than any natural affinities would
+warrant; and both appeared united in the effort to cultivate Freddy
+Van Osburgh’s growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was as yet
+nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve itself
+into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a vague
+sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
+and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
+Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the
+social development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his
+part, a permanent interest in the lady’s future. There were moments
+when Lily found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The
+thought of launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious
+bosom of society was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even
+beguiled her leisure with visions of the fair Norma introduced for
+the first time to a family banquet at the Van Osburghs’. But the
+thought of being personally connected with the transaction was less
+agreeable; and her momentary flashes of amusement were followed by
+increasing periods of doubt.
+
+The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon,
+she was surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her
+alone in the wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch’s world
+the tea-hour was not dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in
+the hands of her masseuse.
+
+Selden’s entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment;
+but his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her
+self-possession, and she took at once the tone of surprise and
+pleasure, wondering frankly that he should have traced her to so
+unlikely a place, and asking what had inspired him to make the
+search.
+
+Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him
+so little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
+obstructions she might put in his way. “I wanted to see you,” he
+said; and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept
+his wishes under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long
+absence as one of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his
+desertion had wounded sensibilities far below the surface of her
+pride.
+
+Selden met the challenge with directness. “Why should I have come,
+unless I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for
+imagining you could want me.”
+
+This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash
+of keenness to her answer. “Then you have come now because you
+think you can be of use to me?”
+
+He hesitated again. “Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to
+talk things over with.”
+
+For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the
+idea that his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a
+personal significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing
+him. Even under the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always
+made itself felt: she might hate him, but she had never been able
+to wish him out of the room. She was very near hating him now;
+yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin
+dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was
+conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her
+deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her, and
+the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
+this stealing influence now prompted her to say: “It’s very good of
+you to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think
+I have anything particular to talk about?”
+
+Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question
+was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were
+unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation
+between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a
+sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training and habit
+of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. Selden’s
+calmness seemed rather to harden into resistance, and Miss Bart’s
+into a surface of glittering irony, as they faced each other from
+the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch’s elephantine sofas. The
+sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its monstrous mates,
+served at length to suggest the turn of Selden’s reply.
+
+“Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch’s secretary; and
+I knew she was anxious to hear how you were getting on.”
+
+Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening.
+“Why didn’t she look me up herself, then?” she asked.
+
+“Because, as you didn’t send her your address, she was afraid of
+being importunate.” Selden continued with a smile: “You see no such
+scruples restrained me; but then I haven’t as much to risk if I
+incur your displeasure.”
+
+Lily answered his smile. “You haven’t incurred it as yet; but I
+have an idea that you are going to.”
+
+“That rests with you, doesn’t it? You see my initiative doesn’t go
+beyond putting myself at your disposal.”
+
+“But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?” she asked in the
+same light tone.
+
+Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room; then he said,
+with a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final
+inspection: “You are to let me take you away from here.”
+
+Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened
+under it and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?”
+
+“Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing
+is that it should be away from here.”
+
+The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the
+words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings
+while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps
+even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends,
+and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with
+this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every
+instinct of pride and self-defence.
+
+“I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an
+interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have
+no intention of leaving.”
+
+Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
+uncontrollable expectancy.
+
+“That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed.
+
+Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here
+to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch——”
+
+“It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.”
+
+“My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed
+of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were
+quite resigned to seeing me starve.”
+
+“Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
+always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.”
+
+“You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I
+suppose you mean—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?”
+
+“I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without
+embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
+constraint in speaking his mind.
+
+“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I
+owe every penny of that legacy.”
+
+“Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
+abruptness of the statement.
+
+“Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now
+perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take
+advantage of Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my
+small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself alive.”
+
+Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone:
+“But with your income and Gerty’s—since you allow me to go so
+far into the details of the situation—you and she could surely
+contrive a life together which would put you beyond the need of
+having to support yourself. Gerty, I know, is eager to make such an
+arrangement, and would be quite happy in it——”
+
+“But I should not,” Miss Bart interposed. “There are many reasons
+why it would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself.” She
+paused a moment, and as he seemed to await a farther explanation,
+added with a quick lift of her head: “You will perhaps excuse me
+from giving you these reasons.”
+
+“I have no claim to know them,” Selden answered, ignoring her tone;
+“no claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have
+already made. And my right to make that is simply the universal
+right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously
+placed in a false position.”
+
+Lily smiled. “I suppose,” she rejoined, “that by a false position
+you mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember
+that I had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before
+I met Mrs. Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real
+difference in being inside or out, and I remember your once telling
+me that it was only those inside who took the difference seriously.”
+
+She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
+memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of
+the nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of
+the experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion
+to deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer
+fulness of emphasis: “The question of being inside or out is, as
+you say, a small one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the
+case, except in so far as Mrs. Hatch’s desire to be inside may put
+you in the position I call false.”
+
+In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the
+effect of confirming Lily’s resistance. The very apprehensions he
+aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the
+note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over
+him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all
+response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment
+of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty,
+and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would
+never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve
+not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther into her confidence.
+However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would
+rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, when he had ceased to speak, “why you
+imagine me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always
+told me that the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to
+teach a girl to get what she wants, why not assume that that is
+precisely what I am doing?”
+
+The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear
+barrier raised against farther confidences: its brightness held
+him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of
+hearing as he rejoined: “I am not sure that I have ever called you
+a successful example of that kind of bringing-up.”
+
+Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled
+herself with a light laugh. “Ah, wait a little longer—give me a
+little more time before you decide!” And as he wavered before her,
+still watching for a break in the impenetrable front she presented:
+“Don’t give me up; I may still do credit to my training!” she
+affirmed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+
+“Look at those spangles, Miss Bart—every one of ’em sewed on
+crooked.”
+
+The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the
+condemned structure of wire and net on the table at Lily’s side,
+and passed on to the next figure in the line.
+
+There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles,
+under exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above
+the utensils of their art; for it was something more than an
+industry, surely, this creation of ever-varied settings for the
+face of fortunate womanhood. Their own faces were sallow with the
+unwholesomeness of hot air and sedentary toil, rather than with any
+actual signs of want: they were employed in a fashionable millinery
+establishment, and were fairly well clothed and well paid; but the
+youngest among them was as dull and colourless as the middle-aged.
+In the whole work-room there was only one skin beneath which the
+blood still visibly played; and that now burned with vexation as
+Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman’s comment, began to
+strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.
+
+To Gerty Farish’s hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been
+reached when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.
+Instances of young lady-milliners establishing themselves under
+fashionable patronage, and imparting to their “creations” that
+indefinable touch which the professional hand can never give, had
+flattered Gerty’s visions of the future, and convinced even Lily
+that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch need not reduce her to
+dependence on her friends.
+
+The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden’s visit, and
+would have taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance
+set up in Lily by his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of
+being involved in a transaction she would not have cared to examine
+too closely had soon afterward defined itself in the light of a
+hint from Mr. Stancy that, if she “saw them through,” she would
+have no reason to be sorry. The implication that such loyalty would
+meet with a direct reward had hastened her flight, and flung her
+back, ashamed and penitent, on the broad bosom of Gerty’s sympathy.
+She did not, however, propose to lie there prone, and Gerty’s
+inspiration about the hats at once revived her hopes of profitable
+activity. Here was, after all, something that her charming listless
+hands could really do; she had no doubt of their capacity for
+knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of course
+only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
+fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the
+shapes and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming
+little front shop—a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green
+hangings—where her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes
+and the rest, perched on their stands like birds just poising for
+flight.
+
+But at the very outset of Gerty’s campaign this vision of the
+green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of
+fashion had been thus “set up,” selling their hats by the mere
+attraction of a name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but
+these privileged beings could command a faith in their powers
+materially expressed by the readiness to pay their shop-rent and
+advance a handsome sum for current expenses. Where was Lily to
+find such support? And even could it have been found, how were
+the ladies on whose approval she depended to be induced to give
+her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy her
+friend’s case might have excited a few months since had been
+imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once
+again, Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to
+save her self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy
+Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at
+the eleventh hour—some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and
+Rosedale—and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the
+risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss Bart’s connivance,
+and would somehow serve as a summing-up and corroboration of the
+vague general distrust of her. It was a relief to those who had
+hung back from her to find themselves thus justified, and they were
+inclined to insist a little on her connection with the Hatch case
+in order to show that they had been right.
+
+Gerty’s quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
+resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent
+for her share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss
+Farish’s, they met with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil
+her failure in tender ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of
+candour, put the case squarely to her friend.
+
+“I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
+others, and besides she’s always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE
+you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a
+start she flamed out about some money you’d got from Gus; I never
+knew her so hot before. You know she’ll let him do anything but
+spend money on his friends: the only reason she’s decent to me now
+is that she knows I’m not hard up.—He speculated for you, you say?
+Well, what’s the harm? He had no business to lose. He DIDN’T lose?
+Then what on earth—but I never COULD understand you, Lily!”
+
+The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much
+deliberation, Mrs. Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in
+their effort to help their friend, decided on placing her in the
+work-room of Mme. Regina’s renowned millinery establishment. Even
+this arrangement was not effected without considerable negotiation,
+for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against untrained
+assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
+owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s
+influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in
+the show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might
+be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a
+negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher,
+inwardly unconvinced, but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s
+unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would be more useful
+that she should learn the trade. To Regina’s work-room Lily was
+therefore committed by her friends, and there Mrs. Fisher left her
+with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness continued to
+hover over her at a distance.
+
+Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months
+later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew
+spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard
+a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of
+criticism and amusement to the other work-women. They were, of
+course, aware of her history—the exact situation of every girl
+in the room was known and freely discussed by all the others—but
+the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense of class
+distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
+still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no
+desire that they should recognize any social difference in her; but
+she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before
+long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch,
+and it was humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery,
+she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day
+when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident
+of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the
+delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman
+still held her inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.
+
+She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to
+the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of
+Miss Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual, because
+Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened
+even during the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the
+weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had
+the incoherence of a dream.
+
+“I TOLD her he’d never look at her again; and he didn’t. I wouldn’t
+have, either—I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to
+the Arion Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She’s taken
+ten bottles, and her headaches don’t seem no better—but she’s
+written a testimonial to say the first bottle cured her, and she
+got five dollars and her picture in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor’s
+hat? The one with the green Paradise? Here, Miss Haines—it’ll be
+ready right off.... That was one of the Trenor girls here yesterday
+with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why, Madam sent for me to
+alter the flower in that Virot hat—the blue tulle: she’s tall and
+slight, with her hair fuzzed out—a good deal like Mamie Leach, on’y
+thinner....”
+
+On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
+startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the
+surface. It was the strangest part of Lily’s strange experience,
+the hearing of these names, the seeing the fragmentary and
+distorted image of the world she had lived in reflected in the
+mirror of the working-girls’ minds. She had never before suspected
+the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous freedom with
+which she and her kind were discussed in this underworld of toilers
+who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence. Every girl in Mme.
+Regina’s work-room knew to whom the headgear in her hands was
+destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a definite
+knowledge of the latter’s place in the social system. That Lily
+was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
+curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her.
+She had fallen, she had “gone under,” and true to the ideal of
+their race, they were awed only by success—by the gross tangible
+image of material achievement. The consciousness of her different
+point of view merely kept them at a little distance from her, as
+though she were a foreigner with whom it was an effort to talk.
+
+“Miss Bart, if you can’t sew those spangles on more regular I guess
+you’d better give the hat to Miss Kilroy.”
+
+Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was
+right: the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What
+made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste
+for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt tired and
+confused: it was an effort to put her thoughts together. She rose
+and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who took it with a suppressed
+smile.
+
+“I’m sorry; I’m afraid I am not well,” she said to the forewoman.
+
+Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill
+of Mme. Regina’s consenting to include a fashionable apprentice
+among her workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were
+wanted, and Miss Haines would have been more than human had she not
+taken a certain pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.
+
+“You’d better go back to binding edges,” she said drily. Lily
+slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She
+did not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in
+the street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old
+standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished
+and promiscuous. In the days—how distant they now seemed!—when she
+had visited the Girls’ Club with Gerty Farish, she had felt an
+enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was because
+she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of her
+grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them,
+the point of view was less interesting.
+
+She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss
+Kilroy. “Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well
+as I can when you’re feeling right. Miss Haines didn’t act fair to
+you.”
+
+Lily’s colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time
+since real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty’s.
+
+“Oh, thank you: I’m not particularly well, but Miss Haines was
+right. I AM clumsy.”
+
+“Well, it’s mean work for anybody with a headache.” Miss Kilroy
+paused irresolutely. “You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever
+try orangeine?”
+
+“Thank you.” Lily held out her hand. “It’s very kind of you—I mean
+to go home.”
+
+She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more
+to say. Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering
+to go home with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent—even
+kindness, the sort of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would
+have jarred on her just then.
+
+“Thank you,” she repeated as she turned away.
+
+She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward
+the street where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely
+refused Gerty’s offer of hospitality. Something of her mother’s
+fierce shrinking from observation and sympathy was beginning to
+develop in her, and the promiscuity of small quarters and close
+intimacy seemed, on the whole, less endurable than the solitude of
+a hall bedroom in a house where she could come and go unremarked
+among other workers. For a while she had been sustained by this
+desire for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from
+increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by
+hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely
+the ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day’s task
+done, she dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched
+wall-paper and shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk
+thither, through the degradation of a New York street in the last
+stages of decline from fashion to commerce.
+
+But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist’s
+at the corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another
+street: she had usually done so of late. But today her steps were
+irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried
+to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and
+she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just
+opposite the chemist’s door.
+
+Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited
+on her before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There
+could be no question about the prescription: it was a copy of one
+of Mrs. Hatch’s, obligingly furnished by that lady’s chemist. Lily
+was confident that the clerk would fill it without hesitation;
+yet the nervous dread of a refusal, or even of an expression of
+doubt, communicated itself to her restless hands as she affected to
+examine the bottles of perfume stacked on the glass case before her.
+
+The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act
+of handing out the bottle he paused.
+
+“You don’t want to increase the dose, you know,” he remarked.
+Lily’s heart contracted.
+
+What did he mean by looking at her in that way?
+
+“Of course not,” she murmured, holding out her hand.
+
+“That’s all right: it’s a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more,
+and off you go—the doctors don’t know why.”
+
+The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back,
+choked the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length
+she emerged safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the
+intensity of her relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her
+tired nerves with the delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in
+the reaction from her momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes
+of drowsiness were already stealing over her.
+
+In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down
+the last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard
+her name uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy
+and prosperous—but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as
+if through a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account
+for the phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They
+had parted with scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace
+of these emotions seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was
+only aware of a confused wish that she might continue to hold fast
+to him.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter, Miss Lily? You’re not well!” he exclaimed;
+and she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.
+
+“I’m a little tired—it’s nothing. Stay with me a moment, please,”
+she faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!
+
+He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they
+stood, with the shriek of the “elevated” and the tumult of trams
+and waggons contending hideously in their ears.
+
+“We can’t stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of
+tea. The LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there’ll be no one
+there at this hour.”
+
+A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness,
+seemed for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps
+brought them to the ladies’ door of the hotel he had named, and
+a moment later he was seated opposite to her, and the waiter had
+placed the tea-tray between them.
+
+“Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up,
+Miss Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a
+cushion for the lady’s back.”
+
+Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong.
+It was the temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her
+craving for the keen stimulant was forever conflicting with that
+other craving for sleep—the midnight craving which only the little
+phial in her hand could still. But today, at any rate, the tea
+could hardly be too strong: she counted on it to pour warmth and
+resolution into her empty veins.
+
+As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter
+lassitude, though the first warm draught already tinged her face
+with returning life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant
+surprise of her beauty. The dark pencilling of fatigue under her
+eyes, the morbid blue-veined pallor of the temples, brought out the
+brightness of her hair and lips, as though all her ebbing vitality
+were centred there. Against the dull chocolate-coloured background
+of the restaurant, the purity of her head stood out as it had
+never done in the most brightly lit ball-room. He looked at her
+with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty were a
+forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
+unawares.
+
+To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. “Why, Miss
+Lily, I haven’t seen you for an age. I didn’t know what had become
+of you.”
+
+As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the
+complications to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her
+he had heard of her; he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and
+of the talk resulting from it. Mrs. Hatch’s MILIEU was one which he
+had once assiduously frequented, and now as devoutly shunned.
+
+Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw
+what was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: “You would
+not be likely to know about me. I have joined the working-classes.”
+
+He stared in genuine wonder. “You don’t mean—? Why, what on earth
+are you doing?”
+
+“Learning to be a milliner—at least TRYING to learn,” she hastily
+qualified the statement.
+
+Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. “Come off—you ain’t
+serious, are you?”
+
+“Perfectly serious. I’m obliged to work for my living.”
+
+“But I understood—I thought you were with Norma Hatch.”
+
+“You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?”
+
+“Something of the kind, I believe.” He leaned forward to refill her
+cup.
+
+Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic
+held for him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: “I
+left her two months ago.”
+
+Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she
+felt sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was
+there that Rosedale did not hear?
+
+“Wasn’t it a soft berth?” he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.
+
+“Too soft—one might have sunk in too deep.” Lily rested one arm on
+the edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than
+she had ever looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging
+her to put her case to this man, from whose curiosity she had
+always so fiercely defended herself.
+
+“You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand
+that she might make things too easy for one.”
+
+Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that
+allusiveness was lost on him.
+
+“It was no place for you, anyhow,” he agreed, so suffused and
+immersed in the light of her full gaze that he found himself being
+drawn into strange depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist
+on mere fugitive glances, looks winged in flight and swiftly lost
+under covert, now found her eyes settling on him with a brooding
+intensity that fairly dazzled him.
+
+“I left,” Lily continued, “lest people should say I was helping
+Mrs. Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh—who is not in the least too
+good for her—and as they still continue to say it, I see that I
+might as well have stayed where I was.”
+
+“Oh, Freddy——” Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
+unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
+acquired. “Freddy don’t count—but I knew YOU weren’t mixed up in
+that. It ain’t your style.”
+
+Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that
+the words gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there,
+drinking more tea, and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale.
+But the old habit of observing the conventions reminded her that it
+was time to bring their colloquy to an end, and she made a faint
+motion to push back her chair.
+
+Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. “Wait a
+minute—don’t go yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look
+thoroughly played out. And you haven’t told me——” He broke off,
+conscious of going farther than he had meant. She saw the struggle
+and understood it; understood also the nature of the spell to which
+he yielded as, with his eyes on her face, he began again abruptly:
+“What on earth did you mean by saying just now that you were
+learning to be a milliner?”
+
+“Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina’s.”
+
+“Good Lord—YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down:
+Mrs. Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy
+from her——”
+
+“I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till
+next summer.”
+
+“Well, but—look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted.”
+
+She shook her head gravely. “No; for I owe it already.”
+
+“Owe it? The whole ten thousand?”
+
+“Every penny.” She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her
+eyes on his face: “I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about
+having made some money for me in stocks.”
+
+She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered
+that he remembered something of the kind.
+
+“He made about nine thousand dollars,” Lily pursued, in the same
+tone of eager communicativeness. “At the time, I understood that
+he was speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of
+me, but I knew nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he
+had NOT used my money—that what he said he had made for me he had
+really given me. It was meant in kindness, of course; but it was
+not the sort of obligation one could remain under. Unfortunately
+I had spent the money before I discovered my mistake; and so my
+legacy will have to go to pay it back. That is the reason why I am
+trying to learn a trade.”
+
+She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between
+the sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into
+her hearer’s mind. She had a passionate desire that some one
+should know the truth about this transaction, and also that the
+rumour of her intention to repay the money should reach Judy
+Trenor’s ears. And it had suddenly occurred to her that Rosedale,
+who had surprised Trenor’s confidence, was the fitting person to
+receive and transmit her version of the facts. She had even felt
+a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving herself
+of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
+telling, and as she ended her pallor was suffused with a deep blush
+of misery.
+
+Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took
+the turn she had least expected.
+
+“But see here—if that’s the case, it cleans you out altogether?”
+
+He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her
+act; as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to
+precipitate her into a fresh act of folly.
+
+“Altogether—yes,” she calmly agreed.
+
+He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little
+puzzled eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
+
+“See here—that’s fine,” he exclaimed abruptly.
+
+Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. “Oh, no—it’s
+merely a bore,” she asserted, gathering together the ends of her
+feather scarf.
+
+Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
+movement. “Miss Lily, if you want any backing—I like pluck——” broke
+from him disconnectedly.
+
+“Thank you.” She held out her hand. “Your tea has given me a
+tremendous backing. I feel equal to anything now.”
+
+Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but
+her companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his
+short arms into his expensive overcoat.
+
+“Wait a minute—you’ve got to let me walk home with you,” he said.
+
+Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of
+his change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue
+again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which,
+through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with
+increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt
+that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood;
+and before the doorstep at which she finally paused he looked up
+with an air of incredulous disgust.
+
+“This isn’t the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss
+Farish.”
+
+“No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends.”
+
+He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows
+draped with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the
+muddy vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a
+visible effort: “You’ll let me come and see you some day?”
+
+She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of
+being frankly touched by it. “Thank you—I shall be very glad,” she
+made answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+That evening in her own room Miss Bart—who had fled early from
+the heavy fumes of the basement dinner-table—sat musing upon the
+impulse which had led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath
+it she discovered an increasing sense of loneliness—a dread of
+returning to the solitude of her room, while she could be anywhere
+else, or in any company but her own. Circumstances, of late, had
+combined to cut her off more and more from her few remaining
+friends. On Carry Fisher’s part the withdrawal was perhaps not
+quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily’s behalf,
+and landed her safely in Mme. Regina’s work-room, Mrs. Fisher
+seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding
+the reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come
+dangerously near to being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch, and it had taken some verbal ingenuity to extricate herself.
+She frankly owned to having brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together,
+but then she did not know Mrs. Hatch—she had expressly warned Lily
+that she did not know Mrs. Hatch—and besides, she was not Lily’s
+keeper, and really the girl was old enough to take care of herself.
+Carry did not put her own case so brutally, but she allowed it to
+be thus put for her by her latest bosom friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney:
+Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of her only brother’s
+escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose house she
+could count on the “jolly parties” which had become a necessity to
+her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point
+of view.
+
+Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.
+Carry had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps
+only a friendship like Gerty’s could be proof against such an
+increasing strain. Gerty’s friendship did indeed hold fast; yet
+Lily was beginning to avoid her also. For she could not go to
+Gerty’s without risk of meeting Selden; and to meet him now would
+be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think of him, whether she
+considered him in the distinctness of her waking thoughts, or felt
+the obsession of his presence through the blur of her tormented
+nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
+Mrs. Hatch’s prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural
+dreams he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and
+tenderness; and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and
+emptied of her courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured
+she sank far below such half-waking visitations, sank into depths
+of dreamless annihilation from which she woke each morning with an
+obliterated past.
+
+Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return;
+but at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug
+gave her a momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she
+drew strength to take up her daily work. The strength was more
+and more needed as the perplexities of her future increased. She
+knew that to Gerty and Mrs. Fisher she was only passing through
+a temporary period of probation, since they believed that the
+apprenticeship she was serving at Mme. Regina’s would enable her,
+when Mrs. Peniston’s legacy was paid, to realize the vision of the
+green-and-white shop with the fuller competence acquired by her
+preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the legacy
+could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed
+a wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she
+could ever learn to compete with hands formed from childhood
+for their special work, the small pay she received would not be
+a sufficient addition to her income to compensate her for such
+drudgery. And the realization of this fact brought her recurringly
+face to face with the temptation to use the legacy in establishing
+her business. Once installed, and in command of her own work-women,
+she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to attract a
+fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
+gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor.
+But the task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued
+to stint herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be
+crushed under the weight of an intolerable obligation.
+
+These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked
+the secret dread that the obligation might not always remain
+intolerable. She knew she could not count on her continuity of
+purpose, and what really frightened her was the thought that she
+might gradually accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely
+in Trenor’s debt, as she had accommodated herself to the part
+allotted her on the Sabrina, and as she had so nearly drifted
+into acquiescing with Stancy’s scheme for the advancement of Mrs.
+Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old incurable dread
+of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting tide of
+dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned her.
+And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood
+that Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take
+advantage of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of
+course impossible to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate
+possibilities hovered temptingly before her. She was quite sure
+that he would come and see her again, and almost sure that, if he
+did, she could bring him to the point of offering to marry her on
+the terms she had previously rejected. Would she still reject them
+if they were offered? More and more, with every fresh mischance
+befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the shape of
+Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her papers,
+lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
+scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
+returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?
+
+What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost;
+she could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless
+night. Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue
+and loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained
+of bodily strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of
+weakness. The only hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her
+bed-side; and how much longer that hope would last she dared not
+conjecture.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+
+Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the
+afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,
+and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the
+ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt
+roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective of
+the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate haze
+of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
+
+As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the
+passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had
+disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for
+Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
+Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her
+C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new
+heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse’s
+knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch’s electric victoria, in
+which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring toilet
+obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later came Judy
+Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
+annual tarpon fishing and a dip into “the street.”
+
+This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense
+of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She
+had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to
+come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,
+and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services
+were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on
+the first of May, and Miss Bart’s attendance had of late been so
+irregular—she had so often been unwell, and had done so little work
+when she came—that it was only as a favour that her dismissal had
+hitherto been deferred.
+
+Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was
+conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It
+was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the
+fact had been brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could
+never compete with professional ability. Since she had been brought
+up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to
+serve any practical purpose; but the discovery put an end to her
+consoling sense of universal efficiency.
+
+As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the
+fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning.
+The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the
+life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence of the
+boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to return to
+it as late as possible; and she was walking slowly now in order to
+postpone the detested approach to her doorstep.
+
+But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest
+from the fact that it was occupied—and indeed filled—by the
+conspicuous figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take
+on an added amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.
+
+The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.
+Rosedale, a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to
+enquire if she had recovered from her indisposition; but since
+then she had not seen or heard from him, and his absence seemed
+to betoken a struggle to keep away, to let her pass once more out
+of his life. If this were the case, his return showed that the
+struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man to
+waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance. He was too
+busy, too practical, and above all too much preoccupied with his
+own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable asides.
+
+In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas
+grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes,
+he looked about him with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat
+distrustfully on the dusty console adorned with a Rogers statuette.
+
+Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he
+deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched
+antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of
+skin above his collar.
+
+“My goodness—you can’t go on living here!” he exclaimed.
+
+Lily smiled at his tone. “I am not sure that I can; but I have gone
+over my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able
+to manage it.”
+
+“Be able to manage it? That’s not what I mean—it’s no place for
+you!”
+
+“It’s what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week.”
+
+“Out of work—out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea
+of your having to work—it’s preposterous.” He brought out his
+sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up
+from a deep inner crater of indignation. “It’s a farce—a crazy
+farce,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room
+reflected in the blotched glass between the windows.
+
+Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. “I don’t
+know why I should regard myself as an exception——” she began.
+
+“Because you ARE; that’s why; and your being in a place like this
+is a damnable outrage. I can’t talk of it calmly.”
+
+She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual
+glibness; and there was something almost moving to her in his
+inarticulate struggle with his emotions.
+
+He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its
+beam ends, and placed himself squarely before her.
+
+“Look here, Miss Lily, I’m going to Europe next week: going over
+to Paris and London for a couple of months—and I can’t leave you
+like this. I can’t do it. I know it’s none of my business—you’ve
+let me understand that often enough; but things are worse with you
+now than they have been before, and you must see that you’ve got to
+accept help from somebody. You spoke to me the other day about some
+debt to Trenor. I know what you mean—and I respect you for feeling
+as you do about it.”
+
+A blush of surprise rose to Lily’s pale face, but before she could
+interrupt him he had continued eagerly: “Well, I’ll lend you the
+money to pay Trenor; and I won’t—I—see here, don’t take me up
+till I’ve finished. What I mean is, it’ll be a plain business
+arrangement, such as one man would make with another. Now, what
+have you got to say against that?”
+
+Lily’s blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude
+were mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the
+unexpected gentleness of her reply.
+
+“Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that
+I can never again be sure of understanding the plainest business
+arrangement.” Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ
+of injustice, she added, even more kindly: “Not that I don’t
+appreciate your kindness—that I’m not grateful for it. But a
+business arrangement between us would in any case be impossible,
+because I shall have no security to give when my debt to Gus Trenor
+has been paid.”
+
+Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the
+note of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as
+closing the question between them.
+
+In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing
+through his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the
+inexorableness of her course—however little he penetrated its
+motive—she saw that it unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold
+over him. It was as though the sense in her of unexplained scruples
+and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy of feature,
+the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an external rarity,
+an air of being impossible to match. As he advanced in social
+experience this uniqueness had acquired a greater value for him,
+as though he were a collector who had learned to distinguish minor
+differences of design and quality in some long-coveted object.
+
+Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her
+at once, on the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs.
+Dorset; and the temptation was the less easy to put aside because,
+little by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike
+for Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was
+penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating qualities
+in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather helpless fidelity
+of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling through the hard
+surface of his material ambitions.
+
+Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a
+gesture which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.
+
+“If you’d only let me, I’d set you up over them all—I’d put you
+where you could wipe your feet on ’em!” he declared; and it touched
+her oddly to see that his new passion had not altered his old
+standard of values.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
+situation in the crude light which Rosedale’s visit had shed on
+it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had
+she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that
+might be called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt
+did she owe to a social order which had condemned and banished her
+without trial? She had never been heard in her own defence; she was
+innocent of the charge on which she had been found guilty; and the
+irregularity of her conviction might seem to justify the use of
+methods as irregular in recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset,
+to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood;
+why should she hesitate to make private use of the facts that
+chance had put in her way? After all, half the opprobrium of such
+an act lies in the name attached to it. Call it blackmail and it
+becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no one, and that
+the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he must be a
+formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.
+
+The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable
+ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense
+of failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the
+selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that
+she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her
+life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the
+world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded. She could not
+hold herself much to blame for this ineffectiveness, and she was
+perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited tendencies had
+combined with early training to make her the highly specialized
+product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as
+the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn
+and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and
+paint the humming-bird’s breast? And was it her fault that the
+purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
+among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt
+to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral
+scruples?
+
+These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their
+battle in her breast during the long watches of the night; and
+when she rose the next morning she hardly knew where the victory
+lay. She was exhausted by the reaction of a night without sleep,
+coming after many nights of rest artificially obtained; and in the
+distorting light of fatigue the future stretched out before her
+grey, interminable and desolate.
+
+She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
+friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the
+intimate domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings
+of the street. Her week of idleness had brought home to her with
+exaggerated force these small aggravations of the boarding-house
+world, and she yearned for that other luxurious world, whose
+machinery is so carefully concealed that one scene flows into
+another without perceptible agency.
+
+At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina’s
+she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the
+uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the
+hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of
+the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had avoided
+Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner’s, and she was not sure
+of a welcome anywhere else.
+
+The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey
+sky threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals
+up and down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the
+Park, hoping to find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the
+wind chilled her, and after an hour’s wandering under the tossing
+boughs she yielded to her increasing weariness, and took refuge in
+a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and
+had meant to go without luncheon; but she was too tired to return
+home, and the long perspective of white tables showed alluringly
+through the windows.
+
+The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the
+rapid absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum
+of shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving
+Lily shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden
+pang of profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and
+it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for
+days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive
+glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the sallow
+preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
+music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who
+sat by themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring
+magazines between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was
+stranded in a great waste of disoccupation.
+
+She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion
+of stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when
+she emerged once more into the street. She realized now that, as
+she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a
+final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate illusion of
+activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had actually a
+reason for hurrying home. To prolong her enjoyment of the sensation
+she decided to walk; but the distance was so great that she found
+herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the way. One of the
+surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when
+it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot
+be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but
+just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
+break into a wild irrational gallop.
+
+She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
+enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting
+her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her
+resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved
+force of resolution which she felt within herself: she saw it was
+going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had imagined.
+
+At five o’clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a
+sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even
+the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had
+half-expected it would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of
+indifference, as though the vigorous exertion of her will had
+finally benumbed her finer sensibilities.
+
+She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and
+went out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still
+high, but a threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook
+the signs projecting from the basement shops along the street. She
+reached Fifth Avenue and began to walk slowly northward. She was
+sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Dorset’s habits to know that she
+could always be found at home after five. She might not, indeed, be
+accessible to visitors, especially to a visitor so unwelcome, and
+against whom it was quite possible that she had guarded herself by
+special orders; but Lily had written a note which she meant to send
+up with her name, and which she thought would secure her admission.
+
+She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset’s, thinking
+that the quick movement through the cold evening air would help
+to steady her nerves; but she really felt no need of being
+tranquillized. Her survey of the situation remained calm and
+unwavering.
+
+As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and
+a rush of cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella
+and the moisture quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She
+was still half a mile from her destination, and she decided to
+walk across to Madison Avenue and take the electric car. As she
+turned into the side street, a vague memory stirred in her. The
+row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
+the Georgian flat-house with flower-boxes on its balconies, were
+merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was
+down this street that she had walked with Selden, that September
+day two years ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had
+entered together. The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed
+sensations—longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of
+the only spring her heart had ever known. It was strange to find
+herself passing his house on such an errand. She seemed suddenly
+to see her action as he would see it—and the fact of his own
+connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she must
+trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
+blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day
+of their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in
+the path she was now following—even then she had resisted the hand
+he had held out.
+
+All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
+overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to
+help her—to help her by loving her, as he had said—and if, the
+third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she
+accuse?... Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know
+why her thoughts still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see
+him remained; it grew to hunger as she paused on the pavement
+opposite his door. The street was dark and empty, swept by the
+rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of the bookshelves,
+and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a light in his
+window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+
+The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps
+made tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire
+flickered on the hearth, and Selden’s easy-chair, which stood near
+it, had been pushed aside when he rose to admit her.
+
+He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent,
+waiting for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the
+threshold, assailed by a rush of memories.
+
+The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from
+which he had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the
+chair he had leaned against while she examined the precious volume.
+But then the wide September light had filled the room, making it
+seem a part of the outer world: now the shaded lamps and the warm
+hearth, detaching it from the gathering darkness of the street,
+gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.
+
+Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden’s silence,
+Lily turned to him and said simply: “I came to tell you that I was
+sorry for the way we parted—for what I said to you that day at Mrs.
+Hatch’s.”
+
+The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up
+the stairs, she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her
+visit, but she now felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of
+misunderstanding that hung between them.
+
+Selden returned her look with a smile. “I was sorry too that we
+should have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn’t bring it
+on myself. Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking——”
+
+“So that you really didn’t care——?” broke from her with a flash of
+her old irony.
+
+“So that I was prepared for the consequences,” he corrected
+good-humouredly. “But we’ll talk of all this later. Do come and sit
+by the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you’ll let me put a
+cushion behind you.”
+
+While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and
+paused near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward,
+cast exaggerated shadows on the pallor of her delicately-hollowed
+face.
+
+“You look tired—do sit down,” he repeated gently.
+
+She did not seem to hear the request. “I wanted you to know that I
+left Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you,” she said, as though
+continuing her confession.
+
+“Yes—yes; I know,” he assented, with a rising tinge of
+embarrassment.
+
+“And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had
+already begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with
+her—for the reasons you gave me; but I wouldn’t admit it—I wouldn’t
+let you see that I understood what you meant.”
+
+“Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out—don’t
+overwhelm me with the sense of my officiousness!”
+
+His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would
+have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment,
+jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange
+state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already
+at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one
+should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts
+of word-play and evasion.
+
+“It was not that—I was not ungrateful,” she insisted. But the power
+of expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat,
+and two tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.
+
+Selden moved forward and took her hand. “You are very tired. Why
+won’t you sit down and let me make you comfortable?”
+
+He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion
+behind her shoulders.
+
+“And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have
+that amount of hospitality at my command.”
+
+She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not
+weep easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself,
+though she was still too tremulous to speak.
+
+“You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes,” Selden
+continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.
+
+His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they
+had sat together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her
+future. There were moments when that day seemed more remote than
+any other event in her life; and yet she could always relive it in
+its minutest detail.
+
+She made a gesture of refusal. “No: I drink too much tea. I would
+rather sit quiet—I must go in a moment,” she added confusedly.
+
+Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the
+mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more
+distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her
+self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but
+now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager
+feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment
+to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate outrush
+of feeling; and on Selden’s side the determining impulse was still
+lacking.
+
+The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done.
+She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in
+which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to
+the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only
+ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with
+redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden’s
+inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the mere
+longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she had
+carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.
+
+“I must go,” she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair.
+“But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to
+tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me at
+Bellomont, and that sometimes—sometimes when I seemed farthest from
+remembering them—they have helped me, and kept me from mistakes;
+kept me from really becoming what many people have thought me.”
+
+Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words
+would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave
+him without trying to make him understand that she had saved
+herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life.
+
+A change had come over Selden’s face as she spoke. Its guarded look
+had yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion,
+but full of a gentle understanding.
+
+“I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has
+really made the difference. The difference is in yourself—it will
+always be there. And since it IS there, it can’t really matter
+to you what people think: you are so sure that your friends will
+always understand you.”
+
+“Ah, don’t say that—don’t say that what you have told me has made
+no difference. It seems to shut me out—to leave me all alone
+with the other people.” She had risen and stood before him, once
+more completely mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The
+consciousness of his half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether
+he wished it or not, he must see her wholly for once before they
+parted.
+
+Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the
+eyes as she continued. “Once—twice—you gave me the chance to escape
+from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward.
+Afterward I saw my mistake—I saw I could never be happy with what
+had contented me before. But it was too late: you had judged me—I
+understood. It was too late for happiness—but not too late to be
+helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I have
+lived on—don’t take it from me now! Even in my worst moments it has
+been like a little light in the darkness. Some women are strong
+enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the help of your
+belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but
+the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I remembered—I
+remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy me;
+and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what
+you did for me—that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to
+tell you that I have always remembered; and that I have tried—tried
+hard....”
+
+She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing
+out her handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds
+of her dress. A wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on
+her lips. Then she lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered
+voice.
+
+“I have tried hard—but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
+person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I
+was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and
+when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
+What can one do when one finds that one only fits into one hole?
+One must get back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap—and
+you don’t know what it’s like in the rubbish heap!”
+
+Her lips wavered into a smile—she had been distracted by the
+whimsical remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two
+years earlier, in that very room. Then she had been planning to
+marry Percy Gryce—what was it she was planning now?
+
+The blood had risen strongly under Selden’s dark skin, but his
+emotion showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.
+
+“You have something to tell me—do you mean to marry?” he said
+abruptly.
+
+Lily’s eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
+self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In
+the light of his question, she had paused to ask herself if her
+decision had really been taken when she entered the room.
+
+“You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!”
+she said with a faint smile.
+
+“And you have come to it now?”
+
+“I shall have to come to it—presently. But there is something else
+I must come to first.” She paused again, trying to transmit to her
+voice the steadiness of her recovered smile. “There is some one
+I must say goodbye to. Oh, not YOU—we are sure to see each other
+again—but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this
+time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back
+to you—I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she
+will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with
+you—and she’ll be no trouble, she’ll take up no room.”
+
+She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. “Will you
+let her stay with you?” she asked.
+
+He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling
+that had not yet risen to his lips. “Lily—can’t I help you?” he
+exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him gently. “Do you remember what you said to me
+once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well—you did love
+me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the
+moment is gone—it was I who let it go. And one must go on living.
+Goodbye.”
+
+She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with
+a kind of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death.
+Something in truth lay dead between them—the love she had killed in
+him and could no longer call to life. But something lived between
+them also, and leaped up in her like an imperishable flame: it was
+the love his love had kindled, the passion of her soul for his.
+
+In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
+understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self
+with him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it
+must still continue to be hers.
+
+Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with
+a strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation
+had vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as
+one of those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as
+they pass.
+
+“Lily,” he said in a low voice, “you mustn’t speak in this way. I
+can’t let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may
+change—but they don’t pass. You can never go out of my life.”
+
+She met his eyes with an illumined look. “No,” she said. “I see
+that now. Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe,
+whatever happens.”
+
+“Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?”
+
+She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.
+
+“Nothing at present—except that I am very cold, and that before I
+go you must make up the fire for me.”
+
+She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.
+Puzzled by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered
+a handful of wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he
+did so, he noticed how thin her hands looked against the rising
+light of the flames. He saw too, under the loose lines of her
+dress, how the curves of her figure had shrunk to angularity; he
+remembered long afterward how the red play of the flame sharpened
+the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the blackness of
+the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes. She
+knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
+not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something
+from her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed
+the gesture at the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was
+still groping for the word to break the spell. She went up to him
+and laid her hands on his shoulders. “Goodbye,” she said, and as he
+bent over her she touched his forehead with her lips.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+
+The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was
+a momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on
+unconscious of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant
+ether which emanates from the high moments of life. But gradually
+it shrank away from her and she felt the dull pavement beneath
+her feet. The sense of weariness returned with accumulated force,
+and for a moment she felt that she could walk no farther. She had
+reached the corner of Forty-first Street and Fifth Avenue, and she
+remembered that in Bryant Park there were seats where she might
+rest.
+
+That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she
+entered it, and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of
+an electric street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of
+her veins, and she told herself that she must not sit long in the
+penetrating dampness which struck up from the wet asphalt. But her
+will-power seemed to have spent itself in a last great effort, and
+she was lost in the blank reaction which follows on an unwonted
+expenditure of energy. And besides, what was there to go home to?
+Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room—that silence of the
+night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the most
+discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral by her bed.
+The thought of the chloral was the only spot of light in the dark
+prospect: she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her
+already. But she was troubled by the thought that it was losing
+its power—she dared not go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep
+it had brought her had been more broken and less profound; there
+had been nights when she was perpetually floating up through it
+to consciousness. What if the effect of the drug should gradually
+fail, as all narcotics were said to fail? She remembered the
+chemist’s warning against increasing the dose; and she had heard
+before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug. Her
+dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she
+lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the
+waning power of the chloral.
+
+Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second
+Street was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the
+lingering occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and
+then a stray figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path
+where Lily sat, looming black for a moment in the white circle of
+electric light. One or two of these passers-by slackened their
+pace to glance curiously at her lonely figure; but she was hardly
+conscious of their scrutiny.
+
+Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows
+remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming
+asphalt; and raising her eyes she saw a young woman bending over
+her.
+
+“Excuse me—are you sick?—Why, it’s Miss Bart!” a half-familiar
+voice exclaimed.
+
+Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman
+with a bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome
+refinement which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its
+common prettiness was redeemed by the strong and generous curve of
+the lips.
+
+“You don’t remember me,” she continued, brightening with the
+pleasure of recognition, “but I’d know you anywhere, I’ve thought
+of you such a lot. I guess my folks all know your name by heart.
+I was one of the girls at Miss Farish’s club—you helped me to go
+to the country that time I had lung-trouble. My name’s Nettie
+Struther. It was Nettie Crane then—but I daresay you don’t remember
+that either.”
+
+Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane’s
+timely rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying
+incidents of her connection with Gerty’s charitable work. She had
+furnished the girl with the means to go to a sanatorium in the
+mountains: it struck her now with a peculiar irony that the money
+she had used had been Gus Trenor’s.
+
+She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not
+forgotten; but her voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself
+sinking under a great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther,
+with a startled exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad
+arm behind her back.
+
+“Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you
+feel better.”
+
+A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from
+the pressure of the supporting arm.
+
+“I’m only tired—it is nothing,” she found voice to say in a moment;
+and then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion’s eyes, she
+added involuntarily: “I have been unhappy—in great trouble.”
+
+“YOU in trouble? I’ve always thought of you as being so high up,
+where everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean,
+and got to wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world,
+I used to remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and
+that seemed to show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But
+you mustn’t sit here too long—it’s fearfully damp. Don’t you feel
+strong enough to walk on a little ways now?” she broke off.
+
+“Yes—yes; I must go home,” Lily murmured, rising.
+
+Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side.
+She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of
+over-work and anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments
+of life destined to be swept prematurely into that social
+refuse-heap of which Lily had so lately expressed her dread. But
+Nettie Struther’s frail envelope was now alive with hope and
+energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her, she would not be
+cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.
+
+“I am very glad to have seen you,” Lily continued, summoning a
+smile to her unsteady lips. “It’ll be my turn to think of you as
+happy—and the world will seem a less unjust place to me too.”
+
+“Oh, but I can’t leave you like this—you’re not fit to go home
+alone. And I can’t go with you either!” Nettie Struther wailed
+with a start of recollection. “You see, it’s my husband’s
+night-shift—he’s a motor-man—and the friend I leave the baby with
+has to step upstairs to get HER husband’s supper at seven. I didn’t
+tell you I had a baby, did I? She’ll be four months old day after
+tomorrow, and to look at her you wouldn’t think I’d ever had a sick
+day. I’d give anything to show you the baby, Miss Bart, and we live
+right down the street here—it’s only three blocks off.” She lifted
+her eyes tentatively to Lily’s face, and then added with a burst
+of courage: “Why won’t you get right into the cars and come home
+with me while I get baby’s supper? It’s real warm in our kitchen,
+and you can rest there, and I’ll take YOU home as soon as ever she
+drops off to sleep.”
+
+It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther’s match had
+made a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself
+to Lily as extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A
+fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near
+it stood a crib in which a baby was sitting upright, with incipient
+anxiety struggling for expression on a countenance still placid
+with sleep.
+
+Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and
+excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return,
+Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to
+the rocking-chair near the stove.
+
+“We’ve got a parlour too,” she explained with pardonable pride;
+“but I guess it’s warmer in here, and I don’t want to leave you
+alone while I’m getting baby’s supper.”
+
+On receiving Lily’s assurance that she much preferred the friendly
+proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a
+bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby’s
+impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she
+seated herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.
+
+“You’re sure you won’t let me warm up a drop of coffee for you,
+Miss Bart? There’s some of baby’s fresh milk left over—well,
+maybe you’d rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It’s
+too lovely having you here. I’ve thought of it so often that I
+can’t believe it’s really come true. I’ve said to George again
+and again: ‘I just wish Miss Bart could see me NOW—’ and I used
+to watch for your name in the papers, and we’d talk over what you
+were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I
+haven’t seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be
+afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I’d get
+sick myself, fretting about it.” Her lips broke into a reminiscent
+smile. “Well, I can’t afford to be sick again, that’s a fact: the
+last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I
+never thought I’d come back alive, and I didn’t much care if I did.
+You see I didn’t know about George and the baby then.”
+
+She paused to readjust the bottle to the child’s bubbling mouth.
+
+“You precious—don’t you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with
+mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto’nette—that’s what
+we call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden—I
+told George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy
+the name.... I never thought I’d get married, you know, and I’d
+never have had the heart to go on working just for myself.”
+
+She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily’s eyes,
+went on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: “You see I
+wasn’t only just SICK that time you sent me off—I was dreadfully
+unhappy too. I’d known a gentleman where I was employed—I don’t
+know as you remember I did type-writing in a big importing
+firm—and—well—I thought we were to be married: he’d gone steady
+with me six months and given me his mother’s wedding ring. But I
+presume he was too stylish for me—he travelled for the firm, and
+had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren’t looked after
+the way you are, and they don’t always know how to look after
+themselves. I didn’t . . . and it pretty near killed me when he
+went away and left off writing....
+
+“It was then I came down sick—I thought it was the end of
+everything. I guess it would have been if you hadn’t sent me off.
+But when I found I was getting well I began to take heart in spite
+of myself. And then, when I got back home, George came round and
+asked me to marry him. At first I thought I couldn’t, because we’d
+been brought up together, and I knew he knew about me. But after a
+while I began to see that that made it easier. I never could have
+told another man, and I’d never have married without telling; but
+if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I didn’t see why
+I shouldn’t begin over again—and I did.”
+
+The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted
+her irradiated face from the child on her knees. “But, mercy, I
+didn’t mean to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there
+looking so fagged out. Only it’s so lovely having you here, and
+letting you see just how you’ve helped me.” The baby had sunk back
+blissfully replete, and Mrs. Struther softly rose to lay the bottle
+aside. Then she paused before Miss Bart.
+
+“I only wish I could help YOU—but I suppose there’s nothing on
+earth I could do,” she murmured wistfully.
+
+Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her
+arms; and the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in
+them.
+
+The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage,
+made an instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing
+influences of digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight
+sink trustfully against her breast. The child’s confidence in its
+safety thrilled her with a sense of warmth and returning life, and
+she bent over, wondering at the rosy blur of the little face, the
+empty clearness of the eyes, the vague tendrilly motions of the
+folding and unfolding fingers. At first the burden in her arms
+seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down, but as she
+continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper, and
+penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though the
+child entered into her and became a part of herself.
+
+She looked up, and saw Nettie’s eyes resting on her with tenderness
+and exultation.
+
+“Wouldn’t it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to be
+just like you? Of course I know she never COULD—but mothers are
+always dreaming the craziest things for their children.”
+
+Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in her
+mother’s arms.
+
+“Oh, she must not do that—I should be afraid to come and see
+her too often!” she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs.
+Struther’s anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the
+promise that of course she would come back soon, and make George’s
+acquaintance, and see the baby in her bath, she passed out of the
+kitchen and went alone down the tenement stairs.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger
+and happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the
+first time she had ever come across the results of her spasmodic
+benevolence, and the surprised sense of human fellowship took the
+mortal chill from her heart.
+
+It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction
+of a deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o’clock, and the
+light and odours proceeding from the basement made it manifest that
+the boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room,
+lit the gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself
+any longer, to go without food because her surroundings made it
+unpalatable. Since it was her fate to live in a boarding-house, she
+must learn to fall in with the conditions of the life. Nevertheless
+she was glad that, when she descended to the heat and glare of the
+dining-room, the repast was nearly over.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of
+activity. For weeks past she had been too listless and indifferent
+to set her possessions in order, but now she began to examine
+systematically the contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a
+few handsome dresses left—survivals of her last phase of splendour,
+on the Sabrina and in London—but when she had been obliged to
+part with her maid she had given the woman a generous share of
+her cast-off apparel. The remaining dresses, though they had lost
+their freshness, still kept the long unerring lines, the sweep
+and amplitude of the great artist’s stroke, and as she spread
+them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn rose
+vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
+of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record
+of her past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her
+old life enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had
+been made for: every dawning tendency in her had been carefully
+directed toward it, all her interests and activities had been
+taught to centre around it. She was like some rare flower grown for
+exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except
+the crowning blossom of her beauty.
+
+Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap
+of white drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was
+the Reynolds dress she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been
+impossible for her to give it away, but she had never seen it since
+that night, and the long flexible folds, as she shook them out,
+gave forth an odour of violets which came to her like a breath
+from the flower-edged fountain where she had stood with Lawrence
+Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the dresses one by one,
+laying away with each some gleam of light, some note of laughter,
+some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was still in
+a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of the
+past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.
+
+She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds
+dress when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the
+Irish maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the
+light, Lily read with surprise the address stamped on the upper
+corner of the envelope. It was a business communication from the
+office of her aunt’s executors, and she wondered what unexpected
+development had caused them to break silence before the appointed
+time. She opened the envelope and a cheque fluttered to the floor.
+As she stooped to pick it up the blood rushed to her face. The
+cheque represented the full amount of Mrs. Peniston’s legacy, and
+the letter accompanying it explained that the executors, having
+adjusted the business of the estate with less delay than they had
+expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the payment
+of the bequests.
+
+Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading
+out the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written
+across it in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount
+it stood for had represented the depths of penury; but her standard
+of values had changed in the interval, and now visions of wealth
+lurked in every flourish of the pen. As she continued to gaze at
+it, she felt the glitter of the visions mounting to her brain,
+and after a while she lifted the lid of the desk and slipped the
+magic formula out of sight. It was easier to think without those
+five figures dancing before her eyes; and she had a great deal of
+thinking to do before she slept.
+
+She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious
+calculations as had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night
+when she had decided to marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies
+book-keeping, and her financial situation was easier to ascertain
+than it had been then; but she had not yet learned the control of
+money, and during her transient phase of luxury at the Emporium she
+had slipped back into habits of extravagance which still impaired
+her slender balance. A careful examination of her cheque-book, and
+of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that, when the latter had
+been settled, she would have barely enough to live on for the next
+three or four months; and even after that, if she were to continue
+her present way of living, without earning any additional money,
+all incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point.
+She hid her eyes with a shudder, beholding herself at the entrance
+of that ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss
+Silverton’s dowdy figure take its despondent way.
+
+It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that
+she turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper
+empoverishment—of an inner destitution compared to which outward
+conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to
+be poor—to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading
+by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption
+in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there
+was something more miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at
+her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth
+down the heedless current of the years. That was the feeling which
+possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and
+ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence,
+without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could
+cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked
+back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any
+real relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown
+hither and thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal
+existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had
+grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer to her than
+another: there was no centre of early pieties, of grave endearing
+traditions, to which her heart could revert and from which it could
+draw strength for itself and tenderness for others. In whatever
+form a slowly-accumulated past lives in the blood—whether in the
+concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories, or
+in the conception of the house not built with hands, but made
+up of inherited passions and loyalties—it has the same power of
+broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching
+it by mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human
+striving.
+
+Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to
+Lily. She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
+mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
+influences of the life about her. All the men and women she
+knew were like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild
+centrifugal dance: her first glimpse of the continuity of life had
+come to her that evening in Nettie Struther’s kitchen.
+
+The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up
+the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them,
+seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It
+was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant
+margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the
+frail audacious permanence of a bird’s nest built on the edge of a
+cliff—a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the
+lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.
+
+Yes—but it had taken two to build the nest; the man’s faith as well
+as the woman’s courage. Lily remembered Nettie’s words: I KNEW HE
+KNEW ABOUT ME. Her husband’s faith in her had made her renewal
+possible—it is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves
+believes her to be! Well—Selden had twice been ready to stake his
+faith on Lily Bart; but the third trial had been too severe for
+his endurance. The very quality of his love had made it the more
+impossible to recall to life. If it had been a simple instinct of
+the blood, the power of her beauty might have revived it. But the
+fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably wound up with
+inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as impossible to
+restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed. Selden
+had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of an
+uncritical return to former states of feeling.
+
+There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory
+of his faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman
+can live on her memories. As she held Nettie Struther’s child in
+her arms the frozen currents of youth had loosed themselves and
+run warm in her veins: the old life-hunger possessed her, and all
+her being clamoured for its share of personal happiness. Yes—it
+was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of
+it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached
+herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw that nothing now
+remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.
+
+It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed
+her. It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful
+fatigue, a wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities
+of the future were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled
+by the intense cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken
+through the merciful veil which intervenes between intention and
+action, and to see exactly what she would do in all the long
+days to come. There was the cheque in her desk, for instance—she
+meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor; but she foresaw
+that when the morning came she would put off doing so, would slip
+into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified her—she
+dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
+Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing?
+She knew the strength of the opposing impulses—she could feel
+the countless hands of habit dragging her back into some fresh
+compromise with fate. She felt an intense longing to prolong,
+to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of her spirit. If only
+life could end now—end on this tragic yet sweet vision of lost
+possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all the
+loving and foregoing in the world!
+
+She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her
+writing-desk, enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to
+her bank. She then wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it,
+without an accompanying word, in an envelope inscribed with his
+name, laid the two letters side by side on her desk. After that
+she continued to sit at the table, sorting her papers and writing,
+till the intense silence of the house reminded her of the lateness
+of the hour. In the street the noise of wheels had ceased, and
+the rumble of the “elevated” came only at long intervals through
+the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal separation
+from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more strangely
+confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel,
+and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands
+against her eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to
+symbolize her future—she felt as though the house, the street, the
+world were all empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless
+universe.
+
+But this was the verge of delirium . . . she had never hung so
+near the dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted—she
+remembered that she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The
+little bottle was at her bed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon
+her. She rose and undressed hastily, hungering now for the touch of
+her pillow. She felt so profoundly tired that she thought she must
+fall asleep at once; but as soon as she had lain down every nerve
+started once more into separate wakefulness. It was as though a
+great blaze of electric light had been turned on in her head, and
+her poor little anguished self shrank and cowered in it, without
+knowing where to take refuge.
+
+She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness
+was possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred
+different points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could
+still this legion of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion
+would have been sweet compared to this shrill beat of activities;
+but weariness had dropped from her as though some cruel stimulant
+had been forced into her veins.
+
+She could bear it—yes, she could bear it; but what strength would
+be left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared—the next day
+pressed close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to
+follow—they swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut
+them out for a few hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion.
+She put out her hand, and measured the soothing drops into a glass;
+but as she did so, she knew they would be powerless against the
+supernatural lucidity of her brain. She had long since raised the
+dose to its highest limit, but tonight she felt she must increase
+it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing so—she remembered
+the chemist’s warning. If sleep came at all, it might be a sleep
+without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a hundred:
+the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a few
+drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure
+for her the rest she so desperately needed....
+
+She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely—the
+physical craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her
+mind shrank from the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes
+contract in a blaze of light—darkness, darkness was what she must
+have at any cost. She raised herself in bed and swallowed the
+contents of the glass; then she blew out her candle and lay down.
+
+She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first
+effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would
+take—the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach
+of passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over
+her in the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect
+increased its fascination: it was delicious to lean over and look
+down into the dim abysses of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug
+seemed to work more slowly than usual: each passionate pulse had to
+be stilled in turn, and it was long before she felt them dropping
+into abeyance, like sentinels falling asleep at their posts. But
+gradually the sense of complete subjugation came over her, and she
+wondered languidly what had made her feel so uneasy and excited.
+She saw now that there was nothing to be excited about—she had
+returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be so
+difficult after all: she felt sure that she would have the strength
+to meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had
+been afraid to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her.
+She had been unhappy, and now she was happy—she had felt herself
+alone, and now the sense of loneliness had vanished.
+
+She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she
+suddenly understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was
+odd—but Nettie Struther’s child was lying on her arm: she felt
+the pressure of its little head against her shoulder. She did not
+know how it had come there, but she felt no great surprise at the
+fact, only a gentle penetrating thrill of warmth and pleasure.
+She settled herself into an easier position, hollowing her arm to
+pillow the round downy head, and holding her breath lest a sound
+should disturb the sleeping child.
+
+As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she
+must tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life
+clear between them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered
+vague and luminous on the far edge of thought—she was afraid of not
+remembering it when she woke; and if she could only remember it and
+say it to him, she felt that everything would be well.
+
+Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold
+her. She struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought
+to keep awake on account of the baby; but even this feeling was
+gradually lost in an indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through
+which, of a sudden, a dark flash of loneliness and terror tore its
+way.
+
+She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a
+moment she seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no—she
+was mistaken—the tender pressure of its body was still close to
+hers: the recovered warmth flowed through her once more, she
+yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+
+The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer
+in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily’s street,
+mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings
+of the doorstep, and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her
+darkened window.
+
+When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication
+in its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the
+squalor of its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a
+youthful sense of adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar
+shores of habit, and launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion;
+all the old tests and measures were left behind, and his course was
+to be shaped by new stars.
+
+That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart’s
+boarding-house; but its shabby doorstep had suddenly become the
+threshold of the untried. As he approached he looked up at the
+triple row of windows, wondering boyishly which one of them
+was hers. It was nine o’clock, and the house, being tenanted
+by workers, already showed an awakened front to the street. He
+remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind was down.
+He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the window
+sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
+inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty
+in the dingy scene.
+
+Nine o’clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed
+beyond all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must
+see Lily Bart at once—he had found the word he meant to say to her,
+and it could not wait another moment to be said. It was strange
+that it had not come to his lips sooner—that he had let her pass
+from him the evening before without being able to speak it. But
+what did that matter, now that a new day had come? It was not a
+word for twilight, but for the morning.
+
+Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in
+his state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him
+that the door should open so promptly. It was still more of a
+surprise to see, as he entered, that it had been opened by Gerty
+Farish—and that behind her, in an agitated blur, several other
+figures ominously loomed.
+
+“Lawrence!” Gerty cried in a strange voice, “how could you get
+here so quickly?”—and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed
+instantly to close about his heart.
+
+He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture—he saw
+the landlady’s imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but
+he shrank back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically
+mounted the steep black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately
+aware that his cousin was about to lead him.
+
+A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
+minute—and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one
+else exclaimed: “It was the greatest mercy—” then Selden felt that
+Gerty had taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be
+suffered to go up alone.
+
+In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the
+passage to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went
+in after her. Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight
+poured a tempered golden flood into the room, and in its light
+Selden saw a narrow bed along the wall, and on the bed, with
+motionless hands and calm unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily
+Bart.
+
+That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied. Her
+real self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier—what
+had he to do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the
+first time, neither paled nor brightened at his coming?
+
+Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of
+one who has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking
+gently, as if transmitting a final message.
+
+“The doctor found a bottle of chloral—she had been sleeping badly
+for a long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake....
+There is no doubt of that—no doubt—there will be no question—he has
+been very kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left
+alone with her—to go over her things before any one else comes. I
+know it is what she would have wished.”
+
+Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down
+on the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable
+mask over the living lineaments he had known. He felt that the real
+Lily was still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible;
+and the tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense
+of helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable
+barrier between them—and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart!
+And now, though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had
+suddenly hardened to adamant, and he might beat his life out
+against it in vain.
+
+He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
+aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by
+the extraordinary light in his cousin’s face.
+
+“You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that
+there shall be no trouble—but of course the formalities must be
+gone through. And I asked him to give us time to look through her
+things first——”
+
+He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. “It won’t
+take long,” she concluded.
+
+“No—it won’t take long,” he agreed.
+
+She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last
+look at the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold
+she paused to add: “You will find me downstairs if you want me.”
+
+Selden roused himself to detain her. “But why are you going? She
+would have wished——”
+
+Gerty shook her head with a smile. “No: this is what she would have
+wished——” and as she spoke a light broke through Selden’s stony
+misery, and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.
+
+The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless
+sleeper on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall
+on his knees, and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful
+cheek on the pillow. They had never been at peace together, they
+two; and now he felt himself drawn downward into the strange
+mysterious depths of her tranquillity.
+
+But he remembered Gerty’s warning words—he knew that, though time
+had ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly
+toward the door. Gerty had given him this supreme half hour, and he
+must use it as she willed.
+
+He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to
+regain his consciousness of outward things. There was very little
+furniture in the room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread
+with a lace cover, and set out with a few gold-topped boxes and
+bottles, a rose-coloured pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with
+tortoise-shell hair-pins—he shrank from the poignant intimacy of
+these trifles, and from the blank surface of the toilet-mirror
+above them.
+
+These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the
+minute observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her
+other renunciations must have cost. There was no other token
+of her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in
+the scrupulous neatness of the scant articles of furniture: a
+washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little
+table near the bed. On this table stood the empty bottle and glass,
+and from these also he averted his eyes.
+
+The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which
+he took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped
+and sealed, Selden, after a moment’s hesitation, laid it aside. On
+the other letter he read Gus Trenor’s name; and the flap of the
+envelope was still ungummed.
+
+Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered
+under it, steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been
+writing to Trenor—writing, presumably, just after their parting
+of the previous evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of
+that last hour, made a mock of the word he had come to speak, and
+defiled even the reconciling silence upon which it fell. He felt
+himself flung back on all the ugly uncertainties from which he
+thought he had cast loose forever. After all, what did he know of
+her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him, and measured
+by the world’s estimate, how little that was! By what right—the
+letter in his hand seemed to ask—by what right was it he who now
+passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
+unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last
+hour together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in
+his hand. Yes—but what if the letter to Trenor had been written
+afterward?
+
+He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips,
+addressed himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After
+all, that task would be easier to perform, now that his personal
+stake in it was annulled.
+
+He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book
+and a few packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly
+precision which characterized all her personal habits. He looked
+through the letters first, because it was the most difficult part
+of the work. They proved to be few and unimportant, but among them
+he found, with a strange commotion of the heart, the note he had
+written her the day after the Brys’ entertainment.
+
+“When may I come to you?”—his words overwhelmed him with a
+realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the
+very moment of attainment. Yes—he had always feared his fate, and
+he was too honest to disown his cowardice now; for had not all his
+old doubts started to life again at the mere sight of Trenor’s name?
+
+He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
+something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
+growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
+examination of the papers.
+
+To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there
+was not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book,
+and saw that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand
+dollars from Mrs. Peniston’s executors had been entered in it.
+The legacy, then, had been paid sooner than Gerty had led him
+to expect. But, turning another page or two, he discovered with
+astonishment that, in spite of this recent accession of funds, the
+balance had already declined to a few dollars. A rapid glance at
+the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date of the
+previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
+the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the
+remaining thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at
+the same time, to Charles Augustus Trenor.
+
+Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the
+desk. He leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands.
+The bitter waters of life surged high about him, their sterile
+taste was on his lips. Did the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery
+or deepen it? At first his mind refused to act—he felt only the
+taint of such a transaction between a man like Trenor and a girl
+like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled vision cleared,
+old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the very
+insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
+of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from
+Trenor; but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared,
+that the obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the
+first opportunity she had freed herself from it, though the act
+left her face to face with bare unmitigated poverty.
+
+That was all he knew—all he could hope to unravel of the story.
+The mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this—unless
+indeed they had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon
+his forehead. Yes, he could now read into that farewell all that
+his heart craved to find there; he could even draw from it courage
+not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the height of his
+opportunity.
+
+He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them
+apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which
+swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it
+more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. But at least
+he HAD loved her—had been willing to stake his future on his faith
+in her—and if the moment had been fated to pass from them before
+they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved
+whole out of the ruin of their lives.
+
+It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves,
+which had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had
+reached out to him in every struggle against the influence of her
+surroundings, and in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew
+him penitent and reconciled to her side.
+
+He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment
+to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word
+which made all clear.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+=Transcriber’s Note=:
+
+
+ 1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do
+ n’t becomes don’t, etc.
+
+ 2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and
+ colour.
+
+ 3. I found and corrected one instance of the name “Gertie,” which I
+ changed to “Gerty” to be consistent with rest of the book.
+
+ Linda Ruoff
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The house of Mirth, by Edith Wharton</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The house of Mirth</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Edith Wharton</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 1, 1995 [eBook #284]<br />
+[Most recently updated: January 1, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF MIRTH ***</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="figcenter illowp70" id="cover" style="max-width: 30em;">
+ <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover created by the transcriber" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter fs150"></div>
+<h1 class="p4">The House of Mirth<br />
+BY<br />
+EDITH WHARTON</h1>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter fs150"></div>
+<p class="center fs150 p4">BOOK ONE</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_1">Chapter 1</h2>
+
+<p>Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central
+Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.</p>
+
+<p>It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from
+a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at
+that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have
+inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and
+another of the country houses which disputed her presence after the close
+of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood
+apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the
+street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
+be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she
+was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him.
+There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
+a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
+always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of
+far-reaching intentions.</p>
+
+<p>An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door,
+and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she
+would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her
+skill to the test.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Selden—what good luck!”</p>
+
+<p>She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him.
+One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss
+Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his
+last train.</p>
+
+<p>Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against
+the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a
+ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish
+smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after
+eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really
+eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached
+the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?</p>
+
+<p>“What luck!” she repeated. “How nice of you to come to my rescue!”</p>
+
+<p>He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked
+what form the rescue was to take.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, almost any—even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One sits
+out a cotillion—why not sit out a train? It isn’t a bit hotter here than
+in Mrs. Van Osburgh’s conservatory—and some of the women are not a bit
+uglier.” She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to
+town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors’ at Bellomont, and had
+missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck. “And there isn’t another
+till half-past five.” She consulted the little jewelled watch among her
+laces. “Just two hours to wait. And I don’t know what to do with myself.
+My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on
+to Bellomont at one o’clock, and my aunt’s house is closed, and I don’t
+know a soul in town.” She glanced plaintively about the station. “It IS
+hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh’s, after all. If you can spare the time, do
+take me somewhere for a breath of air.”</p>
+
+<p>He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as
+diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his
+course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a
+moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.</p>
+
+<p>“Shall we go over to Sherry’s for a cup of tea?”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.</p>
+
+<p>“So many people come up to town on a Monday—one is sure to meet a lot of
+bores. I’m as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any
+difference; but if I’M old enough, you’re not,” she objected gaily. “I’m
+dying for tea—but isn’t there a quieter place?”</p>
+
+<p>He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
+interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that
+both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In judging Miss
+Bart, he had always made use of the “argument from design.”</p>
+
+<p>“The resources of New York are rather meagre,” he said; “but I’ll find a
+hansom first, and then we’ll invent something.” He led her through the
+throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in
+preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles
+and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race?
+The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him
+feel how highly specialized she was.</p>
+
+<p>A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung refreshingly
+over the moist street.</p>
+
+<p>“How delicious! Let us walk a little,” she said as they emerged from the
+station.</p>
+
+<p>They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As she
+moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was conscious of
+taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the modelling of her
+little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair—was it ever so slightly
+brightened by art?—and the thick planting of her straight black lashes.
+Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong
+and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to
+make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious
+way, have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
+distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as
+though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to
+vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture
+will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material
+was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?</p>
+
+<p>As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and her
+lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she paused
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear, I’m so hot and thirsty—and what a hideous place New York is!”
+She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare. “Other
+cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in
+its shirtsleeves.” Her eyes wandered down one of the side streets.
+“Someone has had the humanity to plant a few trees over there. Let us go
+into the shade.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad my street meets with your approval,” said Selden as they
+turned the corner.</p>
+
+<p>“Your street? Do you live here?”</p>
+
+<p>She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
+fantastically varied in obedience to the American craving for novelty,
+but fresh and inviting with their awnings and flower-boxes.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, yes—to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building! I
+don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.” She looked across at the
+flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade. “Which are
+your windows? Those with the awnings down?”</p>
+
+<p>“On the top floor—yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!”</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment. “Come up and see,” he suggested. “I can give you a
+cup of tea in no time—and you won’t meet any bores.”</p>
+
+<p>Her colour deepened—she still had the art of blushing at the right
+time—but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.</p>
+
+<p>“Why not? It’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk,” she declared.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I’m not dangerous,” he said in the same key. In truth, he had never
+liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without
+afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there
+was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.</p>
+
+<p>On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.</p>
+
+<p>“There’s no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the
+mornings, and it’s just possible he may have put out the tea-things and
+provided some cake.”</p>
+
+<p>He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed
+the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks;
+then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its
+walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he
+had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had
+sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent
+of mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.</p>
+
+<p>Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.</p>
+
+<p>“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a
+miserable thing it is to be a woman.” She leaned back in a luxury of
+discontent.</p>
+
+<p>Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.</p>
+
+<p>“Even women,” he said, “have been known to enjoy the privileges of a
+flat.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable,
+marriageable girls!”</p>
+
+<p>“I even know a girl who lives in a flat.”</p>
+
+<p>She sat up in surprise. “You do?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do,” he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for
+cake.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I know—you mean Gerty Farish.” She smiled a little unkindly. “But I
+said MARRIAGEABLE—and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no
+maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the
+food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“You shouldn’t dine with her on wash-days,” said Selden, cutting the cake.</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the
+kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green
+glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its
+slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he
+was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin
+Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the
+civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet
+seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to read his thought. “It was horrid of me to say that of
+Gerty,” she said with charming compunction. “I forgot she was your
+cousin. But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good, and I
+like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I
+daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure
+bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the
+horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt’s drawing-room I
+know I should be a better woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it so very bad?” he asked sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
+filled.</p>
+
+<p>“That shows how seldom you come there. Why don’t you come oftener?”</p>
+
+<p>“When I do come, it’s not to look at Mrs. Peniston’s furniture.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense,” she said. “You don’t come at all—and yet we get on so well
+when we meet.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps that’s the reason,” he answered promptly. “I’m afraid I haven’t
+any cream, you know—shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall like it better.” She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a
+thin disk into her cup. “But that is not the reason,” she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>“The reason for what?”</p>
+
+<p>“For your never coming.” She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in
+her charming eyes. “I wish I knew—I wish I could make you out. Of course
+I know there are men who don’t like me—one can tell that at a glance.
+And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry
+them.” She smiled up at him frankly. “But I don’t think you dislike
+me—and you can’t possibly think I want to marry you.”</p>
+
+<p>“No—I absolve you of that,” he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then——?”</p>
+
+<p>He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against the
+chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement.
+The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he had not supposed
+she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only
+keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation
+but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he
+had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then,” he said with a plunge, “perhaps THAT’S the reason.”</p>
+
+<p>“What?”</p>
+
+<p>“The fact that you don’t want to marry me. Perhaps I don’t regard it as
+such a strong inducement to go and see you.” He felt a slight shiver down
+his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured him.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn’t worthy of you. It’s stupid of you to make
+love to me, and it isn’t like you to be stupid.” She leaned back, sipping
+her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that, if they had been in
+her aunt’s drawing-room, he might almost have tried to disprove her
+deduction.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you see,” she continued, “that there are men enough to say
+pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won’t be
+afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have
+fancied you might be that friend—I don’t know why, except that you are
+neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn’t have to pretend with
+you or be on my guard against you.” Her voice had dropped to a note of
+seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know how much I need such a friend,” she said. “My aunt is
+full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in
+the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them would include
+wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other women—my best
+friends—well, they use me or abuse me; but they don’t care a straw what
+happens to me. I’ve been about too long—people are getting tired of me;
+they are beginning to say I ought to marry.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment’s pause, during which Selden meditated one or two
+replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he
+rejected them in favour of the simple question: “Well, why don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>She coloured and laughed. “Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all, and that
+is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for.”</p>
+
+<p>“It wasn’t meant to be disagreeable,” he returned amicably. “Isn’t
+marriage your vocation? Isn’t it what you’re all brought up for?”</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. “I suppose so. What else is there?”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?”</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders. “You speak as if I ought to marry the first
+man who came along.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there
+must be some one with the requisite qualifications.”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head wearily. “I threw away one or two good chances when I
+first came out—I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly
+poor—and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s become of Dillworth?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, his mother was frightened—she was afraid I should have all the
+family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t do over
+the drawing-room.”</p>
+
+<p>“The very thing you are marrying for!”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly. So she packed him off to India.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hard luck—but you can do better than Dillworth.”</p>
+
+<p>He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting
+one between her lips and slipping the others into a little gold case
+attached to her long pearl chain.</p>
+
+<p>“Have I time? Just a whiff, then.” She leaned forward, holding the tip of
+her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal
+enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids,
+and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallor of
+the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between
+the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints
+of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes lingered on them
+caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the
+pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost
+susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory
+enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.</p>
+
+<p>“You collect, don’t you—you know about first editions and things?”</p>
+
+<p>“As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up
+something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the big sales.”</p>
+
+<p>She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept
+them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.</p>
+
+<p>“And Americana—do you collect Americana?”</p>
+
+<p>Selden stared and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“No, that’s rather out of my line. I’m not really a collector, you see; I
+simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of.”</p>
+
+<p>She made a slight grimace. “And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should fancy so—except to the historian. But your real collector
+values a thing for its rarity. I don’t suppose the buyers of Americana
+sit up reading them all night—old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>She was listening with keen attention. “And yet they fetch fabulous
+prices, don’t they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly
+badly-printed book that one is never going to read! And I suppose most
+of the owners of Americana are not historians either?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use
+those in the public libraries or in private collections. It seems to be
+the mere rarity that attracts the average collector.”</p>
+
+<p>He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing,
+and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes,
+whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finest
+in the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a single
+volume.</p>
+
+<p>It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted now one
+book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her
+fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined against the warm
+background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder
+at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never
+be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing,
+and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
+the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her
+next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before him
+with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
+familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you ever mind,” she asked suddenly, “not being rich enough to buy
+all the books you want?”</p>
+
+<p>He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?”</p>
+
+<p>“And having to work—do you mind that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I’m rather fond of the law.”</p>
+
+<p>“No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to get
+away, to see new places and people?”</p>
+
+<p>“Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew a sympathetic breath. “But do you mind enough—to marry to get
+out of it?”</p>
+
+<p>Selden broke into a laugh. “God forbid!” he declared.</p>
+
+<p>She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.” She
+surveyed him critically. “Your coat’s a little shabby—but who cares? It
+doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one
+would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for
+herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they
+don’t make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman?
+We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we
+can’t keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with her
+lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her case.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for such an
+investment. Perhaps you’ll meet your fate tonight at the Trenors’.”</p>
+
+<p>She returned his look interrogatively.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you might be going there—oh, not in that capacity! But there
+are to be a lot of your set—Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls, Lady
+Cressida Raith—and the George Dorsets.”</p>
+
+<p>She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her
+lashes; but he remained imperturbable.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can’t get away till the end of the week; and
+those big parties bore me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, so they do me,” she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>“Then why go?”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s part of the business—you forget! And besides, if I didn’t, I
+should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s almost as bad as marrying Dillworth,” he agreed, and they both
+laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at the clock.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me! I must be off. It’s after five.”</p>
+
+<p>She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while
+she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her
+slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline—as
+though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the
+drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan
+freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
+threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit.”</p>
+
+<p>“But don’t you want me to see you to the station?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; good bye here, please.”</p>
+
+<p>She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.</p>
+
+<p>“Good bye, then—and good luck at Bellomont!” he said, opening the door
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
+chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and
+she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of
+prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a char-woman who was
+scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and its surrounding implements
+took up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts
+and brush against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work
+and looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth
+she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly
+pitted with small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her
+scalp shone unpleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon,” said Lily, intending by her politeness to convey a
+criticism of the other’s manner.</p>
+
+<p>The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued to
+stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings. Lily felt
+herself flushing under the look. What did the creature suppose? Could one
+never do the simplest, the most harmless thing, without subjecting one’s
+self to some odious conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled
+to think that a char-woman’s stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
+was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE such
+apparitions unwonted on Selden’s stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with
+the moral code of bachelors’ flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it
+occurred to her that the woman’s persistent gaze implied a groping among
+past associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
+fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
+Fifth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for a
+hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she ran
+against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat, who
+raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Bart? Well—of all people! This IS luck,” he declared; and she
+caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Mr. Rosedale—how are you?” she said, perceiving that the
+irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden intimacy
+of his smile.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He was a
+plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes
+fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the
+air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. He glanced up
+interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.</p>
+
+<p>“Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?” he said, in a tone
+which had the familiarity of a touch.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
+precipitate explanations.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch the
+train to the Trenors’.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah—your dress-maker; just so,” he said blandly. “I didn’t know there
+were any dress-makers in the Benedick.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Benedick?” She looked gently puzzled. “Is that the name of this
+building?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, that’s the name: I believe it’s an old word for bachelor, isn’t it?
+I happen to own the building—that’s the way I know.” His smile deepened
+as he added with increasing assurance: “But you must let me take you to
+the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of course? You’ve barely time
+to catch the five-forty. The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, thanks,” she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a hansom
+drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a desperate gesture.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re very kind; but I couldn’t think of troubling you,” she said,
+extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his protestations,
+she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out a breathless order
+to the driver.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_2">Chapter 2</h2>
+
+<p>In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so dearly
+for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing
+without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice? She had
+yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence Selden’s rooms, and it
+was so seldom that she could allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This
+one, at any rate, was going to cost her rather more than she could
+afford. She was vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of
+vigilance, she had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story
+about her dress-maker was bad enough—it would have been so simple to
+tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere
+statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having
+let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the
+witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to let
+Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have purchased
+his silence. He had his race’s accuracy in the appraisal of values, and
+to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the
+company of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as he
+might himself have phrased it. He knew, of course, that there would be a
+large house-party at Bellomont, and the possibility of being taken for
+one of Mrs. Trenor’s guests was doubtless included in his calculations.
+Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage in his social ascent when it was of
+importance to produce such impressions.</p>
+
+<p>The provoking part was that Lily knew all this—knew how easy it would
+have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it might be to do
+so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who made it his business to
+know everything about every one, whose idea of showing himself to be at
+home in society was to display an inconvenient familiarity with the
+habits of those with whom he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure
+that within twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker
+at the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale’s
+acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and
+ignored him. On his first appearance—when her improvident cousin, Jack
+Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too easily guessed)
+a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh “crushes”—Rosedale,
+with that mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which
+characterizes his race, had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She
+understood his motives, for her own course was guided by as nice
+calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be hospitable to
+newcomers, since the most unpromising might be useful later on, and there
+were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But
+some intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social
+discipline, had made her push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a
+trial. He had left behind only the ripple of amusement which his speedy
+despatch had caused among her friends; and though later (to shift the
+metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in fleeting
+glimpses, with long submergences between.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set Mr.
+Rosedale had been pronounced “impossible,” and Jack Stepney roundly
+snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner invitations. Even Mrs.
+Trenor, whose taste for variety had led her into some hazardous
+experiments, resisted Jack’s attempts to disguise Mr. Rosedale as a
+novelty, and declared that he was the same little Jew who had been served
+up and rejected at the social board a dozen times within her memory; and
+while Judy Trenor was obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale’s
+penetrating beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave
+up the contest with a laughing “You’ll see,” and, sticking manfully to
+his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable restaurants, in
+company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who are
+available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been vain, and
+as Rosedale undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh remained with his
+debtor.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
+feared—unless one put one’s self in his power. And this was precisely
+what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see that she had
+something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score to settle with her.
+Something in his smile told her he had not forgotten. She turned from the
+thought with a little shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the
+station, and dogged her down the platform with the persistency of Mr.
+Rosedale himself.</p>
+
+<p>She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but having
+arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive feeling for effect
+which never forsook her, she glanced about in the hope of seeing some
+other member of the Trenors’ party. She wanted to get away from herself,
+and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.</p>
+
+<p>Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man with a
+soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the carriage, appeared to be
+dissembling himself behind an unfolded newspaper. Lily’s eye brightened,
+and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines of her mouth. She had known
+that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at Bellomont, but she had not counted on
+the luck of having him to herself in the train; and the fact banished all
+perturbing thoughts of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to
+end more favourably than it had begun.</p>
+
+<p>She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her prey
+through downcast lashes while she organized a method of attack.
+Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told her that he was
+aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite so engrossed in an
+evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy to come up to her, and
+that she would have to devise some means of approach which should not
+appear to be an advance on her part. It amused her to think that any one
+as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce should be shy; but she was gifted with
+treasures of indulgence for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his
+timidity might serve her purpose better than too much assurance. She had
+the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not
+equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.</p>
+
+<p>She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was racing
+between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as it lowered its
+speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and drifted slowly down the
+carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the train gave a lurch, and he was
+aware of a slender hand gripping the back of his chair. He rose with a
+start, his ingenuous face looking as though it had been dipped in
+crimson: even the reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen. The train
+swayed again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was enveloped in
+the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her fugitive touch.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I’m so sorry—I was trying to find the porter
+and get some tea.”</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they stood
+exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes—he was going to Bellomont. He
+had heard she was to be of the party—he blushed again as he admitted it.
+And was he to be there for a whole week? How delightful!</p>
+
+<p>But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last station
+forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat to her seat.</p>
+
+<p>“The chair next to mine is empty—do take it,” she said over her
+shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded in
+effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and his bags
+to her side.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah—and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea.”</p>
+
+<p>She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that
+seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little table had
+been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to bestow his
+encumbering properties beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her hands
+flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast
+to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed wonderful to him that any
+one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making
+tea in public in a lurching train. He would never have dared to order it
+for himself, lest he should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers;
+but, secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky
+draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, with the flavour of Selden’s caravan tea on her lips, had no great
+fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such nectar to her
+companion; but, rightly judging that one of the charms of tea is the fact
+of drinking it together, she proceeded to give the last touch to Mr.
+Gryce’s enjoyment by smiling at him across her lifted cup.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it quite right—I haven’t made it too strong?” she asked
+solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never tasted
+better tea.</p>
+
+<p>“I daresay it is true,” she reflected; and her imagination was fired by
+the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the depths of the most
+complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually taking his first journey
+alone with a pretty woman.</p>
+
+<p>It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument of his
+initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage him. They would
+have over-emphasized the novelty of the adventure, trying to make him
+feel in it the zest of an escapade. But Lily’s methods were more
+delicate. She remembered that her cousin Jack Stepney had once defined
+Mr. Gryce as the young man who had promised his mother never to go out in
+the rain without his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to
+impart a gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her
+companion, instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or
+unusual, would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always having a
+companion to make one’s tea in the train.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray had been
+removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement of Mr. Gryce’s
+limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity but imagination that he
+lacked: he had a mental palate which would never learn to distinguish
+between railway tea and nectar. There was, however, one topic she could
+rely on: one spring that she had only to touch to set his simple
+machinery in motion. She had refrained from touching it because it was a
+last resource, and she had relied on other arts to stimulate other
+sensations; but as a settled look of dulness began to creep over his
+candid features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary.</p>
+
+<p>“And how,” she said, leaning forward, “are you getting on with your
+Americana?”</p>
+
+<p>His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient film
+had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful operator.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve got a few new things,” he said, suffused with pleasure, but
+lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers might be in
+league to despoil him.</p>
+
+<p>She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn on to talk
+of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which enabled him to
+forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember himself without
+constraint, because he was at home in it, and could assert a superiority
+that there were few to dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared for
+Americana, or knew anything about them; and the consciousness of this
+ignorance threw Mr. Gryce’s knowledge into agreeable relief. The only
+difficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the front; most
+people showed no desire to have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Gryce
+was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable
+commodity.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about Americana; and
+moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to make the task of
+farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable. She questioned him
+intelligently, she heard him submissively; and, prepared for the look of
+lassitude which usually crept over his listeners’ faces, he grew eloquent
+under her receptive gaze. The “points” she had had the presence of mind
+to glean from Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were
+serving her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him
+had been the luckiest incident of the day. She had once more shown her
+talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the
+advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the surface of
+smiling attention which she continued to present to her companion.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce’s sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable. He
+felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms welcome the
+gratification of their needs, and all his senses floundered in a vague
+well-being, through which Miss Bart’s personality was dimly but
+pleasantly perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce’s interest in Americana had not originated with himself: it was
+impossible to think of him as evolving any taste of his own. An uncle had
+left him a collection already noted among bibliophiles; the existence of
+the collection was the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of
+Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it
+had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such,
+and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any
+reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal
+notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so
+exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking
+from publicity.</p>
+
+<p>To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all the
+reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American history in
+particular, and as allusions to his library abounded in the pages of
+these journals, which formed his only reading, he came to regard himself
+as figuring prominently in the public eye, and to enjoy the thought of
+the interest which would be excited if the persons he met in the street,
+or sat among in travelling, were suddenly to be told that he was the
+possessor of the Gryce Americana.</p>
+
+<p>Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
+discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
+proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident person
+she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or to show such
+exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly guessed that Mr. Gryce’s
+egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring constant nurture from without. Miss
+Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she
+appeared to be sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case
+her mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce’s
+future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but
+lately introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
+after old Jefferson Gryce’s death, to take possession of his house in
+Madison Avenue—an appalling house, all brown stone without and black
+walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked
+like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce’s
+arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl
+has no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
+herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself in the
+young man’s way, but had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a
+monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied
+with the iniquities of her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs.
+Peniston and learn from that lady how she managed to prevent the
+kitchen-maid’s smuggling groceries out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a
+kind of impersonal benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded
+with suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their annual
+reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties were manifold,
+for they extended from furtive inspections of the servants’ bedrooms to
+unannounced descents to the cellar; but she had never allowed herself
+many pleasures. Once, however, she had had a special edition of the Sarum
+Rule printed in rubric and presented to every clergyman in the diocese;
+and the gilt album in which their letters of thanks were pasted formed
+the chief ornament of her drawing-room table.</p>
+
+<p>Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a woman
+was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion had been
+grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious, with the result
+that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs. Gryce to extract his
+promise about the overshoes, so little likely was he to hazard himself
+abroad in the rain. After attaining his majority, and coming into the
+fortune which the late Mr. Gryce had made out of a patent device for
+excluding fresh air from hotels, the young man continued to live with his
+mother in Albany; but on Jefferson Gryce’s death, when another large
+property passed into her son’s hands, Mrs. Gryce thought that what she
+called his “interests” demanded his presence in New York. She accordingly
+installed herself in the Madison Avenue house, and Percy, whose sense of
+duty was not inferior to his mother’s, spent all his week days in the
+handsome Broad Street office where a batch of pale men on small salaries
+had grown grey in the management of the Gryce estate, and where he was
+initiated with becoming reverence into every detail of the art of
+accumulation.</p>
+
+<p>As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce’s only
+occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it not too hard
+a task to interest a young man who had been kept on such low diet. At
+any rate, she felt herself so completely in command of the situation that
+she yielded to a sense of security in which all fear of Mr. Rosedale, and
+of the difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
+the edge of thought.</p>
+
+<p>The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted her from
+these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of distress in her
+companion’s eye. His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he
+had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance; a fact confirmed
+by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own
+entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.</p>
+
+<p>She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed by the
+high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train accompanied by a
+maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering under a load of bags and
+dressing-cases.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Lily—are you going to Bellomont? Then you can’t let me have your
+seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this carriage—porter, you
+must find me a place at once. Can’t some one be put somewhere else? I
+want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make
+him understand that I must have a seat next to you and Lily.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller with a
+carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by getting out of
+the train, stood in the middle of the aisle, diffusing about her that
+general sense of exasperation which a pretty woman on her travels not
+infrequently creates.</p>
+
+<p>She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of
+pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like
+the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small pale face seemed the mere
+setting of a pair of dark exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze
+contrasted curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that,
+as one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who
+took up a great deal of room.</p>
+
+<p>Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart’s was at her
+disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther displacement of her
+surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had come across from Mount
+Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had been kicking her heels for
+an hour at Garrisons, without even the alleviation of a cigarette, her
+brute of a husband having neglected to replenish her case before they
+parted that morning.</p>
+
+<p>“And at this hour of the day I don’t suppose you’ve a single one left,
+have you, Lily?” she plaintively concluded.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own lips
+were never defiled by tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>“What an absurd question, Bertha!” she exclaimed, blushing at the thought
+of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden’s.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, don’t you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What—you
+never—— And you don’t either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course—how stupid of
+me—I understand.”</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a smile
+which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her own.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_3">Chapter 3</h2>
+
+<p>Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily
+went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her room,
+she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the hall below,
+where the last card-players were grouped about the tray of tall glasses
+and silver-collared decanters which the butler had just placed on a low
+table near the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale yellow
+marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped against a background
+of dark foliage in the angles of the walls. On the crimson carpet a
+deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire,
+and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness
+on the women’s hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified
+her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life;
+there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her
+own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast
+was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset,
+glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a
+confidential nook beneath the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired hold
+over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but she had
+neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture. She was too
+self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his shyness, and besides, why
+should she care to give herself the trouble? At most it might amuse her
+to make sport of his simplicity for an evening—after that he would be
+merely a burden to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
+encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a
+man up and toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as
+a possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had been
+bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce—the mere thought seemed to waken
+an echo of his droning voice—but she could not ignore him on the morrow,
+she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be
+ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare
+chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her
+for life.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hateful fate—but how escape from it? What choice had she? To be
+herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her bedroom, with its
+softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across the silken
+bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the fire, a vase of
+carnations filling the air with perfume, and the last novels and
+magazines lying uncut on a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a
+vision of Miss Farish’s cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and
+hideous wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby
+surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being
+dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required,
+the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not
+what she wanted. A few years ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her
+daily meed of pleasure without caring who provided it. Now she was
+beginning to chafe at the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere
+pensioner on the splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There
+were even moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she could not
+afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive a taste. She had
+seen the danger exemplified in more than one of her associates—in young
+Ned Silverton, for instance, the charming fair boy now seated in abject
+rapture at the elbow of Mrs. Fisher, a striking divorcee with eyes and
+gowns as emphatic as the head-lines of her “case.” Lily could remember
+when young Silverton had stumbled into their circle, with the air of a
+strayed Arcadian who has published charming sonnets in his college journal.
+Since then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and bridge, and the
+latter at least had involved him in expenses from which he had been more
+than once rescued by harassed maiden sisters, who treasured the sonnets,
+and went without sugar in their tea to keep their darling afloat. Ned’s
+case was familiar to Lily: she had seen his charming eyes—which had a
+good deal more poetry in them than the sonnets—change from surprise to
+amusement, and from amusement to anxiety, as he passed under the spell
+of the terrible god of chance; and she was afraid of discovering the
+same symptoms in her own case.</p>
+
+<p>For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to
+take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay
+for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses and trinkets which
+occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe. And since she had
+played regularly the passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she
+had won a large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
+spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
+imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove
+her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse
+herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one
+must either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
+that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
+surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.</p>
+
+<p>Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold purse
+which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she returned to her
+room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her jewel-case, looked
+under the tray for the roll of bills from which she had replenished the
+purse before going down to dinner. Only twenty dollars were left: the
+discovery was so startling that for a moment she fancied she must have
+been robbed. Then she took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the
+writing-table, tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her
+head was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again
+and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three
+hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
+balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred in the
+other direction. Then she returned to her calculations; but figure as she
+would, she could not conjure back the vanished three hundred dollars. It
+was the sum she had set aside to pacify her dress-maker—unless she
+should decide to use it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so
+many uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play high
+in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost—she who needed
+every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her,
+must have pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
+afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching such a
+heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with her guests
+when they bade her good night.</p>
+
+<p>A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily
+Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a
+universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.</p>
+
+<p>She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had sent to
+bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people’s pleasure to be
+considerate of those who depended on hers, and in her bitter moods it
+sometimes struck her that she and her maid were in the same position,
+except that the latter received her wages more regularly.</p>
+
+<p>As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollow
+and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth,
+faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I must stop worrying!” she exclaimed. “Unless it’s the electric
+light——” she reflected, springing up from her seat and lighting the
+candles on the dressing-table.</p>
+
+<p>She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
+candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a
+background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but
+the two lines about the mouth remained.</p>
+
+<p>Lily rose and undressed in haste.</p>
+
+<p>“It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
+about,” she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty
+cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence
+against them.</p>
+
+<p>But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She returned
+wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy
+load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost sure she had
+“landed” him: a few days’ work and she would win her reward. But the
+reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she could get no zest from
+the thought of victory. It would be a rest from worry, no more—and how
+little that would have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions
+had shrunk gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
+failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?</p>
+
+<p>She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used to
+say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: “But you’ll get it all
+back—you’ll get it all back, with your face.”... The remembrance
+roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the darkness
+reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.</p>
+
+<p>A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was “company”; a
+door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered with square
+envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong envelopes which were
+allowed to gather dust in the depths of a bronze jar; a series of French
+and English maids giving warning amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked
+wardrobes and dress-closets; an equally changing dynasty of nurses and
+footmen; quarrels in the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room;
+precipitate trips to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
+interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer
+should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
+expense—such was the setting of Lily Bart’s first memories.</p>
+
+<p>Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and determined
+figure of a mother still young enough to dance her ball-dresses to rags,
+while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted father filled an intermediate
+space between the butler and the man who came to wind the clocks. Even to
+the eyes of infancy, Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could
+not recall the time when her father had not been bald and slightly
+stooping, with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
+shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was “downtown”; and
+in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on
+the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would kiss her in
+silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or the governess; then
+Mrs. Bart’s maid would come to remind him that he was dining out, and he
+would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
+Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent
+than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours
+staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the
+clatter of his wife’s existence went on unheeded a few feet off.
+Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
+before the steamer was half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the
+horizon. Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected
+to forward Mrs. Bart’s remittances; but for the most part he was never
+mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure presented itself
+on the New York dock as a buffer between the magnitude of his wife’s
+luggage and the restrictions of the American custom-house.</p>
+
+<p>In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily’s teens:
+a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid
+current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need—the
+need of more money. Lily could not recall the time when there had been
+money enough, and in some vague way her father seemed always to blame for
+the deficiency. It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who
+was spoken of by her friends as a “wonderful manager.” Mrs. Bart was
+famous for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to the
+lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though
+one were much richer than one’s bank-book denoted.</p>
+
+<p>Lily was naturally proud of her mother’s aptitude in this line: she had
+been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must have a good
+cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called “decently dressed.” Mrs. Bart’s worst
+reproach to her husband was to ask him if he expected her to “live like a
+pig”; and his replying in the negative was always regarded as a
+justification for cabling to Paris for an extra dress or two, and
+telephoning to the jeweller that he might, after all, send home the
+turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.</p>
+
+<p>Lily knew people who “lived like pigs,” and their appearance and
+surroundings justified her mother’s repugnance to that form of existence.
+They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy houses with engravings from
+Cole’s Voyage of Life on the drawing-room walls, and slatternly
+parlour-maids who said “I’ll go and see” to visitors calling at an hour
+when all right-minded persons are conventionally if not actually out. The
+disgusting part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that
+Lily imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from choice,
+and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct. This gave her a
+sense of reflected superiority, and she did not need Mrs. Bart’s comments
+on the family frumps and misers to foster her naturally lively taste for
+splendour.</p>
+
+<p>Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view of the
+universe.</p>
+
+<p>The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy
+thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on the
+horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke. The
+suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times when Lily
+relived with painful vividness every detail of the day on which the blow
+fell. She and her mother had been seated at the luncheon-table, over the
+CHAUFROIX and cold salmon of the previous night’s dinner: it was one of
+Mrs. Bart’s few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of
+her hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is youth’s
+penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite of a few lines
+about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her temples, was as alert,
+determined and high in colour as if she had risen from an untroubled
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES and
+candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their vigorous
+stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but their rose-colour
+had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily’s sense of fitness was
+disturbed by their reappearance on the luncheon-table.</p>
+
+<p>“I really think, mother,” she said reproachfully, “we might afford a few
+fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or lilies-of-the-valley—”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the world,
+and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when there was no one
+present at it but the family. But she smiled at her daughter’s innocence.</p>
+
+<p>“Lilies-of-the-valley,” she said calmly, “cost two dollars a dozen at
+this season.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of money.</p>
+
+<p>“It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl,” she argued.</p>
+
+<p>“Six dozen what?” asked her father’s voice in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday, the sight
+of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But neither his wife nor his
+daughter was sufficiently interested to ask an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the fragment of
+jellied salmon which the butler had placed before him.</p>
+
+<p>“I was only saying,” Lily began, “that I hate to see faded flowers at
+luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley would not cost
+more than twelve dollars. Mayn’t I tell the florist to send a few every
+day?”</p>
+
+<p>She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her anything,
+and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her own entreaties
+failed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and his
+lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his thin hair lay
+in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he looked at his daughter and
+laughed. The laugh was so strange that Lily coloured under it: she
+disliked being ridiculed, and her father seemed to see something
+ridiculous in the request. Perhaps he thought it foolish that she should
+trouble him about such a trifle.</p>
+
+<p>“Twelve dollars—twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly, my
+dear—give him an order for twelve hundred.” He continued to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.</p>
+
+<p>“You needn’t wait, Poleworth—I will ring for you,” she said to the
+butler.</p>
+
+<p>The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving the
+remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.</p>
+
+<p>“What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?” said Mrs. Bart severely.</p>
+
+<p>She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making, and it
+was odious to her that her husband should make a show of himself before
+the servants.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you ill?” she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>“Ill?—— No, I’m ruined,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruined——?” she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she turned a
+calm face to Lily.</p>
+
+<p>“Shut the pantry door,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father was
+sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon between them,
+and his head bowed on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
+unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached: her look
+was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>“Your father is not well—he doesn’t know what he is saying. It is
+nothing—but you had better go upstairs; and don’t talk to the servants,”
+she added.</p>
+
+<p>Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that voice. She
+had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart’s words: she knew at once that they
+were ruined. In the dark hours which followed, that awful fact
+overshadowed even her father’s slow and difficult dying. To his wife he
+no longer counted: he had become extinct when he ceased to fulfil his
+purpose, and she sat at his side with the provisional air of a traveller
+who waits for a belated train to start. Lily’s feelings were softer: she
+pitied him in a frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for
+the most part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into
+the room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a
+stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home till after
+dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a blur—first of
+sleepiness, then of distance and indifference—and now the fog had
+thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. If she could have
+performed any little services for him, or have exchanged with him a few
+of those affecting words which an extensive perusal of fiction had led
+her to connect with such occasions, the filial instinct might have
+stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active expression, remained in a
+state of spectatorship, overshadowed by her mother’s grim unflagging
+resentment. Every look and act of Mrs. Bart’s seemed to say: “You are
+sorry for him now—but you will feel differently when you see what he has
+done to us.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to Lily when her father died.</p>
+
+<p>Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to Mrs.
+Bart it seemed worse than nothing—the mere mockery of what she was
+entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to live like a pig?
+She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against
+fate. Her faculty for “managing” deserted her, or she no longer took
+sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was well enough to “manage” when
+by so doing one could keep one’s own carriage; but when one’s best
+contrivance did not conceal the fact that one had to go on foot, the
+effort was no longer worth making.</p>
+
+<p>Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long visits
+to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and who deplored
+the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the girl had no
+prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap continental refuges,
+where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof from the frugal tea-tables of
+her companions in misfortune. She was especially careful to avoid her old
+friends and the scenes of her former successes. To be poor seemed to her
+such a confession of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she
+detected a note of condescension in the friendliest advances.</p>
+
+<p>Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily’s
+beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some
+weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset
+in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt.
+She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its
+mere custodian; and she tried to instil into the latter a sense of the
+responsibility that such a charge involved. She followed in imagination
+the career of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might be
+achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of those
+who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to Mrs. Bart,
+only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement of some of her
+examples. She was not above the inconsistency of charging fate, rather
+than herself, with her own misfortunes; but she inveighed so
+acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own
+marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured
+her that she had been “talked into it”—by whom, she never made clear.</p>
+
+<p>Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities. The
+dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the existence
+to which she felt herself entitled. To a less illuminated intelligence
+Mrs. Bart’s counsels might have been dangerous; but Lily understood that
+beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into
+success other arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of
+superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother denounced, and
+it did not take her long to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the
+possessor of an average set of features.</p>
+
+<p>Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart’s. It had been among that
+lady’s grievances that her husband—in the early days, before he was too
+tired—had wasted his evenings in what she vaguely described as “reading
+poetry”; and among the effects packed off to auction after his death were
+a score or two of dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among
+the boots and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
+Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source, which
+gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think
+of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to
+attain a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague
+diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures and
+flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help thinking that
+the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages.
+She would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she
+was secretly ashamed of her mother’s crude passion for money. Lily’s
+preference would have been for an English nobleman with political
+ambitions and vast estates; or, for second choice, an Italian prince with
+a castle in the Apennines and an hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost
+causes had a romantic charm for her, and she liked to picture herself as
+standing aloof from the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her
+pleasure to the claims of an immemorial tradition....</p>
+
+<p>How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were hardly
+more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had centred about
+the possession of a French jointed doll with real hair. Was it only ten
+years since she had wavered in imagination between the English earl and
+the Italian prince? Relentlessly her mind travelled on over the dreary
+interval....</p>
+
+<p>After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died——died of a deep
+disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be dingy. Her
+visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded after the first year.</p>
+
+<p>“People can’t marry you if they don’t see you—and how can they see you
+in these holes where we’re stuck?” That was the burden of her lament; and
+her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from dinginess if she
+could.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way out of it
+somehow—you’re young and can do it,” she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and there Lily
+at once became the centre of a family council composed of the wealthy
+relatives whom she had been taught to despise for living like pigs. It
+may be that they had an inkling of the sentiments in which she had been
+brought up, for none of them manifested a very lively desire for her
+company; indeed, the question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs.
+Peniston with a sigh announced: “I’ll try her for a year.”</p>
+
+<p>Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their surprise, lest
+Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into reconsidering her decision.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart’s widowed sister, and if she was by no means
+the richest of the family group, its other members nevertheless abounded
+in reasons why she was clearly destined by Providence to assume the
+charge of Lily. In the first place she was alone, and it would be
+charming for her to have a young companion. Then she sometimes travelled,
+and Lily’s familiarity with foreign customs—deplored as a misfortune by
+her more conservative relatives—would at least enable her to act as a
+kind of courier. But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not been
+affected by these considerations. She had taken the girl simply because
+no one else would have her, and because she had the kind of moral
+MAUVAISE HONTE which makes the public display of selfishness difficult,
+though it does not interfere with its private indulgence. It would have
+been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but
+with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in
+her act.</p>
+
+<p>She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and found
+an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected to find Lily
+headstrong, critical and “foreign”—for even Mrs. Peniston, though she
+occasionally went abroad, had the family dread of foreignness—but the
+girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more penetrating mind than her aunt’s,
+might have been less reassuring than the open selfishness of youth.
+Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable
+substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece’s adaptability.
+Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her aunt’s good-nature. She
+was in truth grateful for the refuge offered her: Mrs. Peniston’s opulent
+interior was at least not externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality
+which assumes all manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as
+latent in the expensive routine of her aunt’s life as in the makeshift
+existence of a continental pension.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the padding of
+life. It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus
+of activities. The most vivid thing about her was the fact that her
+grandmother had been a Van Alstyne. This connection with the well-fed and
+industrious stock of early New York revealed itself in the glacial
+neatness of Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room and in the excellence of her
+cuisine. She belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always
+lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these
+inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always
+been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little
+mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper
+windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they
+might see what was happening in the street.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she had
+never lived there since her husband’s death—a remote event, which
+appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in the
+personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation. She
+was a woman who remembered dates with intensity, and could tell at a
+moment’s notice whether the drawing-room curtains had been renewed before
+or after Mr. Peniston’s last illness.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and cherished a
+vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such contingencies she
+frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself
+impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting
+screen of her verandah. In the care of such a guardian, it soon became
+clear to Lily that she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good
+food and expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
+would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her to
+regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother’s fierce
+energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled with Mrs.
+Peniston’s resources. Lily had abundant energy of her own, but it was
+restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to her aunt’s habits. She
+saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs. Peniston’s favour till, as Mrs.
+Bart would have phrased it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no
+mind for the vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to
+Mrs. Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady’s passive
+attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt
+into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
+Mrs. Peniston against which her niece’s efforts spent themselves in vain.
+To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging
+at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor. She did not,
+indeed, expect Lily to remain equally immovable: she had all the American
+guardian’s indulgence for the volatility of youth.</p>
+
+<p>She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece’s. It
+seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on dress, and
+she supplemented the girl’s scanty income by occasional “handsome
+presents” meant to be applied to the same purpose. Lily, who was
+intensely practical, would have preferred a fixed allowance; but Mrs.
+Peniston liked the periodical recurrence of gratitude evoked by
+unexpected cheques, and was perhaps shrewd enough to perceive that such a
+method of giving kept alive in her niece a salutary sense of dependence.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do anything for
+her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her take the field. Lily
+had taken it, at first with the confidence of assured possessorship, then
+with gradually narrowing demands, till now she found herself actually
+struggling for a foothold on the broad space which had once seemed her
+own for the asking. How it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she
+thought it was because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she
+feared it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she
+shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy
+and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or
+absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total of her
+failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by dozens, and
+she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.</p>
+
+<p>She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she
+longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself.
+But what manner of life would it be? She had barely enough money to pay
+her dress-makers’ bills and her gambling debts; and none of the desultory
+interests which she dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced
+enough to enable her to live contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no—she was
+too intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she hated
+dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she
+meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its
+flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented
+such a slippery surface to her clutch.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_4">Chapter 4</h2>
+
+<p>The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note from her
+hostess.</p>
+
+<p>“Dearest Lily,” it ran, “if it is not too much of a bore to be down by
+ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some tiresome
+things?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh. It
+WAS a bore to be down by ten—an hour regarded at Bellomont as vaguely
+synchronous with sunrise—and she knew too well the nature of the
+tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary, had been called
+away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards to write, lost addresses
+to hunt up, and other social drudgery to perform. It was understood that
+Miss Bart should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
+recognized the obligation without a murmur.</p>
+
+<p>Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the previous
+night’s review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything in her
+surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity. The windows
+stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September morning, and
+between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of hedges and
+parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to the free
+undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little fire on the
+hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted
+across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old
+marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray,
+with its harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
+slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters. There
+was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied luxury; but, though
+they formed a part of her atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to
+their charm. Mere display left her with a sense of superior distinction;
+but she felt an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor’s summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
+dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that she
+was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions leave
+lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had meant to take
+warning by the little creases which her midnight survey had revealed.</p>
+
+<p>The matter of course tone of Mrs. Trenor’s greeting deepened her
+irritation. If one did drag one’s self out of bed at such an hour, and
+come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing, some special
+recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs. Trenor’s tone
+showed no consciousness of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Lily, that’s nice of you,” she merely sighed across the chaos of
+letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave an incongruously
+commercial touch to the slender elegance of her writing-table.</p>
+
+<p>“There are such lots of horrors this morning,” she added, clearing a
+space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat to Miss
+Bart.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her from
+redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile
+activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished
+play of feature. It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she
+seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated
+instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a
+crowd. The collective nature of her interests exempted her from the
+ordinary rivalries of her sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than
+that of hatred for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have
+more amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by
+Mr. Trenor’s bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph in
+such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous good
+nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart’s utilitarian
+classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as the woman who was
+least likely to “go back” on her.</p>
+
+<p>“It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now,” Mrs. Trenor declared, as
+her friend seated herself at the desk. “She says her sister is going to
+have a baby—as if that were anything to having a house-party! I’m sure I
+shall get most horribly mixed up and there will be some awful rows. When
+I was down at Tuxedo I asked a lot of people for next week, and I’ve
+mislaid the list and can’t remember who is coming. And this week is going
+to be a horrid failure too—and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell
+her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls—that
+was a blunder of Gus’s. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
+one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get that
+second divorce—Carry always overdoes things—but she said the only way
+to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony.
+And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It’s really absurd of Alice
+Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks of what
+society is coming to. Some one said the other day that there was a
+divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows. Besides,
+Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in a good humour when we have
+bores in the house. Have you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All,
+I mean, except her own. It’s rather clever of her to have made a
+specialty of devoting herself to dull people—the field is such a large
+one, and she has it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no
+doubt—I know she borrows money of Gus—but then I’d PAY her to keep him
+in a good humour, so I can’t complain, after all.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart’s efforts to
+unravel her tangled correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>“But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry,” she resumed, with a fresh note
+of lament. “The truth is, I’m awfully disappointed in Lady Cressida
+Raith.”</p>
+
+<p>“Disappointed? Had you known her before?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mercy, no—never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her over with
+letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van Osburgh was
+asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought it would be fun to
+get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her in India, managed it for me.
+Maria was furious, and actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite
+herself here, so that they shouldn’t be QUITE out of it—if I’d known
+what Lady Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
+thought any friend of the Skiddaws’ was sure to be amusing. You remember
+what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send the
+girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess of
+Beltshire’s sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same sort; but
+you never can tell in those English families. They are so big that
+there’s room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the
+moral one—married a clergyman and does missionary work in the East End.
+Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman’s wife, who
+wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take her all through the
+glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to death by asking him the names
+of the plants. Fancy treating Gus as if he were the gardener!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to meeting
+Carry Fisher,” said Miss Bart pacifically.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and if she
+takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will be too
+depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so useful at the
+right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once a year, and she
+would have given just the right tone to things. I always have horrid luck
+about the Bishop’s visits,” added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was
+being fed by a rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; “last year, when he
+came, Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
+Wintons and the Farleys—five divorces and six sets of children between
+them!”</p>
+
+<p>“When is Lady Cressida going?” Lily enquired.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. “My dear, if one only knew! I
+was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I actually forgot to
+name a date, and Gus says she told some one she meant to stop here all
+winter.”</p>
+
+<p>“To stop here? In this house?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be silly—in America. But if no one else asks her—you know they
+NEVER go to hotels.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you.”</p>
+
+<p>“No—I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put in
+while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You should have
+seen Bertha look vacant! But it’s no joke, you know—if she stays here
+all the autumn she’ll spoil everything, and Maria Van Osburgh will simply
+exult.”</p>
+
+<p>At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor’s voice trembled with self-pity.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Judy—as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!” Miss Bart
+tactfully protested. “You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van Osburgh
+were to get all the right people and leave you with all the wrong ones,
+you’d manage to make things go off, and she wouldn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor’s complacency;
+but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t only Lady Cressida,” she lamented. “Everything has gone wrong
+this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Furious with you? Why?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he wouldn’t,
+after all, and she’s quite unreasonable enough to think it’s my fault.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she had
+begun.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought that was all over,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since. But I
+fancy she’s out of a job just at present—and some one gave me a hint
+that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him—but I couldn’t make
+him come; and now I suppose she’ll take it out of me by being perfectly
+nasty to every one else.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming—to some one
+else.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. “She knows he wouldn’t mind. And
+who else is there? Alice Wetherall won’t let Lucius out of her sight.
+Ned Silverton can’t take his eyes off Carry Fisher—poor boy! Gus is
+bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well—and—well, to be sure,
+there’s Percy Gryce!”</p>
+
+<p>She sat up smiling at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart’s countenance did not reflect the smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean that she’d shock him and he’d bore her? Well, that’s not such a
+bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won’t take it into her head to be
+nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for you.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily laughed. “MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
+against Bertha.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I’m not really, you know. Every one
+knows you’re a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than Bertha; but
+then you’re not nasty. And for always getting what she wants in the long
+run, commend me to a nasty woman.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. “I thought you were so fond of
+Bertha.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I am—it’s much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she IS
+dangerous—and if I ever saw her up to mischief it’s now. I can tell by
+poor George’s manner. That man is a perfect barometer—he always knows
+when Bertha is going to——”</p>
+
+<p>“To fall?” Miss Bart suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of course I
+don’t say there’s any real harm in Bertha. Only she delights in making
+people miserable, and especially poor George.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, he seems cut out for the part—I don’t wonder she likes more
+cheerful companionship.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him he
+would be quite different. Or if she’d leave him alone, and let him
+arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn’t dare lose her hold of him
+on account of the money, and so when HE isn’t jealous she pretends to be.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following her
+train of thought with frowning intensity.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know,” she exclaimed after a long pause, “I believe I’ll call up
+Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, don’t,” said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
+surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though not
+commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with puzzled
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him so
+much?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
+intention of protecting me from Bertha—I don’t think I need your
+protection.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. “Lily!——PERCY? Do you mean to
+say you’ve actually done it?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart smiled. “I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are getting to
+be very good friends.”</p>
+
+<p>“H’m—I see.” Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. “You know they say
+he has eight hundred thousand a year—and spends nothing, except on some
+rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and will leave him a
+lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY,” her friend adjured her.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. “I shouldn’t, for
+instance,” she remarked, “be in any haste to tell him that he had a lot
+of rubbishy old books.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, of course not; I know you’re wonderful about getting up people’s
+subjects. But he’s horribly shy, and easily shocked, and—and——”</p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the hunt
+for a rich husband?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I don’t mean that; he wouldn’t believe it of you—at first,” said
+Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. “But you know things are rather
+lively here at times—I must give Jack and Gus a hint—and if he thought
+you were what his mother would call fast—oh, well, you know what I mean.
+Don’t wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don’t smoke if you
+can help it, Lily dear!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. “You’re very kind,
+Judy: I’ll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year’s dress you sent
+me this morning. And if you are really interested in my career, perhaps
+you’ll be kind enough not to ask me to play bridge again this evening.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life you’ll
+lead! But of course I won’t—why didn’t you give me a hint last night?
+There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, you poor duck, to see you happy!”</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex’s eagerness to smooth the course of
+true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re quite sure,” she added solicitously, as the latter extricated
+herself, “that you wouldn’t like me to telephone for Lawrence Selden?”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite sure,” said Lily.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction Miss
+Bart’s ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.</p>
+
+<p>As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont, she
+smiled at Mrs. Trenor’s fear that she might go too fast. If such a
+warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a salutary
+lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to adapt her pace
+to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well
+to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively and luring him on from depth
+to depth of unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was
+propitious to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word,
+had shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had even
+hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no surprise at
+her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint, Lily found herself
+the centre of that feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in
+the mating season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
+existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater
+readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
+attributes of romance. In Lily’s set this conduct implied a sympathetic
+comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in her esteem as she saw
+the consideration he inspired.</p>
+
+<p>The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot propitious
+to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning against the
+balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little distance from the
+animated group about the tea-table, she might have been lost in the mazes
+of an inarticulate happiness. In reality, her thoughts were finding
+definite utterance in the tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in
+store for her. From where she stood she could see them embodied in the
+form of Mr. Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
+nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the
+energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to endow
+her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of municipal
+reform.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher’s latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been preceded by
+an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced an energetic
+advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was small, fiery and dramatic;
+and her hands and eyes were admirable instruments in the service of
+whatever causes she happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault
+common to enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part
+of her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
+resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce’s attitude. Lily
+herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold
+if he remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
+he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a paper
+to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what he called
+“committing himself,” and tenderly as he cherished his health, he
+evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink
+till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher’s toils. Meanwhile he cast
+agonized glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was
+to sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had learned
+the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief, and was fully
+aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher’s volubility was enhancing her
+own repose.</p>
+
+<p>She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
+Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh’s side, was returning across the garden
+from the tennis court.</p>
+
+<p>The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance in which
+Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in contemplating
+what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation. Miss Van Osburgh
+was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had
+once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste
+was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger
+makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
+been reduced to a crust.</p>
+
+<p>Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl’s
+turned toward her companion’s like an empty plate held up to be filled,
+while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching
+boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile.</p>
+
+<p>“How impatient men are!” Lily reflected. “All Jack has to do to get
+everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas
+I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were
+going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me
+hopelessly out of time.”</p>
+
+<p>As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
+likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
+resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he looked
+like a clever pupil’s drawing from a plaster-cast—while Gwen’s
+countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.
+But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices
+and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent
+by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily’s set: they
+had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
+range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for
+each other by every law of moral and physical correspondence——“Yet they
+wouldn’t look at each other,” Lily mused, “they never do. Each of them
+wants a creature of a different race, of Jack’s race and mine, with all
+sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don’t even
+guess the existence of. And they always get what they want.”</p>
+
+<p>She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a slight
+cloud on the latter’s brow advised her that even cousinly amenities were
+subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the necessity of not
+exciting enmities at this crucial point of her career, dropped aside
+while the happy couple proceeded toward the tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her head
+against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The fragrance of the
+late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil scene, a landscape
+tutored to the last degree of rural elegance. In the foreground glowed
+the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal
+pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle;
+and through a long glade the river widened like a lake under the silver
+light of September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
+tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she was
+content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty
+that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load
+from her mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal
+not to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence might
+have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be
+able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
+security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns
+than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would
+be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the
+relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered;
+instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old
+scores she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
+she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr. Gryce
+was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses and emotions.
+He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice
+the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily had known the species before:
+she was aware that such a guarded nature must find one huge outlet of
+egoism, and she determined to be to him what his Americana had hitherto
+been: the one possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money
+on it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
+meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her husband’s
+vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form
+of self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort to
+some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended it should
+free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she would be able to
+play the game in her own way. How should she have distrusted her powers?
+Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have
+been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
+she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of
+permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end.</p>
+
+<p>And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she
+had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this
+crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her
+poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people whom she had ridiculed
+and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed circle
+about which all her desires revolved. They were not as brutal and
+self-engrossed as she had fancied—or rather, since it would no longer be
+necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature became
+less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged
+according to its place in each man’s heaven; and at present it was
+turning its illuminated face to Lily.</p>
+
+<p>In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
+qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of
+emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness
+now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the
+only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks
+and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing
+allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a
+disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
+the people who were not able to live as they lived.</p>
+
+<p>The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs of the
+long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of wheels, and
+divined that more visitors were approaching. There was a movement behind
+her, a scattering of steps and voices: it was evident that the party
+about the tea-table was breaking up. Presently she heard a tread behind
+her on the terrace. She supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means
+to escape from his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his
+coming to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fireside.</p>
+
+<p>She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved; but her
+greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who had approached
+her was Lawrence Selden.</p>
+
+<p>“You see I came after all,” he said; but before she had time to answer,
+Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with her host, had
+stepped between them with a little gesture of appropriation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_5">Chapter 5</h2>
+
+<p>The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the punctual
+appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the household to the
+little church at the gates. Whether any one got into the omnibus or not
+was a matter of secondary importance, since by standing there it not only
+bore witness to the orthodox intentions of the family, but made Mrs.
+Trenor feel, when she finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow
+vicariously made use of it.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Trenor’s theory that her daughters actually did go to church
+every Sunday; but their French governess’s convictions calling her to the
+rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping their mother in her room
+till luncheon, there was seldom any one present to verify the fact. Now
+and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue—when the house had been too
+uproarious over night—Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight
+frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually,
+as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the
+church bells were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven
+away empty.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious observances
+was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during her visits to
+Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda to church. This
+tallied with the assurance, also confidentially imparted, that, never
+having played bridge before, she had been “dragged into it” on the night
+of her arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in consequence
+of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of betting. Mr. Gryce was
+undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the
+life, and the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of
+rich and conspicuous people. But he thought it a very materialistic
+society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the men
+and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for
+all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
+atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to learn that
+she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors to church on Sunday
+morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep before the door, his light
+overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he
+reflected agreeably on the strength of character which kept her true to
+her early training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
+themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference on the
+part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the hope that Miss
+Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes were flying, however;
+the big chestnuts pawed the ground and flecked their impatient sides with
+foam; the coachman seemed to be slowly petrifying on the box, and the
+groom on the doorstep; and still the lady did not come. Suddenly,
+however, there was a sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the
+doorway, and Mr. Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a
+nervous start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
+into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of
+human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single
+one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. It is true that
+the Bellomont puppets did not go to church; but others equally important
+did—and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall’s circle was so large that God was
+included in their visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and
+resigned, with the air of people bound for a dull “At Home,” and after
+them Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other’s veils
+and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church with
+her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that they didn’t
+mind doing it to please her, though they couldn’t fancy what had put the
+idea in her head, and though for their own part they would much rather
+have played lawn tennis with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn’t told them she
+was coming. The Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
+weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on
+seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were not to walk
+across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall’s horrified protest that the
+church was a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
+other’s heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce
+found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare
+he felt not the least concern.</p>
+
+<p>It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known that Miss
+Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen earlier than
+usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea that the sight of
+her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her famous lashes drooped
+above a prayer-book, would put the finishing touch to Mr. Gryce’s
+subjugation, and render inevitable a certain incident which she had
+resolved should form a part of the walk they were to take together after
+luncheon. Her intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor
+Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
+as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
+people’s feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies,
+hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant
+in the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was
+carrying her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see
+herself or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that
+moment, should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
+with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons of
+his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the ill-humour
+of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she learned from Mrs. Trenor
+that Selden had come of his own accord. “He didn’t even wire me—he just
+happened to find the trap at the station. Perhaps it’s not over with
+Bertha after all,” Mrs. Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to
+arrange her dinner-cards accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless she had
+lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset’s call, it was at her
+own that he would stay. So much the previous evening had told her. Mrs.
+Trenor, true to her simple principle of making her married friends happy,
+had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in
+obedience to the time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had
+separated Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset,
+while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.</p>
+
+<p>George Dorset’s talk did not interfere with the range of his neighbour’s
+thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on finding out the
+deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted from this care only by
+the sound of his wife’s voice. On this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset
+took no part in the general conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs
+with Selden, and turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her
+host, who, far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
+the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset,
+however, his wife’s attitude was a subject of such evident concern that,
+when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist
+bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin
+neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on opposite
+sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe Mrs. Dorset
+also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to set up a rapid
+comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison
+which was her undoing. Why else had she suddenly grown interested in
+Selden? She had known him for eight years or more: ever since her return
+to America he had formed a part of her background. She had always been
+glad to sit next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
+men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful
+to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
+affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories of
+life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw that her
+sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that his presence
+shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant
+or exceptional; in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one
+man who had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
+had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the
+show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage
+in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the
+world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on
+her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always
+open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
+once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden’s
+distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.</p>
+
+<p>That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily, turning
+her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world through his
+retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut off and the dusty
+daylight let in. She looked down the long table, studying its occupants
+one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between
+his shoulders, as he preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the
+opposite end of the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
+good-looks, of a jeweller’s window lit by electricity. And between the
+two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people
+were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
+her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a
+“spicy paragraph”; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
+proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had
+become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list,
+whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and
+the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod
+of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they
+were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes,
+half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all
+the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that
+there is no one richer than her father.</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had
+seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was
+gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon
+they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were
+merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she
+saw the poverty of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to
+be more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
+picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which, a few
+hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their standards. She
+closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine of the life she had
+chosen stretched before her like a long white road without dip or
+turning: it was true she was to roll over it in a carriage instead of
+trudging it on foot, but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of
+a short cut which is denied to those on wheels.</p>
+
+<p>She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from the
+depths of his lean throat.</p>
+
+<p>“I say, do look at her,” he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
+lugubrious merriment—“I beg your pardon, but do just look at my wife
+making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really suppose she
+was gone on him—and it’s all the other way round, I assure you.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was affording
+Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared, as he said, that
+Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in the scene: her neighbour
+seemed to receive her advances with a temperate zest which did not
+distract him from his dinner. The sight restored Lily’s good humour, and
+knowing the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset’s marital fears assumed,
+she asked gaily: “Aren’t you horribly jealous of her?”</p>
+
+<p>Dorset greeted the sally with delight. “Oh, abominably—you’ve just hit
+it—keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that’s what has knocked
+my digestion out—being so infernally jealous of her.—I can’t eat a
+mouthful of this stuff, you know,” he added suddenly, pushing back his
+plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable,
+accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other
+people’s cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of
+melted butter.</p>
+
+<p>It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man as well
+as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances into it he was
+not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he engaged Lily so long
+that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other
+side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering
+Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby’s role was
+jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a handspring.</p>
+
+<p>“And of course you’ll have Sim Rosedale as best man!” Lily heard her
+fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney responded,
+as if struck: “Jove, that’s an idea. What a thumping present I’d get out
+of him!”</p>
+
+<p>SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive, obtruded
+itself on Lily’s thoughts like a leer. It stood for one of the many hated
+possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If she did not marry Percy
+Gryce, the day might come when she would have to be civil to such men as
+Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM? But she meant to marry him—she was
+sure of him and sure of herself. She drew back with a shiver from the
+pleasant paths in which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet
+once more in the middle of the long white road.... When she went
+upstairs that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
+batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
+forwarded them all to Bellomont.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
+conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself betimes
+from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast tray, rang to have her grey
+gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs.
+Trenor.</p>
+
+<p>But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of
+rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused a
+smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to kindle Lily’s
+imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the borrowed prayer-book
+flashed a long light down the years. She would have to go to church with
+Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have a front pew in the most
+expensive church in New York, and his name would figure handsomely in the
+list of parish charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would
+be made a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
+her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES
+were included, except those who had showed signs of penitence by being
+re-married to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in
+this round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
+great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent
+to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and her bath had
+filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected in the
+clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this morning, or else the
+glass was at a happier angle.</p>
+
+<p>And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and
+truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold; below the dewy bloom
+of the lawns the woodlands blushed and smouldered, and the hills across
+the river swam in molten blue. Every drop of blood in Lily’s veins
+invited her to happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning behind her
+shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She was too late,
+then—but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr. Gryce’s
+crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely in absenting
+herself, since the disappointment he so candidly betrayed would surely
+whet his appetite for the afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to
+miss; one glance at the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall
+its necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could
+muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough
+with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free
+field till luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and
+Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be
+having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her
+host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of
+young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
+tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left
+only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never came down till
+luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden her to expose herself
+to the crude air of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
+wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her plans.
+These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress somewhat more
+rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she had first selected,
+and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a
+lady in quest of exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of
+dogs by the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
+Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship. She put
+aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and assuring the
+joyous volunteers that she might presently have a use for their company,
+sauntered on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of
+the house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the old
+manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions
+of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
+the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass urns. A
+few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies
+with large head-dresses and small bodies, hung between the shelves lined
+with pleasantly-shabby books: books mostly contemporaneous with the
+ancestors in question, and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no
+perceptible additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used
+for reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking room or a
+quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however, that it
+might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only member of the
+party in the least likely to put it to its original use. She advanced
+noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered with easy-chairs, and before
+she reached the middle of the room she saw that she had not been
+mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in fact seated at its farther end; but
+though a book lay on his knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but
+directed to a lady whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an
+adjoining chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
+dusky leather upholstery.</p>
+
+<p>Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she seemed
+about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she announced her
+approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made the couple raise
+their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank displeasure, and Selden
+with his usual quiet smile. The sight of his composure had a disturbing
+effect on Lily; but to be disturbed was in her case to make a more
+brilliant effort at self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me, am I late?” she asked, putting a hand in his as he advanced to
+greet her.</p>
+
+<p>“Late for what?” enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. “Not for luncheon,
+certainly—but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I had,” said Lily confidingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely at
+your disposal.” Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her antagonist felt
+a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear, no—do stay,” she said good-humouredly. “I don’t in the least
+want to drive you away.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden’s
+engagements.”</p>
+
+<p>The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost on
+its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping to pick
+up the book he had dropped at Lily’s approach. The latter’s eyes widened
+charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go to
+church; and I’m afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS it
+started, do you know?”</p>
+
+<p>She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away some
+time since.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go to
+church with them. It’s too late to walk there, you say? Well, I shall
+have the credit of trying, at any rate—and the advantage of escaping
+part of the service. I’m not so sorry for myself, after all!”</p>
+
+<p>And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss Bart
+strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling grace down the
+long perspective of the garden walk.</p>
+
+<p>She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a fact not
+lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway looking after her
+with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is that she was conscious of
+a somewhat keen shock of disappointment. All her plans for the day had
+been built on the assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come
+to Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to find him on
+the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in a situation which
+might well denote that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it
+possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
+acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when she
+never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw
+no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden
+might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of
+town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their
+judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted; competition put
+her on her mettle, and she reflected that Selden’s coming, if it did not
+declare him to be still in Mrs. Dorset’s toils, showed him to be so
+completely free from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to
+carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from
+the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to
+sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and
+Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence
+enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude
+except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
+scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
+profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
+rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked;
+the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her
+lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to
+find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a
+vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness
+about her.</p>
+
+<p>Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the
+ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade. As she did so a
+step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.</p>
+
+<p>“How fast you walk!” he remarked. “I thought I should never catch up with
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>She answered gaily: “You must be quite breathless! I’ve been sitting
+under that tree for an hour.”</p>
+
+<p>“Waiting for me, I hope?” he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:</p>
+
+<p>“Well—waiting to see if you would come.”</p>
+
+<p>“I seize the distinction, but I don’t mind it, since doing the one
+involved doing the other. But weren’t you sure that I should come?”</p>
+
+<p>“If I waited long enough—but you see I had only a limited time to give
+to the experiment.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why limited? Limited by luncheon?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; by my other engagement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; but to come home from church with another person.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives.
+And is the other person coming home this way?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily laughed again. “That’s just what I don’t know; and to find out, it
+is my business to get to church before the service is over.”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case
+the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve
+of driving back in the omnibus.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the
+bubbling of her inner mood. “Is that what you would do in such an
+emergency?” she enquired.</p>
+
+<p>Selden looked at her with solemnity. “I am here to prove to you,” he
+cried, “what I am capable of doing in an emergency!”</p>
+
+<p>“Walking a mile in an hour—you must own that the omnibus would be
+quicker!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah—but will he find you in the end? That’s the only test of success.”</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had
+felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily’s
+face changed, and she said: “Well, if it is, he has succeeded.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
+toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had
+evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the church-goers had
+thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily’s companion looked rapidly
+from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking
+respectfully at Lady Cressida’s side with his little sidelong look of
+nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing-up the rear with Mrs.
+Wetherall and the Trenors.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah—now I see why you were getting up your Americana!” Selden exclaimed
+with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with which the sally
+was received checked whatever amplifications he had meant to give it.</p>
+
+<p>That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors, or even
+about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden that he had a
+momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number of possibilities; but
+she rose gallantly to the defence of her confusion, by saying, as its
+object approached: “That was why I was waiting for you—to thank you for
+having given me so many points!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short time,” said
+Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart; and while she
+signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he added quickly:
+“Won’t you devote your afternoon to it? You know I must be off tomorrow
+morning. We’ll take a walk, and you can thank me at your leisure.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_6">Chapter 6</h2>
+
+<p>The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air, and the
+glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which diffused the
+brightness without dulling it.</p>
+
+<p>In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill; but as
+the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long slopes
+beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone of lingering
+summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered trees; then it
+dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling sprays of bramble,
+whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves, the country unrolled
+itself in pastoral distances.</p>
+
+<p>Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the creeping
+glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang it, and the
+shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove. The boles of the
+trees stood well apart, with only a light feathering of undergrowth; the
+path wound along the edge of the wood, now and then looking out on a
+sunlit pasture or on an orchard spangled with fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the
+appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the
+fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below
+her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of
+herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the
+nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down
+was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of
+an oak-grove. Two or three red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees,
+and the white wooden spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder
+of the hill; while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran
+between the fields.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us sit here,” Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge of
+rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.</p>
+
+<p>Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She sat
+quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes wandering
+peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape. Selden stretched
+himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat against the level
+sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head, which rested against
+the side of the rock. He had no wish to make her talk; her
+quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general hush and harmony of
+things. In his own mind there was only a lazy sense of pleasure, veiling
+the sharp edges of sensation as the September haze veiled the scene at
+their feet. But Lily, though her attitude was as calm as his, was
+throbbing inwardly with a rush of thoughts. There were in her at the
+moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration,
+the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But
+gradually the captive’s gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed
+to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
+quivered for flight.</p>
+
+<p>She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed
+to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it
+love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts
+and sensations? How much of it was owing to the spell of the perfect
+afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the thought of the dulness she
+had fled from? Lily had no definite experience by which to test the
+quality of her feelings. She had several times been in love with
+fortunes or careers, but only once with a man. That was years ago, when
+she first came out, and had been smitten with a romantic passion for a
+young gentleman named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave
+in his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
+securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest Miss Van
+Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was given to
+telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled this early emotion
+it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only
+point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which
+she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a
+conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance. She had
+not known again till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now
+it was something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
+charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she could put
+her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing them together.
+Though his popularity was of the quiet kind, felt rather than actively
+expressed among his friends, she had never mistaken his inconspicuousness
+for obscurity. His reputed cultivation was generally regarded as a slight
+obstacle to easy intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her
+broad-minded recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam
+in her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she felt
+would have had its distinction in an older society. It was, moreover, one
+of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which lifted his head
+above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark features which, in a land
+of amorphous types, gave him the air of belonging to a more specialized
+race, of carrying the impress of a concentrated past. Expansive persons
+found him a little dry, and very young girls thought him sarcastic; but
+this air of friendly aloofness, as far removed as possible from any
+assertion of personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily’s
+interest. Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in
+her taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed to
+her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being able to
+convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever
+met.</p>
+
+<p>It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her to say
+presently, with a laugh: “I have broken two engagements for you today.
+How many have you broken for me?”</p>
+
+<p>“None,” said Selden calmly. “My only engagement at Bellomont was with
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I did.”</p>
+
+<p>Her look deepened meditatively. “Why?” she murmured, with an accent which
+took all tinge of coquetry from the question.</p>
+
+<p>“Because you’re such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you
+are doing.”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?”</p>
+
+<p>Selden smiled. “I don’t flatter myself that my coming has deflected your
+course of action by a hair’s breadth.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s absurd—since, if you were not here, I could obviously not be
+taking a walk with you.”</p>
+
+<p>“No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making use of
+your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you
+are using today. It’s a part of your cleverness to be able to produce
+premeditated effects extemporaneously.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense of
+humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his presence as
+part of a very definite effect; or that, at least, was the secret pretext
+she had found for breaking her promise to walk with Mr. Gryce. She had
+sometimes been accused of being too eager—even Judy Trenor had warned
+her to go slowly. Well, she would not be too eager in this case; she
+would give her suitor a longer taste of suspense. Where duty and
+inclination jumped together, it was not in Lily’s nature to hold them
+asunder. She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a headache:
+the horrid headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
+church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
+languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her
+hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered rather
+nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the
+future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not
+to expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of
+exposure.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him, since
+she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the party who, after
+luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit to the Van Osburghs at
+Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her disinterestedness, and, to escape
+from the threatened vacuity of the afternoon, had taken her advice and
+departed mournfully, in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged
+down the avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
+had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to
+his suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as her
+plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included in it.
+The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the stair and
+strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.</p>
+
+<p>She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at her
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought, after all, the air might do me good,” she explained; and he
+agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.</p>
+
+<p>The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and Selden had
+the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of leisure and safety gave
+the last touch of lightness to her spirit. With so much time to talk, and
+no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of
+mental vagrancy.</p>
+
+<p>She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge with a
+touch of resentment.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know,” she said, “why you are always accusing me of
+premeditation.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you had to
+follow a certain line—and if one does a thing at all it is a merit to do
+it thoroughly.”</p>
+
+<p>“If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged to
+think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation. But you
+must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I never yield to
+an impulse.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, but I don’t suppose that: haven’t I told you that your genius lies
+in converting impulses into intentions?”</p>
+
+<p>“My genius?” she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. “Is there any
+final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven’t succeeded.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her. “Success—what
+is success? I shall be interested to have your definition.”</p>
+
+<p>“Success?” She hesitated. “Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I
+suppose. It’s a relative quality, after all. Isn’t that your idea of it?”</p>
+
+<p>“My idea of it? God forbid!” He sat up with sudden energy, resting his
+elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. “My idea of
+success,” he said, “is personal freedom.”</p>
+
+<p>“Freedom? Freedom from worries?”</p>
+
+<p>“From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from
+all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
+spirit—that’s what I call success.”</p>
+
+<p>She leaned forward with a responsive flash. “I know—I know—it’s
+strange; but that’s just what I’ve been feeling today.”</p>
+
+<p>He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. “Is the feeling so rare
+with you?” he said.</p>
+
+<p>She blushed a little under his gaze. “You think me horribly sordid, don’t
+you? But perhaps it’s rather that I never had any choice. There was no
+one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit.”</p>
+
+<p>“There never is—it’s a country one has to find the way to one’s self.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I should never have found my way there if you hadn’t told me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, there are sign-posts—but one has to know how to read them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I have known, I have known!” she cried with a glow of eagerness.
+“Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign—and
+yesterday—last evening at dinner—I suddenly saw a little way into your
+republic.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had
+found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a
+reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.
+His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have
+been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should
+interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this
+weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on
+her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
+altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm.
+THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and
+the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It
+was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
+spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning
+intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be
+the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
+even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” he said, “did it make you want to see more? Are you going to
+become one of us?”</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand
+toward the case.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, do give me one—I haven’t smoked for days!”</p>
+
+<p>“Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER; and at
+the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, then I’m afraid we can’t let you into the republic.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not? Is it a celibate order?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not in the least, though I’m bound to say there are not many married
+people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it’s as hard for
+rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
+conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the
+only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to
+have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs
+are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich
+people—they may not be thinking of money, but they’re breathing it all
+the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and
+gasp!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal of your
+time in the element you disapprove of.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have tried
+to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs can work in
+another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back
+again into something else; and that’s the secret that most of your
+friends have lost.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that the
+people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and
+not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only
+use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t it fairer to look at
+them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
+intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is
+that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not
+the critics on the fence. It’s just the other way with most shows—the
+audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is
+on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an
+escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes
+the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life.” Selden
+raised himself on his elbow. “Good heavens!” he went on, “I don’t
+underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of
+splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it
+is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we’re all the
+raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that
+tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society
+like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of
+purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton—he’s really too good to be used
+to refurbish anybody’s social shabbiness. There’s a lad just setting out
+to discover the universe: isn’t it a pity he should end by finding it in
+Mrs. Fisher’s drawing-room?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to
+write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society
+that he is likely to lose them?”</p>
+
+<p>Selden answered her with a shrug. “Why do we call all our generous ideas
+illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn’t it a sufficient condemnation
+of society to find one’s self accepting such phraseology? I very nearly
+acquired the jargon at Silverton’s age, and I know how names can alter
+the colour of beliefs.”</p>
+
+<p>She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
+habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and
+compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory
+where his faiths were formed.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians,” she exclaimed; “why do you
+call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create
+arbitrary objections in order to keep people out.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D’ETAT and seat
+you on the throne.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the
+threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions—you
+think them unworthy of me!”</p>
+
+<p>Selden smiled, but not ironically. “Well, isn’t that a tribute? I think
+them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them.”</p>
+
+<p>She had turned to gaze on him gravely. “But isn’t it possible that, if I
+had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better use of them?
+Money stands for all kinds of things—its purchasing quality isn’t
+limited to diamonds and motor-cars.”</p>
+
+
+<p>“Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by founding a
+hospital.”</p>
+
+<p>“But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must think my
+ambitions are good enough for me.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden met this appeal with a laugh. “Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am not
+divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you are trying
+to get!”</p>
+
+<p>“Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get them I
+probably shan’t like them?” She drew a deep breath. “What a miserable
+future you foresee for me!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—have you never foreseen it for yourself?” The slow colour rose to
+her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the deep wells of
+feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had produced it.</p>
+
+<p>“Often and often,” she said. “But it looks so much darker when you show
+it to me!”</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat silent,
+while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of the air.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. “Why do you do
+this to me?” she cried. “Why do you make the things I have chosen seem
+hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?”</p>
+
+<p>The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had fallen. He
+himself did not know why he had led their talk along such lines; it was
+the last use he would have imagined himself making of an afternoon’s
+solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one of those moments when neither
+seemed to speak deliberately, when an indwelling voice in each called to
+the other across unsounded depths of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I have nothing to give you instead,” he said, sitting up and turning
+so that he faced her. “If I had, it should be yours, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than the
+manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he saw that
+for a moment she wept.</p>
+
+<p>It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and drew
+down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she turned on
+him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he said to
+himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.</p>
+
+<p>The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and irony:
+“Isn’t it natural that I should try to belittle all the things I can’t
+offer you?”</p>
+
+<p>Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with a
+gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which she had
+no claim.</p>
+
+<p>“But you belittle ME, don’t you,” she returned gently, “in being so sure
+they are the only things I care for?”</p>
+
+<p>Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
+egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: “But you do care for
+them, don’t you? And no wishing of mine can alter that.”</p>
+
+<p>He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry him,
+that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned on him a
+face sparkling with derision.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” she cried, “for all your fine phrases you’re really as great a
+coward as I am, for you wouldn’t have made one of them if you hadn’t been
+so sure of my answer.”</p>
+
+<p>The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden’s
+wavering intentions.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not so sure of your answer,” he said quietly. “And I do you the
+justice to believe that you are not either.”</p>
+
+<p>It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a moment—“Do you
+want to marry me?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He broke into a laugh. “No, I don’t want to—but perhaps I should if you
+did!”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I told you—you’re so sure of me that you can amuse yourself
+with experiments.” She drew back the hand he had regained, and sat
+looking down on him sadly.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not making experiments,” he returned. “Or if I am, it is not on you
+but on myself. I don’t know what effect they are going to have on me—but
+if marrying you is one of them, I will take the risk.”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled faintly. “It would be a great risk, certainly—I have never
+concealed from you how great.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, it’s you who are the coward!” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The soft
+isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed lifted into a
+finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their
+veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s you who are the coward,” he repeated, catching her hands in his.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings: he felt
+as though her heart were beating rather with the stress of a long flight
+than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing back with a little smile
+of warning—“I shall look hideous in dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own
+hats,” she declared.</p>
+
+<p>They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other like
+adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which
+they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling
+itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser
+blue.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect, and
+following the high-road, which wound whiter through the surrounding
+twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.</p>
+
+<p>Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and she
+began to move toward the lane.</p>
+
+<p>“I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after dark,” she
+said, almost impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to regain
+his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable note of
+dryness: “That was not one of our party; the motor was going the other
+way.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know—I know——” She paused, and he saw her redden through the
+twilight. “But I told them I was not well—that I should not go out. Let
+us go down!” she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his
+pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that
+moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered
+hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion
+see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held
+out the cigarettes to her.</p>
+
+<p>She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned
+forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red
+gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble
+into a smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Were you serious?” she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she
+might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without
+having time to select the just note. Selden’s voice was under better
+control. “Why not?” he returned. “You see I took no risks in being so.”
+And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort,
+he added quickly: “Let us go down.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_7">Chapter 7</h2>
+
+<p>It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor’s friendship that her voice,
+in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
+she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.</p>
+
+<p>“All I can say is, Lily, that I can’t make you out!” She leaned back,
+sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
+indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while
+she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case,
+the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.</p>
+
+<p>“If you hadn’t told me you were going in for him seriously—but I’m sure
+you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to
+let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don’t
+suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine
+your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And
+I’m sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even
+Bertha kept her hands off—I will say that—till Lawrence came down and
+you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
+retaliate—why on earth did you interfere with her? You’ve known Lawrence
+Selden for years—why did you behave as if you had just discovered him?
+If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it—you
+could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you
+Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
+Lawrence’s turning up put her in a good humour, and if you’d only let her
+think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you
+this trick. Oh, Lily, you’ll never do anything if you’re not serious!”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
+impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own
+conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor’s reproachful accents.
+But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence.
+“I only took a day off—I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and
+I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p>“He did mean to stay—that’s the worst of it. It shows that he’s run away
+from you; that Bertha’s done her work and poisoned him thoroughly.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily gave a slight laugh. “Oh, if he’s running I’ll overtake him!”</p>
+
+<p>Her friend threw out an arresting hand. “Whatever you do, Lily, do
+nothing!”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. “I don’t mean, literally, to
+take the next train. There are ways——” But she did not go on to specify
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. “There WERE ways—plenty of
+them! I didn’t suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don’t
+deceive yourself—he’s thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to
+his mother, and she’ll protect him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, to the death,” Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.</p>
+
+<p>“How you can LAUGH——” her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
+soberer perception of things with the question: “What was it Bertha
+really told him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t ask me—horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you
+know what I mean—of course there isn’t anything, REALLY; but I suppose
+she brought in Prince Varigliano—and Lord Hubert—and there was some
+story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is my father’s cousin,” Miss Bart interposed.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
+she told Bertha, naturally. They’re all alike, you know: they hold their
+tongues for years, and you think you’re safe, but when their opportunity
+comes they remember everything.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. “It was some money
+I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs’. I repaid it, of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, well, they wouldn’t remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
+gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man—she knew
+just what to tell him!”</p>
+
+<p>In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
+friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
+temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
+had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
+people’s; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
+as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
+statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
+thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
+in the light of Mrs. Trenor’s vigorous comments, the reckoning was
+certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
+gradually reverting to her friend’s view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor’s
+words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
+herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
+imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
+poverty. Judy knew it must be “horrid” for poor Lily to have to stop to
+consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
+have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
+of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
+were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
+char-woman. Mrs. Trenor’s unconsciousness of the real stress of the
+situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her
+friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
+she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of
+indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had
+driven her out again on those dark seas?</p>
+
+<p>If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was
+the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive
+her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of
+occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in
+which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long
+hours of subjection.</p>
+
+<p>She laid a deprecating hand on her friend’s. “Dear Judy! I’m sorry to
+have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have
+some letters for me to answer—let me at least be useful.”</p>
+
+<p>She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption
+of the morning’s task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had
+proved herself unfit for higher uses.</p>
+
+<p>The luncheon-table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney
+and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony
+that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady
+Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to
+lunch at a distant country-house. At such moments of diminished interest
+it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on
+this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed
+and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. “How few of us are
+left! I do so enjoy the quiet—don’t you, Lily? I wish the men would
+always stop away—it’s really much nicer without them. Oh, you don’t
+count, George: one doesn’t have to talk to one’s husband. But I thought
+Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?” she added enquiringly.
+“Didn’t he intend to, Judy? He’s such a nice boy—I wonder what drove
+him away? He is rather shy, and I’m afraid we may have shocked him: he
+has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he
+told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you
+doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and
+always has a lot left over to invest!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. “I do believe it is some one’s duty
+to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to
+realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to
+study the laws of his country.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. “I think he HAS studied the divorce
+laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a
+petition against divorce.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing
+glance at Miss Bart: “I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to
+tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard.”</p>
+
+<p>His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed
+with a sardonic growl: “Poor devil! It isn’t the ship that will do for
+him, it’s the crew.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or the stowaways,” said Miss Corby brightly. “If I contemplated a voyage
+with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Van Osburgh’s vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate
+expression. “I’m sure I don’t see why you laugh at him; I think he’s very
+nice,” she exclaimed; “and, at any rate, a girl who married him would
+always have enough to be comfortable.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but
+it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the
+breast of one of her hearers.</p>
+
+<p>Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than
+any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the
+heiress’s view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her
+mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to
+her. Mrs. Dorset’s pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut
+deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no
+one else—not even Judy Trenor—knew the full magnitude of her folly.</p>
+
+<p>She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered
+request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the
+luncheon-table.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily, dear, if you’ve nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher
+that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at
+four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I’m very
+glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him
+rather severely since she’s been here, and she is so keen about going to
+fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
+It seems to me,” Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, “that most of her
+alimony is paid by other women’s husbands!”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
+friend’s words, and their peculiar application to herself. Why should
+she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
+elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
+unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
+their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
+married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
+for a married woman to borrow money—and Lily was expertly aware of the
+implication involved—but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
+the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
+private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
+society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
+could of course borrow from her women friends—a hundred here or there,
+at the utmost—but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
+looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
+Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
+were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
+to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations was the
+decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
+without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
+continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
+difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
+necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
+next morning for Richfield.</p>
+
+<p>At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
+unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
+which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
+crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: “Halloo! It isn’t
+often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
+to do.”</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
+conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
+caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
+of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from
+the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and
+slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.</p>
+
+<p>The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: “It’s not often I
+have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>“The privilege of driving me home? Well, I’m glad you won the race,
+anyhow. But I know what really happened—my wife sent you. Now didn’t
+she?”</p>
+
+<p>He had the dull man’s unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could
+not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, Judy thinks I’m the safest person for you to be with; and she’s
+quite right,” she rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, is she, though? If she is, it’s because you wouldn’t waste your time
+on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can
+get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who’ve kept a free foot. Let
+me light a cigar, will you? I’ve had a beastly day of it.”</p>
+
+<p>He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to
+her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand
+cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with
+a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him
+handsome!</p>
+
+<p>As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: “Did you have
+such a lot of tiresome things to do?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say so—rather!” Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by
+his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a
+confidential talk. “You don’t know how a fellow has to hustle to keep
+this kind of thing going.” He waved his whip in the direction of the
+Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations.
+“Judy has no idea of what she spends—not that there isn’t plenty to keep
+the thing going,” he interrupted himself, “but a man has got to keep his
+eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to
+live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
+too—luckily for me—but at the pace we go now, I don’t know where I
+should be if it weren’t for taking a flyer now and then. The women all
+think—I mean Judy thinks—I’ve nothing to do but to go downtown once a
+month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of
+hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain
+today, though,” he went on after a moment, “for I did a very neat stroke
+of business, thanks to Stepney’s friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily,
+I wish you’d try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He’s
+going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she’d
+only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him.
+The man is mad to know the people who don’t want to know him, and when a
+fellow’s in that state there is nothing he won’t do for the first woman
+who takes him up.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion’s discourse had
+started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by
+the mention of Mr. Rosedale’s name. She uttered a faint protest.</p>
+
+<p>“But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, hang it—because he’s fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner! Well,
+all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him
+now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he’ll be in
+it whether we want him or not, and then he won’t be giving away a
+half-a-million tip for a dinner.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale
+to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor’s first words. This vast
+mysterious Wall Street world of “tips” and “deals”—might she not find in
+it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard
+of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more
+notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and
+its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed,
+imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a “tip” from Mr.
+Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
+commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in
+a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal
+instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of
+explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always
+scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal
+fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of
+inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not
+open.</p>
+
+<p>As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile.
+“The afternoon is so perfect—don’t you want to drive me a little
+farther? I’ve been rather out of spirits all day, and it’s so restful to
+be away from people, with some one who won’t mind if I’m a little dull.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
+trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
+himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him—not
+battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would
+have given their boots to get such a look from.</p>
+
+<p>“Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is your
+last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of
+everything at bridge last night?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily shook her head with a sigh. “I have had to give up Doucet; and
+bridge too—I can’t afford it. In fact I can’t afford any of the things
+my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I
+don’t play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as
+the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about
+my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a
+favour—the very greatest of favours.”</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of
+apprehension that she read in them.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, of course—if it’s anything I can manage——” He broke off, and she
+guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs.
+Fisher’s methods.</p>
+
+<p>“The greatest of favours,” she rejoined gently. “The fact is, Judy is
+angry with me, and I want you to make my peace.”</p>
+
+<p>“Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense——” his relief broke through in a
+laugh. “Why, you know she’s devoted to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her.
+But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her
+heart—poor dear—on my marrying—marrying a great deal of money.”</p>
+
+<p>She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning
+abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>“A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove—you don’t mean Gryce? What—you do?
+Oh, no, of course I won’t mention it—you can trust me to keep my mouth
+shut—but Gryce—good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring
+yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn’t, eh? And
+so you gave him the sack, and that’s the reason why he lit out by the
+first train this morning?” He leaned back, spreading himself farther
+across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
+discernment. “How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I
+could have told her you’d never put up with such a little milksop!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily sighed more deeply. “I sometimes think,” she murmured, “that men
+understand a woman’s motives better than other women do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Some men—I’m certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy,” he repeated,
+exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you would understand; that’s why I wanted to speak to you,”
+Miss Bart rejoined. “I can’t make that kind of marriage; it’s impossible.
+But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost
+entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she
+makes me no regular allowance, and lately I’ve lost money at cards, and I
+don’t dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but
+there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
+my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income
+of my own, but I’m afraid it’s badly invested, for it seems to bring in
+less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don’t know
+if my aunt’s agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser.” She paused a
+moment, and added in a lighter tone: “I didn’t mean to bore you with all
+this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can’t, at
+present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away
+tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the
+rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
+clothes.”</p>
+
+<p>At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was
+heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of
+indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his
+wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart’s future, he would
+have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better
+marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of
+discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that
+he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the
+assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
+that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he
+was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
+disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if
+she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and
+approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she
+was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
+find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
+Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
+titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
+much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
+her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.</p>
+
+<p>Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
+before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
+her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
+money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
+too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
+understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
+certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
+transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
+general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
+that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
+risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
+within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
+and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.</p>
+
+<p>Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
+repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
+resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
+the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
+herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
+immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
+nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
+shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
+appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
+inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
+consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
+claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
+his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
+which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
+him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_8">Chapter 8</h2>
+
+<p>The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
+scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
+degree to which it effaced her debts.</p>
+
+<p>The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
+absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
+this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
+she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
+order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
+disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
+orders without making the payment!</p>
+
+<p>She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
+listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
+seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
+with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
+hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily’s growing
+intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
+kindness.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m so glad you and Gus have become such good friends,” she said
+approvingly. “It’s too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
+with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
+listen to them when we were engaged—I’m sure he is telling the same ones
+still. And now I shan’t always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
+keep him in a good humour. She’s a perfect vulture, you know; and she
+hasn’t the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for
+her, and I’m sure she never pays when she loses.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
+of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
+There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
+had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
+cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
+Rosedale’s “tip,” and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
+there was the promise of another “big rise”; she understood therefore
+that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
+owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
+demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
+borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
+did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
+of the next “big rise.”</p>
+
+<p>The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on the
+occasion of Jack Stepney’s marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
+the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
+had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
+attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group. The
+truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
+there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
+pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
+before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
+youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.</p>
+
+<p>The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
+paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the “simple country wedding” to
+which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
+the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
+While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
+fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
+threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
+presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
+apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
+often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
+the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
+mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
+her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
+that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
+possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
+rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
+her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
+could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
+enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
+easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.</p>
+
+<p>A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
+in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
+Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
+large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
+After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
+ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
+weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
+brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
+man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
+imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
+Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
+prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
+her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
+did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
+blunder and bring him once more to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of Selden’s dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
+for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
+their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
+and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
+his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
+cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
+Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
+the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
+him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
+else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
+luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
+more than it was worth.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
+delightful had just happened to you!”</p>
+
+<p>The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
+did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities. Miss
+Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
+there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
+freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
+observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
+grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily’s own view of her wavered
+between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
+acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
+dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
+consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
+occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
+inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
+acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the “useful” colour of Gerty
+Farish’s gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to
+let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
+proclaim that you think you are beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have
+taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was something
+irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no higher pleasures,
+and that one might get as much interest and excitement out of life in a
+cramped flat as in the splendours of the Van Osburgh establishment.
+Today, however, her chirping enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They
+seemed only to throw her own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and
+give a soaring vastness to her scheme of life.</p>
+
+<p>“Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else leaves
+the dining-room!” suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in her friend’s.
+It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental and unenvious interest
+in all the details of a wedding: she was the kind of person who always
+kept her handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a
+box of wedding-cake.</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t everything beautifully done?” she pursued, as they entered the
+distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van Osburgh’s bridal
+spoils. “I always say no one does things better than cousin Grace! Did
+you ever taste anything more delicious than that MOUSSE of lobster with
+champagne sauce? I made up my mind weeks ago that I wouldn’t miss this
+wedding, and just fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence
+Selden heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving
+me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him
+at Sherry’s. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
+myself!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
+cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time in such
+an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a vague pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you see him often?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and then we
+do a play together; but lately I haven’t seen much of him. He doesn’t
+look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled. The dear fellow! I do
+wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so today, but he said he
+didn’t care for the really nice ones, and the other kind didn’t care for
+him—but that was just his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl
+who WASN’T nice. Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?”</p>
+
+<p>They had paused before the table on which the bride’s jewels were
+displayed, and Lily’s heart gave an envious throb as she caught the
+refraction of light from their surfaces—the milky gleam of perfectly
+matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet,
+the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding
+diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied
+art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily’s veins like
+wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized
+the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and
+refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and
+the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant—it’s as big as a
+dinner-plate! Who can have given it?” Miss Farish bent short-sightedly
+over the accompanying card. “MR. SIMON ROSEDALE. What, that horrid man?
+Oh, yes—I remember he’s a friend of Jack’s, and I suppose cousin Grace
+had to ask him here today; but she must rather hate having to let Gwen
+accept such a present from him.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh’s reluctance, but was aware of
+Miss Farish’s habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the
+persons least likely to be encumbered by them.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, if Gwen doesn’t care to be seen wearing it she can always exchange
+it for something else,” she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, here is something so much prettier,” Miss Farish continued. “Do
+look at this exquisite white sapphire. I’m sure the person who chose it
+must have taken particular pains. What is the name? Percy Gryce? Ah,
+then I’m not surprised!” She smiled significantly as she replaced the
+card. “Of course you’ve heard that he’s perfectly devoted to Evie Van
+Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about it—it’s quite a romance! He
+met her first at the George Dorsets’, only about six weeks ago, and it’s
+just the nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don’t mean the
+money—of course she has plenty of her own—but she’s such a quiet
+stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so
+they are exactly suited to each other.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed.
+Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her
+brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull
+and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness,
+had “placed” one by one in enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls
+who grow up in the shelter of a mother’s love—a mother who knows how to
+contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage
+of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
+cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned,
+may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it
+takes a mother’s unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
+safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of failure.
+Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy Gryce’s millions be
+joined to another great fortune, why should this clumsy girl be put in
+possession of powers she would never know how to use?</p>
+
+<p>She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her arm,
+and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of vexation:
+what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had wandered off to
+the next table, and they were alone.</p>
+
+<p>Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
+unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
+undisguised approval.</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!” He had slipped insensibly into
+the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the right moment
+to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and women called each
+other by their Christian names; it was only on Trenor’s lips that the
+familiar address had an unpleasant significance.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance, “have
+you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean to
+duplicate at Tiffany’s tomorrow? I’ve got a cheque for you in my pocket
+that will go a long way in that line!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual, and the
+room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance assured her
+that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of pleasure replaced her
+apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>“Another dividend?” she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the desire
+not to be overheard.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I’ve pulled off four thou’
+for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you’ll begin to think
+you’re a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you won’t think poor old
+Gus such an awful ass as some people do.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think you the kindest of friends; but I can’t thank you properly now.”</p>
+
+<p>She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
+hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone—and how glad she
+was that they were not! The news filled her with the glow produced by a
+sudden cessation of physical pain. The world was not so stupid and
+blundering after all: now and then a stroke of luck came to the
+unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began to rise: it was
+characteristic of her that one trifling piece of good fortune should give
+wings to all her hopes. Instantly came the reflection that Percy Gryce
+was not irretrievably lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of
+recapturing him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
+have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping
+to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
+countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an
+air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence
+was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily quickly
+transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of her gratitude
+seemed not to have brought the complete gratification she had meant it to
+give.</p>
+
+<p>“Hang thanking me—I don’t want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like the
+chance to say two words to you now and then,” he grumbled. “I thought you
+were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I’ve hardly laid eyes
+on you for the last month. Why can’t you come back to Bellomont this
+evening? We’re all alone, and Judy is as cross as two sticks. Do come and
+cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I’ll run you over in the motor, and you
+can telephone your maid to bring your traps from town by the next train.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. “I wish I
+could—but it’s quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and I
+must be with her for the next few days.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ve seen a good deal less of you since we’ve got to be such pals
+than I used to when you were Judy’s friend,” he continued with
+unconscious penetration.</p>
+
+<p>“When I was Judy’s friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you say the
+most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would tire of me
+much sooner than Judy—but come and see me at my aunt’s the next
+afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet talk, and you
+can tell me how I had better invest my fortune.”</p>
+
+<p>It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had absented
+herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other visits to pay; but
+she now began to feel that the reckoning she had thus contrived to evade
+had rolled up interest in the interval.</p>
+
+<p>The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing to
+Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he said:
+“Oh, I don’t know that I can promise you a fresh tip every day. But
+there’s one thing you might do for me; and that is, just to be a little
+civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to dine when we get to
+town, but I can’t induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would
+let me bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don’t
+believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can tell you
+he’s a chap it pays to be decent to.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words which
+seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an unexpectedly easy
+way of acquitting her debt; and had she not reasons of her own for
+wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, bring him by all means,” she said smiling; “perhaps I can get a tip
+out of him on my own account.”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with a look
+which made her change colour.</p>
+
+<p>“I say, you know—you’ll please remember he’s a blooming bounder,” he
+said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window near
+which they had been standing.</p>
+
+<p>The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for space and
+fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where only a few men
+were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while scattered couples
+strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted borders of the
+flower-garden.</p>
+
+<p>As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and she
+found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which his
+nearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.
+They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that
+episode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to be
+less conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than the
+satisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in
+masculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
+reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor,
+and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant
+to rest a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
+Selden’s manner always conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>“This is luck,” he said smiling. “I was wondering if I should be able to
+have a word with you before the special snatches us away. I came with
+Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train, but I am sure
+she is still extracting sentimental solace from the wedding presents. She
+appears to regard their number and value as evidence of the disinterested
+affection of the contracting parties.”</p>
+
+<p>There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and as he
+spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and letting his
+eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace, she felt with a
+faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the
+footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her
+vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to
+him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
+diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” she said, “I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with
+romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my
+self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions
+were.”</p>
+
+<p>The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity. It
+seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought, on the contrary,” he returned lightly, “that I had been the
+means of proving they were more important to you than anything else.”</p>
+
+<p>It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden
+obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly,
+like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the
+faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go
+alone!</p>
+
+<p>The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latent
+chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that
+his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood
+to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in a world
+apart with her.</p>
+
+<p>“At least you can’t think worse things of me than you say!” she exclaimed
+with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the flow of
+comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the reappearance of Gus
+Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his wake.</p>
+
+<p>“Hang it, Lily, I thought you’d given me the slip: Rosedale and I have
+been hunting all over for you!”</p>
+
+<p>His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
+detected in Rosedale’s eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and the
+idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful by
+the sense of Selden’s surprise that she should number Rosedale among her
+acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued to
+stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smile
+at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the
+privilege of being seen with her.</p>
+
+<p>It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but
+Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene,
+and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to
+exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden’s suspecting that there was any
+need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial
+phrases of politeness. Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant
+attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level
+with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
+silence implied.</p>
+
+<p>He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered the
+plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his moustache;
+then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said, with a
+side-glance at Selden: “Upon my soul, I never saw a more ripping get-up.
+Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go to see at the
+Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don’t go to her too!”</p>
+
+<p>The words were projected sharply against Lily’s silence, and she saw in a
+flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In ordinary talk
+they might have passed unheeded; but following on her prolonged pause
+they acquired a special meaning. She felt, without looking, that Selden
+had immediately seized it, and would inevitably connect the allusion with
+her visit to himself. The consciousness increased her irritation against
+Rosedale, but also her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
+propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden’s presence.</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know the other women don’t go to my dress-maker?” she
+returned. “You see I’m not afraid to give her address to my friends!”</p>
+
+<p>Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this privileged
+circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification, and a knowing
+smile drew up his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove, you needn’t be!” he declared. “You could give ’em the whole
+outfit and win at a canter!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, that’s nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would carry
+me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or some innocent
+drink before we all have to rush for the train.”</p>
+
+<p>She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through the
+gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her throbbed with
+the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the light
+surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted: she did not
+mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth about Percy Gryce.
+Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty
+withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most
+of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few
+minutes—the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life
+which she most wished him to ignore—increased her longing for shelter,
+for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation
+would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in
+an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.</p>
+
+<p>Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of an
+audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal actors had
+left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily could discover
+neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh. That both should be
+missing struck her with foreboding; and she charmed Mr. Rosedale by
+proposing that they should make their way to the conservatories at the
+farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long
+suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of
+being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off
+as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion’s
+self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen
+with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search.
+The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and
+Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for
+a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came
+upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the
+consciousness of duty performed.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the tired
+hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots in a
+kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly fixed, and
+she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture. “My dear Lily, I
+haven’t had time for a word with you, and now I suppose you are just off.
+Have you seen Evie? She’s been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to
+tell you her little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already.
+The engagement is not to be announced till next week—but you are such a
+friend of Mr. Gryce’s that they both wished you to be the first to know
+of their happiness.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_9">Chapter 9</h2>
+
+<p>In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
+therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue
+residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze
+who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey of that
+deserted thoroughfare.</p>
+
+<p>The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the
+domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through” the linen
+and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner
+folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for
+lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield
+up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths
+and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed
+in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.</p>
+
+<p>It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on the
+afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The journey back to
+town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves. Though Evie Van
+Osburgh’s engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which
+the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed;
+and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and
+anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of
+innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation
+evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included
+a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in
+the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear
+herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner
+between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
+by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to feel
+the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed
+to a deeper self-disgust.</p>
+
+<p>As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a physical
+outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She revolted from
+the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston’s black walnut, from the
+slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the mingled odour of sapolio
+and furniture-polish that met her at the door.</p>
+
+<p>The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she was
+arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds. Gathering up
+her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture; and as she did so
+she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same
+situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was
+again descending the staircase from Selden’s rooms; and looking down to
+remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met
+by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar
+circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on
+crimson elbows, examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the
+same apparent reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss
+Bart was on her own ground.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail,” she said
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of excuse,
+she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth across the
+landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter swept by. It was
+insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such creatures about the
+house; and Lily entered her room resolved that the woman should be
+dismissed that evening.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance:
+since early morning she had been shut up with her maid, going over her
+furs, a process which formed the culminating episode in the drama of
+household renovation. In the evening also Lily found herself alone, for
+her aunt, who rarely dined out, had responded to the summons of a Van
+Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
+unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
+turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
+the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
+buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s existence.</p>
+
+<p>She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
+domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
+had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
+that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
+been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
+of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
+time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
+as she had said to Selden—people were tired of her. They would welcome
+her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart. She
+knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story. There were
+moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
+remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
+beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
+herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
+sheds perfume.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
+returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
+dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
+Peniston’s interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
+Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
+of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.</p>
+
+<p>Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
+as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
+confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
+a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
+the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
+Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
+manners and vicarious interests, who “ran in” to sit with Mrs. Peniston
+when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
+dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
+admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in
+the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented
+the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston’s temperate career.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her
+excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the
+person who performs them. She greatly preferred the brilliant and
+unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the
+other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that
+the drawing-room should be “done over.” But when it came to hunting for
+missing napkins, or helping to decide whether the backstairs needed
+re-carpeting, Grace’s judgment was certainly sounder than Lily’s: not to
+mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
+soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean of
+itself, without extraneous assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier—Mrs.
+Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was “company”—Lily seemed to
+watch her own figure retreating down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to
+a middle-age like Grace Stepney’s. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor
+and her friends she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston;
+whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims
+of others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.</p>
+
+<p>A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty house,
+roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was as though all
+the weariness of the past months had culminated in the vacuity of that
+interminable evening. If only the ring meant a summons from the outer
+world—a token that she was still remembered and wanted!</p>
+
+<p>After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announcement
+that there was a person outside who was asking to see Miss Bart; and on
+Lily’s pressing for a more specific description, she added:</p>
+
+<p>“It’s Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won’t say what she wants.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman in
+a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light. The
+glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face and
+the reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.
+Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you wish to see me?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like to say a word to you, Miss.” The tone was neither
+aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker’s errand.
+Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to withdraw beyond
+ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.</p>
+
+<p>She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and closed
+the door when they had entered.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it that you wish?” she enquired.</p>
+
+<p>The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms folded
+in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small parcel wrapped
+in dirty newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>“I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart.” She spoke
+the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a
+part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like a
+threat.</p>
+
+<p>“You have found something belonging to me?” she asked, extending her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Haffen drew back. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess it’s mine as
+much as anybody’s,” she returned.</p>
+
+<p>Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her visitor’s
+manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in certain directions,
+there was nothing in her experience to prepare her for the exact
+significance of the present scene. She felt, however, that it must be
+ended as promptly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked for
+me?”</p>
+
+<p>The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared to
+answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way back to make a
+beginning, and it was only after a pause that she replied: “My husband
+was janitor to the Benedick till the first of the month; since then he
+can’t get nothing to do.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily remained silent and she continued: “It wasn’t no fault of our own,
+neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for, and we was
+put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had a long sickness
+last winter, and an operation that ate up all we’d put by; and it’s hard
+for me and the children, Haffen being so long out of a job.”</p>
+
+<p>After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a place for
+her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady’s intervention
+with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always getting what she
+wanted that she was used to being appealed to as an intermediary, and,
+relieved of her vague apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional
+formula.</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry you have been in trouble,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that we have, Miss, and it’s on’y just beginning. If on’y we’d ’a
+got another situation—but the agent, he’s dead against us. It ain’t no
+fault of ours, neither, but——”</p>
+
+<p>At this point Lily’s impatience overcame her. “If you have anything to
+say to me——” she interposed.</p>
+
+<p>The woman’s resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Miss; I’m coming to that,” she said. She paused again, with her
+eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: “When
+we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen’s rooms;
+leastways, I swep’ ’em out on Saturdays. Some of the gentlemen got the
+greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper
+baskets ’d be fairly brimming, and papers falling over on the floor.
+Maybe havin’ so many is how they get so careless. Some of ’em is worse
+than others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
+carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore ’em in little bits in
+summer. But sometimes he’d have so many he’d just bunch ’em together, the
+way the others did, and tear the lot through once—like this.”</p>
+
+<p>While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her hand,
+and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table between Miss
+Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn in two; but with a
+rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together and smoothed out the page.</p>
+
+<p>A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the presence
+of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured—the kind of vileness of
+which people whispered, but which she had never thought of as touching
+her own life. She drew back with a motion of disgust, but her withdrawal
+was checked by a sudden discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston’s
+chandelier she had recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a
+large disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly
+disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
+pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily’s ear as though she had heard them
+spoken.</p>
+
+<p>At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
+understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha Dorset,
+and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was no date, but the
+blackness of the ink proved the writing to be comparatively recent. The
+packet in Mrs. Haffen’s hand doubtless contained more letters of the same
+kind—a dozen, Lily conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her
+was short, but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she
+was conscious of reading them, told a long history—a history over which,
+for the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
+shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless “good situations”
+of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the
+volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo
+glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek.
+Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given
+its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for
+having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender
+who is found out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The
+code of Lily’s world decreed that a woman’s husband should be the only
+judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while she had
+the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man
+of George Dorset’s temper there could be no thought of condonation—the
+possessor of his wife’s letters could overthrow with a touch the whole
+structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha Dorset’s secret
+had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged
+Lily’s disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust
+prevailed—all her instinctive resistances, of taste, of training, of
+blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest
+sense was one of personal contamination.</p>
+
+<p>She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible between
+herself and her visitor. “I know nothing of these letters,” she said; “I
+have no idea why you have brought them here.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. “I’ll tell you why, Miss. I brought ’em
+to you to sell, because I ain’t got no other way of raising money, and if
+we don’t pay our rent by tomorrow night we’ll be put out. I never done
+anythin’ of the kind before, and if you’d speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr.
+Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on again at the Benedick—I seen you
+talking to Mr. Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr.
+Selden’s rooms——”</p>
+
+<p>The blood rushed to Lily’s forehead. She understood now—Mrs. Haffen
+supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap of her
+anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but an obscure
+impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden’s name had started a new
+train of thought. Bertha Dorset’s letters were nothing to her—they might
+go where the current of chance carried them! But Selden was inextricably
+involved in their fate. Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such
+exposure; and in this instance the flash of divination which had carried
+the meaning of the letters to Lily’s brain had revealed also that they
+were appeals—repeated and therefore probably unanswered—for the renewal
+of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact that
+the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands would
+convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world holds it least
+pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider where a man of
+Dorset’s ticklish balance was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was aware only
+of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued, and that therefore
+she must obtain possession of them. Beyond that her mind did not travel.
+She had, indeed, a quick vision of returning the packet to Bertha Dorset,
+and of the opportunities the restitution offered; but this thought lit up
+abysses from which she shrank back ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had already
+opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All the letters
+had been pieced together with strips of thin paper. Some were in small
+fragments, the others merely torn in half. Though there were not many,
+thus spread out they nearly covered the table. Lily’s glance fell on a
+word here and there—then she said in a low voice: “What do you wish me
+to pay you?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Haffen’s face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that the
+young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman to make
+the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than she had
+foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
+expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price named,
+and after a moment’s hesitation, met it by a counter-offer of half the
+amount.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
+outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to restore
+them to their wrapping.</p>
+
+<p>“I guess they’re worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor has got
+to live as well as the rich,” she observed sententiously.</p>
+
+
+<p>Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
+resistance.</p>
+
+<p>“You are mistaken,” she said indifferently. “I have offered all I am
+willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
+them.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
+know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
+rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
+a word of this commanding young lady’s might set in motion.</p>
+
+<p>She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
+that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
+she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
+honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
+letters mustn’t go any farther.</p>
+
+<p>Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
+greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones. The
+idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
+that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
+original demand.</p>
+
+<p>She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
+the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
+minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
+her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
+closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen’s
+dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
+do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
+them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
+keep them—to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
+their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
+be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston’s icy
+drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
+lamps, was never lit except when there was company.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
+opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
+Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
+trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
+clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
+always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
+kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
+was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
+being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.
+“I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it’s
+extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly.”</p>
+
+<p>Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the
+glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. “My dear, you look tired; I
+suppose it’s the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full
+of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us
+about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the CONSOMME: a
+wedding breakfast should always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn’t care
+for the bridesmaids’ dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
+they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste’s, but she says they
+didn’t look it. I’m glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade
+of salmon-pink wouldn’t have suited you.” Mrs. Peniston delighted in
+discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
+part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue
+of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in
+the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
+extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably
+careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed
+to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh’s gown, and could not even say
+whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride’s table:
+Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener
+than as a narrator.</p>
+
+<p>“Really, Lily, I don’t see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding,
+if you don’t remember what happened or whom you saw there. When I was a
+girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went to, and write the
+names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion
+favours till after your uncle’s death, when it seemed unsuitable to have
+so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I
+remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van
+Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it’s wonderful how she
+notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress
+was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must
+have come from Paquin.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
+surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece
+between two malachite vases, passed her lace handkerchief between the
+helmet and its visor.</p>
+
+<p>“I knew it—the parlour-maid never dusts there!” she exclaimed,
+triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
+reseating herself, she went on: “Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
+best-dressed woman at the wedding. I’ve no doubt her dress DID cost more
+than any one else’s, but I can’t quite like the idea—a combination of
+sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who
+won’t take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa
+at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject’s home life—a most
+peculiar arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
+herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things and she
+was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better;
+she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
+Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
+influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in that
+silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has
+been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really
+engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it
+all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven—she had almost
+despaired of marrying Evie.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed itself,
+not to the furniture, but to her niece.</p>
+
+<p>“Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you were to
+marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they had stopped
+with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite sure there was an
+engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left unexpectedly one morning,
+they all thought he had rushed to town for the ring.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily rose and moved toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>“I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed,” she said; and Mrs.
+Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel sustaining
+the late Mr. Peniston’s crayon-portrait was not exactly in line with the
+sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded brow to her kiss.</p>
+
+<p>In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the grate.
+It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at least she
+could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her aunt’s
+disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however, but dropping
+into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was large and
+comfortably-furnished—it was the envy and admiration of poor Grace
+Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious
+appointments of the guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily’s existence
+were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
+bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston’s bedroom, and
+the magenta “flock” wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early ’sixties,
+was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had
+tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches,
+in the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
+surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as
+she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the
+setting she had pictured for herself—an apartment which should surpass
+the complicated luxury of her friends’ surroundings by the whole extent
+of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior;
+in which every tint and line should combine to enhance her beauty and
+give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical
+ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
+the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunt’s words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
+vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding her up
+to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of their little
+group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than any other
+sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon which could flay
+its victims without the shedding of blood. Her cheek burned at the
+recollection, and she rose and caught up the letters. She no longer meant
+to destroy them: that intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion
+of Mrs. Peniston’s words.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed
+the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and
+deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a
+flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of
+buying them.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_10">Chapter 10</h2>
+
+<p>The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or two
+notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to Bellomont;
+but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to remain with her
+aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of her solitary existence
+with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement of spending her
+newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the days.</p>
+
+<p>All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in, and
+whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting aside a
+part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of the risks of the
+opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to feel that, for a few
+months at least, she would be independent of her friends’ bounty, that
+she could show herself abroad without wondering whether some penetrating
+eye would detect in her dress the traces of Judy Trenor’s refurbished
+splendour. The fact that the money freed her temporarily from all minor
+obligations obscured her sense of the greater one it represented, and
+having never before known what it was to command so large a sum, she
+lingered delectably over the amusement of spending it.</p>
+
+<p>It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she had spent
+an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most complicated
+elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered the same
+establishment with the modest object of having her watch repaired. Lily
+was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to defer the purchase of
+the dressing-case till she should receive the bill for her new
+opera cloak, and the resolve made her feel much richer than when she had
+entered the shop. In this mood of self-approval she had a sympathetic eye
+for others, and she was struck by her friend’s air of dejection.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting of a
+struggling charity in which she was interested. The object of the
+association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a reading-room and
+other modest distractions, where young women of the class employed in
+downtown offices might find a home when out of work, or in need of rest,
+and the first year’s financial report showed so deplorably small a
+balance that Miss Farish, who was convinced of the urgency of the work,
+felt proportionately discouraged by the small amount of interest it
+aroused. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily,
+and she was often bored by the relation of her friend’s philanthropic
+efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast
+between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty’s
+“cases.” These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps pretty, some
+not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself
+leading such a life as theirs—a life in which achievement seemed as
+squalid as failure—and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
+price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing out her
+little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the amount into Miss
+Farish’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
+moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a
+person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing
+good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her
+horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy. Moreover,
+by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of
+generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in
+which she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish’s surprise and
+gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense
+of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.</p>
+
+<p>About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend the
+Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation was one
+which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready response, for the
+party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was ostensibly given by a lady of
+obscure origin and indomitable social ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily
+had hitherto avoided. Now, however, she was disposed to coincide with
+Mrs. Fisher’s view, that it didn’t matter who gave the party, as long as
+things were well done; and doing things well (under competent direction)
+was Mrs. Wellington Bry’s strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
+as “Welly” Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had already
+sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to her
+determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry Fisher, she
+was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing herself entirely
+to that lady’s guidance. Everything, accordingly, was well done, for
+there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher’s prodigality when she was not spending
+her own money, and as she remarked to her pupil, a good cook was the best
+introduction to society. If the company was not as select as the CUISINE,
+the Welly Brys at least had the satisfaction of figuring for the first
+time in the society columns in company with one or two noticeable names;
+and foremost among these was of course Miss Bart’s. The young lady was
+treated by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the
+mood when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
+Bry’s admiration was a mirror in which Lily’s self-complacency recovered
+its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those
+which will sustain the weight of human vanity; and the sense of being of
+importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the
+gratifying consciousness of power. If these people paid court to her it
+proved that she was still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired;
+and she was not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her
+fineness, in developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware from
+the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp cold and
+hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the influences of the
+winter woods. She returned to town in a glow of rejuvenation, conscious
+of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a fresh elasticity in her muscles. The
+future seemed full of a vague promise, and all her apprehensions were
+swept out of sight on the buoyant current of her mood.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise of a
+visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential hour when the
+tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly expectancy; and his
+manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to the intimacy of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her lucky
+speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but there was
+something in the quality of his geniality which chilled her own, and she
+was conscious of marking each step in their acquaintance by a fresh
+blunder.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rosedale—making himself promptly at home in an adjoining easy-chair,
+and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: “You ought to go to my
+man for something really good”—appeared totally unconscious of the
+repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness behind the urn. It was
+perhaps her very manner of holding herself aloof that appealed to his
+collector’s passion for the rare and unattainable. He gave, at any rate,
+no sign of resenting it and seemed prepared to supply in his own manner
+all the ease that was lacking in hers.</p>
+
+<p>His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box on the
+opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively: “Mrs. Fisher
+is coming, and I’ve secured a tremendous admirer of yours, who’ll never
+forgive me if you don’t accept.”</p>
+
+<p>As Lily’s silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he added with
+a confidential smile: “Gus Trenor has promised to come to town on
+purpose. I fancy he’d go a good deal farther for the pleasure of seeing
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful enough
+to hear her name coupled with Trenor’s, and on Rosedale’s lips the
+allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.</p>
+
+<p>“The Trenors are my best friends—I think we should all go a long way to
+see each other,” she said, absorbing herself in the preparation of fresh
+tea.</p>
+
+<p>Her visitor’s smile grew increasingly intimate. “Well, I wasn’t thinking
+of Mrs. Trenor at the moment—they say Gus doesn’t always, you know.”
+Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right note, he added,
+with a well-meant effort at diversion: “How’s your luck been going in
+Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a nice little pile for you
+last month.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that her
+hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady them; but
+her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid the tremor might
+communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke, however, it was in a
+tone of perfect lightness.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, yes—I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor, who
+helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks instead of a
+mortgage, as my aunt’s agent wanted me to do; and as it happened, I made
+a lucky ‘turn’—is that what you call it? For you make a great many
+yourself, I believe.”</p>
+
+<p>She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her attitude,
+and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance and manner, a
+step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct always nerved her
+to successful dissimulation, and it was not the first time she had used
+her beauty to divert attention from an inconvenient topic.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
+acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having comported
+himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He had always believed
+he had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt manner
+in which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had “come into line,”
+confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Her
+way of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a
+tribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The
+girl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
+advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage of
+her nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible that
+Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With all his faults,
+Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions, and was the less likely to
+overstep them because they were so purely instinctive. But Lily recalled
+with a pang that there were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided
+to her, Gus “talked foolishly”: in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word
+had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
+shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit
+enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not
+uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of
+supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general
+dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane,
+the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial
+conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions
+with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr.
+Rosedale’s drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him
+with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
+flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice
+to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt of the
+expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening night of the
+opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised to take him up that
+winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of being first in the field.</p>
+
+<p>For a day or two after Rosedale’s visit, Lily’s thoughts were dogged by
+the consciousness of Trenor’s shadowy claim, and she wished she had a
+clearer notion of the exact nature of the transaction which seemed to
+have put her in his power; but her mind shrank from any unusual
+application, and she was always helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover
+she had not seen Trenor since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in
+his continued absence the trace of Rosedale’s words was soon effaced by
+other impressions.</p>
+
+<p>When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
+completely vanished that the sight of Trenor’s ruddy countenance in the
+back of Mr. Rosedale’s box filled her with a sense of pleasant
+reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity of
+appearing as Rosedale’s guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and it was a
+relief to find herself supported by any one of her own set—for Mrs.
+Fisher’s social habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify
+Miss Bart’s.</p>
+
+<p>To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty in
+public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of dress, the
+insistency of Trenor’s gaze merged itself in the general stream of
+admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to
+be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength
+and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one’s self
+lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
+counterpart of genius!</p>
+
+<p>All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happy
+shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, the
+cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. But
+brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt
+to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still
+performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If
+Lily’s poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought
+that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor,
+the latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight of
+these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily look
+smarter in her life, that there wasn’t a woman in the house who showed
+off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the
+opportunity of making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of
+gazing at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the back of
+the box, where they found themselves alone between two acts, Trenor said,
+without preamble, and in a tone of sulky authority: “Look here, Lily, how
+is a fellow ever to see anything of you? I’m in town three or four days
+in the week, and you know a line to the club will always find me, but you
+don’t seem to remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip
+out of me.”</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any
+easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment
+for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows
+by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m very much flattered by your wanting to see me,” she returned,
+essaying lightness instead, “but, unless you have mislaid my address, it
+would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt’s—in fact, I
+rather expected you to look me up there.”</p>
+
+<p>If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a
+failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows
+that made him look his dullest when he was angry: “Hang going to your
+aunt’s, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps
+talking to you! You know I’m not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw—I’d
+always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on. But why
+can’t we go off somewhere on a little lark together—a nice quiet little
+expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the
+station?”</p>
+
+<p>He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she
+fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on
+his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
+tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: “I
+don’t see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not
+always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what
+afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice
+quiet talk.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hang talking! That’s what you always say,” returned Trenor, whose
+expletives lacked variety. “You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh
+wedding—but the plain English of it is that, now you’ve got what you
+wanted out of me, you’d rather have any other fellow about.”</p>
+
+<p>His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with
+annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive
+hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be foolish, Gus; I can’t let you talk to me in that ridiculous
+way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn’t we take a walk in the
+Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it’s amusing to be rustic in
+town, and if you like I’ll meet you there, and we’ll go and feed the
+squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola.”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took
+the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.</p>
+
+<p>“All right, then: that’s a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three
+o’clock, at the end of the Mall. I’ll be there sharp, remember; you won’t
+go back on me, Lily?”</p>
+
+<p>But to Miss Bart’s relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by
+the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.</p>
+
+<p>Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on
+the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at
+Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled
+the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom
+the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and
+distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions.
+But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out
+thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she
+was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the
+trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to
+him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
+kindness.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,” he began
+complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this year and last,
+except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven’t got
+new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me through a course of this
+every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian nights—then she comes late, and
+there’s time to digest. But when they give Wagner we have to rush
+dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in
+front and pleurisy in the back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without
+drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don’t make any
+difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why
+he’s alive; I suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my
+wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s
+sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones, I mean;
+that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t worse than the
+music. Some of ’em have long hair, and they start an argument with the
+soup, and don’t notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is
+the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton
+brings them to the house—he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he
+are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of ’em if
+she chose, and I don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I
+say is: ‘Don’t let me see ’em eat!’”</p>
+
+<p>The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of
+pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing
+surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont
+episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a
+start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died
+out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST
+INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the
+apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset’s letters, she might have
+continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession
+had fed her resentment to satiety.</p>
+
+<p>She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie an
+escape from Trenor’s importunities.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_11">Chapter 11</h2>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning. Fifth
+Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging upward to the
+fashionable quarters about the Park, where illuminated windows and
+outspread awnings betokened the usual routine of hospitality. Other
+tributary currents crossed the mainstream, bearing their freight to the
+theatres, restaurants or opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded
+watch-tower of her upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the
+chronic volume of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward
+a Van Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
+that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry’s.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as keenly
+as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she
+enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who
+take part must proverbially forego. No one could have kept a more
+accurate record of social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring
+finger on the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
+extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special
+memory for the vicissitudes of the “new people” who rose to the surface
+with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or
+landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers; and she was apt
+to display a remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate,
+so that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost always
+able to say to Grace Stepney—the recipient of her prophecies—that she
+had known exactly what would happen.</p>
+
+<p>This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as that in
+which everybody “felt poor” except the Welly Brys and Mr. Simon Rosedale.
+It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where prices fell in accordance
+with that peculiar law which proves railway stocks and bales of cotton to
+be more sensitive to the allotment of executive power than many estimable
+citizens trained to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes
+supposed to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
+dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion
+sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito, general
+entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners
+became the fashion.</p>
+
+<p>But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of
+the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any
+magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the
+golden coach. The mere fact of growing richer at a time when most
+people’s investments are shrinking, is calculated to attract envious
+attention; and according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale
+had found the secret of performing this miracle.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and there
+was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the victims of
+the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had made the same
+number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue, filled a
+picture gallery with old masters, entertained all New York in it, and
+been smuggled out of the country between a trained nurse and a doctor,
+while his creditors mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests
+explained to each other that they had dined with him only because they
+wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
+career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his
+race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was
+prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season afforded him an
+unusual opportunity to shine, and he set about with patient industry to
+form a background for his growing glory. Mrs. Fisher was of immense
+service to him at this period. She had set off so many newcomers on the
+social stage that she was like one of those pieces of stock scenery which
+tell the experienced spectator exactly what is going to take place. But
+Mr. Rosedale wanted, in the long run, a more individual environment. He
+was sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never have
+credited him with perceiving, because he had no corresponding variations
+of manner; and it was becoming more and more clear to him that Miss Bart
+herself possessed precisely the complementary qualities needed to round
+off his social personality.</p>
+
+<p>Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston’s vision.
+Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to overlook the MINUTIAE
+of the foreground, and she was much more likely to know where Carry
+Fisher had found the Welly Brys’ CHEF for them, than what was happening
+to her own niece. She was not, however, without purveyors of information
+ready to supplement her deficiencies. Grace Stepney’s mind was like a
+kind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn
+by a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
+inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how many
+trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney’s head. She
+was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed
+that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for
+brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state. She knew that
+Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she
+inspired the same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a
+Gerty Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they differed
+from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss Farish’s heart was a
+fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney’s a precise register of facts
+as manifested in their relation to herself. She had sensibilities which,
+to Lily, would have seemed comic in a person with a freckled nose and red
+eyelids, who lived in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston’s
+drawing-room; but poor Grace’s limitations gave them a more concentrated
+inner life, as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser
+efflorescence. She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did
+not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant, but
+because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less mortifying to
+believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to
+assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. Even such
+scant civilities as Lily accorded to Mr. Rosedale would have made Miss
+Stepney her friend for life; but how could she foresee that such a friend
+was worth cultivating? How, moreover, can a young woman who has never
+been ignored measure the pang which this injury inflicts? And, lastly,
+how could Lily, accustomed to choose between a pressure of engagements,
+guess that she had mortally offended Miss Stepney by causing her to be
+excluded from one of Mrs. Peniston’s infrequent dinner-parties?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense of family
+obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys’ return from their honeymoon she
+felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room lamps and extract
+her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston’s rare
+entertainments were preceded by days of heart-rending vacillation as to
+every detail of the feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern
+of the table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary
+discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as
+the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in it. For a week
+the prospect had lighted up Miss Stepney’s colourless existence; then she
+had been given to understand that it would be more convenient to have her
+another day. Miss Stepney knew exactly what had happened. Lily, to whom
+family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her
+aunt that a dinner of “smart” people would be much more to the taste of
+the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her niece
+in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce Grace’s exile.
+After all, Grace could come any other day; why should she mind being put
+off?</p>
+
+<p>It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other day—and
+because she knew her relations were in the secret of her unoccupied
+evenings—that this incident loomed gigantically on her horizon. She was
+aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and dull resentment was turned
+to active animosity.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the dinner,
+laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of
+Fifth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>“Gus Trenor?—Lily and Gus Trenor?” she said, growing so suddenly pale
+that her visitor was almost alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don’t mean....”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what you DO mean,” said Mrs. Peniston, with a frightened
+quiver in her small fretful voice. “Such things were never heard of in my
+day. And my own niece! I’m not sure I understand you. Do people say he’s
+in love with her?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston’s horror was genuine. Though she boasted an unequalled
+familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she had the innocence
+of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a part of “history,” and to
+whom it never occurs that the scandals she reads of in lesson-hours may
+be repeating themselves in the next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her
+imagination shrouded, like the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of
+course, that society was “very much changed,” and that many women her
+mother would have thought “peculiar” were now in a position to be
+critical about their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils of
+divorce with her rector, and had felt thankful at times that Lily was
+still unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could attach to a young
+girl’s name, above all that it could be lightly coupled with that of a
+married man, was so new to her that she was as much aghast as if she had
+been accused of leaving her carpets down all summer, or of violating any
+of the other cardinal laws of house-keeping.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel the
+superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was really pitiable
+to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston! She smiled at the
+latter’s question. “People always say unpleasant things—and certainly
+they’re a great deal together. A friend of mine met them the other
+afternoon in the Park—quite late, after the lamps were lit. It’s a pity
+Lily makes herself so conspicuous.”</p>
+
+<p>“CONSPICUOUS!” gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her voice
+to mitigate the horror. “What sort of things do they say? That he means
+to get a divorce and marry her?”</p>
+
+<p>Grace Stepney laughed outright. “Dear me, no! He would hardly do that.
+It—it’s a flirtation—nothing more.”</p>
+
+<p>“A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to tell me
+that, with Lily’s looks and advantages, she could find no better use for
+her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost old enough to be her
+father?” This argument had such a convincing ring that it gave Mrs.
+Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up her work, while she waited for
+Grace Stepney to rally her scattered forces.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. “That’s the worst of
+it—people say she isn’t wasting her time! Every one knows, as you say,
+that Lily is too handsome and—and charming—to devote herself to a man
+like Gus Trenor unless—”</p>
+
+<p>“Unless?” echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath nervously. It was
+agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to the verge of
+anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar with the classic drama
+to have recalled in advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially
+received, but she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a
+reduced wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To
+the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more
+personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to
+boast of her niece’s charms.</p>
+
+<p>“Unless,” said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned emphasis,
+“unless there are material advantages to be gained by making herself
+agreeable to him.”</p>
+
+<p>She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly that
+Mrs. Peniston’s black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would have been
+hers at the end of the season.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same idea
+had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath her dignity
+to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who wore her old
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>“If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,” she
+said coldly, “you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than
+just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large dinner.”</p>
+
+<p>The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney’s last scruples. “I
+don’t know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling you
+about Lily. I was sure I shouldn’t get any thanks for it,” she returned
+with a flare of temper. “But I have some family feeling left, and as you
+are the only person who has any authority over Lily, I thought you ought
+to know what is being said of her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Peniston, “what I complain of is that you haven’t told
+me yet what IS being said.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say that Gus
+Trenor pays her bills.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pays her bills—her bills?” Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. “I can’t
+imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has her own
+income—and I provide for her very handsomely—”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, we all know that,” interposed Miss Stepney drily. “But Lily wears a
+great many smart gowns—”</p>
+
+<p>“I like her to be well-dressed—it’s only suitable!”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this point; but
+Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She was like the
+stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must be annihilated to be
+convinced.</p>
+
+<p>“Gambling debts? Lily?” Mrs. Peniston’s voice shook with anger and
+bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of her
+mind. “What do you mean by her gambling debts?”</p>
+
+<p>“Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily’s set one is liable to
+lose a great deal—and I don’t suppose Lily always wins.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who told you that my niece played cards for money?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mercy, cousin Julia, don’t look at me as if I were trying to turn you
+against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs. Gryce told
+me herself that it was her gambling that frightened Percy Gryce—it seems
+he was really taken with her at first. But, of course, among Lily’s
+friends it’s quite the custom for girls to play for money. In fact,
+people are inclined to excuse her on that account——”</p>
+
+<p>“To excuse her for what?”</p>
+
+<p>“For being hard up—and accepting attentions from men like Gus
+Trenor—and George Dorset——”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. “George Dorset? Is there any one else? I
+should like to know the worst, if you please.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a good deal
+with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her—but of course that’s only
+natural. And I’m sure there is no truth in the horrid things people say;
+but she HAS been spending a great deal of money this winter. Evie Van
+Osburgh was at Celeste’s ordering her trousseau the other day—yes, the
+marriage takes place next month—and she told me that Celeste showed her
+the most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And people
+say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I’m
+sure I’m sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston’s genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney
+with a disdain which boded ill for that lady’s prospect of succeeding to
+the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason have generally some
+crack through which suspicion filters, and her visitor’s insinuations did
+not glide off as easily as she had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked
+scenes, and her determination to avoid them had always led her to hold
+herself aloof from the details of Lily’s life. In her youth, girls had
+not been supposed to require close supervision. They were generally
+assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and
+marriage, and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural
+guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator’s suddenly
+joining in a game. There had of course been “fast” girls even in Mrs.
+Peniston’s early experience; but their fastness, at worst, was understood
+to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which there could be no
+graver charge than that of being “unladylike.” The modern fastness
+appeared synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was
+as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the drawing-room:
+it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to admit.</p>
+
+<p>She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had heard,
+or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of discreet
+interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and a scene, in the
+shaken state of Mrs. Peniston’s nerves, with the effects of her dinner
+not worn off, and her mind still tremulous with new impressions, was a
+risk she deemed it her duty to avoid. But there remained in her thoughts
+a settled deposit of resentment against her niece, all the denser because
+it was not to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible
+of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the
+charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.
+Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the
+house, and she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated
+furniture.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_12">Chapter 12</h2>
+
+<p>Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her
+critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had
+a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another,
+without ever perceiving the right road till it was too late to take it.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not imagined
+that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money for her would
+ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in itself still seemed
+harmless enough; only it was a fertile source of harmful complications.
+As she exhausted the amusement of spending the money these complications
+became more pressing, and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in
+tracing the causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the
+thought that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
+This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of friendliness
+between the two women. Lily’s visit to the Dorsets had resulted, for
+both, in the discovery that they could be of use to each other; and the
+civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its
+antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in
+a new sentimental experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher’s late property, Ned
+Silverton, was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had
+once remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband’s
+attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his
+self-engrossment was not proof against Lily’s arts, or rather these were
+especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy
+Gryce stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset’s humours, and if
+the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her
+situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.</p>
+
+<p>Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such difficulties on
+the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy Trenor’s lavish impulses,
+and Dorset’s admiration was not likely to express itself in financial
+“tips,” even had Lily cared to renew her experiences in that line. What
+she required, for the moment, of the Dorsets’ friendship, was simply its
+social sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but
+this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set
+such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a
+married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her
+opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk in
+the Park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and since his
+marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the form of the
+sentimental small-talk which doubles upon itself like the paths in a
+maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led
+back to the same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually
+losing control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
+mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been somewhat
+heavily “touched” by the fall in stocks; his household expenses weighed
+on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all sides, a sullen opposition to
+his wishes, instead of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open, and
+descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but preferring
+the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the restrictions of a
+dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged Lily to return to
+Bellomont, and the first time they met in town Lily fancied there was a
+shade of coldness in her manner. Was it merely the expression of her
+displeasure at Miss Bart’s neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached
+her? The latter contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a
+sense of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere,
+it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity
+of her friend’s affection, though it sometimes showed itself in
+self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from any
+risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly conscious of
+the way in which such an estrangement would react on herself. The fact
+that Gus Trenor was Judy’s husband was at times Lily’s strongest reason
+for disliking him, and for resenting the obligation under which he had
+placed her. To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New
+Year, “proposed” herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in
+advance that the presence of a large party would protect her from too
+great assiduity on Trenor’s part, and his wife’s telegraphic “come by all
+means” seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always prevailed
+over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her hostess’s manner.
+Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the experiment of coming to
+Bellomont was destined not to be successful. The party was made up of
+what Mrs. Trenor called “poky people”—her generic name for persons who
+did not play bridge—and, it being her habit to group all such
+obstructionists in one class, she usually invited them together,
+regardless of their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an
+irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in common than
+their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group
+lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in this
+case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed boredom of their
+host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to
+Lily to fuse the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a
+service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her accustomed
+zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts.
+If Mrs. Trenor’s manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a
+faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic
+allusion to “your friends the Wellington Brys,” or to “the little Jew who
+has bought the Greiner house—some one told us you knew him, Miss
+Bart,”—showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of
+society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the
+right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The indication was
+a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have smiled at it, trusting to
+the charm of her personality to dispel any prejudice against her. But now
+she had grown more sensitive to criticism and less confident in her power
+of disarming it. She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont
+permitted themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
+they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind her
+back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor’s manner should seem to
+justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for avoiding him,
+and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in every purpose which
+had taken her there.</p>
+
+<p>In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had the
+happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly Brys, after
+much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly-acquired friends, had
+decided on the bold move of giving a general entertainment. To attack
+society collectively, when one’s means of approach are limited to a few
+acquaintances, is like advancing into a strange country with an
+insufficient number of scouts; but such rash tactics have sometimes led
+to brilliant victories, and the Brys had determined to put their fate to
+the touch. Mrs. Fisher, to whom they had entrusted the conduct of the
+affair, had decided that TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music were the
+two baits most likely to attract the desired prey, and after prolonged
+negotiations, and the kind of wire-pulling in which she was known to
+excel, she had induced a dozen fashionable women to exhibit themselves in
+a series of pictures which, by a farther miracle of persuasion, the
+distinguished portrait painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed upon to
+organize.</p>
+
+<p>Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth’s guidance her
+vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than
+dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal of
+draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights and shadows.
+Her dramatic instinct was roused by the choice of subjects, and the
+gorgeous reproductions of historic dress stirred an imagination which
+only visual impressions could reach. But keenest of all was the
+exhilaration of displaying her own beauty under a new aspect: of showing
+that her loveliness was no mere fixed quality, but an element shaping all
+emotions to fresh forms of grace.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher’s measures had been well-taken, and society, surprised in a
+dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs. Bry’s hospitality. The
+protesting minority were forgotten in the throng which abjured and came;
+and the audience was almost as brilliant as the show.</p>
+
+<p>Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
+inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom that a
+man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long since learned
+that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small group of the
+like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and was not insensible
+to the part money plays in their production: all he asked was that the
+very rich should live up to their calling as stage-managers, and not
+spend their money in a dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be
+charged with doing. Their recently built house, whatever it might lack as
+a frame for domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the display of a
+festal assemblage as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian
+architects improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of
+improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so
+rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the
+marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat one’s self in
+one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it was not painted
+against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself, from
+an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank enjoyment. The
+company, in obedience to the decorative instinct which calls for fine
+clothes in fine surroundings, had dressed rather with an eye to Mrs.
+Bry’s background than to herself. The seated throng, filling the immense
+room without undue crowding, presented a surface of rich tissues and
+jewelled shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and
+the flushed splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of the
+room a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch curtained with
+folds of old damask; but in the pause before the parting of the folds
+there was little thought of what they might reveal, for every woman who
+had accepted Mrs. Bry’s invitation was engaged in trying to find out how
+many of her friends had done the same.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that indiscriminate and
+uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss Bart’s finer perceptions. It
+may be that Selden’s nearness had something to do with the quality of his
+cousin’s pleasure; but Miss Farish was so little accustomed to refer her
+enjoyment of such scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely
+conscious of a deeper sense of contentment.</p>
+
+<p>“Wasn’t it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course it would never
+have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list, and I should have
+been so sorry to miss seeing it all—and especially Lily herself. Some
+one told me the ceiling was by Veronese—you would know, of course,
+Lawrence. I suppose it’s very beautiful, but his women are so dreadfully
+fat. Goddesses? Well, I can only say that if they’d been mortals and had
+to wear corsets, it would have been better for them. I think our women
+are much handsomer. And this room is wonderfully becoming—every one
+looks so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George
+Dorset’s pearls—I suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent of our
+Girls’ Club for a year. Not that I ought to complain about the club;
+every one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you that Lily had
+given us three hundred dollars? Wasn’t it splendid of her? And then she
+collected a lot of money from her friends—Mrs. Bry gave us five hundred,
+and Mr. Rosedale a thousand. I wish Lily were not so nice to Mr.
+Rosedale, but she says it’s no use being rude to him, because he doesn’t
+see the difference. She really can’t bear to hurt people’s feelings—it
+makes me so angry when I hear her called cold and conceited! The girls at
+the club don’t call her that. Do you know she has been there with me
+twice?—yes, Lily! And you should have seen their eyes! One of them said
+it was as good as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat
+there, and laughed and talked with them—not a bit as if she were being
+CHARITABLE, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did. They’ve
+been asking ever since when she’s coming back; and she’s promised
+me——oh!”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farish’s confidences were cut short by the parting of the curtain on
+the first TABLEAU—a group of nymphs dancing across flower-strewn sward
+in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli’s Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend
+for their effect not only on the happy disposal of lights and the
+delusive interposition of layers of gauze, but on a corresponding
+adjustment of the mental vision. To unfurnished minds they remain, in
+spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but
+to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary
+world between fact and imagination. Selden’s mind was of this order: he
+could yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
+spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry’s TABLEAUX wanted none of the qualities
+which go to the producing of such illusions, and under Morpeth’s
+organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other with the rhythmic march
+of some splendid frieze, in which the fugitive curves of living flesh and
+the wandering light of young eyes have been subdued to plastic harmony
+without losing the charm of life.</p>
+
+<p>The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had been
+cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No one, for
+instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry Fisher, with her
+short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of her eyes, the
+provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant Miss Smedden from
+Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous curves of Titian’s Daughter,
+lifting her gold salver laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of
+rippled hair and rich brocade, and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed
+the frailer Dutch type, with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes and
+lashes, made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a
+curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar
+of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and
+marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians,
+lounging by a fountain in a sunlit glade.</p>
+
+<p>Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in Selden,
+leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even Gerty Farish’s
+running commentary—“Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson looks!” or: “That must be
+Kate Corby, to the right there, in purple”—did not break the spell of
+the illusion. Indeed, so skilfully had the personality of the actors been
+subdued to the scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of
+the audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
+suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly the
+portrait of Miss Bart.</p>
+
+<p>Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of personality—the
+unanimous “Oh!” of the spectators was a tribute, not to the brush-work of
+Reynolds’s “Mrs. Lloyd” but to the flesh and blood loveliness of Lily
+Bart. She had shown her artistic intelligence in selecting a type so like
+her own that she could embody the person represented without ceasing to
+be herself. It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into,
+Reynolds’s canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams
+of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a splendid
+setting—she had thought for a moment of representing Tiepolo’s
+Cleopatra—had yielded to the truer instinct of trusting to her
+unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a picture without
+distracting accessories of dress or surroundings. Her pale draperies,
+and the background of foliage against which she stood, served only to
+relieve the long dryad-like curves that swept upward from her poised foot
+to her lifted arm. The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of
+soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden
+always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
+her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to
+see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her
+little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of
+which her beauty was a part.</p>
+
+<p>“Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there isn’t
+a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to know it!”</p>
+
+<p>These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
+Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden’s shoulder
+whenever the parting of the curtains presented any exceptional
+opportunity for the study of the female outline, affected their hearer in
+an unexpected way. It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily’s
+beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of the comments had
+imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of
+indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the
+standards by which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban
+for a judgment on Miranda?</p>
+
+<p>In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole
+tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all
+that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him
+from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where
+he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again.</p>
+
+<p>He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. “Wasn’t she too
+beautiful, Lawrence? Don’t you like her best in that simple dress? It
+makes her look like the real Lily—the Lily I know.”</p>
+
+<p>He met Gerty Farish’s brimming gaze. “The Lily we know,” he corrected;
+and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding, exclaimed joyfully:
+“I’ll tell her that! She always says you dislike her.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The performance over, Selden’s first impulse was to seek Miss Bart.
+During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX, the actors
+had seated themselves here and there in the audience, diversifying its
+conventional appearance by the varied picturesqueness of their dress.
+Lily, however, was not among them, and her absence served to protract the
+effect she had produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see
+her too soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
+detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding,
+and on his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however, he
+knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her side; and
+though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither it would, without
+making an immediate effort to reach her, his procrastination was not due
+to any lingering resistance, but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in
+the sense of complete surrender.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had not an instant’s doubt as to the meaning of the murmur greeting
+her appearance. No other tableau had been received with that precise note
+of approval: it had obviously been called forth by herself, and not by
+the picture she impersonated. She had feared at the last moment that she
+was risking too much in dispensing with the advantages of a more
+sumptuous setting, and the completeness of her triumph gave her an
+intoxicating sense of recovered power. Not caring to diminish the
+impression she had produced, she held herself aloof from the audience
+till the movement of dispersal before supper, and thus had a second
+opportunity of showing herself to advantage, as the throng poured slowly
+into the empty drawing-room where she was standing.</p>
+
+<p>She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed itself as
+the circulation became general, and the individual comments on her
+success were a delightful prolongation of the collective applause. At
+such moments she lost something of her natural fastidiousness, and cared
+less for the quality of the admiration received than for its quantity.
+Differences of personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in
+which her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
+approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning on Ned
+Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of capturing for
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher, as
+whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the group
+before Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two of the men
+wandered off in search of their partners for supper, and the others,
+noticing Selden’s approach, gave way to him in accordance with the tacit
+freemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he
+reached her; and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the
+satisfaction of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen
+as it rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
+felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced. She
+read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation of her
+triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she
+cared to be beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in silence,
+and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but against the tide
+which was setting thither. The faces about her flowed by like the
+streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was leading
+her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the long
+suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden.
+Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent
+dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the
+depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
+lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash
+of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might
+have been blown across a sleeping lake.</p>
+
+<p>Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a
+part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them
+to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the
+boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude
+about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it
+together. At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so
+that her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of the
+branches. Selden followed her, and still without speaking they seated
+themselves on a bench beside the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a child.
+“You never speak to me—you think hard things of me,” she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>“I think of you at any rate, God knows!” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Then why do we never see each other? Why can’t we be friends? You
+promised once to help me,” she continued in the same tone, as though the
+words were drawn from her unwillingly.</p>
+
+<p>“The only way I can help you is by loving you,” Selden said in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion of a
+flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips touched. She drew back and
+rose from her seat. Selden rose too, and they stood facing each other.
+Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a moment against her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, love me, love me—but don’t tell me so!” she sighed with her eyes in
+his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped through the
+arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the room beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the transiency of
+exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but presently he reentered
+the house and made his way through the deserted rooms to the door. A few
+sumptuously-cloaked ladies were already gathered in the marble vestibule,
+and in the coat-room he found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.</p>
+
+<p>The former, at Selden’s approach, paused in the careful selection of a
+cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near the door.</p>
+
+<p>“Hallo, Selden, going too? You’re an Epicurean like myself, I see: you
+don’t want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin. Gad, what a
+show of good-looking women; but not one of ’em could touch that little
+cousin of mine. Talk of jewels—what’s a woman want with jewels when
+she’s got herself to show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they
+wear cover up their figures when they’ve got ’em. I never knew till
+tonight what an outline Lily has.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s not her fault if everybody don’t know it now,” growled Trenor,
+flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined coat. “Damned bad
+taste, I call it—no, no cigar for me. You can’t tell what you’re smoking
+in one of these new houses—likely as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay
+for supper? Not if I know it! When people crowd their rooms so that you
+can’t get near any one you want to speak to, I’d as soon sup in the
+elevated at the rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says
+life’s too short to spend it in breaking in new people.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_13">Chapter 13</h2>
+
+<p>Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bed-side.</p>
+
+<p>One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town that
+afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dine
+with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly that an important
+case called him to Albany, whence he would be unable to return till the
+evening, and asked Lily to let him know at what hour on the following day
+she would see him.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his letter. The
+scene in the Brys’ conservatory had been like a part of her dreams; she
+had not expected to wake to such evidence of its reality. Her first
+movement was one of annoyance: this unforeseen act of Selden’s added
+another complication to life. It was so unlike him to yield to such an
+irrational impulse! Did he really mean to ask her to marry him? She had
+once shown him the impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent
+behaviour seemed to prove that he had accepted the situation with a
+reasonableness somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more
+agreeable to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the
+cost of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
+sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the episode
+of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could not marry him, it
+would be kinder to him, as well as easier for herself, to write a line
+amicably evading his request to see her: he was not the man to mistake
+such a hint, and when next they met it would be on their usual friendly
+footing.</p>
+
+<p>Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted to
+write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her resolve. She
+was still languid from her brief sleep and the exhilaration of the
+evening, and the sight of Selden’s writing brought back the culminating
+moment of her triumph: the moment when she had read in his eyes that no
+philosophy was proof against her power. It would be pleasant to have that
+sensation again . . . no one else could give it to her in its fulness;
+and she could not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection by an
+act of definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily: “TOMORROW
+AT FOUR;” murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet into its
+envelope: “I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Judy Trenor’s summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first time she
+had received a direct communication from Bellomont since the close of her
+last visit there, and she was still visited by the dread of having
+incurred Judy’s displeasure. But this characteristic command seemed to
+reestablish their former relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that
+her friend had probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys’
+entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast, perhaps
+for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband, perhaps because, as
+Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she “couldn’t bear new people
+when she hadn’t discovered them herself.” At any rate, though she
+remained haughtily at Bellomont, Lily suspected in her a devouring
+eagerness to hear of what she had missed, and to learn exactly in what
+measure Mrs. Wellington Bry had surpassed all previous competitors for
+social recognition. Lily was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but
+it happened that she was dining out. She determined, however, to see Mrs.
+Trenor for a few moments, and ringing for her maid she despatched a
+telegram to say that she would be with her friend that evening at ten.</p>
+
+<p>She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal feast a
+few of the performers of the previous evening. There was to be plantation
+music in the studio after dinner—for Mrs. Fisher, despairing of the
+republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to her small crowded house
+a spacious apartment, which, whatever its uses in her hours of plastic
+inspiration, served at other times for the exercise of an indefatigable
+hospitality. Lily was reluctant to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and
+she would have liked to lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but
+she could not break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten she
+asked her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth Avenue to the
+Trenors’.</p>
+
+<p>She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that Judy’s presence in
+town was not signalized by a greater promptness in admitting her; and her
+surprise was increased when, instead of the expected footman, pushing his
+shoulders into a tardy coat, a shabby care-taking person in calico let
+her into the shrouded hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the
+threshold of the drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual volubility
+while he relieved her of her cloak and drew her into the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Come along to the den; it’s the only comfortable place in the house.
+Doesn’t this room look as if it was waiting for the body to be brought
+down? Can’t see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up in this awful
+slippery white stuff—it’s enough to give a fellow pneumonia to walk
+through these rooms on a cold day. You look a little pinched yourself, by
+the way: it’s rather a sharp night out. I noticed it walking up from the
+club. Come along, and I’ll give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast
+yourself over the fire and try some of my new Egyptians—that little
+Turkish chap at the Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try,
+and if you like ’em I’ll get out a lot for you: they don’t have ’em here
+yet, but I’ll cable.”</p>
+
+<p>He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where Mrs.
+Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there was an air of
+occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers, newspapers, a littered
+writing-table, and a general aspect of lamp-lit familiarity, so that it
+was a surprise not to see Judy’s energetic figure start up from the
+arm-chair near the fire.</p>
+
+<p>It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat in
+question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and near it
+stood one of those intricate folding tables which British ingenuity has
+devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco and spirits. The sight
+of such appliances in a drawing-room was not unusual in Lily’s set, where
+smoking and drinking were unrestricted by considerations of time and
+place, and her first movement was to help herself to one of the
+cigarettes recommended by Trenor, while she checked his loquacity by
+asking, with a surprised glance: “Where’s Judy?”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and perhaps by
+prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending over the latter to
+decipher their silver labels.</p>
+
+<p>“Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy water—you do
+look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your nose is red. I’ll take
+another glass to keep you company—Judy?—Why, you see, Judy’s got a
+devil of a head ache—quite knocked out with it, poor thing—she asked me
+to explain—make it all right, you know—Do come up to the fire, though;
+you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me make you comfortable, there’s a
+good girl.”</p>
+
+<p>He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her toward a low
+seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed herself quietly.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean to say that Judy’s not well enough to see me? Doesn’t she
+want me to go upstairs?”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to set it
+down before he answered.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, no—the fact is, she’s not up to seeing anybody. It came on
+suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully sorry she
+was—if she’d known where you were dining she’d have sent you word.”</p>
+
+<p>“She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram. But it
+doesn’t matter, of course. I suppose if she’s so poorly she won’t go back
+to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and see her then.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes: exactly—that’s capital. I’ll tell her you’ll pop in tomorrow
+morning. And now do sit down a minute, there’s a dear, and let’s have a
+nice quiet jaw together. You won’t take a drop, just for sociability?
+Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why, don’t you like it? What
+are you chucking it away for?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am chucking it away because I must go, if you’ll have the goodness to
+call a cab for me,” Lily returned with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>She did not like Trenor’s unusual excitability, with its too evident
+explanation, and the thought of being alone with him, with her friend out
+of reach upstairs, at the other end of the great empty house, did not
+conduce to a desire to prolong their TETE-A-TETE.</p>
+
+<p>But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved between
+herself and the door.</p>
+
+<p>“Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy’d been here you’d have
+sat gossiping till all hours—and you can’t even give me five minutes!
+It’s always the same story. Last night I couldn’t get near you—I went to
+that damned vulgar party just to see you, and there was everybody talking
+about you, and asking me if I’d ever seen anything so stunning, and when
+I tried to come up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just
+went on laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be
+able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when you were
+mentioned.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in which
+resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she had regained
+her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the middle of the room,
+while her slight smile seemed to put an ever increasing distance between
+herself and Trenor.</p>
+
+<p>Across it she said: “Don’t be absurd, Gus. It’s past eleven, and I must
+really ask you to ring for a cab.”</p>
+
+<p>He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown to detest.</p>
+
+<p>“And supposing I won’t ring for one—what’ll you do then?”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her.”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. “Look here, Lily:
+won’t you give me five minutes of your own accord?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not tonight, Gus: you——”</p>
+
+<p>“Very good, then: I’ll take ’em. And as many more as I want.” He had
+squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
+He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>“Go and sit down there, please: I’ve got a word to say to you.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew herself
+up and moved toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>“If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time. I
+shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once.”</p>
+
+<p>He burst into a laugh. “Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you won’t
+find Judy. She ain’t there.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily cast a startled look upon him. “Do you mean that Judy is not in the
+house—not in town?” she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s just what I do mean,” returned Trenor, his bluster sinking to
+sullenness under her look.</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense—I don’t believe you. I am going upstairs,” she said
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold unimpeded.</p>
+
+<p>“Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont.”</p>
+
+<p>But Lily had a flash of reassurance. “If she hadn’t come she would have
+sent me word——”</p>
+
+<p>“She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“I received no message.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t send any.”</p>
+
+<p>The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her opponent
+through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations indistinct.</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on me; but if
+you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour I must again ask
+you to send for a cab.”</p>
+
+<p>It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung by irony
+it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry streaks on Trenor’s
+face might have been raised by an actual lash.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Lily, don’t take that high and mighty tone with me.” He had
+again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive shrinking from him
+she let him regain command of the threshold. “I DID play a trick on you;
+I own up to it; but if you think I’m ashamed you’re mistaken. Lord knows
+I’ve been patient enough—I’ve hung round and looked like an ass. And
+all the while you were letting a lot of other fellows make up to
+you . . . letting ’em make fun of me, I daresay . . . I’m not sharp, and
+can’t dress my friends up to look funny, as you do . . . but I can tell
+when it’s being done to me.... I can tell fast enough when I’m made a
+fool of....”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, I shouldn’t have thought that!” flashed from Lily; but her laugh
+dropped to silence under his look.</p>
+
+<p>“No; you wouldn’t have thought it; but you’ll know better now. That’s
+what you’re here for tonight. I’ve been waiting for a quiet time to talk
+things over, and now I’ve got it I mean to make you hear me out.”</p>
+
+<p>His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
+steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily than the
+excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind forsook her.
+She had more than once been in situations where a quick sword-play of wit
+had been needful to cover her retreat; but her frightened heart-throbs
+told her that here such skill would not avail.</p>
+
+<p>To gain time she repeated: “I don’t understand what you want.”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw himself
+in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I stand.
+Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally allowed to have a
+seat at table.”</p>
+
+<p>She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of having to
+conciliate where she longed to humble.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what you mean—but you must see, Gus, that I can’t stay
+here talking to you at this hour——”</p>
+
+<p>“Gad, you go to men’s houses fast enough in broad day light—strikes me
+you’re not always so deuced careful of appearances.”</p>
+
+<p>The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that follows
+on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then—this was the way men talked
+of her—She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there was a throb of
+self-pity in her throat. But all the while another self was sharpening
+her to vigilance, whispering the terrified warning that every word and
+gesture must be measured.</p>
+
+<p>“If you have brought me here to say insulting things——” she began.</p>
+
+<p>Trenor laughed. “Don’t talk stage-rot. I don’t want to insult you. But a
+man’s got his feelings—and you’ve played with mine too long. I didn’t
+begin this business—kept out of the way, and left the track clear for
+the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set to work to make an ass
+of me—and an easy job you had of it, too. That’s the trouble—it was too
+easy for you—you got reckless—thought you could turn me inside out, and
+chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that ain’t
+playing fair: that’s dodging the rules of the game. Of course I know now
+what you wanted—it wasn’t my beautiful eyes you were after—but I tell
+you what, Miss Lily, you’ve got to pay up for making me think so——”</p>
+
+<p>He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward her with
+a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every nerve tore at
+her to retreat as he advanced.</p>
+
+<p>“Pay up?” she faltered. “Do you mean that I owe you money?”</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again. “Oh, I’m not asking for payment in kind. But there’s
+such a thing as fair play—and interest on one’s money—and hang me if
+I’ve had as much as a look from you——”</p>
+
+<p>“Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me how to
+invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of business . . .
+you told me it was all right——”</p>
+
+<p>“It WAS all right—it is, Lily: you’re welcome to all of it, and ten
+times more. I’m only asking for a word of thanks from you.” He was closer
+still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened self in her
+was dragging the other down.</p>
+
+<p>“I HAVE thanked you; I’ve shown I was grateful. What more have you done
+than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor caught her up with a sneer. “I don’t doubt you’ve accepted as much
+before—and chucked the other chaps as you’d like to chuck me. I don’t
+care how you settled your score with them—if you fooled ’em I’m that
+much to the good. Don’t stare at me like that—I know I’m not talking the
+way a man is supposed to talk to a girl—but, hang it, if you don’t like
+it you can stop me quick enough—you know I’m mad about you—damn the
+money, there’s plenty more of it—if THAT bothers you.... I was a
+brute, Lily—Lily!—just look at me——”</p>
+
+<p>Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke—wave crashing on wave so
+close that the moral shame was one with the physical dread. It seemed to
+her that self-esteem would have made her invulnerable—that it was her
+own dishonour which put a fearful solitude about her.</p>
+
+<p>His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back from
+him with a desperate assumption of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve told you I don’t understand—but if I owe you money you shall be
+paid——”</p>
+
+<p>Trenor’s face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called out
+the primitive man.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah—you’ll borrow from Selden or Rosedale—and take your chances of
+fooling them as you’ve fooled me! Unless—unless you’ve settled your
+other scores already—and I’m the only one left out in the cold!”</p>
+
+<p>She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words—the words were worse
+than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body—in her throat,
+her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes travelled despairingly
+about the room—they lit on the bell, and she remembered that help was in
+call. Yes, but scandal with it—a hideous mustering of tongues. No, she
+must fight her way out alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to
+be in the house with Trenor—there must be nothing to excite conjecture
+in her way of leaving it.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.</p>
+
+<p>“I am here alone with you,” she said. “What more have you to say?”</p>
+
+<p>To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare. With
+his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him chill and
+humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the fumes of his
+libations, and the situation loomed before him black and naked as the
+ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the hand of inherited order,
+plucked back the bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts.
+Trenor’s eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
+ledge.</p>
+
+<p>“Go home! Go away from here”——he stammered, and turning his back on her
+walked toward the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate lucidity.
+The collapse of Trenor’s will left her in control, and she heard herself,
+in a voice that was her own yet outside herself, bidding him ring for the
+servant, bidding him give the order for a hansom, directing him to put
+her in it when it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but
+an insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly, and
+nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light
+words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while
+all the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
+street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as
+the prisoner’s first draught of free air; but the clearness of brain
+continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
+lateness of the hour, and even observed a man’s figure—was there
+something half-familiar in its outline?—which, as she entered the
+hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the obscurity of
+the side street.</p>
+
+<p>But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness
+closed on her. “I can’t think—I can’t think,” she moaned, and leaned her
+head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to
+herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always
+known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She
+had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of
+the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of
+the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
+huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour’s repose. Yes, the Furies might
+sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners,
+and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her
+brain.... She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing—the familiar
+alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was
+a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past
+seemed simple, natural, full of daylight—and she was alone in a place of
+darkness and pollution.—Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened
+her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she
+saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
+eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend
+them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled
+from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her
+through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
+vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed—and the darkness would
+frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the
+room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated
+her room at Mrs. Peniston’s—its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact
+that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human
+nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four
+walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
+superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even
+had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs.
+Peniston’s mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as
+Lily’s. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that
+questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the
+darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but
+compassion holding its breath.</p>
+
+<p>She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!—they
+were nearing Gerty’s corner. If only she could reach there before this
+labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips—if only she could
+feel the hold of Gerty’s arms while she shook in the ague-fit of fear
+that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door in the roof and called
+the address to the driver. It was not so late—Gerty might still be
+waking. And even if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate
+every recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend’s
+call.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_14">Chapter 14</h2>
+
+<p>Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys’ entertainment, woke
+from dreams as happy as Lily’s. If they were less vivid in hue, more
+subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they
+were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such
+flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was
+accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through
+the cracks of other people’s lives.</p>
+
+<p>Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but
+unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden’s growing kindness to
+herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If
+these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine
+psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite
+in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to
+look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends. Now that
+she was enjoying a little private feast of her own, it would have seemed
+incredibly selfish not to lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one
+with whom she would rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.</p>
+
+<p>As to the nature of Selden’s growing kindness, Gerty would no more have
+dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a butterfly’s
+colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize on the wonder would
+be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it fade and stiffen in her
+hand: better the sense of beauty palpitating out of reach, while she held
+her breath and watched where it would alight. Yet Selden’s manner at the
+Brys’ had brought the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be
+beating in her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
+so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
+absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for, as the
+liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but she was quick
+to feel in him a change implying that for once she could give pleasure as
+well as receive it.</p>
+
+<p>And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should be
+reached through their interest in Lily Bart!</p>
+
+<p>Gerty’s affection for her friend—a sentiment that had learned to keep
+itself alive on the scantiest diet—had grown to active adoration since
+Lily’s restless curiosity had drawn her into the circle of Miss Farish’s
+work. Lily’s taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite
+for well-doing. Her visit to the Girls’ Club had first brought her in
+contact with the dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with
+philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled
+on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay all
+around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life reached
+its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter night enclose
+a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this was in the natural
+order of things, and the orchid basking in its artificially created
+atmosphere could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by
+the ice on the panes.</p>
+
+<p>But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of
+poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments.
+Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the
+mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable
+separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure,
+her own fierce revulsions from pain—that some of these bundles of
+feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to
+look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love—this discovery gave
+Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a
+life. Lily’s nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
+demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which did not
+press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was drawn out of
+herself by the interest of her direct relation with a world so unlike her
+own. She had supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or
+two of Miss Farish’s most appealing subjects, and the admiration and
+interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club
+ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to disentangle
+the mixed threads of which Lily’s philanthropy was woven. She supposed
+her beautiful friend to be actuated by the same motive as herself—that
+sharpening of the moral vision which makes all human suffering so near
+and insistent that the other aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty
+lived by such simple formulas that she did not hesitate to class her
+friend’s state with the emotional “change of heart” to which her dealings
+with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
+she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer
+to all criticisms of Lily’s conduct: as she had said, she knew “the real
+Lily,” and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her
+placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities—a
+sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the receipt of
+a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine with her that evening.</p>
+
+<p>While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement produced
+in her small household, Selden was at one with her in thinking with
+intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him to Albany was not
+complicated enough to absorb all his attention, and he had the
+professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind free when its services
+were not needed. This part—which at the moment seemed dangerously like
+the whole—was filled to the brim with the sensations of the previous
+evening. Selden understood the symptoms: he recognized the fact that he
+was paying up, as there had always been a chance of his having to pay up,
+for the voluntary exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from
+permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a
+different way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment.
+There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
+had never wanted to marry a “nice” girl: the adjective connoting, in his
+cousin’s vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to
+preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden’s fate to have a
+charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still
+emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind
+of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her,
+and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for
+money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little
+more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely
+kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
+on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
+understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and
+discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the
+bills mounted up.</p>
+
+<p>Though many of Selden’s friends would have called his parents poor, he
+had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt only as a
+check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions were so good that
+their rarity gave them a merited relief, and abstinence was combined with
+elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs. Selden’s knack of wearing her old
+velvet as if it were new. A man has the advantage of being delivered
+early from the home point of view, and before Selden left college he had
+learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as
+of spending it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that
+practised at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
+the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of “values.”
+It was from her that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side
+of life: the stoic’s carelessness of material things, combined with the
+Epicurean’s pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling appeared to
+him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending of the two
+ingredients so essential as in the character of a pretty woman.</p>
+
+<p>It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
+besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of a
+love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central fact of
+life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the makeshift
+alternative of a relation that should be less than this: that should
+leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it put an undue
+strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield to the growth of an
+affection which might appeal to pity yet leave the understanding
+untouched: sympathy should no more delude him than a trick of the eyes,
+the grace of helplessness than a curve of the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>But now—that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows. His
+reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less important
+than the question as to when Lily would receive his note! He yielded
+himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations, wondering at what hour
+her reply would be sent, with what words it would begin. As to its import
+he had no doubt—he was as sure of her surrender as of his own. And so
+he had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on
+a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel
+gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
+him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation
+to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before of what was
+said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he knew from the
+vulgar estimate of her. His mind turned to Gerty Farish’s words, and the
+wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of
+innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD—even
+the hidden god in their neighbour’s breast! Selden was in the state of
+impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces.
+His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should
+justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth
+to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday
+recess, but seized a moment’s leisure in court to scribble his telegram
+to Gerty Farish.</p>
+
+<p>Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a note
+from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only a line of
+rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away disappointed when he
+was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.</p>
+
+<p>“Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me—I’ve ordered a
+canvas-back.”</p>
+
+<p>He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall glass at
+his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.</p>
+
+<p>Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.</p>
+
+<p>“Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight. I shall
+have the club to myself. You know how I’m living this winter, rattling
+round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town today, but she’s
+put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine alone in a room with the
+looking-glasses covered, and nothing but a bottle of Harvey sauce on the
+sideboard? I say, Lawrence, chuck your engagement and take pity on
+me—it gives me the blue devils to dine alone, and there’s nobody but
+that canting ass Wetherall in the club.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, Gus—I can’t do it.”</p>
+
+<p>As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor’s face, the
+unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way his jewelled
+rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red fingers. Certainly the
+beast was predominating—the beast at the bottom of the glass. And he had
+heard this man’s name coupled with Lily’s! Bah—the thought sickened him;
+all the way back to his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor’s fat
+creased hands——</p>
+
+<p>On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew what
+was in it before he broke the seal—a grey seal with BEYOND! beneath a
+flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond—beyond the ugliness, the
+pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul——</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Gerty’s little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden entered it.
+Its modest “effects,” compact of enamel paint and ingenuity, spoke to him
+in the language just then sweetest to his ear. It is surprising how
+little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul
+has suddenly been raised. Gerty sparkled too; or at least shone with a
+tempered radiance. He had never before noticed that she had
+“points”—really, some good fellow might do worse.... Over the little
+dinner (and here, again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she
+ought to marry—he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had
+made the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such
+gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim
+her own hats—she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little repast he
+kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being the centre of
+observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she had manufactured for
+the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household
+arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had
+utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
+about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in
+a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a
+large establishment.</p>
+
+<p>When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as snugly as
+bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and poured it into her
+grandmother’s egg-shell cups, his eye, as he leaned back, basking in the
+warm fragrance, lighted on a recent photograph of Miss Bart, and the
+desired transition was effected without an effort. The photograph was
+well enough—but to catch her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed
+with him—never had she been so radiant. But could photography capture
+that light? There had been a new look in her face—something different;
+yes, Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was so
+exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to the watery
+stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare,
+alternating with the equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A
+man who lived in lodgings missed the best part of life—he pictured the
+flavourless solitude of Trenor’s repast, and felt a moment’s compassion
+for the man.... But to return to Lily—and again and again he returned,
+questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts
+of their stored tenderness for her friend.</p>
+
+<p>At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
+communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped to
+confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on the fact
+that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous impulses—her
+restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life had never satisfied
+her proved that she was made for better things. She might have married
+more than once—the conventional rich marriage which she had been taught
+to consider the sole end of existence—but when the opportunity came she
+had always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love
+with her—every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her
+dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce
+incident chimed too well with Selden’s mood not to be instantly adopted
+by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once seemed
+the obvious solution. If rejection there had been—and he wondered now
+that he had ever doubted it!—then he held the key to the secret, and the
+hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with dawn. It
+was he who had wavered and disowned the face of opportunity—and the joy
+now warming his breast might have been a familiar inmate if he had
+captured it in its first flight.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings in
+Gerty’s heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing Selden,
+repeating mechanically: “No, she has never been understood——” and all
+the while she herself seemed to be sitting in the centre of a great glare
+of comprehension. The little confidential room, where a moment ago their
+thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly
+vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length of her new vision
+of the future—and that future stretched out interminably, with her
+lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.</p>
+
+<p>“She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them,” she
+heard Selden saying. And again: “Be good to her, Gerty, won’t you?” and:
+“She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to be—you’ll help
+her by believing the best of her?”</p>
+
+<p>The words beat on Gerty’s brain like the sound of a language which has
+seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to be
+unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily—that was all! There
+had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had
+taken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to
+her own part in the talk—but it was all as meaningless as the boom of
+waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
+sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.</p>
+
+<p>Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she could
+yield to the blessed waves.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Fisher’s? You say she was dining there? There’s music afterward; I
+believe I had a card from her.” He glanced at the foolish pink-faced
+clock that was drumming out this hideous hour. “A quarter past ten? I
+might look in there now; the Fisher evenings are amusing. I haven’t kept
+you up too late, Gerty? You look tired—I’ve rambled on and bored you.”
+And in the unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss
+upon her cheek.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>At Mrs. Fisher’s, through the cigar smoke of the studio, a dozen voices
+greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he dropped into a
+seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search of Miss Bart. But she
+was not there, and the discovery gave him a pang out of all proportion to
+its seriousness; since the note in his breast-pocket assured him that at
+four the next day they would meet. To his impatience it seemed
+immeasurably long to wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to
+Mrs. Fisher to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily? She’s just gone. She had to run off, I forget where. Wasn’t she
+wonderful last night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who’s that? Lily?” asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a neighbouring
+arm-chair. “Really, you know, I’m no prude, but when it comes to a girl
+standing there as if she was up at auction—I thought seriously of
+speaking to cousin Julia.”</p>
+
+<p>“You didn’t know Jack had become our social censor?” Mrs. Fisher said to
+Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the general derision:
+“But she’s a cousin, hang it, and when a man’s married—TOWN TALK was
+full of her this morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes: lively reading that was,” said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking his
+moustache to hide the smile behind it. “Buy the dirty sheet? No, of
+course not; some fellow showed it to me—but I’d heard the stories
+before. When a girl’s as good-looking as that she’d better marry; then no
+questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized society there is no
+provision as yet for the young woman who claims the privileges of
+marriage without assuming its obligations.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of Mr.
+Rosedale,” Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“Rosedale—good heavens!” exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his eye-glass.
+“Stepney, that’s your fault for foisting the brute on us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, confound it, you know, we don’t MARRY Rosedale in our family,”
+Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive bridal
+finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the judicial
+reflection: “In Lily’s circumstances it’s a mistake to have too high a
+standard.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately,” Mrs. Fisher
+rejoined; “but the sight of her last night sent him off his head. What do
+you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? ‘My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I
+could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that, the picture’d appreciate a
+hundred per cent in ten years.’”</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove,—but isn’t she about somewhere?” exclaimed Van Alstyne,
+restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.</p>
+
+<p>“No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs. Where
+was she going, by the way? What’s on tonight? I hadn’t heard of anything.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, not a party, I think,” said an inexperienced young Farish who had
+arrived late. “I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she gave the
+driver the Trenors’ address.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Trenors’?” exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. “Why, the house is
+closed—Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did she? That’s queer. I’m sure I’m not mistaken. Well, come now,
+Trenor’s there, anyhow—I—oh, well—the fact is, I’ve no head for
+numbers,” he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining foot, and
+the smile that circled the room.</p>
+
+<p>In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with his
+hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why he had
+stayed in it so long.</p>
+
+<p>On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily’s: “It seems
+to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you disapprove of.”</p>
+
+<p>Well—what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
+element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That
+BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus’s
+task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda’s chains, for her limbs are
+numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with
+dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had
+strength for both—it was her weakness which had put the strength in him.
+It was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a
+clogging morass of old associations and habits, and for the moment its
+vapours were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in
+her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar
+which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor
+with which he was trying to build up a defence against the influences of
+the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
+which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so swayed by
+them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view
+of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?</p>
+
+<p>The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he
+strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
+At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of
+company.</p>
+
+<p>“Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one’s head. Now that
+women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine. It would be a
+curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the
+sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to
+obscure the moral issue.”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden’s mood than Van
+Alstyne’s after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined
+himself to generalities his listener’s nerves were in control. Happily
+Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing-up of social aspects, and with
+Selden for audience was eager to show the sureness of his touch. Mrs.
+Fisher lived in an East side street near the Park, and as the two men
+walked down Fifth Avenue the new architectural developments of that
+versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne’s comment.</p>
+
+<p>“That Greiner house, now—a typical rung in the social ladder! The man
+who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table
+at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a
+style his friends might have thought the money had given out. Not a bad
+purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western
+sight-seer. By and bye he’ll get out of that phase, and want something
+that the crowd will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he
+marries my clever cousin——”</p>
+
+<p>Selden dashed in with the query: “And the Wellington Brys’? Rather
+clever of its kind, don’t you think?”</p>
+
+<p>They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich restraint of
+line, which suggested the clever corseting of a redundant figure.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to Europe,
+and has a standard. I’m sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a copy of the
+TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt furniture is thought to
+be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever chap that architect is,
+though—how he takes his client’s measure! He has put the whole of Mrs.
+Bry in his use of the composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember,
+he chose the Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
+Trenor house is one of his best things—doesn’t look like a
+banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out
+a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at
+Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys’ ball-room must rankle: you may be
+sure she knows ’em as well as if she’d been there last night with a
+yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She
+isn’t, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I
+suppose Gus lives in the back.”</p>
+
+<p>He had halted opposite the Trenors’ corner, and Selden perforce stayed
+his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited; only an oblong
+gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.</p>
+
+<p>“They’ve bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and fifty
+feet in the side street. There’s where the ball-room’s to be, with a
+gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above. I suggested
+changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room across the whole
+Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door corresponds with the
+windows——”</p>
+
+<p>The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped to a
+startled “Hallo!” as the door opened and two figures were seen
+silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom halted at
+the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it in a haze of
+evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky, remained
+persistently projected against the light.</p>
+
+<p>For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
+silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the whole
+scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.</p>
+
+<p>Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.</p>
+
+<p>“A—hem—nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I may
+count on you—appearances are deceptive—and Fifth Avenue is so
+imperfectly lighted——”</p>
+
+<p>“Goodnight,” said Selden, turning sharply down the side street without
+seeing the other’s extended hand.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Alone with her cousin’s kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He had
+kissed her before—but not with another woman on his lips. If he had
+spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming the dark flood
+as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot through with glory, and
+it was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness. Gerty hid her face
+from the light, but it pierced to the crannies of her soul. She had been
+so contented, life had seemed so simple and sufficient—why had he come
+to trouble her with new hopes? And Lily—Lily, her best friend!
+Woman-like, she accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily,
+her fond imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
+her—had understood and sympathized with the modest independence of her
+life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice
+balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his
+view of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
+at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door barred
+against her by Lily’s hand! Lily, for whose admission there she herself
+had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She
+knew Selden—she saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped
+to dispel his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
+him—she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known to each
+other. On Selden’s part, no doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient;
+he had never guessed her foolish secret; but Lily—Lily must have known!
+When, in such matters, are a woman’s perceptions at fault? And if she
+knew, then she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere
+wantonness of power, since, even to Gerty’s suddenly flaming jealousy, it
+seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden’s wife. Lily might
+be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of
+living without it, and Selden’s eager investigations into the small
+economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as tragically duped
+as herself.</p>
+
+<p>She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were crumbling to
+cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade. Just beneath it stood
+the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out imperially on the cheap
+gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the little room. Could Selden picture
+her in such an interior? Gerty felt the poverty, the insignificance of
+her surroundings: she beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the
+cruelty of Lily’s judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
+dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily ever
+really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was the taste of
+new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature experimenting in a
+laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with a
+start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a district
+visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered the fire, and
+went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass above her
+dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the shadows of the
+room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right had she to dream the
+dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly
+as she undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
+setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life must be
+taken up as though there had been no break in its routine. Her servant
+did not come till eight o’clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and
+placed it beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat,
+extinguished her light and lay down. But on her bed sleep would not
+come, and she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
+closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be blindly
+grappled with. Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight
+forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
+wanted happiness—wanted it as fiercely and unscrupulously as Lily did,
+but without Lily’s power of obtaining it. And in her conscious impotence
+she lay shivering, and hated her friend——</p>
+
+<p>A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a light and
+stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat incoherently, then
+she felt the sobering touch of fact, and remembered that such calls were
+not unknown in her charitable work. She flung on her dressing-gown to
+answer the summons, and unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision
+of Lily Bart.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty’s first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as though
+Lily’s presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then she
+heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend’s face, and felt
+herself caught and clung to.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily—what is it?” she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who has
+gained shelter after a long flight.</p>
+
+<p>“I was so cold—I couldn’t go home. Have you a fire?”</p>
+
+<p>Gerty’s compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of habit,
+swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one who needed
+help—for what reason, there was no time to pause and conjecture:
+disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty’s lips, and made her
+draw her friend silently into the sitting-room and seat her by the
+darkened hearth.</p>
+
+<p>“There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute.”</p>
+
+<p>She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed
+strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on
+the white ruin of Lily’s face. The girls looked at each other in silence;
+then Lily repeated: “I couldn’t go home.”</p>
+
+<p>“No—no—you came here, dear! You’re cold and tired—sit quiet, and I’ll
+make you some tea.”</p>
+
+<p>Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade: all
+personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and experience had
+taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed.</p>
+
+<p>Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
+soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
+wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed it
+away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.</p>
+
+<p>“I came here because I couldn’t bear to be alone,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily! Something has happened—can’t you tell me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I couldn’t bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my room at
+Aunt Julia’s—so I came here——”</p>
+
+<p>She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in a
+fresh burst of fear.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their wings—alone, at
+night, in the dark? But you don’t know—there is nothing to make the dark
+dreadful to you——”</p>
+
+<p>The words, flashing back on Gerty’s last hours, struck from her a faint
+derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery, was blinded to
+everything outside it.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll let me stay? I shan’t mind when daylight comes—Is it late? Is
+the night nearly over? It must be awful to be sleepless—everything
+stands by the bed and stares——”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farish caught her straying hands. “Lily, look at me! Something has
+happened—an accident? You have been frightened—what has frightened you?
+Tell me if you can—a word or two—so that I can help you.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not frightened: that’s not the word. Can you imagine looking into
+your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement—some hideous change
+that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that—I
+can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts—I hate ugliness, you
+know—I’ve always turned from it—but I can’t explain to you—you
+wouldn’t understand.”</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.</p>
+
+<p>“How long the night is! And I know I shan’t sleep tomorrow. Some one told
+me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors. And he was not
+wicked, only unfortunate—and I see now how he must have suffered, lying
+alone with his thoughts! But I am bad—a bad girl—all my thoughts are
+bad—I have always had bad people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought
+I could manage my own life—I was proud—proud! but now I’m on their
+level——”</p>
+
+<p>Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of experience,
+till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech. She had first
+imagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, since
+Lily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher’s; but she now saw
+that other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back from
+conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.</p>
+
+<p>“There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me—do they ever pick themselves
+up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?”</p>
+
+<p>“Lily! you mustn’t speak so—you’re dreaming.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t they always go from bad to worse? There’s no turning back—your
+old self rejects you, and shuts you out.”</p>
+
+<p>She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness. “Go to
+bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I’ll watch here by the fire,
+and you’ll leave the light, and your door open. All I want is to feel
+that you are near me.” She laid both hands on Gerty’s shoulders, with a
+smile that was like sunrise on a sea strewn with wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
+frozen—you must undress and be made warm.” Gerty paused with sudden
+compunction. “But Mrs. Peniston—it’s past midnight! What will she think?”</p>
+
+<p>“She goes to bed. I have a latchkey. It doesn’t matter—I can’t go back
+there.”</p>
+
+<p>“There’s no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me where you
+have been. Listen, Lily—it will help you to speak!” She regained Miss
+Bart’s hands, and pressed them against her. “Try to tell me—it will
+clear your poor head. Listen—you were dining at Carry Fisher’s.” Gerty
+paused and added with a flash of heroism: “Lawrence Selden went from here
+to find you.”</p>
+
+<p>At the word, Lily’s face melted from locked anguish to the open misery of
+a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with tears.</p>
+
+<p>“He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help me.
+He told me—he warned me long ago—he foresaw that I should grow hateful
+to myself!”</p>
+
+<p>The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened the
+springs of self-pity in her friend’s dry breast, and tear by tear Lily
+poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped sideways in
+Gerty’s big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden’s had leaned,
+in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty’s aching senses the
+inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on
+Lily’s part to rob her of her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was
+to see in it a natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to
+such as Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they
+despoil. But if Selden’s infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect
+that his name produced shook Gerty’s steadfastness with a last pang. Men
+pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
+probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would have
+welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed the sufferer
+back to tolerance of life! But Lily’s self-betrayal took this last hope
+from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who
+loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. “Gerty, you know
+him—you understand him—tell me; if I went to him, if I told him
+everything—if I said: ‘I am bad through and through—I want admiration,
+I want excitement, I want money—’ yes, MONEY! That’s my shame,
+Gerty—and it’s known, it’s said of me—it’s what men think of me—If I
+said it all to him—told him the whole story—said plainly: ‘I’ve sunk
+lower than the lowest, for I’ve taken what they take, and not paid as
+they pay’—oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him
+everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me,
+and save me from loathing myself?”</p>
+
+<p>Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had
+come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river
+sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge
+past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: “He is
+like other men?” She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so
+would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before
+herself in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of
+her own passion.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes: I know him; he will help you,” she said; and in a moment Lily’s
+passion was weeping itself out against her breast.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on
+it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily’s dress and persuaded her to
+put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in
+the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to
+avoid contact with her bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be
+caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses
+toward her friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily’s
+nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet
+stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand of
+her hair swept Gerty’s cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was
+warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as
+rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her
+side, in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs
+from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped
+for her friend’s, and held it fast.</p>
+
+<p>“Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things,” she moaned; and
+Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow
+as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay
+still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to
+Gerty’s as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers
+relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she
+slept.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_15">Chapter 15</h2>
+
+<p>When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; then
+memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the cold
+slant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building,
+she saw her evening dress and opera cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a
+chair. Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and
+it occurred to Lily that, at home, her maid’s vigilance had always spared
+her the sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and
+with the constriction of her attitude in Gerty’s bed. All through her
+troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss in, and
+the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if she had spent
+her night in a train.</p>
+
+<p>This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then
+she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration, a languor
+of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The
+thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast
+roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the
+slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the
+dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But
+she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay
+back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical
+distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no
+freshness through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil
+of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of
+tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull
+hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she felt;
+Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up to drink
+the tea.</p>
+
+<p>“I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous attack
+in the carriage,” she said, as the drink brought clearness to her
+sluggish thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>“You were not well; I am so glad you came here,” Gerty returned.</p>
+
+<p>“But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia—?”</p>
+
+<p>“She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your things.
+But won’t you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress under
+her maid’s searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty was obliged
+to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a trace of the
+previous night’s emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace
+Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of enquiries as
+best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her
+way back from Carry Fisher’s; that, fearing she would not have strength
+to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish’s instead; but that a quiet
+night had restored her, and that she had no need of a doctor.</p>
+
+<p>This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to her own
+symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her aunt’s panacea for
+all physical and moral disorders. In the solitude of her own room she was
+brought back to a sharp contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them
+necessarily differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged
+furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea.
+But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
+besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced herself
+to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and the result of
+this hateful computation was the discovery that she had, in all, received
+nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been
+given and received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame: she knew that
+not a penny of it was her own, and that to restore her self-respect she
+must at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her
+outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
+realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more to keep
+up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute
+should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more
+sordid place than she had conceived it.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been removed, Lily
+asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the
+sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin
+arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a
+bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for
+these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the
+fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
+confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
+associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs.
+Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness
+which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since
+it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing
+this, Lily seldom ventured to assail it. She had never felt less like
+making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in
+vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily: this
+incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia; I’ve had
+worries,” she replied.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse
+closing against a beggar.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really
+believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
+thoughts—”</p>
+
+<p>“I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for it.
+She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of the year
+we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before we sailed,
+and feeling SURE the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and then
+said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
+astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced
+to continue: “I have been foolish——”</p>
+
+<p>“No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed. “I
+fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to mention
+the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your
+kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a girl is put
+to nowadays——”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your clothes
+and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid
+Celeste’s bill for you last October.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more
+inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few
+things since——”</p>
+
+<p>“What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the
+bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and
+one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and
+skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”</p>
+
+<p>“Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet sent
+in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a
+fraction of the sum that Lily needed.</p>
+
+<p>“She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it’s large;
+and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless and
+imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”</p>
+
+<p>She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly
+hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without
+effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs.
+Peniston shrink back apprehensively.</p>
+
+<p>“Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after
+frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at
+least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.” Mrs. Peniston
+glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of digitalis. “If you owe
+Celeste another thousand, she may send me her account,” she added, as
+though to end the discussion at any cost.</p>
+
+<p>“I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time; but I
+have really no choice—I ought to have spoken sooner—I owe a great deal
+more than a thousand dollars.”</p>
+
+<p>“A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”</p>
+
+<p>“I told you it was not only Celeste. I—there are other bills—more
+pressing—that must be settled.”</p>
+
+<p>“What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your
+head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have run into debt,
+you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till
+your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead
+of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all,
+and surely in four or five months you can settle the rest of your bills
+if I pay the dress-maker now.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract even a
+thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of paying Celeste’s
+bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the dress-maker’s account,
+and would make out the cheque to her and not to Lily. And yet the money
+must be obtained before the day was over!</p>
+
+<p>“The debts I speak of are—different—not like tradesmen’s bills,” she
+began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost afraid to
+continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything? The idea
+precipitated Lily’s avowal.</p>
+
+<p>“The fact is, I’ve played cards a good deal—bridge; the women all do it;
+girls too—it’s expected. Sometimes I’ve won—won a good deal—but lately
+I’ve been unlucky—and of course such debts can’t be paid off
+gradually——”</p>
+
+<p>She paused: Mrs. Peniston’s face seemed to be petrifying as she listened.</p>
+
+<p>“Cards—you’ve played cards for money? It’s true, then: when I was told
+so I wouldn’t believe it. I won’t ask if the other horrors I was told
+were true too; I’ve heard enough for the state of my nerves. When I think
+of the example you’ve had in this house! But I suppose it’s your foreign
+bringing-up—no one knew where your mother picked up her friends. And her
+Sundays were a scandal—that I know.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. “You play cards on Sunday?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at Bellomont
+and with the Dorsets.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for cards, but
+a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and one drifts into
+doing what the others do. I’ve had a dreadful lesson, and if you’ll help
+me out this time I promise you—”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. “You needn’t make any promises:
+it’s unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn’t undertake to pay
+your gambling debts.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aunt Julia! You don’t mean that you won’t help me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
+countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker, I will
+settle with her—beyond that I recognize no obligation to assume your
+debts.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
+stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: “Aunt
+Julia, I shall be disgraced—I—” But she could go no farther. If her
+aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts, in
+what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?</p>
+
+<p>“I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct far
+more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded you to play
+cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson too. They can
+probably afford to lose a little money—and at any rate, I am not going
+to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I must ask you to leave
+me—this scene has been extremely painful, and I have my own health to
+consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and tell Jennings I will see no
+one this afternoon but Grace Stepney.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling with
+fear and anger—the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears. She walked
+up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The last door of escape
+was closed—she felt herself shut in with her dishonour.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
+chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she remembered
+that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant to put him off with
+a word—but now her heart leaped at the thought of seeing him. Was there
+not a promise of rescue in his love? As she had lain at Gerty’s side the
+night before, she had thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of
+weeping out her pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear
+herself of its consequences before she met him—she had never really
+doubted that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
+in the full storm of her misery, that Selden’s love could not be her
+ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment’s shelter
+there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.</p>
+
+<p>But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
+wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive as the
+river’s flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be terrible—but
+afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered Gerty’s words: “I
+know him—he will help you”; and her mind clung to them as a sick person
+might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if he really understood—if he would
+help her to gather up her broken life, and put it together in some new
+semblance in which no trace of the past should remain! He had always made
+her feel that she was worthy of better things, and she had never been in
+greater need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
+imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she needed—it
+would take the glow of passion to weld together the shattered fragments
+of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty’s words and held fast to
+them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden’s feeling for her, and it had
+never dawned upon her blindness that Gerty’s own judgment of him was
+coloured by emotions far more ardent than her own.</p>
+
+<p>Four o’clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that Selden
+would be punctual. But the hour came and passed—it moved on feverishly,
+measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had time to take a fresh
+survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate anew between the impulse to
+confide in Selden and the dread of destroying his illusions. But as the
+minutes passed the need of throwing herself on his comprehension became
+more urgent: she could not bear the weight of her misery alone. There
+would be a perilous moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her
+beauty to bridge it over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?</p>
+
+<p>But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
+detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the four for
+a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after five confirmed
+this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to write more legibly in
+future. The sound of steps in the hall, and of the butler’s voice
+preceding them, poured fresh energy into her veins. She felt herself once
+more the alert and competent moulder of emergencies, and the remembrance
+of her power over Selden flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the
+drawing-room door opened it was Rosedale who came in.</p>
+
+<p>The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing movement of
+irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her own carelessness in not
+denying the door to all but Selden, she controlled herself and greeted
+Rosedale amicably. It was annoying that Selden, when he came, should find
+that particular visitor in possession, but Lily was mistress of the art
+of ridding herself of superfluous company, and to her present mood
+Rosedale seemed distinctly negligible.</p>
+
+<p>His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few moments’
+conversation. She had caught at the Brys’ entertainment as an easy
+impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval till Selden
+appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside the tea-table, his
+hands in his pockets, his legs a little too freely extended, at once gave
+the topic a personal turn.</p>
+
+<p>“Pretty well done—well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry’s got his back
+up and don’t mean to let go till he’s got the hang of the thing. Of
+course, there were things here and there—things Mrs. Fisher couldn’t be
+expected to see to—the champagne wasn’t cold, and the coats got mixed in
+the coat-room. I would have spent more money on the music. But that’s my
+character: if I want a thing I’m willing to pay: I don’t go up to the
+counter, and then wonder if the article’s worth the price. I wouldn’t be
+satisfied to entertain like the Welly Brys; I’d want something that would
+look more easy and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it
+takes just two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman
+to spend it.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to rearrange
+the tea-cups.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve got the money,” he continued, clearing his throat, “and what I want
+is the woman—and I mean to have her too.”</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
+walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne’s type bring their hats
+and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added a touch of
+elegant familiarity to their appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on his
+face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would take some
+time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before the moment of
+refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of a mind withdrawn yet
+not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of a subtle encouragement. He
+would not have liked any evidence of eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>“I mean to have her too,” he repeated, with a laugh intended to
+strengthen his self-assurance. “I generally HAVE got what I wanted in
+life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I’ve got more than I know how to
+invest; and now the money doesn’t seem to be of any account unless I can
+spend it on the right woman. That’s what I want to do with it: I want my
+wife to make all the other women feel small. I’d never grudge a dollar
+that was spent on that. But it isn’t every woman can do it, no matter how
+much you spend on her. There was a girl in some history book who wanted
+gold shields, or something, and the fellows threw ’em at her, and she was
+crushed under ’em: they killed her. Well, that’s true enough: some women
+looked buried under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who’ll hold her
+head higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
+other night at the Brys’, in that plain white dress, looking as if you
+had a crown on, I said to myself: ‘By gad, if she had one she’d wear it
+as if it grew on her.’”</p>
+
+<p>Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme: “Tell
+you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than all the rest
+of ’em put together. If a woman’s going to ignore her pearls, they want
+to be better than anybody else’s—and so it is with everything else. You
+know what I mean—you know it’s only the showy things that are cheap.
+Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if
+she wanted to. I know there’s one thing vulgar about money, and that’s
+the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in
+that way.” He paused, and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an
+earlier manner: “I guess you know the lady I’ve got in view, Miss Bart.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge. Even
+through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr. Rosedale’s
+millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of them to cancel
+her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly
+repugnant in the light of Selden’s expected coming. The contrast was too
+grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided
+that directness would be best.</p>
+
+<p>“If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful—very much flattered;
+but I don’t know what I have ever done to make you think—”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, if you mean you’re not dead in love with me, I’ve got sense enough
+left to see that. And I ain’t talking to you as if you were—I presume I
+know the kind of talk that’s expected under those circumstances. I’m
+confoundedly gone on you—that’s about the size of it—and I’m just
+giving you a plain business statement of the consequences. You’re not
+very fond of me—YET—but you’re fond of luxury, and style, and
+amusement, and of not having to worry about cash. You like to have a good
+time, and not have to settle for it; and what I propose to do is to
+provide for the good time and do the settling.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: “You are mistaken in
+one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared to settle for.”</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words implied
+a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was prepared to meet and
+repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning it failed to abash him,
+and he went on in the same tone: “I didn’t mean to give offence; excuse
+me if I’ve spoken too plainly. But why ain’t you straight with me—why do
+you put up that kind of bluff? You know there’ve been times when you were
+bothered—damned bothered—and as a girl gets older, and things keep
+moving along, why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable
+to move past her and not come back. I don’t say it’s anywhere near that
+with you yet; but you’ve had a taste of bothers that a girl like yourself
+ought never to have known about, and what I’m offering you is the chance
+to turn your back on them once for all.”</p>
+
+<p>The colour burned in Lily’s face as he ended; there was no mistaking the
+point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass unheeded was a fatal
+confession of weakness, while to resent it too openly was to risk
+offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation quivered on her lip; but
+it was quelled by the secret voice which warned her that she must not
+quarrel with him. He knew too much about her, and even at the moment when
+it was essential that he should show himself at his best, he did not
+scruple to let her see how much he knew. How then would he use his power
+when her expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for
+restraint? Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she
+had to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as a
+breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try to
+decide coolly which turn to take.</p>
+
+<p>“You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am grateful
+to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always easy to be
+quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor and lives among
+rich people; I have been careless about money, and have worried about my
+bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful if I made that a reason for
+accepting all you offer, with no better return to make than the desire to
+be free from my anxieties. You must give me time—time to think of your
+kindness—and of what I could give you in return for it——”</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal was
+shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale rise in
+obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for success, and
+disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept what was conceded,
+without undue haste to press for more. Something in his prompt
+acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the stored force of a
+patience that might subdue the strongest will. But at least they had
+parted amicably, and he was out of the house without meeting
+Selden—Selden, whose continued absence now smote her with a new alarm.
+Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she understood that it was now
+too late to hope for Selden. He would write explaining his absence, of
+course; there would be a note from him by the late post. But her
+confession would have to be postponed; and the chill of the delay settled
+heavily on her fagged spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It lay heavier when the postman’s last ring brought no note for her, and
+she had to go upstairs to a lonely night—a night as grim and sleepless
+as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty. She had never learned to
+live with her own thoughts, and to be confronted with them through such
+hours of lucid misery made the confused wretchedness of her previous
+vigil seem easily bearable.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her that she
+would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed without his
+writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and dining alone with
+her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the heart, and talked icily on
+general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to bed early, and when she had gone
+Lily sat down and wrote a note to Selden. She was about to ring for a
+messenger to despatch it when her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening
+paper which lay at her elbow: “Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the
+passengers sailing this afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the
+Windward Liner Antilles.”</p>
+
+<p>She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note. She
+understood now that he was never coming—that he had gone away because he
+was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking across the floor
+stood gazing at herself for a long time in the brightly lit mirror above
+the mantelpiece. The lines in her face came out terribly—she looked
+old; and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she look to other
+people? She moved away, and began to wander aimlessly about the room,
+fitting her steps with mechanical precision between the monstrous roses
+of Mrs. Peniston’s Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with
+which she had written to Selden still rested against the uncovered
+inkstand. She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
+it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and sat over
+it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write the date, and
+“Dear Mr. Rosedale”—but after that her inspiration flagged. She meant to
+tell him to come to her, but the words refused to shape themselves. At
+length she began: “I have been thinking——” then she laid the pen down,
+and sat with her elbows on the table and her face hidden in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was not
+late—barely ten o’clock—and there might still be a note from Selden, or
+a message—or he might be there himself, on the other side of the door!
+The announcement of his sailing might have been a mistake—it might be
+another Lawrence Selden who had gone to Havana—all these possibilities
+had time to flash through her mind, and build up the conviction that she
+was after all to see or hear from him, before the drawing-room door
+opened to admit a servant carrying a telegram.</p>
+
+<p>Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset’s name below
+the message: “Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us on a cruise
+in Mediterranean?”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter fs150"></div>
+<p class="center fs150 p4">BOOK TWO</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_1a">Chapter 1</h2>
+
+<p>It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo had, more
+than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating itself to each
+man’s humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a festive readiness of
+welcome that might well, in a disenchanted eye, have turned to paint and
+facility. So frank an appeal for participation—so outspoken a
+recognition of the holiday vein in human nature—struck refreshingly on a
+mind jaded by prolonged hard work in surroundings made for the discipline
+of the senses. As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry
+of architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
+loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which suggested a
+sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting of scenes—as he
+took in the whole outspread effect of light and leisure, he felt a
+movement of revulsion from the last few months of his life.</p>
+
+<p>The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
+snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and furious
+air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the gritty wind ground
+into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work, had told himself that
+external conditions did not matter to a man in his state, and that cold
+and ugliness were a good tonic for relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent
+case summoned him abroad to confer with a client in Paris, he broke
+reluctantly with the routine of the office; and it was only now that,
+having despatched his business, and slipped away for a week in the south,
+he began to feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is the solace of
+those who take an objective interest in life.</p>
+
+<p>The multiplicity of its appeals—the perpetual surprise of its contrasts
+and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the show were upon him
+with a spring as he descended the Casino steps and paused on the pavement
+at its doors. He had not been abroad for seven years—and what changes
+the renewed contact produced! If the central depths were untouched,
+hardly a pin-point of surface remained the same. And this was the very
+place to bring out the completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the
+perpetuities, might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a
+day’s revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his fixed sky.</p>
+
+<p>It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its climax
+and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens would soon
+dissolve and reform in other scenes. Meanwhile the last moments of the
+performance seemed to gain an added brightness from the hovering threat
+of the curtain. The quality of the air, the exuberance of the flowers,
+the blue intensity of sea and sky, produced the effect of a closing
+TABLEAU, when all the lights are turned on at once. This impression was
+presently heightened by the way in which a consciously conspicuous group
+of people advanced to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the
+air of the chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the
+final effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had
+been staged regardless of expense, and emphasized its resemblance to one
+of those “costume-plays” in which the protagonists walk through the
+passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood in unrelated
+attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the men hung about
+them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors are named in the
+programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly fused the group by
+arresting the attention of one of its members.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Mr. Selden!” Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a gesture
+toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added plaintively:
+“We’re starving to death because we can’t decide where to lunch.”</p>
+
+<p>Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their difficulty,
+Selden learned with amusement that there were several places where one
+might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit something by lunching;
+so that eating actually became a minor consideration on the very spot
+consecrated to its rites.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE—but that looks as if
+one hadn’t any other reason for being there: the Americans who don’t know
+any one always rush for the best food. And the Duchess of Beltshire has
+taken up Becassin’s lately,” Mrs. Bry earnestly summed up.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher’s despair, had not progressed beyond the point
+of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could not acquire the
+air of doing things because she wanted to, and making her choice the
+final seal of their fitness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure clothes, met
+the dilemma hilariously.</p>
+
+<p>“I guess the Duchess goes where it’s cheapest, unless she can get her
+meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE she’d turn
+up fast enough.”</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. “The Grand Dukes go to that little
+place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it’s the only restaurant in
+Europe where they can cook peas.”</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn
+smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy
+to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis: “It’s quite that.”</p>
+
+<p>“PEAS?” said Mr. Bry contemptuously. “Can they cook terrapin? It just
+shows,” he continued, “what these European markets are, when a fellow can
+make a reputation cooking peas!”</p>
+
+<p>Jack Stepney intervened with authority. “I don’t know that I quite agree
+with Dacey: there’s a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire—but in
+any case, I can’t advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at least not with ladies.”</p>
+
+<p>Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as the Van
+Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and
+discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness of gait which left
+him trailing breathlessly in her wake.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s where we’ll go then!” she declared, with a heavy toss of her
+plumage. “I’m so tired of the TERRASSE: it’s as dull as one of mother’s
+dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who all the awful people
+are at the other place—hasn’t he, Carry? Now, Jack, don’t look so
+solemn!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Bry, “all I want to know is who their dress-makers are.”</p>
+
+<p>“No doubt Dacey can tell you that too,” remarked Stepney, with an ironic
+intention which the other received with the light murmur, “I can at least
+FIND OUT, my dear fellow”; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn’t
+walk another step, the party hailed two or three of the light phaetons
+which hover attentively on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off
+in procession toward the Condamine.</p>
+
+<p>Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging the
+boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
+intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they
+presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue
+curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to
+the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its
+church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the
+gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a
+light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the
+culminating moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great
+steam-yacht drew the company’s attention from the peas.</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove, I believe that’s the Dorsets back!” Stepney exclaimed; and Lord
+Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated: “It’s the
+Sabrina—yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily,” Mrs. Fisher observed.</p>
+
+<p>“I guess they feel as if they had: there’s only one up-to-date hotel in
+the whole place,” said Mr. Bry disparagingly.</p>
+
+<p>“It was Ned Silverton’s idea—but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must have
+been horribly bored.” Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to Selden: “I do
+hope there hasn’t been a row.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back,” said Lord Hubert, in his
+mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: “I daresay the
+Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily’s here.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Duchess admires her immensely: I’m sure she’d be charmed to have it
+arranged,” Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional promptness of the
+man accustomed to draw his profit from facilitating social contacts:
+Selden was struck by the businesslike change in his manner.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily has been a tremendous success here,” Mrs. Fisher continued, still
+addressing herself confidentially to Selden. “She looks ten years
+younger—I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her everywhere in
+Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her to stop for a week at
+Cimiez. People say that was one reason why Bertha whisked the yacht off
+to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn’t take much notice of her, and she
+couldn’t bear to look on at Lily’s triumph.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was cruising in
+the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that
+there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the
+season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating
+his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in
+his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really
+affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments
+of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings,
+and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight of the
+Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that his three months
+of engrossing professional work, following on the sharp shock of his
+disillusionment, had cleared his mind of its sentimental vapours. The
+feeling he had nourished and given prominence to was one of thankfulness
+for his escape: he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a
+dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises.
+Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he had
+not come off unhurt.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher’s side in the Casino gardens, he was trying
+to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in the
+contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed with the
+loitering indecision characteristic of social movements at Monte Carlo,
+where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to
+offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally
+gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with
+the delicate negotiation of securing that lady’s presence at dinner, the
+Stepneys had left for Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed
+to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment
+engaging his highest faculties.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after luncheon,
+had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to withdraw to her
+hotel for an hour’s repose; and Selden and his companion were thus left
+to a stroll propitious to confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself
+into a tranquil session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian
+roses, from which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble
+balusters, and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like
+from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of
+the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of
+many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
+Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had
+come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the
+inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first
+success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the
+Riviera as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their
+course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital, and a
+facility for picking them up again after long absences; and the carefully
+disseminated rumour of the Brys’ wealth had at once gathered about them a
+group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.</p>
+
+<p>“But things are not going as well as I expected,” Mrs. Fisher frankly
+admitted. “It’s all very well to say that every body with money can get
+into society; but it would be truer to say that NEARLY everybody can.
+And the London market is so glutted with new Americans that, to succeed
+there now, they must be either very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are
+neither. HE would get on well enough if she’d let him alone; they like
+his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by
+trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she’d be natural
+herself—fat and vulgar and bouncing—it would be all right; but as soon
+as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She
+tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled.
+I’ve done my best to make her see her mistake—I’ve said to her again and
+again: ‘Just let yourself go, Louisa’; but she keeps up the humbug even
+with me—I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the
+door shut.</p>
+
+<p>“The worst of it is,” Mrs. Fisher went on, “that she thinks it’s all MY
+fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and everybody began
+to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa thought that if she’d
+had Lily in tow instead of me she would have been hob-nobbing with all
+the royalties by this time. She doesn’t realize that it’s Lily’s beauty
+that does it: Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than
+when he knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously
+admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to
+marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned
+up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her
+marriage-settlements with the step-father were being drawn up. Some
+people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal:
+there was an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
+so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
+elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks that Aix
+didn’t suit her, and mentions her having been sent there as proof of the
+incompetence of French doctors. That’s Lily all over, you know: she works
+like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she
+ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a
+picnic.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of sea
+between the cactus-flowers. “Sometimes,” she added, “I think it’s just
+flightiness—and sometimes I think it’s because, at heart, she despises
+the things she’s trying for. And it’s the difficulty of deciding that
+makes her such an interesting study.” She glanced tentatively at Selden’s
+motionless profile, and resumed with a slight sigh: “Well, all I can say
+is, I wish she’d give ME some of her discarded opportunities. I wish we
+could change places now, for instance. She could make a very good thing
+out of the Brys if she managed them properly, and I should know just how
+to look after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy
+Silverton.”</p>
+
+<p>She met Selden’s sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance. “Well,
+what’s the use of mincing matters? We all know that’s what Bertha brought
+her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good time she has to provide
+occupation for George. At first I thought Lily was going to play her
+cards well THIS time, but there are rumours that Bertha is jealous of her
+success here and at Cannes, and I shouldn’t be surprised if there were a
+break any day. Lily’s only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly—oh,
+very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it’s necessary
+that George’s attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And I’m
+bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he’d marry her tomorrow if
+he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But you know him—he’s
+as blind as he’s jealous; and of course Lily’s present business is to
+keep him blind. A clever woman might know just the right moment to tear
+off the bandage: but Lily isn’t clever in that way, and when George does
+open his eyes she’ll probably contrive not to be in his line of vision.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden tossed away his cigarette. “By Jove—it’s time for my train,” he
+exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs. Fisher’s
+surprised comment—“Why, I thought of course you were at Monte!”—a
+murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his head-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>“The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now,” he heard irrelevantly flung
+after him.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel overlooking
+the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of gaping
+portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to transport them to the
+cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to
+the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Nice; and not
+till he was installed in the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim
+to himself, with a reaction of self-contempt: “What the deuce am I
+running away from?”</p>
+
+<p>The pertinence of the question checked Selden’s fugitive impulse before
+the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like an emotional
+coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered. He had instructed
+his bankers to forward some important business letters to Nice, and at
+Nice he would quietly await them. He was already annoyed with himself for
+having left Monte Carlo, where he had intended to pass the week which
+remained to him before sailing; but it would now be difficult to return
+on his steps without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride
+recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the
+probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself
+from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance; and
+viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a reassuring
+object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated mention of her
+name, would send his thoughts back into grooves from which he had
+resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could be entirely excluded from
+his life, the pressure of new and varied impressions, with which no
+thought of her was connected, would soon complete the work of separation.
+Mrs. Fisher’s conversation had, indeed, operated to that end; but the
+treatment was too painful to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies
+were untried; and Selden thought he could trust himself to return
+gradually to a reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.</p>
+
+<p>Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in his
+reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned him that
+he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment there was a
+hand on the door, and he turned to confront the very face he was fleeing.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the
+train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and Lord
+Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage, and
+envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before the
+whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were hastening to
+Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the Duchess of
+Beltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan evidently
+improvised—in spite of Lord Hubert’s protesting “Oh, I say, you
+know,”—for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry’s endeavour to
+capture the Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time for a
+rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself opposite to him in
+the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three months had elapsed since he
+had parted from her on the threshold of the Brys’ conservatory; but a
+subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty. Then it had had
+a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were
+sometimes tragically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a
+process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
+brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation:
+to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm
+fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape.</p>
+
+<p>He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
+competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she took up
+the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had not been
+snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such facility
+sickened him—but he told himself that it was with the pang which
+precedes recovery. Now he would really get well—would eject the last
+drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt himself calmer in her
+presence than he had learned to be in the thought of her. Her assumptions
+and elisions, her short-cuts and long DETOURS, the skill with which she
+contrived to meet him at a point from which no inconvenient glimpses of
+the past were visible, suggested what opportunities she had had for
+practising such arts since their last meeting. He felt that she had at
+last arrived at an understanding with herself: had made a pact with her
+rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government,
+under which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced
+into the service of the state.</p>
+
+<p>And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had adjusted itself
+to the hidden intricacies of a situation in which, even after Mrs.
+Fisher’s elucidating flashes, he still felt himself agrope. Surely Mrs.
+Fisher could no longer charge Miss Bart with neglecting her
+opportunities! To Selden’s exasperated observation she was only too
+completely alive to them. She was “perfect” to every one: subservient to
+Bertha’s anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset’s moods,
+brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her
+on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton,
+portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something
+vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of
+manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed
+on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be
+desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was the impression left
+with him. He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one
+graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ground was
+failing her.</p>
+
+<p>On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for the
+half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of the general
+insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism. How any one
+could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera—any one with a grain of
+imagination—with the whole Mediterranean to choose from: but then, if
+one’s estimate of a place depended on the way they broiled a spring
+chicken! Gad! what a study might be made of the tyranny of the
+stomach—the way a sluggish liver or insufficient gastric juices might
+affect the whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in
+reach—chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the “statutory causes”; a
+woman’s life might be ruined by a man’s inability to digest fresh bread.
+Grotesque? Yes—and tragic—like most absurdities. There’s nothing
+grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he?
+Oh—the reason they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well—partly, no
+doubt, Miss Bart’s desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a
+stone to art and poetry—the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And
+of course she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for him. Oh,
+she could make him believe anything—ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset was aware of
+it—oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn’t see! But she could hold her
+tongue—she’d had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an intimate friend—she
+wouldn’t hear a word against her. Only it hurts a woman’s pride—there
+are some things one doesn’t get used to.... All this in confidence, of
+course? Ah—and there were the ladies signalling from the balcony of the
+hotel.... He plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative
+cigar.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the evening, by
+some of those faint corroborative hints that generate a light of their
+own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden, stumbling on a chance
+acquaintance, had dined with him, and adjourned, still in his company, to
+the brightly lit Promenade, where a line of crowded stands commanded the
+glittering darkness of the waters. The night was soft and persuasive.
+Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from
+the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent
+across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red
+glitter of the illuminated boats. Down the lantern-hung Promenade,
+snatches of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft
+tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and the
+backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the
+vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of the
+season.</p>
+
+<p>Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the stands facing
+the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng, and then found a point
+of vantage on a high garden-parapet above the Promenade. Thence they
+caught but a triangular glimpse of the water, and of the flashing play of
+boats across its surface; but the crowd in the street was under their
+immediate view, and seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than
+the show itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and,
+dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and
+turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls
+overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty cab
+trailed along the deserted thoroughfare, and presently Selden saw two
+persons emerge from the opposite shadows, signal to the cab, and drive
+off in it toward the centre of the town. The moonlight touched them as
+they paused to enter the carriage, and he recognized Mrs. Dorset and
+young Silverton.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw that the
+time was close on eleven. He took another cross street, and without
+breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way to the fashionable
+club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here, amid the blaze of crowded
+baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord Hubert Dacey, seated with his
+habitual worn smile behind a rapidly dwindling heap of gold. The heap
+being in due course wiped out, Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining
+Selden, adjourned with him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was
+now past midnight, and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the
+long trails of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky
+repossessed by the tranquil splendour of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hubert looked at his watch. “By Jove, I promised to join the Duchess
+for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it’s past twelve, and I suppose
+they’ve all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the crowd soon after
+dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They had seats on one of the
+stands, but of course they couldn’t stop quiet: the Duchess never can.
+She and Miss Bart went off in quest of what they call adventures—gad, it
+ain’t their fault if they don’t have some queer ones!” He added
+tentatively, after pausing to grope for a cigarette: “Miss Bart’s an old
+friend of yours, I believe? So she told me.—Ah, thanks—I don’t seem to
+have one left.” He lit Selden’s proffered cigarette, and continued, in
+his high-pitched drawling tone: “None of my business, of course, but I
+didn’t introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess, you
+understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a liberal
+education.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert broke
+out again: “Sort of thing one can’t communicate to the young lady—though
+young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for themselves; but in
+this case—I’m an old friend too, you know . . . and there seemed no one
+else to speak to. The whole situation’s a little mixed, as I see it—but
+there used to be an aunt somewhere, a diffuse and innocent person, who
+was great at bridging over chasms she didn’t see.... Ah, in New York,
+is she? Pity New York’s such a long way off!”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_2a">Chapter 2</h2>
+
+<p>Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found herself
+alone on the deck of the Sabrina.</p>
+
+<p>The cushioned chairs, disposed
+expectantly under the wide awning, showed no signs of recent occupancy,
+and she presently learned from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet
+appeared, and that the gentlemen—separately—had gone ashore as soon as
+they had breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over
+the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
+before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath of
+purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of foam at
+the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences, hotels and villas
+flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and eucalyptus; and the
+background of bare and finely-pencilled mountains quivered in a pale
+intensity of light.</p>
+
+<p>How beautiful it was—and how she loved beauty! She had always felt that
+her sensibility in this direction made up for certain obtusenesses of
+feeling of which she was less proud; and during the last three months she
+had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets’ invitation to go abroad with
+them had come as an almost miraculous release from crushing difficulties;
+and her faculty for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off
+problems of conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had
+arisen, made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a
+postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed
+for her only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
+to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they changed
+their background. She could not have remained in New York without
+repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious
+debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident
+of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them
+dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled
+past them.</p>
+
+<p>Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to aid this
+illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new scenes, and had found
+in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions. The cruise itself charmed
+her as a romantic adventure. She was vaguely touched by the names and
+scenes amid which she moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading
+Theocritus by moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories,
+with a thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
+superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given her more
+pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high company, and of
+making her own ascendency felt there, so that she found herself figuring
+once more as the “beautiful Miss Bart” in the interesting journal devoted
+to recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions—all
+these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of memory
+the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had escaped.</p>
+
+<p>If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her
+ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only
+problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.
+Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of the skill with which she had
+adapted herself to somewhat delicate conditions. She had reason to think
+that she had made herself equally necessary to her host and hostess; and
+if only she had seen any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a
+financial profit from the situation, there would have been no cloud on
+her horizon. The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently
+low; and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
+be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could worry
+along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some happy
+change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was gay and
+beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not unworthily in
+such a setting.</p>
+
+<p>She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of Beltshire,
+and at twelve o’clock she asked to be set ashore in the gig. Before this
+she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see Mrs. Dorset; but the
+reply came back that the latter was tired, and trying to sleep. Lily
+thought she understood the reason of the rebuff. Her hostess had not been
+included in the Duchess’s invitation, though she herself had made the
+most loyal efforts in that direction. But her grace was impervious to
+hints, and invited or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily’s fault if
+Mrs. Dorset’s complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess’s
+easy gait. The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated
+her objection beyond saying: “She’s rather a bore, you know. The only one
+of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry—HE’S funny—” but Lily
+knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether sorry to be
+thus distinguished at her friend’s expense. Bertha certainly HAD grown
+tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned Silverton.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from the
+Sabrina; and the Duchess’s little breakfast, organized by Lord Hubert
+with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter to Lily for not
+including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of late, had grown more than
+usually morose and incalculable, and Ned Silverton went about with an air
+that seemed to challenge the universe. The freedom and lightness of the
+ducal intercourse made an agreeable change from these complications, and
+Lily was tempted, after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her
+companions to the hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to
+play; her diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure;
+but it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of the
+Duchess’s back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a neighbouring
+table.</p>
+
+<p>The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the afternoon
+hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the Sunday crowd in a
+lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass, identities were hardly
+distinguishable; but Lily presently saw Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined
+way through the doors, and, in the broad wake she left, the light figure
+of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug.
+Mrs. Bry pressed on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain
+point in the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
+towing-line, and let herself float to the girl’s side.</p>
+
+<p>“Lose her?” she echoed the latter’s query, with an indifferent glance at
+Mrs. Bry’s retreating back. “I daresay—it doesn’t matter: I HAVE lost
+her already.” And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: “We had an awful row
+this morning. You know, of course, that the Duchess chucked her at dinner
+last night, and she thinks it was my fault—my want of management. The
+worst of it is, the message—just a mere word by telephone—came so late
+that the dinner HAD to be paid for; and Becassin HAD run it up—it had
+been so drummed into him that the Duchess was coming!” Mrs. Fisher
+indulged in a faint laugh at the remembrance. “Paying for what she
+doesn’t get rankles so dreadfully with Louisa: I can’t make her see that
+it’s one of the preliminary steps to getting what you haven’t paid
+for—and as I was the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms,
+poor dear!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came naturally to
+her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to Mrs. Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>“If there’s anything I can do—if it’s only a question of meeting the
+Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing——”</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. “My dear, I have my
+pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn’t manage the Duchess, and I can’t
+palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I’ve taken the final step: I
+go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers. THEY’RE still in the elementary
+stage; an Italian Prince is a great deal more than a Prince to them, and
+they’re always on the brink of taking a courier for one. To save them
+from that is my present mission.” She laughed again at the picture. “But
+before I go I want to make my last will and testament—I want to leave
+you the Brys.”</p>
+
+<p>“Me?” Miss Bart joined in her amusement. “It’s charming of you to
+remember me, dear; but really——”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re already so well provided for?” Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp glance
+at her. “ARE you, though, Lily—to the point of rejecting my offer?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart coloured slowly. “What I really meant was, that the Brys
+wouldn’t in the least care to be so disposed of.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye.
+“What you really meant was that you’ve snubbed the Brys horribly; and you
+know that they know——”</p>
+
+<p>“Carry!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you’d even
+managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina—especially when royalties
+were coming! But it’s not too late,” she ended earnestly, “it’s not too
+late for either of you.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled. “Stay over, and I’ll get the Duchess to dine with them.”</p>
+
+<p>“I shan’t stay over—the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT,” said Mrs.
+Fisher with simplicity. “But get the Duchess to dine with them all the
+same.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend’s importunity
+was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. “I’m sorry I have been
+negligent about the Brys——” she began.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, as to the Brys—it’s you I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Fisher
+abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice:
+“You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess chucked us.
+It was Louisa’s idea—I told her what I thought of it.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart assented. “Yes—I caught sight of you on the way back, at the
+station.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset—that
+horrid little Dabham who does ‘Society Notes from the Riviera’—had been
+dining with us at Nice. And he’s telling everybody that you and Dorset
+came back alone after midnight.”</p>
+
+<p>“Alone—? When he was with us?” Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into
+gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher’s look. “We DID
+come back alone—if that’s so very dreadful! But whose fault was it? The
+Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown Princess; Bertha
+got bored with the show, and went off early, promising to meet us at the
+station. We turned up on time, but she didn’t—she didn’t turn up at all!”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with
+careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher received it
+in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have lost sight of her
+friend’s part in the incident: her inward vision had taken another slant.</p>
+
+<p>“Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for the
+FETE. At any rate, I know she’s safe on the yacht, though I haven’t yet
+seen her; but you see it was not my fault,” Lily summed up.</p>
+
+<p>“Not your fault that Bertha didn’t turn up? My poor child, if only you
+don’t have to pay for it!” Mrs. Fisher rose—she had seen Mrs. Bry
+surging back in her direction. “There’s Louisa, and I must be off—oh,
+we’re on the best of terms externally; we’re lunching together; but at
+heart it’s ME she’s lunching on,” she explained; and with a last
+hand-clasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I leave her to you;
+she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with her
+from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving, the first
+step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry’s good graces. An affable
+advance—a vague murmur that they must see more of each other—an
+allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include the Duchess as
+well as the Sabrina—how easily it was all done, if one possessed the
+knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as she had so often
+wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not more consistently
+exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful—and sometimes, could it be
+that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious of
+a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to the point of
+suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps,
+that he might really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE
+undertook to have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his
+help, with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
+way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more
+for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as she
+advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it been
+produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden? She thought
+not—time and change seemed so completely to have relegated him to his
+proper distance. The sudden and exquisite reaction from her anxieties had
+had the effect of throwing the recent past so far back that even Selden,
+as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so
+clear that they were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down
+to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
+No—that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
+fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
+uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.</p>
+
+<p>They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
+descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her across the
+square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and regain the yacht; but
+she now had the immediate impression that something more was to happen
+first.</p>
+
+<p>“Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?” he began, putting the
+second question before the first was answered, and not waiting for a
+reply to either before he directed her silently toward the comparative
+seclusion of the lower gardens.</p>
+
+<p>She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension.
+The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its sallowness had
+paled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and long
+reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine effect. His appearance,
+in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious.</p>
+
+<p>He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till they
+reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then, pulling up
+abruptly, he said: “Have you seen Bertha?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—when I left the yacht she was not yet up.”</p>
+
+<p>He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
+clock. “Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time she
+came on board? This morning at seven!” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>“At seven?” Lily started. “What happened—an accident to the train?”</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again. “They missed the train—all the trains—they had to
+drive back.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well——?” She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this necessity
+accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, they couldn’t get a carriage at once—at that time of night, you
+know—” the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he were
+putting the case for his wife—“and when they finally did, it was only a
+one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!”</p>
+
+<p>“How tiresome! I see,” she affirmed, with the more earnestness because
+she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after a pause she
+added: “I’m so sorry—but ought we to have waited?”</p>
+
+<p>“Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the four of
+us, do you think?”</p>
+
+<p>She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh intended
+to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of it. “Well, it
+would have been difficult; we should have had to walk by turns. But it
+would have been jolly to see the sunrise.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly,” he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>“Was it? You saw it, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Naturally—I suppose you were worried. Why didn’t you call on me to
+share your vigil?”</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. “I
+don’t think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT,” he said with sudden
+grimness.</p>
+
+<p>Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as in
+one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping her
+sense of it out of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“DENOUEMENT—isn’t that too big a word for such a small incident? The
+worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has probably slept
+off by this time.”</p>
+
+<p>She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to her
+in the glare of his miserable eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t—don’t——!” he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and while
+she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore any cause for
+it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he dropped down on the bench
+near which they had paused, and poured out the wretchedness of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>It was a dreadful hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking and
+seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was
+not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak; but
+rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface
+of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had
+always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the
+situation had presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid
+image—that of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping
+road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending,
+and wondering what would give way first. Well—everything had given way
+now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so long.
+Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it
+from the road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his
+furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made her feel
+the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his life. But for her,
+what ear would have been open to his cries? And what hand but hers could
+drag him up again to a footing of sanity and self-respect? All through
+the stress of the struggle with him, she had been conscious of something
+faintly maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
+present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to
+feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted her to suffer
+with him, not to help him to suffer less.</p>
+
+<p>Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
+frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy so
+deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would think it
+the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But Monte Carlo is,
+of all places, the one where the human bond is least close, and odd
+sights are the least arresting. If a glance or two lingered on the
+couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed them; and it was Lily herself who
+broke the silence by rising from her seat. With the clearing of her
+vision the sweep of peril had extended, and she saw that the post of
+danger was no longer at Dorset’s side.</p>
+
+<p>“If you won’t go back, I must—don’t make me leave you!” she urged.</p>
+
+<p>But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: “What are you going to
+do? You really can’t sit here all night.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers.” He sat up, roused by
+a new thought. “By Jove, Selden’s at Nice—I’ll send for Selden!”</p>
+
+<p>Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. “No, no, NO!” she
+protested.</p>
+
+<p>He swung round on her distrustfully. “Why not Selden? He’s a lawyer isn’t
+he? One will do as well as another in a case like this.”</p>
+
+<p>“As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help you.”</p>
+
+<p>“You do—by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn’t been for you
+I’d have ended the thing long ago. But now it’s got to end.” He rose
+suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. “You can’t want to see
+me ridiculous.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him kindly. “That’s just it.” Then, after a moment’s
+pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
+inspiration: “Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You’ll have time to do it
+before dinner.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, DINNER——” he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
+rejoinder: “Dinner on board, remember; we’ll put it off till nine if you
+like.”</p>
+
+<p>It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the quay, and
+she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her, she began to wonder
+what had been happening on the yacht. Of Silverton’s whereabouts there
+had been no mention. Had he returned to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha—the
+dread alternative sprang on her suddenly—could Bertha, left to herself,
+have gone ashore to rejoin him? Lily’s heart stood still at the thought.
+All her concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
+in such affairs, the woman’s instinct is to side with the man, but
+because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was so
+desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of so
+different a quality from Bertha’s, though hers too was desperate enough.
+The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about herself, while
+he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual crisis, this
+difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution on Bertha’s side,
+since at least he had her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any
+rate, viewed less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were
+for the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily’s sympathies now went out.
+She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of
+obligation, the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain
+it. Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the last
+months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction of which
+Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more urgent that she
+should work undividedly in her friend’s interest.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Bertha’s interest, certainly, that she had despatched Dorset to
+consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of the situation
+accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the safest in which Dorset
+could find himself. Who but Selden could thus miraculously combine the
+skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? The consciousness
+that much skill would be required made Lily rest thankfully in the
+greatness of the obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through
+she could trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust
+in the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the conviction
+strengthened her for the task that remained. She and Bertha had never
+been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis the barriers of reserve
+must surely fall: Dorset’s wild allusions to the scene of the morning
+made Lily feel that they were down already, and that any attempt to
+rebuild them would be beyond Bertha’s strength. She pictured the poor
+creature shivering behind her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense
+the moment when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered.
+If only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
+traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily grew
+more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her long absence.
+What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long hours no soul to
+turn to—but by this time Lily’s eager foot was on the side-ladder, and
+her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be
+unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck, the
+wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated elegance, sat
+dispensing tea to the Duchess of Beltshire and Lord Hubert.</p>
+
+<p>The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that Bertha, at
+least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was proportionately
+disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned. But in an instant she
+saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to look blank before the others,
+and that, to mitigate the effect of her own surprise, she must at once
+produce some simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions
+made it easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess: “Why, I thought you’d
+gone back to the Princess!” and this sufficed for the lady she addressed,
+if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert.</p>
+
+<p>At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the Duchess
+was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first rushed out to the
+yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject of tomorrow’s
+dinner—the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert had finally
+insisted on dragging them.</p>
+
+<p>“To save my neck, you know!” he explained, with a glance that appealed to
+Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the Duchess added, with
+her noble candour: “Mr. Bry has promised him a tip, and he says if we go
+he’ll pass it onto us.”</p>
+
+<p>This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to Lily, Mrs.
+Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the close of which
+Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder, called back, with an air
+of numbering heads: “And of course we may count on Dorset too?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, count on him,” his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up well to
+the last—but as she turned back from waving her adieux over the side,
+Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul of fear look
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady her
+muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control when,
+dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she remarked to
+Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: “I suppose I ought to say good
+morning.”</p>
+
+<p>If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the vaguest
+sense of what was expected of her in return. There was something
+unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset’s composure, and she had to
+force the light tone in which she answered: “I tried to see you this
+morning, but you were not yet up.”</p>
+
+<p>“No—I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought we
+ought to wait for you till the last train.” She spoke very gently, but
+with just the least tinge of reproach.</p>
+
+<p>“You missed us? You waited for us at the station?” Now indeed Lily was
+too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other’s words or keep watch
+on her own. “But I thought you didn’t get to the station till after the
+last train had left!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
+immediate query: “Who told you that?”</p>
+
+<p>“George—I saw him just now in the gardens.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, is that George’s version? Poor George—he was in no state to
+remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this morning,
+and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he found him?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset settled
+herself indolently in her seat. “He’ll wait to see him; he was horribly
+frightened about himself. It’s very bad for him to be worried, and
+whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings on an attack.”</p>
+
+<p>This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was
+put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air
+of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully:
+“Anything upsetting?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
+hours. You know, my dear, you’re rather a big responsibility in such a
+scandalous place after midnight.”</p>
+
+<p>At that—at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable audacity of
+it—Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, really—considering it was you who burdened him with the
+responsibility!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. “By not having the
+superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush for the
+train? Or the imagination to believe that you’d take it without us—you
+and he all alone—instead of waiting quietly in the station till we DID
+manage to meet you?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was pursuing
+an object, following a line she had marked out for herself. Only, with
+such a doom impending, why waste time in these childish efforts to avert
+it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed Lily’s indignation: did it not
+prove how horribly the poor creature was frightened?</p>
+
+<p>“No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice,” she returned.</p>
+
+<p>“Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity to
+rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are not a
+child to be led by the hand!”</p>
+
+<p>“No—nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that’s what you are doing to
+me now.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. “Lecture you—I? Heaven forbid!
+I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it’s usually the
+other way round, isn’t it? I’m expected to take hints, not to give them:
+I’ve positively lived on them all these last months.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hints—from me to you?” Lily repeated.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, negative ones merely—what not to be and to do and to see. And I
+think I’ve taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you’ll let me say
+so, I didn’t understand that one of my negative duties was NOT to warn
+you when you carried your imprudence too far.”</p>
+
+<p>A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery
+that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a
+moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this
+outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature’s attempt to
+cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily’s lips to
+exclaim: “You poor soul, don’t double and turn—come straight back to me,
+and we’ll find a way out!” But the words died under the impenetrable
+insolence of Bertha’s smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it
+quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its
+accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to
+her cabin.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_3a">Chapter 3</h2>
+
+<p>Miss Bart’s telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his hotel; and
+having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The message
+necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he had recently
+heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On the whole he was
+surprised; for though he had perceived that the situation contained all
+the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his
+personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into
+harmlessness. Still, Dorset’s spasmodic temper, and his wife’s reckless
+disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and
+it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from
+a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to
+safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for either lay in
+repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had
+only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his
+desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
+There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished to
+spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the
+public washing of the Dorset linen.</p>
+
+<p>How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more
+vividly after his two hours’ talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out
+at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as
+left him, after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling
+open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come
+out; and happily for his side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced
+together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a
+homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit—there were
+missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
+was naturally Selden’s business to make the most of in putting them under
+his client’s eye. But to a man in Dorset’s mood the completest
+demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the
+moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize, to offer sympathy and
+to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with the
+sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly
+noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted
+for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not
+long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset,
+the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a
+little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such
+natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
+telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
+“Assume that everything is as usual.”</p>
+
+<p>On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was
+lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily’s imperative bidding,
+had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast
+had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of
+the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called
+his “attacks” that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this
+cause; but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to
+make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt
+of the situation on her husband’s hands, as if too absorbed in a
+grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one
+herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
+perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak
+flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of
+“appearances,” her own attention was perpetually distracted by the
+question: “What on earth can she be driving at?” There was something
+positively exasperating in Bertha’s attitude of isolated defiance. If
+only she would have given her friend a hint they might still have worked
+together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while she was thus
+obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she
+honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but for the Dorsets’. She had
+not thought of her own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in
+trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary
+evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
+tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of
+his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who
+should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the
+infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it
+seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an
+hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage
+and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the
+same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the
+confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were
+all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned
+Silverton. No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject
+kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
+another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset now
+avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was repenting his
+rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only trying, in his clumsy
+way, to conform to Selden’s counsel to behave “as usual.” Such
+instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the
+photographer’s behest to “look natural”; and in a creature as unconscious
+as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to
+maintain a pose was sure to result in queer contortions.</p>
+
+<p>It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
+resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset was
+still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and feeling
+too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried ashore.
+Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a group of
+acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in whose company she
+was returning to the rooms when she encountered Selden crossing the
+square. She could not, at the moment, separate herself definitely from
+her party, who had hospitably assumed that she would remain with them
+till they took their departure; but she found time for a momentary pause
+of enquiry, to which he promptly returned: “I’ve seen him again—he’s
+just left me.”</p>
+
+<p>She waited before him anxiously. “Well? what has happened? What WILL
+happen?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing as yet—and nothing in the future, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s over, then? It’s settled? You’re sure?”</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. “Give me time. I’m not sure—but I’m a good deal surer.” And
+with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the expectant
+group on the steps.</p>
+
+<p>Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness, had even
+stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And now, as he
+turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station, that anxiety
+remained with him as the visible justification of his own. It was not,
+indeed, anything specific that he feared: there had been a literal truth
+in his declaration that he did not think anything would happen. What
+troubled him was that, though Dorset’s attitude had perceptibly changed,
+the change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been
+produced by Selden’s arguments, or by the action of his own soberer
+reason. Five minutes’ talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
+been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment as
+weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of apathy, like a
+dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however
+exerted, it worked for the general safety: the question was how long it
+would last, and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On
+these points Selden could gain no light; for he saw that one effect of
+the transformation had been to shut him off from free communion with
+Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the irresistible desire to
+discuss his wrong; but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn
+tenacity, Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
+expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
+impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden began to
+feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of
+the sequel.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station
+when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his brief word with
+her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual
+change in his purpose. The change had been produced by the look in her
+eyes; and in his eagerness to define the nature of that look, he dropped
+into a seat in the gardens, and sat brooding upon the question. It was
+natural enough, in all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a
+young woman placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
+couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her concern for
+her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her own position. The
+worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss Bart’s state of mind, so many
+alternative readings were possible; and one of these, in Selden’s
+troubled mind, took the ugly form suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl
+was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what
+degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being
+fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs.
+Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
+Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are
+generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with
+the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs.
+Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the likelihood of Dorset’s marrying
+Miss Bart if “anything happened”; and though Mrs. Fisher’s conclusions
+were notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from
+which they were drawn. Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the
+girl, and this interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife’s
+struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
+last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
+combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences. She could
+be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was reckless in
+courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely
+to be used as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just
+what course she was likely to take, but his perplexity increased his
+apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must speak
+again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the situation—and he had
+always honestly tried to resist judging her by her surroundings—however
+free she might be from any personal connection with it, she would be
+better out of the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to
+him for help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.</p>
+
+<p>This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him back to
+the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her disappearing; but
+a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed to put him on her traces. He
+saw instead, to his surprise, Ned Silverton loitering somewhat
+ostentatiously about the tables; and the discovery that this actor in the
+drama was not only hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the
+exposure of the footlights, though it might have seemed to imply that all
+peril was over, served rather to deepen Selden’s sense of foreboding.
+Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see
+Miss Bart move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably
+to do at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for a
+glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that she had
+gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow her there, and
+still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a
+private word; and he had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative
+of writing, when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled
+before him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.</p>
+
+<p>Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord Hubert that
+Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset’s company; an
+announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Bry, after a
+glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a
+spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet
+his friends at dinner that evening—“At Becassin’s—a little dinner to
+the Duchess,” she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Selden’s sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought
+him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused
+to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace.
+There, while the Brys hovered within over the last agitating alternatives
+of the MENU, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length
+rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw
+and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss
+Bart on the pretext of a moment’s glance into one of the brilliant shops
+along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
+white dazzle of a jeweller’s window: “I stopped over to see you—to beg
+of you to leave the yacht.”</p>
+
+<p>The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. “To
+leave—? What do you mean? What has happened?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?”</p>
+
+<p>The glare from the jeweller’s window, deepening the pallor of her face,
+gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. “Nothing
+will, I am sure; but while there’s even a doubt left, how can you think I
+would leave Bertha?”</p>
+
+<p>The words rang out on a note of contempt—was it possibly of contempt for
+himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of
+insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest: “You have yourself
+to think of, you know—” to which, with a strange fall of sadness in her
+voice, she answered, meeting his eyes: “If you knew how little difference
+that makes!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, nothing WILL happen,” he said, more for his own reassurance
+than for hers; and “Nothing, nothing, of course!” she valiantly assented,
+as they turned to overtake their companions.</p>
+
+<p>In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry’s
+illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the
+familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife once
+more presenting their customary faces to the world, she engrossed in
+establishing her relation with an intensely new gown, he shrinking with
+dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations of the MENU. The mere
+fact that they thus showed themselves together, with the utmost openness
+the place afforded, seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their
+differences were composed. How this end had been attained was still
+matter for wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested
+confidently in the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by
+telling himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler
+than his own.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses, in
+which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away from
+Lord Hubert’s restraining hand, Selden’s general watchfulness began to
+lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days
+when she was so handsome that to be handsome was enough, and all the
+rest—her grace, her quickness, her social felicities—seemed the
+overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the
+way in which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable shades, from
+the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such
+company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired
+to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace
+cheapening the other women’s smartness as her finely-discriminated
+silences made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had
+restored to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
+in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her voice
+and eyes. Yes, she was matchless—it was the one word for her; and he
+could give his admiration the freer play because so little personal
+feeling remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not
+at the lurid moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light
+of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the
+crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt
+in her. It was before him again in its completeness—the choice in which
+she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the
+showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived
+at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
+setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a
+special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of
+the “Riviera Notes,” emphasized the ideals of a world where
+conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become
+the roll of fame.</p>
+
+<p>It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham, wedged
+in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours, suddenly became
+the centre of Selden’s scrutiny. How much did he know of what was going
+on, and how much, for his purpose, was still worth finding out? His
+little eyes were like tentacles thrown out to catch the floating
+intimations with which, to Selden, the air at moments seemed thick; then
+again it cleared to its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it
+for the journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies’ gowns.
+Mrs. Dorset’s, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham’s
+vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he would have
+called “the literary style.” At first, as Selden had noticed, it had been
+almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now she was in full command of
+it, and was even producing her effects with unwonted freedom. Was she
+not, indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was not
+Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too
+jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always
+jerky; but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him
+farther from his centre.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evident
+satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between Lord
+Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher to
+witness her achievement. Short of Mrs. Fisher her audience might have
+been called complete; for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainly
+gathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as
+to the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry,
+conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
+each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
+pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
+catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
+organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to adorn
+it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore herself, he
+smiled to think that he should have fancied her in need of help. Never
+had she appeared more serenely mistress of the situation than when, at
+the moment of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about
+the table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the shoulders
+to receive her cloak from Dorset.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry’s exceptional cigars and a
+bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables were empty;
+but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to give relief to the
+leave-taking of Mrs. Bry’s distinguished guests. This ceremony was drawn
+out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the
+Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite farewells, and pledges of speedy
+reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes
+on the way to England. The quality of Mrs. Bry’s hospitality, and of the
+tips her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the
+English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over
+their hostess’s future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
+also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy worth
+their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister that
+they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry of this
+departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the door, offered to
+convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The offer was accepted,
+and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband in attendance. Miss Bart had
+lingered for a last word with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry
+was pressing a final, and still more expensive, cigar, called out: “Come
+on, Lily, if you’re going back to the yacht.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused on
+her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht,” she said in a voice of
+singular distinctness.</p>
+
+<p>A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the verge of
+congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her husband, and
+Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was mainly conscious of
+a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and fling him out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife’s side. His face was
+white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes. “Bertha!—Miss
+Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some mistake....”</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Bart remains here,” his wife rejoined incisively. “And, I think,
+George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable
+erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her. She
+had paled a little under the shock of the insult, but the discomposure of
+the surrounding faces was not reflected in her own. The faint disdain of
+her smile seemed to lift her high above her antagonist’s reach, and it
+was not till she had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance
+between them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess.</p>
+
+<p>“I am joining the Duchess tomorrow,” she explained, “and it seemed easier
+for me to remain on shore for the night.”</p>
+
+<p>She held firmly to Mrs. Bry’s wavering eye while she gave this
+explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative glance
+from one to another of the women’s faces. She read their incredulity in
+their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness of the men behind them,
+and for a miserable half-second he thought she quivered on the brink of
+failure. Then, turning to him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery
+of her recovered smile—“Dear Mr. Selden,” she said, “you promised to see
+me to my cab.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden moved
+toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of warm rain
+blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab had been
+tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till
+the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a
+bench, he said: “Sit down a moment.”</p>
+
+<p>She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at the
+bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her face.
+Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful lest any
+word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and kept also from
+free utterance by the wretched doubt which had slowly renewed itself
+within him. What had brought her to this pass? What weakness had placed
+her so abominably at her enemy’s mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have
+turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the
+support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of
+husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind,
+reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
+fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher’s hints, and the corroboration of his own
+impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint,
+since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked
+by the fear of committing a blunder.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as
+that of the men he had despised for turning from her; but before he could
+find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“An hotel—HERE—that you can go to alone? It’s not possible.”</p>
+
+<p>She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. “What IS, then?
+It’s too wet to sleep in the gardens.”</p>
+
+<p>“But there must be some one——”</p>
+
+<p>“Some one to whom I can go? Of course—any number—but at THIS hour? You
+see my change of plan was rather sudden——”</p>
+
+<p>“Good God—if you’d listened to me!” he cried, venting his helplessness
+in a burst of anger.</p>
+
+<p>She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. “But haven’t
+I?” she rejoined. “You advised me to leave the yacht, and I’m leaving it.”</p>
+
+<p>He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to
+explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had
+forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past.</p>
+
+<p>She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like
+some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily!” he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but—“Oh, not
+now,” she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her
+recovered composure: “Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since
+you’re so kindly here to help me——”</p>
+
+<p>He gathered himself up at the challenge. “You will do as I tell you?
+There’s but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the
+Stepneys.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—” broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he
+insisted: “Come—it’s late, and you must appear to have gone there
+directly.”</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last
+gesture of protest. “I can’t—I can’t—not that—you don’t know Gwen: you
+mustn’t ask me!”</p>
+
+<p>“I MUST ask you—you must obey me,” he persisted, though infected at
+heart by her own fear.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice sank to a whisper: “And if she refuses?”—but, “Oh, trust
+me—trust me!” he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch,
+she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square.</p>
+
+<p>In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which
+carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys’ hotel. Here he
+left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was
+sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter’s
+descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the
+gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew
+up with a last flare of reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s understood, then?” he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
+Selden’s arm. “She leaves tomorrow by the early train—and my wife’s
+asleep, and can’t be disturbed.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_4a">Chapter 4</h2>
+
+<p>The blinds of Mrs. Peniston’s drawing-room were drawn down against the
+oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her
+assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were
+all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons—even a stray Peniston or
+two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of
+remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in
+fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston’s property
+“went back”; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal
+of his widow’s private fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent.
+Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took
+the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
+and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife’s bored attitude
+and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress’s disregard of the
+insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her
+in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to
+conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and
+smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: “I
+couldn’t BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere else!”</p>
+
+<p>A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the
+door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with
+Gerty Farish at her side. The women’s faces, as she paused
+interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two
+made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either
+by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others
+meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney,
+with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily,
+ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney’s official attempt to
+direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
+herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from
+the others.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from
+Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their
+welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of
+her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard
+from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston’s sudden death, had been mitigated,
+almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
+be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable
+uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had
+vehemently opposed her niece’s departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
+her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily’s absence. The
+certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the
+prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have
+repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of
+undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
+long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, “always
+understood” that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece;
+and in the latter’s mind the understanding had long since crystallized
+into fact.</p>
+
+<p>“She gets everything, of course—I don’t see what we’re here for,” Mrs.
+Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the
+latter’s deprecating murmur—“Julia was always a just woman”—might have
+been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s only about four hundred thousand,” Mrs. Stepney rejoined with
+a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer’s
+preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: “They won’t find a towel
+missing—I went over them with her the very day——”</p>
+
+<p>Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh
+mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston’s lawyer, solemnly
+erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle
+through the preamble of the will.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s like being in church,” she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen
+Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had
+grown—he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a
+few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on
+his stick.</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder why rich people always grow fat—I suppose it’s because there’s
+nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my
+figure,” she mused, while the lawyer droned on through a labyrinth of
+legacies. The servants came first, then a few charitable institutions,
+then several remoter Melsons and Stepneys, who stirred consciously as
+their names rang out, and then subsided into a state of impassiveness
+befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney,
+and a cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few
+thousands: Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she
+heard her own name—“to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars—” and
+after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
+periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling
+distinctness: “and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and
+name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a
+surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed
+out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged
+handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first
+time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware of her
+presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance. And under
+her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes
+deceived. Disinherited—she had been disinherited—and for Grace
+Stepney! She met Gerty’s lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing
+effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There was
+something to be done before she left the house: to be done with all the
+nobility she knew how to put into such gestures. She advanced to the
+group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her hand said simply: “Dear
+Grace, I am so glad.”</p>
+
+<p>The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space created
+itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no one advanced to
+fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about her, calmly taking the
+measure of her situation. She heard some one ask a question about the
+date of the will; she caught a fragment of the lawyer’s answer—something
+about a sudden summons, and an “earlier instrument.” Then the tide of
+dispersal began to drift past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert
+Melson stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group
+escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should
+take, though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
+found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which more than
+ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family vault, in which
+the last corpse had just been decently deposited.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In Gerty Farish’s sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the two
+friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of laughter: it
+struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt’s legacy should so
+nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor. The need of
+discharging that debt had reasserted itself with increased urgency since
+her return to America, and she spoke her first thought in saying to the
+anxiously hovering Gerty: “I wonder when the legacies will be paid.”</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into a
+larger indignation. “Oh, Lily, it’s unjust; it’s cruel—Grace Stepney
+must FEEL she has no right to all that money!”</p>
+
+<p>“Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her money,”
+Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>“But she was devoted to you—she led every one to think—” Gerty checked
+herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to her with a
+direct look. “Gerty, be honest: this will was made only six weeks ago.
+She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?”</p>
+
+<p>“Every one heard, of course, that there had been some disagreement—some
+misunderstanding——”</p>
+
+<p>“Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?”</p>
+
+<p>“Lily!”</p>
+
+<p>“That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry George
+Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn’t that what
+she told Gwen Stepney?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know—I don’t listen to such horrors.”</p>
+
+<p>“I MUST listen to them—I must know where I stand.” She paused, and again
+sounded a faint note of derision. “Did you notice the women? They were
+afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get the
+money—afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague.” Gerty
+remained silent, and she continued: “I stayed on to see what would
+happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu Melson—I saw them
+watching to see what Gwen would do.—Gerty, I must know just what is
+being said of me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I tell you I don’t listen——”</p>
+
+<p>“One hears such things without listening.” She rose and laid her resolute
+hands on Miss Farish’s shoulders. “Gerty, are people going to cut me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your FRIENDS, Lily—how can you think it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who are one’s friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor trustful
+darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!” She kissed Gerty with
+a whimsical murmur. “You’d never let it make any difference—but then
+you’re fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the irreclaimable ones,
+though? For I’m absolutely impenitent, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty, towering
+like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty, who could only
+falter out: “Lily, Lily—how can you laugh about such things?”</p>
+
+<p>“So as not to weep, perhaps. But no—I’m not of the tearful order. I
+discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has
+helped me through several painful episodes.” She took a restless turn
+about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted the bright mockery of
+her eyes to Gerty’s anxious countenance.</p>
+
+<p>“I shouldn’t have minded, you know, if I’d got the money—” and at Miss
+Farish’s protesting “Oh!” she repeated calmly: “Not a straw, my dear;
+for, in the first place, they wouldn’t have quite dared to ignore me; and
+if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered, because I should have been
+independent of them. But now—!” The irony faded from her eyes, and she
+bent a clouded face upon her friend.</p>
+
+<p>“How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours,
+but after all that makes no difference. The important thing——” Gerty
+paused, and then continued firmly: “The important thing is that you
+should clear yourself—should tell your friends the whole truth.”</p>
+
+<p>“The whole truth?” Miss Bart laughed. “What is truth? Where a woman is
+concerned, it’s the story that’s easiest to believe. In this case it’s a
+great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset’s story than mine, because she
+has a big house and an opera box, and it’s convenient to be on good terms
+with her.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. “But what IS your
+story, Lily? I don’t believe any one knows it yet.”</p>
+
+<p>“My story?—I don’t believe I know it myself. You see I never thought of
+preparing a version in advance as Bertha did—and if I had, I don’t think
+I should take the trouble to use it now.”</p>
+
+<p>But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: “I don’t want a
+version prepared in advance—but I want you to tell me exactly what
+happened from the beginning.”</p>
+
+<p>“From the beginning?” Miss Bart gently mimicked her. “Dear Gerty, how
+little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my
+cradle, I suppose—in the way I was brought up, and the things I was
+taught to care for. Or no—I won’t blame anybody for my faults: I’ll say
+it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving
+ancestress, who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and
+wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!” And as Miss Farish
+continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: “You
+asked me just now for the truth—well, the truth about any girl is that
+once she’s talked about she’s done for; and the more she explains her
+case the worse it looks.—My good Gerty, you don’t happen to have a
+cigarette about you?”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily
+Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June,
+and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed
+on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston’s will, had taken
+flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of
+them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in
+her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at
+the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
+sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
+catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and
+under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to
+London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which
+asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously
+how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
+parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her
+aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded
+in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess’s
+championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she
+was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in
+favour of a new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America.
+But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
+that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys,
+the Brys—all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama—had
+preceded her with their version of the case; and, even had she seen the
+least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and
+reluctance would have restrained her. She knew it was not by
+explanations and counter-charges that she could ever hope to recover her
+lost standing; but even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy,
+she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her
+from defending herself to Gerty Farish—a feeling that was half pride and
+half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed
+to Bertha Dorset’s determination to win back her husband, and though her
+own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
+she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair
+was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset’s attention from
+his wife. That was what she was “there for”: it was the price she had
+chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her
+habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of
+introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the
+situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had
+carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a
+handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.</p>
+
+<p>She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences
+resulting from that failure; and these became clearer to her with every
+day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort
+of Gerty Farish’s nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go.
+She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must
+set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the
+first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on
+how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
+Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were
+amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the
+still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy,
+though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart’s return, had not even
+recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend’s
+bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily’s side might have been
+perilous: there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an
+accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there
+was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent
+passages through town.</p>
+
+<p>To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
+frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
+luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear Gerty, you wouldn’t have me let the head-waiter see that I’ve
+nothing to live on but Aunt Julia’s legacy? Think of Grace Stepney’s
+satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea!
+What sweet shall we have today, dear—COUPE JACQUES or PECHES A LA MELBA?”</p>
+
+<p>She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour, and
+Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an inner
+room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It was
+impossible for these ladies and their companions—among whom Lily had at
+once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale—not to pass, in going out,
+the table at which the two girls were seated; and Gerty’s sense of the
+fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss
+Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace,
+and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for
+them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could
+impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown
+was on Mrs. Trenor’s side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
+exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed
+pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization,
+which included neither enquiries as to her future nor the expression of a
+definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed in the language of
+these omissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other
+members of the party: even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the
+importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs.
+Trenor’s cordiality, and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss
+Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the
+pretext of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group
+soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor’s wake.</p>
+
+<p>It was over in a moment—the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on the
+result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA MELBA—but
+Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy
+Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily had the doomed sense of
+the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor’s complaints of Carry Fisher’s
+rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her
+husband’s private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life
+at Bellomont, where no one seemed to have time to observe any one else,
+and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the
+rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from
+inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money
+of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily’s
+part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly jealous of
+his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The
+immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay
+back her debt to Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a
+thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston’s legacy left, and nothing to live on
+but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish’s
+wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative
+claim of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first;
+after that she would take thought for the future.</p>
+
+<p>In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that her
+legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt’s
+will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to enquire the
+cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Peniston’s
+lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that,
+some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will,
+he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till
+the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement.
+Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
+appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
+powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the
+law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight
+of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney,
+who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of “going
+over” her benefactress’s effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a
+favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one
+morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston’s, where Grace, for the
+facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.</p>
+
+<p>The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so
+long commanded, increased Lily’s desire to shorten the ordeal; and when
+Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best
+quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the point: would she be
+willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy?</p>
+
+<p>Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
+inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realized
+the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think that only the
+payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss Stepney herself had
+not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent—yes,
+actually!—for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her.
+She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have
+wished—she had told the executors so to their faces; but they were
+inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily
+take example by her, and be patient—let them both remember how
+beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.</p>
+
+<p>Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this
+example. “But you will have everything, Grace—it would be easy for you
+to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for.”</p>
+
+<p>“Borrow—easy for me to borrow?” Grace Stepney rose up before her in
+sable wrath. “Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my
+expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable
+horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the
+truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her
+illness—you remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I
+don’t know the particulars, of course—I don’t WANT to know them—but
+there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy—no one
+could be with her without seeing that. I can’t help it if you are
+offended by my telling you this now—if I can do anything to make you
+realize the folly of your course, and how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I
+shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_5a">Chapter 5</h2>
+
+<p>It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston’s door closed on her, that she was
+taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her
+dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities
+showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did
+not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she
+reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a hansom which pulled up at
+sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a signalling
+hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had
+folded her in a demonstrative embrace.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear, you don’t mean to say you’re still in town? When I saw you the
+other day at Sherry’s I didn’t have time to ask——” She broke off, and
+added with a burst of frankness: “The truth is I was HORRID, Lily, and
+I’ve wanted to tell you so ever since.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh——” Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp; but
+Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: “Look here, Lily, don’t
+let’s beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is caused by
+pretending there isn’t any. That’s not my way, and I can only say I’m
+thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other women’s lead. But
+we’ll talk of that by and bye—tell me now where you’re staying and what
+your plans are. I don’t suppose you’re keeping house in there with Grace
+Stepney, eh?—and it struck me you might be rather at loose ends.”</p>
+
+<p>In Lily’s present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of
+this appeal, and she said with a smile: “I am at loose ends for the
+moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and she’s good enough to let
+me be with her whenever she can spare the time.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. “H’m—that’s a temperate joy. Oh, I
+know—Gerty’s a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together; but A
+LA LONGUE you’re used to a little higher seasoning, aren’t you, dear?
+And besides, I suppose she’ll be off herself before long—the first of
+August, you say? Well, look here, you can’t spend your summer in town;
+we’ll talk of that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a
+few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers’
+tonight?”</p>
+
+<p>And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she
+continued with her easy laugh: “You don’t know them and they don’t know
+you; but that don’t make a rap of difference. They’ve taken the Van
+Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I’ve got CARTE BLANCHE to bring my friends
+down there—the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and
+there’s to be rather a jolly party there this week——” she broke off,
+checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart’s expression. “Oh, I don’t
+mean YOUR particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but very
+good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their
+own: what they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own
+way. They gave the other thing a few months’ trial, under my
+distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely
+well—getting on a good deal faster than the Brys, just because they
+didn’t care as much—but suddenly they decided that the whole business
+bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel
+at home with. Rather original of them, don’t you think so? Mattie Gormer
+HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she’s awfully
+easy-going, and Sam won’t be bothered, and they both like to be the most
+important people in sight, so they’ve started a sort of continuous
+performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody
+is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn’t put on airs. I think
+it’s awfully good fun myself—some of the artistic set, you know, any
+pretty actress that’s going, and so on. This week, for instance, they
+have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in ‘The Winning of
+Winny’; and Paul Morpeth—he’s painting Mattie Gormer—and the Dick
+Bellingers, and Kate Corby—well, every one you can think of who’s jolly
+and makes a row. Now don’t stand there with your nose in the air, my
+dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and
+you’ll find clever people as well as noisy ones—Morpeth, who admires
+Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority. “Jump
+in now, there’s a dear, and we’ll drive round to your hotel and have your
+things packed, and then we’ll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at
+the train.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town—of that no
+doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy verandah,
+she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward picturesquely dotted
+with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men in tennis flannels. The
+huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their
+fullest capacity with the Gormers’ week-end guests, who now, in the
+radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the
+grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded:
+distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from
+bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches without.
+Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as
+carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde
+and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly
+assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented
+the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for
+the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The
+train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed—life whizzed on with a
+deafening’ rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a
+welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU
+represented a social out-skirt which Lily had always fastidiously
+avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant
+copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the
+“society play” approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people
+about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
+the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner,
+from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflexion of the women’s
+voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of
+each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more
+familiarity—but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher
+capacity for enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart’s arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness
+that first irritated her pride and then brought her to a sharp sense of
+her own situation—of the place in life which, for the moment, she must
+accept and make the best of. These people knew her story—of that her
+first long talk with Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly
+branded as the heroine of a “queer” episode—but instead of shrinking
+from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question
+into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as
+easily as they did Miss Anstell’s, and with no apparent sense of any
+difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was that she
+should—in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of
+gifts—contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful
+actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied
+order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be “stuck-up,” to mark a
+sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance
+in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms—and into such a
+world!—was hard enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized,
+with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
+all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious
+charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was
+smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty
+deserted city to the space and luxury of a great country-house fanned by
+sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude agreeable enough
+after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For
+the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved—after
+that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her
+dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the
+unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and
+courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions.
+But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of
+indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities,
+and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.</p>
+
+<p>On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux, the
+return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was
+leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence
+in a different setting: some at Newport, some at Bar Harbour, some in the
+elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who
+welcomed Lily’s return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to
+join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily
+herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
+great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
+transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a
+day or two on the way to the Brys’ camp, came to the rescue with a new
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Lily—I’ll tell you what it is: I want you to take my place
+with Mattie Gormer this summer. They’re taking a party out to Alaska next
+month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the laziest woman alive,
+wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging
+things; but the Brys want me too—oh, yes, we’ve made it up: didn’t I
+tell you?—and, to put it frankly, though I like the Gormers best,
+there’s more profit for me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try
+Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them they—well,
+they’ll make it a success for me.” Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands
+enthusiastically. “Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the
+better I like it—quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have
+both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska
+is—well—the very thing I should want for you just at present.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. “To take me out of my
+friends’ way, you mean?” she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher responded with
+a deprecating kiss: “To keep you out of their sight till they realize how
+much they miss you.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if it did
+not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the
+negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre of criticism and
+discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with all the energy of her
+somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit
+to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would
+renounce her journey; but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this
+plan under a sufficiently valid reason.</p>
+
+<p>“You dear innocent, don’t you see,” she protested, “that Carry is quite
+right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people
+as much as possible? If my old friends choose to believe lies about me I
+shall have to make new ones, that’s all; and you know beggars mustn’t be
+choosers. Not that I don’t like Mattie Gormer—I DO like her: she’s kind
+and honest and unaffected; and don’t you suppose I feel grateful to her
+for making me welcome at a time when, as you’ve yourself seen, my own
+family have unanimously washed their hands of me?”</p>
+
+<p>Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was
+cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have
+cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former
+manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from
+it. Gerty had but an obscure conception of what Lily’s actual experience
+had been: but its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity
+since the memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to
+her friend’s extremity. To characters like Gerty’s such a sacrifice
+constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it
+has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her;
+and helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring of
+such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the
+amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York
+August, mitigated only by poor Gerty’s presence, her worldly wisdom would
+have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that
+Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be the first step
+toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of
+season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers’ tumultuous
+progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view
+of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury—the daily waking to an
+assured absence of care and presence of material ease—gradually blunted
+her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void
+they could not fill. Mattie Gormer’s undiscriminating good-nature, and
+the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as
+they treated each other—all these characteristic notes of difference
+began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in
+her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
+The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed
+idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
+perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her
+pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to
+cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in
+the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of
+adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be
+blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her
+craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
+resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy
+elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the
+band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
+her; but Mattie’s following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that
+they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If
+Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity,
+had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where
+the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man
+could either break his engagements, or keep them in a painting-jacket and
+slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his
+appreciation of graces he had no time to cultivate. During the
+preparations for the Brys’ TABLEAUX he had been immensely struck by
+Lily’s plastic possibilities—“not the face: too self-controlled for
+expression; but the rest of her—gad, what a model she’d make!”—and
+though his abhorrence of the world in which he had seen her was too great
+for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the
+privilege of having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in
+Mattie Gormer’s dishevelled drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus
+of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course in
+lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor was she without pale
+glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking up of the
+Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island.
+Kate Corby, whose tastes made her as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was
+rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers,
+where, after a first stare of surprise, she took Lily’s presence almost
+too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in
+the neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
+what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
+latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk
+with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence it was
+impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher
+conveniently took for granted.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to
+probe the inwardness of Lily’s situation, but simply to view it from the
+outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and these conclusions, at
+the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the
+succinct remark: “You must marry as soon as you can.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily uttered a faint laugh—for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. “Do
+you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of ‘a
+good man’s love’?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—I don’t think either of my candidates would answer to that
+description,” said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.</p>
+
+<p>“Either? Are there actually two?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half—for the moment.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. “Other things being
+equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t fly out at me till you hear my reasons—George Dorset.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh——” Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
+unrebuffed. “Well, why not? They had a few weeks’ honeymoon when they
+first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them
+again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and
+George’s powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They’re at their
+place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly
+party—no one else but poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a
+galley-slave (they used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy!)—and
+after luncheon George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end
+would have to come soon.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. “As far as that goes, the end will
+never come—Bertha will always know how to get him back when she wants
+him.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. “Not if he has any one
+else to turn to! Yes—that’s just what it comes to: the poor creature
+can’t stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow, full of life
+and enthusiasm.” She paused, and went on, dropping her glance from
+Lily’s: “He wouldn’t stay with her ten minutes if he KNEW——”</p>
+
+<p>“Knew——?” Miss Bart repeated.</p>
+
+<p>“What YOU must, for instance—with the opportunities you’ve had! If he
+had positive proof, I mean——”</p>
+
+<p>Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. “Please let us
+drop the subject, Carry: it’s too odious to me.” And to divert her
+companion’s attention she added, with an attempt at lightness: “And your
+second candidate? We must not forget him.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. “I wonder if you’ll cry out just as loud if
+I say—Sim Rosedale?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her
+friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a possibility which,
+in the last weeks, had more than once recurred to her; but after a moment
+she said carelessly: “Mr. Rosedale wants a wife who can establish him in
+the bosom of the Van Osburghs and Trenors.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. “And so YOU could—with his money!
+Don’t you see how beautifully it would work out for you both?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t see any way of making him see it,” Lily returned, with a laugh
+intended to dismiss the subject.</p>
+
+<p>But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had taken
+leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her annexation by the
+Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner
+Paradise from which she was now excluded; but once or twice, when nothing
+better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he
+had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation. That he still
+admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer
+circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no
+puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
+was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of
+her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known “Miss
+Lily”—she was “Miss Lily” to him now—before they had had the faintest
+social existence: enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with
+the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt
+that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social
+current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and
+manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of
+meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was
+deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with
+Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most
+unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her
+wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest
+construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at
+Carry Fisher’s suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she
+disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
+gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always
+less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency
+which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
+mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he
+had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of
+affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth
+Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure
+on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
+distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable
+clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or
+twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right
+note of disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was
+a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
+ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his
+affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the
+goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of
+the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her
+in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her—she could
+distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And the
+twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a
+faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosedale’s
+wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination.
+She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he
+dared to admire her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the
+other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please
+him—he had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if
+she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had
+felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he
+had no other reason for marrying her?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_6a">Chapter 6</h2>
+
+<p>As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were engaged
+in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a part of Miss
+Bart’s duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits of inspection to the
+new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged into problems of lighting
+and sanitation, Lily had leisure to wander, in the bright autumn air,
+along the tree-fringed bay to which the land declined. Little as she was
+addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a
+welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being
+swept passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she had
+no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and squander
+money, while she felt herself of no more account among them than an
+expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one
+morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon
+the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in the immediate
+neighbourhood of the Gormers’ newly-acquired estate, and in her
+motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught one or two
+passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so different an orbit
+that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did not see
+Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight, instead of bringing
+him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent him toward her with an
+eagerness which found expression in his opening words.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Bart!—You’ll shake hands, won’t you? I’ve been hoping to meet
+you—I should have written to you if I’d dared.” His face, with its
+tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look, as
+though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts
+at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed
+on, as if encouraged by her tone: “I wanted to apologize—to ask you to
+forgive me for the miserable part I played——”</p>
+
+<p>She checked him with a quick gesture. “Don’t let us speak of it: I was
+very sorry for you,” she said, with a tinge of disdain which, as she
+instantly perceived, was not lost on him.</p>
+
+<p>He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the
+thrust. “You might well be; you don’t know—you must let me explain. I
+was deceived: abominably deceived——”</p>
+
+<p>“I am still more sorry for you, then,” she interposed, without irony;
+“but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject
+can be discussed.”</p>
+
+<p>He met this with a look of genuine wonder. “Why not? Isn’t it to you, of
+all people, that I owe an explanation——”</p>
+
+<p>“No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah——” he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute hand
+switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement
+to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: “Miss Bart, for God’s sake
+don’t turn from me! We used to be good friends—you were always kind to
+me—and you don’t know how I need a friend now.”</p>
+
+<p>The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily’s
+breast. She too needed friends—she had tasted the pang of loneliness;
+and her resentment of Bertha Dorset’s cruelty softened her heart to the
+poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha’s victims.</p>
+
+<p>“I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you,” she said. “But
+you must understand that after what has happened we can’t be friends
+again—we can’t see each other.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, you ARE kind—you’re merciful—you always were!” He fixed his
+miserable gaze on her. “But why can’t we be friends—why not, when I’ve
+repented in dust and ashes? Isn’t it hard that you should condemn me to
+suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough
+at the time—is there to be no respite for me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
+reconciliation which was effected at my expense,” Lily began, with
+renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: “Don’t put it in that
+way—when that’s been the worst of my punishment. My God! what could I
+do—wasn’t I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice: any word I
+might have said would have been turned against you——”</p>
+
+<p>“I have told you I don’t blame you; all I ask you to understand is that,
+after the use Bertha chose to make of me—after all that her behaviour
+has since implied—it’s impossible that you and I should meet.”</p>
+
+<p>He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. “Is it—need it
+be? Mightn’t there be circumstances——?” he checked himself, slashing at
+the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again: “Miss Bart,
+listen—give me a minute. If we’re not to meet again, at least let me
+have a hearing now. You say we can’t be friends after—after what has
+happened. But can’t I at least appeal to your pity? Can’t I move you if I
+ask you to think of me as a prisoner—a prisoner you alone can set free?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it possible
+that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher’s adumbrations?</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t see how I can possibly be of any help to you,” she murmured,
+drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.</p>
+
+<p>Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest
+moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an
+abrupt drop to docility: “You WOULD see, if you’d be as merciful as you
+used to be: and heaven knows I’ve never needed it more!”</p>
+
+<p>She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her
+influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering, and the
+sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for
+his weakness.</p>
+
+<p>“I am very sorry for you—I would help you willingly; but you must have
+other friends, other advisers.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never had a friend like you,” he answered simply. “And besides—can’t
+you see?—you’re the only person”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“the
+only person who knows.”</p>
+
+<p>Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in precipitate
+throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her
+entreatingly. “You do see, don’t you? You understand? I’m desperate—I’m
+at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know
+you can. You don’t want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can’t
+want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind—your eyes
+are kind now. You say you’re sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to
+show it; and heaven knows there’s nothing to keep you back. You
+understand, of course—there wouldn’t be a hint of publicity—not a sound
+or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that,
+you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: ‘I know this—and
+this—and this’—and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and
+the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second.”</p>
+
+<p>He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
+between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the
+shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For
+there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal;
+she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher’s
+insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his
+loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he
+would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to
+make him so lay in her hand—lay there in a completeness he could not
+even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a
+stroke—there was something dazzling in the completeness of the
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the
+deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of herself, and of
+the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like
+so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had
+already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.</p>
+
+<p>“Goodbye—I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the world that I can do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing? Ah, don’t say that,” he cried; “say what’s true: that you
+abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved
+me!”</p>
+
+<p>“Goodbye—goodbye,” she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she
+heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: “At least you’ll let me see
+you once more?”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the lawn
+toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her hostess might be
+speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of her delay; for, like
+many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.</p>
+
+<p>As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a
+high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the
+gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective
+pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to
+an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh: “Did you see my
+visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George
+Dorset—she said she’d dropped in to make a neighbourly call.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience
+of Bertha’s idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the
+neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer, relieved to see that
+she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh: “Of
+course what really brought her was curiosity—she made me take her all
+over the house. But no one could have been nicer—no airs, you know, and
+so good-natured: I can quite see why people think her so fascinating.”</p>
+
+<p>This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with
+Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck
+Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha’s habits to
+be neighbourly, much less to make advances to any one outside the
+immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored
+the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members
+only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
+capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them
+special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this
+now in Mrs. Gormer’s unconcealable complacency, and in the happy
+irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted Bertha’s
+opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret
+ambitions which Mrs. Gormer’s native indolence, and the attitude of her
+companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating afresh in the
+glow of Bertha’s advances; and whatever the cause of the latter, Lily saw
+that, if they were followed up, they were likely to have a disturbing
+effect upon her own future.</p>
+
+<p>She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new friends by
+one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent; and on her return
+from this somewhat depressing excursion she was immediately conscious
+that Mrs. Dorset’s influence was still in the air. There had been another
+exchange of visits, a tea at a country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball;
+there was even a rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer,
+with an unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
+conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.</p>
+
+<p>The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell Sunday
+with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish’s aid, had discovered a small
+private hotel where she might establish herself for the winter. The
+hotel being on the edge of a fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the
+few square feet she was to occupy was considerably in excess of her
+means; but she found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters
+in the argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
+importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible
+for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
+lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish’s. She had never been so
+near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage to meet her
+weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts
+out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair
+margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
+enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her
+rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and
+fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged
+ceiling and haunting smell of coffee—all these material discomforts,
+which were yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be
+withdrawn, kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
+her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher’s counsels. Beat
+about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was that she
+must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was fortified by
+an unexpected visit from George Dorset.</p>
+
+<p>She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her
+narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with
+which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances; but the sight of
+her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn’t come to bother
+her—that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of
+anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
+himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that
+had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
+herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint
+realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his
+self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had
+actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there
+was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn’t more than
+enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The
+fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
+intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might
+mean—and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way
+in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.</p>
+
+<p>When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must dress for
+dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to blurt out: “It’s
+been such a comfort—do say you’ll let me see you again—” But to this
+direct appeal it was impossible to give an assent; and she said with
+friendly decisiveness: “I’m sorry—but you know why I can’t.”</p>
+
+<p>He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
+embarrassed but insistent. “I know how you might, if you would—if things
+were different—and it lies with you to make them so. It’s just a word to
+say, and you put me out of my misery!”</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of
+the temptation. “You’re mistaken; I know nothing; I saw nothing,” she
+exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration, to build a barrier
+between herself and her peril; and as he turned away, groaning out “You
+sacrifice us both,” she continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: “I
+know nothing—absolutely nothing.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with Mrs.
+Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met she was
+conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour. There could be no
+doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested
+with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear
+down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one;
+but neither was it easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the
+thought of what George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness
+for baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when a
+marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her
+difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day
+of plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
+well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
+mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were
+certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at
+any cost be exorcised—and one of these was the image of herself as
+Rosedale’s wife.</p>
+
+<p>Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys’ Newport
+success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; and
+thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset’s visit. Though it was
+nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was still out, and the
+firelit quiet of the small silent house descended on her spirit with a
+sense of peace and familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had
+ever before been evoked by Carry Fisher’s surroundings; but, contrasted
+to the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of repose
+and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in the quiet
+competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her room. Mrs. Fisher’s
+unconventionality was, after all, a merely superficial divergence from an
+inherited social creed, while the manners of the Gormer circle
+represented their first attempt to formulate such a creed for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had found
+herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of familiar
+associations had almost prepared her, as she descended the stairs before
+dinner, to enter upon a group of her old acquaintances. But this
+expectation was instantly checked by the reflection that the friends who
+remained loyal were precisely those who would be least willing to expose
+her to such encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
+instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth
+before his hostess’s little girl.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily; yet she
+could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to the
+child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctory
+endearments of the guest under his hostess’s eye, for he and the little
+girl had the room to themselves; and something in his attitude made him
+seem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creature
+who endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind—Lily, from the threshold,
+had time to feel—kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way
+of the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which
+to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her
+repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for at
+sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid and
+dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer’s drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her only
+fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter’s
+tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness which
+enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant course through a world of
+antagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of her
+friends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she
+actively gleaned her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real
+sympathies were on the other side—with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
+unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of
+success.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher’s experience guarded her against the mistake of exposing
+Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression of Rosedale’s
+personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped in to dinner, and
+Lily, alive to every detail of her friend’s method, saw that such
+opportunities as had been contrived for her were to be deferred till she
+had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
+sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer
+resigned to the surgeon’s touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic
+helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs.
+Fisher followed her upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>“May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in my
+room we shall disturb the child.” Mrs. Fisher looked about her with the
+eye of the solicitous hostess. “I hope you’ve managed to make yourself
+comfortable, dear? Isn’t it a jolly little house? It’s such a blessing to
+have a few quiet weeks with the baby.”</p>
+
+<p>Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively maternal
+that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time and
+money enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a well-earned rest: I’ll say that for myself,” she continued,
+sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near the fire.
+“Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to wish myself back with
+the Gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious—it’s
+nothing to social ambition! Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering
+whether the women who called on us called on ME because I was with her,
+or on HER because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to
+find out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
+rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
+acquaintance—when, all the while, that was what she had me there for,
+and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season was over!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause, and the
+practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an occasional
+resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial moments, the
+purpose of the juggler’s chatter while he shifts the contents of his
+sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette-smoke she continued to gaze
+meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
+toilet table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened undulations of
+her hair.</p>
+
+<p>“Your hair’s wonderful, Lily. Thinner—? What does that matter, when it’s
+so light and alive? So many women’s worries seem to go straight to their
+hair—but yours looks as if there had never been an anxious thought under
+it. I never saw you look better than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer
+told me that Morpeth wanted to paint you—why don’t you let him?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart’s immediate answer was to address a critical glance to the
+reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she said, with a
+slight touch of irritation: “I don’t care to accept a portrait from Paul
+Morpeth.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher mused. “N—no. And just now, especially—well, he can do you
+after you’re married.” She waited a moment, and then went on: “By the
+way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned up here last
+Sunday—and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the world!”</p>
+
+<p>She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
+hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart’s lifted hand maintained its
+unwavering stroke from brow to nape.</p>
+
+<p>“I never was more astonished,” Mrs. Fisher pursued. “I don’t know two
+women less predestined to intimacy—from Bertha’s standpoint, that is;
+for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that she should be
+singled out—I’ve no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the
+anaconda. Well, you know I’ve always told you that Mattie secretly longed
+to bore herself with the really fashionable; and now that the chance has
+come, I see that she’s capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
+friend. “Including ME?” she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from the
+hearth.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what Bertha means, isn’t it?” Miss Bart went on steadily. “For
+of course she always means something; and before I left Long Island I saw
+that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. “She has her fast now, at any rate. To
+think of that loud independence of Mattie’s being only a subtler form of
+snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe anything she
+pleases—and I’m afraid she’s begun, my poor child, by insinuating
+horrors about you.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. “The world is too
+vile,” she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher’s anxious scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to
+fight it on its own terms—and above all, my dear, not alone!” Mrs.
+Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp.
+“You’ve told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening;
+but in the rush we all live in there’s no time to keep on hating any one
+without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure
+you with other people it must be because she’s still afraid of you. From
+her standpoint there’s only one reason for being afraid of you; and my
+own idea is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
+hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don’t
+care for that particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you
+from Bertha is to marry somebody else.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_7a">Chapter 7</h2>
+
+<p>The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the cheerless
+distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts with a cold
+precision unmodified by shade or colour, and refracted, as it were, from
+the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she had opened windows
+from which no sky was ever visible. But the idealist subdued to vulgar
+necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he
+cannot stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her
+case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with it, however,
+she went the full length of its consequences; and these had never been
+more clearly present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out
+for a walk with Rosedale.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the
+light of summer, and something in the lines of the landscape, and in the
+golden haze which bathed them, recalled to Miss Bart the September
+afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellomont with Selden. The
+importunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her
+present situation, since her walk with Selden had represented an
+irresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion was
+designed to bring about. But other memories importuned her also; the
+recollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through
+some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always
+failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now.
+She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and
+against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in breaking up
+her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for shelter and security
+was intensified by the passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only
+wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of
+Rosedale—the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create—she would at
+least present an invulnerable front to her enemy.</p>
+
+<p>She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to keep
+up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending.
+As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which
+his look and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this
+momentary endurance of his mood was the price she must pay for her
+ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which
+concession must turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be
+made equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
+impenetrable to such hints, and she had a sense of something hard and
+self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner.</p>
+
+<p>They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above
+the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned
+period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her gaze.</p>
+
+<p>“I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale,” she said quietly; “and I am
+ready to marry you whenever you wish.”</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
+announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted
+before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>“For I suppose that is what you do wish,” she continued, in the same
+quiet tone. “And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in
+this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust
+my happiness to your hands.”</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such
+occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown across the
+tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient brightness
+Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious that every avenue
+of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.</p>
+
+<p>Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in which,
+with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped cigarette.
+Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying: “My
+dear Miss Lily, I’m sorry if there’s been any little misapprehension
+between us—but you made me feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really
+no intention of renewing it.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked
+the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: “I
+have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my
+decision was final.”</p>
+
+<p>Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in
+puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest
+inflection of sadness in her voice: “Before we bid each other goodbye, I
+want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did.”</p>
+
+<p>The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a
+vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the
+sense of distance she could convey without a hint of disdain, that made
+it most difficult for him to give her up.</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain’t we going to be good friends all
+the same?” he urged, without releasing her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She drew it away quietly. “What is your idea of being good friends?” she
+returned with a slight smile. “Making love to me without asking me to
+marry you?” Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that’s about the size of it, I suppose. I can’t help making love
+to you—I don’t see how any man could; but I don’t mean to ask you to
+marry me as long as I can keep out of it.”</p>
+
+<p>She continued to smile. “I like your frankness; but I am afraid our
+friendship can hardly continue on those terms.” She turned away, as
+though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and he
+followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having after all
+kept the game in her own hands.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Lily——” he began impulsively; but she walked on without seeming
+to hear him.</p>
+
+<p>He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand on
+her arm. “Miss Lily—don’t hurry away like that. You’re beastly hard on a
+fellow; but if you don’t mind speaking the truth I don’t see why you
+shouldn’t allow me to do the same.”</p>
+
+<p>She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away instinctively
+from his touch, though she made no effort to evade his words.</p>
+
+<p>“I was under the impression,” she rejoined, “that you had done so without
+waiting for my permission.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—why shouldn’t you hear my reasons for doing it, then? We’re
+neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going to
+hurt us. I’m all broken up on you: there’s nothing new in that. I’m more
+in love with you than I was this time last year; but I’ve got to face the
+fact that the situation is changed.”</p>
+
+<p>She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic composure.
+“You mean to say that I’m not as desirable a match as you thought me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; that’s what I do mean,” he answered resolutely. “I won’t go into
+what’s happened. I don’t believe the stories about you—I don’t WANT to
+believe them. But they’re there, and my not believing them ain’t going to
+alter the situation.”</p>
+
+<p>She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked the
+retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly. “If they are
+not true,” she said, “doesn’t THAT alter the situation?”</p>
+
+<p>He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes, which made
+her feel herself no more than some superfine human merchandise. “I
+believe it does in novels; but I’m certain it don’t in real life. You
+know that as well as I do: if we’re speaking the truth, let’s speak the
+whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn’t look at
+me: this year—well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in
+the interval? Your situation, that’s all. Then you thought you could do
+better; now——”</p>
+
+<p>“You think you can?” broke from her ironically.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is.” He stood before her, his hands in
+his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid waistcoat.
+“It’s this way, you see: I’ve had a pretty steady grind of it these last
+years, working up my social position. Think it’s funny I should say
+that? Why should I mind saying I want to get into society? A man ain’t
+ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery.
+Well, a taste for society’s just another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want
+to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year—put
+it that way if it sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the
+best houses; and I’m getting it too, little by little. But I know the
+quickest way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with
+the wrong ones; and that’s the reason I want to avoid mistakes.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have
+expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his candour, and
+after a moment’s pause he went on: “There it is, you see. I’m more in
+love with you than ever, but if I married you now I’d queer myself for
+good and all, and everything I’ve worked for all these years would be
+wasted.”</p>
+
+<p>She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had
+faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long
+moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed
+expediency.</p>
+
+<p>“I understand you,” she said. “A year ago I should have been of use to
+you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you for telling me so
+quite honestly.” She extended her hand with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale’s
+self-command. “By George, you’re a dead game sport, you are!” he
+exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
+suddenly—“Miss Lily—stop. You know I don’t believe those stories—I
+believe they were all got up by a woman who didn’t hesitate to sacrifice
+you to her own convenience——”</p>
+
+<p>Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to endure
+his insolence than his commiseration.</p>
+
+<p>“You are very kind; but I don’t think we need discuss the matter farther.”</p>
+
+<p>But Rosedale’s natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him to
+brush such resistance aside. “I don’t want to discuss anything; I just
+want to put a plain case before you,” he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose in his
+look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly upon her: “The
+wonder to me is that you’ve waited so long to get square with that woman,
+when you’ve had the power in your hands.” She continued silent under the
+rush of astonishment that his words produced, and he moved a step closer
+to ask with low-toned directness: “Why don’t you use those letters of
+hers you bought last year?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In the words
+preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to her supposed
+influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the
+reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale’s resorting to it. But now
+she saw how far short of the mark she had fallen; and the surprise of
+learning that he had discovered the secret of the letters left her, for
+the moment, unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of
+putting his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his point;
+and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer control of the
+situation: “You see I know where you stand—I know how completely she’s
+in your power. That sounds like stage-talk, don’t it?—but there’s a lot
+of truth in some of those old gags; and I don’t suppose you bought those
+letters simply because you’re collecting autographs.”</p>
+
+<p>She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her only
+clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his power.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re wondering how I found out about ’em?” he went on, answering her
+look with a note of conscious pride. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I’m
+the owner of the Benedick—but never mind about that now. Getting on to
+things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I’ve simply
+extended it to my private affairs. For this IS partly my affair, you
+see—at least, it depends on you to make it so. Let’s look the situation
+straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for reasons we needn’t go into, did you
+a beastly bad turn last spring. Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and
+her best friends wouldn’t believe her on oath where their own interests
+were concerned; but as long as they’re out of the row it’s much easier to
+follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you’ve simply been
+sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn’t that a pretty fair
+statement of the case?—Well, some people say you’ve got the neatest kind
+of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would marry you tomorrow,
+if you’d tell him all you know, and give him the chance to show the lady
+the door. I daresay he would; but you don’t seem to care for that
+particular form of getting even, and, taking a purely business view of
+the question, I think you’re right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out
+with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to
+get Bertha Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time for the
+expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed on, expounding
+and elucidating his idea with the directness of the man who has no doubts
+of his cause, she found the indignation gradually freezing on her lip,
+found herself held fast in the grasp of his argument by the mere cold
+strength of its presentation. There was no time now to wonder how he had
+heard of her obtaining the letters: all her world was dark outside the
+monstrous glare of his scheme for using them. And it was not, after the
+first moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-bound, subdued
+to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
+cravings. He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha Dorset’s
+friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the
+tacit retractation of all that had caused its withdrawal, she had only to
+put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously
+delivered into her hands. Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this
+course over that which poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The other plan
+depended for its success on the infliction of an open injury, while this
+reduced the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third
+person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of
+businesslike give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless air
+of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision of
+boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual
+adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every concession had its
+recognized equivalent: Lily’s tired mind was fascinated by this escape
+from fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and
+measures.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only a
+gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching
+perception of the chances it offered; for as she continued to stand
+before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return upon
+himself: “You see how simple it is, don’t you? Well, don’t be carried
+away by the idea that it’s TOO simple. It isn’t exactly as if you’d
+started in with a clean bill of health. Now we’re talking let’s call
+things by their right names, and clear the whole business up. You know
+well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn’t have touched you if there hadn’t
+been—well—questions asked before—little points of interrogation, eh?
+Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with stingy relatives, I suppose;
+anyhow, they DID happen, and she found the ground prepared for her. Do
+you see where I’m coming out? You don’t want these little questions
+cropping up again. It’s one thing to get Bertha Dorset into line—but
+what you want is to keep her there. You can frighten her fast enough—but
+how are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you’re as
+powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won’t do that for you as
+you are now; but with a big backing behind you, you’ll keep her just
+where you want her to be. That’s MY share in the business—that’s what
+I’m offering you. You can’t put the thing through without me—don’t run
+away with any idea that you can. In six months you’d be back again among
+your old worries, or worse ones; and here I am, ready to lift you out of
+’em tomorrow if you say so. DO you say so, Miss Lily?” he added, moving
+suddenly nearer.</p>
+
+<p>The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to startle
+Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which she had
+insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the groping
+consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perception
+that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of course, the
+likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying to cheat him of his
+share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the
+whole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential
+baseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a voice that
+was a surprise to her own ears: “You are mistaken—quite mistaken—both
+in the facts and in what you infer from them.”</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction so
+different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting him guide
+her.</p>
+
+<p>“Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each other!”
+he exclaimed; and to her murmur of “Ah, we do NOW,” he retorted with a
+sudden burst of violence: “I suppose it’s because the letters are to HIM,
+then? Well, I’ll be damned if I see what thanks you’ve got from him!”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_8a">Chapter 8</h2>
+
+<p>The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was in
+transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted at
+the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream of
+carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing semblance
+of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants with a human display
+of the same costly and high-stepping kind as circled daily about its
+ring. In Miss Bart’s world the Horse Show, and the public it attracted,
+had ostensibly come to be classed among the spectacles disdained of the
+elect; but, as the feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance on
+his village green, so society, unofficially and incidentally, still
+condescended to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was
+not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
+horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her
+friend’s side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this
+lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a
+change in the relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning
+discrimination, a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs.
+Gormer’s chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should
+constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once
+the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift of fashionable life
+would facilitate Mattie’s detachment from her. She had, in short, failed
+to make herself indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been
+thwarted by an influence stronger than any she could exert. That
+influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha
+Dorset’s social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.</p>
+
+<p>Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own
+position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered: once
+Bertha’s match in material resources, her superior gifts would make it
+easy for her to dominate her adversary. An understanding of what such
+domination would mean, and of the disadvantages accruing from her
+rejection of it, was brought home to Lily with increasing clearness
+during the early weeks of the winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a
+semblance of movement outside the main flow of the social current; but
+with the return to town, and the concentrating of scattered activities,
+the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life
+marked her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a
+part of the season’s fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void of
+social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never
+really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different centre:
+it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find
+any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her,
+and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value
+suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her
+former life. Its very drudgeries had a charm now that she was
+involuntarily released from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced
+civilities to the dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious
+dinners—how pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness
+of her days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with
+a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world; nor did
+she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes produce a wholesome
+reaction of contempt in their victim. Society did not turn away from her,
+it simply drifted by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to
+the full measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the
+creature of its favour.</p>
+
+<p>She had rejected Rosedale’s suggestion with a promptness of scorn almost
+surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for high flashes of
+indignation. But she could not breathe long on the heights; there had
+been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength:
+what she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in
+which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her
+intermittent impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her
+self-respect. If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only
+afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a
+slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale’s offer without conscious
+effort; her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet
+perceive that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to
+live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
+discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher’s, the results of the struggle were
+already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages Lily
+had already given to expediency; but she saw her passionately and
+irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of “keeping up.” Gerty could
+smile now at her own early dream of her friend’s renovation through
+adversity: she understood clearly enough that Lily was not of those to
+whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost. But this
+very fact, to Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid,
+the more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
+conscious of needing.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish’s
+stairs. There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation
+of Gerty’s sympathy: she felt the real difficulties of her situation to
+be incommunicable to any one whose theory of values was so different from
+her own, and the restrictions of Gerty’s life, which had once had the
+charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
+her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon, she put
+into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend, this sense of
+shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual intensity. The walk up
+Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the brilliance of the hard winter
+sunlight, an interminable procession of fastidiously-equipped
+carriages—giving her, through the little squares of brougham-windows,
+peeps of familiar profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands
+dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen—this glimpse of the
+ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than
+ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty’s stairs, and of
+the cramped blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined
+to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures
+were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very
+moment—figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged
+lady in limp black who descended Gerty’s flight as Lily climbed to it!</p>
+
+<p>“That was poor Miss Jane Silverton—she came to talk things over with me:
+she and her sister want to do something to support themselves,” Gerty
+explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>“To support themselves? Are they so hard up?” Miss Bart asked with a
+touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of other
+people.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid they have nothing left: Ned’s debts have swallowed up
+everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carry
+Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good influence,
+because she doesn’t care for cards, and—well, she talked quite
+beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger
+brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have
+a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up his literary work again.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her
+departing visitor. “But that isn’t all; it isn’t even the worst. It seems
+that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won’t allow
+him to see her, and he is so unhappy about it that he has taken to
+gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And
+cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of having had a very bad influence
+on Freddy, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with
+Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
+Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that
+Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had
+introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he’s
+of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt—she
+came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something
+to do she could earn enough to pay Ned’s debts and send him away—I’m
+afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his
+evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from
+the cruise—I can’t see why he should have spent so much more money under
+Bertha’s influence than Carry’s: can you?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. “My dear Gerty, I always
+understand how people can spend much more money—never how they can spend
+any less!”</p>
+
+<p>She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty’s easy-chair, while
+her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.</p>
+
+<p>“But what can they do—the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to support
+themselves?” she asked, conscious that the note of irritation still
+persisted in her voice. It was the very last topic she had meant to
+discuss—it really did not interest her in the least—but she was seized
+by a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colourless shrinking
+victims of young Silverton’s sentimental experiments meant to cope with
+the grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know—I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane reads
+aloud very nicely—but it’s so hard to find any one who is willing to be
+read to. And Miss Annie paints a little——”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I know—apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of thing I
+shall be doing myself before long!” exclaimed Lily, starting up with a
+vehemence of movement that threatened destruction to Miss Farish’s
+fragile tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her seat.
+“I’d forgotten there was no room to dash about in—how beautifully one
+does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I wasn’t meant to be
+good,” she sighed out incoherently.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the eyes
+shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.</p>
+
+<p>“You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give you this
+cushion to lean against.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an
+impatient hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t give me that! I don’t want to lean back—I shall go to sleep if I
+do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, why not, dear? I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” Gerty urged
+affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>“No—no; don’t be quiet; talk to me—keep me awake! I don’t sleep at
+night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t sleep at night? Since when?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know—I can’t remember.” She rose and put the empty cup on the
+tea-tray. “Another, and stronger, please; if I don’t keep awake now I
+shall see horrors tonight—perfect horrors!”</p>
+
+<p>“But they’ll be worse if you drink too much tea.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no—give it to me; and don’t preach, please,” Lily returned
+imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed that her
+hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.</p>
+
+<p>“But you look so tired: I’m sure you must be ill——”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. “Do I look ill? Does my face
+show it?” She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror above the
+writing-table. “What a horrid looking-glass—it’s all blotched and
+discoloured. Any one would look ghastly in it!” She turned back, fixing
+her plaintive eyes on Gerty. “You stupid dear, why do you say such odious
+things to me? It’s enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
+looking ill means looking ugly.” She caught Gerty’s wrists, and drew her
+close to the window. “After all, I’d rather know the truth. Look me
+straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I perfectly frightful?”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and your
+cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden——”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, they WERE pale, then—ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don’t you
+tell me frankly that I’m a wreck? My eyes are bright now because I’m so
+nervous—but in the mornings they look like lead. And I can see the lines
+coming in my face—the lines of worry and disappointment and failure!
+Every sleepless night leaves a new one—and how can I sleep, when I have
+such dreadful things to think about?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dreadful things—what things?” asked Gerty, gently detaching her wrists
+from her friend’s feverish fingers.</p>
+
+<p>“What things? Well, poverty, for one—and I don’t know any that’s more
+dreadful.” Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness into the
+easy-chair near the tea-table. “You asked me just now if I could
+understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I
+understand—he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live ON
+the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense—but it’s a
+privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine,
+and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes
+and their private cars—yes, but there’s a tax to pay on every one of
+those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing
+cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents—and—and—lots of other
+things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too—oh, yes, I’ve
+had to take up bridge again—and by going to the best dress-makers, and
+having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping
+herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!”</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her
+pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her fagged
+brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the change in her
+face—of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish
+its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished.</p>
+
+<p>“It doesn’t sound very amusing, does it? And it isn’t—I’m sick to death
+of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills me—it’s what
+keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for your strong tea. For I
+can’t go on in this way much longer, you know—I’m nearly at the end of
+my tether. And then what can I do—how on earth am I to keep myself
+alive? I see myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton
+woman—slinking about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
+blotting-pads to Women’s Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands
+of women trying to do the same thing already, and not one of the number
+who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I have!”</p>
+
+<p>She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. “It’s late, and I must
+be off—I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don’t look so worried,
+you dear thing—don’t think too much about the nonsense I’ve been
+talking.” She was before the mirror again, adjusting her hair with a
+light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a dexterous touch to her
+furs. “Of course, you know, it hasn’t come to the employment agencies and
+the painted blotting-pads yet; but I’m rather hard up just for the
+moment, and if I could find something to do—notes to write and
+visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing—it would tide me over
+till the legacy is paid. And Carry has promised to find somebody who
+wants a kind of social secretary—you know she makes a specialty of the
+helpless rich.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her anxiety. She
+was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money: money to meet the
+vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor evaded. To give
+up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the
+provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish’s sitting-room, was an
+expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it
+seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find
+some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do this
+was one which she had never before seriously considered, and the
+discovery that, as a bread-winner, she was likely to prove as helpless
+and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe shock to her
+self-confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation, as a
+person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate any situation
+in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that such gifts would be
+of value to seekers after social guidance; but there was unfortunately no
+specific head under which the art of saying and doing the right thing
+could be offered in the market, and even Mrs. Fisher’s resourcefulness
+failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague
+wealth of Lily’s graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedients for
+enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously assert
+that she had put several opportunities of this kind before Lily; but more
+legitimate methods of bread-winning were as much out of her line as they
+were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she was generally called upon
+to assist. Lily’s failure to profit by the chances already afforded her
+might, moreover, have justified the abandonment of farther effort on her
+behalf; but Mrs. Fisher’s inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at
+creating artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the
+pursuance of this end she at once started on a voyage of discovery in
+Miss Bart’s behalf; and as the result of her explorations she now
+summoned the latter with the announcement that she had “found something.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend’s plight, and
+her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her that Lily, for the
+present, had no wish for the kind of help she could give. Miss Farish
+could see no hope for her friend but in a life completely reorganized and
+detached from its old associations; whereas all Lily’s energies were
+centred in the determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to
+keep herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion could
+be maintained. Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gerty, she could
+not judge it as harshly as Selden, for instance, might have done. She had
+not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in each
+other’s arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart’s blood passing
+into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough;
+no trace remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour; but
+Gerty’s tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with obscure and
+inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with a silent
+forbearance which took no account of time. She could not, however, deny
+herself the solace of taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden, with
+whom, since his return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of
+cousinly confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their relation. He
+found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding and devoted, but with
+a quickened intelligence of the heart which he recognized without seeking
+to explain it. To Gerty herself it would once have seemed impossible that
+she should ever again talk freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had
+passed in the secrecy of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when
+the mist of the struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of
+self, a deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
+current of human understanding.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gerty had
+the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden. The latter, having
+presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through the
+dowdy animation of his cousin’s tea-hour, conscious of something in her
+voice and eye which solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last
+visitor was gone Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen
+Miss Bart.</p>
+
+<p>Selden’s perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“I haven’t seen her at all—I’ve perpetually missed seeing her since she
+came back.”</p>
+
+<p>This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
+hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by adding:
+“I’ve wanted to see her—but she seems to have been absorbed by the
+Gormer set since her return from Europe.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all the more reason: she’s been very unhappy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Unhappy at being with the Gormers?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I don’t defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is at an
+end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha
+Dorset quarrelled with her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah——” Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where
+he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin
+continued to explain: “Judy Trenor and her own family have deserted her
+too—and all because Bertha Dorset has said such horrible things. And she
+is very poor—you know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy,
+after giving her to understand that she was to have everything.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—I know,” Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room, but
+only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between
+door and window. “Yes—she’s been abominably treated; but it’s
+unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy
+can’t say to her.”</p>
+
+<p>His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. “There would be
+other ways of showing your sympathy,” she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which
+projected from the hearth. “What are you thinking of, you incorrigible
+missionary?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty’s colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer.
+Then she made it more explicit by saying: “I am thinking of the fact that
+you and she used to be great friends—that she used to care immensely for
+what you thought of her—and that, if she takes your staying away as a
+sign of what you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
+unhappiness.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dear child, don’t add to it still more—at least to your conception
+of it—by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own.”
+Selden, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice;
+but he met Gerty’s look of perplexity by saying more mildly: “But, though
+you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss
+Bart, you can’t exaggerate my readiness to do it—if you ask me to.” He
+laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the
+current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which fill
+the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the feeling that he
+measured the cost of her request as plainly as she read the significance
+of his reply; and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them
+made her next words easier to find.</p>
+
+<p>“I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you had been
+a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has never needed it
+before. You know how dependent she has always been on ease and
+luxury—how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and uncomfortable. She
+can’t help it—she was brought up with those ideas, and has never been
+able to find her way out of them. But now all the things she cared for
+have been taken from her, and the people who taught her to care for them
+have abandoned her too; and it seems to me that if some one could reach
+out a hand and show her the other side—show her how much is left in life
+and in herself——” Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own
+eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to
+her vague yearning for her friend’s retrieval. “I can’t help her myself:
+she’s passed out of my reach,” she continued. “I think she’s afraid of
+being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed
+dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher was trying to
+find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that she had
+taken a position as private secretary, and that I was not to be anxious,
+for everything was all right, and she would come in and tell me about it
+when she had time; but she has never come, and I don’t like to go to her,
+because I am afraid of forcing myself on her when I’m not wanted. Once,
+when we were children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and
+thrown my arms about her, she said: ‘Please don’t kiss me unless I ask
+you to, Gerty’—and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since then I’ve
+always waited to be asked.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which his thin
+dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against any involuntary
+change of expression. When his cousin ended, he said with a slight smile:
+“Since you’ve learned the wisdom of waiting, I don’t see why you urge me
+to rush in—” but the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add, as he
+rose to take leave: “Still, I’ll do what you wish, and not hold you
+responsible for my failure.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden’s avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he had
+allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory of their
+last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his indignation, he
+had anxiously watched for her return; but she had disappointed him by
+lingering in England, and when she finally reappeared it happened that
+business had called him to the West, whence he came back only to learn
+that she was starting for Alaska with the Gormers. The revelation of this
+suddenly-established intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her.
+If, at a moment when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could
+cheerfully commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no reason
+why such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step she
+took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where, once or
+twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the recognition of
+this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a
+sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart
+by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had
+thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made
+the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely, confirmed the sense of
+relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her.</p>
+
+<p>But Gerty Farish’s words had sufficed to make him see how little this
+view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live quietly
+with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in need of help—even
+such vague help as he could offer—was to be at once repossessed by that
+thought; and by the time he reached the street he had sufficiently
+convinced himself of the urgency of his cousin’s appeal to turn his steps
+directly toward Lily’s hotel.</p>
+
+<p>There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart had
+moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk remembered that
+she had left an address, for which he presently began to search through
+his books.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step without
+letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden waited with a vague
+sense of uneasiness while the address was sought for. The process lasted
+long enough for uneasiness to turn to apprehension; but when at length a
+slip of paper was handed him, and he read on it: “Care of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch, Emporium Hotel,” his apprehension passed into an incredulous
+stare, and this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper
+in two, and turned to walk quickly homeward.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_9a">Chapter 9</h2>
+
+<p>When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
+Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The
+force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more
+in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at a
+breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection
+might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the
+excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture.
+The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense
+mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest
+note of criticism.</p>
+
+<p>When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady to whom
+Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of entering a new
+world. Carry’s vague presentment of Mrs. Norma Hatch (whose reversion to
+her Christian name was explained as the result of her latest divorce),
+left her under the implication of coming “from the West,” with the not
+unusual extenuation of having brought a great deal of money with her. She
+was, in short, rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily’s
+hand. Mrs. Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
+owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she “knew about” through
+Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the Falstaff of a
+certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr. Stancy might have
+been said to form a connecting link between the Gormer world and the more
+dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart now found herself entering. It was,
+however, only figuratively that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch’s world
+could be described as dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a
+blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornamental
+excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which
+she rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
+appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity of
+something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude the
+immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her visitor, and
+that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of her dress and
+voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence which, in ladies of
+her nationality, so curiously coexists with startling extremes of
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her as its
+inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New
+York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with
+mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements,
+while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a
+desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as
+richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
+permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from
+restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from “art
+exhibit” to dress-maker’s opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately
+equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
+distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of their
+sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the hotel routine.
+Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was
+doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves
+were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies,
+diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had
+no more real existence than the poet’s shades in limbo.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering that Mrs.
+Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though still floating
+in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing an outline; and in this
+endeavour she was actively seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr.
+Stancy, a man of large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial
+occasions and of a chivalry finding expression in “first-night” boxes and
+thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the
+scene of her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
+metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she had
+taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the photographer
+whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament of “Sunday
+Supplements,” and had got together the group which constituted her social
+world. It was a small group still, with heterogeneous figures suspended
+in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily did not take long to learn that its
+regulation was no longer in Mr. Stancy’s hands. As often happens, the
+pupil had outstripped the teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of
+heights of elegance as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the
+Emporium. This discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher
+guidance, for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
+to her correspondence, the right “look” to her hats, the right succession
+to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the regulator of a
+germinating social life that Miss Bart’s guidance was required; her
+ostensible duties as secretary being restricted by the fact that Mrs.
+Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write to.</p>
+
+<p>The daily details of Mrs. Hatch’s existence were as strange to Lily as
+its general tenor. The lady’s habits were marked by an Oriental indolence
+and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion. Mrs. Hatch and her
+friends seemed to float together outside the bounds of time and space. No
+definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day
+flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements,
+so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner
+was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
+Hatch’s vigil till daylight.</p>
+
+<p>Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange throng
+of hangers-on—manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers, teachers of
+bridge, of French, of “physical development”: figures sometimes
+indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs. Hatch’s relation to
+them, from the visitors constituting her recognized society. But
+strangest of all to Lily was the encounter, in this latter group, of
+several of her acquaintances. She had supposed, and not without relief,
+that she was passing, for the moment, completely out of her own circle;
+but she found that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence
+overlapped the edge of Mrs. Fisher’s world, had drawn several of its
+brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned
+Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room was
+one of Lily’s first astonishments; but she soon discovered that he was
+not Mr. Stancy’s most important recruit. It was on little Freddy Van
+Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh millions, that the
+attention of Mrs. Hatch’s group was centred. Freddy, barely out of
+college, had risen above the horizon since Lily’s eclipse, and she now
+saw with surprise what an effulgence he shed on the outer twilight of
+Mrs. Hatch’s existence. This, then, was one of the things that young men
+“went in” for when released from the official social routine; this was
+the kind of “previous engagement” that so frequently caused them to
+disappoint the hopes of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being
+behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted
+and the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
+the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease and
+unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience of the irony
+of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions
+from the long disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of
+Mrs. Hatch’s existence, the life of Lily’s former friends seemed packed
+with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible pretty woman of her
+acquaintance had her inherited obligations, her conventional
+benevolences, her share in the working of the great civic machine; and
+all hung together in the solidarity of these traditional functions. The
+performance of specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart’s
+position; but the vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its
+perplexities.</p>
+
+<p>It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs. Hatch showed
+from the first an almost touching desire for Lily’s approval. Far from
+asserting the superiority of wealth, her beautiful eyes seemed to urge
+the plea of inexperience: she wanted to do what was “nice,” to be taught
+how to be “lovely.” The difficulty was to find any point of contact
+between her ideals and Lily’s.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of aspirations
+culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion journals, and a gaudy
+world of sport still more completely beyond her companion’s ken. To
+separate from these confused conceptions those most likely to advance the
+lady on her way, was Lily’s obvious duty; but its performance was
+hampered by rapidly-growing doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and
+more aware of a certain ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she
+had, in the conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch’s
+irreproachableness. The lady’s offences were always against taste rather
+than conduct; her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than
+ethical conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from a
+wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not mind her
+detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the “Beauty-Doctor” a
+seat in Freddy Van Osburgh’s box at the play, she was not equally at ease
+in regard to some less apparent lapses from convention. Ned Silverton’s
+relation to Stancy seemed, for instance, closer and less clear than any
+natural affinities would warrant; and both appeared united in the effort
+to cultivate Freddy Van Osburgh’s growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was
+as yet nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve
+itself into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a
+vague sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
+and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
+Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the social
+development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his part, a
+permanent interest in the lady’s future. There were moments when Lily
+found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The thought of
+launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious bosom of society
+was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even beguiled her leisure with
+visions of the fair Norma introduced for the first time to a family
+banquet at the Van Osburghs’. But the thought of being personally
+connected with the transaction was less agreeable; and her momentary
+flashes of amusement were followed by increasing periods of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon, she was
+surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her alone in the
+wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch’s world the tea-hour was not
+dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in the hands of her masseuse.</p>
+
+<p>Selden’s entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment; but
+his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her self-possession,
+and she took at once the tone of surprise and pleasure, wondering frankly
+that he should have traced her to so unlikely a place, and asking what
+had inspired him to make the search.</p>
+
+<p>Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him so
+little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
+obstructions she might put in his way. “I wanted to see you,” he said;
+and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept his wishes
+under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long absence as one
+of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his desertion had wounded
+sensibilities far below the surface of her pride.</p>
+
+<p>Selden met the challenge with directness. “Why should I have come, unless
+I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for imagining
+you could want me.”</p>
+
+<p>This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash of
+keenness to her answer. “Then you have come now because you think you can
+be of use to me?”</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated again. “Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to talk
+things over with.”</p>
+
+<p>For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the idea that
+his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a personal
+significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing him. Even under
+the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always made itself felt: she
+might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room.
+She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the
+light fell on his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his
+clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven
+with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her,
+and the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
+this stealing influence now prompted her to say: “It’s very good of you
+to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think I have
+anything particular to talk about?”</p>
+
+<p>Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was
+framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and
+for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one
+which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling;
+and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of
+such an explosion. Selden’s calmness seemed rather to harden into
+resistance, and Miss Bart’s into a surface of glittering irony, as they
+faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch’s
+elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its
+monstrous mates, served at length to suggest the turn of Selden’s reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch’s secretary; and I knew
+she was anxious to hear how you were getting on.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. “Why
+didn’t she look me up herself, then?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Because, as you didn’t send her your address, she was afraid of being
+importunate.” Selden continued with a smile: “You see no such scruples
+restrained me; but then I haven’t as much to risk if I incur your
+displeasure.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily answered his smile. “You haven’t incurred it as yet; but I have an
+idea that you are going to.”</p>
+
+<p>“That rests with you, doesn’t it? You see my initiative doesn’t go beyond
+putting myself at your disposal.”</p>
+
+<p>“But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?” she asked in the same
+light tone.</p>
+
+<p>Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room; then he said, with
+a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection:
+“You are to let me take you away from here.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it
+and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?”</p>
+
+<p>“Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is
+that it should be away from here.”</p>
+
+<p>The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words
+cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own
+were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at
+a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and
+unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of
+authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.</p>
+
+<p>“I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an interest
+in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention
+of leaving.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
+uncontrollable expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>“That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here to
+say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch——”</p>
+
+<p>“It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.”</p>
+
+<p>“My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of. She
+has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to
+seeing me starve.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
+always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.”</p>
+
+<p>“You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose
+you mean—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without
+embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
+constraint in speaking his mind.</p>
+
+<p>“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I owe
+every penny of that legacy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
+abruptness of the statement.</p>
+
+<p>“Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now perhaps
+see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of
+Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I
+must earn something more to keep myself alive.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone: “But with
+your income and Gerty’s—since you allow me to go so far into the details
+of the situation—you and she could surely contrive a life together which
+would put you beyond the need of having to support yourself. Gerty, I
+know, is eager to make such an arrangement, and would be quite happy in
+it——”</p>
+
+<p>“But I should not,” Miss Bart interposed. “There are many reasons why it
+would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself.” She paused a moment,
+and as he seemed to await a farther explanation, added with a quick lift
+of her head: “You will perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no claim to know them,” Selden answered, ignoring her tone; “no
+claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have already
+made. And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to
+enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false
+position.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled. “I suppose,” she rejoined, “that by a false position you
+mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember that I
+had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before I met Mrs.
+Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real difference in being
+inside or out, and I remember your once telling me that it was only those
+inside who took the difference seriously.”</p>
+
+<p>She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
+memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of the
+nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of the
+experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion to
+deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer fulness of
+emphasis: “The question of being inside or out is, as you say, a small
+one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the case, except in so far
+as Mrs. Hatch’s desire to be inside may put you in the position I call
+false.”</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect
+of confirming Lily’s resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused
+hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of
+personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his
+attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her
+appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference.
+The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits
+he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her
+aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther
+into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be,
+she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know,” she said, when he had ceased to speak, “why you imagine
+me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always told me that
+the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to teach a girl to get
+what she wants, why not assume that that is precisely what I am doing?”</p>
+
+<p>The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier
+raised against farther confidences: its brightness held him at such a
+distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing as he
+rejoined: “I am not sure that I have ever called you a successful example
+of that kind of bringing-up.”</p>
+
+<p>Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled herself with
+a light laugh. “Ah, wait a little longer—give me a little more time
+before you decide!” And as he wavered before her, still watching for a
+break in the impenetrable front she presented: “Don’t give me up; I may
+still do credit to my training!” she affirmed.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_10a">Chapter 10</h2>
+
+<p>“Look at those spangles, Miss Bart—every one of ’em sewed on crooked.”</p>
+
+<p>The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned
+structure of wire and net on the table at Lily’s side, and passed on to
+the next figure in the line.</p>
+
+<p>There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles, under
+exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of
+their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this
+creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood.
+Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and
+sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were
+employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well
+clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
+colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only one
+skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned
+with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman’s comment,
+began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.</p>
+
+<p>To Gerty Farish’s hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached
+when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats. Instances of
+young lady-milliners establishing themselves under fashionable patronage,
+and imparting to their “creations” that indefinable touch which the
+professional hand can never give, had flattered Gerty’s visions of the
+future, and convinced even Lily that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch
+need not reduce her to dependence on her friends.</p>
+
+<p>The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden’s visit, and would have
+taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance set up in Lily by
+his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of being involved in a
+transaction she would not have cared to examine too closely had soon
+afterward defined itself in the light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if
+she “saw them through,” she would have no reason to be sorry. The
+implication that such loyalty would meet with a direct reward had
+hastened her flight, and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the
+broad bosom of Gerty’s sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
+there prone, and Gerty’s inspiration about the hats at once revived her
+hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that her
+charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their
+capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of
+course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
+fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes
+and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front
+shop—a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings—where
+her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on
+their stands like birds just poising for flight.</p>
+
+<p>But at the very outset of Gerty’s campaign this vision of the
+green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of fashion
+had been thus “set up,” selling their hats by the mere attraction of a
+name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but these privileged beings
+could command a faith in their powers materially expressed by the
+readiness to pay their shop-rent and advance a handsome sum for current
+expenses. Where was Lily to find such support? And even could it have
+been found, how were the ladies on whose approval she depended to be
+induced to give her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy
+her friend’s case might have excited a few months since had been
+imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again,
+Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her
+self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy Van Osburgh
+was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh
+hour—some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale—and despatched
+to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always
+be ascribed to Miss Bart’s connivance, and would somehow serve as a
+summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was
+a relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves thus
+justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her connection
+with the Hatch case in order to show that they had been right.</p>
+
+<p>Gerty’s quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
+resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her
+share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish’s, they met
+with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender
+ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely
+to her friend.</p>
+
+<p>“I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
+others, and besides she’s always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you
+done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she
+flamed out about some money you’d got from Gus; I never knew her so hot
+before. You know she’ll let him do anything but spend money on his
+friends: the only reason she’s decent to me now is that she knows I’m not
+hard up.—He speculated for you, you say? Well, what’s the harm? He had
+no business to lose. He DIDN’T lose? Then what on earth—but I never
+COULD understand you, Lily!”</p>
+
+<p>The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs.
+Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their
+friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina’s renowned
+millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without
+considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
+untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
+owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s
+influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the
+show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a
+valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which
+Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced,
+but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s unreason, agreed that perhaps
+in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To
+Regina’s work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
+Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness
+continued to hover over her at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later,
+and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a
+hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the
+tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the
+other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history—the exact
+situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all
+the others—but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense
+of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
+still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire
+that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had
+hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show
+herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was
+humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still
+betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might
+aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
+experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and
+trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the
+routine of preparatory work.</p>
+
+<p>She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the
+buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss
+Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss
+Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during
+the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the weight of a
+sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of
+a dream.</p>
+
+<p>“I TOLD her he’d never look at her again; and he didn’t. I wouldn’t have,
+either—I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion
+Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She’s taken ten bottles, and
+her headaches don’t seem no better—but she’s written a testimonial to
+say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture
+in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor’s hat? The one with the green Paradise?
+Here, Miss Haines—it’ll be ready right off.... That was one of the
+Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why,
+Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat—the blue tulle:
+she’s tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out—a good deal like Mamie
+Leach, on’y thinner....”</p>
+
+<p>On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
+startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
+It was the strangest part of Lily’s strange experience, the hearing of
+these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world
+she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls’ minds. She
+had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and
+contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
+underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
+Every girl in Mme. Regina’s work-room knew to whom the headgear in her
+hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a
+definite knowledge of the latter’s place in the social system. That Lily
+was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
+curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had
+fallen, she had “gone under,” and true to the ideal of their race, they
+were awed only by success—by the gross tangible image of material
+achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
+them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
+whom it was an effort to talk.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Bart, if you can’t sew those spangles on more regular I guess you’d
+better give the hat to Miss Kilroy.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
+sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
+clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
+physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
+her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
+took it with a suppressed smile.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry; I’m afraid I am not well,” she said to the forewoman.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
+Mme. Regina’s consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
+workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
+Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
+pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>“You’d better go back to binding edges,” she said drily. Lily slipped out
+last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
+mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
+irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
+all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days—how distant they
+now seemed!—when she had visited the Girls’ Club with Gerty Farish, she
+had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
+because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
+her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
+point of view was less interesting.</p>
+
+<p>She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
+“Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
+you’re feeling right. Miss Haines didn’t act fair to you.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
+real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty’s.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, thank you: I’m not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
+AM clumsy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s mean work for anybody with a headache.” Miss Kilroy paused
+irresolutely. “You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever try
+orangeine?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you.” Lily held out her hand. “It’s very kind of you—I mean to go
+home.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say.
+Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home
+with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent—even kindness, the sort
+of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just
+then.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” she repeated as she turned away.</p>
+
+<p>She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street
+where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty’s offer
+of hospitality. Something of her mother’s fierce shrinking from
+observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the
+promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole,
+less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she
+could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had
+been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now,
+perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about
+by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
+ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day’s task done, she
+dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wall-paper and
+shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the
+degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from
+fashion to commerce.</p>
+
+<p>But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist’s at the
+corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had
+usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn
+toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower
+crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the
+street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist’s door.</p>
+
+<p>Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her
+before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no
+question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch’s,
+obligingly furnished by that lady’s chemist. Lily was confident that the
+clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a
+refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her
+restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked
+on the glass case before her.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of
+handing out the bottle he paused.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t want to increase the dose, you know,” he remarked. Lily’s
+heart contracted.</p>
+
+<p>What did he mean by looking at her in that way?</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not,” she murmured, holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all right: it’s a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off
+you go—the doctors don’t know why.”</p>
+
+<p>The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked
+the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged
+safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her
+relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the
+delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her
+momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already
+stealing over her.</p>
+
+<p>In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the
+last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name
+uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and
+prosperous—but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through
+a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account for the
+phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with
+scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions
+seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
+wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, what’s the matter, Miss Lily? You’re not well!” he exclaimed; and
+she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m a little tired—it’s nothing. Stay with me a moment, please,” she
+faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with
+the shriek of the “elevated” and the tumult of trams and waggons
+contending hideously in their ears.</p>
+
+<p>“We can’t stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea. The
+LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there’ll be no one there at this
+hour.”</p>
+
+<p>A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed
+for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to
+the ladies’ door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was
+seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>“Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss
+Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for
+the lady’s back.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It was the
+temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen
+stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep—the
+midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But
+today, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it
+to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.</p>
+
+<p>As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude,
+though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning
+life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty.
+The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined
+pallor of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips,
+as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull
+chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head
+stood out as it had never done in the most brightly lit ball-room. He
+looked at her with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty
+were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
+unawares.</p>
+
+<p>To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. “Why, Miss Lily,
+I haven’t seen you for an age. I didn’t know what had become of you.”</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications
+to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her he had heard of her;
+he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and of the talk resulting from
+it. Mrs. Hatch’s MILIEU was one which he had once assiduously frequented,
+and now as devoutly shunned.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what
+was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: “You would not be
+likely to know about me. I have joined the working-classes.”</p>
+
+<p>He stared in genuine wonder. “You don’t mean—? Why, what on earth are
+you doing?”</p>
+
+<p>“Learning to be a milliner—at least TRYING to learn,” she hastily
+qualified the statement.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. “Come off—you ain’t
+serious, are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Perfectly serious. I’m obliged to work for my living.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I understood—I thought you were with Norma Hatch.”</p>
+
+<p>“You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?”</p>
+
+<p>“Something of the kind, I believe.” He leaned forward to refill her cup.</p>
+
+<p>Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for
+him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: “I left her two
+months ago.”</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt
+sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
+Rosedale did not hear?</p>
+
+<p>“Wasn’t it a soft berth?” he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.</p>
+
+<p>“Too soft—one might have sunk in too deep.” Lily rested one arm on the
+edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
+looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
+to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>“You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
+might make things too easy for one.”</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
+lost on him.</p>
+
+<p>“It was no place for you, anyhow,” he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
+the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
+depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
+looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
+settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.</p>
+
+<p>“I left,” Lily continued, “lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
+Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh—who is not in the least too good for
+her—and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
+have stayed where I was.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Freddy——” Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
+unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
+acquired. “Freddy don’t count—but I knew YOU weren’t mixed up in that.
+It ain’t your style.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
+gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
+and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale. But the old habit of
+observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
+colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. “Wait a minute—don’t go
+yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
+And you haven’t told me——” He broke off, conscious of going farther
+than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
+also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
+face, he began again abruptly: “What on earth did you mean by saying just
+now that you were learning to be a milliner?”</p>
+
+<p>“Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina’s.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good Lord—YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs.
+Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her——”</p>
+
+<p>“I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next
+summer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, but—look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted.”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head gravely. “No; for I owe it already.”</p>
+
+<p>“Owe it? The whole ten thousand?”</p>
+
+<p>“Every penny.” She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on
+his face: “I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some
+money for me in stocks.”</p>
+
+<p>She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he
+remembered something of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>“He made about nine thousand dollars,” Lily pursued, in the same tone of
+eager communicativeness. “At the time, I understood that he was
+speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew
+nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had NOT used my
+money—that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It
+was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation
+one could remain under. Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
+discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back.
+That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade.”</p>
+
+<p>She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the
+sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer’s
+mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth
+about this transaction, and also that the rumour of her intention to
+repay the money should reach Judy Trenor’s ears. And it had suddenly
+occurred to her that Rosedale, who had surprised Trenor’s confidence, was
+the fitting person to receive and transmit her version of the facts. She
+had even felt a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving
+herself of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
+telling, and as she ended her pallor was suffused with a deep blush of
+misery.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took the
+turn she had least expected.</p>
+
+<p>“But see here—if that’s the case, it cleans you out altogether?”</p>
+
+<p>He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her act;
+as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to precipitate
+her into a fresh act of folly.</p>
+
+<p>“Altogether—yes,” she calmly agreed.</p>
+
+<p>He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little puzzled
+eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>“See here—that’s fine,” he exclaimed abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. “Oh, no—it’s merely a
+bore,” she asserted, gathering together the ends of her feather scarf.</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
+movement. “Miss Lily, if you want any backing—I like pluck——” broke
+from him disconnectedly.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you.” She held out her hand. “Your tea has given me a tremendous
+backing. I feel equal to anything now.”</p>
+
+<p>Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but her
+companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his short
+arms into his expensive overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait a minute—you’ve got to let me walk home with you,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of his
+change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she
+led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the
+distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the
+DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking
+contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which
+she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.</p>
+
+<p>“This isn’t the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss Farish.”</p>
+
+<p>“No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends.”</p>
+
+<p>He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped
+with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy
+vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible
+effort: “You’ll let me come and see you some day?”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being
+frankly touched by it. “Thank you—I shall be very glad,” she made
+answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>That evening in her own room Miss Bart—who had fled early from the heavy
+fumes of the basement dinner-table—sat musing upon the impulse which had
+led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath it she discovered an
+increasing sense of loneliness—a dread of returning to the solitude of
+her room, while she could be anywhere else, or in any company but her
+own. Circumstances, of late, had combined to cut her off more and more
+from her few remaining friends. On Carry Fisher’s part the withdrawal was
+perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily’s
+behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina’s work-room, Mrs. Fisher
+seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding the
+reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come dangerously near to
+being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some
+verbal ingenuity to extricate herself. She frankly owned to having
+brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch—she had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch—and besides, she was not Lily’s keeper, and really the girl was
+old enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
+brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest bosom
+friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of
+her only brother’s escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose
+house she could count on the “jolly parties” which had become a necessity
+to her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of
+view.</p>
+
+<p>Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it. Carry
+had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps only a
+friendship like Gerty’s could be proof against such an increasing strain.
+Gerty’s friendship did indeed hold fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid
+her also. For she could not go to Gerty’s without risk of meeting Selden;
+and to meet him now would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think
+of him, whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
+thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur of her
+tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
+Mrs. Hatch’s prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams
+he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness;
+and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her
+courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below
+such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation
+from which she woke each morning with an obliterated past.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return; but
+at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug gave her a
+momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she drew strength to
+take up her daily work. The strength was more and more needed as the
+perplexities of her future increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs.
+Fisher she was only passing through a temporary period of probation,
+since they believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme.
+Regina’s would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston’s legacy was paid, to
+realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller competence
+acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the
+legacy could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed a
+wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she could ever
+learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their special work,
+the small pay she received would not be a sufficient addition to her
+income to compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
+fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to use the
+legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and in command of
+her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to
+attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
+gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor. But the
+task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued to stint
+herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the
+weight of an intolerable obligation.</p>
+
+<p>These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked the
+secret dread that the obligation might not always remain intolerable.
+She knew she could not count on her continuity of purpose, and what
+really frightened her was the thought that she might gradually
+accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely in Trenor’s debt, as she
+had accommodated herself to the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as
+she had so nearly drifted into acquiescing with Stancy’s scheme for the
+advancement of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old
+incurable dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
+tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned
+her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood that
+Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take advantage
+of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of course impossible
+to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered
+temptingly before her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her
+again, and almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point
+of offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected. Would
+she still reject them if they were offered? More and more, with every
+fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the
+shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her
+papers, lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
+scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
+returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?</p>
+
+<p>What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost; she
+could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless night.
+Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue and
+loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained of bodily
+strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only
+hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much
+longer that hope would last she dared not conjecture.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_11a">Chapter 11</h2>
+
+<p>Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the afternoon
+spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April, and the sweetness
+of spring was in the air. It mitigated the ugliness of the long crowded
+thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the
+discouraging perspective of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry
+to the delicate haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.</p>
+
+<p>As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the passing
+carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had disbanded; but
+a few still lingered, delaying their departure for Europe, or passing
+through town on their return from the South. Among them was Mrs. Van
+Osburgh, swaying majestically in her C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy
+Gryce at her side, and the new heir to the Gryce millions enthroned
+before them on his nurse’s knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch’s
+electric victoria, in which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of
+a spring toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
+came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
+annual tarpon fishing and a dip into “the street.”</p>
+
+<p>This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense of
+aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She had nothing
+to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to come; for the season
+was over in millinery as well as in society, and a week earlier Mme.
+Regina had notified her that her services were no longer required. Mme.
+Regina always reduced her staff on the first of May, and Miss Bart’s
+attendance had of late been so irregular—she had so often been unwell,
+and had done so little work when she came—that it was only as a favour
+that her dismissal had hitherto been deferred.</p>
+
+<p>Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was conscious of
+having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It was bitter to
+acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the fact had been
+brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could never compete with
+professional ability. Since she had been brought up to be ornamental,
+she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical
+purpose; but the discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
+efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the fact
+that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning. The luxury of
+lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the life of ease; it had no
+part in the utilitarian existence of the boarding-house. She liked to
+leave her room early, and to return to it as late as possible; and she
+was walking slowly now in order to postpone the detested approach to her
+doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest from
+the fact that it was occupied—and indeed filled—by the conspicuous
+figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take on an added
+amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph. Rosedale,
+a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to enquire if she had
+recovered from her indisposition; but since then she had not seen or
+heard from him, and his absence seemed to betoken a struggle to keep
+away, to let her pass once more out of his life. If this were the case,
+his return showed that the struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew
+he was not the man to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental
+dalliance. He was too busy, too practical, and above all too much
+preoccupied with his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable
+asides.</p>
+
+<p>In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas grass, and
+discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes, he looked about him
+with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat distrustfully on the dusty
+console adorned with a Rogers statuette.</p>
+
+<p>Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he deposited
+himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched antimacassar which
+scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of skin above his collar.</p>
+
+<p>“My goodness—you can’t go on living here!” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Lily smiled at his tone. “I am not sure that I can; but I have gone over
+my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able to manage
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Be able to manage it? That’s not what I mean—it’s no place for you!”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week.”</p>
+
+<p>“Out of work—out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea of your
+having to work—it’s preposterous.” He brought out his sentences in short
+violent jerks, as though they were forced up from a deep inner crater of
+indignation. “It’s a farce—a crazy farce,” he repeated, his eyes fixed
+on the long vista of the room reflected in the blotched glass between the
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. “I don’t know why
+I should regard myself as an exception——” she began.</p>
+
+<p>“Because you ARE; that’s why; and your being in a place like this is a
+damnable outrage. I can’t talk of it calmly.”</p>
+
+<p>She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual glibness; and
+there was something almost moving to her in his inarticulate struggle
+with his emotions.</p>
+
+<p>He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its beam
+ends, and placed himself squarely before her.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Miss Lily, I’m going to Europe next week: going over to Paris
+and London for a couple of months—and I can’t leave you like this. I
+can’t do it. I know it’s none of my business—you’ve let me understand
+that often enough; but things are worse with you now than they have been
+before, and you must see that you’ve got to accept help from somebody.
+You spoke to me the other day about some debt to Trenor. I know what you
+mean—and I respect you for feeling as you do about it.”</p>
+
+<p>A blush of surprise rose to Lily’s pale face, but before she could
+interrupt him he had continued eagerly: “Well, I’ll lend you the money to
+pay Trenor; and I won’t—I—see here, don’t take me up till I’ve
+finished. What I mean is, it’ll be a plain business arrangement, such as
+one man would make with another. Now, what have you got to say against
+that?”</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude were
+mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the unexpected
+gentleness of her reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that I can
+never again be sure of understanding the plainest business arrangement.”
+Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ of injustice, she
+added, even more kindly: “Not that I don’t appreciate your kindness—that
+I’m not grateful for it. But a business arrangement between us would in
+any case be impossible, because I shall have no security to give when my
+debt to Gus Trenor has been paid.”</p>
+
+<p>Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the note
+of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as closing the
+question between them.</p>
+
+<p>In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing through
+his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the inexorableness of her
+course—however little he penetrated its motive—she saw that it
+unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold over him. It was as though the
+sense in her of unexplained scruples and resistances had the same
+attraction as the delicacy of feature, the fastidiousness of manner,
+which gave her an external rarity, an air of being impossible to match.
+As he advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
+greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had learned to
+distinguish minor differences of design and quality in some long-coveted
+object.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at once, on
+the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset; and the
+temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little by little,
+circumstances were breaking down her dislike for Rosedale. The dislike,
+indeed, still subsisted; but it was penetrated here and there by the
+perception of mitigating qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness,
+a rather helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
+through the hard surface of his material ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a gesture
+which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.</p>
+
+<p>“If you’d only let me, I’d set you up over them all—I’d put you where
+you could wipe your feet on ’em!” he declared; and it touched her oddly
+to see that his new passion had not altered his old standard of values.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
+situation in the crude light which Rosedale’s visit had shed on it. In
+fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had she not
+sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that might be
+called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt did she owe to
+a social order which had condemned and banished her without trial? She
+had never been heard in her own defence; she was innocent of the charge
+on which she had been found guilty; and the irregularity of her
+conviction might seem to justify the use of methods as irregular in
+recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not
+scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to
+make private use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all,
+half the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it. Call
+it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no
+one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he
+must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.</p>
+
+<p>The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of
+the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the
+passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of
+society. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude
+nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a
+worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by
+her unregarded. She could not hold herself much to blame for this
+ineffectiveness, and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed.
+Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
+highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its
+narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been
+fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the
+rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird’s breast? And was it her fault that
+the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
+among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be
+hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?</p>
+
+<p>These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their battle
+in her breast during the long watches of the night; and when she rose the
+next morning she hardly knew where the victory lay. She was exhausted by
+the reaction of a night without sleep, coming after many nights of rest
+artificially obtained; and in the distorting light of fatigue the future
+stretched out before her grey, interminable and desolate.</p>
+
+<p>She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
+friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the intimate
+domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings of the street.
+Her week of idleness had brought home to her with exaggerated force these
+small aggravations of the boarding-house world, and she yearned for that
+other luxurious world, whose machinery is so carefully concealed that one
+scene flows into another without perceptible agency.</p>
+
+<p>At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina’s she had
+spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial
+promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical
+fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not
+decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from
+the milliner’s, and she was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey sky
+threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals up and
+down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Park, hoping to
+find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the wind chilled her, and
+after an hour’s wandering under the tossing boughs she yielded to her
+increasing weariness, and took refuge in a little restaurant in
+Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and had meant to go without
+luncheon; but she was too tired to return home, and the long perspective
+of white tables showed alluringly through the windows.</p>
+
+<p>The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the rapid
+absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of shrill voices
+reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little
+circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had
+lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken
+to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a
+responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the
+sallow preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
+music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who sat by
+themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring magazines
+between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was stranded in a great
+waste of disoccupation.</p>
+
+<p>She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion of
+stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when she emerged
+once more into the street. She realized now that, as she sat in the
+restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The
+discovery gave her an immediate illusion of activity: it was exhilarating
+to think that she had actually a reason for hurrying home. To prolong
+her enjoyment of the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was
+so great that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
+way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that
+time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it,
+cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters;
+but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
+break into a wild irrational gallop.</p>
+
+<p>She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
+enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting her plan
+into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her resolve. She
+was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved force of resolution
+which she felt within herself: she saw it was going to be easier, a great
+deal easier, than she had imagined.</p>
+
+<p>At five o’clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a sealed
+packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even the contact
+with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had half-expected it
+would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of indifference, as though
+the vigorous exertion of her will had finally benumbed her finer
+sensibilities.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and went
+out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still high, but a
+threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook the signs projecting
+from the basement shops along the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and
+began to walk slowly northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs.
+Dorset’s habits to know that she could always be found at home after
+five. She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
+visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that she had
+guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a note which she
+meant to send up with her name, and which she thought would secure her
+admission.</p>
+
+<p>She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset’s, thinking that the
+quick movement through the cold evening air would help to steady her
+nerves; but she really felt no need of being tranquillized. Her survey of
+the situation remained calm and unwavering.</p>
+
+<p>As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and a rush of
+cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella and the moisture
+quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She was still half a mile from
+her destination, and she decided to walk across to Madison Avenue and
+take the electric car. As she turned into the side street, a vague memory
+stirred in her. The row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone
+house-fronts, the Georgian flat-house with flower-boxes on its balconies,
+were merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was down
+this street that she had walked with Selden, that September day two years
+ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered together. The
+recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations—longings, regrets,
+imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever
+known. It was strange to find herself passing his house on such an
+errand. She seemed suddenly to see her action as he would see it—and the
+fact of his own connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she
+must trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
+blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day of
+their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in the path
+she was now following—even then she had resisted the hand he had held
+out.</p>
+
+<p>All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
+overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to help
+her—to help her by loving her, as he had said—and if, the third time,
+he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse?...
+Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts
+still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see him remained; it grew to
+hunger as she paused on the pavement opposite his door. The street was
+dark and empty, swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of
+the bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a
+light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_12a">Chapter 12</h2>
+
+<p>The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps made
+tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire flickered
+on the hearth, and Selden’s easy-chair, which stood near it, had been
+pushed aside when he rose to admit her.</p>
+
+<p>He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent, waiting
+for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the threshold, assailed by
+a rush of memories.</p>
+
+<p>The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from which he
+had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the chair he had
+leaned against while she examined the precious volume. But then the wide
+September light had filled the room, making it seem a part of the outer
+world: now the shaded lamps and the warm hearth, detaching it from the
+gathering darkness of the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden’s silence, Lily
+turned to him and said simply: “I came to tell you that I was sorry for
+the way we parted—for what I said to you that day at Mrs. Hatch’s.”</p>
+
+<p>The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs,
+she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now
+felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>Selden returned her look with a smile. “I was sorry too that we should
+have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn’t bring it on myself.
+Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking——”</p>
+
+<p>“So that you really didn’t care——?” broke from her with a flash of her
+old irony.</p>
+
+<p>“So that I was prepared for the consequences,” he corrected
+good-humouredly. “But we’ll talk of all this later. Do come and sit by
+the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you’ll let me put a cushion
+behind you.”</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and paused
+near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward, cast exaggerated
+shadows on the pallor of her delicately-hollowed face.</p>
+
+<p>“You look tired—do sit down,” he repeated gently.</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem to hear the request. “I wanted you to know that I left
+Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you,” she said, as though continuing
+her confession.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—yes; I know,” he assented, with a rising tinge of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>“And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had already
+begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with her—for the
+reasons you gave me; but I wouldn’t admit it—I wouldn’t let you see that
+I understood what you meant.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out—don’t overwhelm
+me with the sense of my officiousness!”</p>
+
+<p>His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have
+recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on
+her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of
+extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of
+the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it
+necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and
+evasion.</p>
+
+<p>“It was not that—I was not ungrateful,” she insisted. But the power of
+expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat, and two
+tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Selden moved forward and took her hand. “You are very tired. Why won’t
+you sit down and let me make you comfortable?”</p>
+
+<p>He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion behind
+her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have that
+amount of hospitality at my command.”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not weep
+easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself, though she
+was still too tremulous to speak.</p>
+
+<p>“You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes,” Selden
+continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.</p>
+
+<p>His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they had sat
+together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her future. There
+were moments when that day seemed more remote than any other event in her
+life; and yet she could always relive it in its minutest detail.</p>
+
+<p>She made a gesture of refusal. “No: I drink too much tea. I would rather
+sit quiet—I must go in a moment,” she added confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The
+tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under
+the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her
+to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more
+putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming
+an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an
+immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden’s side the determining
+impulse was still lacking.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had
+passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every
+demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it
+elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned.
+But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw
+herself forever shut out from Selden’s inmost self. She had come to him
+with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her;
+but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in
+its death-pang.</p>
+
+<p>“I must go,” she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. “But I
+may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I
+have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that
+sometimes—sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them—they
+have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming
+what many people have thought me.”</p>
+
+<p>Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would
+not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without
+trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the
+seeming ruin of her life.</p>
+
+<p>A change had come over Selden’s face as she spoke. Its guarded look had
+yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion, but full of
+a gentle understanding.</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really
+made the difference. The difference is in yourself—it will always be
+there. And since it IS there, it can’t really matter to you what people
+think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, don’t say that—don’t say that what you have told me has made no
+difference. It seems to shut me out—to leave me all alone with the other
+people.” She had risen and stood before him, once more completely
+mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The consciousness of his
+half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether he wished it or not, he
+must see her wholly for once before they parted.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the eyes
+as she continued. “Once—twice—you gave me the chance to escape from my
+life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I
+saw my mistake—I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me
+before. But it was too late: you had judged me—I understood. It was too
+late for happiness—but not too late to be helped by the thought of what
+I had missed. That is all I have lived on—don’t take it from me now!
+Even in my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
+Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the
+help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great
+temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I
+remembered—I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy
+me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what you
+did for me—that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you
+that I have always remembered; and that I have tried—tried hard....”</p>
+
+<p>She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing out her
+handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds of her dress. A
+wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on her lips. Then she
+lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered voice.</p>
+
+<p>“I have tried hard—but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
+person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just
+a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped
+out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one
+finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be
+thrown out into the rubbish heap—and you don’t know what it’s like in
+the rubbish heap!”</p>
+
+<p>Her lips wavered into a smile—she had been distracted by the whimsical
+remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two years earlier, in
+that very room. Then she had been planning to marry Percy Gryce—what was
+it she was planning now?</p>
+
+<p>The blood had risen strongly under Selden’s dark skin, but his emotion
+showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.</p>
+
+<p>“You have something to tell me—do you mean to marry?” he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Lily’s eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
+self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the light of
+his question, she had paused to ask herself if her decision had really
+been taken when she entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>“You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!” she
+said with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>“And you have come to it now?”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall have to come to it—presently. But there is something else I
+must come to first.” She paused again, trying to transmit to her voice
+the steadiness of her recovered smile. “There is some one I must say
+goodbye to. Oh, not YOU—we are sure to see each other again—but the
+Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are
+going to part, and I have brought her back to you—I am going to leave
+her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like
+to think that she has stayed with you—and she’ll be no trouble, she’ll
+take up no room.”</p>
+
+<p>She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. “Will you let
+her stay with you?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling that had
+not yet risen to his lips. “Lily—can’t I help you?” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him gently. “Do you remember what you said to me once?
+That you could help me only by loving me? Well—you did love me for a
+moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the moment is
+gone—it was I who let it go. And one must go on living. Goodbye.”</p>
+
+<p>She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind
+of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death. Something
+in truth lay dead between them—the love she had killed in him and could
+no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped
+up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had
+kindled, the passion of her soul for his.</p>
+
+<p>In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
+understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self with
+him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must still
+continue to be hers.</p>
+
+<p>Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with a
+strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation had
+vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as one of
+those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as they pass.</p>
+
+<p>“Lily,” he said in a low voice, “you mustn’t speak in this way. I can’t
+let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may change—but
+they don’t pass. You can never go out of my life.”</p>
+
+<p>She met his eyes with an illumined look. “No,” she said. “I see that now.
+Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe, whatever happens.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?”</p>
+
+<p>She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing at present—except that I am very cold, and that before I go you
+must make up the fire for me.”</p>
+
+<p>She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers. Puzzled
+by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered a handful of
+wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he did so, he noticed
+how thin her hands looked against the rising light of the flames. He saw
+too, under the loose lines of her dress, how the curves of her figure had
+shrunk to angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of
+the flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the
+blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes.
+She knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
+not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something from
+her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at
+the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the
+word to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
+shoulders. “Goodbye,” she said, and as he bent over her she touched his
+forehead with her lips.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_13a">Chapter 13</h2>
+
+<p>The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was a
+momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on unconscious
+of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant ether which
+emanates from the high moments of life. But gradually it shrank away from
+her and she felt the dull pavement beneath her feet. The sense of
+weariness returned with accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that
+she could walk no farther. She had reached the corner of Forty-first
+Street and Fifth Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there
+were seats where she might rest.</p>
+
+<p>That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she entered it,
+and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of an electric
+street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of her veins, and she
+told herself that she must not sit long in the penetrating dampness which
+struck up from the wet asphalt. But her will-power seemed to have spent
+itself in a last great effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction
+which follows on an unwonted expenditure of energy. And besides, what was
+there to go home to? Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room—that
+silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the
+most discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral by her bed. The
+thought of the chloral was the only spot of light in the dark prospect:
+she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her already. But she
+was troubled by the thought that it was losing its power—she dared not
+go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been
+more broken and less profound; there had been nights when she was
+perpetually floating up through it to consciousness. What if the effect
+of the drug should gradually fail, as all narcotics were said to fail?
+She remembered the chemist’s warning against increasing the dose; and she
+had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug.
+Her dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she
+lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the waning
+power of the chloral.</p>
+
+<p>Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second Street
+was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the lingering
+occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and then a stray
+figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path where Lily sat, looming
+black for a moment in the white circle of electric light. One or two of
+these passers-by slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely
+figure; but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows
+remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming asphalt;
+and raising her eyes she saw a young woman bending over her.</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me—are you sick?—Why, it’s Miss Bart!” a half-familiar voice
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with a
+bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome refinement
+which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its common prettiness was
+redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t remember me,” she continued, brightening with the pleasure of
+recognition, “but I’d know you anywhere, I’ve thought of you such a lot.
+I guess my folks all know your name by heart. I was one of the girls at
+Miss Farish’s club—you helped me to go to the country that time I had
+lung-trouble. My name’s Nettie Struther. It was Nettie Crane then—but I
+daresay you don’t remember that either.”</p>
+
+<p>Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane’s timely
+rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her
+connection with Gerty’s charitable work. She had furnished the girl with
+the means to go to a sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with
+a peculiar irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor’s.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not forgotten; but
+her voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself sinking under a
+great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther, with a startled
+exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad arm behind her back.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you feel
+better.”</p>
+
+<p>A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from the
+pressure of the supporting arm.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m only tired—it is nothing,” she found voice to say in a moment; and
+then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion’s eyes, she added
+involuntarily: “I have been unhappy—in great trouble.”</p>
+
+<p>“YOU in trouble? I’ve always thought of you as being so high up, where
+everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean, and got to
+wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world, I used to
+remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and that seemed to
+show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But you mustn’t sit here too
+long—it’s fearfully damp. Don’t you feel strong enough to walk on a
+little ways now?” she broke off.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—yes; I must go home,” Lily murmured, rising.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side. She
+had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of over-work and
+anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to
+be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so
+lately expressed her dread. But Nettie Struther’s frail envelope was now
+alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her,
+she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.</p>
+
+<p>“I am very glad to have seen you,” Lily continued, summoning a smile to
+her unsteady lips. “It’ll be my turn to think of you as happy—and the
+world will seem a less unjust place to me too.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but I can’t leave you like this—you’re not fit to go home alone.
+And I can’t go with you either!” Nettie Struther wailed with a start of
+recollection. “You see, it’s my husband’s night-shift—he’s a
+motor-man—and the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to
+get HER husband’s supper at seven. I didn’t tell you I had a baby, did I?
+She’ll be four months old day after tomorrow, and to look at her you
+wouldn’t think I’d ever had a sick day. I’d give anything to show you the
+baby, Miss Bart, and we live right down the street here—it’s only three
+blocks off.” She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily’s face, and then
+added with a burst of courage: “Why won’t you get right into the cars and
+come home with me while I get baby’s supper? It’s real warm in our
+kitchen, and you can rest there, and I’ll take YOU home as soon as ever
+she drops off to sleep.”</p>
+
+<p>It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther’s match had made
+a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as
+extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through
+the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which
+a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for
+expression on a countenance still placid with sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and
+excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return,
+Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the
+rocking-chair near the stove.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ve got a parlour too,” she explained with pardonable pride; “but I
+guess it’s warmer in here, and I don’t want to leave you alone while I’m
+getting baby’s supper.”</p>
+
+<p>On receiving Lily’s assurance that she much preferred the friendly
+proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a
+bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby’s
+impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated
+herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re sure you won’t let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss
+Bart? There’s some of baby’s fresh milk left over—well, maybe you’d
+rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It’s too lovely having you
+here. I’ve thought of it so often that I can’t believe it’s really come
+true. I’ve said to George again and again: ‘I just wish Miss Bart could
+see me NOW—’ and I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we’d
+talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses
+you wore. I haven’t seen your name for a long time, though, and I began
+to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I’d get
+sick myself, fretting about it.” Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile.
+“Well, I can’t afford to be sick again, that’s a fact: the last spell
+nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I’d
+come back alive, and I didn’t much care if I did. You see I didn’t know
+about George and the baby then.”</p>
+
+<p>She paused to readjust the bottle to the child’s bubbling mouth.</p>
+
+<p>“You precious—don’t you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with
+mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto’nette—that’s what we
+call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden—I told
+George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy the
+name.... I never thought I’d get married, you know, and I’d never have
+had the heart to go on working just for myself.”</p>
+
+<p>She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily’s eyes, went
+on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: “You see I wasn’t only
+just SICK that time you sent me off—I was dreadfully unhappy too. I’d
+known a gentleman where I was employed—I don’t know as you remember I
+did type-writing in a big importing firm—and—well—I thought we were to
+be married: he’d gone steady with me six months and given me his mother’s
+wedding ring. But I presume he was too stylish for me—he travelled for
+the firm, and had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren’t looked
+after the way you are, and they don’t always know how to look after
+themselves. I didn’t . . . and it pretty near killed me when he went away
+and left off writing....</p>
+
+<p>“It was then I came down sick—I thought it was the end of everything. I
+guess it would have been if you hadn’t sent me off. But when I found I
+was getting well I began to take heart in spite of myself. And then,
+when I got back home, George came round and asked me to marry him. At
+first I thought I couldn’t, because we’d been brought up together, and I
+knew he knew about me. But after a while I began to see that that made it
+easier. I never could have told another man, and I’d never have married
+without telling; but if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I
+didn’t see why I shouldn’t begin over again—and I did.”</p>
+
+<p>The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted her
+irradiated face from the child on her knees. “But, mercy, I didn’t mean
+to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there looking so fagged
+out. Only it’s so lovely having you here, and letting you see just how
+you’ve helped me.” The baby had sunk back blissfully replete, and Mrs.
+Struther softly rose to lay the bottle aside. Then she paused before Miss
+Bart.</p>
+
+<p>“I only wish I could help YOU—but I suppose there’s nothing on earth I
+could do,” she murmured wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her arms; and
+the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in them.</p>
+
+<p>The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage, made an
+instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing influences of
+digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight sink trustfully
+against her breast. The child’s confidence in its safety thrilled her
+with a sense of warmth and returning life, and she bent over, wondering
+at the rosy blur of the little face, the empty clearness of the eyes, the
+vague tendrilly motions of the folding and unfolding fingers. At first
+the burden in her arms seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down,
+but as she continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper, and
+penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though the child
+entered into her and became a part of herself.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up, and saw Nettie’s eyes resting on her with tenderness and
+exultation.</p>
+
+<p>“Wouldn’t it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to be just
+like you? Of course I know she never COULD—but mothers are always
+dreaming the craziest things for their children.”</p>
+
+<p>Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in her
+mother’s arms.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, she must not do that—I should be afraid to come and see her too
+often!” she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs. Struther’s
+anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the promise that of
+course she would come back soon, and make George’s acquaintance, and see
+the baby in her bath, she passed out of the kitchen and went alone down
+the tenement stairs.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger and
+happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the first time she
+had ever come across the results of her spasmodic benevolence, and the
+surprised sense of human fellowship took the mortal chill from her heart.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction of a
+deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o’clock, and the light and
+odours proceeding from the basement made it manifest that the
+boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room, lit the
+gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself any longer,
+to go without food because her surroundings made it unpalatable. Since it
+was her fate to live in a boarding-house, she must learn to fall in with
+the conditions of the life. Nevertheless she was glad that, when she
+descended to the heat and glare of the dining-room, the repast was nearly
+over.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of activity.
+For weeks past she had been too listless and indifferent to set her
+possessions in order, but now she began to examine systematically the
+contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a few handsome dresses
+left—survivals of her last phase of splendour, on the Sabrina and in
+London—but when she had been obliged to part with her maid she had given
+the woman a generous share of her cast-off apparel. The remaining
+dresses, though they had lost their freshness, still kept the long
+unerring lines, the sweep and amplitude of the great artist’s stroke, and
+as she spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn
+rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
+of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her
+past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life
+enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had been made for:
+every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it, all
+her interests and activities had been taught to centre around it. She
+was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every
+bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white
+drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress
+she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been impossible for her to give
+it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long
+flexible folds, as she shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets
+which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she
+had stood with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the
+dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note
+of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was
+still in a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of
+the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.</p>
+
+<p>She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dress
+when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irish
+maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, Lily
+read with surprise the address stamped on the upper corner of the
+envelope. It was a business communication from the office of her aunt’s
+executors, and she wondered what unexpected development had caused them
+to break silence before the appointed time. She opened the envelope and a
+cheque fluttered to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up the blood
+rushed to her face. The cheque represented the full amount of Mrs.
+Peniston’s legacy, and the letter accompanying it explained that the
+executors, having adjusted the business of the estate with less delay
+than they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the
+payment of the bequests.</p>
+
+<p>Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out
+the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it
+in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had
+represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed
+in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of
+the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the
+visions mounting to her brain, and after a while she lifted the lid of
+the desk and slipped the magic formula out of sight. It was easier to
+think without those five figures dancing before her eyes; and she had a
+great deal of thinking to do before she slept.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious calculations as
+had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night when she had decided to
+marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies book-keeping, and her financial
+situation was easier to ascertain than it had been then; but she had not
+yet learned the control of money, and during her transient phase of
+luxury at the Emporium she had slipped back into habits of extravagance
+which still impaired her slender balance. A careful examination of her
+cheque-book, and of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that, when the
+latter had been settled, she would have barely enough to live on for the
+next three or four months; and even after that, if she were to continue
+her present way of living, without earning any additional money, all
+incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point. She hid her
+eyes with a shudder, beholding herself at the entrance of that
+ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss Silverton’s dowdy
+figure take its despondent way.</p>
+
+<p>It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she
+turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper
+empoverishment—of an inner destitution compared to which outward
+conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be
+poor—to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary
+degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy
+communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more
+miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of
+being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the
+years. That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being
+something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface
+of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self
+could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back
+she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real
+relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and
+thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to
+shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without
+any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no
+centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her
+heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and
+tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives
+in the blood—whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with
+visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands,
+but made up of inherited passions and loyalties—it has the same power of
+broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by
+mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving.</p>
+
+<p>Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to Lily.
+She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
+mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
+influences of the life about her. All the men and women she knew were
+like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance:
+her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening
+in Nettie Struther’s kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the
+fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to
+Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre
+enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for
+possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious
+permanence of a bird’s nest built on the edge of a cliff—a mere wisp of
+leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may
+hang safely over the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>Yes—but it had taken two to build the nest; the man’s faith as well as
+the woman’s courage. Lily remembered Nettie’s words: I KNEW HE KNEW ABOUT
+ME. Her husband’s faith in her had made her renewal possible—it is so
+easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be!
+Well—Selden had twice been ready to stake his faith on Lily Bart; but
+the third trial had been too severe for his endurance. The very quality
+of his love had made it the more impossible to recall to life. If it had
+been a simple instinct of the blood, the power of her beauty might have
+revived it. But the fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably
+wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as
+impossible to restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed.
+Selden had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of
+an uncritical return to former states of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his
+faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on
+her memories. As she held Nettie Struther’s child in her arms the frozen
+currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins: the
+old life-hunger possessed her, and all her being clamoured for its share
+of personal happiness. Yes—it was happiness she still wanted, and the
+glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by
+one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw
+that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.</p>
+
+<p>It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed her.
+It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful fatigue, a
+wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities of the future
+were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled by the intense
+cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken through the merciful
+veil which intervenes between intention and action, and to see exactly
+what she would do in all the long days to come. There was the cheque in
+her desk, for instance—she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor;
+but she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing so,
+would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified
+her—she dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
+Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the
+strength of the opposing impulses—she could feel the countless hands of
+habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an
+intense longing to prolong, to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of
+her spirit. If only life could end now—end on this tragic yet sweet
+vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all
+the loving and foregoing in the world!</p>
+
+<p>She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her writing-desk,
+enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to her bank. She then
+wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it, without an accompanying
+word, in an envelope inscribed with his name, laid the two letters side
+by side on her desk. After that she continued to sit at the table,
+sorting her papers and writing, till the intense silence of the house
+reminded her of the lateness of the hour. In the street the noise of
+wheels had ceased, and the rumble of the “elevated” came only at long
+intervals through the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal
+separation from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more
+strangely confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel,
+and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands against her
+eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her
+future—she felt as though the house, the street, the world were all
+empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless universe.</p>
+
+<p>But this was the verge of delirium . . . she had never hung so near the
+dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted—she remembered that
+she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The little bottle was at her
+bed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon her. She rose and undressed
+hastily, hungering now for the touch of her pillow. She felt so
+profoundly tired that she thought she must fall asleep at once; but as
+soon as she had lain down every nerve started once more into separate
+wakefulness. It was as though a great blaze of electric light had been
+turned on in her head, and her poor little anguished self shrank and
+cowered in it, without knowing where to take refuge.</p>
+
+<p>She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness was
+possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred different
+points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could still this legion
+of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion would have been sweet
+compared to this shrill beat of activities; but weariness had dropped
+from her as though some cruel stimulant had been forced into her veins.</p>
+
+<p>She could bear it—yes, she could bear it; but what strength would be
+left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared—the next day pressed
+close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to follow—they
+swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut them out for a few
+hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion. She put out her hand, and
+measured the soothing drops into a glass; but as she did so, she knew
+they would be powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain.
+She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she
+felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing
+so—she remembered the chemist’s warning. If sleep came at all, it might
+be a sleep without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a
+hundred: the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a
+few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for
+her the rest she so desperately needed....</p>
+
+<p>She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely—the physical
+craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her mind shrank from
+the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes contract in a blaze of
+light—darkness, darkness was what she must have at any cost. She raised
+herself in bed and swallowed the contents of the glass; then she blew out
+her candle and lay down.</p>
+
+<p>She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first
+effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would
+take—the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of
+passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in
+the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect increased its
+fascination: it was delicious to lean over and look down into the dim
+abysses of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug seemed to work more slowly
+than usual: each passionate pulse had to be stilled in turn, and it was
+long before she felt them dropping into abeyance, like sentinels falling
+asleep at their posts. But gradually the sense of complete subjugation
+came over her, and she wondered languidly what had made her feel so
+uneasy and excited. She saw now that there was nothing to be excited
+about—she had returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be
+so difficult after all: she felt sure that she would have the strength to
+meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had been afraid
+to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her. She had been
+unhappy, and now she was happy—she had felt herself alone, and now the
+sense of loneliness had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she suddenly
+understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was odd—but Nettie
+Struther’s child was lying on her arm: she felt the pressure of its
+little head against her shoulder. She did not know how it had come there,
+but she felt no great surprise at the fact, only a gentle penetrating
+thrill of warmth and pleasure. She settled herself into an easier
+position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round downy head, and holding
+her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child.</p>
+
+<p>As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must
+tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life clear between
+them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered vague and luminous on
+the far edge of thought—she was afraid of not remembering it when she
+woke; and if she could only remember it and say it to him, she felt that
+everything would be well.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold her. She
+struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought to keep awake on
+account of the baby; but even this feeling was gradually lost in an
+indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through which, of a sudden, a dark
+flash of loneliness and terror tore its way.</p>
+
+<p>She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a moment she
+seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no—she was mistaken—the
+tender pressure of its body was still close to hers: the recovered warmth
+flowed through her once more, she yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Chapter_14a">Chapter 14</h2>
+
+<p>The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the
+air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily’s street, mellowed the
+blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the doorstep,
+and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window.</p>
+
+<p>When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication in
+its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the squalor of
+its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a youthful sense of
+adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and
+launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and
+measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars.</p>
+
+<p>That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart’s boarding-house;
+but its shabby doorstep had suddenly become the threshold of the
+untried. As he approached he looked up at the triple row of windows,
+wondering boyishly which one of them was hers. It was nine o’clock, and
+the house, being tenanted by workers, already showed an awakened front to
+the street. He remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind
+was down. He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the
+window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
+inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the
+dingy scene.</p>
+
+<p>Nine o’clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed beyond
+all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily
+Bart at once—he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could
+not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come
+to his lips sooner—that he had let her pass from him the evening before
+without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new
+day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in his
+state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door
+should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he
+entered, that it had been opened by Gerty Farish—and that behind her, in
+an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed.</p>
+
+<p>“Lawrence!” Gerty cried in a strange voice, “how could you get here so
+quickly?”—and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to
+close about his heart.</p>
+
+<p>He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture—he saw the
+landlady’s imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but he shrank
+back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically mounted the steep
+black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately aware that his cousin
+was about to lead him.</p>
+
+<p>A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
+minute—and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one else
+exclaimed: “It was the greatest mercy—” then Selden felt that Gerty had
+taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be suffered to go up
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage
+to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went in after her.
+Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a tempered
+golden flood into the room, and in its light Selden saw a narrow bed
+along the wall, and on the bed, with motionless hands and calm
+unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart.</p>
+
+<p>That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied. Her real
+self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier—what had he to
+do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the first time,
+neither paled nor brightened at his coming?</p>
+
+<p>Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of one who
+has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking gently, as if
+transmitting a final message.</p>
+
+<p>“The doctor found a bottle of chloral—she had been sleeping badly for a
+long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake.... There is no
+doubt of that—no doubt—there will be no question—he has been very
+kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left alone with her—to
+go over her things before any one else comes. I know it is what she would
+have wished.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down on
+the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable mask
+over the living lineaments he had known. He felt that the real Lily was
+still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible; and the
+tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense of
+helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier
+between them—and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart! And now,
+though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened
+to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in vain.</p>
+
+<p>He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
+aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by the
+extraordinary light in his cousin’s face.</p>
+
+<p>“You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that there
+shall be no trouble—but of course the formalities must be gone through.
+And I asked him to give us time to look through her things first——”</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. “It won’t take
+long,” she concluded.</p>
+
+<p>“No—it won’t take long,” he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last look at
+the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold she paused to
+add: “You will find me downstairs if you want me.”</p>
+
+<p>Selden roused himself to detain her. “But why are you going? She would
+have wished——”</p>
+
+<p>Gerty shook her head with a smile. “No: this is what she would have
+wished——” and as she spoke a light broke through Selden’s stony misery,
+and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.</p>
+
+<p>The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless sleeper
+on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall on his knees,
+and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful cheek on the pillow.
+They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself
+drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>But he remembered Gerty’s warning words—he knew that, though time had
+ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly toward the
+door. Gerty had given him this supreme half hour, and he must use it as
+she willed.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to regain his
+consciousness of outward things. There was very little furniture in the
+room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover, and set
+out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured
+pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hair-pins—he shrank
+from the poignant intimacy of these trifles, and from the blank surface
+of the toilet-mirror above them.</p>
+
+<p>These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the minute
+observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her other
+renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality
+about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the
+scant articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small
+writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the
+empty bottle and glass, and from these also he averted his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he
+took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped and
+sealed, Selden, after a moment’s hesitation, laid it aside. On the other
+letter he read Gus Trenor’s name; and the flap of the envelope was still
+ungummed.</p>
+
+<p>Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered under it,
+steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been writing to
+Trenor—writing, presumably, just after their parting of the previous
+evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of that last hour, made a mock
+of the word he had come to speak, and defiled even the reconciling
+silence upon which it fell. He felt himself flung back on all the ugly
+uncertainties from which he thought he had cast loose forever. After all,
+what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him,
+and measured by the world’s estimate, how little that was! By what
+right—the letter in his hand seemed to ask—by what right was it he who
+now passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
+unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last hour
+together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in his hand.
+Yes—but what if the letter to Trenor had been written afterward?</p>
+
+<p>He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips, addressed
+himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After all, that task
+would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was
+annulled.</p>
+
+<p>He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book and a few
+packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly precision which
+characterized all her personal habits. He looked through the letters
+first, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved to
+be few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotion
+of the heart, the note he had written her the day after the Brys’
+entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>“When may I come to you?”—his words overwhelmed him with a realization
+of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of
+attainment. Yes—he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to
+disown his cowardice now; for had not all his old doubts started to life
+again at the mere sight of Trenor’s name?</p>
+
+<p>He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
+something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
+growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
+examination of the papers.</p>
+
+<p>To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there was
+not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book, and saw
+that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand dollars from Mrs.
+Peniston’s executors had been entered in it. The legacy, then, had been
+paid sooner than Gerty had led him to expect. But, turning another page
+or two, he discovered with astonishment that, in spite of this recent
+accession of funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars. A
+rapid glance at the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date
+of the previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
+the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the remaining
+thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at the same time, to
+Charles Augustus Trenor.</p>
+
+<p>Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the desk. He
+leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands. The bitter waters
+of life surged high about him, their sterile taste was on his lips. Did
+the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery or deepen it? At first his mind
+refused to act—he felt only the taint of such a transaction between a
+man like Trenor and a girl like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled
+vision cleared, old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the
+very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
+of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from Trenor;
+but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared, that the
+obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the first opportunity
+she had freed herself from it, though the act left her face to face with
+bare unmitigated poverty.</p>
+
+<p>That was all he knew—all he could hope to unravel of the story. The
+mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this—unless indeed they
+had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes,
+he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find
+there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for
+having failed to reach the height of his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart;
+since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her
+had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult
+for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he HAD loved her—had
+been willing to stake his future on his faith in her—and if the moment
+had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now
+that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which
+had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had reached out
+to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and
+in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and
+reconciled to her side.</p>
+
+<p>He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its
+lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made
+all clear.</p>
+
+<p class="center fs80 p2">THE END</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<div class="transnote">
+<p><b>Transcriber’s Note</b>:</p>
+
+<p>1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do n’t
+becomes don’t, etc.</p>
+
+<p>2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and colour.</p>
+
+<p>3. I found and corrected one instance of the name “Gertie,” which I
+changed to “Gerty” to be consistent with rest of the book.</p>
+
+<p>Linda Ruoff</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF MIRTH ***</div>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: House of Mirth
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2008 [EBook #284]
+[Last updated: January 12, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSE OF MIRTH ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The House of Mirth
+
+BY
+
+EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK ONE
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central
+Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.
+
+It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from
+a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at
+that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have
+inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and
+another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close
+of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood
+apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the
+street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
+be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she
+was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him.
+There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
+a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
+always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of
+far-reaching intentions.
+
+An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door,
+and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she
+would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her
+skill to the test.
+
+"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"
+
+She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him.
+One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss
+Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his
+last train.
+
+Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against
+the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a
+ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish
+smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after
+eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really
+eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached
+the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?
+
+"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my rescue!"
+
+He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked
+what form the rescue was to take.
+
+"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One sits
+out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit hotter here than
+in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of the women are not a bit
+uglier." She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to
+town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had
+missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another
+till half-past five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her
+laces. "Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
+My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on
+to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is closed, and I don't
+know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively about the station. "It IS
+hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after all. If you can spare the time, do
+take me somewhere for a breath of air."
+
+He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as
+diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his
+course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a
+moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.
+
+"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"
+
+She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.
+
+"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet a lot of
+bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any
+difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not," she objected gaily. "I'm
+dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter place?"
+
+He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
+interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that
+both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In judging Miss
+Bart, he had always made use of the "argument from design."
+
+"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll find a
+hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her through the
+throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in
+preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles
+and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race?
+The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him
+feel how highly specialized she was.
+
+A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung refreshingly
+over the moist street.
+
+"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged from the
+station.
+
+They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As she
+moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was conscious of
+taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the modelling of her
+little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair--was it ever so slightly
+brightened by art?--and the thick planting of her straight black lashes.
+Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong
+and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to
+make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious
+way, have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
+distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as
+though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to
+vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture
+will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material
+was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?
+
+As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and her
+lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she paused
+with a sigh.
+
+"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty--and what a hideous place New York is!"
+She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare. "Other
+cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in
+its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered down one of the side-streets.
+"Someone has had the humanity to plant a few trees over there. Let us go
+into the shade."
+
+"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as they
+turned the corner.
+
+"Your street? Do you live here?"
+
+She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
+fantastically varied in obedience to the American craving for novelty,
+but fresh and inviting with their awnings and flower-boxes.
+
+"Ah, yes--to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building! I
+don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
+flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade. "Which are
+your windows? Those with the awnings down?"
+
+"On the top floor--yes."
+
+"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!"
+
+He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give you a
+cup of tea in no time--and you won't meet any bores."
+
+Her colour deepened--she still had the art of blushing at the right
+time--but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
+
+"Why not? It's too tempting--I'll take the risk," she declared.
+
+"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he had never
+liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without
+afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there
+was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.
+
+On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.
+
+"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the
+mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out the tea-things and
+provided some cake."
+
+He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed
+the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks;
+then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its
+walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he
+had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had
+sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent
+of mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.
+
+Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.
+
+"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What a
+miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a luxury of
+discontent.
+
+Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
+
+"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges of a
+flat."
+
+"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable,
+marriageable girls!"
+
+"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."
+
+She sat up in surprise. "You do?"
+
+"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for
+cake.
+
+"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little unkindly. "But I
+said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no
+maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the
+food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know."
+
+"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting the cake.
+
+They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the
+kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green
+glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its
+slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he
+was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin
+Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the
+civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet
+seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
+
+She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that of
+Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was your
+cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I
+like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I
+daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure
+bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the
+horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt's drawing-room I
+know I should be a better woman."
+
+"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
+filled.
+
+"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come oftener?"
+
+"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."
+
+"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on so well
+when we meet."
+
+"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I haven't
+any cream, you know--shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?"
+
+"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a
+thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason," she insisted.
+
+"The reason for what?"
+
+"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in
+her charming eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could make you out. Of course
+I know there are men who don't like me--one can tell that at a glance.
+And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry
+them." She smiled up at him frankly. "But I don't think you dislike
+me--and you can't possibly think I want to marry you."
+
+"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.
+
+"Well, then----?"
+
+He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against the
+chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement.
+The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement--he had not supposed
+she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only
+keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation
+but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he
+had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.
+
+"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard it as
+such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt a slight shiver down
+his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured him.
+
+"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you to make
+love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She leaned back, sipping
+her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that, if they had been in
+her aunt's drawing-room, he might almost have tried to disprove her
+deduction.
+
+"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
+pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't be
+afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have
+fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except that you are
+neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't have to pretend with
+you or be on my guard against you." Her voice had dropped to a note of
+seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a
+child.
+
+"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My aunt is
+full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in
+the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them would include
+wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other women--my best
+friends--well, they use me or abuse me; but they don't care a straw what
+happens to me. I've been about too long--people are getting tired of me;
+they are beginning to say I ought to marry."
+
+There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or two
+replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he
+rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why don't you?"
+
+She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all, and that
+is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."
+
+"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably. "Isn't
+marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought up for?"
+
+She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"
+
+"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the first
+man who came along."
+
+"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there
+must be some one with the requisite qualifications."
+
+She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances when I
+first came out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly
+poor--and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money."
+
+Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.
+
+"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all the
+family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn't do over
+the drawing-room."
+
+"The very thing you are marrying for!"
+
+"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."
+
+"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."
+
+He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting
+one between her lips and slipping the others into a little gold case
+attached to her long pearl chain.
+
+"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of
+her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal
+enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids,
+and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of
+the cheek.
+
+She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between
+the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints
+of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes lingered on them
+caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the
+pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost
+susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory
+enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.
+
+"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and things?"
+
+"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up
+something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the big sales."
+
+She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept
+them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.
+
+"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"
+
+Selden stared and laughed.
+
+"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector, you see; I
+simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of."
+
+She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?"
+
+"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real collector
+values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana
+sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn't."
+
+She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch fabulous
+prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly
+badly-printed book that one is never going to read! And I suppose most
+of the owners of Americana are not historians either?"
+
+"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use
+those in the public libraries or in private collections. It seems to be
+the mere rarity that attracts the average collector."
+
+He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing,
+and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes,
+whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finest
+in the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a single
+volume.
+
+It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted now one
+book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her
+fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined against the warm
+background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder
+at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never
+be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing,
+and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
+the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her
+next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before him
+with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
+familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.
+
+"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy
+all the books you want?"
+
+He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby
+walls.
+
+"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"
+
+"And having to work--do you mind that?"
+
+"Oh, the work itself is not so bad--I'm rather fond of the law."
+
+"No; but the being tied down: the routine--don't you ever want to get
+away, to see new places and people?"
+
+"Horribly--especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer."
+
+She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough--to marry to get
+out of it?"
+
+Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.
+
+She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.
+
+"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must, a man may if he chooses." She
+surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little shabby--but who cares? It
+doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one
+would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for
+herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they
+don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman?
+We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and if we
+can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership."
+
+Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with her
+lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her case.
+
+"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for such an
+investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the Trenors'."
+
+She returned his look interrogatively.
+
+"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity! But there
+are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls, Lady
+Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."
+
+She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her
+lashes; but he remained imperturbable.
+
+"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the week; and
+those big parties bore me."
+
+"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.
+
+"Then why go?"
+
+"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't, I
+should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."
+
+"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they both
+laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."
+
+She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while
+she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her
+slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline--as
+though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the
+drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan
+freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.
+
+He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
+threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.
+
+"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."
+
+"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"
+
+"No; good bye here, please."
+
+She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.
+
+"Good bye, then--and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening the door
+for her.
+
+On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
+chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and
+she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of
+prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a char-woman who was
+scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and its surrounding implements
+took up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts
+and brush against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work
+and looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth
+she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly
+pitted with small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her
+scalp shone unpleasantly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to convey a
+criticism of the other's manner.
+
+The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued to
+stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings. Lily felt
+herself flushing under the look. What did the creature suppose? Could one
+never do the simplest, the most harmless thing, without subjecting one's
+self to some odious conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled
+to think that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
+was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE such
+apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with
+the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it
+occurred to her that the woman's persistent gaze implied a groping among
+past associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
+fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for a
+hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she ran
+against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat, who
+raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.
+
+"Miss Bart? Well--of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and she
+caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Rosedale--how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
+irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden intimacy
+of his smile.
+
+Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He was a
+plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes
+fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the
+air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. He glanced up
+interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.
+
+"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a tone
+which had the familiarity of a touch.
+
+Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
+precipitate explanations.
+
+"Yes--I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch the
+train to the Trenors'."
+
+"Ah--your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know there
+were any dress-makers in the Benedick."
+
+"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of this
+building?"
+
+"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor, isn't it?
+I happen to own the building--that's the way I know." His smile deepened
+as he added with increasing assurance: "But you must let me take you to
+the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of course? You've barely time
+to catch the five-forty. The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."
+
+Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.
+
+"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a hansom
+drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a desperate gesture.
+
+"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you," she said,
+extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his protestations,
+she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out a breathless order
+to the driver.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so dearly
+for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing
+without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice? She had
+yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence Selden's rooms, and it
+was so seldom that she could allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This
+one, at any rate, was going to cost her rather more than she could
+afford. She was vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of
+vigilance, she had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story
+about her dress-maker was bad enough--it would have been so simple to
+tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere
+statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having
+let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the
+witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to let
+Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have purchased
+his silence. He had his race's accuracy in the appraisal of values, and
+to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the
+company of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as he
+might himself have phrased it. He knew, of course, that there would be a
+large house-party at Bellomont, and the possibility of being taken for
+one of Mrs. Trenor's guests was doubtless included in his calculations.
+Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage in his social ascent when it was of
+importance to produce such impressions.
+
+The provoking part was that Lily knew all this--knew how easy it would
+have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it might be to do
+so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who made it his business to
+know everything about every one, whose idea of showing himself to be at
+home in society was to display an inconvenient familiarity with the
+habits of those with whom he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure
+that within twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker
+at the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's
+acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed and
+ignored him. On his first appearance--when her improvident cousin, Jack
+Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too easily guessed)
+a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"--Rosedale,
+with that mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which
+characterizes his race, had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She
+understood his motives, for her own course was guided by as nice
+calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be hospitable to
+newcomers, since the most unpromising might be useful later on, and there
+were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But
+some intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social
+discipline, had made her push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a
+trial. He had left behind only the ripple of amusement which his speedy
+despatch had caused among her friends; and though later (to shift the
+metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in fleeting
+glimpses, with long submergences between.
+
+Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set Mr.
+Rosedale had been pronounced "impossible," and Jack Stepney roundly
+snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner invitations. Even Mrs.
+Trenor, whose taste for variety had led her into some hazardous
+experiments, resisted Jack's attempts to disguise Mr. Rosedale as a
+novelty, and declared that he was the same little Jew who had been served
+up and rejected at the social board a dozen times within her memory; and
+while Judy Trenor was obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale's
+penetrating beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave
+up the contest with a laughing "You'll see," and, sticking manfully to
+his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable restaurants, in
+company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who are
+available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been vain, and
+as Rosedale undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh remained with his
+debtor.
+
+Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
+feared--unless one put one's self in his power. And this was precisely
+what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see that she had
+something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score to settle with her.
+Something in his smile told her he had not forgotten. She turned from the
+thought with a little shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the
+station, and dogged her down the platform with the persistency of Mr.
+Rosedale himself.
+
+She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but having
+arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive feeling for effect
+which never forsook her, she glanced about in the hope of seeing some
+other member of the Trenors' party. She wanted to get away from herself,
+and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.
+
+Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man with a
+soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the carriage, appeared to be
+dissembling himself behind an unfolded newspaper. Lily's eye brightened,
+and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines of her mouth. She had known
+that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at Bellomont, but she had not counted on
+the luck of having him to herself in the train; and the fact banished all
+perturbing thoughts of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to
+end more favourably than it had begun.
+
+She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her prey
+through downcast lashes while she organized a method of attack.
+Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told her that he was
+aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite so engrossed in an
+evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy to come up to her, and
+that she would have to devise some means of approach which should not
+appear to be an advance on her part. It amused her to think that any one
+as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce should be shy; but she was gifted with
+treasures of indulgence for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his
+timidity might serve her purpose better than too much assurance. She had
+the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not
+equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
+
+She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was racing
+between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as it lowered its
+speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and drifted slowly down the
+carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the train gave a lurch, and he was
+aware of a slender hand gripping the back of his chair. He rose with a
+start, his ingenuous face looking as though it had been dipped in
+crimson: even the reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen. The train
+swayed again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms.
+
+She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was enveloped in
+the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her fugitive touch.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I'm so sorry--I was trying to find the porter
+and get some tea."
+
+She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they stood
+exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes--he was going to Bellomont. He
+had heard she was to be of the party--he blushed again as he admitted it.
+And was he to be there for a whole week? How delightful!
+
+But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last station
+forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat to her seat.
+
+"The chair next to mine is empty--do take it," she said over her
+shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded in
+effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and his bags
+to her side.
+
+"Ah--and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea."
+
+She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that
+seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little table had
+been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to bestow his
+encumbering properties beneath it.
+
+When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her hands
+flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast
+to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed wonderful to him that any
+one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making
+tea in public in a lurching train. He would never have dared to order it
+for himself, lest he should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers;
+but, secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky
+draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration.
+
+Lily, with the flavour of Selden's caravan tea on her lips, had no great
+fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such nectar to her
+companion; but, rightly judging that one of the charms of tea is the fact
+of drinking it together, she proceeded to give the last touch to Mr.
+Gryce's enjoyment by smiling at him across her lifted cup.
+
+"Is it quite right--I haven't made it too strong?" she asked
+solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never tasted
+better tea.
+
+"I daresay it is true," she reflected; and her imagination was fired by
+the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the depths of the most
+complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually taking his first journey
+alone with a pretty woman.
+
+It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument of his
+initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage him. They would
+have over-emphasized the novelty of the adventure, trying to make him
+feel in it the zest of an escapade. But Lily's methods were more
+delicate. She remembered that her cousin Jack Stepney had once defined
+Mr. Gryce as the young man who had promised his mother never to go out in
+the rain without his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to
+impart a gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her
+companion, instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or
+unusual, would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always having a
+companion to make one's tea in the train.
+
+But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray had been
+removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement of Mr. Gryce's
+limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity but imagination that he
+lacked: he had a mental palate which would never learn to distinguish
+between railway tea and nectar. There was, however, one topic she could
+rely on: one spring that she had only to touch to set his simple
+machinery in motion. She had refrained from touching it because it was a
+last resource, and she had relied on other arts to stimulate other
+sensations; but as a settled look of dulness began to creep over his
+candid features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary.
+
+"And how," she said, leaning forward, "are you getting on with your
+Americana?"
+
+His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient film
+had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful operator.
+
+"I've got a few new things," he said, suffused with pleasure, but
+lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers might be in
+league to despoil him.
+
+She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn on to talk
+of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which enabled him to
+forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember himself without
+constraint, because he was at home in it, and could assert a superiority
+that there were few to dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared for
+Americana, or knew anything about them; and the consciousness of this
+ignorance threw Mr. Gryce's knowledge into agreeable relief. The only
+difficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the front; most
+people showed no desire to have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Gryce
+was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable
+commodity.
+
+But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about Americana; and
+moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to make the task of
+farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable. She questioned him
+intelligently, she heard him submissively; and, prepared for the look of
+lassitude which usually crept over his listeners' faces, he grew eloquent
+under her receptive gaze. The "points" she had had the presence of mind
+to glean from Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were
+serving her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him
+had been the luckiest incident of the day. She had once more shown her
+talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the
+advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the surface of
+smiling attention which she continued to present to her companion.
+
+Mr. Gryce's sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable. He
+felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms welcome the
+gratification of their needs, and all his senses floundered in a vague
+well-being, through which Miss Bart's personality was dimly but
+pleasantly perceptible.
+
+Mr. Gryce's interest in Americana had not originated with himself: it was
+impossible to think of him as evolving any taste of his own. An uncle had
+left him a collection already noted among bibliophiles; the existence of
+the collection was the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of
+Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it
+had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such,
+and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any
+reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal
+notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so
+exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking
+from publicity.
+
+To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all the
+reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American history in
+particular, and as allusions to his library abounded in the pages of
+these journals, which formed his only reading, he came to regard himself
+as figuring prominently in the public eye, and to enjoy the thought of
+the interest which would be excited if the persons he met in the street,
+or sat among in travelling, were suddenly to be told that he was the
+possessor of the Gryce Americana.
+
+Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
+discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
+proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident person
+she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or to show such
+exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly guessed that Mr. Gryce's
+egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring constant nurture from without. Miss
+Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she
+appeared to be sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case
+her mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce's
+future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but
+lately introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
+after old Jefferson Gryce's death, to take possession of his house in
+Madison Avenue--an appalling house, all brown stone without and black
+walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked
+like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce's
+arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl
+has no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
+herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself in the
+young man's way, but had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a
+monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied
+with the iniquities of her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs.
+Peniston and learn from that lady how she managed to prevent the
+kitchen-maid's smuggling groceries out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a
+kind of impersonal benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded
+with suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their annual
+reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties were manifold,
+for they extended from furtive inspections of the servants' bedrooms to
+unannounced descents to the cellar; but she had never allowed herself
+many pleasures. Once, however, she had had a special edition of the Sarum
+Rule printed in rubric and presented to every clergyman in the diocese;
+and the gilt album in which their letters of thanks were pasted formed
+the chief ornament of her drawing-room table.
+
+Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a woman
+was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion had been
+grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious, with the result
+that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs. Gryce to extract his
+promise about the overshoes, so little likely was he to hazard himself
+abroad in the rain. After attaining his majority, and coming into the
+fortune which the late Mr. Gryce had made out of a patent device for
+excluding fresh air from hotels, the young man continued to live with his
+mother in Albany; but on Jefferson Gryce's death, when another large
+property passed into her son's hands, Mrs. Gryce thought that what she
+called his "interests" demanded his presence in New York. She accordingly
+installed herself in the Madison Avenue house, and Percy, whose sense of
+duty was not inferior to his mother's, spent all his week days in the
+handsome Broad Street office where a batch of pale men on small salaries
+had grown grey in the management of the Gryce estate, and where he was
+initiated with becoming reverence into every detail of the art of
+accumulation.
+
+As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce's only
+occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it not too hard
+a task to interest a young man who had been kept on such low diet. At
+any rate, she felt herself so completely in command of the situation that
+she yielded to a sense of security in which all fear of Mr. Rosedale, and
+of the difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
+the edge of thought.
+
+The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted her from
+these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of distress in her
+companion's eye. His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he
+had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance; a fact confirmed
+by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own
+entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.
+
+She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed by the
+high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train accompanied by a
+maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering under a load of bags and
+dressing-cases.
+
+"Oh, Lily--are you going to Bellomont? Then you can't let me have your
+seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this carriage--porter, you
+must find me a place at once. Can't some one be put somewhere else? I
+want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make
+him understand that I must have a seat next to you and Lily."
+
+Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller with a
+carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by getting out of
+the train, stood in the middle of the aisle, diffusing about her that
+general sense of exasperation which a pretty woman on her travels not
+infrequently creates.
+
+She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of
+pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like
+the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small pale face seemed the mere
+setting of a pair of dark exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze
+contrasted curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that,
+as one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who
+took up a great deal of room.
+
+Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart's was at her
+disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther displacement of her
+surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had come across from Mount
+Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had been kicking her heels for
+an hour at Garrisons, without even the alleviation of a cigarette, her
+brute of a husband having neglected to replenish her case before they
+parted that morning.
+
+"And at this hour of the day I don't suppose you've a single one left,
+have you, Lily?" she plaintively concluded.
+
+Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own lips
+were never defiled by tobacco.
+
+"What an absurd question, Bertha!" she exclaimed, blushing at the thought
+of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden's.
+
+"Why, don't you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What--you
+never---- And you don't either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course--how stupid of
+me--I understand."
+
+And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a smile
+which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her own.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily
+went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good.
+
+Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her room,
+she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the hall below,
+where the last card-players were grouped about the tray of tall glasses
+and silver-collared decanters which the butler had just placed on a low
+table near the fire.
+
+The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale yellow
+marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped against a background
+of dark foliage in the angles of the walls. On the crimson carpet a
+deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire,
+and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness
+on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.
+
+There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified
+her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life;
+there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her
+own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast
+was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset,
+glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a
+confidential nook beneath the gallery.
+
+It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired hold
+over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but she had
+neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture. She was too
+self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his shyness, and besides, why
+should she care to give herself the trouble? At most it might amuse her
+to make sport of his simplicity for an evening--after that he would be
+merely a burden to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
+encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a
+man up and toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as
+a possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had been
+bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce--the mere thought seemed to waken
+an echo of his droning voice--but she could not ignore him on the morrow,
+she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be
+ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare
+chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her
+for life.
+
+It was a hateful fate--but how escape from it? What choice had she? To be
+herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her bedroom, with its
+softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across the silken
+bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the fire, a vase of
+carnations filling the air with perfume, and the last novels and
+magazines lying uncut on a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a
+vision of Miss Farish's cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and
+hideous wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby
+surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being
+dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required,
+the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not
+what she wanted. A few years ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her
+daily meed of pleasure without caring who provided it. Now she was
+beginning to chafe at the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere
+pensioner on the splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There
+were even moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.
+
+For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she could not
+afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive a taste. She had
+seen the danger exemplified in more than one of her associates--in young
+Ned Silverton, for instance, the charming fair boy now seated in abject
+rapture at the elbow of Mrs. Fisher, a striking divorcee with eyes and
+gowns as emphatic as the head-lines of her "case." Lily could remember
+when young Silverton had stumbled into their circle, with the air of a
+strayed Arcadian who has published charming sonnets in his college journal.
+Since then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and bridge, and the
+latter at least had involved him in expenses from which he had been more
+than once rescued by harassed maiden sisters, who treasured the sonnets,
+and went without sugar in their tea to keep their darling afloat. Ned's
+case was familiar to Lily: she had seen his charming eyes--which had a
+good deal more poetry in them than the sonnets--change from surprise to
+amusement, and from amusement to anxiety, as he passed under the spell
+of the terrible god of chance; and she was afraid of discovering the
+same symptoms in her own case.
+
+For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to
+take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay
+for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses and trinkets which
+occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe. And since she had
+played regularly the passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she
+had won a large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
+spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
+imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove
+her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse
+herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one
+must either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew
+that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present
+surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.
+
+Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold purse
+which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she returned to her
+room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her jewel-case, looked
+under the tray for the roll of bills from which she had replenished the
+purse before going down to dinner. Only twenty dollars were left: the
+discovery was so startling that for a moment she fancied she must have
+been robbed. Then she took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the
+writing-table, tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her
+head was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again
+and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three
+hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her
+balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred in the
+other direction. Then she returned to her calculations; but figure as she
+would, she could not conjure back the vanished three hundred dollars. It
+was the sum she had set aside to pacify her dress-maker--unless she
+should decide to use it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so
+many uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play high
+in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost--she who needed
+every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her,
+must have pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
+afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching such a
+heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with her guests
+when they bade her good night.
+
+A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily
+Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a
+universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.
+
+She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had sent to
+bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people's pleasure to be
+considerate of those who depended on hers, and in her bitter moods it
+sometimes struck her that she and her maid were in the same position,
+except that the latter received her wages more regularly.
+
+As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollow
+and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth,
+faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.
+
+"Oh, I must stop worrying!" she exclaimed. "Unless it's the electric
+light----" she reflected, springing up from her seat and lighting the
+candles on the dressing-table.
+
+She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
+candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a
+background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but
+the two lines about the mouth remained.
+
+Lily rose and undressed in haste.
+
+"It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
+about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty
+cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence
+against them.
+
+But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She returned
+wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy
+load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost sure she had
+"landed" him: a few days' work and she would win her reward. But the
+reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she could get no zest from
+the thought of victory. It would be a rest from worry, no more--and how
+little that would have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions
+had shrunk gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
+failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?
+
+She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money, used to
+say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But you'll get it all
+back--you'll get it all back, with your face." . . . The remembrance
+roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the darkness
+reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.
+
+A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was "company"; a
+door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered with square
+envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong envelopes which were
+allowed to gather dust in the depths of a bronze jar; a series of French
+and English maids giving warning amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked
+wardrobes and dress-closets; an equally changing dynasty of nurses and
+footmen; quarrels in the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room;
+precipitate trips to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
+interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer
+should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
+expense--such was the setting of Lily Bart's first memories.
+
+Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and determined
+figure of a mother still young enough to dance her ball-dresses to rags,
+while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted father filled an intermediate
+space between the butler and the man who came to wind the clocks. Even to
+the eyes of infancy, Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could
+not recall the time when her father had not been bald and slightly
+stooping, with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
+shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
+mother.
+
+Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down town"; and
+in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on
+the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would kiss her in
+silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or the governess; then
+Mrs. Bart's maid would come to remind him that he was dining out, and he
+would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
+Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent
+than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours
+staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the
+clatter of his wife's existence went on unheeded a few feet off.
+Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
+before the steamer was half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the
+horizon. Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected
+to forward Mrs. Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never
+mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure presented itself
+on the New York dock as a buffer between the magnitude of his wife's
+luggage and the restrictions of the American custom-house.
+
+In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily's teens:
+a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid
+current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need--the
+need of more money. Lily could not recall the time when there had been
+money enough, and in some vague way her father seemed always to blame for
+the deficiency. It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who
+was spoken of by her friends as a "wonderful manager." Mrs. Bart was
+famous for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to the
+lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though
+one were much richer than one's bank-book denoted.
+
+Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line: she had
+been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must have a good
+cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst
+reproach to her husband was to ask him if he expected her to "live like a
+pig"; and his replying in the negative was always regarded as a
+justification for cabling to Paris for an extra dress or two, and
+telephoning to the jeweller that he might, after all, send home the
+turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.
+
+Lily knew people who "lived like pigs," and their appearance and
+surroundings justified her mother's repugnance to that form of existence.
+They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy houses with engravings from
+Cole's Voyage of Life on the drawing-room walls, and slatternly
+parlour-maids who said "I'll go and see" to visitors calling at an hour
+when all right-minded persons are conventionally if not actually out. The
+disgusting part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that
+Lily imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from choice,
+and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct. This gave her a
+sense of reflected superiority, and she did not need Mrs. Bart's comments
+on the family frumps and misers to foster her naturally lively taste for
+splendour.
+
+Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view of the
+universe.
+
+The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy
+thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on the
+horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke. The
+suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times when Lily
+relived with painful vividness every detail of the day on which the blow
+fell. She and her mother had been seated at the luncheon-table, over the
+CHAUFROIX and cold salmon of the previous night's dinner: it was one of
+Mrs. Bart's few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of
+her hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is youth's
+penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite of a few lines
+about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her temples, was as alert,
+determined and high in colour as if she had risen from an untroubled
+sleep.
+
+In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES and
+candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their vigorous
+stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but their rose-colour
+had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily's sense of fitness was
+disturbed by their reappearance on the luncheon-table.
+
+"I really think, mother," she said reproachfully, "we might afford a few
+fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or lilies-of-the-valley--"
+
+Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the world,
+and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when there was no one
+present at it but the family. But she smiled at her daughter's innocence.
+
+"Lilies-of-the-valley," she said calmly, "cost two dollars a dozen at
+this season."
+
+Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of money.
+
+"It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl," she argued.
+
+"Six dozen what?" asked her father's voice in the doorway.
+
+The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday, the sight
+of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But neither his wife nor his
+daughter was sufficiently interested to ask an explanation.
+
+Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the fragment of
+jellied salmon which the butler had placed before him.
+
+"I was only saying," Lily began, "that I hate to see faded flowers at
+luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley would not cost
+more than twelve dollars. Mayn't I tell the florist to send a few every
+day?"
+
+She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her anything,
+and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her own entreaties
+failed.
+
+Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and his
+lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his thin hair lay
+in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he looked at his daughter and
+laughed. The laugh was so strange that Lily coloured under it: she
+disliked being ridiculed, and her father seemed to see something
+ridiculous in the request. Perhaps he thought it foolish that she should
+trouble him about such a trifle.
+
+"Twelve dollars--twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly, my
+dear--give him an order for twelve hundred." He continued to laugh.
+
+Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.
+
+"You needn't wait, Poleworth--I will ring for you," she said to the
+butler.
+
+The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving the
+remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.
+
+"What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?" said Mrs. Bart severely.
+
+She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making, and it
+was odious to her that her husband should make a show of himself before
+the servants.
+
+"Are you ill?" she repeated.
+
+"Ill?---- No, I'm ruined," he said.
+
+Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her feet.
+
+"Ruined----?" she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she turned a
+calm face to Lily.
+
+"Shut the pantry door," she said.
+
+Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father was
+sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon between them,
+and his head bowed on his hands.
+
+Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
+unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached: her look
+was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly cheerfulness.
+
+"Your father is not well--he doesn't know what he is saying. It is
+nothing--but you had better go upstairs; and don't talk to the servants,"
+she added.
+
+Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that voice. She
+had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart's words: she knew at once that they
+were ruined. In the dark hours which followed, that awful fact
+overshadowed even her father's slow and difficult dying. To his wife he
+no longer counted: he had become extinct when he ceased to fulfil his
+purpose, and she sat at his side with the provisional air of a traveller
+who waits for a belated train to start. Lily's feelings were softer: she
+pitied him in a frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for
+the most part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into
+the room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a
+stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home till after
+dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a blur--first of
+sleepiness, then of distance and indifference--and now the fog had
+thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. If she could have
+performed any little services for him, or have exchanged with him a few
+of those affecting words which an extensive perusal of fiction had led
+her to connect with such occasions, the filial instinct might have
+stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active expression, remained in a
+state of spectatorship, overshadowed by her mother's grim unflagging
+resentment. Every look and act of Mrs. Bart's seemed to say: "You are
+sorry for him now--but you will feel differently when you see what he has
+done to us."
+
+It was a relief to Lily when her father died.
+
+Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to Mrs.
+Bart it seemed worse than nothing--the mere mockery of what she was
+entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to live like a pig?
+She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against
+fate. Her faculty for "managing" deserted her, or she no longer took
+sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was well enough to "manage" when
+by so doing one could keep one's own carriage; but when one's best
+contrivance did not conceal the fact that one had to go on foot, the
+effort was no longer worth making.
+
+Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long visits
+to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and who deplored
+the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the girl had no
+prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap continental refuges,
+where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof from the frugal tea-tables of
+her companions in misfortune. She was especially careful to avoid her old
+friends and the scenes of her former successes. To be poor seemed to her
+such a confession of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she
+detected a note of condescension in the friendliest advances.
+
+Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily's
+beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some
+weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset
+in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt.
+She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its
+mere custodian; and she tried to instil into the latter a sense of the
+responsibility that such a charge involved. She followed in imagination
+the career of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might be
+achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of those
+who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to Mrs. Bart,
+only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement of some of her
+examples. She was not above the inconsistency of charging fate, rather
+than herself, with her own misfortunes; but she inveighed so
+acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own
+marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured
+her that she had been "talked into it"--by whom, she never made clear.
+
+Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities. The
+dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the existence
+to which she felt herself entitled. To a less illuminated intelligence
+Mrs. Bart's counsels might have been dangerous; but Lily understood that
+beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into
+success other arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of
+superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother denounced, and
+it did not take her long to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the
+possessor of an average set of features.
+
+Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart's. It had been among that
+lady's grievances that her husband--in the early days, before he was too
+tired--had wasted his evenings in what she vaguely described as "reading
+poetry"; and among the effects packed off to auction after his death were
+a score or two of dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among
+the boots and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
+Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source, which
+gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think
+of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to
+attain a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague
+diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures and
+flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help thinking that
+the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages.
+She would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she
+was secretly ashamed of her mother's crude passion for money. Lily's
+preference would have been for an English nobleman with political
+ambitions and vast estates; or, for second choice, an Italian prince with
+a castle in the Apennines and an hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost
+causes had a romantic charm for her, and she liked to picture herself as
+standing aloof from the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her
+pleasure to the claims of an immemorial tradition. . . .
+
+How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were hardly
+more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had centred about
+the possession of a French jointed doll with real hair. Was it only ten
+years since she had wavered in imagination between the English earl and
+the Italian prince? Relentlessly her mind travelled on over the dreary
+interval. . . .
+
+After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died----died of a deep
+disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be dingy. Her
+visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded after the first year.
+
+"People can't marry you if they don't see you--and how can they see you
+in these holes where we're stuck?" That was the burden of her lament; and
+her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from dinginess if she
+could.
+
+"Don't let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way out of it
+somehow--you're young and can do it," she insisted.
+
+She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and there Lily
+at once became the centre of a family council composed of the wealthy
+relatives whom she had been taught to despise for living like pigs. It
+may be that they had an inkling of the sentiments in which she had been
+brought up, for none of them manifested a very lively desire for her
+company; indeed, the question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs.
+Peniston with a sigh announced: "I'll try her for a year."
+
+Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their surprise, lest
+Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into reconsidering her decision.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart's widowed sister, and if she was by no means
+the richest of the family group, its other members nevertheless abounded
+in reasons why she was clearly destined by Providence to assume the
+charge of Lily. In the first place she was alone, and it would be
+charming for her to have a young companion. Then she sometimes travelled,
+and Lily's familiarity with foreign customs--deplored as a misfortune by
+her more conservative relatives--would at least enable her to act as a
+kind of courier. But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not been
+affected by these considerations. She had taken the girl simply because
+no one else would have her, and because she had the kind of moral
+MAUVAISE HONTE which makes the public display of selfishness difficult,
+though it does not interfere with its private indulgence. It would have
+been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but
+with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in
+her act.
+
+She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and found
+an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected to find Lily
+headstrong, critical and "foreign"--for even Mrs. Peniston, though she
+occasionally went abroad, had the family dread of foreignness--but the
+girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more penetrating mind than her aunt's,
+might have been less reassuring than the open selfishness of youth.
+Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable
+substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece's adaptability.
+Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her aunt's good nature. She
+was in truth grateful for the refuge offered her: Mrs. Peniston's opulent
+interior was at least not externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality
+which assumes all manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as
+latent in the expensive routine of her aunt's life as in the makeshift
+existence of a continental pension.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the padding of
+life. It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus
+of activities. The most vivid thing about her was the fact that her
+grandmother had been a Van Alstyne. This connection with the well-fed and
+industrious stock of early New York revealed itself in the glacial
+neatness of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room and in the excellence of her
+cuisine. She belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always
+lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these
+inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always
+been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little
+mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper
+windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they
+might see what was happening in the street.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she had
+never lived there since her husband's death--a remote event, which
+appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in the
+personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation. She
+was a woman who remembered dates with intensity, and could tell at a
+moment's notice whether the drawing-room curtains had been renewed before
+or after Mr. Peniston's last illness.
+
+Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and cherished a
+vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such contingencies she
+frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself
+impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting
+screen of her verandah. In the care of such a guardian, it soon became
+clear to Lily that she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good
+food and expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
+would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her to
+regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother's fierce
+energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled with Mrs.
+Peniston's resources. Lily had abundant energy of her own, but it was
+restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to her aunt's habits. She
+saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs.
+Bart would have phrased it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no
+mind for the vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to
+Mrs. Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive
+attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt
+into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
+Mrs. Peniston against which her niece's efforts spent themselves in vain.
+To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging
+at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor. She did not,
+indeed, expect Lily to remain equally immovable: she had all the American
+guardian's indulgence for the volatility of youth.
+
+She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece's. It
+seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on dress, and
+she supplemented the girl's scanty income by occasional "handsome
+presents" meant to be applied to the same purpose. Lily, who was
+intensely practical, would have preferred a fixed allowance; but Mrs.
+Peniston liked the periodical recurrence of gratitude evoked by
+unexpected cheques, and was perhaps shrewd enough to perceive that such a
+method of giving kept alive in her niece a salutary sense of dependence.
+
+Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do anything for
+her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her take the field. Lily
+had taken it, at first with the confidence of assured possessorship, then
+with gradually narrowing demands, till now she found herself actually
+struggling for a foothold on the broad space which had once seemed her
+own for the asking. How it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she
+thought it was because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she
+feared it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she
+shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy
+and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or
+absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total of her
+failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by dozens, and
+she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.
+
+She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she
+longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself.
+But what manner of life would it be? She had barely enough money to pay
+her dress-makers' bills and her gambling debts; and none of the desultory
+interests which she dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced
+enough to enable her to live contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no--she was
+too intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she hated
+dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she
+meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its
+flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented
+such a slippery surface to her clutch.
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note from her
+hostess.
+
+"Dearest Lily," it ran, "if it is not too much of a bore to be down by
+ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some tiresome
+things?"
+
+Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh. It
+WAS a bore to be down by ten--an hour regarded at Bellomont as vaguely
+synchronous with sunrise--and she knew too well the nature of the
+tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary, had been called
+away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards to write, lost addresses
+to hunt up, and other social drudgery to perform. It was understood that
+Miss Bart should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
+recognized the obligation without a murmur.
+
+Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the previous
+night's review of her cheque-book had produced. Everything in her
+surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity. The windows
+stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September morning, and
+between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of hedges and
+parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to the free
+undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little fire on the
+hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted
+across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old
+marquetry desk. Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray,
+with its harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
+slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters. There
+was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied luxury; but, though
+they formed a part of her atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to
+their charm. Mere display left her with a sense of superior distinction;
+but she felt an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.
+
+Mrs. Trenor's summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
+dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that she
+was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions leave
+lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had meant to take
+warning by the little creases which her midnight survey had revealed.
+
+The matter-of-course tone of Mrs. Trenor's greeting deepened her
+irritation. If one did drag one's self out of bed at such an hour, and
+come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing, some special
+recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs. Trenor's tone
+showed no consciousness of the fact.
+
+"Oh, Lily, that's nice of you," she merely sighed across the chaos of
+letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave an incongruously
+commercial touch to the slender elegance of her writing-table.
+
+"There are such lots of horrors this morning," she added, clearing a
+space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat to Miss
+Bart.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her from
+redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile
+activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished
+play of feature. It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she
+seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated
+instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a
+crowd. The collective nature of her interests exempted her from the
+ordinary rivalries of her sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than
+that of hatred for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have
+more amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by
+Mr. Trenor's bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph in
+such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous good
+nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart's utilitarian
+classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as the woman who was
+least likely to "go back" on her.
+
+"It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor declared, as
+her friend seated herself at the desk. "She says her sister is going to
+have a baby--as if that were anything to having a house-party! I'm sure I
+shall get most horribly mixed up and there will be some awful rows. When
+I was down at Tuxedo I asked a lot of people for next week, and I've
+mislaid the list and can't remember who is coming. And this week is going
+to be a horrid failure too--and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell
+her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls--that
+was a blunder of Gus's. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
+one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get that
+second divorce--Carry always overdoes things--but she said the only way
+to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony.
+And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It's really absurd of Alice
+Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks of what
+society is coming to. Some one said the other day that there was a
+divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows. Besides,
+Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in a good humour when we have
+bores in the house. Have you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All,
+I mean, except her own. It's rather clever of her to have made a
+specialty of devoting herself to dull people--the field is such a large
+one, and she has it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no
+doubt--I know she borrows money of Gus--but then I'd PAY her to keep him
+in a good humour, so I can't complain, after all."
+
+Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart's efforts to
+unravel her tangled correspondence.
+
+"But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry," she resumed, with a fresh note
+of lament. "The truth is, I'm awfully disappointed in Lady Cressida
+Raith."
+
+"Disappointed? Had you known her before?"
+
+"Mercy, no--never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her over with
+letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van Osburgh was
+asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought it would be fun to
+get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her in India, managed it for me.
+Maria was furious, and actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite
+herself here, so that they shouldn't be QUITE out of it--if I'd known
+what Lady Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
+thought any friend of the Skiddaws' was sure to be amusing. You remember
+what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send the
+girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess of
+Beltshire's sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same sort; but
+you never can tell in those English families. They are so big that
+there's room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the
+moral one--married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East End.
+Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman's wife, who
+wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take her all through the
+glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to death by asking him the names
+of the plants. Fancy treating Gus as if he were the gardener!"
+
+Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.
+
+"Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to meeting
+Carry Fisher," said Miss Bart pacifically.
+
+"I'm sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and if she
+takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will be too
+depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so useful at the
+right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once a year, and she
+would have given just the right tone to things. I always have horrid luck
+about the Bishop's visits," added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was
+being fed by a rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; "last year, when he
+came, Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
+Wintons and the Farleys--five divorces and six sets of children between
+them!"
+
+"When is Lady Cressida going?" Lily enquired.
+
+Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. "My dear, if one only knew! I
+was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I actually forgot to
+name a date, and Gus says she told some one she meant to stop here all
+winter."
+
+"To stop here? In this house?"
+
+"Don't be silly--in America. But if no one else asks her--you know they
+NEVER go to hotels."
+
+"Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you."
+
+"No--I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put in
+while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You should have
+seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you know--if she stays here
+all the autumn she'll spoil everything, and Maria Van Osburgh will simply
+exult."
+
+At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor's voice trembled with self-pity.
+
+"Oh, Judy--as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!" Miss Bart
+tactfully protested. "You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van Osburgh
+were to get all the right people and leave you with all the wrong ones,
+you'd manage to make things go off, and she wouldn't."
+
+Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor's complacency;
+but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.
+
+"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented. "Everything has gone wrong
+this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me."
+
+"Furious with you? Why?"
+
+"Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he wouldn't,
+after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think it's my fault."
+
+Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she had
+begun.
+
+"I thought that was all over," she said.
+
+"So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since. But I
+fancy she's out of a job just at present--and some one gave me a hint
+that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him--but I couldn't make
+him come; and now I suppose she'll take it out of me by being perfectly
+nasty to every one else."
+
+"Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming--to some one
+else."
+
+Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. "She knows he wouldn't mind. And
+who else is there? Alice Wetherall won't let Lucius out of her sight.
+Ned Silverton can't take his eyes off Carry Fisher--poor boy! Gus is
+bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well--and--well, to be sure,
+there's Percy Gryce!"
+
+She sat up smiling at the thought.
+
+Miss Bart's countenance did not reflect the smile.
+
+"Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off."
+
+"You mean that she'd shock him and he'd bore her? Well, that's not such a
+bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won't take it into her head to be
+nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for you."
+
+Lily laughed. "MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
+against Bertha."
+
+"Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I'm not really, you know. Every one
+knows you're a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than Bertha; but
+then you're not nasty. And for always getting what she wants in the long
+run, commend me to a nasty woman."
+
+Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. "I thought you were so fond of
+Bertha."
+
+"Oh, I am--it's much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she IS
+dangerous--and if I ever saw her up to mischief it's now. I can tell by
+poor George's manner. That man is a perfect barometer--he always knows
+when Bertha is going to----"
+
+"To fall?" Miss Bart suggested.
+
+"Don't be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of course I
+don't say there's any real harm in Bertha. Only she delights in making
+people miserable, and especially poor George."
+
+"Well, he seems cut out for the part--I don't wonder she likes more
+cheerful companionship."
+
+"Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him he
+would be quite different. Or if she'd leave him alone, and let him
+arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn't dare lose her hold of him
+on account of the money, and so when HE isn't jealous she pretends to be."
+
+Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following her
+train of thought with frowning intensity.
+
+"Do you know," she exclaimed after a long pause, "I believe I'll call up
+Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?"
+
+"Oh, don't," said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
+surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though not
+commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with puzzled
+eyes.
+
+"Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him so
+much?"
+
+"Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
+intention of protecting me from Bertha--I don't think I need your
+protection."
+
+Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. "Lily!----PERCY? Do you mean to
+say you've actually done it?"
+
+Miss Bart smiled. "I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are getting to
+be very good friends."
+
+"H'm--I see." Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know they say
+he has eight hundred thousand a year--and spends nothing, except on some
+rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and will leave him a
+lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY," her friend adjured her.
+
+Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. "I shouldn't, for
+instance," she remarked, "be in any haste to tell him that he had a lot
+of rubbishy old books."
+
+"No, of course not; I know you're wonderful about getting up people's
+subjects. But he's horribly shy, and easily shocked, and--and----"
+
+"Why don't you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the hunt
+for a rich husband?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that; he wouldn't believe it of you--at first," said
+Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. "But you know things are rather
+lively here at times--I must give Jack and Gus a hint--and if he thought
+you were what his mother would call fast--oh, well, you know what I mean.
+Don't wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don't smoke if you
+can help it, Lily dear!"
+
+Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. "You're very kind,
+Judy: I'll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year's dress you sent
+me this morning. And if you are really interested in my career, perhaps
+you'll be kind enough not to ask me to play bridge again this evening."
+
+"Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life you'll
+lead! But of course I won't--why didn't you give me a hint last night?
+There's nothing I wouldn't do, you poor duck, to see you happy!"
+
+And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex's eagerness to smooth the course of
+true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.
+
+"You're quite sure," she added solicitously, as the latter extricated
+herself, "that you wouldn't like me to telephone for Lawrence Selden?"
+
+"Quite sure," said Lily.
+
+
+
+The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction Miss
+Bart's ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.
+
+As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont, she
+smiled at Mrs. Trenor's fear that she might go too fast. If such a
+warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a salutary
+lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to adapt her pace
+to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well
+to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively and luring him on from depth
+to depth of unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was
+propitious to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word,
+had shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had even
+hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no surprise at
+her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint, Lily found herself
+the centre of that feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in
+the mating season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
+existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater
+readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
+attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a sympathetic
+comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in her esteem as she saw
+the consideration he inspired.
+
+The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot propitious
+to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning against the
+balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little distance from the
+animated group about the tea-table, she might have been lost in the mazes
+of an inarticulate happiness. In reality, her thoughts were finding
+definite utterance in the tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in
+store for her. From where she stood she could see them embodied in the
+form of Mr. Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
+nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the
+energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to endow
+her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of municipal
+reform.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been preceded by
+an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced an energetic
+advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was small, fiery and dramatic;
+and her hands and eyes were admirable instruments in the service of
+whatever causes she happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault
+common to enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part
+of her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
+resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce's attitude. Lily
+herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold
+if he remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
+he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a paper
+to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what he called
+"committing himself," and tenderly as he cherished his health, he
+evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink
+till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast
+agonized glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was
+to sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had learned
+the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief, and was fully
+aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's volubility was enhancing her
+own repose.
+
+She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
+Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning across the garden
+from the tennis court.
+
+The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance in which
+Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in contemplating
+what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation. Miss Van Osburgh
+was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had
+once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste
+was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger
+makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
+been reduced to a crust.
+
+Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl's
+turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled,
+while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching
+boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile.
+
+"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to get
+everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas
+I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were
+going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me
+hopelessly out of time."
+
+As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
+likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
+resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way--he looked
+like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast--while Gwen's
+countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.
+But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices
+and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent
+by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they
+had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
+range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for
+each other by every law of moral and physical correspondence----"Yet they
+wouldn't look at each other," Lily mused, "they never do. Each of them
+wants a creature of a different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all
+sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even
+guess the existence of. And they always get what they want."
+
+She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a slight
+cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly amenities were
+subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the necessity of not
+exciting enmities at this crucial point of her career, dropped aside
+while the happy couple proceeded toward the tea-table.
+
+Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her head
+against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The fragrance of the
+late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil scene, a landscape
+tutored to the last degree of rural elegance. In the foreground glowed
+the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal
+pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle;
+and through a long glade the river widened like a lake under the silver
+light of September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
+tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she was
+content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty
+that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load
+from her mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal
+not to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence might
+have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be
+able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
+security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns
+than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would
+be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the
+relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered;
+instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old
+scores she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
+she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr. Gryce
+was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses and emotions.
+He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice
+the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily had known the species before:
+she was aware that such a guarded nature must find one huge outlet of
+egoism, and she determined to be to him what his Americana had hitherto
+been: the one possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money
+on it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
+meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her husband's
+vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form
+of self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort to
+some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended it should
+free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she would be able to
+play the game in her own way. How should she have distrusted her powers?
+Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have
+been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
+she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of
+permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end.
+
+And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she
+had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this
+crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her
+poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people whom she had ridiculed
+and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed circle
+about which all her desires revolved. They were not as brutal and
+self-engrossed as she had fancied--or rather, since it would no longer be
+necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature became
+less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged
+according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was
+turning its illuminated face to Lily.
+
+In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
+qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of
+emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness
+now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the
+only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks
+and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing
+allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a
+disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
+the people who were not able to live as they lived.
+
+The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs of the
+long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of wheels, and
+divined that more visitors were approaching. There was a movement behind
+her, a scattering of steps and voices: it was evident that the party
+about the tea-table was breaking up. Presently she heard a tread behind
+her on the terrace. She supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means
+to escape from his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his
+coming to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fire-side.
+
+She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved; but her
+greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who had approached
+her was Lawrence Selden.
+
+"You see I came after all," he said; but before she had time to answer,
+Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with her host, had
+stepped between them with a little gesture of appropriation.
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the punctual
+appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the household to the
+little church at the gates. Whether any one got into the omnibus or not
+was a matter of secondary importance, since by standing there it not only
+bore witness to the orthodox intentions of the family, but made Mrs.
+Trenor feel, when she finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow
+vicariously made use of it.
+
+It was Mrs. Trenor's theory that her daughters actually did go to church
+every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions calling her to the
+rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping their mother in her room
+till luncheon, there was seldom any one present to verify the fact. Now
+and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue--when the house had been too
+uproarious over night--Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight
+frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually,
+as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the
+church bells were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven
+away empty.
+
+Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious observances
+was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during her visits to
+Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda to church. This
+tallied with the assurance, also confidentially imparted, that, never
+having played bridge before, she had been "dragged into it" on the night
+of her arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in consequence
+of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of betting. Mr. Gryce was
+undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the
+life, and the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of
+rich and conspicuous people. But he thought it a very materialistic
+society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the men
+and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for
+all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
+atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to learn that
+she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors to church on Sunday
+morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep before the door, his light
+overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he
+reflected agreeably on the strength of character which kept her true to
+her early training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.
+
+For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
+themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference on the
+part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the hope that Miss
+Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes were flying, however;
+the big chestnuts pawed the ground and flecked their impatient sides with
+foam; the coachman seemed to be slowly petrifying on the box, and the
+groom on the doorstep; and still the lady did not come. Suddenly,
+however, there was a sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the
+doorway, and Mr. Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a
+nervous start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
+into the carriage.
+
+The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of
+human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single
+one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. It is true that
+the Bellomont puppets did not go to church; but others equally important
+did--and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall's circle was so large that God was
+included in their visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and
+resigned, with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after
+them Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's veils
+and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church with
+her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that they didn't
+mind doing it to please her, though they couldn't fancy what had put the
+idea in her head, and though for their own part they would much rather
+have played lawn tennis with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she
+was coming. The Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
+weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on
+seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were not to walk
+across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall's horrified protest that the
+church was a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
+other's heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce
+found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare
+he felt not the least concern.
+
+It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known that Miss
+Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen earlier than
+usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea that the sight of
+her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her famous lashes drooped
+above a prayer-book, would put the finishing touch to Mr. Gryce's
+subjugation, and render inevitable a certain incident which she had
+resolved should form a part of the walk they were to take together after
+luncheon. Her intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor
+Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
+as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
+people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies,
+hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant
+in the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was
+carrying her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see
+herself or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that
+moment, should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
+with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons of
+his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the ill-humour
+of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she learned from Mrs. Trenor
+that Selden had come of his own accord. "He didn't even wire me--he just
+happened to find the trap at the station. Perhaps it's not over with
+Bertha after all," Mrs. Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to
+arrange her dinner-cards accordingly.
+
+Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless she had
+lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset's call, it was at her
+own that he would stay. So much the previous evening had told her. Mrs.
+Trenor, true to her simple principle of making her married friends happy,
+had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in
+obedience to the time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had
+separated Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset,
+while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.
+
+George Dorset's talk did not interfere with the range of his neighbour's
+thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on finding out the
+deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted from this care only by
+the sound of his wife's voice. On this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset
+took no part in the general conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs
+with Selden, and turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her
+host, who, far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
+the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset,
+however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such evident concern that,
+when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist
+bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin
+neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.
+
+Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on opposite
+sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe Mrs. Dorset
+also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to set up a rapid
+comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison
+which was her undoing. Why else had she suddenly grown interested in
+Selden? She had known him for eight years or more: ever since her return
+to America he had formed a part of her background. She had always been
+glad to sit next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
+men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful
+to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
+affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories of
+life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw that her
+sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that his presence
+shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant
+or exceptional; in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one
+man who had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
+had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the
+show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage
+in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the
+world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on
+her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always
+open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
+once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's
+distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.
+
+That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily, turning
+her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world through his
+retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut off and the dusty
+daylight let in. She looked down the long table, studying its occupants
+one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between
+his shoulders, as he preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the
+opposite end of the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
+good-looks, of a jeweller's window lit by electricity. And between the
+two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people
+were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
+her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a
+"spicy paragraph"; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
+proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had
+become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list,
+whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and
+the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod
+of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they
+were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes,
+half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all
+the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that
+there is no one richer than her father.
+
+Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had
+seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was
+gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon
+they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were
+merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she
+saw the poverty of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to
+be more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
+picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which, a few
+hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their standards. She
+closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine of the life she had
+chosen stretched before her like a long white road without dip or
+turning: it was true she was to roll over it in a carriage instead of
+trudging it on foot, but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of
+a short cut which is denied to those on wheels.
+
+She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from the
+depths of his lean throat.
+
+"I say, do look at her," he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
+lugubrious merriment--"I beg your pardon, but do just look at my wife
+making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really suppose she
+was gone on him--and it's all the other way round, I assure you."
+
+Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was affording
+Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared, as he said, that
+Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in the scene: her neighbour
+seemed to receive her advances with a temperate zest which did not
+distract him from his dinner. The sight restored Lily's good humour, and
+knowing the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset's marital fears assumed,
+she asked gaily: "Aren't you horribly jealous of her?"
+
+Dorset greeted the sally with delight. "Oh, abominably--you've just hit
+it--keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's what has knocked
+my digestion out--being so infernally jealous of her.--I can't eat a
+mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added suddenly, pushing back his
+plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable,
+accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other
+people's cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of
+melted butter.
+
+It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man as well
+as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances into it he was
+not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he engaged Lily so long
+that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other
+side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering
+Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was
+jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a handspring.
+
+"And of course you'll have Sim Rosedale as best man!" Lily heard her
+fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney responded,
+as if struck: "Jove, that's an idea. What a thumping present I'd get out
+of him!"
+
+SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive, obtruded
+itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one of the many hated
+possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If she did not marry Percy
+Gryce, the day might come when she would have to be civil to such men as
+Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM? But she meant to marry him--she was
+sure of him and sure of herself. She drew back with a shiver from the
+pleasant paths in which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet
+once more in the middle of the long white road.... When she went
+upstairs that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
+batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
+forwarded them all to Bellomont.
+
+Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
+conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself betimes
+from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast-tray, rang to have her grey
+gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs.
+Trenor.
+
+But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of
+rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused a
+smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to kindle Lily's
+imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the borrowed prayer-book
+flashed a long light down the years. She would have to go to church with
+Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have a front pew in the most
+expensive church in New York, and his name would figure handsomely in the
+list of parish charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would
+be made a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
+her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES
+were included, except those who had showed signs of penitence by being
+re-married to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in
+this round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
+great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent
+to be bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and her bath had
+filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected in the
+clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this morning, or else the
+glass was at a happier angle.
+
+And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and
+truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold; below the dewy bloom
+of the lawns the woodlands blushed and smouldered, and the hills across
+the river swam in molten blue. Every drop of blood in Lily's veins
+invited her to happiness.
+
+The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning behind her
+shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She was too late,
+then--but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr. Gryce's
+crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely in absenting
+herself, since the disappointment he so candidly betrayed would surely
+whet his appetite for the afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to
+miss; one glance at the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall
+its necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could
+muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough
+with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free
+field till luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and
+Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be
+having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her
+host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of
+young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
+tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left
+only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never came down till
+luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden her to expose herself
+to the crude air of the morning.
+
+To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
+wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her plans.
+These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress somewhat more
+rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she had first selected,
+and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a
+lady in quest of exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of
+dogs by the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
+Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship. She put
+aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and assuring the
+joyous volunteers that she might presently have a use for their company,
+sauntered on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of
+the house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the old
+manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions
+of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
+the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass urns. A
+few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies
+with large head-dresses and small bodies, hung between the shelves lined
+with pleasantly-shabby books: books mostly contemporaneous with the
+ancestors in question, and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no
+perceptible additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used
+for reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking-room or a
+quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however, that it
+might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only member of the
+party in the least likely to put it to its original use. She advanced
+noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered with easy-chairs, and before
+she reached the middle of the room she saw that she had not been
+mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in fact seated at its farther end; but
+though a book lay on his knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but
+directed to a lady whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an
+adjoining chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
+dusky leather upholstery.
+
+Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she seemed
+about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she announced her
+approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made the couple raise
+their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank displeasure, and Selden
+with his usual quiet smile. The sight of his composure had a disturbing
+effect on Lily; but to be disturbed was in her case to make a more
+brilliant effort at self-possession.
+
+"Dear me, am I late?" she asked, putting a hand in his as he advanced to
+greet her.
+
+"Late for what?" enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. "Not for luncheon,
+certainly--but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?"
+
+"Yes, I had," said Lily confidingly.
+
+"Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely at
+your disposal." Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her antagonist felt
+a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.
+
+"Oh, dear, no--do stay," she said good-humouredly. "I don't in the least
+want to drive you away."
+
+"You're awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden's
+engagements."
+
+The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost on
+its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping to pick
+up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach. The latter's eyes widened
+charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.
+
+"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go to
+church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS it
+started, do you know?"
+
+She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away some
+time since.
+
+"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go to
+church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well, I shall
+have the credit of trying, at any rate--and the advantage of escaping
+part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself, after all!"
+
+And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss Bart
+strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling grace down the
+long perspective of the garden walk.
+
+She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a fact not
+lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway looking after her
+with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is that she was conscious of
+a somewhat keen shock of disappointment. All her plans for the day had
+been built on the assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come
+to Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to find him on
+the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in a situation which
+might well denote that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it
+possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
+acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when she
+never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw
+no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden
+might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of
+town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their
+judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted; competition put
+her on her mettle, and she reflected that Selden's coming, if it did not
+declare him to be still in Mrs. Dorset's toils, showed him to be so
+completely free from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.
+
+These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to
+carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from
+the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to
+sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and
+Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence
+enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude
+except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
+scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
+profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
+rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked;
+the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her
+lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to
+find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a
+vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness
+about her.
+
+Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the
+ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade. As she did so a
+step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.
+
+"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch up with
+you."
+
+She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been sitting
+under that tree for an hour."
+
+"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:
+
+"Well--waiting to see if you would come."
+
+"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the one
+involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should come?"
+
+"If I waited long enough--but you see I had only a limited time to give
+to the experiment."
+
+"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"
+
+"No; by my other engagement."
+
+"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"
+
+"No; but to come home from church with another person."
+
+"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives.
+And is the other person coming home this way?"
+
+Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find out, it
+is my business to get to church before the service is over."
+
+"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case
+the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve
+of driving back in the omnibus."
+
+Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the
+bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in such an
+emergency?" she enquired.
+
+Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you," he
+cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"
+
+"Walking a mile in an hour--you must own that the omnibus would be
+quicker!"
+
+"Ah--but will he find you in the end? That's the only test of success."
+
+They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had
+felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily's
+face changed, and she said: "Well, if it is, he has succeeded."
+
+Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
+toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had
+evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the church-goers had
+thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily's companion looked rapidly
+from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking
+respectfully at Lady Cressida's side with his little sidelong look of
+nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs.
+Wetherall and the Trenors.
+
+"Ah--now I see why you were getting up your Americana!" Selden exclaimed
+with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with which the sally
+was received checked whatever amplifications he had meant to give it.
+
+That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors, or even
+about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden that he had a
+momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number of possibilities; but
+she rose gallantly to the defence of her confusion, by saying, as its
+object approached: "That was why I was waiting for you--to thank you for
+having given me so many points!"
+
+"Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short time," said
+Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart; and while she
+signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he added quickly:
+"Won't you devote your afternoon to it? You know I must be off tomorrow
+morning. We'll take a walk, and you can thank me at your leisure."
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air, and the
+glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which diffused the
+brightness without dulling it.
+
+In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill; but as
+the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long slopes
+beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone of lingering
+summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered trees; then it
+dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling sprays of bramble,
+whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves, the country unrolled
+itself in pastoral distances.
+
+Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the creeping
+glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang it, and the
+shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove. The boles of the
+trees stood well apart, with only a light feathering of undergrowth; the
+path wound along the edge of the wood, now and then looking out on a
+sunlit pasture or on an orchard spangled with fruit.
+
+Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the
+appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the
+fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below
+her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of
+herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the
+nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down
+was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of
+an oak-grove. Two or three red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees,
+and the white wooden spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder
+of the hill; while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran
+between the fields.
+
+"Let us sit here," Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge of
+rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.
+
+Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She sat
+quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes wandering
+peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape. Selden stretched
+himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat against the level
+sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head, which rested against
+the side of the rock. He had no wish to make her talk; her
+quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general hush and harmony of
+things. In his own mind there was only a lazy sense of pleasure, veiling
+the sharp edges of sensation as the September haze veiled the scene at
+their feet. But Lily, though her attitude was as calm as his, was
+throbbing inwardly with a rush of thoughts. There were in her at the
+moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration,
+the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But
+gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed
+to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
+quivered for flight.
+
+She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed
+to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it
+love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts
+and sensations? How much of it was owing to the spell of the perfect
+afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the thought of the dulness she
+had fled from? Lily had no definite experience by which to test the
+quality of her feelings. She had several times been in love with
+fortunes or careers, but only once with a man. That was years ago, when
+she first came out, and had been smitten with a romantic passion for a
+young gentleman named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave
+in his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
+securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest Miss Van
+Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was given to
+telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled this early emotion
+it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only
+point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which
+she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a
+conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance. She had
+not known again till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now
+it was something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
+charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she could put
+her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing them together.
+Though his popularity was of the quiet kind, felt rather than actively
+expressed among his friends, she had never mistaken his inconspicuousness
+for obscurity. His reputed cultivation was generally regarded as a slight
+obstacle to easy intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her
+broad-minded recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam
+in her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she felt
+would have had its distinction in an older society. It was, moreover, one
+of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which lifted his head
+above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark features which, in a land
+of amorphous types, gave him the air of belonging to a more specialized
+race, of carrying the impress of a concentrated past. Expansive persons
+found him a little dry, and very young girls thought him sarcastic; but
+this air of friendly aloofness, as far removed as possible from any
+assertion of personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily's
+interest. Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in
+her taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed to
+her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being able to
+convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever
+met.
+
+It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her to say
+presently, with a laugh: "I have broken two engagements for you today.
+How many have you broken for me?"
+
+"None," said Selden calmly. "My only engagement at Bellomont was with
+you."
+
+She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.
+
+"Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?"
+
+"Of course I did."
+
+Her look deepened meditatively. "Why?" she murmured, with an accent which
+took all tinge of coquetry from the question.
+
+"Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you
+are doing."
+
+"How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?"
+
+Selden smiled. "I don't flatter myself that my coming has deflected your
+course of action by a hair's breadth."
+
+"That's absurd--since, if you were not here, I could obviously not be
+taking a walk with you."
+
+"No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making use of
+your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you
+are using today. It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce
+premeditated effects extemporaneously."
+
+Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense of
+humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his presence as
+part of a very definite effect; or that, at least, was the secret pretext
+she had found for breaking her promise to walk with Mr. Gryce. She had
+sometimes been accused of being too eager--even Judy Trenor had warned
+her to go slowly. Well, she would not be too eager in this case; she
+would give her suitor a longer taste of suspense. Where duty and
+inclination jumped together, it was not in Lily's nature to hold them
+asunder. She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a headache:
+the horrid headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
+church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked
+languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her
+hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered rather
+nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the
+future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not
+to expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of
+exposure.
+
+Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him, since
+she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the party who, after
+luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit to the Van Osburghs at
+Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her disinterestedness, and, to escape
+from the threatened vacuity of the afternoon, had taken her advice and
+departed mournfully, in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged
+down the avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
+had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to
+his suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as her
+plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included in it.
+The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the stair and
+strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.
+
+She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at her
+feet.
+
+"I thought, after all, the air might do me good," she explained; and he
+agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
+
+The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and Selden had
+the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of leisure and safety gave
+the last touch of lightness to her spirit. With so much time to talk, and
+no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of
+mental vagrancy.
+
+She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge with a
+touch of resentment.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "why you are always accusing me of
+premeditation."
+
+"I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you had to
+follow a certain line--and if one does a thing at all it is a merit to do
+it thoroughly."
+
+"If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged to
+think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation. But you
+must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I never yield to
+an impulse."
+
+"Ah, but I don't suppose that: haven't I told you that your genius lies
+in converting impulses into intentions?"
+
+"My genius?" she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. "Is there any
+final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven't succeeded."
+
+Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her. "Success--what
+is success? I shall be interested to have your definition."
+
+"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I
+suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"
+
+"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his
+elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of
+success," he said, "is personal freedom."
+
+"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
+
+"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from
+all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
+spirit--that's what I call success."
+
+She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know--I know--it's
+strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."
+
+He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling so rare
+with you?" he said.
+
+She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly sordid, don't
+you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any choice. There was no
+one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit."
+
+"There never is--it's a country one has to find the way to one's self."
+
+"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told me."
+
+"Ah, there are sign-posts--but one has to know how to read them."
+
+"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of eagerness.
+"Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign--and
+yesterday--last evening at dinner--I suddenly saw a little way into your
+republic."
+
+Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had
+found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a
+reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.
+His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have
+been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should
+interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this
+weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on
+her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
+altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm.
+THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and
+the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It
+was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
+spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning
+intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be
+the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
+even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.
+
+"Well," he said, "did it make you want to see more? Are you going to
+become one of us?"
+
+He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand
+toward the case.
+
+"Oh, do give me one--I haven't smoked for days!"
+
+"Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont."
+
+"Yes--but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER; and at
+the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER."
+
+"Ah, then I'm afraid we can't let you into the republic."
+
+"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"
+
+"Not in the least, though I'm bound to say there are not many married
+people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it's as hard for
+rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven."
+
+"That's unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
+conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the
+only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."
+
+"You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to
+have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs
+are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich
+people--they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all
+the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and
+gasp!"
+
+Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.
+
+"It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal of your
+time in the element you disapprove of."
+
+Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried
+to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in
+another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back
+again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your
+friends have lost."
+
+Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that the
+people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and
+not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only
+use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at
+them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
+intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"
+
+"That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is
+that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not
+the critics on the fence. It's just the other way with most shows--the
+audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is
+on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an
+escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes
+the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden
+raised himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
+underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of
+splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it
+is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we're all the
+raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that
+tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society
+like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of
+purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton--he's really too good to be used
+to refurbish anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out
+to discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding it in
+Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"
+
+"Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to
+write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society
+that he is likely to lose them?"
+
+Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our generous ideas
+illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a sufficient condemnation
+of society to find one's self accepting such phraseology? I very nearly
+acquired the jargon at Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter
+the colour of beliefs."
+
+She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His
+habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and
+compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory
+where his faiths were formed.
+
+"Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed; "why do you
+call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create
+arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."
+
+"It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D'ETAT and seat
+you on the throne."
+
+"Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the
+threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions--you
+think them unworthy of me!"
+
+Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I think
+them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."
+
+She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible that, if I
+had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better use of them?
+Money stands for all kinds of things--its purchasing quality isn't
+limited to diamonds and motor-cars."
+
+
+"Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by founding a
+hospital."
+
+"But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must think my
+ambitions are good enough for me."
+
+Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am not
+divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you are trying
+to get!"
+
+"Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get them I
+probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath. "What a miserable
+future you foresee for me!"
+
+"Well--have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour rose to
+her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the deep wells of
+feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had produced it.
+
+"Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when you show
+it to me!"
+
+He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat silent,
+while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of the air.
+
+But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do you do
+this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have chosen seem
+hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?"
+
+The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had fallen. He
+himself did not know why he had led their talk along such lines; it was
+the last use he would have imagined himself making of an afternoon's
+solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one of those moments when neither
+seemed to speak deliberately, when an indwelling voice in each called to
+the other across unsounded depths of feeling.
+
+"No, I have nothing to give you instead," he said, sitting up and turning
+so that he faced her. "If I had, it should be yours, you know."
+
+She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than the
+manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he saw that
+for a moment she wept.
+
+It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and drew
+down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she turned on
+him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he said to
+himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.
+
+The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and irony:
+"Isn't it natural that I should try to belittle all the things I can't
+offer you?"
+
+Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with a
+gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which she had
+no claim.
+
+"But you belittle ME, don't you," she returned gently, "in being so sure
+they are the only things I care for?"
+
+Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
+egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: "But you do care for
+them, don't you? And no wishing of mine can alter that."
+
+He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry him,
+that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned on him a
+face sparkling with derision.
+
+"Ah," she cried, "for all your fine phrases you're really as great a
+coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if you hadn't been
+so sure of my answer."
+
+The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden's
+wavering intentions.
+
+"I am not so sure of your answer," he said quietly. "And I do you the
+justice to believe that you are not either."
+
+It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a moment--"Do you
+want to marry me?" she asked.
+
+He broke into a laugh. "No, I don't want to--but perhaps I should if you
+did!"
+
+"That's what I told you--you're so sure of me that you can amuse yourself
+with experiments." She drew back the hand he had regained, and sat
+looking down on him sadly.
+
+"I am not making experiments," he returned. "Or if I am, it is not on you
+but on myself. I don't know what effect they are going to have on me--but
+if marrying you is one of them, I will take the risk."
+
+She smiled faintly. "It would be a great risk, certainly--I have never
+concealed from you how great."
+
+"Ah, it's you who are the coward!" he exclaimed.
+
+She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The soft
+isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed lifted into a
+finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their
+veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to
+the earth.
+
+"It's you who are the coward," he repeated, catching her hands in his.
+
+She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings: he felt
+as though her heart were beating rather with the stress of a long flight
+than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing back with a little smile
+of warning--"I shall look hideous in dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own
+hats," she declared.
+
+They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other like
+adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which
+they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling
+itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser
+blue.
+
+Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect, and
+following the high-road, which wound whiter through the surrounding
+twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.
+
+Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and she
+began to move toward the lane.
+
+"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after dark," she
+said, almost impatiently.
+
+Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to regain
+his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable note of
+dryness: "That was not one of our party; the motor was going the other
+way."
+
+"I know--I know----" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
+twilight. "But I told them I was not well--that I should not go out. Let
+us go down!" she murmured.
+
+Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his
+pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that
+moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered
+hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion
+see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.
+
+She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held
+out the cigarettes to her.
+
+She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned
+forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red
+gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble
+into a smile.
+
+"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she
+might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without
+having time to select the just note. Selden's voice was under better
+control. "Why not?" he returned. "You see I took no risks in being so."
+And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort,
+he added quickly: "Let us go down."
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice,
+in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
+she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.
+
+"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back,
+sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
+indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while
+she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case,
+the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.
+
+"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but I'm sure
+you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to
+let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don't
+suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine
+your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And
+I'm sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even
+Bertha kept her hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and
+you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
+retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known Lawrence
+Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just discovered him?
+If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it--you
+could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you
+Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
+Lawrence's turning up put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her
+think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you
+this trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"
+
+Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
+impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own
+conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's reproachful accents.
+But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence.
+"I only took a day off--I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and
+I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning."
+
+Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its
+weakness.
+
+"He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's run away
+from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him thoroughly."
+
+Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake him!"
+
+Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily, do
+nothing!"
+
+Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean, literally, to
+take the next train. There are ways----" But she did not go on to specify
+them.
+
+Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty of
+them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don't
+deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to
+his mother, and she'll protect him!"
+
+"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
+
+"How you can LAUGH----" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
+soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha
+really told him?"
+
+"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you
+know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose
+she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord Hubert--and there was some
+story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"
+
+"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.
+
+"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
+she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their
+tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity
+comes they remember everything."
+
+Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money
+I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course."
+
+"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
+gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man--she knew
+just what to tell him!"
+
+In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
+friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
+temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
+had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
+people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
+as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
+statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
+thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
+in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was
+certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
+gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's
+words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
+herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
+imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
+poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
+consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
+have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
+of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
+were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
+char-woman. Mrs. Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the
+situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her
+friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
+she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of
+indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had
+driven her out again on those dark seas?
+
+If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was
+the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive
+her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of
+occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in
+which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long
+hours of subjection.
+
+She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm sorry to
+have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have
+some letters for me to answer--let me at least be useful."
+
+She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption
+of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had
+proved herself unfit for higher uses.
+
+The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney
+and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony
+that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady
+Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to
+lunch at a distant country-house. At such moments of diminished interest
+it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on
+this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed
+and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.
+
+She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few of us are
+left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish the men would
+always stop away--it's really much nicer without them. Oh, you don't
+count, George: one doesn't have to talk to one's husband. But I thought
+Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?" she added enquiringly.
+"Didn't he intend to, Judy? He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove
+him away? He is rather shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he
+has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he
+told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you
+doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and
+always has a lot left over to invest!"
+
+Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some one's duty
+to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to
+realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to
+study the laws of his country."
+
+Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the divorce
+laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a
+petition against divorce."
+
+Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing
+glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to
+tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard."
+
+His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed
+with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship that will do for
+him, it's the crew."
+
+"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated a voyage
+with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold."
+
+Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate
+expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at him; I think he's very
+nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a girl who married him would
+always have enough to be comfortable."
+
+She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but
+it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the
+breast of one of her hearers.
+
+Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than
+any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the
+heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her
+mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to
+her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut
+deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no
+one else--not even Judy Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly.
+
+She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered
+request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the
+luncheon-table.
+
+"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher
+that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at
+four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I'm very
+glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him
+rather severely since she's been here, and she is so keen about going to
+fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
+It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her
+alimony is paid by other women's husbands!"
+
+Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
+friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself. Why should
+she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
+elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
+unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
+their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
+married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
+for a married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
+implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
+the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
+private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
+society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
+could of course borrow from her women friends--a hundred here or there,
+at the utmost--but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
+looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
+Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
+were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
+to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations was the
+decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
+without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
+continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
+difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
+necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
+next morning for Richfield.
+
+At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
+unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
+which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
+crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't
+often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
+to do."
+
+The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
+conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
+caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
+of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from
+the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and
+slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.
+
+The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not often I
+have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with
+me."
+
+"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won the race,
+anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent you. Now didn't
+she?"
+
+He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could
+not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth.
+
+"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with; and she's
+quite right," she rejoined.
+
+"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste your time
+on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can
+get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who've kept a free foot. Let
+me light a cigar, will you? I've had a beastly day of it."
+
+He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to
+her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand
+cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with
+a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him
+handsome!
+
+As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you have
+such a lot of tiresome things to do?"
+
+"I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by
+his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a
+confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow has to hustle to keep
+this kind of thing going." He waved his whip in the direction of the
+Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations.
+"Judy has no idea of what she spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep
+the thing going," he interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his
+eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to
+live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
+too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know where I
+should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then. The women all
+think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but to go down town once a
+month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of
+hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain
+to-day, though," he went on after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke
+of business, thanks to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily,
+I wish you'd try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
+going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she'd
+only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him.
+The man is mad to know the people who don't want to know him, and when a
+fellow's in that state there is nothing he won't do for the first woman
+who takes him up."
+
+Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's discourse had
+started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by
+the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She uttered a faint protest.
+
+"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible."
+
+"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner! Well,
+all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him
+now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he'll be in
+it whether we want him or not, and then he won't be giving away a
+half-a-million tip for a dinner."
+
+Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale
+to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first words. This vast
+mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and "deals"--might she not find in
+it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard
+of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more
+notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and
+its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed,
+imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a "tip" from Mr.
+Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
+commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in
+a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.
+
+In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal
+instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of
+explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always
+scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal
+fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of
+inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not
+open.
+
+As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile.
+"The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me a little
+farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day, and it's so restful to
+be away from people, with some one who won't mind if I'm a little dull."
+
+She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
+trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
+himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him--not
+battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would
+have given their boots to get such a look from.
+
+"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is your
+last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of
+everything at bridge last night?"
+
+Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet; and
+bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of the things
+my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I
+don't play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as
+the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about
+my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a
+favour--the very greatest of favours."
+
+Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of
+apprehension that she read in them.
+
+"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage----" He broke off, and she
+guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs.
+Fisher's methods.
+
+"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is, Judy is
+angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."
+
+"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense----" his relief broke through in a
+laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."
+
+"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her.
+But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her
+heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great deal of money."
+
+She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning
+abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
+
+"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce? What--you do?
+Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust me to keep my mouth
+shut--but Gryce--good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring
+yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And
+so you gave him the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the
+first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther
+across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
+discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I
+could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!"
+
+Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that men
+understand a woman's motives better than other women do."
+
+"Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he repeated,
+exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
+
+"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to you,"
+Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage; it's impossible.
+But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost
+entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she
+makes me no regular allowance, and lately I've lost money at cards, and I
+don't dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but
+there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
+my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income
+of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in
+less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know
+if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a
+moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all
+this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can't, at
+present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away
+tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the
+rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
+clothes."
+
+At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was
+heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of
+indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his
+wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart's future, he would
+have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better
+marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of
+discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that
+he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the
+assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
+that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he
+was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
+disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if
+she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and
+approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she
+was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
+find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
+Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
+titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
+much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
+her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
+
+Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
+before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
+her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
+money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
+too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
+understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
+certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
+transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
+general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
+that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
+risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
+within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
+and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.
+
+Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
+repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
+resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
+the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
+herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
+immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
+nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
+shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
+appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
+inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
+consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
+claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
+his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
+which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
+him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
+scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
+degree to which it effaced her debts.
+
+The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
+absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
+this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
+she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
+order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
+disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
+orders without making the payment!
+
+She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
+listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
+seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
+with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
+hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing
+intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
+kindness.
+
+"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
+approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
+with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
+listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he is telling the same ones
+still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
+keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she
+hasn't the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for
+her, and I'm sure she never pays when she loses."
+
+Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
+of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
+There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
+had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
+cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
+Rosedale's "tip," and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
+there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood therefore
+that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
+owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
+demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
+borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
+did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
+of the next "big rise."
+
+The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on the
+occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
+the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
+had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
+attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group. The
+truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
+there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
+pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
+before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
+youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.
+
+The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
+paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple country wedding" to
+which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
+the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
+While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
+fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
+threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
+presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
+apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
+often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
+the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
+mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
+her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
+that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
+possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
+rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
+her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
+could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
+enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
+easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.
+
+A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
+in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
+Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
+large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
+After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
+ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
+weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
+brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
+man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
+imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
+Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
+prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
+her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
+did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
+blunder and bring him once more to her feet.
+
+The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
+for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
+their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
+and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
+his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
+cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
+Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
+the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
+him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
+else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
+luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
+more than it was worth.
+
+"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
+delightful had just happened to you!"
+
+The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
+did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities. Miss
+Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
+there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
+freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
+observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
+grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her wavered
+between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
+acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
+dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
+consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
+occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
+inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
+acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty
+Farish's gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to
+let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
+proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
+
+Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have
+taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was something
+irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no higher pleasures,
+and that one might get as much interest and excitement out of life in a
+cramped flat as in the splendours of the Van Osburgh establishment.
+Today, however, her chirping enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They
+seemed only to throw her own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and
+give a soaring vastness to her scheme of life.
+
+"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else leaves
+the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in her friend's.
+It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental and unenvious interest
+in all the details of a wedding: she was the kind of person who always
+kept her handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a
+box of wedding-cake.
+
+"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered the
+distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van Osburgh's bridal
+spoils. "I always say no one does things better than cousin Grace! Did
+you ever taste anything more delicious than that MOUSSE of lobster with
+champagne sauce? I made up my mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this
+wedding, and just fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence
+Selden heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving
+me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him
+at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
+myself!"
+
+Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
+cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time in such
+an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a vague pleasure.
+
+"Do you see him often?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and then we
+do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of him. He doesn't
+look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled. The dear fellow! I do
+wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so today, but he said he
+didn't care for the really nice ones, and the other kind didn't care for
+him--but that was just his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl
+who WASN'T nice. Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"
+
+They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
+displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught the
+refraction of light from their surfaces--the milky gleam of perfectly
+matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet,
+the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding
+diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied
+art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like
+wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized
+the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and
+refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and
+the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.
+
+"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant--it's as big as a
+dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent short-sightedly
+over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE. What, that horrid man?
+Oh, yes--I remember he's a friend of Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace
+had to ask him here today; but she must rather hate having to let Gwen
+accept such a present from him."
+
+Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of
+Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the
+persons least likely to be encumbered by them.
+
+"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always exchange
+it for something else," she remarked.
+
+"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued. "Do
+look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person who chose it
+must have taken particular pains. What is the name? Percy Gryce? Ah,
+then I'm not surprised!" She smiled significantly as she replaced the
+card. "Of course you've heard that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van
+Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about it--it's quite a romance! He
+met her first at the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's
+just the nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
+money--of course she has plenty of her own--but she's such a quiet
+stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so
+they are exactly suited to each other."
+
+Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed.
+Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her
+brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull
+and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness,
+had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls
+who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love--a mother who knows how to
+contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage
+of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
+cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned,
+may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it
+takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
+safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.
+
+Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of failure.
+Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy Gryce's millions be
+joined to another great fortune, why should this clumsy girl be put in
+possession of powers she would never know how to use?
+
+She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her arm,
+and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of vexation:
+what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had wandered off to
+the next table, and they were alone.
+
+Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
+unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
+undisguised approval.
+
+"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly into
+the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the right moment
+to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and women called each
+other by their Christian names; it was only on Trenor's lips that the
+familiar address had an unpleasant significance.
+
+"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance, "have
+you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean to
+duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for you in my pocket
+that will go a long way in that line!"
+
+Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual, and the
+room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance assured her
+that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of pleasure replaced her
+apprehension.
+
+"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the desire
+not to be overheard.
+
+"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off four thou'
+for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you'll begin to think
+you're a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you won't think poor old
+Gus such an awful ass as some people do."
+
+"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you properly now."
+
+She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
+hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone--and how glad she
+was that they were not! The news filled her with the glow produced by a
+sudden cessation of physical pain. The world was not so stupid and
+blundering after all: now and then a stroke of luck came to the
+unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began to rise: it was
+characteristic of her that one trifling piece of good fortune should give
+wings to all her hopes. Instantly came the reflection that Percy Gryce
+was not irretrievably lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of
+recapturing him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
+have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping
+to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
+countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an
+air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence
+was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of the room.
+
+Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily quickly
+transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of her gratitude
+seemed not to have brought the complete gratification she had meant it to
+give.
+
+"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like the
+chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I thought you
+were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I've hardly laid eyes
+on you for the last month. Why can't you come back to Bellomont this
+evening? We're all alone, and Judy is as cross as two sticks. Do come and
+cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you
+can telephone your maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."
+
+Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish I
+could--but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and I
+must be with her for the next few days."
+
+"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be such pals
+than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he continued with
+unconscious penetration.
+
+"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you say the
+most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would tire of me
+much sooner than Judy--but come and see me at my aunt's the next
+afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet talk, and you
+can tell me how I had better invest my fortune."
+
+It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had absented
+herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other visits to pay; but
+she now began to feel that the reckoning she had thus contrived to evade
+had rolled up interest in the interval.
+
+The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing to
+Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he said:
+"Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a fresh tip every day. But
+there's one thing you might do for me; and that is, just to be a little
+civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to dine when we get to
+town, but I can't induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would
+let me bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
+believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can tell you
+he's a chap it pays to be decent to."
+
+Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words which
+seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an unexpectedly easy
+way of acquitting her debt; and had she not reasons of her own for
+wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?
+
+"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can get a tip
+out of him on my own account."
+
+Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with a look
+which made her change colour.
+
+"I say, you know--you'll please remember he's a blooming bounder," he
+said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window near
+which they had been standing.
+
+The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for space and
+fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where only a few men
+were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while scattered couples
+strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted borders of the
+flower-garden.
+
+As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and she
+found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which his
+nearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.
+They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that
+episode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to be
+less conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than the
+satisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in
+masculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
+reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor,
+and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant
+to rest a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
+Selden's manner always conveyed.
+
+"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be able to
+have a word with you before the special snatches us away. I came with
+Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train, but I am sure
+she is still extracting sentimental solace from the wedding presents. She
+appears to regard their number and value as evidence of the disinterested
+affection of the contracting parties."
+
+There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and as he
+spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and letting his
+eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace, she felt with a
+faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the
+footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her
+vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to
+him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
+diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her
+reply.
+
+"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with
+romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my
+self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions
+were."
+
+The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity. It
+seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.
+
+"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had been the
+means of proving they were more important to you than anything else."
+
+It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden
+obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly,
+like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the
+faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go
+alone!
+
+The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latent
+chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that
+his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood
+to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in a world
+apart with her.
+
+"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she exclaimed
+with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the flow of
+comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the reappearance of Gus
+Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his wake.
+
+"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I have
+been hunting all over for you!"
+
+His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
+detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and the
+idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.
+
+She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful by
+the sense of Selden's surprise that she should number Rosedale among her
+acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued to
+stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smile
+at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the
+privilege of being seen with her.
+
+It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but
+Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene,
+and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to
+exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any
+need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial
+phrases of politeness. Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant
+attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level
+with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
+silence implied.
+
+He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered the
+plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his moustache;
+then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said, with a
+side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a more ripping get-up.
+Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go to see at the
+Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don't go to her too!"
+
+The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she saw in a
+flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In ordinary talk
+they might have passed unheeded; but following on her prolonged pause
+they acquired a special meaning. She felt, without looking, that Selden
+had immediately seized it, and would inevitably connect the allusion with
+her visit to himself. The consciousness increased her irritation against
+Rosedale, but also her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
+propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.
+
+"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
+returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my friends!"
+
+Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this privileged
+circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification, and a knowing
+smile drew up his moustache.
+
+"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the whole
+outfit and win at a canter!"
+
+"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would carry
+me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or some innocent
+drink before we all have to rush for the train."
+
+She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through the
+gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her throbbed with
+the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of the scene.
+
+But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the light
+surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted: she did not
+mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth about Percy Gryce.
+Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty
+withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most
+of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few
+minutes--the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life
+which she most wished him to ignore--increased her longing for shelter,
+for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation
+would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in
+an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.
+
+Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of an
+audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal actors had
+left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily could discover
+neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh. That both should be
+missing struck her with foreboding; and she charmed Mr. Rosedale by
+proposing that they should make their way to the conservatories at the
+farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long
+suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of
+being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off
+as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
+self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen
+with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search.
+The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and
+Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for
+a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came
+upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the
+consciousness of duty performed.
+
+She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the tired
+hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots in a
+kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly fixed, and
+she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture. "My dear Lily, I
+haven't had time for a word with you, and now I suppose you are just off.
+Have you seen Evie? She's been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to
+tell you her little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already.
+The engagement is not to be announced till next week--but you are such a
+friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the first to know
+of their happiness."
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+In Mrs. Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
+therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue
+residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze
+who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey of that
+deserted thoroughfare.
+
+The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the
+domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She "went through" the linen
+and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner
+folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for
+lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield
+up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths
+and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed
+in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.
+
+It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on the
+afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The journey back to
+town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves. Though Evie Van
+Osburgh's engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which
+the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed;
+and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and
+anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of
+innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation
+evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included
+a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in
+the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear
+herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner
+between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
+by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to feel
+the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed
+to a deeper self-disgust.
+
+
+As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a physical
+outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings. She revolted from
+the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston's black walnut, from the
+slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the mingled odour of sapolio
+and furniture-polish that met her at the door.
+
+The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she was
+arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds. Gathering up
+her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture; and as she did so
+she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same
+situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was
+again descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to
+remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met
+by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar
+circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on
+crimson elbows, examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the
+same apparent reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss
+Bart was on her own ground.
+
+"Don't you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail," she said
+sharply.
+
+The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of excuse,
+she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth across the
+landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter swept by. It was
+insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such creatures about the
+house; and Lily entered her room resolved that the woman should be
+dismissed that evening.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance:
+since early morning she had been shut up with her maid, going over her
+furs, a process which formed the culminating episode in the drama of
+household renovation. In the evening also Lily found herself alone, for
+her aunt, who rarely dined out, had responded to the summons of a Van
+Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
+unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
+turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
+the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
+buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.
+
+She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
+domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
+had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
+that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
+been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
+of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
+time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
+as she had said to Selden--people were tired of her. They would welcome
+her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart. She
+knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story. There were
+moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
+remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
+beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
+herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
+sheds perfume.
+
+Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
+returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
+dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
+Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
+Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
+of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.
+
+Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
+as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
+confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
+a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
+the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
+Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
+manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston
+when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
+dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
+admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in
+the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented
+the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston's temperate career.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her
+excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the
+person who performs them. She greatly preferred the brilliant and
+unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the
+other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that
+the drawing-room should be "done over." But when it came to hunting for
+missing napkins, or helping to decide whether the backstairs needed
+re-carpeting, Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to
+mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
+soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean of
+itself, without extraneous assistance.
+
+Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier--Mrs.
+Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was "company"--Lily seemed to
+watch her own figure retreating down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to
+a middle age like Grace Stepney's. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor
+and her friends she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston;
+whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims
+of others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.
+
+A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty house,
+roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was as though all
+the weariness of the past months had culminated in the vacuity of that
+interminable evening. If only the ring meant a summons from the outer
+world--a token that she was still remembered and wanted!
+
+After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announcement
+that there was a person outside who was asking to see Miss Bart; and on
+Lily's pressing for a more specific description, she added:
+
+"It's Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants."
+
+Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman in
+a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light. The
+glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face and
+the reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.
+Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise.
+
+"Do you wish to see me?" she asked.
+
+"I should like to say a word to you, Miss." The tone was neither
+aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker's errand.
+Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to withdraw beyond
+ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.
+
+She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and closed
+the door when they had entered.
+
+"What is it that you wish?" she enquired.
+
+The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms folded
+in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small parcel wrapped
+in dirty newspaper.
+
+"I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart." She spoke
+the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a
+part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like a
+threat.
+
+"You have found something belonging to me?" she asked, extending her hand.
+
+Mrs. Haffen drew back. "Well, if it comes to that, I guess it's mine as
+much as anybody's," she returned.
+
+Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her visitor's
+manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in certain directions,
+there was nothing in her experience to prepare her for the exact
+significance of the present scene. She felt, however, that it must be
+ended as promptly as possible.
+
+"I don't understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked for
+me?"
+
+The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared to
+answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way back to make a
+beginning, and it was only after a pause that she replied: "My husband
+was janitor to the Benedick till the first of the month; since then he
+can't get nothing to do."
+
+Lily remained silent and she continued: "It wasn't no fault of our own,
+neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for, and we was
+put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy. I had a long sickness
+last winter, and an operation that ate up all we'd put by; and it's hard
+for me and the children, Haffen being so long out of a job."
+
+After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a place for
+her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady's intervention
+with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always getting what she
+wanted that she was used to being appealed to as an intermediary, and,
+relieved of her vague apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional
+formula.
+
+"I am sorry you have been in trouble," she said.
+
+"Oh, that we have, Miss, and it's on'y just beginning. If on'y we'd 'a
+got another situation--but the agent, he's dead against us. It ain't no
+fault of ours, neither, but----"
+
+At this point Lily's impatience overcame her. "If you have anything to
+say to me----" she interposed.
+
+The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.
+
+"Yes, Miss; I'm coming to that," she said. She paused again, with her
+eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When
+we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms;
+leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays. Some of the gentlemen got the
+greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper
+baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers falling over on the floor.
+Maybe havin' so many is how they get so careless. Some of 'em is worse
+than others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
+carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore 'em in little bits in
+summer. But sometimes he'd have so many he'd just bunch 'em together, the
+way the others did, and tear the lot through once--like this."
+
+While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her hand,
+and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table between Miss
+Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn in two; but with a
+rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together and smoothed out the page.
+
+A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the presence
+of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured--the kind of vileness of
+which people whispered, but which she had never thought of as touching
+her own life. She drew back with a motion of disgust, but her withdrawal
+was checked by a sudden discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston's
+chandelier she had recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a
+large disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly
+disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
+pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily's ear as though she had heard them
+spoken.
+
+At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
+understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha Dorset,
+and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was no date, but the
+blackness of the ink proved the writing to be comparatively recent. The
+packet in Mrs. Haffen's hand doubtless contained more letters of the same
+kind--a dozen, Lily conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her
+was short, but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she
+was conscious of reading them, told a long history--a history over which,
+for the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
+shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless "good situations"
+of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the
+volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo
+glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek.
+Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given
+its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for
+having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender
+who is found out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The
+code of Lily's world decreed that a woman's husband should be the only
+judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while she had
+the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man
+of George Dorset's temper there could be no thought of condonation--the
+possessor of his wife's letters could overthrow with a touch the whole
+structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha Dorset's secret
+had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged
+Lily's disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust
+prevailed--all her instinctive resistances, of taste, of training, of
+blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest
+sense was one of personal contamination.
+
+She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible between
+herself and her visitor. "I know nothing of these letters," she said; "I
+have no idea why you have brought them here."
+
+Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. "I'll tell you why, Miss. I brought 'em
+to you to sell, because I ain't got no other way of raising money, and if
+we don't pay our rent by tomorrow night we'll be put out. I never done
+anythin' of the kind before, and if you'd speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr.
+Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on again at the Benedick--I seen you
+talking to Mr. Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr.
+Selden's rooms----"
+
+The blood rushed to Lily's forehead. She understood now--Mrs. Haffen
+supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap of her
+anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but an obscure
+impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden's name had started a new
+train of thought. Bertha Dorset's letters were nothing to her--they might
+go where the current of chance carried them! But Selden was inextricably
+involved in their fate. Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such
+exposure; and in this instance the flash of divination which had carried
+the meaning of the letters to Lily's brain had revealed also that they
+were appeals--repeated and therefore probably unanswered--for the renewal
+of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless, the fact that
+the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands would
+convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world holds it least
+pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider where a man of
+Dorset's ticklish balance was concerned.
+
+If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was aware only
+of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued, and that therefore
+she must obtain possession of them. Beyond that her mind did not travel.
+She had, indeed, a quick vision of returning the packet to Bertha Dorset,
+and of the opportunities the restitution offered; but this thought lit up
+abysses from which she shrank back ashamed.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had already
+opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table. All the letters
+had been pieced together with strips of thin paper. Some were in small
+fragments, the others merely torn in half. Though there were not many,
+thus spread out they nearly covered the table. Lily's glance fell on a
+word here and there--then she said in a low voice: "What do you wish me
+to pay you?"
+
+Mrs. Haffen's face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that the
+young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman to make
+the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than she had
+foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.
+
+But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
+expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price named,
+and after a moment's hesitation, met it by a counter-offer of half the
+amount.
+
+Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
+outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to restore
+them to their wrapping.
+
+"I guess they're worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor has got
+to live as well as the rich," she observed sententiously.
+
+
+Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
+resistance.
+
+"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have offered all I am
+willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
+them."
+
+Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
+know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
+rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
+a word of this commanding young lady's might set in motion.
+
+She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
+that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
+she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
+honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
+letters mustn't go any farther.
+
+Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
+greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones. The
+idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
+that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
+original demand.
+
+She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
+the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
+minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
+her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
+closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.
+
+She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's
+dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
+do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
+them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
+keep them--to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
+their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
+be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
+drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
+lamps, was never lit except when there was company.
+
+Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
+opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
+Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
+trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
+clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
+always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
+kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
+was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
+being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
+
+She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.
+"I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it's
+extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly."
+
+Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the
+glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in
+it.
+
+Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. "My dear, you look tired; I
+suppose it's the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full
+of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us
+about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the CONSOMME: a
+wedding breakfast should always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn't care
+for the bridesmaids' dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
+they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste's, but she says they
+didn't look it. I'm glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade
+of salmon-pink wouldn't have suited you." Mrs. Peniston delighted in
+discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
+part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue
+of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in
+the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
+extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably
+careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed
+to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh's gown, and could not even say
+whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table:
+Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener
+than as a narrator.
+
+"Really, Lily, I don't see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding,
+if you don't remember what happened or whom you saw there. When I was a
+girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went to, and write the
+names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion
+favours till after your uncle's death, when it seemed unsuitable to have
+so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I
+remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van
+Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it's wonderful how she
+notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress
+was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must
+have come from Paquin."
+
+Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
+surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece
+between two malachite vases, passed her lace handkerchief between the
+helmet and its visor.
+
+"I knew it--the parlour-maid never dusts there!" she exclaimed,
+triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
+reseating herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
+best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID cost more
+than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea--a combination of
+sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who
+won't take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa
+at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject's home life--a most
+peculiar arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
+herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things and she
+was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better;
+she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
+Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
+influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in that
+silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has
+been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really
+engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it
+all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven--she had almost
+despaired of marrying Evie."
+
+Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed itself,
+not to the furniture, but to her niece.
+
+"Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you were to
+marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they had stopped
+with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite sure there was an
+engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left unexpectedly one morning,
+they all thought he had rushed to town for the ring."
+
+Lily rose and moved toward the door.
+
+"I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed," she said; and Mrs.
+Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel sustaining
+the late Mr. Peniston's crayon-portrait was not exactly in line with the
+sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded brow to her kiss.
+
+In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the grate.
+It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at least she
+could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her aunt's
+disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however, but dropping
+into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was large and
+comfortably-furnished--it was the envy and admiration of poor Grace
+Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious
+appointments of the guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily's existence
+were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
+bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston's bedroom, and
+the magenta "flock" wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early 'sixties,
+was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had
+tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches,
+in the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
+surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as
+she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the
+setting she had pictured for herself--an apartment which should surpass
+the complicated luxury of her friends' surroundings by the whole extent
+of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior;
+in which every tint and line should combine to enhance her beauty and
+give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical
+ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
+the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle.
+
+Her aunt's words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
+vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding her up
+to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of their little
+group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than any other
+sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon which could flay
+its victims without the shedding of blood. Her cheek burned at the
+recollection, and she rose and caught up the letters. She no longer meant
+to destroy them: that intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion
+of Mrs. Peniston's words.
+
+Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed
+the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and
+deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a
+flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of
+buying them.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or two
+notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to Bellomont;
+but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to remain with her
+aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of her solitary existence
+with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement of spending her
+newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the days.
+
+All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in, and
+whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting aside a
+part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of the risks of the
+opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to feel that, for a few
+months at least, she would be independent of her friends' bounty, that
+she could show herself abroad without wondering whether some penetrating
+eye would detect in her dress the traces of Judy Trenor's refurbished
+splendour. The fact that the money freed her temporarily from all minor
+obligations obscured her sense of the greater one it represented, and
+having never before known what it was to command so large a sum, she
+lingered delectably over the amusement of spending it.
+
+It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she had spent
+an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most complicated
+elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered the same
+establishment with the modest object of having her watch repaired. Lily
+was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to defer the purchase of
+the dressing-case till she should receive the bill for her new
+opera-cloak, and the resolve made her feel much richer than when she had
+entered the shop. In this mood of self-approval she had a sympathetic eye
+for others, and she was struck by her friend's air of dejection.
+
+Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting of a
+struggling charity in which she was interested. The object of the
+association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a reading-room and
+other modest distractions, where young women of the class employed in
+down town offices might find a home when out of work, or in need of rest,
+and the first year's financial report showed so deplorably small a
+balance that Miss Farish, who was convinced of the urgency of the work,
+felt proportionately discouraged by the small amount of interest it
+aroused. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily,
+and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's philanthropic
+efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast
+between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty's
+"cases." These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps pretty, some
+not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself
+leading such a life as theirs--a life in which achievement seemed as
+squalid as failure--and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
+price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing out her
+little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the amount into Miss
+Farish's hand.
+
+The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
+moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a
+person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing
+good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her
+horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy. Moreover,
+by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of
+generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in
+which she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish's surprise and
+gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense
+of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.
+
+About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend the
+Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation was one
+which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready response, for the
+party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was ostensibly given by a lady of
+obscure origin and indomitable social ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily
+had hitherto avoided. Now, however, she was disposed to coincide with
+Mrs. Fisher's view, that it didn't matter who gave the party, as long as
+things were well done; and doing things well (under competent direction)
+was Mrs. Wellington Bry's strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
+as "Welly" Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had already
+sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to her
+determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry Fisher, she
+was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing herself entirely
+to that lady's guidance. Everything, accordingly, was well done, for
+there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher's prodigality when she was not spending
+her own money, and as she remarked to her pupil, a good cook was the best
+introduction to society. If the company was not as select as the CUISINE,
+the Welly Brys at least had the satisfaction of figuring for the first
+time in the society columns in company with one or two noticeable names;
+and foremost among these was of course Miss Bart's. The young lady was
+treated by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the
+mood when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
+Bry's admiration was a mirror in which Lily's self-complacency recovered
+its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those
+which will sustain the weight of human vanity; and the sense of being of
+importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the
+gratifying consciousness of power. If these people paid court to her it
+proved that she was still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired;
+and she was not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her
+fineness, in developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.
+
+Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware from
+the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp cold and
+hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the influences of the
+winter woods. She returned to town in a glow of rejuvenation, conscious
+of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a fresh elasticity in her muscles. The
+future seemed full of a vague promise, and all her apprehensions were
+swept out of sight on the buoyant current of her mood.
+
+A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise of a
+visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential hour when the
+tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly expectancy; and his
+manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to the intimacy of the occasion.
+
+Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her lucky
+speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but there was
+something in the quality of his geniality which chilled her own, and she
+was conscious of marking each step in their acquaintance by a fresh
+blunder.
+
+Mr. Rosedale--making himself promptly at home in an adjoining easy-chair,
+and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: "You ought to go to my
+man for something really good"--appeared totally unconscious of the
+repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness behind the urn. It was
+perhaps her very manner of holding herself aloof that appealed to his
+collector's passion for the rare and unattainable. He gave, at any rate,
+no sign of resenting it and seemed prepared to supply in his own manner
+all the ease that was lacking in hers.
+
+His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box on the
+opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively: "Mrs. Fisher
+is coming, and I've secured a tremendous admirer of yours, who'll never
+forgive me if you don't accept."
+
+As Lily's silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he added with
+a confidential smile: "Gus Trenor has promised to come to town on
+purpose. I fancy he'd go a good deal farther for the pleasure of seeing
+you."
+
+Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful enough
+to hear her name coupled with Trenor's, and on Rosedale's lips the
+allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.
+
+"The Trenors are my best friends--I think we should all go a long way to
+see each other," she said, absorbing herself in the preparation of fresh
+tea.
+
+Her visitor's smile grew increasingly intimate. "Well, I wasn't thinking
+of Mrs. Trenor at the moment--they say Gus doesn't always, you know."
+Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right note, he added,
+with a well-meant effort at diversion: "How's your luck been going in
+Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a nice little pile for you
+last month."
+
+Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that her
+hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady them; but
+her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid the tremor might
+communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke, however, it was in a
+tone of perfect lightness.
+
+"Ah, yes--I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor, who
+helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks instead of a
+mortgage, as my aunt's agent wanted me to do; and as it happened, I made
+a lucky 'turn'--is that what you call it? For you make a great many
+yourself, I believe."
+
+She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her attitude,
+and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance and manner, a
+step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct always nerved her
+to successful dissimulation, and it was not the first time she had used
+her beauty to divert attention from an inconvenient topic.
+
+When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
+acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having comported
+himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He had always believed
+he had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt manner
+in which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had "come into line,"
+confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Her
+way of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a
+tribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The
+girl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
+advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage of
+her nervousness.
+
+He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible that
+Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale. With all his faults,
+Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions, and was the less likely to
+overstep them because they were so purely instinctive. But Lily recalled
+with a pang that there were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided
+to her, Gus "talked foolishly": in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word
+had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
+shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit
+enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not
+uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of
+supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general
+dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane,
+the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial
+conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions
+with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr.
+Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him
+with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
+flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice
+to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt of the
+expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening night of the
+opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised to take him up that
+winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of being first in the field.
+
+For a day or two after Rosedale's visit, Lily's thoughts were dogged by
+the consciousness of Trenor's shadowy claim, and she wished she had a
+clearer notion of the exact nature of the transaction which seemed to
+have put her in his power; but her mind shrank from any unusual
+application, and she was always helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover
+she had not seen Trenor since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in
+his continued absence the trace of Rosedale's words was soon effaced by
+other impressions.
+
+When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
+completely vanished that the sight of Trenor's ruddy countenance in the
+back of Mr. Rosedale's box filled her with a sense of pleasant
+reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity of
+appearing as Rosedale's guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and it was a
+relief to find herself supported by any one of her own set--for Mrs.
+Fisher's social habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify
+Miss Bart's.
+
+To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty in
+public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of dress, the
+insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the general stream of
+admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to
+be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength
+and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one's self
+lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
+counterpart of genius!
+
+All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happy
+shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, the
+cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. But
+brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt
+to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still
+performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If
+Lily's poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought
+that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor,
+the latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight of
+these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily look
+smarter in her life, that there wasn't a woman in the house who showed
+off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the
+opportunity of making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of
+gazing at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.
+
+It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the back of
+the box, where they found themselves alone between two acts, Trenor said,
+without preamble, and in a tone of sulky authority: "Look here, Lily, how
+is a fellow ever to see anything of you? I'm in town three or four days
+in the week, and you know a line to the club will always find me, but you
+don't seem to remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip
+out of me."
+
+The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any
+easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment
+for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows
+by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.
+
+"I'm very much flattered by your wanting to see me," she returned,
+essaying lightness instead, "but, unless you have mislaid my address, it
+would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt's--in fact, I
+rather expected you to look me up there."
+
+If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a
+failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows
+that made him look his dullest when he was angry: "Hang going to your
+aunt's, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps
+talking to you! You know I'm not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw--I'd
+always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on. But why
+can't we go off somewhere on a little lark together--a nice quiet little
+expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the
+station?"
+
+He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she
+fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on
+his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.
+
+The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
+tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: "I
+don't see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not
+always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what
+afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice
+quiet talk."
+
+"Hang talking! That's what you always say," returned Trenor, whose
+expletives lacked variety. "You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh
+wedding--but the plain English of it is that, now you've got what you
+wanted out of me, you'd rather have any other fellow about."
+
+His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with
+annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive
+hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Gus; I can't let you talk to me in that ridiculous
+way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn't we take a walk in the
+Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it's amusing to be rustic in
+town, and if you like I'll meet you there, and we'll go and feed the
+squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola."
+
+She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took
+the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.
+
+"All right, then: that's a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three
+o'clock, at the end of the Mall. I'll be there sharp, remember; you won't
+go back on me, Lily?"
+
+But to Miss Bart's relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by
+the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
+
+Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on
+the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at
+Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled
+the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom
+the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and
+distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions.
+But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily's intuitions sent out
+thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she
+was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the
+trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to
+him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
+kindness.
+
+"Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling," he began
+complainingly. "Not a shade of difference between this year and last,
+except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven't got
+new voices. My wife's musical, you know--puts me through a course of this
+every winter. It isn't so bad on Italian nights--then she comes late, and
+there's time to digest. But when they give Wagner we have to rush
+dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable--asphyxia in
+front and pleurisy in the back. There's Trenor leaving the box without
+drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don't make any
+difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you'd wonder why
+he's alive; I suppose he's leather inside too.--But I came to say that my
+wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven's
+sake say yes. She's got a lot of bores coming--intellectual ones, I mean;
+that's her new line, you know, and I'm not sure it ain't worse than the
+music. Some of 'em have long hair, and they start an argument with the
+soup, and don't notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is
+the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton
+brings them to the house--he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he
+are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of 'em if
+she chose, and I don't blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I
+say is: 'Don't let me see 'em eat!'"
+
+The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of
+pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing
+surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont
+episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a
+start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died
+out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST
+INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the
+apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset's letters, she might have
+continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession
+had fed her resentment to satiety.
+
+She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie an
+escape from Trenor's importunities.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning. Fifth
+Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging upward to the
+fashionable quarters about the Park, where illuminated windows and
+outspread awnings betokened the usual routine of hospitality. Other
+tributary currents crossed the mainstream, bearing their freight to the
+theatres, restaurants or opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded
+watch-tower of her upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the
+chronic volume of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward
+a Van Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
+that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry's.
+
+Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as keenly
+as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she
+enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who
+take part must proverbially forego. No one could have kept a more
+accurate record of social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring
+finger on the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
+extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special
+memory for the vicissitudes of the "new people" who rose to the surface
+with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or
+landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers; and she was apt
+to display a remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate,
+so that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost always
+able to say to Grace Stepney--the recipient of her prophecies--that she
+had known exactly what would happen.
+
+This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as that in
+which everybody "felt poor" except the Welly Brys and Mr. Simon Rosedale.
+It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where prices fell in accordance
+with that peculiar law which proves railway stocks and bales of cotton to
+be more sensitive to the allotment of executive power than many estimable
+citizens trained to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes
+supposed to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
+dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection: fashion
+sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito, general
+entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and short dinners
+became the fashion.
+
+But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of
+the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any
+magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the
+golden coach. The mere fact of growing richer at a time when most
+people's investments are shrinking, is calculated to attract envious
+attention; and according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale
+had found the secret of performing this miracle.
+
+Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune, and there
+was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one of the victims of
+the crash, who, in the space of twelve short months, had made the same
+number of millions, built a house in Fifth Avenue, filled a
+picture-gallery with old masters, entertained all New York in it, and
+been smuggled out of the country between a trained nurse and a doctor,
+while his creditors mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests
+explained to each other that they had dined with him only because they
+wanted to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
+career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his
+race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But he was
+prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season afforded him an
+unusual opportunity to shine, and he set about with patient industry to
+form a background for his growing glory. Mrs. Fisher was of immense
+service to him at this period. She had set off so many newcomers on the
+social stage that she was like one of those pieces of stock scenery which
+tell the experienced spectator exactly what is going to take place. But
+Mr. Rosedale wanted, in the long run, a more individual environment. He
+was sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never have
+credited him with perceiving, because he had no corresponding variations
+of manner; and it was becoming more and more clear to him that Miss Bart
+herself possessed precisely the complementary qualities needed to round
+off his social personality.
+
+Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston's vision.
+Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to overlook the MINUTIAE
+of the foreground, and she was much more likely to know where Carry
+Fisher had found the Welly Brys' CHEF for them, than what was happening
+to her own niece. She was not, however, without purveyors of information
+ready to supplement her deficiencies. Grace Stepney's mind was like a
+kind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn
+by a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
+inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how many
+trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney's head. She
+was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed
+that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for
+brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state. She knew that
+Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she
+inspired the same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a
+Gerty Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.
+
+In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they differed
+from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss Farish's heart was a
+fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney's a precise register of facts
+as manifested in their relation to herself. She had sensibilities which,
+to Lily, would have seemed comic in a person with a freckled nose and red
+eyelids, who lived in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston's
+drawing-room; but poor Grace's limitations gave them a more concentrated
+inner life, as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser
+efflorescence. She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did
+not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant, but
+because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less mortifying to
+believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to
+assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. Even such
+scant civilities as Lily accorded to Mr. Rosedale would have made Miss
+Stepney her friend for life; but how could she foresee that such a friend
+was worth cultivating? How, moreover, can a young woman who has never
+been ignored measure the pang which this injury inflicts? And, lastly,
+how could Lily, accustomed to choose between a pressure of engagements,
+guess that she had mortally offended Miss Stepney by causing her to be
+excluded from one of Mrs. Peniston's infrequent dinner-parties?
+
+Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense of family
+obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their honeymoon she
+felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room lamps and extract
+her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston's rare
+entertainments were preceded by days of heart-rending vacillation as to
+every detail of the feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern
+of the table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary
+discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as
+the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in it. For a week
+the prospect had lighted up Miss Stepney's colourless existence; then she
+had been given to understand that it would be more convenient to have her
+another day. Miss Stepney knew exactly what had happened. Lily, to whom
+family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her
+aunt that a dinner of "smart" people would be much more to the taste of
+the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her niece
+in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce Grace's exile.
+After all, Grace could come any other day; why should she mind being put
+off?
+
+It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other day--and
+because she knew her relations were in the secret of her unoccupied
+evenings--that this incident loomed gigantically on her horizon. She was
+aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and dull resentment was turned
+to active animosity.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the dinner,
+laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+"Gus Trenor?--Lily and Gus Trenor?" she said, growing so suddenly pale
+that her visitor was almost alarmed.
+
+"Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don't mean . . ."
+
+"I don't know what you DO mean," said Mrs. Peniston, with a frightened
+quiver in her small fretful voice. "Such things were never heard of in my
+day. And my own niece! I'm not sure I understand you. Do people say he's
+in love with her?"
+
+Mrs. Peniston's horror was genuine. Though she boasted an unequalled
+familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she had the innocence
+of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a part of "history," and to
+whom it never occurs that the scandals she reads of in lesson-hours may
+be repeating themselves in the next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her
+imagination shrouded, like the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of
+course, that society was "very much changed," and that many women her
+mother would have thought "peculiar" were now in a position to be
+critical about their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils of
+divorce with her rector, and had felt thankful at times that Lily was
+still unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could attach to a young
+girl's name, above all that it could be lightly coupled with that of a
+married man, was so new to her that she was as much aghast as if she had
+been accused of leaving her carpets down all summer, or of violating any
+of the other cardinal laws of housekeeping.
+
+Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel the
+superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was really pitiable
+to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston! She smiled at the
+latter's question. "People always say unpleasant things--and certainly
+they're a great deal together. A friend of mine met them the other
+afternoon in the Park--quite late, after the lamps were lit. It's a pity
+Lily makes herself so conspicuous."
+
+"CONSPICUOUS!" gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering her voice
+to mitigate the horror. "What sort of things do they say? That he means
+to get a divorce and marry her?"
+
+Grace Stepney laughed outright. "Dear me, no! He would hardly do that.
+It--it's a flirtation--nothing more."
+
+"A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to tell me
+that, with Lily's looks and advantages, she could find no better use for
+her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man almost old enough to be her
+father?" This argument had such a convincing ring that it gave Mrs.
+Peniston sufficient reassurance to pick up her work, while she waited for
+Grace Stepney to rally her scattered forces.
+
+But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. "That's the worst of
+it--people say she isn't wasting her time! Every one knows, as you say,
+that Lily is too handsome and--and charming--to devote herself to a man
+like Gus Trenor unless--"
+
+"Unless?" echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath nervously. It was
+agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to shock her to the verge of
+anger. Miss Stepney was not sufficiently familiar with the classic drama
+to have recalled in advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially
+received, but she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a
+reduced wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To
+the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over more
+personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong moment to
+boast of her niece's charms.
+
+"Unless," said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned emphasis,
+"unless there are material advantages to be gained by making herself
+agreeable to him."
+
+She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly that
+Mrs. Peniston's black brocade, with the cut jet fringe, would have been
+hers at the end of the season.
+
+Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same idea
+had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was beneath her dignity
+to have her nerves racked by a dependent relative who wore her old
+clothes.
+
+"If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations," she
+said coldly, "you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than
+just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a large dinner."
+
+The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney's last scruples. "I
+don't know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in telling you
+about Lily. I was sure I shouldn't get any thanks for it," she returned
+with a flare of temper. "But I have some family feeling left, and as you
+are the only person who has any authority over Lily, I thought you ought
+to know what is being said of her."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Peniston, "what I complain of is that you haven't told
+me yet what IS being said."
+
+"I didn't suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say that Gus
+Trenor pays her bills."
+
+"Pays her bills--her bills?" Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. "I can't
+imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has her own
+income--and I provide for her very handsomely--"
+
+"Oh, we all know that," interposed Miss Stepney drily. "But Lily wears a
+great many smart gowns--"
+
+"I like her to be well-dressed--it's only suitable!"
+
+"Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides."
+
+Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this point; but
+Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame. She was like the
+stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must be annihilated to be
+convinced.
+
+"Gambling debts? Lily?" Mrs. Peniston's voice shook with anger and
+bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out of her
+mind. "What do you mean by her gambling debts?"
+
+"Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily's set one is liable to
+lose a great deal--and I don't suppose Lily always wins."
+
+"Who told you that my niece played cards for money?"
+
+"Mercy, cousin Julia, don't look at me as if I were trying to turn you
+against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge. Mrs. Gryce told
+me herself that it was her gambling that frightened Percy Gryce--it seems
+he was really taken with her at first. But, of course, among Lily's
+friends it's quite the custom for girls to play for money. In fact,
+people are inclined to excuse her on that account----"
+
+"To excuse her for what?"
+
+"For being hard up--and accepting attentions from men like Gus
+Trenor--and George Dorset----"
+
+Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. "George Dorset? Is there any one else? I
+should like to know the worst, if you please."
+
+"Don't put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a good deal
+with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her--but of course that's only
+natural. And I'm sure there is no truth in the horrid things people say;
+but she HAS been spending a great deal of money this winter. Evie Van
+Osburgh was at Celeste's ordering her trousseau the other day--yes, the
+marriage takes place next month--and she told me that Celeste showed her
+the most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And people
+say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of Gus; but I'm
+sure I'm sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a kindness."
+
+Mrs. Peniston's genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney
+with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect of succeeding to
+the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason have generally some
+crack through which suspicion filters, and her visitor's insinuations did
+not glide off as easily as she had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked
+scenes, and her determination to avoid them had always led her to hold
+herself aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls had
+not been supposed to require close supervision. They were generally
+assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of courtship and
+marriage, and interference in such affairs on the part of their natural
+guardians was considered as unwarrantable as a spectator's suddenly
+joining in a game. There had of course been "fast" girls even in Mrs.
+Peniston's early experience; but their fastness, at worst, was understood
+to be a mere excess of animal spirits, against which there could be no
+graver charge than that of being "unladylike." The modern fastness
+appeared synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was
+as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the drawing-room:
+it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to admit.
+
+She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had heard,
+or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of discreet
+interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and a scene, in the
+shaken state of Mrs. Peniston's nerves, with the effects of her dinner
+not worn off, and her mind still tremulous with new impressions, was a
+risk she deemed it her duty to avoid. But there remained in her thoughts
+a settled deposit of resentment against her niece, all the denser because
+it was not to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible
+of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the
+charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.
+Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a contagious illness in the
+house, and she was doomed to sit shivering among her contaminated
+furniture.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her
+critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had
+a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another,
+without ever perceiving the right road till it was too late to take it.
+
+Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not imagined
+that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money for her would
+ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in itself still seemed
+harmless enough; only it was a fertile source of harmful complications.
+As she exhausted the amusement of spending the money these complications
+became more pressing, and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in
+tracing the causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the
+thought that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
+This enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of friendliness
+between the two women. Lily's visit to the Dorsets had resulted, for
+both, in the discovery that they could be of use to each other; and the
+civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its
+antagonist than in confounding him. Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in
+a new sentimental experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher's late property, Ned
+Silverton, was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had
+once remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband's
+attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his
+self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather these were
+especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy
+Gryce stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset's humours, and if
+the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her
+situation were teaching her to make much of minor opportunities.
+
+Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such difficulties on
+the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy Trenor's lavish impulses,
+and Dorset's admiration was not likely to express itself in financial
+"tips," even had Lily cared to renew her experiences in that line. What
+she required, for the moment, of the Dorsets' friendship, was simply its
+social sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but
+this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In her set
+such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who flirted with a
+married man was merely assumed to be pressing to the limit of her
+opportunities. It was Trenor himself who frightened her. Their walk in
+the Park had not been a success. Trenor had married young, and since his
+marriage his intercourse with women had not taken the form of the
+sentimental small-talk which doubles upon itself like the paths in a
+maze. He was first puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led
+back to the same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually
+losing control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
+mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been somewhat
+heavily "touched" by the fall in stocks; his household expenses weighed
+on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all sides, a sullen opposition to
+his wishes, instead of the easy good luck he had hitherto encountered.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open, and
+descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but preferring
+the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the restrictions of a
+dull season. Since the holidays she had not urged Lily to return to
+Bellomont, and the first time they met in town Lily fancied there was a
+shade of coldness in her manner. Was it merely the expression of her
+displeasure at Miss Bart's neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached
+her? The latter contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a
+sense of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root anywhere,
+it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed in the sincerity
+of her friend's affection, though it sometimes showed itself in
+self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from any
+risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly conscious of
+the way in which such an estrangement would react on herself. The fact
+that Gus Trenor was Judy's husband was at times Lily's strongest reason
+for disliking him, and for resenting the obligation under which he had
+placed her. To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New
+Year, "proposed" herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had learned in
+advance that the presence of a large party would protect her from too
+great assiduity on Trenor's part, and his wife's telegraphic "come by all
+means" seemed to assure her of her usual welcome.
+
+Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always prevailed
+over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her hostess's manner.
+Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the experiment of coming to
+Bellomont was destined not to be successful. The party was made up of
+what Mrs. Trenor called "poky people"--her generic name for persons who
+did not play bridge--and, it being her habit to group all such
+obstructionists in one class, she usually invited them together,
+regardless of their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an
+irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in common than
+their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms developed in a group
+lacking the one taste which might have amalgamated them, were in this
+case aggravated by bad weather, and by the ill-concealed boredom of their
+host and hostess. In such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to
+Lily to fuse the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a
+service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her accustomed
+zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle resistance to her efforts.
+If Mrs. Trenor's manner toward her was unchanged, there was certainly a
+faint coldness in that of the other ladies. An occasional caustic
+allusion to "your friends the Wellington Brys," or to "the little Jew who
+has bought the Greiner house--some one told us you knew him, Miss
+Bart,"--showed Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of
+society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the
+right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The indication was
+a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have smiled at it, trusting to
+the charm of her personality to dispel any prejudice against her. But now
+she had grown more sensitive to criticism and less confident in her power
+of disarming it. She knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont
+permitted themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
+they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind her
+back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor's manner should seem to
+justify their disapproval made her seek every pretext for avoiding him,
+and she left Bellomont conscious of having failed in every purpose which
+had taken her there.
+
+In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had the
+happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly Brys, after
+much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly acquired friends, had
+decided on the bold move of giving a general entertainment. To attack
+society collectively, when one's means of approach are limited to a few
+acquaintances, is like advancing into a strange country with an
+insufficient number of scouts; but such rash tactics have sometimes led
+to brilliant victories, and the Brys had determined to put their fate to
+the touch. Mrs. Fisher, to whom they had entrusted the conduct of the
+affair, had decided that TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music were the
+two baits most likely to attract the desired prey, and after prolonged
+negotiations, and the kind of wire-pulling in which she was known to
+excel, she had induced a dozen fashionable women to exhibit themselves in
+a series of pictures which, by a farther miracle of persuasion, the
+distinguished portrait painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed upon to
+organize.
+
+Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth's guidance her
+vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than
+dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal of
+draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights and shadows.
+Her dramatic instinct was roused by the choice of subjects, and the
+gorgeous reproductions of historic dress stirred an imagination which
+only visual impressions could reach. But keenest of all was the
+exhilaration of displaying her own beauty under a new aspect: of showing
+that her loveliness was no mere fixed quality, but an element shaping all
+emotions to fresh forms of grace.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's measures had been well-taken, and society, surprised in a
+dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs. Bry's hospitality. The
+protesting minority were forgotten in the throng which abjured and came;
+and the audience was almost as brilliant as the show.
+
+Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
+inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom that a
+man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long since learned
+that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small group of the
+like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and was not insensible
+to the part money plays in their production: all he asked was that the
+very rich should live up to their calling as stage-managers, and not
+spend their money in a dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be
+charged with doing. Their recently built house, whatever it might lack as
+a frame for domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the display of a
+festal assemblage as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian
+architects improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of
+improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so
+rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the
+marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat one's self in
+one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it was not painted
+against the wall.
+
+Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself, from
+an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank enjoyment. The
+company, in obedience to the decorative instinct which calls for fine
+clothes in fine surroundings, had dressed rather with an eye to Mrs.
+Bry's background than to herself. The seated throng, filling the immense
+room without undue crowding, presented a surface of rich tissues and
+jewelled shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and
+the flushed splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of the
+room a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch curtained with
+folds of old damask; but in the pause before the parting of the folds
+there was little thought of what they might reveal, for every woman who
+had accepted Mrs. Bry's invitation was engaged in trying to find out how
+many of her friends had done the same.
+
+Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that indiscriminate and
+uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss Bart's finer perceptions. It
+may be that Selden's nearness had something to do with the quality of his
+cousin's pleasure; but Miss Farish was so little accustomed to refer her
+enjoyment of such scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely
+conscious of a deeper sense of contentment.
+
+"Wasn't it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course it would never
+have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list, and I should have
+been so sorry to miss seeing it all--and especially Lily herself. Some
+one told me the ceiling was by Veronese--you would know, of course,
+Lawrence. I suppose it's very beautiful, but his women are so dreadfully
+fat. Goddesses? Well, I can only say that if they'd been mortals and had
+to wear corsets, it would have been better for them. I think our women
+are much handsomer. And this room is wonderfully becoming--every one
+looks so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George
+Dorset's pearls--I suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent of our
+Girls' Club for a year. Not that I ought to complain about the club;
+every one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you that Lily had
+given us three hundred dollars? Wasn't it splendid of her? And then she
+collected a lot of money from her friends--Mrs. Bry gave us five hundred,
+and Mr. Rosedale a thousand. I wish Lily were not so nice to Mr.
+Rosedale, but she says it's no use being rude to him, because he doesn't
+see the difference. She really can't bear to hurt people's feelings--it
+makes me so angry when I hear her called cold and conceited! The girls at
+the club don't call her that. Do you know she has been there with me
+twice?--yes, Lily! And you should have seen their eyes! One of them said
+it was as good as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat
+there, and laughed and talked with them--not a bit as if she were being
+CHARITABLE, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did. They've
+been asking ever since when she's coming back; and she's promised
+me----oh!"
+
+Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of the curtain on
+the first TABLEAU--a group of nymphs dancing across flower-strewn sward
+in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend
+for their effect not only on the happy disposal of lights and the
+delusive-interposition of layers of gauze, but on a corresponding
+adjustment of the mental vision. To unfurnished minds they remain, in
+spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but
+to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary
+world between fact and imagination. Selden's mind was of this order: he
+could yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
+spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry's TABLEAUX wanted none of the qualities
+which go to the producing of such illusions, and under Morpeth's
+organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other with the rhythmic march
+of some splendid frieze, in which the fugitive curves of living flesh and
+the wandering light of young eyes have been subdued to plastic harmony
+without losing the charm of life.
+
+The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had been
+cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No one, for
+instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry Fisher, with her
+short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of her eyes, the
+provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant Miss Smedden from
+Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous curves of Titian's Daughter,
+lifting her gold salver laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of
+rippled hair and rich brocade, and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed
+the frailer Dutch type, with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes and
+lashes, made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a
+curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar
+of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and
+marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians,
+lounging by a fountain in a sunlit glade.
+
+Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in Selden,
+leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even Gerty Farish's
+running commentary--"Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson looks!" or: "That must be
+Kate Corby, to the right there, in purple"--did not break the spell of
+the illusion. Indeed, so skilfully had the personality of the actors been
+subdued to the scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of
+the audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
+suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly the
+portrait of Miss Bart.
+
+Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of personality--the
+unanimous "Oh!" of the spectators was a tribute, not to the brush-work of
+Reynolds's "Mrs. Lloyd" but to the flesh and blood loveliness of Lily
+Bart. She had shown her artistic intelligence in selecting a type so like
+her own that she could embody the person represented without ceasing to
+be herself. It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into,
+Reynolds's canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams
+of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a splendid
+setting--she had thought for a moment of representing Tiepolo's
+Cleopatra--had yielded to the truer instinct of trusting to her
+unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a picture without
+distracting accessories of dress or surroundings. Her pale draperies,
+and the background of foliage against which she stood, served only to
+relieve the long dryad-like curves that swept upward from her poised foot
+to her lifted arm. The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of
+soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden
+always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
+her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to
+see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her
+little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of
+which her beauty was a part.
+
+"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there isn't
+a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to know it!"
+
+These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
+Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden's shoulder
+whenever the parting of the curtains presented any exceptional
+opportunity for the study of the female outline, affected their hearer in
+an unexpected way. It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily's
+beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of the comments had
+imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of
+indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the
+standards by which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban
+for a judgment on Miranda?
+
+In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole
+tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all
+that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him
+from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where
+he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again.
+
+He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. "Wasn't she too
+beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple dress? It
+makes her look like the real Lily--the Lily I know."
+
+He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he corrected;
+and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding, exclaimed joyfully:
+"I'll tell her that! She always says you dislike her."
+
+The performance over, Selden's first impulse was to seek Miss Bart.
+During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX, the actors
+had seated themselves here and there in the audience, diversifying its
+conventional appearance by the varied picturesqueness of their dress.
+Lily, however, was not among them, and her absence served to protract the
+effect she had produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see
+her too soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
+detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding,
+and on his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however, he
+knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her side; and
+though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither it would, without
+making an immediate effort to reach her, his procrastination was not due
+to any lingering resistance, but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in
+the sense of complete surrender.
+
+Lily had not an instant's doubt as to the meaning of the murmur greeting
+her appearance. No other tableau had been received with that precise note
+of approval: it had obviously been called forth by herself, and not by
+the picture she impersonated. She had feared at the last moment that she
+was risking too much in dispensing with the advantages of a more
+sumptuous setting, and the completeness of her triumph gave her an
+intoxicating sense of recovered power. Not caring to diminish the
+impression she had produced, she held herself aloof from the audience
+till the movement of dispersal before supper, and thus had a second
+opportunity of showing herself to advantage, as the throng poured slowly
+into the empty drawing-room where she was standing.
+
+She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed itself as
+the circulation became general, and the individual comments on her
+success were a delightful prolongation of the collective applause. At
+such moments she lost something of her natural fastidiousness, and cared
+less for the quality of the admiration received than for its quantity.
+Differences of personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in
+which her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
+approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning on Ned
+Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of capturing for
+himself.
+
+Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs. Fisher, as
+whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should break up the group
+before Selden reached the threshold of the room. One or two of the men
+wandered off in search of their partners for supper, and the others,
+noticing Selden's approach, gave way to him in accordance with the tacit
+freemasonry of the ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he
+reached her; and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the
+satisfaction of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen
+as it rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
+felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced. She
+read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation of her
+triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she
+cared to be beautiful.
+
+Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in silence,
+and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but against the tide
+which was setting thither. The faces about her flowed by like the
+streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was leading
+her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the long
+suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden.
+Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent
+dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the
+depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
+lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash
+of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might
+have been blown across a sleeping lake.
+
+Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a
+part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them
+to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the
+boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude
+about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it
+together. At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so
+that her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of the
+branches. Selden followed her, and still without speaking they seated
+themselves on a bench beside the fountain.
+
+Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a child.
+"You never speak to me--you think hard things of me," she murmured.
+
+"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.
+
+"Then why do we never see each other? Why can't we be friends? You
+promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as though the
+words were drawn from her unwillingly.
+
+"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a low
+voice.
+
+She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion of a
+flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips touched. She drew back and
+rose from her seat. Selden rose too, and they stood facing each other.
+Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a moment against her cheek.
+
+"Ah, love me, love me--but don't tell me so!" she sighed with her eyes in
+his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped through the
+arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the room beyond.
+
+Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the transiency of
+exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but presently he reentered
+the house and made his way through the deserted rooms to the door. A few
+sumptuously-cloaked ladies were already gathered in the marble vestibule,
+and in the coat-room he found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.
+
+The former, at Selden's approach, paused in the careful selection of a
+cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near the door.
+
+"Hallo, Selden, going too? You're an Epicurean like myself, I see: you
+don't want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin. Gad, what a
+show of good-looking women; but not one of 'em could touch that little
+cousin of mine. Talk of jewels--what's a woman want with jewels when
+she's got herself to show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they
+wear cover up their figures when they've got 'em. I never knew till
+tonight what an outline Lily has."
+
+"It's not her fault if everybody don't know it now," growled Trenor,
+flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined coat. "Damned bad
+taste, I call it--no, no cigar for me. You can't tell what you're smoking
+in one of these new houses--likely as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay
+for supper? Not if I know it! When people crowd their rooms so that you
+can't get near any one you want to speak to, I'd as soon sup in the
+elevated at the rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says
+life's too short to spend it in breaking in new people."
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bedside.
+
+One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town that
+afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dine
+with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly that an important
+case called him to Albany, whence he would be unable to return till the
+evening, and asked Lily to let him know at what hour on the following day
+she would see him.
+
+Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his letter. The
+scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part of her dreams; she
+had not expected to wake to such evidence of its reality. Her first
+movement was one of annoyance: this unforeseen act of Selden's added
+another complication to life. It was so unlike him to yield to such an
+irrational impulse! Did he really mean to ask her to marry him? She had
+once shown him the impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent
+behaviour seemed to prove that he had accepted the situation with a
+reasonableness somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more
+agreeable to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the
+cost of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
+sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the episode
+of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could not marry him, it
+would be kinder to him, as well as easier for herself, to write a line
+amicably evading his request to see her: he was not the man to mistake
+such a hint, and when next they met it would be on their usual friendly
+footing.
+
+Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted to
+write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her resolve. She
+was still languid from her brief sleep and the exhilaration of the
+evening, and the sight of Selden's writing brought back the culminating
+moment of her triumph: the moment when she had read in his eyes that no
+philosophy was proof against her power. It would be pleasant to have that
+sensation again . . . no one else could give it to her in its fulness;
+and she could not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection by an
+act of definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily: "TOMORROW
+AT FOUR;" murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet into its
+envelope: "I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes."
+
+
+
+Judy Trenor's summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first time she
+had received a direct communication from Bellomont since the close of her
+last visit there, and she was still visited by the dread of having
+incurred Judy's displeasure. But this characteristic command seemed to
+reestablish their former relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that
+her friend had probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys'
+entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast, perhaps
+for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband, perhaps because, as
+Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she "couldn't bear new people
+when she hadn't discovered them herself." At any rate, though she
+remained haughtily at Bellomont, Lily suspected in her a devouring
+eagerness to hear of what she had missed, and to learn exactly in what
+measure Mrs. Wellington Bry had surpassed all previous competitors for
+social recognition. Lily was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but
+it happened that she was dining out. She determined, however, to see Mrs.
+Trenor for a few moments, and ringing for her maid she despatched a
+telegram to say that she would be with her friend that evening at ten.
+
+She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal feast a
+few of the performers of the previous evening. There was to be plantation
+music in the studio after dinner--for Mrs. Fisher, despairing of the
+republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to her small crowded house
+a spacious apartment, which, whatever its uses in her hours of plastic
+inspiration, served at other times for the exercise of an indefatigable
+hospitality. Lily was reluctant to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and
+she would have liked to lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but
+she could not break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten she
+asked her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth Avenue to the
+Trenors'.
+
+She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that Judy's presence in
+town was not signalized by a greater promptness in admitting her; and her
+surprise was increased when, instead of the expected footman, pushing his
+shoulders into a tardy coat, a shabby care-taking person in calico let
+her into the shrouded hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the
+threshold of the drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual volubility
+while he relieved her of her cloak and drew her into the room.
+
+"Come along to the den; it's the only comfortable place in the house.
+Doesn't this room look as if it was waiting for the body to be brought
+down? Can't see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up in this awful
+slippery white stuff--it's enough to give a fellow pneumonia to walk
+through these rooms on a cold day. You look a little pinched yourself, by
+the way: it's rather a sharp night out. I noticed it walking up from the
+club. Come along, and I'll give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast
+yourself over the fire and try some of my new Egyptians--that little
+Turkish chap at the Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try,
+and if you like 'em I'll get out a lot for you: they don't have 'em here
+yet, but I'll cable."
+
+He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where Mrs.
+Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there was an air of
+occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers, newspapers, a littered
+writing-table, and a general aspect of lamp-lit familiarity, so that it
+was a surprise not to see Judy's energetic figure start up from the
+arm-chair near the fire.
+
+It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat in
+question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and near it
+stood one of those intricate folding tables which British ingenuity has
+devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco and spirits. The sight
+of such appliances in a drawing-room was not unusual in Lily's set, where
+smoking and drinking were unrestricted by considerations of time and
+place, and her first movement was to help herself to one of the
+cigarettes recommended by Trenor, while she checked his loquacity by
+asking, with a surprised glance: "Where's Judy?"
+
+Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and perhaps by
+prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending over the latter to
+decipher their silver labels.
+
+"Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy water--you do
+look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your nose is red. I'll take
+another glass to keep you company--Judy?--Why, you see, Judy's got a
+devil of a head ache--quite knocked out with it, poor thing--she asked me
+to explain--make it all right, you know--Do come up to the fire, though;
+you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me make you comfortable, there's a
+good girl."
+
+He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her toward a low
+seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed herself quietly.
+
+"Do you mean to say that Judy's not well enough to see me? Doesn't she
+want me to go upstairs?"
+
+Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to set it
+down before he answered.
+
+"Why, no--the fact is, she's not up to seeing anybody. It came on
+suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully sorry she
+was--if she'd known where you were dining she'd have sent you word."
+
+"She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram. But it
+doesn't matter, of course. I suppose if she's so poorly she won't go back
+to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and see her then."
+
+"Yes: exactly--that's capital. I'll tell her you'll pop in tomorrow
+morning. And now do sit down a minute, there's a dear, and let's have a
+nice quiet jaw together. You won't take a drop, just for sociability?
+Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why, don't you like it? What
+are you chucking it away for?"
+
+"I am chucking it away because I must go, if you'll have the goodness to
+call a cab for me," Lily returned with a smile.
+
+She did not like Trenor's unusual excitability, with its too evident
+explanation, and the thought of being alone with him, with her friend out
+of reach upstairs, at the other end of the great empty house, did not
+conduce to a desire to prolong their TETE-A-TETE.
+
+But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved between
+herself and the door.
+
+"Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy'd been here you'd have
+sat gossiping till all hours--and you can't even give me five minutes!
+It's always the same story. Last night I couldn't get near you--I went to
+that damned vulgar party just to see you, and there was everybody talking
+about you, and asking me if I'd ever seen anything so stunning, and when
+I tried to come up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just
+went on laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be
+able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when you were
+mentioned."
+
+He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in which
+resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she had regained
+her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the middle of the room,
+while her slight smile seemed to put an ever increasing distance between
+herself and Trenor.
+
+Across it she said: "Don't be absurd, Gus. It's past eleven, and I must
+really ask you to ring for a cab."
+
+He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown to detest.
+
+"And supposing I won't ring for one--what'll you do then?"
+
+"I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her."
+
+Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. "Look here, Lily:
+won't you give me five minutes of your own accord?"
+
+"Not tonight, Gus: you----"
+
+"Very good, then: I'll take 'em. And as many more as I want." He had
+squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
+He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.
+
+"Go and sit down there, please: I've got a word to say to you."
+
+Lily's quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew herself
+up and moved toward the door.
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time. I
+shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once."
+
+He burst into a laugh. "Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you won't
+find Judy. She ain't there."
+
+Lily cast a startled look upon him. "Do you mean that Judy is not in the
+house--not in town?" she exclaimed.
+
+"That's just what I do mean," returned Trenor, his bluster sinking to
+sullenness under her look.
+
+"Nonsense--I don't believe you. I am going upstairs," she said
+impatiently.
+
+He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold unimpeded.
+
+"Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont."
+
+But Lily had a flash of reassurance. "If she hadn't come she would have
+sent me word----"
+
+"She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know."
+
+"I received no message."
+
+"I didn't send any."
+
+The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her opponent
+through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations indistinct.
+
+"I can't imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on me; but if
+you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour I must again ask
+you to send for a cab."
+
+It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung by irony
+it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry streaks on Trenor's
+face might have been raised by an actual lash.
+
+"Look here, Lily, don't take that high and mighty tone with me." He had
+again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive shrinking from him
+she let him regain command of the threshold. "I DID play a trick on you;
+I own up to it; but if you think I'm ashamed you're mistaken. Lord knows
+I've been patient enough--I've hung round and looked like an ass. And
+all the while you were letting a lot of other fellows make up to
+you . . . letting 'em make fun of me, I daresay . . . I'm not sharp, and
+can't dress my friends up to look funny, as you do . . . but I can tell
+when it's being done to me . . . I can tell fast enough when I'm made a
+fool of . . ."
+
+"Ah, I shouldn't have thought that!" flashed from Lily; but her laugh
+dropped to silence under his look.
+
+"No; you wouldn't have thought it; but you'll know better now. That's
+what you're here for tonight. I've been waiting for a quiet time to talk
+things over, and now I've got it I mean to make you hear me out."
+
+His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
+steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily than the
+excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of mind forsook her.
+She had more than once been in situations where a quick sword-play of wit
+had been needful to cover her retreat; but her frightened heart-throbs
+told her that here such skill would not avail.
+
+To gain time she repeated: "I don't understand what you want."
+
+Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw himself
+in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
+
+"I'll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I stand.
+Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally allowed to have a
+seat at table."
+
+She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of having to
+conciliate where she longed to humble.
+
+"I don't know what you mean--but you must see, Gus, that I can't stay
+here talking to you at this hour----"
+
+"Gad, you go to men's houses fast enough in broad day light--strikes me
+you're not always so deuced careful of appearances."
+
+The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that follows
+on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then--this was the way men talked
+of her--She felt suddenly weak and defenceless: there was a throb of
+self-pity in her throat. But all the while another self was sharpening
+her to vigilance, whispering the terrified warning that every word and
+gesture must be measured.
+
+"If you have brought me here to say insulting things----" she began.
+
+Trenor laughed. "Don't talk stage-rot. I don't want to insult you. But a
+man's got his feelings--and you've played with mine too long. I didn't
+begin this business--kept out of the way, and left the track clear for
+the other chaps, till you rummaged me out and set to work to make an ass
+of me--and an easy job you had of it, too. That's the trouble--it was too
+easy for you--you got reckless--thought you could turn me inside out, and
+chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that ain't
+playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. Of course I know now
+what you wanted--it wasn't my beautiful eyes you were after--but I tell
+you what, Miss Lily, you've got to pay up for making me think so----"
+
+He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward her with
+a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every nerve tore at
+her to retreat as he advanced.
+
+"Pay up?" she faltered. "Do you mean that I owe you money?"
+
+He laughed again. "Oh, I'm not asking for payment in kind. But there's
+such a thing as fair play--and interest on one's money--and hang me if
+I've had as much as a look from you----"
+
+"Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me how to
+invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of business . . .
+you told me it was all right----"
+
+"It WAS all right--it is, Lily: you're welcome to all of it, and ten
+times more. I'm only asking for a word of thanks from you." He was closer
+still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the frightened self in her
+was dragging the other down.
+
+"I HAVE thanked you; I've shown I was grateful. What more have you done
+than any friend might do, or any one accept from a friend?"
+
+Trenor caught her up with a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted as much
+before--and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to chuck me. I don't
+care how you settled your score with them--if you fooled 'em I'm that
+much to the good. Don't stare at me like that--I know I'm not talking the
+way a man is supposed to talk to a girl--but, hang it, if you don't like
+it you can stop me quick enough--you know I'm mad about you--damn the
+money, there's plenty more of it--if THAT bothers you . . . I was a
+brute, Lily--Lily!--just look at me----"
+
+Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke--wave crashing on wave so
+close that the moral shame was one with the physical dread. It seemed to
+her that self-esteem would have made her invulnerable--that it was her
+own dishonour which put a fearful solitude about her.
+
+His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back from
+him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
+
+"I've told you I don't understand--but if I owe you money you shall be
+paid----"
+
+Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called out
+the primitive man.
+
+"Ah--you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale--and take your chances of
+fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless--unless you've settled your
+other scores already--and I'm the only one left out in the cold!"
+
+She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words--the words were worse
+than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body--in her throat,
+her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes travelled despairingly
+about the room--they lit on the bell, and she remembered that help was in
+call. Yes, but scandal with it--a hideous mustering of tongues. No, she
+must fight her way out alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to
+be in the house with Trenor--there must be nothing to excite conjecture
+in her way of leaving it.
+
+She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
+
+"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to say?"
+
+To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare. With
+his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him chill and
+humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the fumes of his
+libations, and the situation loomed before him black and naked as the
+ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the hand of inherited order,
+plucked back the bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts.
+Trenor's eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
+ledge.
+
+"Go home! Go away from here"----he stammered, and turning his back on her
+walked toward the hearth.
+
+The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate lucidity.
+The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and she heard herself,
+in a voice that was her own yet outside herself, bidding him ring for the
+servant, bidding him give the order for a hansom, directing him to put
+her in it when it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but
+an insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly, and
+nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light
+words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while
+all the while she shook with inward loathing. On the doorstep, with the
+street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as
+the prisoner's first draught of free air; but the clearness of brain
+continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
+lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there
+something half-familiar in its outline?--which, as she entered the
+hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the obscurity of
+the side street.
+
+But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness
+closed on her. "I can't think--I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her
+head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to
+herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always
+known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She
+had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of
+the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of
+the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
+huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might
+sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners,
+and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her
+brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing--the familiar
+alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was
+a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past
+seemed simple, natural, full of daylight--and she was alone in a place of
+darkness and pollution.--Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened
+her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she
+saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past
+eleven--there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend
+them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled
+from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her
+through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
+vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed--and the darkness would
+frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the
+room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated
+her room at Mrs. Peniston's--its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact
+that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human
+nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four
+walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
+
+Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
+superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even
+had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs.
+Peniston's mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as
+Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that
+questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the
+darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but
+compassion holding its breath.
+
+She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!--they
+were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach there before this
+labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips--if only she could
+feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she shook in the ague-fit of fear
+that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door in the roof and called
+the address to the driver. It was not so late--Gerty might still be
+waking. And even if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate
+every recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend's
+call.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys' entertainment, woke
+from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were less vivid in hue, more
+subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they
+were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such
+flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was
+accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through
+the cracks of other people's lives.
+
+Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but
+unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to
+herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If
+these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine
+psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite
+in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to
+look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends. Now that
+she was enjoying a little private feast of her own, it would have seemed
+incredibly selfish not to lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one
+with whom she would rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.
+
+As to the nature of Selden's growing kindness, Gerty would no more have
+dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a butterfly's
+colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize on the wonder would
+be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it fade and stiffen in her
+hand: better the sense of beauty palpitating out of reach, while she held
+her breath and watched where it would alight. Yet Selden's manner at the
+Brys' had brought the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be
+beating in her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
+so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
+absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for, as the
+liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but she was quick
+to feel in him a change implying that for once she could give pleasure as
+well as receive it.
+
+And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should be
+reached through their interest in Lily Bart!
+
+Gerty's affection for her friend--a sentiment that had learned to keep
+itself alive on the scantiest diet--had grown to active adoration since
+Lily's restless curiosity had drawn her into the circle of Miss Farish's
+work. Lily's taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite
+for well-doing. Her visit to the Girls' Club had first brought her in
+contact with the dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with
+philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled
+on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay all
+around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life reached
+its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter night enclose
+a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this was in the natural
+order of things, and the orchid basking in its artificially created
+atmosphere could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by
+the ice on the panes.
+
+But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of
+poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments.
+Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the
+mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable
+separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure,
+her own fierce revulsions from pain--that some of these bundles of
+feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to
+look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love--this discovery gave
+Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a
+life. Lily's nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
+demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which did not
+press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was drawn out of
+herself by the interest of her direct relation with a world so unlike her
+own. She had supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or
+two of Miss Farish's most appealing subjects, and the admiration and
+interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club
+ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.
+
+Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to disentangle
+the mixed threads of which Lily's philanthropy was woven. She supposed
+her beautiful friend to be actuated by the same motive as herself--that
+sharpening of the moral vision which makes all human suffering so near
+and insistent that the other aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty
+lived by such simple formulas that she did not hesitate to class her
+friend's state with the emotional "change of heart" to which her dealings
+with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
+she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer
+to all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real
+Lily," and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her
+placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities--a
+sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the receipt of
+a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine with her that evening.
+
+While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement produced
+in her small household, Selden was at one with her in thinking with
+intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him to Albany was not
+complicated enough to absorb all his attention, and he had the
+professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind free when its services
+were not needed. This part--which at the moment seemed dangerously like
+the whole--was filled to the brim with the sensations of the previous
+evening. Selden understood the symptoms: he recognized the fact that he
+was paying up, as there had always been a chance of his having to pay up,
+for the voluntary exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from
+permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a
+different way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment.
+There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
+had never wanted to marry a "nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his
+cousin's vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to
+preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a
+charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still
+emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind
+of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her,
+and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for
+money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little
+more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely
+kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
+on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
+understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and
+discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the
+bills mounted up.
+
+Though many of Selden's friends would have called his parents poor, he
+had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt only as a
+check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions were so good that
+their rarity gave them a merited relief, and abstinence was combined with
+elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs. Selden's knack of wearing her old
+velvet as if it were new. A man has the advantage of being delivered
+early from the home point of view, and before Selden left college he had
+learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as
+of spending it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that
+practised at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
+the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of "values."
+It was from her that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side
+of life: the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the
+Epicurean's pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling appeared to
+him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending of the two
+ingredients so essential as in the character of a pretty woman.
+
+It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
+besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of a
+love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central fact of
+life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the makeshift
+alternative of a relation that should be less than this: that should
+leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it put an undue
+strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield to the growth of an
+affection which might appeal to pity yet leave the understanding
+untouched: sympathy should no more delude him than a trick of the eyes,
+the grace of helplessness than a curve of the cheek.
+
+But now--that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows. His
+reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less important
+than the question as to when Lily would receive his note! He yielded
+himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations, wondering at what hour
+her reply would be sent, with what words it would begin. As to its import
+he had no doubt--he was as sure of her surrender as of his own. And so
+he had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on
+a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel
+gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
+him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation
+to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before of what was
+said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he knew from the
+vulgar estimate of her. His mind turned to Gerty Farish's words, and the
+wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of
+innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD--even
+the hidden god in their neighbour's breast! Selden was in the state of
+impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces.
+His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should
+justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth
+to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday
+recess, but seized a moment's leisure in court to scribble his telegram
+to Gerty Farish.
+
+Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a note
+from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only a line of
+rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away disappointed when he
+was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.
+
+"Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me--I've ordered a
+canvas-back."
+
+He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall glass at
+his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.
+
+Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.
+
+"Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight. I shall
+have the club to myself. You know how I'm living this winter, rattling
+round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town today, but she's
+put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine alone in a room with the
+looking-glasses covered, and nothing but a bottle of Harvey sauce on the
+side-board? I say, Lawrence, chuck your engagement and take pity on
+me--it gives me the blue devils to dine alone, and there's nobody but
+that canting ass Wetherall in the club."
+
+"Sorry, Gus--I can't do it."
+
+As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor's face, the
+unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way his jewelled
+rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red fingers. Certainly the
+beast was predominating--the beast at the bottom of the glass. And he had
+heard this man's name coupled with Lily's! Bah--the thought sickened him;
+all the way back to his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor's fat
+creased hands----
+
+On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew what
+was in it before he broke the seal--a grey seal with BEYOND! beneath a
+flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond--beyond the ugliness, the
+pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul----
+
+
+
+Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden entered it.
+Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and ingenuity, spoke to him
+in the language just then sweetest to his ear. It is surprising how
+little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul
+has suddenly been raised. Gerty sparkled too; or at least shone with a
+tempered radiance. He had never before noticed that she had
+"points"--really, some good fellow might do worse . . . Over the little
+dinner (and here, again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she
+ought to marry--he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had
+made the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such
+gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim
+her own hats--she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.
+
+He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little repast he
+kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being the centre of
+observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she had manufactured for
+the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household
+arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had
+utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
+about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in
+a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a
+large establishment.
+
+When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as snugly as
+bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and poured it into her
+grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he leaned back, basking in the
+warm fragrance, lighted on a recent photograph of Miss Bart, and the
+desired transition was effected without an effort. The photograph was
+well enough--but to catch her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed
+with him--never had she been so radiant. But could photography capture
+that light? There had been a new look in her face--something different;
+yes, Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was so
+exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to the watery
+stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare,
+alternating with the equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A
+man who lived in lodgings missed the best part of life--he pictured the
+flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's compassion
+for the man . . . But to return to Lily--and again and again he returned,
+questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts
+of their stored tenderness for her friend.
+
+At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
+communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped to
+confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on the fact
+that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous impulses--her
+restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life had never satisfied
+her proved that she was made for better things. She might have married
+more than once--the conventional rich marriage which she had been taught
+to consider the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she
+had always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love
+with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her
+dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce
+incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not to be instantly adopted
+by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once seemed
+the obvious solution. If rejection there had been--and he wondered now
+that he had ever doubted it!--then he held the key to the secret, and the
+hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with dawn. It
+was he who had wavered and disowned the face of opportunity--and the joy
+now warming his breast might have been a familiar inmate if he had
+captured it in its first flight.
+
+It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings in
+Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing Selden,
+repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been understood----" and all
+the while she herself seemed to be sitting in the centre of a great glare
+of comprehension. The little confidential room, where a moment ago their
+thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly
+vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length of her new vision
+of the future--and that future stretched out interminably, with her
+lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.
+
+"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them," she
+heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't you?" and:
+"She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to be--you'll help
+her by believing the best of her?"
+
+The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language which has
+seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to be
+unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily--that was all! There
+had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had
+taken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to
+her own part in the talk--but it was all as meaningless as the boom of
+waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
+sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
+
+Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she could
+yield to the blessed waves.
+
+"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music afterward; I
+believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the foolish pink-faced
+clock that was drumming out this hideous hour. "A quarter past ten? I
+might look in there now; the Fisher evenings are amusing. I haven't kept
+you up too late, Gerty? You look tired--I've rambled on and bored you."
+And in the unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss
+upon her cheek.
+
+
+
+At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen voices
+greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he dropped into a
+seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search of Miss Bart. But she
+was not there, and the discovery gave him a pang out of all proportion to
+its seriousness; since the note in his breast-pocket assured him that at
+four the next day they would meet. To his impatience it seemed
+immeasurably long to wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to
+Mrs. Fisher to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with
+her.
+
+"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where. Wasn't she
+wonderful last night?"
+
+"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a neighbouring
+arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when it comes to a girl
+standing there as if she was up at auction--I thought seriously of
+speaking to cousin Julia."
+
+"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher said to
+Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the general derision:
+"But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's married--TOWN TALK was
+full of her this morning."
+
+"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking his
+moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the dirty sheet? No, of
+course not; some fellow showed it to me--but I'd heard the stories
+before. When a girl's as good-looking as that she'd better marry; then no
+questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized society there is no
+provision as yet for the young woman who claims the privileges of
+marriage without assuming its obligations."
+
+"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of Mr.
+Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.
+
+"Rosedale--good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his eye-glass.
+"Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on us."
+
+"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our family,"
+Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive bridal
+finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the judicial
+reflection: "In Lily's circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a
+standard."
+
+"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs. Fisher
+rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off his head. What do
+you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? 'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I
+could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that, the picture'd appreciate a
+hundred per cent in ten years.'"
+
+"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
+restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.
+
+"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs. Where
+was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't heard of anything."
+
+"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish who had
+arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she gave the
+driver the Trenors' address."
+
+"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
+closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."
+
+"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come now,
+Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no head for
+numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining foot, and
+the smile that circled the room.
+
+In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with his
+hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why he had
+stayed in it so long.
+
+On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's: "It seems
+to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you disapprove of."
+
+Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
+element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That
+BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's
+task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are
+numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with
+dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had
+strength for both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him.
+It was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a
+clogging morass of old associations and habits, and for the moment its
+vapours were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in
+her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar
+which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor
+with which he was trying to build up a defence against the influences of
+the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
+which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so swayed by
+them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view
+of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?
+
+The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he
+strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
+At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of
+company.
+
+"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now that
+women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine. It would be a
+curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the
+sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to
+obscure the moral issue."
+
+Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van
+Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined
+himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control. Happily
+Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of social aspects, and with
+Selden for audience was eager to show the sureness of his touch. Mrs.
+Fisher lived in an East side street near the Park, and as the two men
+walked down Fifth Avenue the new architectural developments of that
+versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne's comment.
+
+"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder! The man
+who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table
+at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a
+style his friends might have thought the money had given out. Not a bad
+purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western
+sight-seer. By and bye he'll get out of that phase, and want something
+that the crowd will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he
+marries my clever cousin----"
+
+Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'? Rather
+clever of its kind, don't you think?"
+
+They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich restraint of
+line, which suggested the clever corseting of a redundant figure.
+
+"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to Europe,
+and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a copy of the
+TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt furniture is thought to
+be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever chap that architect is,
+though--how he takes his client's measure! He has put the whole of Mrs.
+Bry in his use of the composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember,
+he chose the Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
+Trenor house is one of his best things--doesn't look like a
+banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out
+a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at
+Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys' ball-room must rankle: you may be
+sure she knows 'em as well as if she'd been there last night with a
+yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She
+isn't, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I
+suppose Gus lives in the back."
+
+He had halted opposite the Trenors' corner, and Selden perforce stayed
+his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited; only an oblong
+gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.
+
+"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and fifty
+feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's to be, with a
+gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above. I suggested
+changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room across the whole
+Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door corresponds with the
+windows----"
+
+The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped to a
+startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures were seen
+silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom halted at
+the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it in a haze of
+evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky, remained
+persistently projected against the light.
+
+For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
+silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the whole
+scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.
+
+Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.
+
+"A--hem--nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I may
+count on you--appearances are deceptive--and Fifth Avenue is so
+imperfectly lighted----"
+
+"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street without
+seeing the other's extended hand.
+
+
+
+Alone with her cousin's kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He had
+kissed her before--but not with another woman on his lips. If he had
+spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming the dark flood
+as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot through with glory, and
+it was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness. Gerty hid her face
+from the light, but it pierced to the crannies of her soul. She had been
+so contented, life had seemed so simple and sufficient--why had he come
+to trouble her with new hopes? And Lily--Lily, her best friend!
+Woman-like, she accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily,
+her fond imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
+her--had understood and sympathized with the modest independence of her
+life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice
+balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his
+view of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
+at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door barred
+against her by Lily's hand! Lily, for whose admission there she herself
+had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She
+knew Selden--she saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped
+to dispel his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
+him--she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known to each
+other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient;
+he had never guessed her foolish secret; but Lily--Lily must have known!
+When, in such matters, are a woman's perceptions at fault? And if she
+knew, then she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere
+wantonness of power, since, even to Gerty's suddenly flaming jealousy, it
+seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden's wife. Lily might
+be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of
+living without it, and Selden's eager investigations into the small
+economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as tragically duped
+as herself.
+
+She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were crumbling to
+cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade. Just beneath it stood
+the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out imperially on the cheap
+gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the little room. Could Selden picture
+her in such an interior? Gerty felt the poverty, the insignificance of
+her surroundings: she beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the
+cruelty of Lily's judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
+dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily ever
+really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was the taste of
+new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature experimenting in a
+laboratory.
+
+The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with a
+start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a district
+visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered the fire, and
+went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass above her
+dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the shadows of the
+room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right had she to dream the
+dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly
+as she undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
+setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life must be
+taken up as though there had been no break in its routine. Her servant
+did not come till eight o'clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and
+placed it beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat,
+extinguished her light and lay down. But on her bed sleep would not
+come, and she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
+closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be blindly
+grappled with. Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight
+forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
+wanted happiness--wanted it as fiercely and unscrupulously as Lily did,
+but without Lily's power of obtaining it. And in her conscious impotence
+she lay shivering, and hated her friend----
+
+A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a light and
+stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat incoherently, then
+she felt the sobering touch of fact, and remembered that such calls were
+not unknown in her charitable work. She flung on her dressing-gown to
+answer the summons, and unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision
+of Lily Bart.
+
+Gerty's first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as though
+Lily's presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then she
+heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend's face, and felt
+herself caught and clung to.
+
+"Lily--what is it?" she exclaimed.
+
+Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who has
+gained shelter after a long flight.
+
+"I was so cold--I couldn't go home. Have you a fire?"
+
+Gerty's compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of habit,
+swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one who needed
+help--for what reason, there was no time to pause and conjecture:
+disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty's lips, and made her
+draw her friend silently into the sitting-room and seat her by the
+darkened hearth.
+
+"There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute."
+
+She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed
+strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on
+the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at each other in silence;
+then Lily repeated: "I couldn't go home."
+
+"No--no--you came here, dear! You're cold and tired--sit quiet, and I'll
+make you some tea."
+
+Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade: all
+personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and experience had
+taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed.
+
+Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
+soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
+wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed it
+away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.
+
+"I came here because I couldn't bear to be alone," she said.
+
+Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.
+
+"Lily! Something has happened--can't you tell me?"
+
+"I couldn't bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my room at
+Aunt Julia's--so I came here----"
+
+She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in a
+fresh burst of fear.
+
+"Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their wings--alone, at
+night, in the dark? But you don't know--there is nothing to make the dark
+dreadful to you----"
+
+The words, flashing back on Gerty's last hours, struck from her a faint
+derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery, was blinded to
+everything outside it.
+
+"You'll let me stay? I shan't mind when daylight comes--Is it late? Is
+the night nearly over? It must be awful to be sleepless--everything
+stands by the bed and stares----"
+
+Miss Farish caught her straying hands. "Lily, look at me! Something has
+happened--an accident? You have been frightened--what has frightened you?
+Tell me if you can--a word or two--so that I can help you."
+
+Lily shook her head.
+
+"I am not frightened: that's not the word. Can you imagine looking into
+your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement--some hideous change
+that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that--I
+can't bear to see myself in my own thoughts--I hate ugliness, you
+know--I've always turned from it--but I can't explain to you--you
+wouldn't understand."
+
+She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.
+
+"How long the night is! And I know I shan't sleep tomorrow. Some one told
+me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors. And he was not
+wicked, only unfortunate--and I see now how he must have suffered, lying
+alone with his thoughts! But I am bad--a bad girl--all my thoughts are
+bad--I have always had bad people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought
+I could manage my own life--I was proud--proud! but now I'm on their
+level----"
+
+Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.
+
+Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of experience,
+till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech. She had first
+imagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, since
+Lily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher's; but she now saw
+that other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back from
+conjecture.
+
+Lily's sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.
+
+"There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me--do they ever pick themselves
+up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?"
+
+"Lily! you mustn't speak so--you're dreaming."
+
+"Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your
+old self rejects you, and shuts you out."
+
+She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness. "Go to
+bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I'll watch here by the fire,
+and you'll leave the light, and your door open. All I want is to feel
+that you are near me." She laid both hands on Gerty's shoulders, with a
+smile that was like sunrise on a sea strewn with wreckage.
+
+"I can't leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
+frozen--you must undress and be made warm." Gerty paused with sudden
+compunction. "But Mrs. Peniston--it's past midnight! What will she think?"
+
+"She goes to bed. I have a latch-key. It doesn't matter--I can't go back
+there."
+
+"There's no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me where you
+have been. Listen, Lily--it will help you to speak!" She regained Miss
+Bart's hands, and pressed them against her. "Try to tell me--it will
+clear your poor head. Listen--you were dining at Carry Fisher's." Gerty
+paused and added with a flash of heroism: "Lawrence Selden went from here
+to find you."
+
+At the word, Lily's face melted from locked anguish to the open misery of
+a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with tears.
+
+"He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help me.
+He told me--he warned me long ago--he foresaw that I should grow hateful
+to myself!"
+
+The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened the
+springs of self-pity in her friend's dry breast, and tear by tear Lily
+poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped sideways in
+Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden's had leaned,
+in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty's aching senses the
+inevitableness of her own defeat. Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on
+Lily's part to rob her of her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was
+to see in it a natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to
+such as Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they
+despoil. But if Selden's infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect
+that his name produced shook Gerty's steadfastness with a last pang. Men
+pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
+probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would have
+welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed the sufferer
+back to tolerance of life! But Lily's self-betrayal took this last hope
+from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who
+loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.
+
+Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. "Gerty, you know
+him--you understand him--tell me; if I went to him, if I told him
+everything--if I said: 'I am bad through and through--I want admiration,
+I want excitement, I want money--' yes, MONEY! That's my shame,
+Gerty--and it's known, it's said of me--it's what men think of me--If I
+said it all to him--told him the whole story--said plainly: 'I've sunk
+lower than the lowest, for I've taken what they take, and not paid as
+they pay'--oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him
+everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me,
+and save me from loathing myself?"
+
+Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had
+come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river
+sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge
+past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: "He is
+like other men?" She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so
+would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before
+herself in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of
+her own passion.
+
+"Yes: I know him; he will help you," she said; and in a moment Lily's
+passion was weeping itself out against her breast.
+
+There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on
+it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily's dress and persuaded her to
+put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in
+the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to
+avoid contact with her bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be
+caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses
+toward her friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily's
+nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet
+stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand of
+her hair swept Gerty's cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was
+warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as
+rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her
+side, in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs
+from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped
+for her friend's, and held it fast.
+
+"Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things," she moaned; and
+Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow
+as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay
+still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to
+Gerty's as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers
+relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she
+slept.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in
+the room.
+
+She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; then
+memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the cold
+slant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building,
+she saw her evening dress and opera cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a
+chair. Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and
+it occurred to Lily that, at home, her maid's vigilance had always spared
+her the sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and
+with the constriction of her attitude in Gerty's bed. All through her
+troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to toss in, and
+the long effort to remain motionless made her feel as if she had spent
+her night in a train.
+
+This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then
+she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental prostration, a languor
+of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The
+thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast
+roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the
+slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the
+dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But
+she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay
+back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of physical
+distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no
+freshness through the window; steam-heat was beginning to sing in a coil
+of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door.
+
+The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of
+tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull
+hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.
+
+She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she felt;
+Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself up to drink
+the tea.
+
+"I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a nervous attack
+in the carriage," she said, as the drink brought clearness to her
+sluggish thoughts.
+
+"You were not well; I am so glad you came here," Gerty returned.
+
+"But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia--?"
+
+"She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your things.
+But won't you eat something? I scrambled the eggs myself."
+
+Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and dress under
+her maid's searching gaze. It was a relief to her that Gerty was obliged
+to hasten away: the two kissed silently, but without a trace of the
+previous night's emotion.
+
+Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace
+Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of enquiries as
+best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her
+way back from Carry Fisher's; that, fearing she would not have strength
+to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish's instead; but that a quiet
+night had restored her, and that she had no need of a doctor.
+
+This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to her own
+symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her aunt's panacea for
+all physical and moral disorders. In the solitude of her own room she was
+brought back to a sharp contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them
+necessarily differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged
+furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea.
+But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness; and
+besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she forced herself
+to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to Trenor; and the result of
+this hateful computation was the discovery that she had, in all, received
+nine thousand dollars from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been
+given and received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame: she knew that
+not a penny of it was her own, and that to restore her self-respect she
+must at once repay the whole amount. The inability thus to solace her
+outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was
+realizing for the first time that a woman's dignity may cost more to keep
+up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute
+should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more
+sordid place than she had conceived it.
+
+After luncheon, when Grace Stepney's prying eyes had been removed, Lily
+asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the
+sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin
+arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a
+bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for
+these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the
+fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
+confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
+associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs.
+Peniston's lips. That lady's dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness
+which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since
+it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing
+this, Lily seldom ventured to assail it. She had never felt less like
+making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in
+vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.
+
+Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. "You're a bad colour, Lily: this
+incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you," she said.
+
+Miss Bart saw an opening. "I don't think it's that, Aunt Julia; I've had
+worries," she replied.
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse
+closing against a beggar.
+
+"I'm sorry to bother you with them," Lily continued, "but I really
+believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious
+thoughts--"
+
+"I should have said Carry Fisher's cook was enough to account for it.
+She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891--the spring of the year
+we went to Aix--and I remember dining there two days before we sailed,
+and feeling SURE the coppers hadn't been scoured."
+
+"I don't think I ate much; I can't eat or sleep." Lily paused, and then
+said abruptly: "The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money."
+
+Mrs. Peniston's face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the
+astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced
+to continue: "I have been foolish----"
+
+"No doubt you have: extremely foolish," Mrs. Peniston interposed. "I
+fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses--not to mention
+the handsome presents I've always given you----"
+
+"Oh, you've been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your
+kindness. But perhaps you don't quite realize the expense a girl is put
+to nowadays----"
+
+"I don't realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your clothes
+and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid
+Celeste's bill for you last October."
+
+Lily hesitated: her aunt's implacable memory had never been more
+inconvenient. "You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few
+things since----"
+
+"What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the
+bill--I daresay the woman is swindling you."
+
+"Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and
+one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and
+skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo----"
+
+"Let me see the bill," Mrs. Peniston repeated.
+
+Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet sent
+in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a
+fraction of the sum that Lily needed.
+
+"She hasn't sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW it's large;
+and there are one or two other things; I've been careless and
+imprudent--I'm frightened to think of what I owe----"
+
+She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly
+hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without
+effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs.
+Peniston shrink back apprehensively.
+
+"Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after
+frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at
+least choose a better time to worry me with such matters." Mrs. Peniston
+glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of digitalis. "If you owe
+Celeste another thousand, she may send me her account," she added, as
+though to end the discussion at any cost.
+
+"I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time; but I
+have really no choice--I ought to have spoken sooner--I owe a great deal
+more than a thousand dollars."
+
+"A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!"
+
+"I told you it was not only Celeste. I--there are other bills--more
+pressing--that must be settled."
+
+"What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your
+head," said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. "But if you have run into debt,
+you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till
+your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead
+of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all,
+and surely in four or five months you can settle the rest of your bills
+if I pay the dress-maker now."
+
+Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract even a
+thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of paying Celeste's
+bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the dress-maker's account,
+and would make out the cheque to her and not to Lily. And yet the money
+must be obtained before the day was over!
+
+"The debts I speak of are--different--not like tradesmen's bills," she
+began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston's look made her almost afraid to
+continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything? The idea
+precipitated Lily's avowal.
+
+"The fact is, I've played cards a good deal--bridge; the women all do it;
+girls too--it's expected. Sometimes I've won--won a good deal--but lately
+I've been unlucky--and of course such debts can't be paid off
+gradually----"
+
+She paused: Mrs. Peniston's face seemed to be petrifying as she listened.
+
+"Cards--you've played cards for money? It's true, then: when I was told
+so I wouldn't believe it. I won't ask if the other horrors I was told
+were true too; I've heard enough for the state of my nerves. When I think
+of the example you've had in this house! But I suppose it's your foreign
+bringing-up--no one knew where your mother picked up her friends. And her
+Sundays were a scandal--that I know."
+
+Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. "You play cards on Sunday?"
+
+Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at Bellomont
+and with the Dorsets.
+
+"You're hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for cards, but
+a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and one drifts into
+doing what the others do. I've had a dreadful lesson, and if you'll help
+me out this time I promise you--"
+
+Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. "You needn't make any promises:
+it's unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn't undertake to pay
+your gambling debts."
+
+"Aunt Julia! You don't mean that you won't help me?"
+
+"I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
+countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker, I will
+settle with her--beyond that I recognize no obligation to assume your
+debts."
+
+Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride
+stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: "Aunt
+Julia, I shall be disgraced--I--" But she could go no farther. If her
+aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts, in
+what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?
+
+"I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct far
+more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded you to play
+cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson too. They can
+probably afford to lose a little money--and at any rate, I am not going
+to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I must ask you to leave
+me--this scene has been extremely painful, and I have my own health to
+consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and tell Jennings I will see no
+one this afternoon but Grace Stepney."
+
+Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling with
+fear and anger--the rush of the furies' wings was in her ears. She walked
+up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The last door of escape
+was closed--she felt herself shut in with her dishonour.
+
+Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
+chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she remembered
+that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant to put him off with
+a word--but now her heart leaped at the thought of seeing him. Was there
+not a promise of rescue in his love? As she had lain at Gerty's side the
+night before, she had thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of
+weeping out her pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear
+herself of its consequences before she met him--she had never really
+doubted that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
+in the full storm of her misery, that Selden's love could not be her
+ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment's shelter
+there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.
+
+But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
+wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive as the
+river's flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be terrible--but
+afterward, what blessedness might come! She remembered Gerty's words: "I
+know him--he will help you"; and her mind clung to them as a sick person
+might cling to a healing relic. Oh, if he really understood--if he would
+help her to gather up her broken life, and put it together in some new
+semblance in which no trace of the past should remain! He had always made
+her feel that she was worthy of better things, and she had never been in
+greater need of such solace. Once and again she shrank at the thought of
+imperilling his love by her confession: for love was what she needed--it
+would take the glow of passion to weld together the shattered fragments
+of her self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty's words and held fast to
+them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden's feeling for her, and it had
+never dawned upon her blindness that Gerty's own judgment of him was
+coloured by emotions far more ardent than her own.
+
+Four o'clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that Selden
+would be punctual. But the hour came and passed--it moved on feverishly,
+measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had time to take a fresh
+survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate anew between the impulse to
+confide in Selden and the dread of destroying his illusions. But as the
+minutes passed the need of throwing herself on his comprehension became
+more urgent: she could not bear the weight of her misery alone. There
+would be a perilous moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her
+beauty to bridge it over, to land her safe in the shelter of his devotion?
+
+But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had been
+detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking the four for
+a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes after five confirmed
+this supposition, and made Lily hastily resolve to write more legibly in
+future. The sound of steps in the hall, and of the butler's voice
+preceding them, poured fresh energy into her veins. She felt herself once
+more the alert and competent moulder of emergencies, and the remembrance
+of her power over Selden flushed her with sudden confidence. But when the
+drawing-room door opened it was Rosedale who came in.
+
+The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing movement of
+irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her own carelessness in not
+denying the door to all but Selden, she controlled herself and greeted
+Rosedale amicably. It was annoying that Selden, when he came, should find
+that particular visitor in possession, but Lily was mistress of the art
+of ridding herself of superfluous company, and to her present mood
+Rosedale seemed distinctly negligible.
+
+His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few moments'
+conversation. She had caught at the Brys' entertainment as an easy
+impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval till Selden
+appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside the tea-table, his
+hands in his pockets, his legs a little too freely extended, at once gave
+the topic a personal turn.
+
+"Pretty well done--well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry's got his back
+up and don't mean to let go till he's got the hang of the thing. Of
+course, there were things here and there--things Mrs. Fisher couldn't be
+expected to see to--the champagne wasn't cold, and the coats got mixed in
+the coat-room. I would have spent more money on the music. But that's my
+character: if I want a thing I'm willing to pay: I don't go up to the
+counter, and then wonder if the article's worth the price. I wouldn't be
+satisfied to entertain like the Welly Brys; I'd want something that would
+look more easy and natural, more as if I took it in my stride. And it
+takes just two things to do that, Miss Bart: money, and the right woman
+to spend it."
+
+He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to rearrange
+the tea-cups.
+
+"I've got the money," he continued, clearing his throat, "and what I want
+is the woman--and I mean to have her too."
+
+He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
+walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne's type bring their hats
+and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it added a touch of
+elegant familiarity to their appearance.
+
+Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on his
+face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would take some
+time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before the moment of
+refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of a mind withdrawn yet
+not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of a subtle encouragement. He
+would not have liked any evidence of eagerness.
+
+"I mean to have her too," he repeated, with a laugh intended to
+strengthen his self-assurance. "I generally HAVE got what I wanted in
+life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I've got more than I know how to
+invest; and now the money doesn't seem to be of any account unless I can
+spend it on the right woman. That's what I want to do with it: I want my
+wife to make all the other women feel small. I'd never grudge a dollar
+that was spent on that. But it isn't every woman can do it, no matter how
+much you spend on her. There was a girl in some history book who wanted
+gold shields, or something, and the fellows threw 'em at her, and she was
+crushed under 'em: they killed her. Well, that's true enough: some women
+looked buried under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who'll hold her
+head higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
+other night at the Brys', in that plain white dress, looking as if you
+had a crown on, I said to myself: 'By gad, if she had one she'd wear it
+as if it grew on her.'"
+
+Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme: "Tell
+you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than all the rest
+of 'em put together. If a woman's going to ignore her pearls, they want
+to be better than anybody else's--and so it is with everything else. You
+know what I mean--you know it's only the showy things that are cheap.
+Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if
+she wanted to. I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and that's
+the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in
+that way." He paused, and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an
+earlier manner: "I guess you know the lady I've got in view, Miss Bart."
+
+Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge. Even
+through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr. Rosedale's
+millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of them to cancel
+her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly
+repugnant in the light of Selden's expected coming. The contrast was too
+grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided
+that directness would be best.
+
+"If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful--very much flattered;
+but I don't know what I have ever done to make you think--"
+
+"Oh, if you mean you're not dead in love with me, I've got sense enough
+left to see that. And I ain't talking to you as if you were--I presume I
+know the kind of talk that's expected under those circumstances. I'm
+confoundedly gone on you--that's about the size of it--and I'm just
+giving you a plain business statement of the consequences. You're not
+very fond of me--YET--but you're fond of luxury, and style, and
+amusement, and of not having to worry about cash. You like to have a good
+time, and not have to settle for it; and what I propose to do is to
+provide for the good time and do the settling."
+
+He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: "You are mistaken in
+one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am prepared to settle for."
+
+She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words implied
+a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was prepared to meet and
+repudiate it. But if he recognized her meaning it failed to abash him,
+and he went on in the same tone: "I didn't mean to give offence; excuse
+me if I've spoken too plainly. But why ain't you straight with me--why do
+you put up that kind of bluff? You know there've been times when you were
+bothered--damned bothered--and as a girl gets older, and things keep
+moving along, why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable
+to move past her and not come back. I don't say it's anywhere near that
+with you yet; but you've had a taste of bothers that a girl like yourself
+ought never to have known about, and what I'm offering you is the chance
+to turn your back on them once for all."
+
+The colour burned in Lily's face as he ended; there was no mistaking the
+point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass unheeded was a fatal
+confession of weakness, while to resent it too openly was to risk
+offending him at a perilous moment. Indignation quivered on her lip; but
+it was quelled by the secret voice which warned her that she must not
+quarrel with him. He knew too much about her, and even at the moment when
+it was essential that he should show himself at his best, he did not
+scruple to let her see how much he knew. How then would he use his power
+when her expression of contempt had dispelled his one motive for
+restraint? Her whole future might hinge on her way of answering him: she
+had to stop and consider that, in the stress of her other anxieties, as a
+breathless fugitive may have to pause at the cross-roads and try to
+decide coolly which turn to take.
+
+"You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and I am grateful
+to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is not always easy to be
+quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor and lives among
+rich people; I have been careless about money, and have worried about my
+bills. But I should be selfish and ungrateful if I made that a reason for
+accepting all you offer, with no better return to make than the desire to
+be free from my anxieties. You must give me time--time to think of your
+kindness--and of what I could give you in return for it----"
+
+She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which dismissal was
+shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency made Rosedale rise in
+obedience to it, a little flushed with his unhoped-for success, and
+disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept what was conceded,
+without undue haste to press for more. Something in his prompt
+acquiescence frightened her; she felt behind it the stored force of a
+patience that might subdue the strongest will. But at least they had
+parted amicably, and he was out of the house without meeting
+Selden--Selden, whose continued absence now smote her with a new alarm.
+Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she understood that it was now
+too late to hope for Selden. He would write explaining his absence, of
+course; there would be a note from him by the late post. But her
+confession would have to be postponed; and the chill of the delay settled
+heavily on her fagged spirit.
+
+It lay heavier when the postman's last ring brought no note for her, and
+she had to go upstairs to a lonely night--a night as grim and sleepless
+as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty. She had never learned to
+live with her own thoughts, and to be confronted with them through such
+hours of lucid misery made the confused wretchedness of her previous
+vigil seem easily bearable.
+
+Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear to her that she
+would hear from Selden before noon; but the day passed without his
+writing or coming. Lily remained at home, lunching and dining alone with
+her aunt, who complained of flutterings of the heart, and talked icily on
+general topics. Mrs. Peniston went to bed early, and when she had gone
+Lily sat down and wrote a note to Selden. She was about to ring for a
+messenger to despatch it when her eye fell on a paragraph in the evening
+paper which lay at her elbow: "Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the
+passengers sailing this afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the
+Windward Liner Antilles."
+
+She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her note. She
+understood now that he was never coming--that he had gone away because he
+was afraid that he might come. She rose, and walking across the floor
+stood gazing at herself for a long time in the brightly-lit mirror above
+the mantel-piece. The lines in her face came out terribly--she looked
+old; and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she look to other
+people? She moved away, and began to wander aimlessly about the room,
+fitting her steps with mechanical precision between the monstrous roses
+of Mrs. Peniston's Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with
+which she had written to Selden still rested against the uncovered
+inkstand. She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope, addressed
+it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and sat over
+it with suspended pen. It had been easy enough to write the date, and
+"Dear Mr. Rosedale"--but after that her inspiration flagged. She meant to
+tell him to come to her, but the words refused to shape themselves. At
+length she began: "I have been thinking----" then she laid the pen down,
+and sat with her elbows on the table and her face hidden in her hands.
+
+Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It was not
+late--barely ten o'clock--and there might still be a note from Selden, or
+a message--or he might be there himself, on the other side of the door!
+The announcement of his sailing might have been a mistake--it might be
+another Lawrence Selden who had gone to Havana--all these possibilities
+had time to flash through her mind, and build up the conviction that she
+was after all to see or hear from him, before the drawing-room door
+opened to admit a servant carrying a telegram.
+
+Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset's name below
+the message: "Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you join us on a cruise
+in Mediterranean?"
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK TWO
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo had, more
+than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating itself to each
+man's humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a festive readiness of
+welcome that might well, in a disenchanted eye, have turned to paint and
+facility. So frank an appeal for participation--so outspoken a
+recognition of the holiday vein in human nature--struck refreshingly on a
+mind jaded by prolonged hard work in surroundings made for the discipline
+of the senses. As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry
+of architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
+loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which suggested a
+sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting of scenes--as he
+took in the whole outspread effect of light and leisure, he felt a
+movement of revulsion from the last few months of his life.
+
+The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
+snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and furious
+air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the gritty wind ground
+into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work, had told himself that
+external conditions did not matter to a man in his state, and that cold
+and ugliness were a good tonic for relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent
+case summoned him abroad to confer with a client in Paris, he broke
+reluctantly with the routine of the office; and it was only now that,
+having despatched his business, and slipped away for a week in the south,
+he began to feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is the solace of
+those who take an objective interest in life.
+
+The multiplicity of its appeals--the perpetual surprise of its contrasts
+and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the show were upon him
+with a spring as he descended the Casino steps and paused on the pavement
+at its doors. He had not been abroad for seven years--and what changes
+the renewed contact produced! If the central depths were untouched,
+hardly a pin-point of surface remained the same. And this was the very
+place to bring out the completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the
+perpetuities, might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a
+day's revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his fixed sky.
+
+It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its climax
+and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens would soon
+dissolve and re-form in other scenes. Meanwhile the last moments of the
+performance seemed to gain an added brightness from the hovering threat
+of the curtain. The quality of the air, the exuberance of the flowers,
+the blue intensity of sea and sky, produced the effect of a closing
+TABLEAU, when all the lights are turned on at once. This impression was
+presently heightened by the way in which a consciously conspicuous group
+of people advanced to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the
+air of the chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the
+final effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had
+been staged regardless of expense, and emphasized its resemblance to one
+of those "costume-plays" in which the protagonists walk through the
+passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood in unrelated
+attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the men hung about
+them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors are named in the
+programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly fused the group by
+arresting the attention of one of its members.
+
+"Why, Mr. Selden!" Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a gesture
+toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added plaintively:
+"We're starving to death because we can't decide where to lunch."
+
+Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their difficulty,
+Selden learned with amusement that there were several places where one
+might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit something by lunching;
+so that eating actually became a minor consideration on the very spot
+consecrated to its rites.
+
+"Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE--but that looks as if
+one hadn't any other reason for being there: the Americans who don't know
+any one always rush for the best food. And the Duchess of Beltshire has
+taken up Becassin's lately," Mrs. Bry earnestly summed up.
+
+Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher's despair, had not progressed beyond the point
+of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could not acquire the
+air of doing things because she wanted to, and making her choice the
+final seal of their fitness.
+
+Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure clothes, met
+the dilemma hilariously.
+
+"I guess the Duchess goes where it's cheapest, unless she can get her
+meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE she'd turn
+up fast enough."
+
+But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. "The Grand Dukes go to that little
+place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it's the only restaurant in
+Europe where they can cook peas."
+
+Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn
+smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy
+to the right restaurant, assented with gentle emphasis: "It's quite that."
+
+"PEAS?" said Mr. Bry contemptuously. "Can they cook terrapin? It just
+shows," he continued, "what these European markets are, when a fellow can
+make a reputation cooking peas!"
+
+Jack Stepney intervened with authority. "I don't know that I quite agree
+with Dacey: there's a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire--but in
+any case, I can't advise the Condamine GARGOTE; at least not with ladies."
+
+Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as the Van
+Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and
+discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking fastness of gait which left
+him trailing breathlessly in her wake.
+
+"That's where we'll go then!" she declared, with a heavy toss of her
+plumage. "I'm so tired of the TERRASSE: it's as dull as one of mother's
+dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who all the awful people
+are at the other place--hasn't he, Carry? Now, Jack, don't look so
+solemn!"
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Bry, "all I want to know is who their dress-makers are."
+
+"No doubt Dacey can tell you that too," remarked Stepney, with an ironic
+intention which the other received with the light murmur, "I can at least
+FIND OUT, my dear fellow"; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn't
+walk another step, the party hailed two or three of the light phaetons
+which hover attentively on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off
+in procession toward the Condamine.
+
+Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging the
+boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
+intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they
+presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue
+curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to
+the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its
+church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the
+gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a
+light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the
+culminating moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great
+steam-yacht drew the company's attention from the peas.
+
+"By Jove, I believe that's the Dorsets back!" Stepney exclaimed; and Lord
+Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated: "It's the
+Sabrina--yes."
+
+"So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily," Mrs. Fisher observed.
+
+"I guess they feel as if they had: there's only one up-to-date hotel in
+the whole place," said Mr. Bry disparagingly.
+
+"It was Ned Silverton's idea--but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must have
+been horribly bored." Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to Selden: "I do
+hope there hasn't been a row."
+
+"It's most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back," said Lord Hubert, in his
+mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously: "I daresay the
+Duchess will dine with us, now that Lily's here."
+
+"The Duchess admires her immensely: I'm sure she'd be charmed to have it
+arranged," Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional promptness of the
+man accustomed to draw his profit from facilitating social contacts:
+Selden was struck by the businesslike change in his manner.
+
+"Lily has been a tremendous success here," Mrs. Fisher continued, still
+addressing herself confidentially to Selden. "She looks ten years
+younger--I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her everywhere in
+Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her to stop for a week at
+Cimiez. People say that was one reason why Bertha whisked the yacht off
+to Sicily: the Crown Princess didn't take much notice of her, and she
+couldn't bear to look on at Lily's triumph."
+
+Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was cruising in
+the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that
+there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the
+season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating
+his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in
+his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really
+affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments
+of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings,
+and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight of the
+Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that his three months
+of engrossing professional work, following on the sharp shock of his
+disillusionment, had cleared his mind of its sentimental vapours. The
+feeling he had nourished and given prominence to was one of thankfulness
+for his escape: he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a
+dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises.
+Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he had
+not come off unhurt.
+
+An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher's side in the Casino gardens, he was trying
+to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury received in the
+contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had dispersed with the
+loitering indecision characteristic of social movements at Monte Carlo,
+where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to
+offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally
+gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with
+the delicate negotiation of securing that lady's presence at dinner, the
+Stepneys had left for Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had departed
+to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was at the moment
+engaging his highest faculties.
+
+Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after luncheon,
+had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry Fisher to withdraw to her
+hotel for an hour's repose; and Selden and his companion were thus left
+to a stroll propitious to confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself
+into a tranquil session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian
+roses, from which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble
+balusters, and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like
+from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of
+the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of
+many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs.
+Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had
+come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the
+inclemency of the New York spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first
+success, already thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the
+Riviera as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their
+course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital, and a
+facility for picking them up again after long absences; and the carefully
+disseminated rumour of the Brys' wealth had at once gathered about them a
+group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.
+
+"But things are not going as well as I expected," Mrs. Fisher frankly
+admitted. "It's all very well to say that every body with money can get
+into society; but it would be truer to say that NEARLY everybody can.
+And the London market is so glutted with new Americans that, to succeed
+there now, they must be either very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are
+neither. HE would get on well enough if she'd let him alone; they like
+his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by
+trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she'd be natural
+herself--fat and vulgar and bouncing--it would be all right; but as soon
+as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and queenly. She
+tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady Skiddaw, and they fled.
+I've done my best to make her see her mistake--I've said to her again and
+again: 'Just let yourself go, Louisa'; but she keeps up the humbug even
+with me--I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the
+door shut.
+
+"The worst of it is," Mrs. Fisher went on, "that she thinks it's all MY
+fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and everybody began
+to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could see Louisa thought that if she'd
+had Lily in tow instead of me she would have been hob-nobbing with all
+the royalties by this time. She doesn't realize that it's Lily's beauty
+that does it: Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than
+when he knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously
+admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to
+marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned
+up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her
+marriage-settlements with the step-father were being drawn up. Some
+people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal:
+there was an awful row between the men, and people began to look at Lily
+so queerly that Mrs. Peniston had to pack up and finish her cure
+elsewhere. Not that SHE ever understood: to this day she thinks that Aix
+didn't suit her, and mentions her having been sent there as proof of the
+incompetence of French doctors. That's Lily all over, you know: she works
+like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she
+ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a
+picnic."
+
+Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of sea
+between the cactus-flowers. "Sometimes," she added, "I think it's just
+flightiness--and sometimes I think it's because, at heart, she despises
+the things she's trying for. And it's the difficulty of deciding that
+makes her such an interesting study." She glanced tentatively at Selden's
+motionless profile, and resumed with a slight sigh: "Well, all I can say
+is, I wish she'd give ME some of her discarded opportunities. I wish we
+could change places now, for instance. She could make a very good thing
+out of the Brys if she managed them properly, and I should know just how
+to look after George Dorset while Bertha is reading Verlaine with Neddy
+Silverton."
+
+She met Selden's sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance. "Well,
+what's the use of mincing matters? We all know that's what Bertha brought
+her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good time she has to provide
+occupation for George. At first I thought Lily was going to play her
+cards well THIS time, but there are rumours that Bertha is jealous of her
+success here and at Cannes, and I shouldn't be surprised if there were a
+break any day. Lily's only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly--oh,
+very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it's necessary
+that George's attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And I'm
+bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he'd marry her tomorrow if
+he found out there was anything wrong with Bertha. But you know him--he's
+as blind as he's jealous; and of course Lily's present business is to
+keep him blind. A clever woman might know just the right moment to tear
+off the bandage: but Lily isn't clever in that way, and when George does
+open his eyes she'll probably contrive not to be in his line of vision."
+
+Selden tossed away his cigarette. "By Jove--it's time for my train," he
+exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs. Fisher's
+surprised comment--"Why, I thought of course you were at Monte!"--a
+murmured word to the effect that he was making Nice his head-quarters.
+
+"The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now," he heard irrelevantly flung
+after him.
+
+Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel overlooking
+the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple of gaping
+portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to transport them to the
+cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to
+the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Nice; and not
+till he was installed in the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim
+to himself, with a reaction of self-contempt: "What the deuce am I
+running away from?"
+
+The pertinence of the question checked Selden's fugitive impulse before
+the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like an emotional
+coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered. He had instructed
+his bankers to forward some important business letters to Nice, and at
+Nice he would quietly await them. He was already annoyed with himself for
+having left Monte Carlo, where he had intended to pass the week which
+remained to him before sailing; but it would now be difficult to return
+on his steps without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride
+recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the
+probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself
+from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance; and
+viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a reassuring
+object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated mention of her
+name, would send his thoughts back into grooves from which he had
+resolutely detached them; whereas, if she could be entirely excluded from
+his life, the pressure of new and varied impressions, with which no
+thought of her was connected, would soon complete the work of separation.
+Mrs. Fisher's conversation had, indeed, operated to that end; but the
+treatment was too painful to be voluntarily chosen while milder remedies
+were untried; and Selden thought he could trust himself to return
+gradually to a reasonable view of Miss Bart, if only he did not see her.
+
+Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in his
+reflections before the increasing throng on the platform warned him that
+he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the next moment there was a
+hand on the door, and he turned to confront the very face he was fleeing.
+
+Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon the
+train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young Silverton and Lord
+Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring into the carriage, and
+envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before the
+whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were hastening to
+Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the Duchess of
+Beltshire and to see the water-fete in the bay; a plan evidently
+improvised--in spite of Lord Hubert's protesting "Oh, I say, you
+know,"--for the express purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry's endeavour to
+capture the Duchess.
+
+During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time for a
+rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself opposite to him in
+the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three months had elapsed since he
+had parted from her on the threshold of the Brys' conservatory; but a
+subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty. Then it had had
+a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were
+sometimes tragically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a
+process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
+brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation:
+to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm
+fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape.
+
+He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
+competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she took up
+the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had not been
+snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such facility
+sickened him--but he told himself that it was with the pang which
+precedes recovery. Now he would really get well--would eject the last
+drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt himself calmer in her
+presence than he had learned to be in the thought of her. Her assumptions
+and elisions, her short-cuts and long DETOURS, the skill with which she
+contrived to meet him at a point from which no inconvenient glimpses of
+the past were visible, suggested what opportunities she had had for
+practising such arts since their last meeting. He felt that she had at
+last arrived at an understanding with herself: had made a pact with her
+rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government,
+under which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced
+into the service of the state.
+
+And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had adjusted itself
+to the hidden intricacies of a situation in which, even after Mrs.
+Fisher's elucidating flashes, he still felt himself agrope. Surely Mrs.
+Fisher could no longer charge Miss Bart with neglecting her
+opportunities! To Selden's exasperated observation she was only too
+completely alive to them. She was "perfect" to every one: subservient to
+Bertha's anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods,
+brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her
+on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton,
+portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something
+vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine shades of
+manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed
+on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be
+desperate. She was on the edge of something--that was the impression left
+with him. He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one
+graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ground was
+failing her.
+
+On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for the
+half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of the general
+insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism. How any one
+could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera--any one with a grain of
+imagination--with the whole Mediterranean to choose from: but then, if
+one's estimate of a place depended on the way they broiled a spring
+chicken! Gad! what a study might be made of the tyranny of the
+stomach--the way a sluggish liver or insufficient gastric juices might
+affect the whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in
+reach--chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the "statutory causes"; a
+woman's life might be ruined by a man's inability to digest fresh bread.
+Grotesque? Yes--and tragic--like most absurdities. There's nothing
+grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he?
+Oh--the reason they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well--partly, no
+doubt, Miss Bart's desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a
+stone to art and poetry--the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And
+of course she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for him. Oh,
+she could make him believe anything--ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset was aware of
+it--oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn't see! But she could hold her
+tongue--she'd had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an intimate friend--she
+wouldn't hear a word against her. Only it hurts a woman's pride--there
+are some things one doesn't get used to . . . All this in confidence, of
+course? Ah--and there were the ladies signalling from the balcony of the
+hotel.... He plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative
+cigar.
+
+The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the evening, by
+some of those faint corroborative hints that generate a light of their
+own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden, stumbling on a chance
+acquaintance, had dined with him, and adjourned, still in his company, to
+the brightly lit Promenade, where a line of crowded stands commanded the
+glittering darkness of the waters. The night was soft and persuasive.
+Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from
+the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent
+across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red
+glitter of the illuminated boats. Down the lantern-hung Promenade,
+snatches of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft
+tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and the
+backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the
+vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of the
+season.
+
+Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the stands facing
+the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng, and then found a point
+of vantage on a high garden-parapet above the Promenade. Thence they
+caught but a triangular glimpse of the water, and of the flashing play of
+boats across its surface; but the crowd in the street was under their
+immediate view, and seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than
+the show itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and,
+dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and
+turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls
+overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty cab
+trailed along the deserted thoroughfare, and presently Selden saw two
+persons emerge from the opposite shadows, signal to the cab, and drive
+off in it toward the centre of the town. The moonlight touched them as
+they paused to enter the carriage, and he recognized Mrs. Dorset and
+young Silverton.
+
+Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw that the
+time was close on eleven. He took another cross street, and without
+breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way to the fashionable
+club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here, amid the blaze of crowded
+baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord Hubert Dacey, seated with his
+habitual worn smile behind a rapidly dwindling heap of gold. The heap
+being in due course wiped out, Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining
+Selden, adjourned with him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was
+now past midnight, and the throng on the stands was dispersing, while the
+long trails of red-lit boats scattered and faded beneath a sky
+repossessed by the tranquil splendour of the moon.
+
+Lord Hubert looked at his watch. "By Jove, I promised to join the Duchess
+for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it's past twelve, and I suppose
+they've all scattered. The fact is, I lost them in the crowd soon after
+dinner, and took refuge here, for my sins. They had seats on one of the
+stands, but of course they couldn't stop quiet: the Duchess never can.
+She and Miss Bart went off in quest of what they call adventures--gad, it
+ain't their fault if they don't have some queer ones!" He added
+tentatively, after pausing to grope for a cigarette: "Miss Bart's an old
+friend of yours, I believe? So she told me.--Ah, thanks--I don't seem to
+have one left." He lit Selden's proffered cigarette, and continued, in
+his high-pitched drawling tone: "None of my business, of course, but I
+didn't introduce her to the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess, you
+understand; and a very good friend of mine; but RATHER a liberal
+education."
+
+Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord Hubert broke
+out again: "Sort of thing one can't communicate to the young lady--though
+young ladies nowadays are so competent to judge for themselves; but in
+this case--I'm an old friend too, you know . . . and there seemed no one
+else to speak to. The whole situation's a little mixed, as I see it--but
+there used to be an aunt somewhere, a diffuse and innocent person, who
+was great at bridging over chasms she didn't see . . . Ah, in New York,
+is she? Pity New York's such a long way off!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found herself
+alone on the deck of the Sabrina. The cushioned chairs, disposed
+expectantly under the wide awning, showed no signs of recent occupancy,
+and she presently learned from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet
+appeared, and that the gentlemen--separately--had gone ashore as soon as
+they had breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over
+the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
+before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath of
+purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of foam at
+the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences, hotels and villas
+flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and eucalyptus; and the
+background of bare and finely-pencilled mountains quivered in a pale
+intensity of light.
+
+
+How beautiful it was--and how she loved beauty! She had always felt that
+her sensibility in this direction made up for certain obtusenesses of
+feeling of which she was less proud; and during the last three months she
+had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets' invitation to go abroad with
+them had come as an almost miraculous release from crushing difficulties;
+and her faculty for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off
+problems of conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had
+arisen, made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a
+postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed
+for her only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
+to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they changed
+their background. She could not have remained in New York without
+repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious
+debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident
+of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them
+dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled
+past them.
+
+Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to aid this
+illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new scenes, and had found
+in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions. The cruise itself charmed
+her as a romantic adventure. She was vaguely touched by the names and
+scenes amid which she moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading
+Theocritus by moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories,
+with a thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
+superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given her more
+pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high company, and of
+making her own ascendency felt there, so that she found herself figuring
+once more as the "beautiful Miss Bart" in the interesting journal devoted
+to recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions--all
+these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of memory
+the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had escaped.
+
+If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her
+ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only
+problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.
+Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of the skill with which she had
+adapted herself to somewhat delicate conditions. She had reason to think
+that she had made herself equally necessary to her host and hostess; and
+if only she had seen any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a
+financial profit from the situation, there would have been no cloud on
+her horizon. The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently
+low; and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
+be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could worry
+along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some happy
+change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was gay and
+beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not unworthily in
+such a setting.
+
+She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of Beltshire,
+and at twelve o'clock she asked to be set ashore in the gig. Before this
+she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see Mrs. Dorset; but the
+reply came back that the latter was tired, and trying to sleep. Lily
+thought she understood the reason of the rebuff. Her hostess had not been
+included in the Duchess's invitation, though she herself had made the
+most loyal efforts in that direction. But her grace was impervious to
+hints, and invited or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily's fault if
+Mrs. Dorset's complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess's
+easy gait. The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated
+her objection beyond saying: "She's rather a bore, you know. The only one
+of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry--HE'S funny--" but Lily
+knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether sorry to be
+thus distinguished at her friend's expense. Bertha certainly HAD grown
+tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned Silverton.
+
+On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from the
+Sabrina; and the Duchess's little breakfast, organized by Lord Hubert
+with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter to Lily for not
+including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of late, had grown more than
+usually morose and incalculable, and Ned Silverton went about with an air
+that seemed to challenge the universe. The freedom and lightness of the
+ducal intercourse made an agreeable change from these complications, and
+Lily was tempted, after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her
+companions to the hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to
+play; her diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure;
+but it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of the
+Duchess's back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a neighbouring
+table.
+
+The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the afternoon
+hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the Sunday crowd in a
+lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass, identities were hardly
+distinguishable; but Lily presently saw Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined
+way through the doors, and, in the broad wake she left, the light figure
+of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug.
+Mrs. Bry pressed on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain
+point in the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
+towing-line, and let herself float to the girl's side.
+
+"Lose her?" she echoed the latter's query, with an indifferent glance at
+Mrs. Bry's retreating back. "I daresay--it doesn't matter: I HAVE lost
+her already." And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: "We had an awful row
+this morning. You know, of course, that the Duchess chucked her at dinner
+last night, and she thinks it was my fault--my want of management. The
+worst of it is, the message--just a mere word by telephone--came so late
+that the dinner HAD to be paid for; and Becassin HAD run it up--it had
+been so drummed into him that the Duchess was coming!" Mrs. Fisher
+indulged in a faint laugh at the remembrance. "Paying for what she
+doesn't get rankles so dreadfully with Louisa: I can't make her see that
+it's one of the preliminary steps to getting what you haven't paid
+for--and as I was the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms,
+poor dear!"
+
+Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came naturally to
+her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to Mrs. Fisher.
+
+"If there's anything I can do--if it's only a question of meeting the
+Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing----"
+
+But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. "My dear, I have my
+pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn't manage the Duchess, and I can't
+palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I've taken the final step: I
+go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers. THEY'RE still in the elementary
+stage; an Italian Prince is a great deal more than a Prince to them, and
+they're always on the brink of taking a courier for one. To save them
+from that is my present mission." She laughed again at the picture. "But
+before I go I want to make my last will and testament--I want to leave
+you the Brys."
+
+"Me?" Miss Bart joined in her amusement. "It's charming of you to
+remember me, dear; but really----"
+
+"You're already so well provided for?" Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp glance
+at her. "ARE you, though, Lily--to the point of rejecting my offer?"
+
+Miss Bart coloured slowly. "What I really meant was, that the Brys
+wouldn't in the least care to be so disposed of."
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye.
+"What you really meant was that you've snubbed the Brys horribly; and you
+know that they know----"
+
+"Carry!"
+
+"Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you'd even
+managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina--especially when royalties
+were coming! But it's not too late," she ended earnestly, "it's not too
+late for either of you."
+
+Lily smiled. "Stay over, and I'll get the Duchess to dine with them."
+
+"I shan't stay over--the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT," said Mrs.
+Fisher with simplicity. "But get the Duchess to dine with them all the
+same."
+
+Lily's smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend's importunity
+was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. "I'm sorry I have been
+negligent about the Brys----" she began.
+
+"Oh, as to the Brys--it's you I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Fisher
+abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice:
+"You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess chucked us.
+It was Louisa's idea--I told her what I thought of it."
+
+Miss Bart assented. "Yes--I caught sight of you on the way back, at the
+station."
+
+"Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset--that
+horrid little Dabham who does 'Society Notes from the Riviera'--had been
+dining with us at Nice. And he's telling everybody that you and Dorset
+came back alone after midnight."
+
+"Alone--? When he was with us?" Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into
+gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher's look. "We DID
+come back alone--if that's so very dreadful! But whose fault was it? The
+Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown Princess; Bertha
+got bored with the show, and went off early, promising to meet us at the
+station. We turned up on time, but she didn't--she didn't turn up at all!"
+
+Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with
+careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher received it
+in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have lost sight of her
+friend's part in the incident: her inward vision had taken another slant.
+
+"Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?"
+
+"Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for the
+FETE. At any rate, I know she's safe on the yacht, though I haven't yet
+seen her; but you see it was not my fault," Lily summed up.
+
+"Not your fault that Bertha didn't turn up? My poor child, if only you
+don't have to pay for it!" Mrs. Fisher rose--she had seen Mrs. Bry
+surging back in her direction. "There's Louisa, and I must be off--oh,
+we're on the best of terms externally; we're lunching together; but at
+heart it's ME she's lunching on," she explained; and with a last
+hand-clasp and a last look, she added: "Remember, I leave her to you;
+she's hovering now, ready to take you in."
+
+
+
+Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher's leave-taking away with her
+from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving, the first
+step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry's good graces. An affable
+advance--a vague murmur that they must see more of each other--an
+allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include the Duchess as
+well as the Sabrina--how easily it was all done, if one possessed the
+knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as she had so often
+wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not more consistently
+exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful--and sometimes, could it be
+that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious of
+a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to the point of
+suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps,
+that he might really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE
+undertook to have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his
+help, with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
+way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more
+for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as she
+advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it been
+produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden? She thought
+not--time and change seemed so completely to have relegated him to his
+proper distance. The sudden and exquisite reaction from her anxieties had
+had the effect of throwing the recent past so far back that even Selden,
+as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so
+clear that they were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down
+to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
+No--that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
+fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
+uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.
+
+They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
+descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her across the
+square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and regain the yacht; but
+she now had the immediate impression that something more was to happen
+first.
+
+"Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?" he began, putting the
+second question before the first was answered, and not waiting for a
+reply to either before he directed her silently toward the comparative
+seclusion of the lower gardens.
+
+She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension.
+The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its sallowness had
+paled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and long
+reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine effect. His appearance,
+in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious.
+
+He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till they
+reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then, pulling up
+abruptly, he said: "Have you seen Bertha?"
+
+"No--when I left the yacht she was not yet up."
+
+He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
+clock. "Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time she
+came on board? This morning at seven!" he exclaimed.
+
+"At seven?" Lily started. "What happened--an accident to the train?"
+
+He laughed again. "They missed the train--all the trains--they had to
+drive back."
+
+"Well----?" She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this necessity
+accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.
+
+"Well, they couldn't get a carriage at once--at that time of night, you
+know--" the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he were
+putting the case for his wife--"and when they finally did, it was only a
+one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!"
+
+"How tiresome! I see," she affirmed, with the more earnestness because
+she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after a pause she
+added: "I'm so sorry--but ought we to have waited?"
+
+"Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the four of
+us, do you think?"
+
+She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh intended
+to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of it. "Well, it
+would have been difficult; we should have had to walk by turns. But it
+would have been jolly to see the sunrise."
+
+"Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly," he agreed.
+
+"Was it? You saw it, then?"
+
+"I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them."
+
+"Naturally--I suppose you were worried. Why didn't you call on me to
+share your vigil?"
+
+He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. "I
+don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said with sudden
+grimness.
+
+Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as in
+one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping her
+sense of it out of her eyes.
+
+"DENOUEMENT--isn't that too big a word for such a small incident? The
+worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has probably slept
+off by this time."
+
+She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to her
+in the glare of his miserable eyes.
+
+"Don't--don't----!" he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and while
+she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore any cause for
+it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he dropped down on the bench
+near which they had paused, and poured out the wretchedness of his soul.
+
+It was a dreadful hour--an hour from which she emerged shrinking and
+seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was
+not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak; but
+rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface
+of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had
+always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the
+situation had presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid
+image--that of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping
+road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending,
+and wondering what would give way first. Well--everything had given way
+now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so long.
+Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it
+from the road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his
+furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made her feel
+the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his life. But for her,
+what ear would have been open to his cries? And what hand but hers could
+drag him up again to a footing of sanity and self-respect? All through
+the stress of the struggle with him, she had been conscious of something
+faintly maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
+present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to
+feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted her to suffer
+with him, not to help him to suffer less.
+
+Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
+frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy so
+deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would think it
+the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But Monte Carlo is,
+of all places, the one where the human bond is least close, and odd
+sights are the least arresting. If a glance or two lingered on the
+couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed them; and it was Lily herself who
+broke the silence by rising from her seat. With the clearing of her
+vision the sweep of peril had extended, and she saw that the post of
+danger was no longer at Dorset's side.
+
+"If you won't go back, I must--don't make me leave you!" she urged.
+
+But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: "What are you going to
+do? You really can't sit here all night."
+
+"I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers." He sat up, roused by
+a new thought. "By Jove, Selden's at Nice--I'll send for Selden!"
+
+Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. "No, no, NO!" she
+protested.
+
+He swung round on her distrustfully. "Why not Selden? He's a lawyer isn't
+he? One will do as well as another in a case like this."
+
+"As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help you."
+
+"You do--by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn't been for you
+I'd have ended the thing long ago. But now it's got to end." He rose
+suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. "You can't want to see
+me ridiculous."
+
+She looked at him kindly. "That's just it." Then, after a moment's
+pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
+inspiration: "Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You'll have time to do it
+before dinner."
+
+"Oh, DINNER----" he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
+rejoinder: "Dinner on board, remember; we'll put it off till nine if you
+like."
+
+It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the quay, and
+she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her, she began to wonder
+what had been happening on the yacht. Of Silverton's whereabouts there
+had been no mention. Had he returned to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha--the
+dread alternative sprang on her suddenly--could Bertha, left to herself,
+have gone ashore to rejoin him? Lily's heart stood still at the thought.
+All her concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
+in such affairs, the woman's instinct is to side with the man, but
+because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was so
+desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of so
+different a quality from Bertha's, though hers too was desperate enough.
+The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about herself, while
+he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual crisis, this
+difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution on Bertha's side,
+since at least he had her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any
+rate, viewed less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were
+for the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went out.
+She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of
+obligation, the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain
+it. Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the last
+months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction of which
+Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more urgent that she
+should work undividedly in her friend's interest.
+
+It was in Bertha's interest, certainly, that she had despatched Dorset to
+consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of the situation
+accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the safest in which Dorset
+could find himself. Who but Selden could thus miraculously combine the
+skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? The consciousness
+that much skill would be required made Lily rest thankfully in the
+greatness of the obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through
+she could trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust
+in the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.
+
+Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the conviction
+strengthened her for the task that remained. She and Bertha had never
+been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis the barriers of reserve
+must surely fall: Dorset's wild allusions to the scene of the morning
+made Lily feel that they were down already, and that any attempt to
+rebuild them would be beyond Bertha's strength. She pictured the poor
+creature shivering behind her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense
+the moment when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered.
+If only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
+traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily grew
+more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her long absence.
+What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long hours no soul to
+turn to--but by this time Lily's eager foot was on the side-ladder, and
+her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be
+unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck, the
+wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated elegance, sat
+dispensing tea to the Duchess of Beltshire and Lord Hubert.
+
+The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that Bertha, at
+least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was proportionately
+disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned. But in an instant she
+saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to look blank before the others,
+and that, to mitigate the effect of her own surprise, she must at once
+produce some simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions
+made it easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess: "Why, I thought you'd
+gone back to the Princess!" and this sufficed for the lady she addressed,
+if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert.
+
+At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the Duchess
+was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first rushed out to the
+yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject of tomorrow's
+dinner--the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert had finally
+insisted on dragging them.
+
+"To save my neck, you know!" he explained, with a glance that appealed to
+Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the Duchess added, with
+her noble candour: "Mr. Bry has promised him a tip, and he says if we go
+he'll pass it onto us."
+
+This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to Lily, Mrs.
+Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the close of which
+Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder, called back, with an air
+of numbering heads: "And of course we may count on Dorset too?"
+
+"Oh, count on him," his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up well to
+the last--but as she turned back from waving her adieux over the side,
+Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul of fear look
+out.
+
+Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady her
+muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control when,
+dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she remarked to
+Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: "I suppose I ought to say good
+morning."
+
+If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the vaguest
+sense of what was expected of her in return. There was something
+unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset's composure, and she had to
+force the light tone in which she answered: "I tried to see you this
+morning, but you were not yet up."
+
+"No--I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought we
+ought to wait for you till the last train." She spoke very gently, but
+with just the least tinge of reproach.
+
+"You missed us? You waited for us at the station?" Now indeed Lily was
+too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other's words or keep watch
+on her own. "But I thought you didn't get to the station till after the
+last train had left!"
+
+Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
+immediate query: "Who told you that?"
+
+"George--I saw him just now in the gardens."
+
+"Ah, is that George's version? Poor George--he was in no state to
+remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this morning,
+and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he found him?"
+
+Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset settled
+herself indolently in her seat. "He'll wait to see him; he was horribly
+frightened about himself. It's very bad for him to be worried, and
+whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings on an attack."
+
+This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was
+put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air
+of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully:
+"Anything upsetting?"
+
+"Yes--such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
+hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big responsibility in such a
+scandalous place after midnight."
+
+At that--at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable audacity of
+it--Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished laugh.
+
+"Well, really--considering it was you who burdened him with the
+responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. "By not having the
+superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush for the
+train? Or the imagination to believe that you'd take it without us--you
+and he all alone--instead of waiting quietly in the station till we DID
+manage to meet you?"
+
+Lily's colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was pursuing
+an object, following a line she had marked out for herself. Only, with
+such a doom impending, why waste time in these childish efforts to avert
+it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed Lily's indignation: did it not
+prove how horribly the poor creature was frightened?
+
+"No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice," she returned.
+
+"Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity to
+rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are not a
+child to be led by the hand!"
+
+"No--nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that's what you are doing to
+me now."
+
+Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. "Lecture you--I? Heaven forbid!
+I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it's usually the
+other way round, isn't it? I'm expected to take hints, not to give them:
+I've positively lived on them all these last months."
+
+"Hints--from me to you?" Lily repeated.
+
+"Oh, negative ones merely--what not to be and to do and to see. And I
+think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you'll let me say
+so, I didn't understand that one of my negative duties was NOT to warn
+you when you carried your imprudence too far."
+
+A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery
+that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a
+moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this
+outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to
+cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to
+exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double and turn--come straight back to me,
+and we'll find a way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable
+insolence of Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it
+quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its
+accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to
+her cabin.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Miss Bart's telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his hotel; and
+having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The message
+necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he had recently
+heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On the whole he was
+surprised; for though he had perceived that the situation contained all
+the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his
+personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into
+harmlessness. Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless
+disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and
+it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from
+a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to
+safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for either lay in
+repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had
+only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his
+desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
+There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished to
+spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the
+public washing of the Dorset linen.
+
+How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more
+vividly after his two hours' talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out
+at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as
+left him, after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling
+open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come
+out; and happily for his side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced
+together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a
+homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit--there were
+missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
+was naturally Selden's business to make the most of in putting them under
+his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's mood the completest
+demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the
+moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize, to offer sympathy and
+to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with the
+sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly
+noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted
+for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not
+long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset,
+the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a
+little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such
+natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
+telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction:
+"Assume that everything is as usual."
+
+On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was
+lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's imperative bidding,
+had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast
+had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of
+the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called
+his "attacks" that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this
+cause; but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to
+make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt
+of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a
+grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one
+herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
+perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak
+flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of
+"appearances," her own attention was perpetually distracted by the
+question: "What on earth can she be driving at?" There was something
+positively exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If
+only she would have given her friend a hint they might still have worked
+together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while she was thus
+obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she
+honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but for the Dorsets'. She had
+not thought of her own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in
+trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary
+evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
+tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of
+his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who
+should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the
+infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing
+hand.
+
+Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it
+seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an
+hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage
+and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the
+same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the
+confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were
+all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned
+Silverton. No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject
+kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
+another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset now
+avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was repenting his
+rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only trying, in his clumsy
+way, to conform to Selden's counsel to behave "as usual." Such
+instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the
+photographer's behest to "look natural"; and in a creature as unconscious
+as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to
+maintain a pose was sure to result in queer contortions.
+
+It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
+resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset was
+still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and feeling
+too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried ashore.
+Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a group of
+acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in whose company she
+was returning to the rooms when she encountered Selden crossing the
+square. She could not, at the moment, separate herself definitely from
+her party, who had hospitably assumed that she would remain with them
+till they took their departure; but she found time for a momentary pause
+of enquiry, to which he promptly returned: "I've seen him again--he's
+just left me."
+
+She waited before him anxiously. "Well? what has happened? What WILL
+happen?"
+
+"Nothing as yet--and nothing in the future, I think."
+
+"It's over, then? It's settled? You're sure?"
+
+He smiled. "Give me time. I'm not sure--but I'm a good deal surer." And
+with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the expectant
+group on the steps.
+
+Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness, had even
+stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And now, as he
+turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station, that anxiety
+remained with him as the visible justification of his own. It was not,
+indeed, anything specific that he feared: there had been a literal truth
+in his declaration that he did not think anything would happen. What
+troubled him was that, though Dorset's attitude had perceptibly changed,
+the change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been
+produced by Selden's arguments, or by the action of his own soberer
+reason. Five minutes' talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had
+been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment as
+weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of apathy, like a
+dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however
+exerted, it worked for the general safety: the question was how long it
+would last, and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On
+these points Selden could gain no light; for he saw that one effect of
+the transformation had been to shut him off from free communion with
+Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the irresistible desire to
+discuss his wrong; but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn
+tenacity, Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full
+expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then
+impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden began to
+feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of
+the sequel.
+
+It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station
+when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his brief word with
+her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual
+change in his purpose. The change had been produced by the look in her
+eyes; and in his eagerness to define the nature of that look, he dropped
+into a seat in the gardens, and sat brooding upon the question. It was
+natural enough, in all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a
+young woman placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
+couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her concern for
+her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her own position. The
+worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss Bart's state of mind, so many
+alternative readings were possible; and one of these, in Selden's
+troubled mind, took the ugly form suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl
+was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what
+degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being
+fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs.
+Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but
+Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are
+generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with
+the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs.
+Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the likelihood of Dorset's marrying
+Miss Bart if "anything happened"; and though Mrs. Fisher's conclusions
+were notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from
+which they were drawn. Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the
+girl, and this interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife's
+struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the
+last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically
+combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences. She could
+be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was reckless in
+courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely
+to be used as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just
+what course she was likely to take, but his perplexity increased his
+apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must speak
+again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the situation--and he had
+always honestly tried to resist judging her by her surroundings--however
+free she might be from any personal connection with it, she would be
+better out of the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to
+him for help, it was clearly his business to tell her so.
+
+This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him back to
+the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her disappearing; but
+a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed to put him on her traces. He
+saw instead, to his surprise, Ned Silverton loitering somewhat
+ostentatiously about the tables; and the discovery that this actor in the
+drama was not only hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the
+exposure of the footlights, though it might have seemed to imply that all
+peril was over, served rather to deepen Selden's sense of foreboding.
+Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see
+Miss Bart move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably
+to do at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for a
+glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that she had
+gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow her there, and
+still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a
+private word; and he had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative
+of writing, when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled
+before him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.
+
+Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord Hubert that
+Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset's company; an
+announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Bry, after a
+glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a
+spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet
+his friends at dinner that evening--"At Becassin's--a little dinner to
+the Duchess," she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the
+pressure.
+
+Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought
+him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused
+to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace.
+There, while the Brys hovered within over the last agitating alternatives
+of the MENU, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length
+rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw
+and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss
+Bart on the pretext of a moment's glance into one of the brilliant shops
+along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
+white dazzle of a jeweller's window: "I stopped over to see you--to beg
+of you to leave the yacht."
+
+The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. "To
+leave--? What do you mean? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?"
+
+The glare from the jeweller's window, deepening the pallour of her face,
+gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. "Nothing
+will, I am sure; but while there's even a doubt left, how can you think I
+would leave Bertha?"
+
+The words rang out on a note of contempt--was it possibly of contempt for
+himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of
+insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest: "You have yourself
+to think of, you know--" to which, with a strange fall of sadness in her
+voice, she answered, meeting his eyes: "If you knew how little difference
+that makes!"
+
+"Oh, well, nothing WILL happen," he said, more for his own reassurance
+than for hers; and "Nothing, nothing, of course!" she valiantly assented,
+as they turned to overtake their companions.
+
+In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry's
+illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the
+familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife once
+more presenting their customary faces to the world, she engrossed in
+establishing her relation with an intensely new gown, he shrinking with
+dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations of the MENU. The mere
+fact that they thus showed themselves together, with the utmost openness
+the place afforded, seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their
+differences were composed. How this end had been attained was still
+matter for wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested
+confidently in the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by
+telling himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler
+than his own.
+
+Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses, in
+which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away from
+Lord Hubert's restraining hand, Selden's general watchfulness began to
+lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days
+when she was so handsome that to be handsome was enough, and all the
+rest--her grace, her quickness, her social felicities--seemed the
+overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the
+way in which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable shades, from
+the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such
+company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired
+to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace
+cheapening the other women's smartness as her finely-discriminated
+silences made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had
+restored to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed
+in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her voice
+and eyes. Yes, she was matchless--it was the one word for her; and he
+could give his admiration the freer play because so little personal
+feeling remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not
+at the lurid moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light
+of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the
+crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt
+in her. It was before him again in its completeness--the choice in which
+she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the
+showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived
+at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident
+setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a
+special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of
+the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where
+conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become
+the roll of fame.
+
+It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham, wedged
+in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours, suddenly became
+the centre of Selden's scrutiny. How much did he know of what was going
+on, and how much, for his purpose, was still worth finding out? His
+little eyes were like tentacles thrown out to catch the floating
+intimations with which, to Selden, the air at moments seemed thick; then
+again it cleared to its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it
+for the journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies' gowns.
+Mrs. Dorset's, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham's
+vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he would have
+called "the literary style." At first, as Selden had noticed, it had been
+almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now she was in full command of
+it, and was even producing her effects with unwonted freedom. Was she
+not, indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was not
+Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too
+jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always
+jerky; but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him
+farther from his centre.
+
+The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evident
+satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between Lord
+Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher to
+witness her achievement. Short of Mrs. Fisher her audience might have
+been called complete; for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainly
+gathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as
+to the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry,
+conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that
+each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the
+pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,
+catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in
+organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to adorn
+it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore herself, he
+smiled to think that he should have fancied her in need of help. Never
+had she appeared more serenely mistress of the situation than when, at
+the moment of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about
+the table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the shoulders
+to receive her cloak from Dorset.
+
+The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry's exceptional cigars and a
+bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables were empty;
+but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to give relief to the
+leave-taking of Mrs. Bry's distinguished guests. This ceremony was drawn
+out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the
+Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite farewells, and pledges of speedy
+reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes
+on the way to England. The quality of Mrs. Bry's hospitality, and of the
+tips her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the
+English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over
+their hostess's future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were
+also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy worth
+their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham.
+
+A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister that
+they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry of this
+departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the door, offered to
+convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The offer was accepted,
+and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband in attendance. Miss Bart had
+lingered for a last word with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry
+was pressing a final, and still more expensive, cigar, called out: "Come
+on, Lily, if you're going back to the yacht."
+
+Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused on
+her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.
+
+"Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht," she said in a voice of
+singular distinctness.
+
+A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the verge of
+congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her husband, and
+Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was mainly conscious of
+a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and fling him out into the street.
+
+Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife's side. His face was
+white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes. "Bertha!--Miss
+Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some mistake . . ."
+
+"Miss Bart remains here," his wife rejoined incisively. "And, I think,
+George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer."
+
+Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable
+erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her. She
+had paled a little under the shock of the insult, but the discomposure of
+the surrounding faces was not reflected in her own. The faint disdain of
+her smile seemed to lift her high above her antagonist's reach, and it
+was not till she had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance
+between them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess.
+
+"I am joining the Duchess tomorrow," she explained, "and it seemed easier
+for me to remain on shore for the night."
+
+She held firmly to Mrs. Bry's wavering eye while she gave this
+explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative glance
+from one to another of the women's faces. She read their incredulity in
+their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness of the men behind them,
+and for a miserable half-second he thought she quivered on the brink of
+failure. Then, turning to him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery
+of her recovered smile--"Dear Mr. Selden," she said, "you promised to see
+me to my cab."
+
+
+
+Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden moved
+toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of warm rain
+blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab had been
+tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till
+the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a
+bench, he said: "Sit down a moment."
+
+She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at the
+bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her face.
+Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful lest any
+word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and kept also from
+free utterance by the wretched doubt which had slowly renewed itself
+within him. What had brought her to this pass? What weakness had placed
+her so abominably at her enemy's mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have
+turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the
+support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of
+husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind,
+reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and
+fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the corroboration of his own
+impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint,
+since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked
+by the fear of committing a blunder.
+
+Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as
+that of the men he had despised for turning from her; but before he could
+find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question.
+
+"Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning."
+
+"An hotel--HERE--that you can go to alone? It's not possible."
+
+She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. "What IS, then?
+It's too wet to sleep in the gardens."
+
+"But there must be some one----"
+
+"Some one to whom I can go? Of course--any number--but at THIS hour? You
+see my change of plan was rather sudden----"
+
+"Good God--if you'd listened to me!" he cried, venting his helplessness
+in a burst of anger.
+
+She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. "But haven't
+I?" she rejoined. "You advised me to leave the yacht, and I'm leaving it."
+
+He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to
+explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had
+forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past.
+
+She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like
+some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.
+
+"Lily!" he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but--"Oh, not
+now," she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her
+recovered composure: "Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since
+you're so kindly here to help me----"
+
+He gathered himself up at the challenge. "You will do as I tell you?
+There's but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the
+Stepneys."
+
+"Oh--" broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he
+insisted: "Come--it's late, and you must appear to have gone there
+directly."
+
+He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last
+gesture of protest. "I can't--I can't--not that--you don't know Gwen: you
+mustn't ask me!"
+
+"I MUST ask you--you must obey me," he persisted, though infected at
+heart by her own fear.
+
+Her voice sank to a whisper: "And if she refuses?"--but, "Oh, trust
+me--trust me!" he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch,
+she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square.
+
+In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which
+carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys' hotel. Here he
+left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was
+sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter's
+descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the
+gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew
+up with a last flare of reluctance.
+
+"It's understood, then?" he stipulated nervously, with his hand on
+Selden's arm. "She leaves tomorrow by the early train--and my wife's
+asleep, and can't be disturbed."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The blinds of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down against the
+oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her
+assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were
+all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons--even a stray Peniston or
+two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of
+remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in
+fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's property
+"went back"; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal
+of his widow's private fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent.
+Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took
+the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
+and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude
+and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the
+insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her
+in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to
+conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and
+smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I
+couldn't BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere else!"
+
+A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the
+door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with
+Gerty Farish at her side. The women's faces, as she paused
+interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two
+made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either
+by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others
+meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney,
+with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily,
+ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney's official attempt to
+direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
+herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from
+the others.
+
+It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from
+Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their
+welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of
+her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard
+from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated,
+almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
+be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable
+uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had
+vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
+her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The
+certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the
+prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have
+repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of
+undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
+long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, "always
+understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece;
+and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized
+into fact.
+
+"She gets everything, of course--I don't see what we're here for," Mrs.
+Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the
+latter's deprecating murmur--"Julia was always a just woman"--might have
+been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.
+
+"Well, it's only about four hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney rejoined with
+a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer's
+preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They won't find a towel
+missing--I went over them with her the very day----"
+
+Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh
+mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, solemnly
+erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle
+through the preamble of the will.
+
+"It's like being in church," she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen
+Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had
+grown--he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a
+few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on
+his stick.
+
+"I wonder why rich people always grow fat--I suppose it's because there's
+nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my
+figure," she mused, while the lawyer droned on through a labyrinth of
+legacies. The servants came first, then a few charitable institutions,
+then several remoter Melsons and Stepneys, who stirred consciously as
+their names rang out, and then subsided into a state of impassiveness
+befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney,
+and a cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few
+thousands: Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she
+heard her own name--"to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars--" and
+after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
+periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling
+distinctness: "and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and
+name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney."
+
+There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a
+surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed
+out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged
+handkerchief.
+
+Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first
+time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware of her
+presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance. And under
+her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes
+deceived. Disinherited--she had been disinherited--and for Grace
+Stepney! She met Gerty's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing
+effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There was
+something to be done before she left the house: to be done with all the
+nobility she knew how to put into such gestures. She advanced to the
+group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her hand said simply: "Dear
+Grace, I am so glad."
+
+The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space created
+itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no one advanced to
+fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about her, calmly taking the
+measure of her situation. She heard some one ask a question about the
+date of the will; she caught a fragment of the lawyer's answer--something
+about a sudden summons, and an "earlier instrument." Then the tide of
+dispersal began to drift past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert
+Melson stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group
+escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should
+take, though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
+found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which more than
+ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family vault, in which
+the last corpse had just been decently deposited.
+
+
+
+In Gerty Farish's sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the two
+friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of laughter: it
+struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt's legacy should so
+nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor. The need of
+discharging that debt had reasserted itself with increased urgency since
+her return to America, and she spoke her first thought in saying to the
+anxiously hovering Gerty: "I wonder when the legacies will be paid."
+
+But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into a
+larger indignation. "Oh, Lily, it's unjust; it's cruel--Grace Stepney
+must FEEL she has no right to all that money!"
+
+"Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her money,"
+Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.
+
+"But she was devoted to you--she led every one to think--" Gerty checked
+herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to her with a
+direct look. "Gerty, be honest: this will was made only six weeks ago.
+She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?"
+
+"Every one heard, of course, that there had been some disagreement--some
+misunderstanding----"
+
+"Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?"
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry George
+Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn't that what
+she told Gwen Stepney?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't listen to such horrors."
+
+"I MUST listen to them--I must know where I stand." She paused, and again
+sounded a faint note of derision. "Did you notice the women? They were
+afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get the
+money--afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague." Gerty
+remained silent, and she continued: "I stayed on to see what would
+happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu Melson--I saw them
+watching to see what Gwen would do.--Gerty, I must know just what is
+being said of me."
+
+"I tell you I don't listen----"
+
+"One hears such things without listening." She rose and laid her resolute
+hands on Miss Farish's shoulders. "Gerty, are people going to cut me?"
+
+"Your FRIENDS, Lily--how can you think it?"
+
+"Who are one's friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor trustful
+darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!" She kissed Gerty with
+a whimsical murmur. "You'd never let it make any difference--but then
+you're fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the irreclaimable ones,
+though? For I'm absolutely impenitent, you know."
+
+She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty, towering
+like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty, who could only
+falter out: "Lily, Lily--how can you laugh about such things?"
+
+"So as not to weep, perhaps. But no--I'm not of the tearful order. I
+discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has
+helped me through several painful episodes." She took a restless turn
+about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted the bright mockery of
+her eyes to Gerty's anxious countenance.
+
+"I shouldn't have minded, you know, if I'd got the money--" and at Miss
+Farish's protesting "Oh!" she repeated calmly: "Not a straw, my dear;
+for, in the first place, they wouldn't have quite dared to ignore me; and
+if they had, it wouldn't have mattered, because I should have been
+independent of them. But now--!" The irony faded from her eyes, and she
+bent a clouded face upon her friend.
+
+"How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours,
+but after all that makes no difference. The important thing----" Gerty
+paused, and then continued firmly: "The important thing is that you
+should clear yourself--should tell your friends the whole truth."
+
+"The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth? Where a woman is
+concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a
+great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she
+has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms
+with her."
+
+Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. "But what IS your
+story, Lily? I don't believe any one knows it yet."
+
+"My story?--I don't believe I know it myself. You see I never thought of
+preparing a version in advance as Bertha did--and if I had, I don't think
+I should take the trouble to use it now."
+
+But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: "I don't want a
+version prepared in advance--but I want you to tell me exactly what
+happened from the beginning."
+
+"From the beginning?" Miss Bart gently mimicked her. "Dear Gerty, how
+little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my
+cradle, I suppose--in the way I was brought up, and the things I was
+taught to care for. Or no--I won't blame anybody for my faults: I'll say
+it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving
+ancestress, who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and
+wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!" And as Miss Farish
+continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: "You
+asked me just now for the truth--well, the truth about any girl is that
+once she's talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her
+case the worse it looks.--My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a
+cigarette about you?"
+
+
+
+In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily
+Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June,
+and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed
+on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston's will, had taken
+flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of
+them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in
+her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at
+the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
+sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
+catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and
+under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to
+London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which
+asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously
+how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
+parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her
+aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded
+in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess's
+championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she
+was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in
+favour of a new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America.
+But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
+that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys,
+the Brys--all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama--had
+preceded her with their version of the case; and, even had she seen the
+least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and
+reluctance would have restrained her. She knew it was not by
+explanations and counter-charges that she could ever hope to recover her
+lost standing; but even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy,
+she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her
+from defending herself to Gerty Farish--a feeling that was half pride and
+half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed
+to Bertha Dorset's determination to win back her husband, and though her
+own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
+she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair
+was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from
+his wife. That was what she was "there for": it was the price she had
+chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her
+habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of
+introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the
+situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had
+carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a
+handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.
+
+She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences
+resulting from that failure; and these became clearer to her with every
+day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort
+of Gerty Farish's nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go.
+She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must
+set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the
+first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on
+how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
+Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were
+amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the
+still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy,
+though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart's return, had not even
+recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend's
+bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily's side might have been
+perilous: there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an
+accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there
+was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent
+passages through town.
+
+To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
+frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
+luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.
+
+"My dear Gerty, you wouldn't have me let the head-waiter see that I've
+nothing to live on but Aunt Julia's legacy? Think of Grace Stepney's
+satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea!
+What sweet shall we have today, dear--COUPE JACQUES or PECHES A LA MELBA?"
+
+She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour, and
+Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an inner
+room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It was
+impossible for these ladies and their companions--among whom Lily had at
+once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale--not to pass, in going out,
+the table at which the two girls were seated; and Gerty's sense of the
+fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss
+Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace,
+and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for
+them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could
+impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown
+was on Mrs. Trenor's side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
+exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed
+pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization,
+which included neither enquiries as to her future nor the expression of a
+definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed in the language of
+these omissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other
+members of the party: even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the
+importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs.
+Trenor's cordiality, and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss
+Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the
+pretext of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group
+soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor's wake.
+
+It was over in a moment--the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on the
+result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA MELBA--but
+Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy
+Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily had the doomed sense of
+the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.
+
+In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor's complaints of Carry Fisher's
+rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her
+husband's private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life
+at Bellomont, where no one seemed to have time to observe any one else,
+and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the
+rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from
+inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money
+of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily's
+part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly jealous of
+his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The
+immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay
+back her debt to Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a
+thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston's legacy left, and nothing to live on
+but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish's
+wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative
+claim of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first;
+after that she would take thought for the future.
+
+In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that her
+legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt's
+will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to enquire the
+cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Peniston's
+lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that,
+some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will,
+he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till
+the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement.
+Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
+appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
+powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the
+law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight
+of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney,
+who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of "going
+over" her benefactress's effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a
+favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one
+morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston's, where Grace, for the
+facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.
+
+The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so
+long commanded, increased Lily's desire to shorten the ordeal; and when
+Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best
+quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the point: would she be
+willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy?
+
+Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
+inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realized
+the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think that only the
+payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss Stepney herself had
+not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent--yes,
+actually!--for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her.
+She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have
+wished--she had told the executors so to their faces; but they were
+inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily
+take example by her, and be patient--let them both remember how
+beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.
+
+Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this
+example. "But you will have everything, Grace--it would be easy for you
+to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for."
+
+"Borrow--easy for me to borrow?" Grace Stepney rose up before her in
+sable wrath. "Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my
+expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable
+horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the
+truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her
+illness--you remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I
+don't know the particulars, of course--I don't WANT to know them--but
+there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy--no one
+could be with her without seeing that. I can't help it if you are
+offended by my telling you this now--if I can do anything to make you
+realize the folly of your course, and how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I
+shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss."
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was
+taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her
+dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities
+showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did
+not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she
+reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a hansom which pulled up at
+sight of her.
+
+From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a signalling
+hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had
+folded her in a demonstrative embrace.
+
+"My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town? When I saw you the
+other day at Sherry's I didn't have time to ask----" She broke off, and
+added with a burst of frankness: "The truth is I was HORRID, Lily, and
+I've wanted to tell you so ever since."
+
+"Oh----" Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp; but
+Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: "Look here, Lily, don't
+let's beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is caused by
+pretending there isn't any. That's not my way, and I can only say I'm
+thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other women's lead. But
+we'll talk of that by and bye--tell me now where you're staying and what
+your plans are. I don't suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace
+Stepney, eh?--and it struck me you might be rather at loose ends."
+
+In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of
+this appeal, and she said with a smile: "I am at loose ends for the
+moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and she's good enough to let
+me be with her whenever she can spare the time."
+
+Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "H'm--that's a temperate joy. Oh, I
+know--Gerty's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together; but A
+LA LONGUE you're used to a little higher seasoning, aren't you, dear?
+And besides, I suppose she'll be off herself before long--the first of
+August, you say? Well, look here, you can't spend your summer in town;
+we'll talk of that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a
+few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers'
+tonight?"
+
+And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she
+continued with her easy laugh: "You don't know them and they don't know
+you; but that don't make a rap of difference. They've taken the Van
+Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I've got CARTE BLANCHE to bring my friends
+down there--the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and
+there's to be rather a jolly party there this week----" she broke off,
+checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart's expression. "Oh, I don't
+mean YOUR particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but very
+good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their
+own: what they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own
+way. They gave the other thing a few months' trial, under my
+distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely
+well--getting on a good deal faster than the Brys, just because they
+didn't care as much--but suddenly they decided that the whole business
+bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel
+at home with. Rather original of them, don't you think so? Mattie Gormer
+HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she's awfully
+easy-going, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be the most
+important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous
+performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody
+is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs. I think
+it's awfully good fun myself--some of the artistic set, you know, any
+pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they
+have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in 'The Winning of
+Winny'; and Paul Morpeth--he's painting Mattie Gormer--and the Dick
+Bellingers, and Kate Corby--well, every one you can think of who's jolly
+and makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my
+dear--it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and
+you'll find clever people as well as noisy ones--Morpeth, who admires
+Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set."
+
+Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority. "Jump
+in now, there's a dear, and we'll drive round to your hotel and have your
+things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at
+the train."
+
+
+
+It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town--of that no
+doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy verandah,
+she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward picturesquely dotted
+with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men in tennis flannels. The
+huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their
+fullest capacity with the Gormers' week-end guests, who now, in the
+radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the
+grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded:
+distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from
+bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches without.
+Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as
+carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde
+and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly
+assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented
+the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for
+the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The
+train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed--life whizzed on with a
+deafening' rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a
+welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts. The Gormer MILIEU
+represented a social out-skirt which Lily had always fastidiously
+avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant
+copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the
+"society play" approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people
+about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
+the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner,
+from the pattern of the men's waistcoats to the inflexion of the women's
+voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of
+each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more
+familiarity--but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher
+capacity for enjoyment.
+
+Miss Bart's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness
+that first irritated her pride and then brought her to a sharp sense of
+her own situation--of the place in life which, for the moment, she must
+accept and make the best of. These people knew her story--of that her
+first long talk with Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly
+branded as the heroine of a "queer" episode--but instead of shrinking
+from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question
+into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as
+easily as they did Miss Anstell's, and with no apparent sense of any
+difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was that she
+should--in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of
+gifts--contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful
+actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied
+order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be "stuck-up," to mark a
+sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance
+in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms--and into such a
+world!--was hard enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized,
+with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
+all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious
+charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was
+smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty
+deserted city to the space and luxury of a great country-house fanned by
+sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude agreeable enough
+after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For
+the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved--after
+that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her
+dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the
+unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and
+courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions.
+But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of
+indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities,
+and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.
+
+On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux, the
+return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was
+leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence
+in a different setting: some at Newport, some at Bar Harbour, some in the
+elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who
+welcomed Lily's return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to
+join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily
+herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
+great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
+transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a
+day or two on the way to the Brys' camp, came to the rescue with a new
+suggestion.
+
+"Look here, Lily--I'll tell you what it is: I want you to take my place
+with Mattie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out to Alaska next
+month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the laziest woman alive,
+wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging
+things; but the Brys want me too--oh, yes, we've made it up: didn't I
+tell you?--and, to put it frankly, though I like the Gormers best,
+there's more profit for me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try
+Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them they--well,
+they'll make it a success for me." Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands
+enthusiastically. "Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the
+better I like it--quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have
+both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska
+is--well--the very thing I should want for you just at present."
+
+Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. "To take me out of my
+friends' way, you mean?" she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher responded with
+a deprecating kiss: "To keep you out of their sight till they realize how
+much they miss you."
+
+
+
+Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if it did
+not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the
+negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre of criticism and
+discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with all the energy of her
+somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit
+to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would
+renounce her journey; but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this
+plan under a sufficiently valid reason.
+
+"You dear innocent, don't you see," she protested, "that Carry is quite
+right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people
+as much as possible? If my old friends choose to believe lies about me I
+shall have to make new ones, that's all; and you know beggars mustn't be
+choosers. Not that I don't like Mattie Gormer--I DO like her: she's kind
+and honest and unaffected; and don't you suppose I feel grateful to her
+for making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own
+family have unanimously washed their hands of me?"
+
+Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was
+cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have
+cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former
+manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from
+it. Gerty had but an obscure conception of what Lily's actual experience
+had been: but its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity
+since the memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to
+her friend's extremity. To characters like Gerty's such a sacrifice
+constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it
+has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her;
+and helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring of
+such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the
+amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York
+August, mitigated only by poor Gerty's presence, her worldly wisdom would
+have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that
+Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be the first step
+toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of
+season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers' tumultuous
+progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view
+of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury--the daily waking to an
+assured absence of care and presence of material ease--gradually blunted
+her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void
+they could not fill. Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating good-nature, and
+the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as
+they treated each other--all these characteristic notes of difference
+began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in
+her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
+The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed
+idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
+perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her
+pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to
+cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in
+the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of
+adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be
+blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her
+craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
+resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy
+elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the
+band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
+her; but Mattie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that
+they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If
+Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity,
+had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where
+the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man
+could either break his engagements, or keep them in a painting-jacket and
+slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his
+appreciation of graces he had no time to cultivate. During the
+preparations for the Brys' TABLEAUX he had been immensely struck by
+Lily's plastic possibilities--"not the face: too self-controlled for
+expression; but the rest of her--gad, what a model she'd make!"--and
+though his abhorrence of the world in which he had seen her was too great
+for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the
+privilege of having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in
+Mattie Gormer's dishevelled drawing-room.
+
+Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus
+of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course in
+lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor was she without pale
+glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking-up of the
+Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island.
+Kate Corby, whose tastes made her as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was
+rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers,
+where, after a first stare of surprise, she took Lily's presence almost
+too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in
+the neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
+what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
+latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk
+with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence it was
+impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher
+conveniently took for granted.
+
+Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to
+probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to view it from the
+outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and these conclusions, at
+the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the
+succinct remark: "You must marry as soon as you can."
+
+Lily uttered a faint laugh--for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. "Do
+you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of 'a
+good man's love'?"
+
+"No--I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that
+description," said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.
+
+"Either? Are there actually two?"
+
+"Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half--for the moment."
+
+Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. "Other things being
+equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?"
+
+"Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons--George Dorset."
+
+"Oh----" Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
+unrebuffed. "Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when they
+first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them
+again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and
+George's powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They're at their
+place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly
+party--no one else but poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a
+galley-slave (they used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy!)--and
+after luncheon George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end
+would have to come soon."
+
+Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. "As far as that goes, the end will
+never come--Bertha will always know how to get him back when she wants
+him."
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. "Not if he has any one
+else to turn to! Yes--that's just what it comes to: the poor creature
+can't stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow, full of life
+and enthusiasm." She paused, and went on, dropping her glance from
+Lily's: "He wouldn't stay with her ten minutes if he KNEW----"
+
+"Knew----?" Miss Bart repeated.
+
+"What YOU must, for instance--with the opportunities you've had! If he
+had positive proof, I mean----"
+
+Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. "Please let us
+drop the subject, Carry: it's too odious to me." And to divert her
+companion's attention she added, with an attempt at lightness: "And your
+second candidate? We must not forget him."
+
+Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. "I wonder if you'll cry out just as loud if
+I say--Sim Rosedale?"
+
+Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her
+friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a possibility which,
+in the last weeks, had more than once recurred to her; but after a moment
+she said carelessly: "Mr. Rosedale wants a wife who can establish him in
+the bosom of the Van Osburghs and Trenors."
+
+Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. "And so YOU could--with his money!
+Don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you both?"
+
+"I don't see any way of making him see it," Lily returned, with a laugh
+intended to dismiss the subject.
+
+But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had taken
+leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her annexation by the
+Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner
+Paradise from which she was now excluded; but once or twice, when nothing
+better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he
+had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation. That he still
+admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer
+circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no
+puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
+was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of
+her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known "Miss
+Lily"--she was "Miss Lily" to him now--before they had had the faintest
+social existence: enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with
+the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt
+that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social
+current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and
+manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.
+
+The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of
+meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was
+deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with
+Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most
+unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her
+wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest
+construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at
+Carry Fisher's suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she
+disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
+gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always
+less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency
+which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
+mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he
+had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of
+affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth
+Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure
+on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
+distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable
+clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or
+twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right
+note of disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was
+a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
+ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his
+affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the
+goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of
+the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her
+in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her--she could
+distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And the
+twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a
+faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosedale's
+wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination.
+She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he
+dared to admire her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the
+other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please
+him--he had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if
+she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had
+felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he
+had no other reason for marrying her?
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were engaged
+in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a part of Miss
+Bart's duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits of inspection to the
+new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged into problems of lighting
+and sanitation, Lily had leisure to wander, in the bright autumn air,
+along the tree-fringed bay to which the land declined. Little as she was
+addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a
+welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being
+swept passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she had
+no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and squander
+money, while she felt herself of no more account among them than an
+expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.
+
+It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one
+morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon
+the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in the immediate
+neighbourhood of the Gormers' newly-acquired estate, and in her
+motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught one or two
+passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so different an orbit
+that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter.
+
+Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did not see
+Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight, instead of bringing
+him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent him toward her with an
+eagerness which found expression in his opening words.
+
+"Miss Bart!--You'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to meet
+you--I should have written to you if I'd dared." His face, with its
+tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look, as
+though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts
+at his heels.
+
+The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed
+on, as if encouraged by her tone: "I wanted to apologize--to ask you to
+forgive me for the miserable part I played----"
+
+She checked him with a quick gesture. "Don't let us speak of it: I was
+very sorry for you," she said, with a tinge of disdain which, as she
+instantly perceived, was not lost on him.
+
+He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the
+thrust. "You might well be; you don't know--you must let me explain. I
+was deceived: abominably deceived----"
+
+"I am still more sorry for you, then," she interposed, without irony;
+"but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject
+can be discussed."
+
+He met this with a look of genuine wonder. "Why not? Isn't it to you, of
+all people, that I owe an explanation----"
+
+"No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to me."
+
+"Ah----" he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute hand
+switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement
+to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: "Miss Bart, for God's sake
+don't turn from me! We used to be good friends--you were always kind to
+me--and you don't know how I need a friend now."
+
+The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily's
+breast. She too needed friends--she had tasted the pang of loneliness;
+and her resentment of Bertha Dorset's cruelty softened her heart to the
+poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha's victims.
+
+"I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you," she said. "But
+you must understand that after what has happened we can't be friends
+again--we can't see each other."
+
+"Ah, you ARE kind--you're merciful--you always were!" He fixed his
+miserable gaze on her. "But why can't we be friends--why not, when I've
+repented in dust and ashes? Isn't it hard that you should condemn me to
+suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough
+at the time--is there to be no respite for me?"
+
+"I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
+reconciliation which was effected at my expense," Lily began, with
+renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: "Don't put it in that
+way--when that's been the worst of my punishment. My God! what could I
+do--wasn't I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice: any word I
+might have said would have been turned against you----"
+
+"I have told you I don't blame you; all I ask you to understand is that,
+after the use Bertha chose to make of me--after all that her behaviour
+has since implied--it's impossible that you and I should meet."
+
+He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. "Is it--need it
+be? Mightn't there be circumstances----?" he checked himself, slashing at
+the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again: "Miss Bart,
+listen--give me a minute. If we're not to meet again, at least let me
+have a hearing now. You say we can't be friends after--after what has
+happened. But can't I at least appeal to your pity? Can't I move you if I
+ask you to think of me as a prisoner--a prisoner you alone can set free?"
+
+Lily's inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it possible
+that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher's adumbrations?
+
+"I can't see how I can possibly be of any help to you," she murmured,
+drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.
+
+Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest
+moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an
+abrupt drop to docility: "You WOULD see, if you'd be as merciful as you
+used to be: and heaven knows I've never needed it more!"
+
+She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her
+influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering, and the
+sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for
+his weakness.
+
+"I am very sorry for you--I would help you willingly; but you must have
+other friends, other advisers."
+
+"I never had a friend like you," he answered simply. "And besides--can't
+you see?--you're the only person"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"the
+only person who knows."
+
+Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in precipitate
+throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her
+entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You understand? I'm desperate--I'm
+at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know
+you can. You don't want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't
+want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind--your eyes
+are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to
+show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you back. You
+understand, of course--there wouldn't be a hint of publicity--not a sound
+or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that,
+you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: 'I know this--and
+this--and this'--and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and
+the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second."
+
+He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
+between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the
+shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For
+there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal;
+she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's
+insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his
+loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he
+would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to
+make him so lay in her hand--lay there in a completeness he could not
+even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a
+stroke--there was something dazzling in the completeness of the
+opportunity.
+
+She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the
+deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her--fear of herself, and of
+the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like
+so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had
+already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.
+
+"Goodbye--I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."
+
+"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that you
+abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved
+me!"
+
+"Goodbye--goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she
+heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At least you'll let me see
+you once more?"
+
+
+
+Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the lawn
+toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her hostess might be
+speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of her delay; for, like
+many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.
+
+As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a
+high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the
+gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective
+pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to
+an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh: "Did you see my
+visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George
+Dorset--she said she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call."
+
+Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience
+of Bertha's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the
+neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer, relieved to see that
+she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh: "Of
+course what really brought her was curiosity--she made me take her all
+over the house. But no one could have been nicer--no airs, you know, and
+so good-natured: I can quite see why people think her so fascinating."
+
+This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with
+Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck
+Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha's habits to
+be neighbourly, much less to make advances to any one outside the
+immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored
+the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members
+only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
+capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them
+special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this
+now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable complacency, and in the happy
+irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted Bertha's
+opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret
+ambitions which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence, and the attitude of her
+companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating afresh in the
+glow of Bertha's advances; and whatever the cause of the latter, Lily saw
+that, if they were followed up, they were likely to have a disturbing
+effect upon her own future.
+
+She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new friends by
+one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent; and on her return
+from this somewhat depressing excursion she was immediately conscious
+that Mrs. Dorset's influence was still in the air. There had been another
+exchange of visits, a tea at a country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball;
+there was even a rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer,
+with an unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
+conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.
+
+The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell Sunday
+with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish's aid, had discovered a small
+private hotel where she might establish herself for the winter. The
+hotel being on the edge of a fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the
+few square feet she was to occupy was considerably in excess of her
+means; but she found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters
+in the argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
+importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible
+for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
+lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish's. She had never been so
+near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage to meet her
+weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts
+out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair
+margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
+enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her
+rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and
+fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged
+ceiling and haunting smell of coffee--all these material discomforts,
+which were yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be
+withdrawn, kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
+her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels. Beat
+about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was that she
+must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was fortified by
+an unexpected visit from George Dorset.
+
+She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her
+narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with
+which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances; but the sight of
+her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn't come to bother
+her--that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of
+anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
+himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that
+had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
+herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint
+realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his
+self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had
+actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there
+was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn't more than
+enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The
+fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
+intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might
+mean--and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way
+in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.
+
+When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must dress for
+dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to blurt out: "It's
+been such a comfort--do say you'll let me see you again--" But to this
+direct appeal it was impossible to give an assent; and she said with
+friendly decisiveness: "I'm sorry--but you know why I can't."
+
+He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
+embarrassed but insistent. "I know how you might, if you would--if things
+were different--and it lies with you to make them so. It's just a word to
+say, and you put me out of my misery!"
+
+Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of
+the temptation. "You're mistaken; I know nothing; I saw nothing," she
+exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration, to build a barrier
+between herself and her peril; and as he turned away, groaning out "You
+sacrifice us both," she continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: "I
+know nothing--absolutely nothing."
+
+
+
+Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with Mrs.
+Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met she was
+conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour. There could be no
+doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested
+with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear
+down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one;
+but neither was it easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the
+thought of what George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness
+for baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when a
+marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her
+difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day
+of plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
+well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
+mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were
+certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at
+any cost be exorcised--and one of these was the image of herself as
+Rosedale's wife.
+
+Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys' Newport
+success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; and
+thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset's visit. Though it was
+nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was still out, and the
+firelit quiet of the small silent house descended on her spirit with a
+sense of peace and familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had
+ever before been evoked by Carry Fisher's surroundings; but, contrasted
+to the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of repose
+and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in the quiet
+competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her room. Mrs. Fisher's
+unconventionality was, after all, a merely superficial divergence from an
+inherited social creed, while the manners of the Gormer circle
+represented their first attempt to formulate such a creed for themselves.
+
+It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had found
+herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of familiar
+associations had almost prepared her, as she descended the stairs before
+dinner, to enter upon a group of her old acquaintances. But this
+expectation was instantly checked by the reflection that the friends who
+remained loyal were precisely those who would be least willing to expose
+her to such encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
+instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth
+before his hostess's little girl.
+
+Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily; yet she
+could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to the
+child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctory
+endearments of the guest under his hostess's eye, for he and the little
+girl had the room to themselves; and something in his attitude made him
+seem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creature
+who endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind--Lily, from the threshold,
+had time to feel--kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way
+of the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which
+to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her
+repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for at
+sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid and
+dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer's drawing-room.
+
+It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her only
+fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter's
+tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness which
+enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant course through a world of
+antagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of her
+friends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she
+actively gleaned her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real
+sympathies were on the other side--with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
+unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of
+success.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of exposing
+Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression of Rosedale's
+personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped in to dinner, and
+Lily, alive to every detail of her friend's method, saw that such
+opportunities as had been contrived for her were to be deferred till she
+had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
+sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer
+resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic
+helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs.
+Fisher followed her upstairs.
+
+"May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in my
+room we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about her with the
+eye of the solicitous hostess. "I hope you've managed to make yourself
+comfortable, dear? Isn't it a jolly little house? It's such a blessing to
+have a few quiet weeks with the baby."
+
+Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively maternal
+that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time and
+money enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter.
+
+"It's a well-earned rest: I'll say that for myself," she continued,
+sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near the fire.
+"Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to wish myself back with
+the Gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious--it's
+nothing to social ambition! Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering
+whether the women who called on us called on ME because I was with her,
+or on HER because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to
+find out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
+rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
+acquaintance--when, all the while, that was what she had me there for,
+and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season was over!"
+
+Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause, and the
+practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an occasional
+resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial moments, the
+purpose of the juggler's chatter while he shifts the contents of his
+sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette smoke she continued to gaze
+meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
+toilet-table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened undulations of
+her hair.
+
+"Your hair's wonderful, Lily. Thinner--? What does that matter, when it's
+so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go straight to their
+hair--but yours looks as if there had never been an anxious thought under
+it. I never saw you look better than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer
+told me that Morpeth wanted to paint you--why don't you let him?"
+
+Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to the
+reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she said, with a
+slight touch of irritation: "I don't care to accept a portrait from Paul
+Morpeth."
+
+Mrs. Fisher mused. "N--no. And just now, especially--well, he can do you
+after you're married." She waited a moment, and then went on: "By the
+way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day. She turned up here last
+Sunday--and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the world!"
+
+She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
+hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained its
+unwavering stroke from brow to nape.
+
+"I never was more astonished," Mrs. Fisher pursued. "I don't know two
+women less predestined to intimacy--from Bertha's standpoint, that is;
+for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that she should be
+singled out--I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the
+anaconda. Well, you know I've always told you that Mattie secretly longed
+to bore herself with the really fashionable; and now that the chance has
+come, I see that she's capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it."
+
+Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
+friend. "Including ME?" she suggested.
+
+"Ah, my dear," murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from the
+hearth.
+
+"That's what Bertha means, isn't it?" Miss Bart went on steadily. "For
+of course she always means something; and before I left Long Island I saw
+that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie."
+
+Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate. To
+think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only a subtler form of
+snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe anything she
+pleases--and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor child, by insinuating
+horrors about you."
+
+Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. "The world is too
+vile," she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's anxious scrutiny.
+
+"It's not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to
+fight it on its own terms--and above all, my dear, not alone!" Mrs.
+Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp.
+"You've told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening;
+but in the rush we all live in there's no time to keep on hating any one
+without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure
+you with other people it must be because she's still afraid of you. From
+her standpoint there's only one reason for being afraid of you; and my
+own idea is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
+hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don't
+care for that particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you
+from Bertha is to marry somebody else."
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the cheerless
+distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts with a cold
+precision unmodified by shade or colour, and refracted, as it were, from
+the blank walls of the surrounding limitations: she had opened windows
+from which no sky was ever visible. But the idealist subdued to vulgar
+necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he
+cannot stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her
+case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with it, however,
+she went the full length of its consequences; and these had never been
+more clearly present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out
+for a walk with Rosedale.
+
+It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the
+light of summer, and something in the lines of the landscape, and in the
+golden haze which bathed them, recalled to Miss Bart the September
+afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellomont with Selden. The
+importunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her
+present situation, since her walk with Selden had represented an
+irresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion was
+designed to bring about. But other memories importuned her also; the
+recollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through
+some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always
+failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now.
+She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and
+against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in breaking up
+her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for shelter and security
+was intensified by the passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only
+wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of
+Rosedale--the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create--she would at
+least present an invulnerable front to her enemy.
+
+She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to keep
+up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending.
+As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which
+his look and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this
+momentary endurance of his mood was the price she must pay for her
+ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which
+concession must turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be
+made equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
+impenetrable to such hints, and she had a sense of something hard and
+self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner.
+
+They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above
+the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned
+period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her gaze.
+
+"I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale," she said quietly; "and I am
+ready to marry you whenever you wish."
+
+Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
+announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted
+before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.
+
+"For I suppose that is what you do wish," she continued, in the same
+quiet tone. "And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in
+this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust
+my happiness to your hands."
+
+She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such
+occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown across the
+tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient brightness
+Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious that every avenue
+of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.
+
+Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in which,
+with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped cigarette.
+Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying: "My
+dear Miss Lily, I'm sorry if there's been any little misapprehension
+between us-but you made me feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really
+no intention of renewing it."
+
+Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked
+the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: "I
+have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my
+decision was final."
+
+Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in
+puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest
+inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I
+want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did."
+
+The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a
+vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the
+sense of distance she could convey without a hint of disdain, that made
+it most difficult for him to give her up.
+
+"Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain't we going to be good friends all
+the same?" he urged, without releasing her hand.
+
+She drew it away quietly. "What is your idea of being good friends?" she
+returned with a slight smile. "Making love to me without asking me to
+marry you?" Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease.
+
+"Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose. I can't help making love
+to you--I don't see how any man could; but I don't mean to ask you to
+marry me as long as I can keep out of it."
+
+She continued to smile. "I like your frankness; but I am afraid our
+friendship can hardly continue on those terms." She turned away, as
+though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and he
+followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having after all
+kept the game in her own hands.
+
+"Miss Lily----" he began impulsively; but she walked on without seeming
+to hear him.
+
+He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating hand on
+her arm. "Miss Lily--don't hurry away like that. You're beastly hard on a
+fellow; but if you don't mind speaking the truth I don't see why you
+shouldn't allow me to do the same."
+
+She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away instinctively
+from his touch, though she made no effort to evade his words.
+
+"I was under the impression," she rejoined, "that you had done so without
+waiting for my permission."
+
+"Well--why shouldn't you hear my reasons for doing it, then? We're
+neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going to
+hurt us. I'm all broken up on you: there's nothing new in that. I'm more
+in love with you than I was this time last year; but I've got to face the
+fact that the situation is changed."
+
+She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic composure.
+"You mean to say that I'm not as desirable a match as you thought me?"
+
+"Yes; that's what I do mean," he answered resolutely. "I won't go into
+what's happened. I don't believe the stories about you--I don't WANT to
+believe them. But they're there, and my not believing them ain't going to
+alter the situation."
+
+She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked the
+retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly. "If they are
+not true," she said, "doesn't THAT alter the situation?"
+
+He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes, which made
+her feel herself no more than some superfine human merchandise. "I
+believe it does in novels; but I'm certain it don't in real life. You
+know that as well as I do: if we're speaking the truth, let's speak the
+whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at
+me: this year--well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in
+the interval? Your situation, that's all. Then you thought you could do
+better; now----"
+
+"You think you can?" broke from her ironically.
+
+"Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is." He stood before her, his hands in
+his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid waistcoat.
+"It's this way, you see: I've had a pretty steady grind of it these last
+years, working up my social position. Think it's funny I should say
+that? Why should I mind saying I want to get into society? A man ain't
+ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery.
+Well, a taste for society's just another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want
+to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year--put
+it that way if it sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the
+best houses; and I'm getting it too, little by little. But I know the
+quickest way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with
+the wrong ones; and that's the reason I want to avoid mistakes."
+
+Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have
+expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his candour, and
+after a moment's pause he went on: "There it is, you see. I'm more in
+love with you than ever, but if I married you now I'd queer myself for
+good and all, and everything I've worked for all these years would be
+wasted."
+
+She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had
+faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long
+moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed
+expediency.
+
+"I understand you," she said. "A year ago I should have been of use to
+you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you for telling me so
+quite honestly." She extended her hand with a smile.
+
+Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale's
+self-command. "By George, you're a dead game sport, you are!" he
+exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
+suddenly--"Miss Lily--stop. You know I don't believe those stories--I
+believe they were all got up by a woman who didn't hesitate to sacrifice
+you to her own convenience----"
+
+Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to endure
+his insolence than his commiseration.
+
+"You are very kind; but I don't think we need discuss the matter farther."
+
+But Rosedale's natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for him to
+brush such resistance aside. "I don't want to discuss anything; I just
+want to put a plain case before you," he persisted.
+
+She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose in his
+look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly upon her: "The
+wonder to me is that you've waited so long to get square with that woman,
+when you've had the power in your hands." She continued silent under the
+rush of astonishment that his words produced, and he moved a step closer
+to ask with low-toned directness: "Why don't you use those letters of
+hers you bought last year?"
+
+Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In the words
+preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to her supposed
+influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the
+reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale's resorting to it. But now
+she saw how far short of the mark she had fallen; and the surprise of
+learning that he had discovered the secret of the letters left her, for
+the moment, unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of
+putting his knowledge.
+
+Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his point;
+and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer control of the
+situation: "You see I know where you stand--I know how completely she's
+in your power. That sounds like stage-talk, don't it?--but there's a lot
+of truth in some of those old gags; and I don't suppose you bought those
+letters simply because you're collecting autographs."
+
+She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her only
+clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his power.
+
+"You're wondering how I found out about 'em?" he went on, answering her
+look with a note of conscious pride. "Perhaps you've forgotten that I'm
+the owner of the Benedick--but never mind about that now. Getting on to
+things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I've simply
+extended it to my private affairs. For this IS partly my affair, you
+see--at least, it depends on you to make it so. Let's look the situation
+straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for reasons we needn't go into, did you
+a beastly bad turn last spring. Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and
+her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath where their own interests
+were concerned; but as long as they're out of the row it's much easier to
+follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been
+sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn't that a pretty fair
+statement of the case?--Well, some people say you've got the neatest kind
+of an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would marry you tomorrow,
+if you'd tell him all you know, and give him the chance to show the lady
+the door. I daresay he would; but you don't seem to care for that
+particular form of getting even, and, taking a purely business view of
+the question, I think you're right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out
+with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to
+get Bertha Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her."
+
+He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time for the
+expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed on, expounding
+and elucidating his idea with the directness of the man who has no doubts
+of his cause, she found the indignation gradually freezing on her lip,
+found herself held fast in the grasp of his argument by the mere cold
+strength of its presentation. There was no time now to wonder how he had
+heard of her obtaining the letters: all her world was dark outside the
+monstrous glare of his scheme for using them. And it was not, after the
+first moment, the horror of the idea that held her spell-bound, subdued
+to his will; it was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost
+cravings. He would marry her tomorrow if she could regain Bertha Dorset's
+friendship; and to induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the
+tacit retractation of all that had caused its withdrawal, she had only to
+put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously
+delivered into her hands. Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this
+course over that which poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The other plan
+depended for its success on the infliction of an open injury, while this
+reduced the transaction to a private understanding, of which no third
+person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of
+business-like give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless air
+of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision of
+boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual
+adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every concession had its
+recognized equivalent: Lily's tired mind was fascinated by this escape
+from fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and
+measures.
+
+Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only a
+gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching
+perception of the chances it offered; for as she continued to stand
+before him without speaking, he broke out, with a quick return upon
+himself: "You see how simple it is, don't you? Well, don't be carried
+away by the idea that it's TOO simple. It isn't exactly as if you'd
+started in with a clean bill of health. Now we're talking let's call
+things by their right names, and clear the whole business up. You know
+well enough that Bertha Dorset couldn't have touched you if there hadn't
+been--well--questions asked before--little points of interrogation, eh?
+Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with stingy relatives, I suppose;
+anyhow, they DID happen, and she found the ground prepared for her. Do
+you see where I'm coming out? You don't want these little questions
+cropping up again. It's one thing to get Bertha Dorset into line--but
+what you want is to keep her there. You can frighten her fast enough--but
+how are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you're as
+powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won't do that for you as
+you are now; but with a big backing behind you, you'll keep her just
+where you want her to be. That's MY share in the business--that's what
+I'm offering you. You can't put the thing through without me--don't run
+away with any idea that you can. In six months you'd be back again among
+your old worries, or worse ones; and here I am, ready to lift you out of
+'em tomorrow if you say so. DO you say so, Miss Lily?" he added, moving
+suddenly nearer.
+
+The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to startle
+Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which she had
+insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the groping
+consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perception
+that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of course, the
+likelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying to cheat him of his
+share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the
+whole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential
+baseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk.
+
+She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a voice that
+was a surprise to her own ears: "You are mistaken--quite mistaken--both
+in the facts and in what you infer from them."
+
+Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a direction so
+different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting him guide
+her.
+
+"Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each other!"
+he exclaimed; and to her murmur of "Ah, we do NOW," he retorted with a
+sudden burst of violence: "I suppose it's because the letters are to HIM,
+then? Well, I'll be damned if I see what thanks you've got from him!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was in
+transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted at
+the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream of
+carriages between house-fronts gradually restored to consciousness.
+
+The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing semblance
+of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants with a human display
+of the same costly and high-stepping kind as circled daily about its
+ring. In Miss Bart's world the Horse Show, and the public it attracted,
+had ostensibly come to be classed among the spectacles disdained of the
+elect; but, as the feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance on
+his village green, so society, unofficially and incidentally, still
+condescended to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was
+not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her
+horses; and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her
+friend's side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this
+lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a
+change in the relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning
+discrimination, a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs.
+Gormer's chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should
+constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once
+the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift of fashionable life
+would facilitate Mattie's detachment from her. She had, in short, failed
+to make herself indispensable; or rather, her attempt to do so had been
+thwarted by an influence stronger than any she could exert. That
+influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha
+Dorset's social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.
+
+Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own
+position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered: once
+Bertha's match in material resources, her superior gifts would make it
+easy for her to dominate her adversary. An understanding of what such
+domination would mean, and of the disadvantages accruing from her
+rejection of it, was brought home to Lily with increasing clearness
+during the early weeks of the winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a
+semblance of movement outside the main flow of the social current; but
+with the return to town, and the concentrating of scattered activities,
+the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life
+marked her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a
+part of the season's fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void of
+social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never
+really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different centre:
+it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find
+any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her,
+and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value
+suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her
+former life. Its very drudgeries had a charm now that she was
+involuntarily released from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced
+civilities to the dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious
+dinners--how pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness
+of her days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with
+a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world; nor did
+she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes produce a wholesome
+reaction of contempt in their victim. Society did not turn away from her,
+it simply drifted by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to
+the full measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the
+creature of its favour.
+
+She had rejected Rosedale's suggestion with a promptness of scorn almost
+surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for high flashes of
+indignation. But she could not breathe long on the heights; there had
+been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength:
+what she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in
+which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her
+intermittent impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her
+self-respect. If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only
+afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a
+slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without conscious
+effort; her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet
+perceive that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to
+live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her.
+
+
+
+
+To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
+discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle were
+already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages Lily
+had already given to expediency; but she saw her passionately and
+irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of "keeping up." Gerty could
+smile now at her own early dream of her friend's renovation through
+adversity: she understood clearly enough that Lily was not of those to
+whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost. But this
+very fact, to Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid,
+the more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
+conscious of needing.
+
+Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish's
+stairs. There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation
+of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real difficulties of her situation to
+be incommunicable to any one whose theory of values was so different from
+her own, and the restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the
+charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
+her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon, she put
+into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend, this sense of
+shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual intensity. The walk up
+Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the brilliance of the hard winter
+sunlight, an interminable procession of fastidiously-equipped
+carriages--giving her, through the little squares of brougham-windows,
+peeps of familiar profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands
+dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen--this glimpse of the
+ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than
+ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's stairs, and of
+the cramped blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined
+to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures
+were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very
+moment--figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged
+lady in limp black who descended Gerty's flight as Lily climbed to it!
+
+"That was poor Miss Jane Silverton--she came to talk things over with me:
+she and her sister want to do something to support themselves," Gerty
+explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room.
+
+"To support themselves? Are they so hard up?" Miss Bart asked with a
+touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the woes of other
+people.
+
+"I'm afraid they have nothing left: Ned's debts have swallowed up
+everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carry
+Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a good influence,
+because she doesn't care for cards, and--well, she talked quite
+beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger
+brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have
+a chance to drop cards and racing, and take up his literary work again."
+
+Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her
+departing visitor. "But that isn't all; it isn't even the worst. It seems
+that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at least Bertha won't allow
+him to see her, and he is so unhappy about it that he has taken to
+gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And
+cousin Grace Van Osburgh accuses him of having had a very bad influence
+on Freddy, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with
+Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
+Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that
+Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had
+introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him because now he's
+of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt--she
+came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something
+to do she could earn enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away--I'm
+afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his
+evenings at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from
+the cruise--I can't see why he should have spent so much more money under
+Bertha's influence than Carry's: can you?"
+
+Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. "My dear Gerty, I always
+understand how people can spend much more money--never how they can spend
+any less!"
+
+She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty's easy-chair, while
+her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
+
+"But what can they do--the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to support
+themselves?" she asked, conscious that the note of irritation still
+persisted in her voice. It was the very last topic she had meant to
+discuss--it really did not interest her in the least--but she was seized
+by a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colourless shrinking
+victims of young Silverton's sentimental experiments meant to cope with
+the grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
+
+"I don't know--I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane reads
+aloud very nicely--but it's so hard to find any one who is willing to be
+read to. And Miss Annie paints a little----"
+
+"Oh, I know--apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of thing I
+shall be doing myself before long!" exclaimed Lily, starting up with a
+vehemence of movement that threatened destruction to Miss Farish's
+fragile tea-table.
+
+Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her seat.
+"I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in--how beautifully one
+does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I wasn't meant to be
+good," she sighed out incoherently.
+
+Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the eyes
+shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
+
+"You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give you this
+cushion to lean against."
+
+Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an
+impatient hand.
+
+"Don't give me that! I don't want to lean back--I shall go to sleep if I
+do."
+
+"Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse," Gerty urged
+affectionately.
+
+"No--no; don't be quiet; talk to me--keep me awake! I don't sleep at
+night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me."
+
+"You don't sleep at night? Since when?"
+
+"I don't know--I can't remember." She rose and put the empty cup on the
+tea-tray. "Another, and stronger, please; if I don't keep awake now I
+shall see horrors tonight--perfect horrors!"
+
+"But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea."
+
+"No, no--give it to me; and don't preach, please," Lily returned
+imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed that her
+hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
+
+"But you look so tired: I'm sure you must be ill----"
+
+Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. "Do I look ill? Does my face
+show it?" She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror above the
+writing-table. "What a horrid looking-glass--it's all blotched and
+discoloured. Any one would look ghastly in it!" She turned back, fixing
+her plaintive eyes on Gerty. "You stupid dear, why do you say such odious
+things to me? It's enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
+looking ill means looking ugly." She caught Gerty's wrists, and drew her
+close to the window. "After all, I'd rather know the truth. Look me
+straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I perfectly frightful?"
+
+"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and your
+cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden----"
+
+"Ah, they WERE pale, then--ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don't you
+tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright now because I'm so
+nervous--but in the mornings they look like lead. And I can see the lines
+coming in my face--the lines of worry and disappointment and failure!
+Every sleepless night leaves a new one--and how can I sleep, when I have
+such dreadful things to think about?"
+
+"Dreadful things--what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her wrists
+from her friend's feverish fingers.
+
+"What things? Well, poverty, for one--and I don't know any that's more
+dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness into the
+easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if I could
+understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I
+understand--he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live ON
+the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense--but it's a
+privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine,
+and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes
+and their private cars--yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of
+those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing
+cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents--and--and--lots of other
+things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too--oh, yes, I've
+had to take up bridge again--and by going to the best dress-makers, and
+having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping
+herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"
+
+She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her
+pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her fagged
+brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the change in her
+face--of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish
+its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished.
+
+"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't--I'm sick to death
+of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills me--it's what
+keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for your strong tea. For I
+can't go on in this way much longer, you know--I'm nearly at the end of
+my tether. And then what can I do--how on earth am I to keep myself
+alive? I see myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton
+woman--slinking about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
+blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands
+of women trying to do the same thing already, and not one of the number
+who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I have!"
+
+She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. "It's late, and I must
+be off--I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don't look so worried,
+you dear thing--don't think too much about the nonsense I've been
+talking." She was before the mirror again, adjusting her hair with a
+light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a dexterous touch to her
+furs. "Of course, you know, it hasn't come to the employment agencies and
+the painted blotting-pads yet; but I'm rather hard-up just for the
+moment, and if I could find something to do--notes to write and
+visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing--it would tide me over
+till the legacy is paid. And Carry has promised to find somebody who
+wants a kind of social secretary--you know she makes a specialty of the
+helpless rich."
+
+
+
+
+Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her anxiety. She
+was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money: money to meet the
+vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor evaded. To give
+up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the
+provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an
+expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it
+seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find
+some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do this
+was one which she had never before seriously considered, and the
+discovery that, as a bread-winner, she was likely to prove as helpless
+and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe shock to her
+self-confidence.
+
+Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation, as a
+person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate any situation
+in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that such gifts would be
+of value to seekers after social guidance; but there was unfortunately no
+specific head under which the art of saying and doing the right thing
+could be offered in the market, and even Mrs. Fisher's resourcefulness
+failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague
+wealth of Lily's graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedients for
+enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously assert
+that she had put several opportunities of this kind before Lily; but more
+legitimate methods of bread-winning were as much out of her line as they
+were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she was generally called upon
+to assist. Lily's failure to profit by the chances already afforded her
+might, moreover, have justified the abandonment of farther effort on her
+behalf; but Mrs. Fisher's inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at
+creating artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the
+pursuance of this end she at once started on a voyage of discovery in
+Miss Bart's behalf; and as the result of her explorations she now
+summoned the latter with the announcement that she had "found something."
+
+
+
+
+Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend's plight, and
+her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her that Lily, for the
+present, had no wish for the kind of help she could give. Miss Farish
+could see no hope for her friend but in a life completely reorganized and
+detached from its old associations; whereas all Lily's energies were
+centred in the determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to
+keep herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion could
+be maintained. Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gerty, she could
+not judge it as harshly as Selden, for instance, might have done. She had
+not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in each
+other's arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart's blood passing
+into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough;
+no trace remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour; but
+Gerty's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with obscure and
+inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with a silent
+forbearance which took no account of time. She could not, however, deny
+herself the solace of taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden, with
+whom, since his return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of
+cousinly confidence.
+
+Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their relation. He
+found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding and devoted, but with
+a quickened intelligence of the heart which he recognized without seeking
+to explain it. To Gerty herself it would once have seemed impossible that
+she should ever again talk freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had
+passed in the secrecy of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when
+the mist of the struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of
+self, a deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
+current of human understanding.
+
+It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gerty had
+the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden. The latter, having
+presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through the
+dowdy animation of his cousin's tea-hour, conscious of something in her
+voice and eye which solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last
+visitor was gone Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen
+Miss Bart.
+
+Selden's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of surprise.
+
+"I haven't seen her at all--I've perpetually missed seeing her since she
+came back."
+
+This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
+hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by adding:
+"I've wanted to see her--but she seems to have been absorbed by the
+Gormer set since her return from Europe."
+
+"That's all the more reason: she's been very unhappy."
+
+"Unhappy at being with the Gormers?"
+
+"Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is at an
+end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha
+Dorset quarrelled with her."
+
+"Ah----" Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where
+he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin
+continued to explain: "Judy Trenor and her own family have deserted her
+too--and all because Bertha Dorset has said such horrible things. And she
+is very poor--you know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy,
+after giving her to understand that she was to have everything."
+
+"Yes--I know," Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room, but
+only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between
+door and window. "Yes--she's been abominably treated; but it's
+unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy
+can't say to her."
+
+His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. "There would be
+other ways of showing your sympathy," she suggested.
+
+Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which
+projected from the hearth. "What are you thinking of, you incorrigible
+missionary?" he asked.
+
+Gerty's colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer.
+Then she made it more explicit by saying: "I am thinking of the fact that
+you and she used to be great friends--that she used to care immensely for
+what you thought of her--and that, if she takes your staying away as a
+sign of what you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
+unhappiness."
+
+"My dear child, don't add to it still more--at least to your conception
+of it--by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own."
+Selden, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice;
+but he met Gerty's look of perplexity by saying more mildly: "But, though
+you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss
+Bart, you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it--if you ask me to." He
+laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the
+current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which fill
+the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the feeling that he
+measured the cost of her request as plainly as she read the significance
+of his reply; and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them
+made her next words easier to find.
+
+"I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you had been
+a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has never needed it
+before. You know how dependent she has always been on ease and
+luxury--how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and uncomfortable. She
+can't help it--she was brought up with those ideas, and has never been
+able to find her way out of them. But now all the things she cared for
+have been taken from her, and the people who taught her to care for them
+have abandoned her too; and it seems to me that if some one could reach
+out a hand and show her the other side--show her how much is left in life
+and in herself----" Gerty broke off, abashed at the sound of her own
+eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to
+her vague yearning for her friend's retrieval. "I can't help her myself:
+she's passed out of my reach," she continued. "I think she's afraid of
+being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed
+dreadfully worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher was trying to
+find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that she had
+taken a position as private secretary, and that I was not to be anxious,
+for everything was all right, and she would come in and tell me about it
+when she had time; but she has never come, and I don't like to go to her,
+because I am afraid of forcing myself on her when I'm not wanted. Once,
+when we were children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and
+thrown my arms about her, she said: 'Please don't kiss me unless I ask
+you to, Gerty'--and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since then I've
+always waited to be asked."
+
+Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which his thin
+dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against any involuntary
+change of expression. When his cousin ended, he said with a slight smile:
+"Since you've learned the wisdom of waiting, I don't see why you urge me
+to rush in--" but the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add, as he
+rose to take leave: "Still, I'll do what you wish, and not hold you
+responsible for my failure."
+
+Selden's avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he had
+allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory of their
+last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his indignation, he
+had anxiously watched for her return; but she had disappointed him by
+lingering in England, and when she finally reappeared it happened that
+business had called him to the West, whence he came back only to learn
+that she was starting for Alaska with the Gormers. The revelation of this
+suddenly-established intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her.
+If, at a moment when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could
+cheerfully commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no reason
+why such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step she
+took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where, once or
+twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the recognition of
+this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a
+sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart
+by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had
+thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made
+the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely, confirmed the sense of
+relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her.
+
+But Gerty Farish's words had sufficed to make him see how little this
+view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live quietly
+with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in need of help--even
+such vague help as he could offer--was to be at once repossessed by that
+thought; and by the time he reached the street he had sufficiently
+convinced himself of the urgency of his cousin's appeal to turn his steps
+directly toward Lily's hotel.
+
+There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart had
+moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk remembered that
+she had left an address, for which he presently began to search through
+his books.
+
+It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step without
+letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden waited with a vague
+sense of uneasiness while the address was sought for. The process lasted
+long enough for uneasiness to turn to apprehension; but when at length a
+slip of paper was handed him, and he read on it: "Care of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch, Emporium Hotel," his apprehension passed into an incredulous
+stare, and this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper
+in two, and turned to walk quickly homeward.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
+Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The
+force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more
+in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at a
+breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection
+might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the
+excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture.
+The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense
+mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest
+note of criticism.
+
+When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady to whom
+Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of entering a new
+world. Carry's vague presentment of Mrs. Norma Hatch (whose reversion to
+her Christian name was explained as the result of her latest divorce),
+left her under the implication of coming "from the West," with the not
+unusual extenuation of having brought a great deal of money with her. She
+was, in short, rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily's
+hand. Mrs. Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
+owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she "knew about" through
+Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the Falstaff of a
+certain section of festive club life. Socially, Mr. Stancy might have
+been said to form a connecting link between the Gormer world and the more
+dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart now found herself entering. It was,
+however, only figuratively that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch's world
+could be described as dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a
+blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornamental
+excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which
+she rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
+appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity of
+something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude the
+immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her visitor, and
+that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of her dress and
+voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence which, in ladies of
+her nationality, so curiously coexists with startling extremes of
+experience.
+
+The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her as its
+inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New
+York hotel--a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with
+mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements,
+while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a
+desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as
+richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
+permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from
+restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from "art
+exhibit" to dress-maker's opening. High-stepping horses or elaborately
+equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
+distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of their
+sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the hotel routine.
+Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was
+doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves
+were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies,
+diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had
+no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.
+
+Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering that Mrs.
+Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though still floating
+in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing an outline; and in this
+endeavour she was actively seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr.
+Stancy, a man of large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial
+occasions and of a chivalry finding expression in "first-night" boxes and
+thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the
+scene of her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
+metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she had
+taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the photographer
+whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament of "Sunday
+Supplements," and had got together the group which constituted her social
+world. It was a small group still, with heterogeneous figures suspended
+in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily did not take long to learn that its
+regulation was no longer in Mr. Stancy's hands. As often happens, the
+pupil had outstripped the teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of
+heights of elegance as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the
+Emporium. This discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher
+guidance, for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
+to her correspondence, the right "look" to her hats, the right succession
+to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the regulator of a
+germinating social life that Miss Bart's guidance was required; her
+ostensible duties as secretary being restricted by the fact that Mrs.
+Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write to.
+
+The daily details of Mrs. Hatch's existence were as strange to Lily as
+its general tenor. The lady's habits were marked by an Oriental indolence
+and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion. Mrs. Hatch and her
+friends seemed to float together outside the bounds of time and space. No
+definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day
+flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements,
+so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner
+was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
+Hatch's vigil till daylight.
+
+Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange throng
+of hangers-on--manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers, teachers of
+bridge, of French, of "physical development": figures sometimes
+indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs. Hatch's relation to
+them, from the visitors constituting her recognized society. But
+strangest of all to Lily was the encounter, in this latter group, of
+several of her acquaintances. She had supposed, and not without relief,
+that she was passing, for the moment, completely out of her own circle;
+but she found that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence
+overlapped the edge of Mrs. Fisher's world, had drawn several of its
+brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned
+Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room was
+one of Lily's first astonishments; but she soon discovered that he was
+not Mr. Stancy's most important recruit. It was on little Freddy Van
+Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh millions, that the
+attention of Mrs. Hatch's group was centred. Freddy, barely out of
+college, had risen above the horizon since Lily's eclipse, and she now
+saw with surprise what an effulgence he shed on the outer twilight of
+Mrs. Hatch's existence. This, then, was one of the things that young men
+"went in" for when released from the official social routine; this was
+the kind of "previous engagement" that so frequently caused them to
+disappoint the hopes of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being
+behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted
+and the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
+the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease and
+unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience of the irony
+of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions
+from the long disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of
+Mrs. Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed packed
+with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible pretty woman of her
+acquaintance had her inherited obligations, her conventional
+benevolences, her share in the working of the great civic machine; and
+all hung together in the solidarity of these traditional functions. The
+performance of specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart's
+position; but the vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its
+perplexities.
+
+It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs. Hatch showed
+from the first an almost touching desire for Lily's approval. Far from
+asserting the superiority of wealth, her beautiful eyes seemed to urge
+the plea of inexperience: she wanted to do what was "nice," to be taught
+how to be "lovely." The difficulty was to find any point of contact
+between her ideals and Lily's.
+
+Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of aspirations
+culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion journals, and a gaudy
+world of sport still more completely beyond her companion's ken. To
+separate from these confused conceptions those most likely to advance the
+lady on her way, was Lily's obvious duty; but its performance was
+hampered by rapidly-growing doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and
+more aware of a certain ambiguity in her situation. It was not that she
+had, in the conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch's
+irreproachableness. The lady's offences were always against taste rather
+than conduct; her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than
+ethical conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from a
+wandering and extravagant good-nature. But if Lily did not mind her
+detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the "Beauty-Doctor" a
+seat in Freddy Van Osburgh's box at the play, she was not equally at ease
+in regard to some less apparent lapses from convention. Ned Silverton's
+relation to Stancy seemed, for instance, closer and less clear than any
+natural affinities would warrant; and both appeared united in the effort
+to cultivate Freddy Van Osburgh's growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was
+as yet nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve
+itself into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a
+vague sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
+and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
+Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the social
+development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his part, a
+permanent interest in the lady's future. There were moments when Lily
+found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The thought of
+launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious bosom of society
+was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even beguiled her leisure with
+visions of the fair Norma introduced for the first time to a family
+banquet at the Van Osburghs'. But the thought of being personally
+connected with the transaction was less agreeable; and her momentary
+flashes of amusement were followed by increasing periods of doubt.
+
+The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon, she was
+surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her alone in the
+wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch's world the tea-hour was not
+dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in the hands of her masseuse.
+
+Selden's entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment; but
+his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her self-possession,
+and she took at once the tone of surprise and pleasure, wondering frankly
+that he should have traced her to so unlikely a place, and asking what
+had inspired him to make the search.
+
+Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him so
+little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
+obstructions she might put in his way. "I wanted to see you," he said;
+and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept his wishes
+under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long absence as one
+of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his desertion had wounded
+sensibilities far below the surface of her pride.
+
+Selden met the challenge with directness. "Why should I have come, unless
+I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for imagining
+you could want me."
+
+This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash of
+keenness to her answer. "Then you have come now because you think you can
+be of use to me?"
+
+He hesitated again. "Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to talk
+things over with."
+
+For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the idea that
+his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a personal
+significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing him. Even under
+the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always made itself felt: she
+might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room.
+She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the
+light fell on his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his
+clothes--she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven
+with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her,
+and the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
+this stealing influence now prompted her to say: "It's very good of you
+to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think I have
+anything particular to talk about?"
+
+Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was
+framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and
+for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one
+which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling;
+and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of
+such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into
+resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they
+faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's
+elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its
+monstrous mates, served at length to suggest the turn of Selden's reply.
+
+"Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch's secretary; and I knew
+she was anxious to hear how you were getting on."
+
+Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. "Why
+didn't she look me up herself, then?" she asked.
+
+"Because, as you didn't send her your address, she was afraid of being
+importunate." Selden continued with a smile: "You see no such scruples
+restrained me; but then I haven't as much to risk if I incur your
+displeasure."
+
+Lily answered his smile. "You haven't incurred it as yet; but I have an
+idea that you are going to."
+
+"That rests with you, doesn't it? You see my initiative doesn't go beyond
+putting myself at your disposal."
+
+"But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?" she asked in the same
+light tone.
+
+Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room; then he said, with
+a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection:
+"You are to let me take you away from here."
+
+Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it
+and said coldly: "And may I ask where you mean me to go?"
+
+"Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is
+that it should be away from here."
+
+The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words
+cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own
+were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at
+a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and
+unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of
+authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," she said, "for taking such an interest
+in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention
+of leaving."
+
+Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
+uncontrollable expectancy.
+
+"That simply means that you don't know where you are!" he exclaimed.
+
+Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. "If you have come here to
+say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch----"
+
+"It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned."
+
+"My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of. She
+has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to
+seeing me starve."
+
+"Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
+always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again."
+
+"You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose
+you mean--till my aunt's legacy is paid?"
+
+"I do mean that; Gerty told me of it," Selden acknowledged without
+embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
+constraint in speaking his mind.
+
+"But Gerty does not happen to know," Miss Bart rejoined, "that I owe
+every penny of that legacy."
+
+"Good God!" Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
+abruptness of the statement.
+
+"Every penny of it, and more too," Lily repeated; "and you now perhaps
+see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of
+Gerty's kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I
+must earn something more to keep myself alive."
+
+Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone: "But with
+your income and Gerty's--since you allow me to go so far into the details
+of the situation--you and she could surely contrive a life together which
+would put you beyond the need of having to support yourself. Gerty, I
+know, is eager to make such an arrangement, and would be quite happy in
+it----"
+
+"But I should not," Miss Bart interposed. "There are many reasons why it
+would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself." She paused a moment,
+and as he seemed to await a farther explanation, added with a quick lift
+of her head: "You will perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons."
+
+"I have no claim to know them," Selden answered, ignoring her tone; "no
+claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have already
+made. And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to
+enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false
+position."
+
+Lily smiled. "I suppose," she rejoined, "that by a false position you
+mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember that I
+had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before I met Mrs.
+Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real difference in being
+inside or out, and I remember your once telling me that it was only those
+inside who took the difference seriously."
+
+She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
+memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of the
+nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of the
+experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion to
+deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer fulness of
+emphasis: "The question of being inside or out is, as you say, a small
+one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the case, except in so far
+as Mrs. Hatch's desire to be inside may put you in the position I call
+false."
+
+In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect
+of confirming Lily's resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused
+hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of
+personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his
+attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her
+appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference.
+The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits
+he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her
+aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth farther
+into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be,
+she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.
+
+"I don't know," she said, when he had ceased to speak, "why you imagine
+me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always told me that
+the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to teach a girl to get
+what she wants, why not assume that that is precisely what I am doing?"
+
+The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier
+raised against farther confidences: its brightness held him at such a
+distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing as he
+rejoined: "I am not sure that I have ever called you a successful example
+of that kind of bringing-up."
+
+Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled herself with
+a light laugh. "Ah, wait a little longer--give me a little more time
+before you decide!" And as he wavered before her, still watching for a
+break in the impenetrable front she presented: "Don't give me up; I may
+still do credit to my training!" she affirmed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+"Look at those spangles, Miss Bart--every one of 'em sewed on crooked."
+
+The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned
+structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side, and passed on to
+the next figure in the line.
+
+There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles, under
+exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of
+their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this
+creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood.
+Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and
+sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were
+employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well
+clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
+colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only one
+skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned
+with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman's comment,
+began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.
+
+To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached
+when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats. Instances of
+young lady-milliners establishing themselves under fashionable patronage,
+and imparting to their "creations" that indefinable touch which the
+professional hand can never give, had flattered Gerty's visions of the
+future, and convinced even Lily that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch
+need not reduce her to dependence on her friends.
+
+The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and would have
+taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance set up in Lily by
+his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of being involved in a
+transaction she would not have cared to examine too closely had soon
+afterward defined itself in the light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if
+she "saw them through," she would have no reason to be sorry. The
+implication that such loyalty would meet with a direct reward had
+hastened her flight, and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the
+broad bosom of Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
+there prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once revived her
+hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that her
+charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their
+capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of
+course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
+fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes
+and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front
+shop--a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings--where
+her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on
+their stands like birds just poising for flight.
+
+But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
+green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of fashion
+had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere attraction of a
+name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but these privileged beings
+could command a faith in their powers materially expressed by the
+readiness to pay their shop-rent and advance a handsome sum for current
+expenses. Where was Lily to find such support? And even could it have
+been found, how were the ladies on whose approval she depended to be
+induced to give her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy
+her friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
+imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again,
+Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her
+self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy Van Osburgh
+was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh
+hour--some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale--and despatched
+to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always
+be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a
+summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was
+a relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves thus
+justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her connection
+with the Hatch case in order to show that they had been right.
+
+Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
+resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her
+share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish's, they met
+with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender
+ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely
+to her friend.
+
+"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
+others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you
+done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she
+flamed out about some money you'd got from Gus; I never knew her so hot
+before. You know she'll let him do anything but spend money on his
+friends: the only reason she's decent to me now is that she knows I'm not
+hard up.--He speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had
+no business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth--but I never
+COULD understand you, Lily!"
+
+The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs.
+Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their
+friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina's renowned
+millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without
+considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
+untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
+owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher's
+influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the
+show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a
+valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which
+Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced,
+but resigned to this latest proof of Lily's unreason, agreed that perhaps
+in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To
+Regina's work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
+Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty's watchfulness
+continued to hover over her at a distance.
+
+Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later,
+and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a
+hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the
+tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the
+other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history--the exact
+situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all
+the others--but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense
+of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
+still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire
+that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had
+hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show
+herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was
+humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still
+betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might
+aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
+experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and
+trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the
+routine of preparatory work.
+
+She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the
+buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss
+Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss
+Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during
+the noon recess; and Lily's head was so heavy with the weight of a
+sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of
+a dream.
+
+"I TOLD her he'd never look at her again; and he didn't. I wouldn't have,
+either--I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion
+Ball, and had a hack for her both ways.... She's taken ten bottles, and
+her headaches don't seem no better--but she's written a testimonial to
+say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture
+in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor's hat? The one with the green Paradise?
+Here, Miss Haines--it'll be ready right off.... That was one of the
+Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How'd I know? Why,
+Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat--the blue tulle:
+she's tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out--a good deal like Mamie
+Leach, on'y thinner...."
+
+On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
+startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
+It was the strangest part of Lily's strange experience, the hearing of
+these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world
+she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls' minds. She
+had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and
+contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
+underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
+Every girl in Mme. Regina's work-room knew to whom the headgear in her
+hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a
+definite knowledge of the latter's place in the social system. That Lily
+was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
+curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had
+fallen, she had "gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they
+were awed only by success--by the gross tangible image of material
+achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
+them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
+whom it was an effort to talk.
+
+"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I guess you'd
+better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."
+
+Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
+sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
+clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
+physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
+her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
+took it with a suppressed smile.
+
+"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.
+
+Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
+Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
+workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
+Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
+pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.
+
+"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily slipped out
+last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
+mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
+irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
+all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they
+now seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish, she
+had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
+because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
+her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
+point of view was less interesting.
+
+She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
+"Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
+you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair to you."
+
+Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
+real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.
+
+"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
+AM clumsy."
+
+"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy paused
+irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever try
+orangeine?"
+
+"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I mean to go
+home."
+
+She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say.
+Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home
+with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent--even kindness, the sort
+of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just
+then.
+
+"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.
+
+She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street
+where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty's offer
+of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce shrinking from
+observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the
+promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole,
+less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she
+could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had
+been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now,
+perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about
+by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
+ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done, she
+dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wallpaper and
+shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the
+degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from
+fashion to commerce.
+
+But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's at the
+corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had
+usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn
+toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower
+crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the
+street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.
+
+Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her
+before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no
+question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch's,
+obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist. Lily was confident that the
+clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a
+refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her
+restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked
+on the glass case before her.
+
+The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of
+handing out the bottle he paused.
+
+"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked. Lily's
+heart contracted.
+
+What did he mean by looking at her in that way?
+
+"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.
+
+"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off
+you go--the doctors don't know why."
+
+The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked
+the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged
+safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her
+relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the
+delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her
+momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already
+stealing over her.
+
+In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the
+last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name
+uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and
+prosperous--but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through
+a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account for the
+phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with
+scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions
+seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
+wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he exclaimed; and
+she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.
+
+"I'm a little tired--it's nothing. Stay with me a moment, please," she
+faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!
+
+He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with
+the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons
+contending hideously in their ears.
+
+"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea. The
+LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no one there at this
+hour."
+
+A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed
+for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to
+the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was
+seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between
+them.
+
+"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss
+Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for
+the lady's back."
+
+Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It was the
+temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen
+stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep--the
+midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But
+today, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it
+to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.
+
+As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude,
+though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning
+life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty.
+The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined
+pallour of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips,
+as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull
+chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head
+stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit ball-room. He
+looked at her with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty
+were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
+unawares.
+
+To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why, Miss Lily,
+I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had become of you."
+
+As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications
+to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her he had heard of her;
+he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and of the talk resulting from
+it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was one which he had once assiduously frequented,
+and now as devoutly shunned.
+
+Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what
+was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You would not be
+likely to know about me. I have joined the working classes."
+
+He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean--? Why, what on earth are
+you doing?"
+
+"Learning to be a milliner--at least TRYING to learn," she hastily
+qualified the statement.
+
+Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off--you ain't
+serious, are you?"
+
+"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."
+
+"But I understood--I thought you were with Norma Hatch."
+
+"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"
+
+"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill her cup.
+
+Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for
+him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I left her two
+months ago."
+
+Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt
+sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
+Rosedale did not hear?
+
+"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.
+
+"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm on the
+edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
+looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
+to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
+herself.
+
+"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
+might make things too easy for one."
+
+Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
+lost on him.
+
+"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
+the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
+depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
+looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
+settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.
+
+"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
+Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least too good for
+her--and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
+have stayed where I was."
+
+"Oh, Freddy----" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
+unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
+acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed up in that.
+It ain't your style."
+
+Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
+gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
+and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale. But the old habit of
+observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
+colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.
+
+Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a minute--don't go
+yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
+And you haven't told me----" He broke off, conscious of going farther
+than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
+also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
+face, he began again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just
+now that you were learning to be a milliner?"
+
+"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."
+
+"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs.
+Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her----"
+
+"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next
+summer."
+
+"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted."
+
+She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."
+
+"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"
+
+"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on
+his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some
+money for me in stocks."
+
+She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he
+remembered something of the kind.
+
+"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same tone of
+eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that he was
+speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew
+nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had NOT used my
+money--that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It
+was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation
+one could remain under. Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
+discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back.
+That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."
+
+She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the
+sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer's
+mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth
+about this transaction, and also that the rumour of her intention to
+repay the money should reach Judy Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly
+occurred to her that Rosedale, who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was
+the fitting person to receive and transmit her version of the facts. She
+had even felt a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving
+herself of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
+telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep blush of
+misery.
+
+Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took the
+turn she had least expected.
+
+"But see here--if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"
+
+He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her act;
+as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to precipitate
+her into a fresh act of folly.
+
+"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.
+
+He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little puzzled
+eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
+
+"See here--that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.
+
+Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no--it's merely a
+bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her feather scarf.
+
+Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
+movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing--I like pluck----" broke
+from him disconnectedly.
+
+"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a tremendous
+backing. I feel equal to anything now."
+
+Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but her
+companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his short
+arms into his expensive overcoat.
+
+"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he said.
+
+Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of his
+change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she
+led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the
+distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the
+DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking
+contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which
+she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
+
+"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss Farish."
+
+"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."
+
+He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped
+with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy
+vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible
+effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"
+
+She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being
+frankly touched by it. "Thank you--I shall be very glad," she made
+answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.
+
+
+
+That evening in her own room Miss Bart--who had fled early from the heavy
+fumes of the basement dinner-table--sat musing upon the impulse which had
+led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath it she discovered an
+increasing sense of loneliness--a dread of returning to the solitude of
+her room, while she could be anywhere else, or in any company but her
+own. Circumstances, of late, had combined to cut her off more and more
+from her few remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
+perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily's
+behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room, Mrs. Fisher
+seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding the
+reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come dangerously near to
+being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some
+verbal ingenuity to extricate herself. She frankly owned to having
+brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch--she had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs.
+Hatch--and besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was
+old enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
+brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest bosom
+friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of
+her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose
+house she could count on the "jolly parties" which had become a necessity
+to her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of
+view.
+
+Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it. Carry
+had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps only a
+friendship like Gerty's could be proof against such an increasing strain.
+Gerty's friendship did indeed hold fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid
+her also. For she could not go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden;
+and to meet him now would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think
+of him, whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
+thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur of her
+tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
+Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams
+he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness;
+and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her
+courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below
+such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation
+from which she woke each morning with an obliterated past.
+
+Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return; but
+at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug gave her a
+momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she drew strength to
+take up her daily work. The strength was more and more needed as the
+perplexities of her future increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs.
+Fisher she was only passing through a temporary period of probation,
+since they believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme.
+Regina's would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
+realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller competence
+acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the
+legacy could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed a
+wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she could ever
+learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their special work,
+the small pay she received would not be a sufficient addition to her
+income to compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
+fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to use the
+legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and in command of
+her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to
+attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
+gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor. But the
+task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued to stint
+herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the
+weight of an intolerable obligation.
+
+These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked the
+secret dread that the obligation might not always remain intolerable.
+She knew she could not count on her continuity of purpose, and what
+really frightened her was the thought that she might gradually
+accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she
+had accommodated herself to the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as
+she had so nearly drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the
+advancement of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old
+incurable dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
+tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned
+her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood that
+Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take advantage
+of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of course impossible
+to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered
+temptingly before her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her
+again, and almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point
+of offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected. Would
+she still reject them if they were offered? More and more, with every
+fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the
+shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her
+papers, lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
+scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
+returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?
+
+What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost; she
+could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless night.
+Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue and
+loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained of bodily
+strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only
+hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much
+longer that hope would last she dared not conjecture.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the afternoon
+spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April, and the sweetness
+of spring was in the air. It mitigated the ugliness of the long crowded
+thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the
+discouraging perspective of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry
+to the delicate haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
+
+As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the passing
+carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had disbanded; but
+a few still lingered, delaying their departure for Europe, or passing
+through town on their return from the South. Among them was Mrs. Van
+Osburgh, swaying majestically in her C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy
+Gryce at her side, and the new heir to the Gryce millions enthroned
+before them on his nurse's knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch's
+electric victoria, in which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of
+a spring toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
+came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
+annual tarpon fishing and a dip into "the street."
+
+This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense of
+aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She had nothing
+to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to come; for the season
+was over in millinery as well as in society, and a week earlier Mme.
+Regina had notified her that her services were no longer required. Mme.
+Regina always reduced her staff on the first of May, and Miss Bart's
+attendance had of late been so irregular--she had so often been unwell,
+and had done so little work when she came--that it was only as a favour
+that her dismissal had hitherto been deferred.
+
+Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was conscious of
+having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It was bitter to
+acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the fact had been
+brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could never compete with
+professional ability. Since she had been brought up to be ornamental,
+she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical
+purpose; but the discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
+efficiency.
+
+As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the fact
+that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning. The luxury of
+lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the life of ease; it had no
+part in the utilitarian existence of the boarding-house. She liked to
+leave her room early, and to return to it as late as possible; and she
+was walking slowly now in order to postpone the detested approach to her
+doorstep.
+
+But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest from
+the fact that it was occupied--and indeed filled--by the conspicuous
+figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take on an added
+amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.
+
+The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph. Rosedale,
+a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to enquire if she had
+recovered from her indisposition; but since then she had not seen or
+heard from him, and his absence seemed to betoken a struggle to keep
+away, to let her pass once more out of his life. If this were the case,
+his return showed that the struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew
+he was not the man to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental
+dalliance. He was too busy, too practical, and above all too much
+preoccupied with his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable
+asides.
+
+In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas grass, and
+discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes, he looked about him
+with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat distrustfully on the dusty
+console adorned with a Rogers statuette.
+
+Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he deposited
+himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched antimacassar which
+scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of skin above his collar.
+
+"My goodness--you can't go on living here!" he exclaimed.
+
+Lily smiled at his tone. "I am not sure that I can; but I have gone over
+my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able to manage
+it."
+
+"Be able to manage it? That's not what I mean--it's no place for you!"
+
+"It's what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week."
+
+"Out of work--out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea of your
+having to work--it's preposterous." He brought out his sentences in short
+violent jerks, as though they were forced up from a deep inner crater of
+indignation. "It's a farce--a crazy farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed
+on the long vista of the room reflected in the blotched glass between the
+windows.
+
+Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. "I don't know why
+I should regard myself as an exception----" she began.
+
+"Because you ARE; that's why; and your being in a place like this is a
+damnable outrage. I can't talk of it calmly."
+
+She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual glibness; and
+there was something almost moving to her in his inarticulate struggle
+with his emotions.
+
+He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its beam
+ends, and placed himself squarely before her.
+
+"Look here, Miss Lily, I'm going to Europe next week: going over to Paris
+and London for a couple of months--and I can't leave you like this. I
+can't do it. I know it's none of my business--you've let me understand
+that often enough; but things are worse with you now than they have been
+before, and you must see that you've got to accept help from somebody.
+You spoke to me the other day about some debt to Trenor. I know what you
+mean--and I respect you for feeling as you do about it."
+
+A blush of surprise rose to Lily's pale face, but before she could
+interrupt him he had continued eagerly: "Well, I'll lend you the money to
+pay Trenor; and I won't--I--see here, don't take me up till I've
+finished. What I mean is, it'll be a plain business arrangement, such as
+one man would make with another. Now, what have you got to say against
+that?"
+
+Lily's blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude were
+mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the unexpected
+gentleness of her reply.
+
+"Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that I can
+never again be sure of understanding the plainest business arrangement."
+Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ of injustice, she
+added, even more kindly: "Not that I don't appreciate your kindness--that
+I'm not grateful for it. But a business arrangement between us would in
+any case be impossible, because I shall have no security to give when my
+debt to Gus Trenor has been paid."
+
+Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the note
+of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as closing the
+question between them.
+
+In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing through
+his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the inexorableness of her
+course--however little he penetrated its motive--she saw that it
+unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold over him. It was as though the
+sense in her of unexplained scruples and resistances had the same
+attraction as the delicacy of feature, the fastidiousness of manner,
+which gave her an external rarity, an air of being impossible to match.
+As he advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
+greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had learned to
+distinguish minor differences of design and quality in some long-coveted
+object.
+
+Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at once, on
+the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset; and the
+temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little by little,
+circumstances were breaking down her dislike for Rosedale. The dislike,
+indeed, still subsisted; but it was penetrated here and there by the
+perception of mitigating qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness,
+a rather helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
+through the hard surface of his material ambitions.
+
+Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a gesture
+which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.
+
+"If you'd only let me, I'd set you up over them all--I'd put you where
+you could wipe your feet on 'em!" he declared; and it touched her oddly
+to see that his new passion had not altered his old standard of values.
+
+
+
+Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
+situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on it. In
+fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had she not
+sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that might be
+called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt did she owe to
+a social order which had condemned and banished her without trial? She
+had never been heard in her own defence; she was innocent of the charge
+on which she had been found guilty; and the irregularity of her
+conviction might seem to justify the use of methods as irregular in
+recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not
+scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to
+make private use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all,
+half the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it. Call
+it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no
+one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he
+must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.
+
+The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of
+the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the
+passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of
+society. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude
+nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a
+worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by
+her unregarded. She could not hold herself much to blame for this
+ineffectiveness, and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed.
+Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
+highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its
+narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been
+fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the
+rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast? And was it her fault that
+the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
+among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be
+hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?
+
+These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their battle
+in her breast during the long watches of the night; and when she rose the
+next morning she hardly knew where the victory lay. She was exhausted by
+the reaction of a night without sleep, coming after many nights of rest
+artificially obtained; and in the distorting light of fatigue the future
+stretched out before her grey, interminable and desolate.
+
+She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
+friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the intimate
+domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings of the street.
+Her week of idleness had brought home to her with exaggerated force these
+small aggravations of the boarding-house world, and she yearned for that
+other luxurious world, whose machinery is so carefully concealed that one
+scene flows into another without perceptible agency.
+
+At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's she had
+spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial
+promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical
+fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not
+decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from
+the milliner's, and she was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.
+
+The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey sky
+threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals up and
+down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Park, hoping to
+find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the wind chilled her, and
+after an hour's wandering under the tossing boughs she yielded to her
+increasing weariness, and took refuge in a little restaurant in
+Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and had meant to go without
+luncheon; but she was too tired to return home, and the long perspective
+of white tables showed alluringly through the windows.
+
+The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the rapid
+absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of shrill voices
+reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little
+circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had
+lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken
+to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a
+responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the
+sallow preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
+music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who sat by
+themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring magazines
+between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was stranded in a great
+waste of disoccupation.
+
+She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion of
+stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when she emerged
+once more into the street. She realized now that, as she sat in the
+restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The
+discovery gave her an immediate illusion of activity: it was exhilarating
+to think that she had actually a reason for hurrying home. To prolong
+her enjoyment of the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was
+so great that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
+way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that
+time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it,
+cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters;
+but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
+break into a wild irrational gallop.
+
+She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
+enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting her plan
+into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her resolve. She
+was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved force of resolution
+which she felt within herself: she saw it was going to be easier, a great
+deal easier, than she had imagined.
+
+At five o'clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a sealed
+packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even the contact
+with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had half-expected it
+would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of indifference, as though
+the vigorous exertion of her will had finally benumbed her finer
+sensibilities.
+
+She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and went
+out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still high, but a
+threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook the signs projecting
+from the basement shops along the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and
+began to walk slowly northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs.
+Dorset's habits to know that she could always be found at home after
+five. She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
+visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that she had
+guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a note which she
+meant to send up with her name, and which she thought would secure her
+admission.
+
+She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset's, thinking that the
+quick movement through the cold evening air would help to steady her
+nerves; but she really felt no need of being tranquillized. Her survey of
+the situation remained calm and unwavering.
+
+As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and a rush of
+cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella and the moisture
+quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She was still half a mile from
+her destination, and she decided to walk across to Madison Avenue and
+take the electric car. As she turned into the side street, a vague memory
+stirred in her. The row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone
+house-fronts, the Georgian flat-house with flowerboxes on its balconies,
+were merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was down
+this street that she had walked with Selden, that September day two years
+ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered together. The
+recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations--longings, regrets,
+imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever
+known. It was strange to find herself passing his house on such an
+errand. She seemed suddenly to see her action as he would see it--and the
+fact of his own connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she
+must trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
+blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day of
+their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set in the path
+she was now following--even then she had resisted the hand he had held
+out.
+
+All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
+overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to help
+her--to help her by loving her, as he had said--and if, the third time,
+he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse? . . .
+Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts
+still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see him remained; it grew to
+hunger as she paused on the pavement opposite his door. The street was
+dark and empty, swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of
+the bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a
+light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps made
+tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire flickered
+on the hearth, and Selden's easy-chair, which stood near it, had been
+pushed aside when he rose to admit her.
+
+He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent, waiting
+for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the threshold, assailed by
+a rush of memories.
+
+The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from which he
+had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the chair he had
+leaned against while she examined the precious volume. But then the wide
+September light had filled the room, making it seem a part of the outer
+world: now the shaded lamps and the warm hearth, detaching it from the
+gathering darkness of the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.
+
+Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden's silence, Lily
+turned to him and said simply: "I came to tell you that I was sorry for
+the way we parted--for what I said to you that day at Mrs. Hatch's."
+
+The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs,
+she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now
+felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung
+between them.
+
+Selden returned her look with a smile. "I was sorry too that we should
+have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn't bring it on myself.
+Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking----"
+
+"So that you really didn't care----?" broke from her with a flash of her
+old irony.
+
+"So that I was prepared for the consequences," he corrected
+good-humouredly. "But we'll talk of all this later. Do come and sit by
+the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you'll let me put a cushion
+behind you."
+
+While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and paused
+near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward, cast exaggerated
+shadows on the pallour of her delicately-hollowed face.
+
+"You look tired--do sit down," he repeated gently.
+
+She did not seem to hear the request. "I wanted you to know that I left
+Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you," she said, as though continuing
+her confession.
+
+"Yes--yes; I know," he assented, with a rising tinge of embarrassment.
+
+"And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had already
+begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with her--for the
+reasons you gave me; but I wouldn't admit it--I wouldn't let you see that
+I understood what you meant."
+
+"Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out--don't overwhelm
+me with the sense of my officiousness!"
+
+His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have
+recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on
+her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of
+extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of
+the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it
+necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and
+evasion.
+
+"It was not that--I was not ungrateful," she insisted. But the power of
+expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat, and two
+tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.
+
+Selden moved forward and took her hand. "You are very tired. Why won't
+you sit down and let me make you comfortable?"
+
+He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion behind
+her shoulders.
+
+"And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have that
+amount of hospitality at my command."
+
+She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not weep
+easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself, though she
+was still too tremulous to speak.
+
+"You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes," Selden
+continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.
+
+His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they had sat
+together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her future. There
+were moments when that day seemed more remote than any other event in her
+life; and yet she could always relive it in its minutest detail.
+
+She made a gesture of refusal. "No: I drink too much tea. I would rather
+sit quiet--I must go in a moment," she added confusedly.
+
+Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The
+tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under
+the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her
+to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more
+putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming
+an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an
+immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining
+impulse was still lacking.
+
+The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had
+passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every
+demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it
+elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned.
+But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw
+herself forever shut out from Selden's inmost self. She had come to him
+with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her;
+but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in
+its death-pang.
+
+"I must go," she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. "But I
+may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I
+have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that
+sometimes--sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them--they
+have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming
+what many people have thought me."
+
+Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would
+not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without
+trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the
+seeming ruin of her life.
+
+A change had come over Selden's face as she spoke. Its guarded look had
+yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion, but full of
+a gentle understanding.
+
+"I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really
+made the difference. The difference is in yourself--it will always be
+there. And since it IS there, it can't really matter to you what people
+think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you."
+
+"Ah, don't say that--don't say that what you have told me has made no
+difference. It seems to shut me out--to leave me all alone with the other
+people." She had risen and stood before him, once more completely
+mastered by the inner urgency of the moment. The consciousness of his
+half-divined reluctance had vanished. Whether he wished it or not, he
+must see her wholly for once before they parted.
+
+Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the eyes
+as she continued. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my
+life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I
+saw my mistake--I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me
+before. But it was too late: you had judged me--I understood. It was too
+late for happiness--but not too late to be helped by the thought of what
+I had missed. That is all I have lived on--don't take it from me now!
+Even in my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
+Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the
+help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great
+temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I
+remembered--I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy
+me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. That is what you
+did for me--that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you
+that I have always remembered; and that I have tried--tried hard . . ."
+
+She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing out her
+handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds of her dress. A
+wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on her lips. Then she
+lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered voice.
+
+"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
+person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just
+a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped
+out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one
+finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be
+thrown out into the rubbish heap--and you don't know what it's like in
+the rubbish heap!"
+
+Her lips wavered into a smile--she had been distracted by the whimsical
+remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two years earlier, in
+that very room. Then she had been planning to marry Percy Gryce--what was
+it she was planning now?
+
+The blood had risen strongly under Selden's dark skin, but his emotion
+showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.
+
+"You have something to tell me--do you mean to marry?" he said abruptly.
+
+Lily's eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
+self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the light of
+his question, she had paused to ask herself if her decision had really
+been taken when she entered the room.
+
+"You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!" she
+said with a faint smile.
+
+"And you have come to it now?"
+
+"I shall have to come to it--presently. But there is something else I
+must come to first." She paused again, trying to transmit to her voice
+the steadiness of her recovered smile. "There is some one I must say
+goodbye to. Oh, not YOU--we are sure to see each other again--but the
+Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are
+going to part, and I have brought her back to you--I am going to leave
+her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like
+to think that she has stayed with you--and she'll be no trouble, she'll
+take up no room."
+
+She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will you let
+her stay with you?" she asked.
+
+He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling that had
+not yet risen to his lips. "Lily--can't I help you?" he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me once?
+That you could help me only by loving me? Well--you did love me for a
+moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the moment is
+gone--it was I who let it go. And one must go on living. Goodbye."
+
+She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind
+of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death. Something
+in truth lay dead between them--the love she had killed in him and could
+no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped
+up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had
+kindled, the passion of her soul for his.
+
+In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
+understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self with
+him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must still
+continue to be hers.
+
+Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with a
+strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation had
+vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as one of
+those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as they pass.
+
+"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I can't
+let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may change--but
+they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."
+
+She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see that now.
+Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe, whatever happens."
+
+"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"
+
+She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.
+
+"Nothing at present--except that I am very cold, and that before I go you
+must make up the fire for me."
+
+She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers. Puzzled
+by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered a handful of
+wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he did so, he noticed
+how thin her hands looked against the rising light of the flames. He saw
+too, under the loose lines of her dress, how the curves of her figure had
+shrunk to angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of
+the flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the
+blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes.
+She knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
+not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something from
+her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at
+the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the
+word to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
+shoulders. "Goodbye," she said, and as he bent over her she touched his
+forehead with her lips.
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was a
+momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on unconscious
+of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant ether which
+emanates from the high moments of life. But gradually it shrank away from
+her and she felt the dull pavement beneath her feet. The sense of
+weariness returned with accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that
+she could walk no farther. She had reached the corner of Forty-first
+Street and Fifth Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there
+were seats where she might rest.
+
+That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she entered it,
+and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of an electric
+street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of her veins, and she
+told herself that she must not sit long in the penetrating dampness which
+struck up from the wet asphalt. But her will-power seemed to have spent
+itself in a last great effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction
+which follows on an unwonted expenditure of energy. And besides, what was
+there to go home to? Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room--that
+silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the
+most discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral by her bed. The
+thought of the chloral was the only spot of light in the dark prospect:
+she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her already. But she
+was troubled by the thought that it was losing its power--she dared not
+go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been
+more broken and less profound; there had been nights when she was
+perpetually floating up through it to consciousness. What if the effect
+of the drug should gradually fail, as all narcotics were said to fail?
+She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the dose; and she
+had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug.
+Her dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she
+lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the waning
+power of the chloral.
+
+Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second Street
+was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the lingering
+occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now and then a stray
+figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path where Lily sat, looming
+black for a moment in the white circle of electric light. One or two of
+these passers-by slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely
+figure; but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny.
+
+Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows
+remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming asphalt;
+and raising her eyes she saw a young woman bending over her.
+
+"Excuse me--are you sick?--Why, it's Miss Bart!" a half-familiar voice
+exclaimed.
+
+Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with a
+bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome refinement
+which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its common prettiness was
+redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips.
+
+"You don't remember me," she continued, brightening with the pleasure of
+recognition, "but I'd know you anywhere, I've thought of you such a lot.
+I guess my folks all know your name by heart. I was one of the girls at
+Miss Farish's club--you helped me to go to the country that time I had
+lung-trouble. My name's Nettie Struther. It was Nettie Crane then--but I
+daresay you don't remember that either."
+
+Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane's timely
+rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her
+connection with Gerty's charitable work. She had furnished the girl with
+the means to go to a sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with
+a peculiar irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor's.
+
+She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not forgotten; but
+her voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself sinking under a
+great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther, with a startled
+exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad arm behind her back.
+
+"Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you feel
+better."
+
+A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from the
+pressure of the supporting arm.
+
+"I'm only tired--it is nothing," she found voice to say in a moment; and
+then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion's eyes, she added
+involuntarily: "I have been unhappy--in great trouble."
+
+"YOU in trouble? I've always thought of you as being so high up, where
+everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real mean, and got to
+wondering why things were so queerly fixed in the world, I used to
+remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and that seemed to
+show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But you mustn't sit here too
+long--it's fearfully damp. Don't you feel strong enough to walk on a
+little ways now?" she broke off.
+
+"Yes--yes; I must go home," Lily murmured, rising.
+
+Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side. She
+had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of over-work and
+anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to
+be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so
+lately expressed her dread. But Nettie Struther's frail envelope was now
+alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her,
+she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle.
+
+"I am very glad to have seen you," Lily continued, summoning a smile to
+her unsteady lips. "It'll be my turn to think of you as happy--and the
+world will seem a less unjust place to me too."
+
+"Oh, but I can't leave you like this--you're not fit to go home alone.
+And I can't go with you either!" Nettie Struther wailed with a start of
+recollection. "You see, it's my husband's night-shift--he's a
+motor-man--and the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to
+get HER husband's supper at seven. I didn't tell you I had a baby, did I?
+She'll be four months old day after tomorrow, and to look at her you
+wouldn't think I'd ever had a sick day. I'd give anything to show you the
+baby, Miss Bart, and we live right down the street here--it's only three
+blocks off." She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily's face, and then
+added with a burst of courage: "Why won't you get right into the cars and
+come home with me while I get baby's supper? It's real warm in our
+kitchen, and you can rest there, and I'll take YOU home as soon as ever
+she drops off to sleep."
+
+It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther's match had made
+a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as
+extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through
+the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which
+a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for
+expression on a countenance still placid with sleep.
+
+Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and
+excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return,
+Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the
+rocking-chair near the stove.
+
+"We've got a parlour too," she explained with pardonable pride; "but I
+guess it's warmer in here, and I don't want to leave you alone while I'm
+getting baby's supper."
+
+On receiving Lily's assurance that she much preferred the friendly
+proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a
+bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby's
+impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated
+herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor.
+
+"You're sure you won't let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss
+Bart? There's some of baby's fresh milk left over--well, maybe you'd
+rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It's too lovely having you
+here. I've thought of it so often that I can't believe it's really come
+true. I've said to George again and again: 'I just wish Miss Bart could
+see me NOW--' and I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we'd
+talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses
+you wore. I haven't seen your name for a long time, though, and I began
+to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I'd get
+sick myself, fretting about it." Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile.
+"Well, I can't afford to be sick again, that's a fact: the last spell
+nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I'd
+come back alive, and I didn't much care if I did. You see I didn't know
+about George and the baby then."
+
+She paused to readjust the bottle to the child's bubbling mouth.
+
+"You precious--don't you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad with
+mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry Anto'nette--that's what we
+call her: after the French queen in that play at the Garden--I told
+George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy the
+name . . . I never thought I'd get married, you know, and I'd never have
+had the heart to go on working just for myself."
+
+She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily's eyes, went
+on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: "You see I wasn't only
+just SICK that time you sent me off--I was dreadfully unhappy too. I'd
+known a gentleman where I was employed--I don't know as you remember I
+did type-writing in a big importing firm--and--well--I thought we were to
+be married: he'd gone steady with me six months and given me his mother's
+wedding ring. But I presume he was too stylish for me--he travelled for
+the firm, and had seen a great deal of society. Work girls aren't looked
+after the way you are, and they don't always know how to look after
+themselves. I didn't . . . and it pretty near killed me when he went away
+and left off writing . . .
+
+"It was then I came down sick--I thought it was the end of everything. I
+guess it would have been if you hadn't sent me off. But when I found I
+was getting well I began to take heart in spite of myself. And then,
+when I got back home, George came round and asked me to marry him. At
+first I thought I couldn't, because we'd been brought up together, and I
+knew he knew about me. But after a while I began to see that that made it
+easier. I never could have told another man, and I'd never have married
+without telling; but if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I
+didn't see why I shouldn't begin over again--and I did."
+
+The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted her
+irradiated face from the child on her knees. "But, mercy, I didn't mean
+to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there looking so fagged
+out. Only it's so lovely having you here, and letting you see just how
+you've helped me." The baby had sunk back blissfully replete, and Mrs.
+Struther softly rose to lay the bottle aside. Then she paused before Miss
+Bart.
+
+"I only wish I could help YOU--but I suppose there's nothing on earth I
+could do," she murmured wistfully.
+
+Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her arms; and
+the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in them.
+
+The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage, made an
+instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing influences of
+digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight sink trustfully
+against her breast. The child's confidence in its safety thrilled her
+with a sense of warmth and returning life, and she bent over, wondering
+at the rosy blur of the little face, the empty clearness of the eyes, the
+vague tendrilly motions of the folding and unfolding fingers. At first
+the burden in her arms seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down,
+but as she continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper, and
+penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though the child
+entered into her and became a part of herself.
+
+She looked up, and saw Nettie's eyes resting on her with tenderness and
+exultation.
+
+"Wouldn't it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to be just
+like you? Of course I know she never COULD--but mothers are always
+dreaming the craziest things for their children."
+
+Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in her
+mother's arms.
+
+"Oh, she must not do that--I should be afraid to come and see her too
+often!" she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs. Struther's
+anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the promise that of
+course she would come back soon, and make George's acquaintance, and see
+the baby in her bath, she passed out of the kitchen and went alone down
+the tenement stairs.
+
+
+
+As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger and
+happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the first time she
+had ever come across the results of her spasmodic benevolence, and the
+surprised sense of human fellowship took the mortal chill from her heart.
+
+It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction of a
+deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o'clock, and the light and
+odours proceeding from the basement made it manifest that the
+boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room, lit the
+gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself any longer,
+to go without food because her surroundings made it unpalatable. Since it
+was her fate to live in a boarding-house, she must learn to fall in with
+the conditions of the life. Nevertheless she was glad that, when she
+descended to the heat and glare of the dining-room, the repast was nearly
+over.
+
+
+
+In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of activity.
+For weeks past she had been too listless and indifferent to set her
+possessions in order, but now she began to examine systematically the
+contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a few handsome dresses
+left--survivals of her last phase of splendour, on the Sabrina and in
+London--but when she had been obliged to part with her maid she had given
+the woman a generous share of her cast-off apparel. The remaining
+dresses, though they had lost their freshness, still kept the long
+unerring lines, the sweep and amplitude of the great artist's stroke, and
+as she spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn
+rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
+of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her
+past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life
+enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had been made for:
+every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it, all
+her interests and activities had been taught to centre around it. She
+was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every
+bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.
+
+Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white
+drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress
+she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been impossible for her to give
+it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long
+flexible folds, as she shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets
+which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she
+had stood with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the
+dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note
+of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was
+still in a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of
+the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.
+
+She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dress
+when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irish
+maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, Lily
+read with surprise the address stamped on the upper corner of the
+envelope. It was a business communication from the office of her aunt's
+executors, and she wondered what unexpected development had caused them
+to break silence before the appointed time. She opened the envelope and a
+cheque fluttered to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up the blood
+rushed to her face. The cheque represented the full amount of Mrs.
+Peniston's legacy, and the letter accompanying it explained that the
+executors, having adjusted the business of the estate with less delay
+than they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the
+payment of the bequests.
+
+Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out
+the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it
+in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had
+represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed
+in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of
+the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the
+visions mounting to her brain, and after a while she lifted the lid of
+the desk and slipped the magic formula out of sight. It was easier to
+think without those five figures dancing before her eyes; and she had a
+great deal of thinking to do before she slept.
+
+She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious calculations as
+had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night when she had decided to
+marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies book-keeping, and her financial
+situation was easier to ascertain than it had been then; but she had not
+yet learned the control of money, and during her transient phase of
+luxury at the Emporium she had slipped back into habits of extravagance
+which still impaired her slender balance. A careful examination of her
+cheque-book, and of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that, when the
+latter had been settled, she would have barely enough to live on for the
+next three or four months; and even after that, if she were to continue
+her present way of living, without earning any additional money, all
+incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point. She hid her
+eyes with a shudder, beholding herself at the entrance of that
+ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss Silverton's dowdy
+figure take its despondent way.
+
+It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she
+turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper
+empoverishment--of an inner destitution compared to which outward
+conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be
+poor--to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary
+degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy
+communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more
+miserable still--it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of
+being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the
+years. That was the feeling which possessed her now--the feeling of being
+something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface
+of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self
+could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back
+she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real
+relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and
+thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to
+shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without
+any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no
+centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her
+heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and
+tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives
+in the blood--whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with
+visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands,
+but made up of inherited passions and loyalties--it has the same power of
+broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by
+mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving.
+
+Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to Lily.
+She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
+mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
+influences of the life about her. All the men and women she knew were
+like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance:
+her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening
+in Nettie Struther's kitchen.
+
+The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the
+fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to
+Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre
+enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for
+possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious
+permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff--a mere wisp of
+leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may
+hang safely over the abyss.
+
+Yes--but it had taken two to build the nest; the man's faith as well as
+the woman's courage. Lily remembered Nettie's words: I KNEW HE KNEW ABOUT
+ME. Her husband's faith in her had made her renewal possible--it is so
+easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be!
+Well--Selden had twice been ready to stake his faith on Lily Bart; but
+the third trial had been too severe for his endurance. The very quality
+of his love had made it the more impossible to recall to life. If it had
+been a simple instinct of the blood, the power of her beauty might have
+revived it. But the fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably
+wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as
+impossible to restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed.
+Selden had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of
+an uncritical return to former states of feeling.
+
+There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his
+faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on
+her memories. As she held Nettie Struther's child in her arms the frozen
+currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins: the
+old life-hunger possessed her, and all her being clamoured for its share
+of personal happiness. Yes--it was happiness she still wanted, and the
+glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by
+one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw
+that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.
+
+It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed her.
+It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful fatigue, a
+wan lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities of the future
+were shadowed forth gigantically. She was appalled by the intense
+cleanness of the vision; she seemed to have broken through the merciful
+veil which intervenes between intention and action, and to see exactly
+what she would do in all the long days to come. There was the cheque in
+her desk, for instance--she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor;
+but she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing so,
+would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified
+her--she dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Lawrence
+Selden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the
+strength of the opposing impulses-she could feel the countless hands of
+habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an
+intense longing to prolong, to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of
+her spirit. If only life could end now--end on this tragic yet sweet
+vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all
+the loving and foregoing in the world!
+
+She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her writing-desk,
+enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to her bank. She then
+wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it, without an accompanying
+word, in an envelope inscribed with his name, laid the two letters side
+by side on her desk. After that she continued to sit at the table,
+sorting her papers and writing, till the intense silence of the house
+reminded her of the lateness of the hour. In the street the noise of
+wheels had ceased, and the rumble of the "elevated" came only at long
+intervals through the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal
+separation from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more
+strangely confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel,
+and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands against her
+eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her
+future--she felt as though the house, the street, the world were all
+empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless universe.
+
+But this was the verge of delirium . . . she had never hung so near the
+dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted--she remembered that
+she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The little bottle was at her
+bed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon her. She rose and undressed
+hastily, hungering now for the touch of her pillow. She felt so
+profoundly tired that she thought she must fall asleep at once; but as
+soon as she had lain down every nerve started once more into separate
+wakefulness. It was as though a great blaze of electric light had been
+turned on in her head, and her poor little anguished self shrank and
+cowered in it, without knowing where to take refuge.
+
+She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness was
+possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred different
+points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could still this legion
+of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion would have been sweet
+compared to this shrill beat of activities; but weariness had dropped
+from her as though some cruel stimulant had been forced into her veins.
+
+She could bear it--yes, she could bear it; but what strength would be
+left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared--the next day pressed
+close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to follow--they
+swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut them out for a few
+hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion. She put out her hand, and
+measured the soothing drops into a glass; but as she did so, she knew
+they would be powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain.
+She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she
+felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing
+so--she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might
+be a sleep without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a
+hundred: the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a
+few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for
+her the rest she so desperately needed....
+
+She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely--the physical
+craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her mind shrank from
+the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes contract in a blaze of
+light--darkness, darkness was what she must have at any cost. She raised
+herself in bed and swallowed the contents of the glass; then she blew out
+her candle and lay down.
+
+She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first
+effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would
+take--the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of
+passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in
+the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect increased its
+fascination: it was delicious to lean over and look down into the dim
+abysses of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug seemed to work more slowly
+than usual: each passionate pulse had to be stilled in turn, and it was
+long before she felt them dropping into abeyance, like sentinels falling
+asleep at their posts. But gradually the sense of complete subjugation
+came over her, and she wondered languidly what had made her feel so
+uneasy and excited. She saw now that there was nothing to be excited
+about--she had returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be
+so difficult after all: she felt sure that she would have the strength to
+meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had been afraid
+to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her. She had been
+unhappy, and now she was happy--she had felt herself alone, and now the
+sense of loneliness had vanished.
+
+She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she suddenly
+understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was odd--but Nettie
+Struther's child was lying on her arm: she felt the pressure of its
+little head against her shoulder. She did not know how it had come there,
+but she felt no great surprise at the fact, only a gentle penetrating
+thrill of warmth and pleasure. She settled herself into an easier
+position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round downy head, and holding
+her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child.
+
+As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must
+tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life clear between
+them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered vague and luminous on
+the far edge of thought--she was afraid of not remembering it when she
+woke; and if she could only remember it and say it to him, she felt that
+everything would be well.
+
+Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold her. She
+struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought to keep awake on
+account of the baby; but even this feeling was gradually lost in an
+indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through which, of a sudden, a dark
+flash of loneliness and terror tore its way.
+
+She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a moment she
+seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no--she was mistaken--the
+tender pressure of its body was still close to hers: the recovered warmth
+flowed through her once more, she yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the
+air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the
+blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step,
+and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window.
+
+When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication in
+its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the squalor of
+its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a youthful sense of
+adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and
+launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and
+measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars.
+
+That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart's boarding-house;
+but its shabby door-step had suddenly become the threshold of the
+untried. As he approached he looked up at the triple row of windows,
+wondering boyishly which one of them was hers. It was nine o'clock, and
+the house, being tenanted by workers, already showed an awakened front to
+the street. He remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind
+was down. He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the
+window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
+inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the
+dingy scene.
+
+Nine o'clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed beyond
+all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily
+Bart at once--he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could
+not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come
+to his lips sooner--that he had let her pass from him the evening before
+without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new
+day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning.
+
+Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in his
+state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door
+should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he
+entered, that it had been opened by Gerty Farish--and that behind her, in
+an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed.
+
+"Lawrence!" Gerty cried in a strange voice, "how could you get here so
+quickly?"--and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to
+close about his heart.
+
+He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture--he saw the
+landlady's imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but he shrank
+back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically mounted the steep
+black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately aware that his cousin
+was about to lead him.
+
+A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
+minute--and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one else
+exclaimed: "It was the greatest mercy--" then Selden felt that Gerty had
+taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be suffered to go up
+alone.
+
+In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage
+to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went in after her.
+Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a tempered
+golden flood into the room, and in its light Selden saw a narrow bed
+along the wall, and on the bed, with motionless hands and calm
+unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart.
+
+That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied. Her real
+self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier--what had he to
+do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the first time,
+neither paled nor brightened at his coming?
+
+Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of one who
+has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking gently, as if
+transmitting a final message.
+
+"The doctor found a bottle of chloral--she had been sleeping badly for a
+long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake.... There is no
+doubt of that--no doubt--there will be no question--he has been very
+kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left alone with her--to
+go over her things before any one else comes. I know it is what she would
+have wished."
+
+Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down on
+the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable mask
+over the living lineaments he had known. He felt that the real Lily was
+still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible; and the
+tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense of
+helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier
+between them--and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart! And now,
+though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened
+to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in vain.
+
+He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
+aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by the
+extraordinary light in his cousin's face.
+
+"You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that there
+shall be no trouble--but of course the formalities must be gone through.
+And I asked him to give us time to look through her things first----"
+
+He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. "It won't take
+long," she concluded.
+
+"No--it won't take long," he agreed.
+
+She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last look at
+the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold she paused to
+add: "You will find me downstairs if you want me."
+
+Selden roused himself to detain her. "But why are you going? She would
+have wished----"
+
+Gerty shook her head with a smile. "No: this is what she would have
+wished----" and as she spoke a light broke through Selden's stony misery,
+and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.
+
+The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless sleeper
+on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall on his knees,
+and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful cheek on the pillow.
+They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself
+drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.
+
+But he remembered Gerty's warning words--he knew that, though time had
+ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly toward the
+door. Gerty had given him this supreme half-hour, and he must use it as
+she willed.
+
+He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to regain his
+consciousness of outward things. There was very little furniture in the
+room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover, and set
+out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured
+pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hair-pins--he shrank
+from the poignant intimacy of these trifles, and from the blank surface
+of the toilet-mirror above them.
+
+These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the minute
+observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her other
+renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality
+about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the
+scant articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small
+writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the
+empty bottle and glass, and from these also he averted his eyes.
+
+The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he
+took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped and
+sealed, Selden, after a moment's hesitation, laid it aside. On the other
+letter he read Gus Trenor's name; and the flap of the envelope was still
+ungummed.
+
+Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered under it,
+steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been writing to
+Trenor--writing, presumably, just after their parting of the previous
+evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of that last hour, made a mock
+of the word he had come to speak, and defiled even the reconciling
+silence upon which it fell. He felt himself flung back on all the ugly
+uncertainties from which he thought he had cast loose forever. After all,
+what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him,
+and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was! By what
+right--the letter in his hand seemed to ask--by what right was it he who
+now passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
+unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last hour
+together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in his hand.
+Yes--but what if the letter to Trenor had been written afterward?
+
+He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips, addressed
+himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After all, that task
+would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was
+annulled.
+
+He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book and a few
+packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly precision which
+characterized all her personal habits. He looked through the letters
+first, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved to
+be few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotion
+of the heart, the note he had written her the day after the Brys'
+entertainment.
+
+"When may I come to you?"--his words overwhelmed him with a realization
+of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of
+attainment. Yes--he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to
+disown his cowardice now; for had not all his old doubts started to life
+again at the mere sight of Trenor's name?
+
+He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
+something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
+growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
+examination of the papers.
+
+To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there was
+not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book, and saw
+that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand dollars from Mrs.
+Peniston's executors had been entered in it. The legacy, then, had been
+paid sooner than Gerty had led him to expect. But, turning another page
+or two, he discovered with astonishment that, in spite of this recent
+accession of funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars. A
+rapid glance at the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date
+of the previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
+the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the remaining
+thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at the same time, to
+Charles Augustus Trenor.
+
+Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the desk. He
+leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands. The bitter waters
+of life surged high about him, their sterile taste was on his lips. Did
+the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery or deepen it? At first his mind
+refused to act--he felt only the taint of such a transaction between a
+man like Trenor and a girl like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled
+vision cleared, old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the
+very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
+of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from Trenor;
+but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared, that the
+obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the first opportunity
+she had freed herself from it, though the act left her face to face with
+bare unmitigated poverty.
+
+That was all he knew--all he could hope to unravel of the story. The
+mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this--unless indeed they
+had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes,
+he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find
+there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for
+having failed to reach the height of his opportunity.
+
+He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart;
+since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her
+had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult
+for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he HAD loved her--had
+been willing to stake his future on his faith in her--and if the moment
+had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now
+that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.
+
+It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which
+had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had reached out
+to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and
+in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and
+reconciled to her side.
+
+He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its
+lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made
+all clear.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Notes:
+
+1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do n't
+becomes don't, etc.
+
+2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and colour.
+
+3. I found and corrected one instance of the name "Gertie," which I
+changed to "Gerty" to be consistent with rest of the book.
+
+Linda Ruoff
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
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+House of Mirth
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+
+
+
+
+The House of Mirth
+BY
+EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK ONE
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand
+Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss
+Lily Bart.
+
+It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his
+work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart
+doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching
+a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the
+act of transition between one and another of the country-houses
+which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport
+season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from
+the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street,
+and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
+be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once
+that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the
+idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he
+could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was
+characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that
+her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions.
+
+An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to
+the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish
+to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to
+think of putting her skill to the test.
+
+"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"
+
+She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to
+intercept him. One or two persons, in brushing past them,
+lingered to look; for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the
+suburban traveller rushing to his last train.
+
+Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved
+against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous
+than in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained
+the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was
+beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and
+indefatigable dancing. Was it really eleven years, Selden found
+himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the
+nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?
+
+"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my
+rescue!"
+
+He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and
+asked what form the rescue was to take.
+
+"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me.
+One sits out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit
+hotter here than in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of
+the women are not a bit uglier." She broke off, laughing, to
+explain that she had come up to town from Tuxedo, on her way to
+the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had missed the three-fifteen
+train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another till half-past
+five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her laces.
+"Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
+My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was
+to go on to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is
+closed, and I don't know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively
+about the station. "It IS hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after
+all. If you can spare the time, do take me somewhere for a breath
+of air."
+
+He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure
+struck him as diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed
+Lily Bart; and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it
+amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy
+which her proposal implied.
+
+"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"
+
+She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.
+
+"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet
+a lot of bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought
+not to make any difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not,"
+she objected gaily. "I'm dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter
+place?"
+
+He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her
+discretions interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he
+was so sure that both were part of the same carefully-elaborated
+plan. In judging Miss Bart, he had always made use of the
+"argument from design."
+
+"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll
+find a hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her
+through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced
+girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling
+with paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she
+belonged to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this
+average section of womanhood made him feel how highly
+specialized she was.
+
+A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung
+refreshingly over the moist street.
+
+"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged
+from the station.
+
+They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As
+she moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was
+conscious of taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the
+modelling of her little ear, the crisp upward wave of her
+hair--was it ever so slightly brightened by art?--and the thick
+planting of her straight black lashes. Everything about her was
+at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a
+confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that
+a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way,
+have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the
+qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were
+chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and
+fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay. Yet the analogy
+left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture will not take a high
+finish; and was it not possible that the material was fine, but
+that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?
+
+As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out,
+and her lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two
+later she paused with a sigh.
+
+"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty--and what a hideous place New
+York is!" She looked despairingly up and down the dreary
+thoroughfare. "Other cities put on their best clothes in summer,
+but New York seems to sit in its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered
+down one of the side-streets. "Someone has had the humanity to
+plant a few trees over there. Let us go into the shade."
+
+"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as
+they turned the corner.
+
+"Your street? Do you live here?"
+
+She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone
+house-fronts, fantastically varied in obedience to the American
+craving for novelty, but fresh and inviting with their awnings
+and flower-boxes.
+
+"Ah, yes--to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building!
+I don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
+flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade.
+"Which are your windows? Those with the awnings down?"
+
+"On the top floor--yes."
+
+"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up
+there!"
+
+He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give
+you a cup of tea in no time--and you won't meet any bores."
+
+Her colour deepened--she still had the art of blushing at the
+right time--but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was
+made.
+
+"Why not? It's too tempting--I'll take the risk," she declared.
+
+"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he
+had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had
+accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her
+calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in
+the spontaneity of her consent.
+
+On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.
+
+"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to
+come in the mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out
+the tea-things and provided some cake."
+
+He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She
+noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his
+gloves and sticks; then she found herself in a small library,
+dark but cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded
+Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray
+on a low table near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying
+inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of
+mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.
+
+Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.
+
+"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What
+a miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a
+luxury of discontent.
+
+Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
+
+"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges
+of a flat."
+
+"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable,
+marriageable girls!"
+
+"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."
+
+She sat up in surprise. "You do?"
+
+"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the
+sought-for cake.
+
+"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little
+unkindly. "But I said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid
+little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook
+does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that,
+you know."
+
+"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting
+the cake.
+
+They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp
+under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little
+tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit
+of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire
+bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony of
+suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish had
+chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which
+had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like
+manacles chaining her to her fate.
+
+She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that
+of Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was
+your cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being
+good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am
+not. If I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her
+flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one
+likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only
+do over my aunt's drawing-room I know I should be a better
+woman."
+
+"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to
+be filled.
+
+"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come
+oftener?"
+
+"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."
+
+"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on
+so well when we meet."
+
+"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I
+haven't any cream, you know--shall you mind a slice of lemon
+instead?"
+
+"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and
+dropped a thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason,"
+she insisted.
+
+"The reason for what?"
+
+"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of
+perplexity in her charming eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could
+make you out. Of course I know there are men who don't like
+me--one can tell that at a glance. And there are others who are
+afraid of me: they think I want to marry them." She smiled up at
+him frankly. "But I don't think you dislike me--and you can't
+possibly think I want to marry you."
+
+"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.
+
+"Well, then---?"
+
+He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning
+against the chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of
+indolent amusement. The provocation in her eyes increased his
+amusement--he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such
+small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or
+perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the
+personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had
+asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.
+
+"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard
+it as such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt
+a slight shiver down his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh
+reassured him.
+
+"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you
+to make love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She
+leaned back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial
+that, if they had been in her aunt's drawing-room, he might
+almost have tried to disprove her deduction.
+
+"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
+pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't
+be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I
+have fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except
+that you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't
+have to pretend with you or be on my guard against you." Her
+voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up
+at him with the troubled gravity of a child.
+
+"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My
+aunt is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to
+apply to conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that to live
+up to them would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves.
+And the other women--my best friends--well, they use me or abuse
+me; but they don't care a straw what happens to me. I've been
+about too long--people are getting tired of me; they are
+beginning to say I ought to marry."
+
+There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or
+two replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation;
+but he rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why
+don't you?"
+
+She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all,
+and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."
+
+"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably.
+"Isn't marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought
+up for?"
+
+She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"
+
+"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the
+first man who came along."
+
+"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as
+that. But there must be some one with the requisite
+qualifications."
+
+She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances
+when I first came out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I
+am horribly poor--and very expensive. I must have a great deal of
+money."
+
+Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all
+the family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I
+wouldn't do over the drawing-room."
+
+"The very thing you are marrying for!"
+
+"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."
+
+"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."
+
+He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes,
+putting one between her lips and slipping the others into a
+little gold case attached to her long pearl chain.
+
+"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding
+the tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a
+purely impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set
+in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them
+melted into the pure pallour of the cheek.
+
+She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves
+between the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had
+the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes
+lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the
+expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures
+that was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her
+expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture,
+and she turned to Selden with a question.
+
+"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and
+things?"
+
+"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I
+pick up something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at
+the big sales."
+
+She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now
+swept them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied
+with a new idea.
+
+"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"
+
+Selden stared and laughed.
+
+"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector,
+you see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am
+fond of."
+
+She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I
+suppose?"
+
+"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real
+collector values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the
+buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson
+Gryce certainly didn't."
+
+She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch
+fabulous prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot
+for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read!
+And I suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians
+either?"
+
+"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have
+to use those in the public libraries or in private collections.
+It seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average
+collector."
+
+He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was
+standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were
+the rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was
+really considered the finest in the world, and what was the
+largest price ever fetched by a single volume.
+
+It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted
+now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the
+pages between her fingers, while her drooping profile was
+outlined against the warm background of old bindings, that he
+talked on without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so
+unsuggestive a subject. But he could never be long with her
+without trying to find a reason for what she was doing, and as
+she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
+the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving
+at. Her next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She
+paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to
+admit him to her familiarity, and to remind him of the
+restrictions it imposed.
+
+"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough
+to buy all the books you want?"
+
+He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture
+and shabby walls.
+
+"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"
+
+"And having to work--do you mind that?"
+
+"Oh, the work itself is not so bad--I'm rather fond of the law."
+
+"No; but the being tied down: the routine--don't you ever want to
+get away, to see new places and people?"
+
+"Horribly--especially when I see all my friends rushing to the
+steamer."
+
+She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough--to marry
+to get out of it?"
+
+Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.
+
+She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.
+
+"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must, a man may if he
+chooses." She surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little
+shabby--but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to
+dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out
+as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the
+background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but
+they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected
+to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and if we can't keep
+it up alone, we have to go into partnership."
+
+Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even
+with her lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of
+her case.
+
+"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for
+such an investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the
+Trenors'."
+
+She returned his look interrogatively.
+
+"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity!
+But there are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the
+Wetheralls, Lady Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."
+
+She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query
+through her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.
+
+"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the
+week; and those big parties bore me."
+
+"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.
+
+"Then why go?"
+
+"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't,
+I should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."
+
+"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they
+both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."
+
+She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror
+while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope
+of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her
+outline--as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the
+conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was
+the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such
+savour to her artificiality.
+
+He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
+threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.
+
+"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."
+
+"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"
+
+"No; good bye here, please."
+
+She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.
+
+"Good bye, then--and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening
+the door for her.
+
+On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a
+thousand chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one
+could never tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions
+by a violent reaction of prudence. There was no one in sight,
+however, but a char-woman who was scrubbing the stairs. Her own
+stout person and its surrounding implements took up so much room
+that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts and brush
+against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work and
+looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the
+wet cloth she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad
+sallow face, slightly pitted with small-pox, and thin
+straw-coloured hair through which her scalp shone unpleasantly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to
+convey a criticism of the other's manner.
+
+The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and
+continued to stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken
+linings. Lily felt herself flushing under the look. What did the
+creature suppose? Could one never do the simplest, the most
+harmless thing, without subjecting one's self to some odious
+conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled to think
+that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
+was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE
+such apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not
+familiar with the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her
+colour rose again as it occurred to her that the woman's
+persistent gaze implied a groping among past associations. But
+she put aside the thought with a smile at her own fears, and
+hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street
+for a hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk
+she ran against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his
+coat, who raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.
+
+"Miss Bart? Well--of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and
+she caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up
+lids.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Rosedale--how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
+irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden
+intimacy of his smile.
+
+Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He
+was a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London
+clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes
+which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were
+bric-a-brac. He glanced up interrogatively at the porch of the
+Benedick.
+
+"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a
+tone which had the familiarity of a touch.
+
+Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
+precipitate explanations.
+
+"Yes--I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to
+catch the train to the Trenors'."
+
+"Ah--your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know
+there were any dress-makers in the Benedick."
+
+"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of
+this building?"
+
+"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor,
+isn't it? I happen to own the building--that's the way I know."
+His smile deepened as he added with increasing assurance: "But
+you must let me take you to the station. The Trenors are at
+Bellomont, of course? You've barely time to catch the five-forty.
+The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."
+
+Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.
+
+"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a
+hansom drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a
+desperate gesture.
+
+"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you," she
+said, extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his
+protestations, she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called
+out a breathless order to the driver.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so
+dearly for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do
+a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of
+artifice? She had yielded to a passing impulse in going to
+Lawrence Selden's rooms, and it was so seldom that she could
+allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This one, at any rate,
+was going to cost her rather more than she could afford. She was
+vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of vigilance, she
+had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story about
+her dress-maker was bad enough--it would have been so simple to
+tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere
+statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But,
+after having let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was
+doubly stupid to snub the witness of her discomfiture. If she had
+had the presence of mind to let Rosedale drive her to the
+station, the concession might have purchased his silence. He had
+his race's accuracy in the appraisal of values, and to be seen
+walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the
+company of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as
+he might himself have phrased it. He knew, of course, that there
+would be a large house-party at Bellomont, and the possibility of
+being taken for one of Mrs. Trenor's guests was doubtless
+included in his calculations. Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage
+in his social ascent when it was of importance to produce such
+impressions.
+
+The provoking part was that Lily knew all this--knew how easy it
+would have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it
+might be to do so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who
+made it his business to know everything about every one, whose
+idea of showing himself to be at home in society was to display
+an inconvenient familiarity with the habits of those with whom he
+wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure that within
+twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker at
+the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's
+acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed
+and ignored him. On his first appearance--when her
+improvident cousin, Jack Stepney, had obtained for him (in return
+for favours too easily guessed) a card to one of the vast
+impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"--Rosedale, with that mixture of
+artistic sensibility and business astuteness which characterizes
+his race, had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She
+understood his motives, for her own course was guided by as nice
+calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be
+hospitable to newcomers, since the most unpromising might be
+useful later on, and there were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to
+swallow them if they were not. But some intuitive repugnance,
+getting the better of years of social discipline, had made her
+push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a trial. He had left
+behind only the ripple of amusement which his speedy despatch had
+caused among her friends; and though later (to shift the
+metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in
+fleeting glimpses, with long submergences between.
+
+Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set
+Mr. Rosedale had been pronounced "impossible," and Jack Stepney
+roundly snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner
+invitations. Even Mrs. Trenor, whose taste for variety had led
+her into some hazardous experiments, resisted Jack's attempts to
+disguise Mr. Rosedale as a novelty, and declared that he was the
+same little Jew who had been served up and rejected at the social
+board a dozen times within her memory; and while Judy Trenor was
+obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale's penetrating
+beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave up
+the contest with a laughing "You'll see," and, sticking manfully
+to his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable
+restaurants, in company with the personally vivid if socially
+obscure ladies who are available for such purposes. But the
+attempt had hitherto been vain, and as Rosedale undoubtedly paid
+for the dinners, the laugh remained with his debtor.
+
+Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
+feared--unless one put one's self in his power. And this was
+precisely what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see
+that she had something to conceal; and she was sure he had a
+score to settle with her. Something in his smile told her
+he had not forgotten. She turned from the thought with a little
+shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the station, and dogged
+her down the platform with the persistency of Mr. Rosedale
+himself.
+
+She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but
+having arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive
+feeling for effect which never forsook her, she glanced about in
+the hope of seeing some other member of the Trenors' party. She
+wanted to get away from herself, and conversation was the only
+means of escape that she knew.
+
+Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young
+man with a soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the
+carriage, appeared to be dissembling himself behind an unfolded
+newspaper. Lily's eye brightened, and a faint smile relaxed the
+drawn lines of her mouth. She had known that Mr. Percy Gryce was
+to be at Bellomont, but she had not counted on the luck of having
+him to herself in the train; and the fact banished all perturbing
+thoughts of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to end
+more favourably than it had begun.
+
+She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her
+prey through downcast lashes while she organized a method of
+attack. Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told
+her that he was aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite
+so engrossed in an evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy
+to come up to her, and that she would have to devise some means
+of approach which should not appear to be an advance on her part.
+It amused her to think that any one as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce
+should be shy; but she was gifted with treasures of indulgence
+for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his timidity might serve
+her purpose better than too much assurance. She had the art of
+giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not
+equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
+
+She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was
+racing between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as
+it lowered its speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and
+drifted slowly down the carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the
+train gave a lurch, and he was aware of a slender hand gripping
+the back of his chair. He rose with a start, his ingenuous
+face looking as though it had been dipped in crimson: even the
+reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen. The train swayed
+again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms.
+
+She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was
+enveloped in the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt
+her fugitive touch.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I'm so sorry--I was trying to find the
+porter and get some tea."
+
+She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and
+they stood exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes--he was going
+to Bellomont. He had heard she was to be of the party--he blushed
+again as he admitted it. And was he to be there for a whole week?
+How delightful!
+
+But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last
+station forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to
+retreat to her seat.
+
+"The chair next to mine is empty--do take it," she said over her
+shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment,
+succeeded in effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport
+himself and his bags to her side.
+
+"Ah--and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea."
+
+She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease
+that seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little
+table had been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr.
+Gryce to bestow his encumbering properties beneath it.
+
+When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her
+hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and
+slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It
+seemed wonderful to him that any one should perform with such
+careless ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a
+lurching train. He would never have dared to order it for
+himself, lest he should attract the notice of his
+fellow-passengers; but, secure in the shelter of her
+conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with a delicious
+sense of exhilaration.
+
+Lily, with the flavour of Selden's caravan tea on her lips, had
+no great fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such
+nectar to her companion; but, rightly judging that one of
+the charms of tea is the fact of drinking it together, she
+proceeded to give the last touch to Mr. Gryce's enjoyment by
+smiling at him across her lifted cup.
+
+"Is it quite right--I haven't made it too strong?" she asked
+solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never
+tasted better tea.
+
+"I daresay it is true," she reflected; and her imagination was
+fired by the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the
+depths of the most complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually
+taking his first journey alone with a pretty woman.
+
+It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument
+of his initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage
+him. They would have over-emphasized the novelty of the
+adventure, trying to make him feel in it the zest of an escapade.
+But Lily's methods were more delicate. She remembered that her
+cousin Jack Stepney had once defined Mr. Gryce as the young man
+who had promised his mother never to go out in the rain without
+his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to impart a
+gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her companion,
+instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or
+unusual, would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always
+having a companion to make one's tea in the train.
+
+But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray
+had been removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement
+of Mr. Gryce's limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity
+but imagination that he lacked: he had a mental palate which
+would never learn to distinguish between railway tea and nectar.
+There was, however, one topic she could rely on: one spring that
+she had only to touch to set his simple machinery in motion. She
+had refrained from touching it because it was a last resource,
+and she had relied on other arts to stimulate other sensations;
+but as a settled look of dulness began to creep over his candid
+features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary.
+
+"And how," she said, leaning forward, "are you getting on with
+your Americana?"
+
+His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an
+incipient film had been removed from it, and she felt the pride
+of a skilful operator.
+
+"I've got a few new things," he said, suffused with pleasure, but
+lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers
+might be in league to despoil him.
+
+She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn on
+to talk of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which
+enabled him to forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to
+remember himself without constraint, because he was at home in
+it, and could assert a superiority that there were few to
+dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared for Americana, or
+knew anything about them; and the consciousness of this ignorance
+threw Mr. Gryce's knowledge into agreeable relief. The only
+difficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the
+front; most people showed no desire to have their ignorance
+dispelled, and Mr. Gryce was like a merchant whose warehouses are
+crammed with an unmarketable commodity.
+
+But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about
+Americana; and moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to
+make the task of farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable.
+She questioned him intelligently, she heard him submissively;
+and, prepared for the look of lassitude which usually crept over
+his listeners' faces, he grew eloquent under her receptive gaze.
+The "points" she had had the presence of mind to glean from
+Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were serving
+her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him
+had been the luckiest incident of the day. She had once more
+shown her talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous
+theories as to the advisability of yielding to impulse were
+germinating under the surface of smiling attention which she
+continued to present to her companion.
+
+Mr. Gryce's sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable.
+He felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms
+welcome the gratification of their needs, and all his senses
+floundered in a vague well-being, through which Miss Bart's
+personality was dimly but pleasantly perceptible.
+
+Mr. Gryce's interest in Americana had not originated with
+himself: it was impossible to think of him as evolving any taste
+of his own. An uncle had left him a collection already noted
+among bibliophiles; the existence of the collection was
+the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of Gryce, and
+the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it had
+been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as
+such, and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced
+on any reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to
+avoid personal notice, he took, in the printed mention of his
+name, a pleasure so exquisite and excessive that it seemed a
+compensation for his shrinking from publicity.
+
+To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all
+the reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American
+history in particular, and as allusions to his library abounded
+in the pages of these journals, which formed his only reading, he
+came to regard himself as figuring prominently in the public eye,
+and to enjoy the thought of the interest which would be excited
+if the persons he met in the street, or sat among in travelling,
+were suddenly to be told that he was the possessor of the Gryce
+Americana.
+
+Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
+discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
+proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident
+person she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or
+to show such exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly
+guessed that Mr. Gryce's egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring
+constant nurture from without. Miss Bart had the gift of
+following an undercurrent of thought while she appeared to be
+sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case her
+mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy
+Gryce's future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from
+Albany, and but lately introduced to the metropolis, where the
+mother and son had come, after old Jefferson Gryce's death, to
+take possession of his house in Madison Avenue--an appalling
+house, all brown stone without and black walnut within, with the
+Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked like a mausoleum.
+Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce's arrival had
+fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl has
+no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
+herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself
+in the young man's way, but had made the acquaintance of
+Mrs. Gryce, a monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator
+and a mind preoccupied with the iniquities of her servants, who
+came sometimes to sit with Mrs. Peniston and learn from that lady
+how she managed to prevent the kitchen-maid's smuggling groceries
+out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a kind of impersonal
+benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded with
+suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their annual
+reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties were
+manifold, for they extended from furtive inspections of the
+servants' bedrooms to unannounced descents to the cellar; but she
+had never allowed herself many pleasures. Once, however, she had
+had a special edition of the Sarum Rule printed in rubric and
+presented to every clergyman in the diocese; and the gilt album
+in which their letters of thanks were pasted formed the chief
+ornament of her drawing-room table.
+
+Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a
+woman was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion
+had been grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious,
+with the result that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs.
+Gryce to extract his promise about the overshoes, so little
+likely was he to hazard himself abroad in the rain. After
+attaining his majority, and coming into the fortune which the
+late Mr. Gryce had made out of a patent device for excluding
+fresh air from hotels, the young man continued to live with his
+mother in Albany; but on Jefferson Gryce's death, when another
+large property passed into her son's hands, Mrs. Gryce thought
+that what she called his "interests" demanded his presence in New
+York. She accordingly installed herself in the Madison Avenue
+house, and Percy, whose sense of duty was not inferior to his
+mother's, spent all his week days in the handsome Broad Street
+office where a batch of pale men on small salaries had grown grey
+in the management of the Gryce estate, and where he was initiated
+with becoming reverence into every detail of the art of
+accumulation.
+
+As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce's
+only occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it
+not too hard a task to interest a young man who had been kept on
+such low diet. At any rate, she felt herself so completely
+in command of the situation that she yielded to a sense of
+security in which all fear of Mr. Rosedale, and of the
+difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
+the edge of thought.
+
+The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted
+her from these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of
+distress in her companion's eye. His seat faced toward the door,
+and she guessed that he had been perturbed by the approach of an
+acquaintance; a fact confirmed by the turning of heads and
+general sense of commotion which her own entrance into a
+railway-carriage was apt to produce.
+
+She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed
+by the high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train
+accompanied by a maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering
+under a load of bags and dressing-cases.
+
+"Oh, Lily--are you going to Bellomont? Then you can't let me have
+your seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this
+carriage--porter, you must find me a place at once. Can't some
+one be put somewhere else? I want to be with my friends. Oh, how
+do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make him understand that I must
+have a seat next to you and Lily."
+
+Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller
+with a carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by
+getting out of the train, stood in the middle of the aisle,
+diffusing about her that general sense of exasperation which a
+pretty woman on her travels not infrequently creates.
+
+She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless
+pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run
+through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected. Her
+small pale face seemed the mere setting of a pair of dark
+exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze contrasted
+curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that, as
+one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit
+who took up a great deal of room.
+
+Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart's was
+at her disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther
+displacement of her surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she
+had come across from Mount Kisco in her motor-car that morning,
+and had been kicking her heels for an hour at Garrisons, without
+even the alleviation of a cigarette, her brute of a
+husband having neglected to replenish her case before they parted
+that morning.
+
+"And at this hour of the day I don't suppose you've a single one
+left, have you, Lily?" she plaintively concluded.
+
+Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose
+own lips were never defiled by tobacco.
+
+"What an absurd question, Bertha!" she exclaimed, blushing at the
+thought of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden's.
+
+"Why, don't you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What--you
+never---And you don't either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course--how
+stupid of me--I understand."
+
+And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with
+a smile which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside
+her own.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when
+Lily went to bed that night she had played too long for her own
+good.
+
+Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her
+room, she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the
+hall below, where the last card-players were grouped about the
+tray of tall glasses and silver-collared decanters which the
+butler had just placed on a low table near the fire.
+
+The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale
+yellow marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped
+against a background of dark foliage in the angles of the walls.
+On the crimson carpet a deer-hound and two or three spaniels
+dozed luxuriously before the fire, and the light from the great
+central lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women's hair
+and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.
+
+There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they
+gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external
+finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge
+to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the
+moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned
+away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine
+spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a confidential nook
+beneath the gallery.
+
+It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired
+hold over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but
+she had neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture.
+She was too self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his
+shyness, and besides, why should she care to give herself the
+trouble? At most it might amuse her to make sport of his
+simplicity for an evening--after that he would be merely a burden
+to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
+encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who
+could take a man up and toss him aside as she willed, without
+having to regard him as a possible factor in her plans, filled
+Lily Bart with envy. She had been bored all the afternoon
+by Percy Gryce--the mere thought seemed to waken an echo of his
+droning voice--but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she
+must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be
+ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the
+bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour
+of boring her for life.
+
+It was a hateful fate--but how escape from it? What choice had
+she? To be herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her
+bedroom, with its softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown
+lying across the silken bedspread, her little embroidered
+slippers before the fire, a vase of carnations filling the air
+with perfume, and the last novels and magazines lying uncut on a
+table beside the reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish's
+cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and hideous
+wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby
+surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole
+being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background
+she required, the only climate she could breathe in. But the
+luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years ago it had
+sufficed her: she had taken her daily meed of pleasure without
+caring who provided it. Now she was beginning to chafe at the
+obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere pensioner on the
+splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There were even
+moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.
+
+For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she
+could not afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive
+a taste. She had seen the danger exemplified in more than one of
+her associates--in young Ned Silverton, for instance, the
+charming fair boy now seated in abject rapture at the elbow of
+Mrs. Fisher, a striking divorcee with eyes and gowns as emphatic
+as the head-lines of her "case." Lily could remember when young
+Silverton had stumbled into their circle, with the air of a
+strayed Arcadian who has published chamung sonnets in his college
+journal. Since then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and
+bridge, and the latter at least had involved him in expenses from
+which he had been more than once rescued by harassed maiden
+sisters, who treasured the sonnets, and went without sugar in
+their tea to keep their darling afloat. Ned's case was
+familiar to Lily: she had seen his charming eyes--which had a
+good deal more poetry in them than the sonnets--change from
+surprise to amusement, and from amusement to anxiety, as he
+passed under the spell of the terrible god of chance; and she was
+afraid of discovering the same symptoms in her own case.
+
+For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected
+her to take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes
+she had to pay for their prolonged hospitality, and for the
+dresses and trinkets which occasionally replenished her
+insufficient wardrobe. And since she had played regularly the
+passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she had won a
+large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
+spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
+imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the
+game, drove her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She
+tried to excuse herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if
+one played at all one must either play high or be set down as
+priggish or stingy; but she knew that the gambling passion was
+upon her, and that in her present surroundings there was small
+hope of resisting it.
+
+Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold
+purse which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she
+returned to her room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out
+her jewel-case, looked under the tray for the roll of bills from
+which she had replenished the purse before going down to dinner.
+Only twenty dollars were left: the discovery was so startling
+that for a moment she fancied she must have been robbed. Then she
+took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the writing-table,
+tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her head
+was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures
+again and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had
+lost three hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book
+to see if her balance was larger than she remembered, but found
+she had erred in the other direction. Then she returned to her
+calculations; but figure as she would, she could not conjure back
+the vanished three hundred dollars. It was the sum she had set
+aside to pacify her dress-maker--unless she should decide to use
+it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so many
+uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play
+high in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost--she
+who needed every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband
+showered money on her, must have pocketed at least five hundred,
+and Judy Trenor, who could have afforded to lose a thousand a
+night, had left the table clutching such a heap of bills that she
+had been unable to shake hands with her guests when they bade her
+good night.
+
+A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to
+Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the
+laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its
+calculations.
+
+She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had
+sent to bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other
+people's pleasure to be considerate of those who depended on
+hers, and in her bitter moods it sometimes struck her that she
+and her maid were in the same position, except that the latter
+received her wages more regularly.
+
+As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked
+hollow and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near
+her mouth, faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.
+
+"Oh, I must stop worrying!" she exclaimed. "Unless it's the
+electric light---" she reflected, springing up from her seat and
+lighting the candles on the dressing-table.
+
+She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
+candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly
+from a background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it
+like a haze; but the two lines about the mouth remained.
+
+Lily rose and undressed in haste.
+
+"It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to
+think about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added
+injustice that petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty
+which was her only defence against them.
+
+But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She
+returned wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer
+picks up a heavy load and toils on after a brief rest. She was
+almost sure she had "landed" him: a few days' work and she would
+win her reward. But the reward itself seemed upalatable
+just then: she could get no zest from the thought of victory. It
+would be a rest from worry, no more--and how little that would
+have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions had shrunk
+gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
+failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?
+
+She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money,
+used to say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But
+you'll get it all back--you'll get it all back, with your face."
+. . . The remembrance roused a whole train of association, and
+she lay in the darkness reconstructing the past out of which her
+present had grown.
+
+A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was
+"company"; a door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered
+with square envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong
+envelopes which were allowed to gather dust in the depths of a
+bronze jar; a series of French and English maids giving warning
+amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked wardrobes and dress-closets;
+an equally changing dynasty of nurses and footmen; quarrels in
+the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room; precipitate trips
+to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
+interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the
+summer should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant
+reactions of expense--such was the setting of Lily Bart's first
+memories.
+
+Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and
+determined figure of a mother still young enough to dance her
+ball-dresses to rags, while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted
+father filled an intermediate space between the butler and the
+man who came to wind the clocks. Even to the eyes of infancy,
+Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could not recall
+the time when her father had not been bald and slightly stooping,
+with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
+shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older
+than her mother.
+
+Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down
+town"; and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard
+his fagged step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room
+door. He would kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions
+of the nurse or the governess; then Mrs. Bart's maid would
+come to remind him that he was dining out, and he would hurry
+away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
+Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and
+silent than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he
+would sit for hours staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner
+of the verandah, while the clatter of his wife's existence went
+on unheeded a few feet off. Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and
+Lily went to Europe for the summer, and before the steamer was
+half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the horizon. Sometimes
+his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected to forward
+Mrs. Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never
+mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure
+presented itself on the New York dock as a buffer between the
+magnitude of his wife's luggage and the restrictions of the
+American custom-house.
+
+In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through
+Lily's teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft
+glided on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the
+underflow of a perpetual need--the need of more money. Lily could
+not recall the time when there had been money enough, and in some
+vague way her father seemed always to blame for the deficiency.
+It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who was spoken
+of by her friends as a "wonderful manager." Mrs. Bart was famous
+for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to
+the lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in
+living as though one were much richer than one's bank-book
+denoted.
+
+Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line:
+she had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one
+must have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently
+dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst reproach to her husband was to ask
+him if he expected her to "live like a pig"; and his replying in
+the negative was always regarded as a justification for cabling
+to Paris for an extra dress or two, and telephoning to the
+jeweller that he might, after all, send home the turquoise
+bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.
+
+Lily knew people who "lived like pigs," and their appearance and
+surroundings justified her mother's repugnance to that
+form of existence. They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy
+houses with engravings from Cole's Voyage of Life on the
+drawing-room walls, and slatternly parlour-maids who said "I'll
+go and see" to visitors calling at an hour when all right-minded
+persons are conventionally if not actually out. The disgusting
+part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that Lily
+imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from
+choice, and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct.
+This gave her a sense of reflected superiority, and she did not
+need Mrs. Bart's comments on the family frumps and misers to
+foster her naturally lively taste for splendour.
+
+Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her
+view of the universe.
+
+The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a
+heavy thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still
+lingered on the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and
+suddenly it broke. The suddenness added to the horror; and there
+were still times when Lily relived with painful vividness every
+detail of the day on which the blow fell. She and her mother had
+been seated at the luncheon-table, over the CHAUFROIX and cold
+salmon of the previous night's dinner: it was one of Mrs. Bart's
+few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of her
+hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is
+youth's penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite
+of a few lines about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her
+temples, was as alert, determined and high in colour as if she
+had risen from an untroubled sleep.
+
+In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES
+and candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their
+vigorous stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but
+their rose-colour had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily's
+sense of fitness was disturbed by their reappearance on the
+luncheon-table.
+
+"I really think, mother," she said reproachfully, "we might
+afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or
+lilies-of-the-valley---"
+
+Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the
+world, and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked
+when there was no one present at it but the family. But she
+smiled at her daughter's innocence.
+
+"Lilies-of-the-valley," she said calmly, "cost two dollars a
+dozen at this season."
+
+Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of
+money.
+
+"It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl," she
+argued.
+
+"Six dozen what?" asked her father's voice in the doorway.
+
+The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday,
+the sight of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But
+neither his wife nor his daughter was sufficiently interested to
+ask an explanation.
+
+Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the
+fragment of jellied salmon which the butler had placed before
+him.
+
+"I was only saying," Lily began, "that I hate to see faded
+flowers at luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-
+valley would not cost more than twelve dollars. Mayn't I tell the
+florist to send a few every day?"
+
+She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her
+anything, and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her
+own entreaties failed.
+
+Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and
+his lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his
+thin hair lay in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he
+looked at his daughter and laughed. The laugh was so strange that
+Lily coloured under it: she disliked being ridiculed, and her
+father seemed to see something ridiculous in the request. Perhaps
+he thought it foolish that she should trouble him about such a
+trifle.
+
+"Twelve dollars--twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly,
+my dear--give him an order for twelve hundred." He continued to
+laugh.
+
+Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.
+
+"You needn't wait, Poleworth--I will ring for you," she said to
+the butler.
+
+The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving
+the remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.
+
+"What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?" said Mrs. Bart
+severely.
+
+She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making,
+and it was odious to her that her husband should make a show of
+himself before the servants.
+
+"Are you ill?" she repeated.
+
+"Ill?---No, I'm ruined," he said.
+
+Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her
+feet.
+
+"Ruined---?" she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she
+turned a calm face to Lily.
+
+"Shut the pantry door," she said.
+
+Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father
+was sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon
+between them, and his head bowed on his hands.
+
+Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
+unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached:
+her look was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly
+cheerfulness.
+
+"Your father is not well--he doesn't know what he is saying. It
+is nothing--but you had better go upstairs; and don't talk to the
+servants," she added.
+
+Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that
+voice. She had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart's words: she knew
+at once that they were ruined. In the dark hours which followed,
+that awful fact overshadowed even her father's slow and difficult
+dying. To his wife he no longer counted: he had become extinct
+when he ceased to fulfil his purpose, and she sat at his side
+with the provisional air of a traveller who waits for a belated
+train to start. Lily's feelings were softer: she pitied him in a
+frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for the most
+part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into the
+room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of
+a stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home
+till after dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a
+blur--first of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference--
+and now the fog had thickened till he was almost
+indistinguishable. If she could have performed any little
+services for him, or have exchanged with him a few of those
+affecting words which an extensive perusal of fiction had
+led her to connect with such occasions, the filial instinct might
+have stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active expression,
+remained in a state of spectatorship, overshadowed by her
+mother's grim unflagging resentment. Every look and act of Mrs.
+Bart's seemed to say: "You are sorry for him now--but you will
+feel differently when you see what he has done to us."
+
+It was a relief to Lily when her father died.
+
+Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to
+Mrs. Bart it seemed worse than nothing--the mere mockery of what
+she was entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to
+live like a pig? She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state
+of inert anger against fate. Her faculty for "managing" deserted
+her, or she no longer took sufficient pride in it to exert it. It
+was well enough to "manage" when by so doing one could keep one's
+own carriage; but when one's best contrivance did not conceal the
+fact that one had to go on foot, the effort was no longer worth
+making.
+
+Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long
+visits to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and
+who deplored the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the
+girl had no prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap
+continental refuges, where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof
+from the frugal tea-tables of her companions in misfortune. She
+was especially careful to avoid her old friends and the scenes of
+her former successes. To be poor seemed to her such a confession
+of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she detected a note
+of condescension in the friendliest advances.
+
+Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of
+Lily's beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though
+it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance.
+It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which
+their life was to be rebuilt. She watched it jealously, as though
+it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she
+tried to instil into the latter a sense of the responsibility
+that such a charge involved. She followed in imagination the
+career of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might
+be achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful
+warning of those who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they
+wanted: to Mrs. Bart, only stupidity could explain the lamentable
+denouement of some of her examples. She was not above the
+inconsistency of charging fate, rather than herself, with her own
+misfortunes; but she inveighed so acrimoniously against
+love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own marriage had
+been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured her
+that she had been "talked into it"--by whom, she never made
+clear.
+
+Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities.
+The dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief
+the existence to which she felt herself entitled. To a less
+illuminated intelligence Mrs. Bart's counsels might have been
+dangerous; but Lily understood that beauty is only the raw
+material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other
+arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of
+superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother
+denounced, and it did not take her long to learn that a beauty
+needs more tact than the possessor of an average set of features.
+
+Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart's. It had been among
+that lady's grievances that her husband--in the early days,
+before he was too tired--had wasted his evenings in what she
+vaguely described as "reading poetry"; and among the effects
+packed off to auction after his death were a score or two of
+dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among the boots
+and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
+Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source,
+which gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She
+liked to think of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her
+the opportunity to attain a position where she should make her
+influence felt in the vague diffusion of refinement and good
+taste. She was fond of pictures and flowers, and of sentimental
+fiction, and she could not help thinking that the possession of
+such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages. She would
+not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she
+was secretly ashamed of her mother's crude passion for money.
+Lily's preference would have been for an English nobleman with
+political ambitions and vast estates; or, for second
+choice, an Italian prince with a castle in the Apennines and an
+hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost causes had a romantic
+charm for her, and she liked to picture herself as standing aloof
+from the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her
+pleasure to the claims of an immemorial tradition. . . .
+
+How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were
+hardly more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had
+centred about the possession of a French jointed doll with real
+hair. Was it only ten years since she had wavered in imagination
+between the English earl and the Italian prince? Relentlessly her
+mind travelled on over the dreary interval. . . .
+
+After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died---died of a
+deep disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be
+dingy. Her visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded
+after the first year.
+
+"People can't marry you if they don't see you--and how can they
+see you in these holes where we're stuck?" That was the burden of
+her lament; and her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape
+from dinginess if she could.
+
+"Don't let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way
+out of it somehow--you're young and can do it," she insisted.
+
+She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and
+there Lily at once became the centre of a family council composed
+of the wealthy relatives whom she had been taught to despise for
+living like pigs. It may be that they had an inkling of the
+sentiments in which she had been brought up, for none of them
+manifested a very lively desire for her company; indeed, the
+question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs. Peniston with a
+sigh announced: "I'll try her for a year."
+
+Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their
+surprise, lest Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into
+reconsidering her decision.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart's widowed sister, and if she was by no
+means the richest of the family group, its other members
+nevertheless abounded in reasons why she was clearly destined by
+Providence to assume the charge of Lily. In the first place she
+was alone, and it would be charming for her to have a
+young companion. Then she sometimes travelled, and Lily's
+familiarity with foreign customs--deplored as a misfortune by her
+more conservative relatives--would at least enable her to act as
+a kind of courier. But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not
+been affected by these considerations. She had taken the girl
+simply because no one else would have her, and because she had
+the kind of moral MAUVAISE HONTE which makes the public display
+of selfishness difficult, though it does not interfere with its
+private indulgence. It would have been impossible for Mrs.
+Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but with the eyes of
+her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in her act.
+
+She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and
+found an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected to
+find Lily headstrong, critical and "foreign"--for even Mrs.
+Peniston, though she occasionally went abroad, had the family
+dread of foreignness--but the girl showed a pliancy, which, to a
+more penetrating mind than her aunt's, might have been less
+reassuring than the open selfishness of youth. Misfortune had
+made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable
+substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece's
+adaptability. Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her
+aunt's good nature. She was in truth grateful for the refuge
+offered her: Mrs. Peniston's opulent interior was at least not
+externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality which assumes all
+manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as latent in
+the expensive routine of her aunt's life as in the makeshift
+existence of a continental pension.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the
+padding of life. It was impossible to believe that she had
+herself ever been a focus of activities. The most vivid thing
+about her was the fact that her grandmother had been a Van
+Alstyne. This connection with the well-fed and industrious stock
+of early New York revealed itself in the glacial neatness of Mrs.
+Peniston's drawing-room and in the excellence of her cuisine. She
+belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always lived
+well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these
+inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faitfully conformed.
+She had always been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled
+one of those little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were
+accustomed to affix to their upper windows, so that from the
+depths of an impenetrable domesticity they might see what was
+happening in the street.
+
+Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but
+she had never lived there since her husband's death--a remote
+event, which appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a
+dividing point in the personal reminiscences that formed the
+staple of her conversation. She was a woman who remembered dates
+with intensity, and could tell at a moment's notice whether the
+drawing-room curtains had been renewed before or after Mr.
+Peniston's last illness.
+
+Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and
+cherished a vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such
+contingencies she frequented the more populous watering-places,
+where she installed herself impersonally in a hired house and
+looked on at life through the matting screen of her verandah. In
+the care of such a guardian, it soon became clear to Lily that
+she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good food and
+expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
+would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught
+her to regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her
+mother's fierce energies would have accomplished, had they been
+coupled with Mrs. Peniston's resources. Lily had abundant energy
+of her own, but it was restricted by the necessity of adapting
+herself to her aunt's habits. She saw that at all costs she must
+keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs. Bart would have phrased
+it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no mind for the
+vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to Mrs.
+Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive
+attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw
+her aunt into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a
+static force in Mrs. Peniston against which her niece's efforts
+spent themselves in vain. To attempt to bring her into active
+relation with life was like tugging at a piece of furniture which
+has been screwed to the floor. She did not, indeed, expect Lily
+to remain equally immovable: she had all the American guardian's
+indulgence for the volatility of youth.
+
+She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece's.
+It seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on
+dress, and she supplemented the girl's scanty income by
+occasional "handsome presents" meant to be applied to the same
+purpose. Lily, who was intensely practical, would have preferred
+a fixed allowance; but Mrs. Peniston liked the periodical
+recurrence of gratitude evoked by unexpected cheques, and was
+perhaps shrewd enough to perceive that such a method of giving
+kept alive in her niece a salutary sense of dependence.
+
+Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do
+anything for her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her
+take the field. Lily had taken it, at first with the confidence
+of assured possessorship, then with gradually narrowing demands,
+till now she found herself actually struggling for a foothold on
+the broad space which had once seemed her own for the asking. How
+it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she thought it was
+because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she feared
+it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she
+shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience,
+pliancy and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these
+faults or absolved herself from them, made no difference in the
+sum-total of her failure. Younger and plainer girls had been
+married off by dozens, and she was nine-and-twenty, and still
+Miss Bart.
+
+She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate,
+when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent
+life for herself. But what manner of life would it be? She had
+barely enough money to pay her dress-makers' bills and her
+gambling debts; and none of the desultory interests which she
+dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced enough to enable
+her to live contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no--she was too
+intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she
+hated dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her
+last breath she meant to fight against it, dragging herself up
+again and again above its flood till she gained the bright
+pinnacles of success which presented such a slippery surface to
+her clutch.
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note
+from her hostess.
+
+"Dearest Lily," it ran, "if it is not too much of a bore to be
+down by ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with
+some tiresome things?"
+
+Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a
+sigh. It WAS a bore to be down by ten--an hour regarded at
+Bellomont as vaguely synchronous with sunrise--and she knew too
+well the nature of the tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg,
+the secretary, had been called away, and there would be notes and
+dinner-cards to write, lost addresses to hunt up, and other
+social drudgery to perform. It was understood that Miss Bart
+should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
+recognized the obligation without a murmur.
+
+Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the
+previous night's review of her cheque-book had produced.
+Everything in her surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and
+amenity. The windows stood open to the sparkling freshness of the
+September morning, and between the yellow boughs she caught a
+perspective of hedges and parterres leading by degrees of
+lessening formality to the free undulations of the park. Her maid
+had kindled a little fire on the hearth, and it contended
+cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted across the moss-green
+carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old marquetry desk.
+Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray, with its
+harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
+slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters.
+There was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied
+luxury; but, though they formed a part of her atmosphere, she
+never lost her sensitiveness to their charm. Mere display left
+her with a sense of superior distinction; but she felt an
+affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.
+
+Mrs. Trenor's summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
+dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability
+that she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such
+emotions leave lines on the face as well as in the
+character, and she had meant to take warning by the little
+creases which her midnight survey had revealed.
+
+The matter-of-course tone of Mrs. Trenor's greeting deepened her
+irritation. If one did drag one's self out of bed at such an
+hour, and come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of
+note-writing, some special recognition of the sacrifice seemed
+fitting. But Mrs. Trenor's tone showed no consciousness of the
+fact.
+
+"Oh, Lily, that's nice of you," she merely sighed across the
+chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave
+an incongruously commercial touch to the slender elegance of her
+writing-table.
+
+"There are such lots of horrors this morning," she added,
+clearing a space in the centre of the confusion and rising to
+yield her seat to Miss Bart.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her
+from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years
+of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except
+in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her
+beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so
+much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she
+could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature
+of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her
+sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than that of hatred
+for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have more
+amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed
+by Mr. Trenor's bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate
+triumph in such competitions, success had developed in her an
+unscrupulous good nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss
+Bart's utilitarian classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor
+ranked as the woman who was least likely to "go back" on her.
+
+"It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor
+declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk. "She says her
+sister is going to have a baby--as if that were anything to
+having a house-party! I'm sure I shall get most horribly mixed up
+and there will be some awful rows. When I was down at Tuxedo I
+asked a lot of people for next week, and I've mislaid the list
+and can't remember who is coming. And this week is going to be a
+horrid failure too--and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and
+tell her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the
+Wetheralls--that was a blunder of Gus's. They disapprove of Carry
+Fisher, you know. As if one could help having Carry Fisher! It
+WAS foolish of her to get that second divorce--Carry always
+overdoes things--but she said the only way to get a penny out of
+Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony. And poor
+Carry has to consider every dollar. It's really absurd of Alice
+Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks
+of what society is coming to. Some one said the other day that
+there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family
+one knows. Besides, Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in
+a good humour when we have bores in the house. Have you noticed
+that ALL the husbands like her? All, I mean, except her own. It's
+rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting herself
+to dull people--the field is such a large one, and she has it
+practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt--I know
+she borrows money of Gus--but then I'd PAY her to keep him in a
+good humour, so I can't complain, after all."
+
+Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart's efforts
+to unravel her tangled correspondence.
+
+"But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry," she resumed, with a
+fresh note of lament. "The truth is, I'm awfully disappointed in
+Lady Cressida Raith."
+
+"Disappointed? Had you known her before?"
+
+"Mercy, no--never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her
+over with letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van
+Osburgh was asking a big party to meet her this week, so I
+thought it would be fun to get her away, and Jack Stepney, who
+knew her in India, managed it for me. Maria was furious, and
+actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite herself here, so
+that they shouldn't be QUITE out of it--if I'd known what Lady
+Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
+thought any friend of the Skiddaws' was sure to be amusing. You
+remember what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I
+simply had to send the girls out of the room. Besides, Lady
+Cressida is the Duchess of Beltshire's sister, and I naturally
+supposed she was the same sort; but you never can tell in those
+English families. They are so big that there's room for
+all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the moral
+one--married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East
+End. Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman's
+wife, who wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take
+her all through the glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to
+death by asking him the names of the plants. Fancy treating Gus
+as if he were the gardener!"
+
+Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.
+
+"Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to
+meeting Carry Fisher," said Miss Bart pacifically.
+
+"I'm sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and
+if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will
+be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so
+useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop
+once a year, and she would have given just the right tone to
+things. I always have horrid luck about the Bishop's visits,"
+added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was being fed by a
+rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; "last year, when he came,
+Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
+Wintons and the Farleys--five divorces and six sets of children
+between them!"
+
+"When is Lady Cressida going?" Lily enquired.
+
+Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. "My dear, if one only
+knew! I was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I
+actually forgot to name a date, and Gus says she told some one
+she meant to stop here all winter."
+
+"To stop here? In this house?"
+
+"Don't be silly--in America. But if no one else asks her--you
+know they NEVER go to hotels."
+
+"Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you."
+
+"No--I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to
+put in while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You
+should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you
+know--if she stays here all the autumn she'll spoil everything,
+and Maria Van Osburgh will simply exult."
+
+At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor's voice trembled with
+self-pity.
+
+"Oh, Judy--as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!"
+Miss Bart tactfully protested. "You know perfectly well that,
+if Mrs. Van Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you
+with all the wrong ones, you'd manage to make things go off,
+and she wouldn't."
+
+Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor's
+complacency; but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from
+her brow.
+
+"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented. "Everything has gone
+wrong this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with
+me."
+
+"Furious with you? Why?"
+
+"Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he
+wouldn't, after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think
+it's my fault."
+
+Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note
+she had begun.
+
+"I thought that was all over," she said.
+
+"So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.
+But I fancy she's out of a job just at present--and some one gave
+me a hint that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask
+him--but I couldn't make him come; and now I suppose she'll take
+it out of me by being perfectly nasty to every one else."
+
+"Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming--to
+some one else."
+
+Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. "She knows he wouldn't
+mind. And who else is there? Alice Wetherall won't let Lucius out
+of her sight. Ned Silverton can't take his eyes off Carry
+Fisher--poor boy! Gus is bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her
+too well--and--well, to be sure, there's Percy Gryce!"
+
+She sat up smiling at the thought.
+
+Miss Bart's countenance did not reflect the smile.
+
+"Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off."
+
+"You mean that she'd shock him and he'd bore her? Well, that's
+not such a bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won't take it
+into her head to be nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose
+for you."
+
+Lily laughed. "MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no
+show against Bertha."
+
+"Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I'm not really, you know.
+Every one knows you're a thousand times handsomer and cleverer
+than Bertha; but then you're not nasty. And for always getting
+what she wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman."
+
+Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. "I thought you were so
+fond of Bertha."
+
+"Oh, I am--it's much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But
+she IS dangerous--and if I ever saw her up to mischief it's now.
+I can tell by poor George's manner. That man is a perfect
+barometer--he always knows when Bertha is going to---"
+
+"To fall?" Miss Bart suggested.
+
+"Don't be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of
+course I don't say there's any real harm in Bertha. Only she
+delights in making people miserable, and especially poor George."
+
+"Well, he seems cut out for the part--I don't wonder she likes
+more cheerful companionship."
+
+"Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry
+him he would be quite different. Or if she'd leave him alone, and
+let him arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn't dare lose
+her hold of him on account of the money, and so when HE isn't
+jealous she pretends to be."
+
+Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat
+following her train of thought with frowning intensity.
+
+"Do you know," she exclaimed after a long pause, "I believe I'll
+call up Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST
+come?"
+
+"Oh, don't," said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The
+blush surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who,
+though not commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at
+her with puzzled eyes.
+
+"Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike
+him so much?"
+
+"Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the
+benevolent intention of protecting me from Bertha--I don't think
+I need your protection."
+
+Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. "Lily!---PERCY? Do you
+mean to say you've actually done it?"
+
+Miss Bart smiled. "I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are
+getting to be very good friends."
+
+"H'm--I see." Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know
+they say he has eight hundred thousand a year--and spends
+nothing, except on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has
+heart-disease and will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO
+SLOWLY," her friend adjured her.
+
+Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. "I shouldn't, for
+instance," she remarked, "be in any haste to tell him that he had
+a lot of rubbishy old books."
+
+"No, of course not; I know you're wonderful about getting up
+people's subjects. But he's horribly shy, and easily shocked,
+and--and---"
+
+"Why don't you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on
+the hunt for a rich husband?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that; he wouldn't believe it of you--at first,"
+said Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. "But you know things
+are rather lively here at times--I must give Jack and Gus a
+hint--and if he thought you were what his mother would call
+fast--oh, well, you know what I mean. Don't wear your scarlet
+CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don't smoke if you can help it,
+Lily dear!"
+
+Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. "You're very
+kind, Judy: I'll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year's
+dress you sent me this morning. And if you are really interested
+in my career, perhaps you'll be kind enough not to ask me to play
+bridge again this evening."
+
+"Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life
+you'll lead! But of course I won't--why didn't you give me a hint
+last night? There's nothing I wouldn't do, you poor duck, to see
+you happy!"
+
+And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex's eagerness to smooth the
+course of true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.
+
+"You're quite sure," she added solicitously, as the latter
+extricated herself, "that you wouldn't like me to telephone for
+Lawrence Selden?"
+
+"Quite sure," said Lily.
+
+
+
+The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction
+Miss Bart's ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.
+
+As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at
+Bellomont, she smiled at Mrs. Trenor's fear that she might go too
+fast. If such a warning had ever been needful, the years had
+taught her a salutary lesson, and she flattered herself that she
+now knew how to adapt her pace to the object of pursuit. In the
+case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well to flutter ahead, losing
+herself elusively and luring him on from depth to depth of
+unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was propitious
+to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word, had
+shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had
+even hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no
+surprise at her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint,
+Lily found herself the centre of that feminine solicitude which
+envelops a young woman in the mating season. A solitude was
+tacitly created for her in the crowded existence of Bellomont,
+and her friends could not have shown a greater readiness for
+self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
+attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a
+sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in
+her esteem as she saw the consideration he inspired.
+
+The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot
+propitious to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning
+against the balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little
+distance from the animated group about the tea-table, she might
+have been lost in the mazes of an inarticulate happiness. In
+reality, her thoughts were finding definite utterance in the
+tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in store for her. From
+where she stood she could see them embodied in the form of Mr.
+Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
+nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all
+the energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had
+combined to endow her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in
+the task of municipal reform.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been
+preceded by an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn
+replaced an energetic advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher
+was small, fiery and dramatic; and her hands and eyes were
+admirable instruments in the service of whatever causes he
+happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault common to
+enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part of
+her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
+resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce's attitude. Lily
+herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of
+catching cold if he remained out of doors too long at that hour,
+and the fear that, if he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher
+might follow him up with a paper to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a
+constitutional dislike to what he called "committing himself,"
+and tenderly as he cherished his health, he evidently concluded
+that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink till chance
+released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast agonized
+glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was to
+sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had
+learned the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief,
+and was fully aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's
+volubility was enhancing her own repose.
+
+She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin
+Jack Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning
+across the garden from the tennis court.
+
+The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance
+in which Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in
+contemplating what seemed to her a caricature of her own
+situation. Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces
+and no high lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she
+was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of
+less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any
+fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
+been reduced to a crust.
+
+Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the
+girl's turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up
+to be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed
+the encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin
+veneer of his smile.
+
+"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to
+get everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry
+him; whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and
+advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance,
+where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time."
+
+As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of
+family likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There
+was no resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic
+way--he looked like a clever pupil's drawing from a
+plaster-cast--while Gwen's countenance had no more modelling than
+a face painted on a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was
+unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices and ideals, and the
+same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring
+them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a
+force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
+range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short,
+made for each other by every law of moral and physical
+correspondence---"Yet they wouldn't look at each other," Lily
+mused, "they never do. Each of them wants a creature of a
+different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all sorts of
+intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even guess
+the existence of. And they always get what they want."
+
+She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a
+slight cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly
+amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of
+the necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of
+her career, dropped aside while the happy couple proceeded toward
+the tea-table.
+
+Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her
+head against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The
+fragrance of the late blossoms seemed an emanation of the
+tranquil scene, a landscape tutored to the last degree of rural
+elegance. In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens.
+Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety
+firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long
+glade the river widened like a lake under the silver light of
+September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
+tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she
+was content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The
+certainty that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had
+lifted a heavy load from her mind, and her money troubles were
+too recent for their removal not to leave a sense of
+relief which a less discerning intelligence might have taken for
+happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be able to
+arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
+security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter
+gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha
+Dorset. She would be free forever from the shifts, the
+expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor. Instead of
+having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of being
+grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores she
+could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And she
+had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr.
+Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses
+and emotions. He had the kind of character in which prudence is a
+vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily
+had known the species before: she was aware that such a guarded
+nature must find one huge outlet of egoism, and she determined to
+be to him what his Americana had hitherto been: the one
+possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on
+it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
+meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her
+husband's vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the
+most exquisite form of self-indulgence. The system might at first
+necessitate a resort to some of the very shifts and expedients
+from which she intended it should free her; but she felt sure
+that in a short time she would be able to play the game in her
+own way. How should she have distrusted her powers? Her beauty
+itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have been
+in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
+she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind
+of permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through
+to the end.
+
+And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the
+mockery she had thought it three days ago. There was room for
+her, after all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence,
+so short a time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her.
+These people whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to
+make a place for her in the charmed circle about which all her
+desires revolved. They were not as brutal and self-engrossed as
+she had fancied--or rather, since it would no longer be
+necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature
+became less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt
+to be judged according to its place in each man's heaven; and at
+present it was turning its illuminated face to Lily.
+
+In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of
+amiable qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness,
+their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times
+was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social
+ascendency. They were lords of the only world she cared for, and
+they were ready to admit her to their ranks and let her lord it
+with them. Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to
+their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief
+in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
+the people who were not able to live as they lived.
+
+The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs
+of the long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of
+wheels, and divined that more visitors were approaching. There
+was a movement behind her, a scattering of steps and voices: it
+was evident that the party about the tea-table was breaking up.
+Presently she heard a tread behind her on the terrace. She
+supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means to escape from
+his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his coming
+to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the
+fire-side.
+
+She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved;
+but her greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who
+had approached her was Lawrence Selden.
+
+"You see I came after all," he said; but before she had time to
+answer, Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with
+her host, had stepped between them with a little gesture of
+appropriation.
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the
+punctual appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the
+household to the little church at the gates. Whether any one got
+into the omnibus or not was a matter of secondary importance,
+since by standing there it not only bore witness to the orthodox
+intentions of the family, but made Mrs. Trenor feel, when she
+finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow vicariously
+made use of it.
+
+It was Mrs. Trenor's theory that her daughters actually did go to
+church every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions
+calling her to the rival fane, and the fatigues of the week
+keeping their mother in her room till luncheon, there was seldom
+any one present to verify the fact. Now and then, in a spasmodic
+burst of virtue--when the house had been too uproarious over
+night--Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight frock-coat
+and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually, as
+Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten
+till the church bells were ringing across the park, and the
+omnibus had driven away empty.
+
+Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious
+observances was repugnant to her early traditions, and that
+during her visits to Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel
+and Hilda to church. This tallied with the assurance, also
+confidentially imparted, that, never having played bridge
+before, she had been "dragged into it" on the night of her
+arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in
+consequence of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of
+betting. Mr. Gryce was undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked
+the ease and glitter of the life, and the lustre conferred on him
+by being a member of this group of rich and conspicuous people.
+But he thought it a very materialistic society; there were times
+when he was frightened by the talk of the men and the looks of
+the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for all her
+ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
+atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to
+learn that she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors
+to church on Sunday morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep
+before the door, his light overcoat on his arm and his
+prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he reflected agreeably
+on the strength of character which kept her true to her early
+training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.
+
+For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
+themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference
+on the part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the
+hope that Miss Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes
+were flying, however; the big chestnuts pawed the ground and
+flecked their impatient sides with foam; the coachman seemed to
+be slowly petrifying on the box, and the groom on the doorstep;
+and still the lady did not come. Suddenly, however, there was a
+sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the doorway, and Mr.
+Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a nervous
+start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
+into the carriage.
+
+The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast
+group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to
+perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding
+puppets. It is true that the Bellomont puppets did not go to
+church; but others equally important did--and Mr. and Mrs.
+Wetherall's circle was so large that God was included in their
+visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and resigned,
+with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after them
+Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's
+veils and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to
+church with her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck
+that they didn't mind doing it to please her, though they
+couldn't fancy what had put the idea in her head, and though for
+their own part they would much rather have played lawn tennis
+with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she was coming. The
+Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
+weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets,
+who, on seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were
+not to walk across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall's horrified
+protest that the church was a mile away, her ladyship,
+after a glance at the height of the other's heels, acquiesced in
+the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce found himself
+rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare he
+felt not the least concern.
+
+It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known
+that Miss Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even
+risen earlier than usual in the execution of her purpose. She had
+an idea that the sight of her in a grey gown of devotional cut,
+with her famous lashes drooped above a prayer-book, would put the
+finishing touch to Mr. Gryce's subjugation, and render inevitable
+a certain incident which she had resolved should form a part of
+the walk they were to take together after luncheon. Her
+intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor Lily,
+for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
+as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
+people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small
+contingencies, hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She
+was like a water-plant in the flux of the tides, and today the
+whole current of her mood was carrying her toward Lawrence
+Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see herself or Bertha Dorset?
+It was the last question which, at that moment, should have
+engaged her. She might better have contented herself with
+thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons
+of his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the
+ill-humour of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she
+learned from Mrs. Trenor that Selden had come of his own accord.
+"He didn't even wire me--he just happened to find the trap at the
+station. Perhaps it's not over with Bertha after all," Mrs.
+Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to arrange her
+dinner-cards accordingly.
+
+Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless
+she had lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset's
+call, it was at her own that he would stay. So much the previous
+evening had told her. Mrs. Trenor, true to her simple principle
+of making her married friends happy, had placed Selden and Mrs.
+Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in obedience to the
+time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had separated
+Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George
+Dorset, while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.
+
+George Dorset's talk did not interfere with the range of his
+neighbour's thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on
+finding out the deleterious ingredients of every dish and
+diverted from this care only by the sound of his wife's voice. On
+this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset took no part in the general
+conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs with Selden, and
+turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her host, who,
+far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
+the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr.
+Dorset, however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such
+evident concern that, when he was not scraping the sauce from his
+fish, or scooping the moist bread-crumbs from the interior of his
+roll, he sat straining his thin neck for a glimpse of her between
+the lights.
+
+Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on
+opposite sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to
+observe Mrs. Dorset also, and by carrying her glance a few feet
+farther, to set up a rapid comparison between Lawrence Selden and
+Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison which was her undoing. Why else
+had she suddenly grown interested in Selden? She had known him
+for eight years or more: ever since her return to America he had
+formed a part of her background. She had always been glad to sit
+next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
+men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities
+needful to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy
+with her own affairs to regard him as more than one of the
+pleasant accessories of life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her
+own heart, and she saw that her sudden preoccupation with Selden
+was due to the fact that his presence shed a new light on her
+surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant or exceptional;
+in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one man who
+had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
+had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing
+the show objectively, of having points of contact outside the
+great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to
+gape at. How alluring the world outside the cage appeared
+to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In reality, as she
+knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open; but most of
+the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown
+in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's distinction
+that he had never forgotten the way out.
+
+That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily,
+turning her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little
+world through his retina: it was as though the pink lamps had
+been shut off and the dusty daylight let in. She looked down the
+long table, studying its occupants one by one, from Gus Trenor,
+with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between his shoulders, as he
+preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the opposite end of
+the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
+good-looks, of a jeweller's window lit by electricity. And
+between the two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and
+trivial these people were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful
+impatience: Carry Fisher, with her shoulders, her eyes, her
+divorces, her general air of embodying a "spicy paragraph"; young
+Silverton, who had meant to live on proof-reading and write an
+epic, and who now lived on his friends and had become critical of
+truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list, whose most
+fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and the
+engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous
+nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he
+knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident
+smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an
+heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a
+young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer
+than her father.
+
+Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different
+they had seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized
+what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up.
+That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities;
+now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the
+glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their
+achievement. It was not that she wanted them to be more
+disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
+picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way
+in which, a few hours since, she had felt the centripetal force
+of their standards. She closed her eyes an instant, and the
+vacuous routine of the life she had chosen stretched before her
+like a long white road without dip or turning: it was true she
+was to roll over it in a carriage instead of trudging it on foot,
+but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of a short cut
+which is denied to those on wheels.
+
+She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from
+the depths of his lean throat.
+
+"I say, do look at her," he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
+lugubrious merriment--"I beg your pardon, but do just look at my
+wife making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would
+really suppose she was gone on him--and it's all the other way
+round, I assure you."
+
+Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was
+affording Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly
+appeared, as he said, that Mrs. Dorset was the more active
+participant in the scene: her neighbour seemed to receive her
+advances with a temperate zest which did not distract him from
+his dinner. The sight restored Lily's good humour, and knowing
+the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset's marital fears assumed,
+she asked gaily: "Aren't you horribly jealous of her?"
+
+Dorset greeted the sally with delight. "Oh, abominably--you've
+just hit it--keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's
+what has knocked my digestion out--being so infernally jealous of
+her.--I can't eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added
+suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance; and
+Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention to
+his prolonged denunciation of other people's cooks, with a
+supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of melted butter.
+
+It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man
+as well as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his
+grievances into it he was not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At
+any rate he engaged Lily so long that the sweets were being
+handed when she caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss
+Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney
+on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was
+jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a
+handspring.
+
+"And of course you'll have Sim Rosedale as best man!" Lily heard
+her fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney
+responded, as if struck: "Jove, that's an idea. What a thumping
+present I'd get out of him!"
+
+SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive,
+obtruded itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one
+of the many hated possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If
+she did not marry Percy Gryce, the day might come when she would
+have to be civil to such men as Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY
+HIM? But she meant to marry him--she was sure of him and sure of
+herself. She drew back with a shiver from the pleasant paths in
+which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet once more
+in the middle of the long white road.... When she went upstairs
+that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
+batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
+forwarded them all to Bellomont.
+
+Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most
+earnest conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore
+herself betimes from the lingering enjoyment of her
+breakfast-tray, rang to have her grey gown laid out, and
+despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs. Trenor.
+
+But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs
+of rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they
+roused a smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough
+to kindle Lily's imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and
+the borrowed prayer-book flashed a long light down the years. She
+would have to go to church with Percy Gryce every Sunday. They
+would have a front pew in the most expensive church in New York,
+and his name would figure handsomely in the list of parish
+charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would be made
+a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
+her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no
+DIVORCEES were included, except those who had showed signs of
+penitence by being re-married to the very wealthy. There was
+nothing especially arduous in this round of religious
+obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that great bulk of
+boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent to be
+bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and her bath had
+filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected
+in the clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this
+morning, or else the glass was at a happier angle.
+
+And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for
+impulse and truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold;
+below the dewy bloom of the lawns the woodlands blushed and
+smouldered, and the hills across the river swam in molten blue.
+Every drop of blood in Lily's veins invited her to happiness.
+
+The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning
+behind her shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She
+was too late, then--but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of
+Mr. Gryce's crestfallen face even suggested that she had done
+wisely in absenting herself, since the disappointment he so
+candidly betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the
+afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to miss; one glance at
+the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall its
+necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and
+could muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was
+familiar enough with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was
+likely to have a free field till luncheon. She had seen the
+Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and Lady Cressida packed safely into
+the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be having her hair
+shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her host for a
+drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of young
+despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
+tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies,
+this left only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never
+came down till luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden
+her to expose herself to the crude air of the morning.
+
+To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special
+thought; wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere
+with her plans. These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming
+a dress somewhat more rustic and summerlike in style than the
+garment she had first selected, and rustling downstairs,
+sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a lady in quest of
+exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of dogs by
+the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
+Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship.
+She put aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and
+assuring the joyous volunteers that she might presently have a
+use for their company, sauntered on through the empty
+drawing-room to the library at the end of the house. The library
+was almost the only surviving portion of the old manor-house of
+Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions of the
+mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
+the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass
+urns. A few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in
+tie-wigs, and ladies with large head-dresses and small bodies,
+hung between the shelves lined with pleasantly-shabby books:
+books mostly contemporaneous with the ancestors in question, and
+to which the subsequent Trenors had made no perceptible
+additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used for
+reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking-room or
+a quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however,
+that it might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only
+member of the party in the least likely to put it to its original
+use. She advanced noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered
+with easy-chairs, and before she reached the middle of the room
+she saw that she had not been mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in
+fact seated at its farther end; but though a book lay on his
+knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but directed to a
+lady whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an adjoining
+chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
+dusky leather upholstery.
+
+Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she
+seemed about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she
+announced her approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made
+the couple raise their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank
+displeasure, and Selden with his usual quiet smile. The sight of
+his composure had a disturbing effect on Lily; but to be
+disturbed was in her case to make a more brilliant effort at
+self-possession.
+
+"Dear me, am I late?" she asked, putting a hand in his as he
+advanced to greet her.
+
+"Late for what?" enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. "Not for luncheon,
+certainly--but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?"
+
+"Yes, I had," said Lily confidingly.
+
+"Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is
+entirely at your disposal." Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and
+her antagonist felt a certain pleasure in prolonging her
+distress.
+
+"Oh, dear, no--do stay," she said good-humouredly. "I don't in
+the least want to drive you away."
+
+"You're awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr.
+Selden's engagements."
+
+The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not
+lost on its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by
+stooping to pick up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach.
+The latter's eyes widened charmingly and she broke into a light
+laugh.
+
+"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to
+go to church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me.
+HAS it started, do you know?"
+
+She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away
+some time since.
+
+"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go
+to church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well,
+I shall have the credit of trying, at any rate--and the advantage
+of escaping part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself,
+after all!"
+
+And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded,
+Miss Bart strolled through the glass doors and carried her
+rustling grace down the long perspective of the garden walk.
+
+She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a
+fact not lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway
+looking after her with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is
+that she was conscious of a somewhat keen shock of
+disappointment. All her plans for the day had been built on the
+assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come to
+Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to
+find him on the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in
+a situation which might well denote that he had been on the watch
+for another lady. Was it possible, after all, that he had come
+for Bertha Dorset? The latter had acted on the assumption to the
+extent of appearing at an hour when she never showed herself to
+ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw no way of putting
+her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden might have
+been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of town:
+women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in
+their judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted;
+competition put her on her mettle, and she reflected that
+Selden's coming, if it did not declare him to be still in Mrs.
+Dorset's toils, showed him to be so completely free from them
+that he was not afraid of her proximity.
+
+These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly
+likely to carry her to church before the sermon, and at length,
+having passed from the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far
+forgot her intention as to sink into a rustic seat at a bend of
+the walk. The spot was charming, and Lily was not insensible to
+the charm, or to the fact that her presence enhanced it; but she
+was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in
+company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
+scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however,
+appeared to profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of
+fruitless waiting she rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing
+sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her,
+and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what
+she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so
+blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague
+sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the
+loneliness about her.
+
+Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead,
+digging the ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade.
+As she did so a step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at
+her side.
+
+"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch
+up with you."
+
+She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been
+sitting under that tree for an hour."
+
+"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague
+laugh:
+
+"Well--waiting to see if you would come."
+
+"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the
+one involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should
+come?"
+
+"If I waited long enough--but you see I had only a limited time
+to give to the experiment."
+
+"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"
+
+"No; by my other engagement."
+
+"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"
+
+"No; but to come home from church with another person."
+
+"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with
+alternatives. And is the other person coming home this way?"
+
+Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find
+out, it is my business to get to church before the service is
+over."
+
+"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in
+which case the other person, piqued by your absence, will form
+the desperate resolve of driving back in the omnibus."
+
+Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like
+the bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in
+such an emergency?" she enquired.
+
+Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you,"
+he cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"
+
+"Walking a mile in an hour--you must own that the omnibus would
+be quicker!"
+
+"Ah--but will he find you in the end? That's the only test of
+success."
+
+They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that
+they had felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but
+suddenly Lily's face changed, and she said: "Well, if it is, he
+has succeeded."
+
+Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people
+advancing toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady
+Cressida had evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of
+the church-goers had thought it their duty to accompany
+her. Lily's companion looked rapidly from one to the other of the
+two men of the party; Wetherall walking respectfully at Lady
+Cressida's side with his little sidelong look of nervous
+attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs.
+Wetherall and the Trenors.
+
+"Ah--now I see why you were getting up your Americana!" Selden
+exclaimed with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with
+which the sally was received checked whatever amplifications he
+had meant to give it.
+
+That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors,
+or even about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden
+that he had a momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number
+of possibilities; but she rose gallantly to the defence of her
+confusion, by saying, as its object approached: "That was why I
+was waiting for you--to thank you for having given me so many
+points!"
+
+"Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short
+time," said Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss
+Bart; and while she signalled a response to their boisterous
+greeting, he added quickly: "Won't you devote your afternoon to
+it? You know I must be off tomorrow morning. We'll take a walk,
+and you can thank me at your leisure."
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air,
+and the glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze
+which diffused the brightness without dulling it.
+
+In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill;
+but as the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the
+long slopes beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached
+a zone of lingering summer. The path wound across a meadow with
+scattered trees; then it dipped into a lane plumed with asters
+and purpling sprays of bramble, whence, through the light quiver
+of ash-leaves, the country unrolled itself in pastoral distances.
+
+Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the
+creeping glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang
+it, and the shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a
+beech-grove. The boles of the trees stood well apart, with only a
+light feathering of undergrowth; the path wound along the edge of
+the wood, now and then looking out on a sunlit pasture or on an
+orchard spangled with fruit.
+
+Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for
+the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which
+was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape
+outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood,
+and she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth,
+its long free reaches. On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples
+wavered like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey
+orchards, and here and there the lingering green of an oak-grove.
+Two or three red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees, and the
+white wooden spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder
+of the hill; while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road
+ran between the fields.
+
+"Let us sit here," Selden suggested, as they reached an open
+ledge of rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy
+boulders.
+
+Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She
+sat quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent,
+her eyes wandering peacefully over the broken ranges of the
+landscape. Selden stretched himself on the grass at her feet,
+tilting his hat against the level sun-rays, and clasping his
+hands behind his head, which rested against the side of the rock.
+He had no wish to make her talk; her quick-breathing silence
+seemed a part of the general hush and harmony of things. In his
+own mind there was only a lazy sense of pleasure, veiling the
+sharp edges of sensation as the September haze veiled the scene
+at their feet. But Lily, though her attitude was as calm as his,
+was throbbing inwardly with a rush of thoughts. There were in her
+at the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and
+exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black
+prison-house of fears. But gradually the captive's gasps grew
+fainter, or the other paid less heed to them: the horizon
+expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit quivered for
+flight.
+
+She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which
+seemed to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her
+feet. Was it love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination
+of happy thoughts and sensations? How much of it was owing to the
+spell of the perfect afternoon, the scent of the fading woods,
+the thought of the dulness she had fled from? Lily had no
+definite experience by which to test the quality of her feelings.
+She had several times been in love with fortunes or careers, but
+only once with a man. That was years ago, when she first came
+out, and had been smitten with a romantic passion for a young
+gentleman named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little
+wave in his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other
+negotiable securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing
+the eldest Miss Van Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and
+wheezy, and was given to telling anecdotes about his children. If
+Lily recalled this early emotion it was not to compare it with
+that which now possessed her; the only point of comparison was
+the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which she remembered
+feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a
+conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance.
+She had not known again till today that lightness, that glow of
+freedom; but now it was something more than a blind groping of
+the blood. The peculiar charm of her feeling for Selden
+was that she understood it; she could put her finger on every
+link of the chain that was drawing them together. Though his
+popularity was of the quiet kind, felt rather than actively
+expressed among his friends, she had never mistaken his
+inconspicuousness for obscurity. His reputed cultivation was
+generally regarded as a slight obstacle to easy intercourse, but
+Lily, who prided herself on her broad-minded recognition of
+literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam in her
+travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she felt
+would have had its distinction in an older society. It was,
+moreover, one of his gifts to look his part; to have a height
+which lifted his head above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled
+dark features which, in a land of amorphous types, gave him the
+air of belonging to a more specialized race, of carrying the
+impress of a concentrated past. Expansive persons found him a
+little dry, and very young girls thought him sarcastic; but this
+air of friendly aloofness, as far removed as possible from any
+assertion of personal advantage, was the quality which piqued
+Lily's interest. Everything about him accorded with the
+fastidious element in her taste, even to the light irony with
+which he surveyed what seemed to her most sacred. She admired him
+most of all, perhaps, for being able to convey as distinct a
+sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever met.
+
+It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her
+to say presently, with a laugh: "I have broken two engagements
+for you today. How many have you broken for me?"
+
+"None," said Selden calmly. "My only engagement at Bellomont was
+with you."
+
+She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.
+
+"Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?"
+
+"Of course I did."
+
+Her look deepened meditatively. "Why?" she murmured, with an
+accent which took all tinge of coquetry from the question.
+
+"Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see
+what you are doing."
+
+"How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?"
+
+Selden smiled. "I don't flatter myself that my coming has
+deflected your course of action by a hair's breadth."
+
+"That's absurd--since, if you were not here, I could obviously
+not be taking a walk with you."
+
+"No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making
+use of your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the
+bit of colour you are using today. It's a part of your cleverness
+to be able to produce premeditated effects extemporaneously."
+
+Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her
+sense of humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident
+of his presence as part of a very definite effect; or that, at
+least, was the secret pretext she had found for breaking her
+promise to walk with Mr. Gryce. She had sometimes been accused of
+being too eager--even Judy Trenor had warned her to go slowly.
+Well, she would not be too eager in this case; she would give her
+suitor a longer taste of suspense. Where duty and inclination
+jumped together, it was not in Lily's nature to hold them
+asunder. She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a
+headache: the horrid headache which, in the morning, had
+prevented her venturing to church. Her appearance at luncheon
+justified the excuse. She looked languid, full of a suffering
+sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her hand. Mr. Gryce was
+new to such manifestations; he wondered rather nervously if she
+were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the future of his
+progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not to
+expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of
+exposure.
+
+Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging
+him, since she should be such poor company, to join the rest of
+the party who, after luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a
+visit to the Van Osburghs at Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by
+her disinterestedness, and, to escape from the threatened vacuity
+of the afternoon, had taken her advice and departed mournfully,
+in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged down the
+avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
+had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no
+reply to his suggestion that they should spend the
+afternoon together, but as her plan unfolded itself he felt
+fairly confident of being included in it. The house was empty
+when at length he heard her step on the stair and strolled out of
+the billiard-room to join her.
+
+She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at
+her feet.
+
+"I thought, after all, the air might do me good," she explained;
+and he agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
+
+The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and
+Selden had the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of
+leisure and safety gave the last touch of lightness to her
+spirit. With so much time to talk, and no definite object to be
+led up to, she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy.
+
+She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his
+charge with a touch of resentment.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "why you are always accusing me of
+premeditation."
+
+"I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that
+you had to follow a certain line--and if one does a thing at all
+it is a merit to do it thoroughly."
+
+"If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is
+obliged to think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the
+imputation. But you must find me a dismal kind of person if you
+suppose that I never yield to an impulse."
+
+"Ah, but I don't suppose that: haven't I told you that your
+genius lies in converting impulses into intentions?"
+
+"My genius?" she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. "Is
+there any final test of genius but success? And I certainly
+haven't succeeded."
+
+Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her.
+"Success--what is success? I shall be interested to have your
+definition."
+
+"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of
+life, I suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that
+your idea of it?"
+
+"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy,
+resting his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow
+fields. "My idea of success," he said, "is personal freedom."
+
+"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
+
+"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and
+anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of
+republic of the spirit--that's what I call success."
+
+She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know--I know--it's
+strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."
+
+He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling
+so rare with you?" he said.
+
+She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly
+sordid, don't you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any
+choice. There was no one, I mean, to tell me about the republic
+of the spirit."
+
+"There never is--it's a country one has to find the way to one's
+self."
+
+"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told
+me."
+
+"Ah, there are sign-posts--but one has to know how to read them."
+
+"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of
+eagerness. "Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a
+letter of the sign--and yesterday--last evening at dinner--I
+suddenly saw a little way into your republic."
+
+Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto
+he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic
+amusement which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory
+intercourse with pretty women. His attitude had been one of
+admiring spectatorship, and he would have been almost sorry to
+detect in her any emotional weakness which should interfere with
+the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this weakness had
+become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on her
+that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
+altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant
+charm. THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his
+first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which
+his coming produced. It was the danger-point of their intercourse
+that he could not doubt the spontaneity of her liking. From
+whatever angle he viewed their dawning intimacy, he could not see
+it as part of her scheme of life; and to be the unforeseen
+element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
+even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.
+
+"Well," he said, "did it make you want to see more? Are you going
+to become one of us?"
+
+He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her
+hand toward the case.
+
+"Oh, do give me one--I haven't smoked for days!"
+
+"Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont."
+
+"Yes--but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A
+MARIER; and at the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER."
+
+"Ah, then I'm afraid we can't let you into the republic."
+
+"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"
+
+"Not in the least, though I'm bound to say there are not many
+married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and
+it's as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of
+heaven."
+
+"That's unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
+conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money,
+and the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal
+of it."
+
+"You might as well say that the only way not to think about air
+is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but
+your lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it
+is with your rich people--they may not be thinking of money, but
+they're breathing it all the while; take them into another
+element and see how they squirm and gasp!"
+
+Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her
+cigarette-smoke.
+
+"It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal
+of your time in the element you disapprove of."
+
+Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I
+have tried to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's
+lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being
+able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the
+secret that most of your friends have lost."
+
+Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that
+the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it
+as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise
+money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and
+gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as
+opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
+intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"
+
+"That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about
+society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who
+are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It's just the other
+way with most shows--the audience may be under the illusion, but
+the actors know that real life is on the other side of the
+footlights. The people who take society as an escape from work
+are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing
+worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden raised
+himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
+underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense
+of splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The
+worst of it is that so much human nature is used up in the
+process. If we're all the raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one
+would rather be the fire that tempers a sword than the fish that
+dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours wastes such good
+material in producing its little patch of purple! Look at a boy
+like Ned Silverton--he's really too good to be used to refurbish
+anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out to
+discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding
+it in Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"
+
+"Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long
+enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it
+is only in society that he is likely to lose them?"
+
+Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our
+generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a
+sufficient condemnation of society to find one's self accepting
+such phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at
+Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter the colour of
+beliefs."
+
+She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation.
+His habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns
+over and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into
+the laboratory where his faiths were formed.
+
+"Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed; "why
+do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation,
+and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."
+
+"It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D'ETAT
+and seat you on the throne."
+
+"Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot
+across the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise
+my ambitions--you think them unworthy of me!"
+
+Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I
+think them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."
+
+She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible
+that, if I had the opportunities of these people, I might make a
+better use of them? Money stands for all kinds of things--its
+purchasing quality isn't limited to diamonds and motor-cars."
+
+
+"Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by
+founding a hospital."
+
+"But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must
+think my ambitions are good enough for me."
+
+Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am
+not divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you
+are trying to get!"
+
+"Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to
+get them I probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath.
+"What a miserable future you foresee for me!"
+
+"Well--have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour
+rose to her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the
+deep wells of feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had
+produced it.
+
+"Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when
+you show it to me!"
+
+He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat
+silent, while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet
+of the air.
+
+But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do
+you do this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have
+chosen seem hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me
+instead?"
+
+The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had
+fallen. He himself did not know why he had led their talk along
+such lines; it was the last use he would have imagined himself
+making of an afternoon's solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one
+of those moments when neither seemed to speak deliberately, when
+an indwelling voice in each called to the other across unsounded
+depths of feeling.
+
+"No, I have nothing to give you instead," he said, sitting up and
+turning so that he faced her. "If I had, it should be yours, you
+know."
+
+She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than
+the manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and
+he saw that for a moment she wept.
+
+It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and
+drew down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave,
+she turned on him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion,
+and he said to himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping
+was an art.
+
+The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and
+irony: "Isn't it natural that I should try to belittle all the
+things I can't offer you?"
+
+Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with
+a gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to
+which she had no claim.
+
+"But you belittle ME, don't you," she returned gently, "in being
+so sure they are the only things I care for?"
+
+Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of
+his egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: "But you do
+care for them, don't you? And no wishing of mine can alter that."
+
+He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry
+him, that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she
+turned on him a face sparkling with derision.
+
+"Ah," she cried, "for all your fine phrases you're really as
+great a coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if
+you hadn't been so sure of my answer."
+
+The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden's
+wavering intentions.
+
+"I am not so sure of your answer," he said quietly. "And I do you
+the justice to believe that you are not either."
+
+It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a
+moment--"Do you want to marry me?" she asked.
+
+He broke into a laugh. "No, I don't want to--but perhaps I should
+if you did!"
+
+"That's what I told you--you're so sure of me that you can amuse
+yourself with experiments." She drew back the hand he had
+regained, and sat looking down on him sadly.
+
+"I am not making experiments," he returned. "Or if I am, it is
+not on you but on myself. I don't know what effect they are going
+to have on me--but if marrying you is one of them, I will take
+the risk."
+
+She smiled faintly. "It would be a great risk, certainly--I have
+never concealed from you how great."
+
+"Ah, it's you who are the coward!" he exclaimed.
+
+She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The
+soft isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed
+lifted into a finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour
+trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the
+loosened leaves were drawn to the earth.
+
+"It's you who are the coward," he repeated, catching her hands in
+his.
+
+She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings:
+he felt as though her heart were beating rather with the stress
+of a long flight than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing
+back with a little smile of warning--"I shall look hideous in
+dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own hats," she declared.
+
+They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other
+like adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height
+from which they discover a new world. The actual world at their
+feet was veiling itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear
+moon rose in the denser blue.
+
+Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant
+insect, and following the high-road, which wound whiter through
+the surrounding twilight, a black object rushed across their
+vision.
+
+Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and
+she began to move toward the lane.
+
+"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after
+dark," she said, almost impatiently.
+
+Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to
+regain his usual view of her; then he said, with an
+uncontrollable note of dryness: "That was not one of our party;
+the motor was going the other way."
+
+"I know--I know---" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
+twilight. "But I told them I was not well--that I should not go
+out. Let us go down!" she murmured.
+
+Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case
+from his pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him
+necessary, at that moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture
+of this sort, his recovered hold on the actual: he had an almost
+puerile wish to let his companion see that, their flight over, he
+had landed on his feet.
+
+She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then
+he held out the cigarettes to her.
+
+She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips,
+leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness
+the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he
+saw her mouth tremble into a smile.
+
+"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which
+she might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock
+inflections, without having time to select the just note.
+Selden's voice was under better control. "Why not?" he returned.
+"You see I took no risks in being so." And as she continued to
+stand before him, a little pale under the retort, he added
+quickly: "Let us go down."
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her
+voice, in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal
+despair as if she had been lamenting the collapse of a
+house-party.
+
+"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned
+back, sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning
+an indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her
+desk, while she considered, with the eye of a physician who has
+given up the case, the erect exterior of the patient confronting
+her.
+
+"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but
+I'm sure you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else
+did you ask me to let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and
+Kate Corby? I don't suppose you did it because he amused you; we
+could none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment
+unless you meant to marry him. And I'm sure everybody played
+fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even Bertha kept her
+hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and you
+dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
+retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known
+Lawrence Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just
+discovered him? If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a
+stupid time to show it--you could have paid her back just as well
+after you were married! I told you Bertha was dangerous. She was
+in an odious mood when she came here, but Lawrence's turning up
+put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her think he came
+for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you this
+trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"
+
+Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
+impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of
+her own conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's
+reproachful accents. But even to her own conscience she must
+trump up a semblance of defence. "I only took a day off--I
+thought he meant to stay on all this week, and I knew Mr. Selden
+was leaving this morning."
+
+Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare
+its weakness.
+
+"He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's
+run away from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him
+thoroughly."
+
+Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake
+him!"
+
+Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily,
+do nothing!"
+
+Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean,
+literally, to take the next train. There are ways---" But she did
+not go on to specify them.
+
+Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty
+of them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out.
+But don't deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has
+run straight home to his mother, and she'll protect him!"
+
+"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.
+
+"How you can LAUGH---" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped
+back to a soberer perception of things with the question: "What
+was it Bertha really told him?"
+
+"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything.
+Oh, you know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY;
+but I suppose she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord
+Hubert--and there was some story of your having borrowed money of
+old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"
+
+"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.
+
+"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry
+Fisher; and she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you
+know: they hold their tongues for years, and you think you're
+safe, but when their opportunity comes they remember everything."
+
+Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was
+some money I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of
+course."
+
+"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea
+of the gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her
+man--she knew just what to tell him!"
+
+In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to
+admonish her friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable
+equanimity. Her naturally good temper had been disciplined by
+years of enforced compliance, since she had almost always had to
+attain her ends by the circuitous path of other people's; and,
+being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they
+presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
+statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as
+her own thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the
+case. Presented in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments,
+the reckoning was certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she
+listened, found herself gradually reverting to her friend's view
+of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's words were moreover emphasized
+for her hearer by anxieties which she herself could scarcely
+guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen imagination, forms
+but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of poverty. Judy
+knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
+consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats,
+and not to have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but
+the daily friction of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small
+temptations to expenditure, were trials as far out of her
+experience as the domestic problems of the char-woman. Mrs.
+Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the situation had
+the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her friend
+reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
+she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide
+of indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind
+of folly had driven her out again on those dark seas?
+
+If anything was needed to put the last touch to her
+self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was
+opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had
+fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had
+to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of
+seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long hours of
+subjection.
+
+She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm
+sorry to have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But
+you must have some letters for me to answer--let me at least be
+useful."
+
+She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her
+resumption of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that,
+after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses.
+
+The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack
+Stepney and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last
+touch of irony that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in
+the same train), and Lady Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls
+had been despatched by motor to lunch at a distant country-house.
+At such moments of diminished interest it was usual for Mrs.
+Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on this occasion
+she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed and
+drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.
+
+She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few
+of us are left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish
+the men would always stop away--it's really much nicer without
+them. Oh, you don't count, George: one doesn't have to talk to
+one's husband. But I thought Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest
+of the week?" she added enquiringly. "Didn't he intend to, Judy?
+He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove him away? He is rather
+shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he has been brought
+up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he told me he
+had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you doing
+it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income,
+and always has a lot left over to invest!"
+
+Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some
+one's duty to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has
+never been made to realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy
+man should be compelled to study the laws of his country."
+
+Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the
+divorce laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some
+kind of a petition against divorce."
+
+Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a
+laughing glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of
+marriage, and wants to tinker up the old ship before he goes
+aboard."
+
+His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset
+exclaimed with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship
+that will do for him, it's the crew."
+
+"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated
+a voyage with him I should try to start with a friend in the
+hold."
+
+Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for
+appropriate expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at
+him; I think he's very nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a
+girl who married him would always have enough to be comfortable."
+
+She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her
+words, but it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had
+sunk into the breast of one of her hearers.
+
+Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily
+Bart than any other in the language. She could not even pause to
+smile over the heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere
+shelter against want: her mind was filled with the vision of what
+that shelter might have been to her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did
+not smart, for her own irony cut deeper: no one could hurt her as
+much as she was hurting herself, for no one else--not even Judy
+Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly.
+
+She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a
+whispered request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they
+left the luncheon-table.
+
+"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry
+Fisher that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He
+will be back at four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet
+him. Of course I'm very glad to have him amused, but I happen to
+know that she has bled him rather severely since she's been here,
+and she is so keen about going to fetch him that I fancy she must
+have got a lot more bills this morning. It seems to me," Mrs.
+Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her alimony is paid by
+other women's husbands!"
+
+Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over
+her friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself.
+Why should she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours,
+borrowed money of an elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry
+Fisher could make a living unrebuked from the good-nature of her
+men friends and the tolerance of their wives? It all turned on
+the tiresome distinction between what a married woman
+might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking for a
+married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
+implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM
+which the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be
+punished by private vengeance, does not provoke the collective
+disapprobation of society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such
+opportunities were possible. She could of course borrow from her
+women friends--a hundred here or there, at the utmost--but they
+were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and looked a little
+askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque. Women are
+not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast were
+either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from
+it to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations
+was the decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not
+remain at Bellomont without playing bridge, and being involved in
+other expenses; and to continue her usual series of autumn visits
+would merely prolong the same difficulties. She had reached a
+point where abrupt retrenchment was necessary, and the only cheap
+life was a dull life. She would start the next morning for
+Richfield.
+
+At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not
+wholly unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the
+light runabout in which she had driven over, and as he climbed
+heavily to her side, crushing her into a scant third of the seat,
+he said: "Halloo! It isn't often you honour me. You must have
+been uncommonly hard up for something to do."
+
+The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than
+usually conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of
+moisture had caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly
+to the broad expanse of cheek and neck which he turned to her;
+but she was aware also, from the look in his small dull eyes,
+that the contact with her freshness and slenderness was as
+agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.
+
+The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not
+often I have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the
+privilege with me."
+
+"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won
+the race, anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent
+you. Now didn't she?"
+
+He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily
+could not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on
+the truth.
+
+"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with;
+and she's quite right," she rejoined.
+
+"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste
+your time on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up
+with what we can get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps
+who've kept a free foot. Let me light a cigar, will you? I've had
+a beastly day of it."
+
+He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the
+reins to her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame
+under his hand cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and
+Lily averted her eyes with a momentary feeling of repugnance. And
+yet some women thought him handsome!
+
+As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you
+have such a lot of tiresome things to do?"
+
+"I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to,
+either by his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare
+enjoyment of a confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow
+has to hustle to keep this kind of thing going." He waved his
+whip in the direction of the Bellomont acres, which lay outspread
+before them in opulent undulations. "Judy has no idea of what she
+spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep the thing going," he
+interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his eyes open and
+pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to live
+like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
+too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know
+where I should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then.
+The women all think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but
+to go down town once a month and cut off coupons, but the truth
+is it takes a devilish lot of hard work to keep the machinery
+running. Not that I ought to complain to-day, though," he went on
+after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke of business, thanks
+to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily, I wish you'd
+try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
+going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these
+days, and if she'd only ask him to dine now and then I could get
+almost anything out of him. The man is mad to know the people who
+don't want to know him, and when a fellow's in that state there
+is nothing he won't do for the first woman who takes him up."
+
+Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's
+discourse had started an interesting train of thought, which was
+rudely interrupted by the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She
+uttered a faint protest.
+
+"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was
+impossible."
+
+"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy
+manner! Well, all I can say is that the people who are clever
+enough to be civil to him now will make a mighty good thing of
+it. A few years from now he'll be in it whether we want him or
+not, and then he won't be giving away a half-a-million tip for a
+dinner."
+
+Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr.
+Rosedale to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first
+words. This vast mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and
+"deals"--might she not find in it the means of escape from her
+dreary predicament? She had often heard of women making money in
+this way through their friends: she had no more notion than most
+of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and its
+vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not,
+indeed, imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a
+"tip" from Mr. Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession
+of that precious commodity, and who, as the husband of her
+dearest friend, stood to her in a relation of almost fraternal
+intimacy.
+
+In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the
+fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but
+this way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity,
+and she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to
+herself. Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and
+when she made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were
+certain closed doors she did not open.
+
+As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with
+a smile. "The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me
+a little farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day,
+and it's so restful to be away from people, with some one who
+won't mind if I'm a little dull."
+
+She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
+trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor
+felt himself wishing that his wife could see how other women
+treated him--not battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a
+girl that most men would have given their boots to get such a
+look from.
+
+"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits?
+Is your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook
+you out of everything at bridge last night?"
+
+Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet;
+and bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of
+the things my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a
+bore because I don't play cards any longer, and because I am not
+as smartly dressed as the other women. But you will think me a
+bore too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention
+them because I want you to do me a favour--the very greatest of
+favours."
+
+Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the
+tinge of apprehension that she read in them.
+
+"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage---" He broke off,
+and she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the
+remembrance of Mrs. Fisher's methods.
+
+"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is,
+Judy is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."
+
+"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense---" his relief broke through
+in a laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."
+
+"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to
+vex her. But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She
+has set her heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great
+deal of money."
+
+She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor,
+turning abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.
+
+"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce?
+What--you do? Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust
+me to keep my mouth shut--but Gryce--good Lord, GRYCE! Did
+Judy really think you could bring yourself to marry that
+portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And so you gave him
+the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the first train
+this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther across
+the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
+discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a
+thing? I could have told her you'd never put up with such a
+little milksop!"
+
+Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that
+men understand a woman's motives better than other women do."
+
+"Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he
+repeated, exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.
+
+"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to
+you," Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage;
+it's impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women
+in my set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and
+though she is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance,
+and lately I've lost money at cards, and I don't dare tell her
+about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but there is
+hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
+my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a
+tiny income of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it
+seems to bring in less every year, and I am so ignorant of money
+matters that I don't know if my aunt's agent, who looks after it,
+is a good adviser." She paused a moment, and added in a lighter
+tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all this, but I want your
+help in making Judy understand that I can't, at present, go on
+living as one must live among you all. I am going away tomorrow
+to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest
+of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
+clothes."
+
+At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which
+was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a
+murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours
+earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
+Bart's future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
+tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
+get; but with the subject of discussion at his side,
+turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood
+her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance
+by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
+that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of
+honour, he was bound to do all he could to protect her from the
+results of her disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by
+the reflection that if she had married Gryce she would have been
+surrounded by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to
+sacrifice herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole
+cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of
+such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher,
+who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
+titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely
+do as much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and
+who brought her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.
+
+Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after
+sunset; and before it was over he had tried, with some show of
+success, to prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he
+could make a handsome sum of money for her without endangering
+the small amount she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of
+the manipulations of the stock-market to understand his technical
+explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that certain points in
+them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the transaction served
+as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the general blur her
+hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only that her
+modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
+risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take
+place within a short time, that there would be no tedious
+interval for suspense and reaction, relieved her of her lingering
+scruples.
+
+Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the
+release of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured,
+it was easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in
+such straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded
+from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other
+demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting
+Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and
+rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
+shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel
+that her appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the
+liking he inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling
+men, while it consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure
+the thought of the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a
+coarse dull man who, under all his show of authority, was a mere
+supernumerary in the costly show for which his money paid:
+surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold him by his
+vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a
+blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence
+in the exact degree to which it effaced her debts.
+
+The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
+how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple
+deprive her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily
+felt really virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her
+tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh order accompanied each
+payment did not lessen her sense of disinterestedness. How many
+women, in her place, would have given the orders without making
+the payment!
+
+She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good
+humour. To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and
+laugh at his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required
+of her, and the complacency with which her hostess regarded these
+attentions freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor
+evidently assumed that Lily's growing intimacy with her husband
+was simply an indirect way of returning her own kindness.
+
+"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
+approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him,
+and put up with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are,
+because I had to listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he
+is telling the same ones still. And now I shan't always have to
+be asking Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good-humour. She's a
+perfect vulture, you know; and she hasn't the least moral sense.
+She is always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I'm sure she
+never pays when she loses."
+
+Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the
+embarrassment of a personal application. Her own position was
+surely quite different. There could be no question of her not
+paying when she lost, since Trenor had assured her that she was
+certain not to lose. In sending her the cheque he had explained
+that he had made five thousand for her out of Rosedale's "tip,"
+and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
+there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood
+therefore that he was now speculating with her own money, and
+that she consequently owed him no more than the gratitude which
+such a trifling service demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to
+raise the first sum, he had borrowed on her securities; but this
+was a point over which her curiosity did not linger. It was
+concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date of the next
+"big rise."
+
+The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on
+the occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a
+cousin of the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as
+bridesmaid; but she had declined on the plea that, since she was
+much taller than the other attendant virgins, her presence might
+mar the symmetry of the group. The truth was, she had attended
+too many brides to the altar: when next seen there she meant to
+be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the pleasantries
+made at the expense of young girls who have been too long before
+the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
+youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she
+really was.
+
+The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church
+near the paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple
+country wedding" to which guests are convoyed in special trains,
+and from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off
+by the intervention of the police. While these sylvan rites were
+taking place, in a church packed with fashion and festooned with
+orchids, the representatives of the press were threading their
+way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
+presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting
+up his apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in
+which Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal
+part, and on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely
+a casual spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure
+occupying the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to
+assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact that
+her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
+possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough
+buoyancy to rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed
+faith in her beauty, her power, and her general fitness to
+attract a brilliant destiny. It could not be that one
+conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and enjoyment was doomed
+to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked easily
+reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.
+
+A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the
+discovery, in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and
+neatly-trimmed beard of Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something
+almost bridal in his own aspect: his large white gardenia had a
+symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen. After all, seen in
+an assemblage of his kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a
+friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he
+was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings
+out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
+man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the
+conventional imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in
+the seclusion of the Van Osburgh conservatories, playing
+skillfully upon sensibilities thus prepared for her touch. In
+fact, when she looked at the other women about her, and recalled
+the image she had brought away from her own glass, it did not
+seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
+blunder and bring him once more to her feet.
+
+The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her,
+disturbed for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise
+of her blood as their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary
+motion, a wave of resistance and withdrawal. She did not wish to
+see him again, not because she feared his influence, but because
+his presence always had the effect of cheapening her aspirations,
+of throwing her whole world out of focus. Besides, he was a
+living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and the fact
+that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
+him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in
+which, all else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might
+be the last touch of luxury; but in the world as it was, such a
+privilege was likely to cost more than it was worth.
+
+"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if
+something delightful had just happened to you!"
+
+The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her
+brilliant friend did not, in her own person, suggest such
+happy possibilities. Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the
+mediocre and the ineffectual. If there were compensating
+qualities in her wide frank glance and the freshness of her
+smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic observer
+would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
+grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her
+wavered between pity for her limitations and impatience at her
+cheerful acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother,
+acquiescence in dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there
+were moments when, in the consciousness of her own power to look
+and to be so exactly what the occasion required, she almost felt
+that other girls were plain and inferior from choice. Certainly
+no one need have confessed such acquiescence in her lot as was
+revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty Farish's gown and the
+subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to let your
+clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
+proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
+
+Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to
+have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was
+something irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no
+higher pleasures, and that one might get as much interest and
+excitement out of life in a cramped flat as in the splendours of
+the Van Osburgh establishment. Today, however, her chirping
+enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They seemed only to throw her
+own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and give a soaring
+vastness to her scheme of life.
+
+"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone
+else leaves the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her
+arm in her friend's. It was characteristic of her to take a
+sentimental and unenvious interest in all the details of a
+wedding: she was the kind of person who always kept her
+handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a box
+of wedding-cake.
+
+"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered
+the distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van
+Osburgh's bridal spoils. "I always say no one does things better
+than cousin Grace! Did you ever taste anything more delicious
+than that MOUSSE of lobster with champagne sauce? I made up my
+mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this wedding, and just
+fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence Selden
+heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and
+driving me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am
+to dine with him at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I
+were getting married myself!"
+
+Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his
+dull cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much
+time in such an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave
+her a vague pleasure.
+
+"Do you see him often?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and
+then we do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of
+him. He doesn't look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled.
+The dear fellow! I do wish he would marry some nice girl. I told
+him so today, but he said he didn't care for the really nice
+ones, and the other kind didn't care for him--but that was just
+his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl who WASN'T nice.
+Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"
+
+They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
+displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught
+the refraction of light from their surfaces--the milky gleam of
+perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against
+contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled
+into light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints
+enhanced and deepened by the varied art of their setting. The
+glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like wine. More completely
+than any other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she
+longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and refinement
+in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and the
+whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.
+
+"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant--it's as big as a
+dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent
+short-sightedly over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE.
+What, that horrid man? Oh, yes--I remember he's a friend of
+Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace had to ask him here today; but
+she must rather hate having to let Gwen accept such a present
+from him."
+
+Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was
+aware of Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of
+feeling to the persons least likely to be encumbered by them.
+
+"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always
+exchange it for something else," she remarked.
+
+"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued.
+"Do look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person
+who chose it must have taken particular pains. What is the name?
+Percy Gryce? Ah, then I'm not surprised!" She smiled
+significantly as she replaced the card. "Of course you've heard
+that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van Osburgh? Cousin Grace is
+so pleased about it--it's quite a romance! He met her first at
+the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's just the
+nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
+money--of course she has plenty of her own--but she's such a
+quiet stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the
+same tastes; so they are exactly suited to each other."
+
+Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet
+bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively
+through her brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest,
+dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van
+Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness, had "placed" one by one in
+enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the
+shelter of a mother's love--a mother who knows how to contrive
+opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage of
+propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
+cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are
+concerned, may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far
+at the next: it takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight
+to land her daughters safely in the arms of wealth and
+suitability.
+
+Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of
+failure. Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy
+Gryce's millions be joined to another great fortune, why should
+this clumsy girl be put in possession of powers she would never
+know how to use?
+
+She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch
+on her arm, and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a
+thrill of vexation: what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty
+Farish had wandered off to the next table, and they were alone.
+
+Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
+unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
+undisguised approval.
+
+"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly
+into the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the
+right moment to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and
+women called each other by their Christian names; it was only on
+Trenor's lips that the familiar address had an unpleasant
+significance.
+
+"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance,
+"have you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you
+mean to duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for
+you in my pocket that will go a long way in that line!"
+
+Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual,
+and the room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance
+assured her that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of
+pleasure replaced her apprehension.
+
+"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in
+the desire not to be overheard.
+
+"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off
+four thou' for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose
+you'll begin to think you're a pretty knowing speculator. And
+perhaps you won't think poor old Gus such an awful ass as some
+people do."
+
+"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you
+properly now."
+
+She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
+hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone--and how
+glad she was that they were not! The news filled her with the
+glow produced by a sudden cessation of physical pain. The world
+was not so stupid and blundering after all: now and then a stroke
+of luck came to the unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began
+to rise: it was characteristic of her that one trifling piece of
+good fortune should give wings to all her hopes. Instantly came
+the reflection that Percy Gryce was not irretrievably
+lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of recapturing
+him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
+have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced
+about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit
+instead on the glossy countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was
+slipping through the crowd with an air half obsequious, half
+obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence was recognized, it
+would swell to the dimensions of the room.
+
+Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily
+quickly transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression
+of her gratitude seemed not to have brought the complete
+gratification she had meant it to give.
+
+"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like
+the chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I
+thought you were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and
+I've hardly laid eyes on you for the last month. Why can't you
+come back to Bellomont this evening? We're all alone, and Judy is
+as cross as two sticks. Do come and cheer a fellow up. If you say
+yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you can telephone your
+maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."
+
+Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish
+I could--but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to
+town, and I must be with her for the next few days."
+
+"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be
+such pals than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he
+continued with unconscious penetration.
+
+"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you
+say the most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you
+would tire of me much sooner than Judy--but come and see me at my
+aunt's the next afternoon you are in town; then we can have a
+nice quiet talk, and you can tell me how I had better invest my
+fortune."
+
+It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had
+absented herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other
+visits to pay; but she now began to feel that the reckoning she
+had thus contrived to evade had rolled up interest in the
+interval.
+
+The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing
+to Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower
+as he said: "Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a fresh tip
+every day. But there's one thing you might do for me;
+and that is, just to be a little civil to Rosedale. Judy has
+promised to ask him to dine when we get to town, but I can't
+induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would let me
+bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
+believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can
+tell you he's a chap it pays to be decent to."
+
+Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words
+which seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an
+unexpectedly easy way of acquitting her debt; and had she not
+reasons of her own for wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?
+
+"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can
+get a tip out of him on my own account."
+
+Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers
+with a look which made her change colour.
+
+"I say, you know--you'll please remember he's a blooming
+bounder," he said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the
+open window near which they had been standing.
+
+The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for
+space and fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace,
+where only a few men were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur,
+while scattered couples strolled across the lawn to the
+autumn-tinted borders of the flower-garden.
+
+As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers,
+and she found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the
+pulses which his nearness always caused was increased by a slight
+sense of constraint. They had not met since their Sunday
+afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that episode was still so vivid
+to her that she could hardly believe him to be less conscious of
+it. But his greeting expressed no more than the satisfaction
+which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in masculine
+eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
+reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from
+Trenor, and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale,
+it was pleasant to rest a moment on the sense of complete
+understanding which Lawrence Selden's manner always conveyed.
+
+"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be
+able to have a word with you before the special snatches us away.
+I came with Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the
+train, but I am sure she is still extracting sentimental solace
+from the wedding presents. She appears to regard their number and
+value as evidence of the disinterested affection of the
+contracting parties."
+
+There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and
+as he spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and
+letting his eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace,
+she felt with a faint chill of regret that he had gone back
+without an effort to the footing on which they had stood before
+their last talk together. Her vanity was stung by the sight of
+his unscathed smile. She longed to be to him something more than
+a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing diversion to his eye
+and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her reply.
+
+"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up
+with romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never
+recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and
+unimportant my ambitions were."
+
+The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity.
+It seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.
+
+"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had
+been the means of proving they were more important to you than
+anything else."
+
+It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a
+sudden obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at
+him helplessly, like a hurt or frightened child: this real self
+of hers, which he had the faculty of drawing out of the depths,
+was so little accustomed to go alone!
+
+The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did,
+a latent chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him
+to discover that his nearness made her more brilliant, but this
+glimpse of a twilight mood to which he alone had the clue seemed
+once more to set him in a world apart with her.
+
+"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she
+exclaimed with a trembling laugh; but before he could
+answer, the flow of comprehension between them was abruptly
+stayed by the reappearance of Gus Trenor, who advanced with Mr.
+Rosedale in his wake.
+
+"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I
+have been hunting all over for you!"
+
+His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied
+she detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the
+fact, and the idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.
+
+She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more
+disdainful by the sense of Selden's surprise that she should
+number Rosedale among her acquaintances. Trenor had turned away,
+and his companion continued to stand before Miss Bart, alert and
+expectant, his lips parted in a smile at whatever she might be
+about to say, and his very back conscious of the privilege of
+being seen with her.
+
+It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps;
+but Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer
+of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt
+herself powerless to exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's
+suspecting that there was any need for her to propitiate such a
+man as Rosedale checked the trivial phrases of politeness.
+Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant attitude, and she
+continued to face him in silence, her glance just level with his
+polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
+silence implied.
+
+He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered
+the plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his
+moustache; then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and
+said, with a side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a
+more ripping get-up. Is that the last creation of the dress-maker
+you go to see at the Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other
+women don't go to her too!"
+
+The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she
+saw in a flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In
+ordinary talk they might have passed unheeded; but following on
+her prolonged pause they acquired a special meaning. She felt,
+without looking, that Selden had immediately seized it, and would
+inevitably connect the allusion with her visit to himself. The
+consciousness increased her irritation against Rosedale, but also
+her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
+propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.
+
+"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
+returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my
+friends!"
+
+Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this
+privileged circle that his small eyes puckered with
+gratification, and a knowing smile drew up his moustache.
+
+"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the
+whole outfit and win at a canter!"
+
+"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would
+carry me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or
+some innocent drink before we all have to rush for the train."
+
+She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side
+through the gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in
+her throbbed with the consciousness of what Selden must have
+thought of the scene.
+
+But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the
+light surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted:
+she did not mean to leave without an attempt to discover the
+truth about Percy Gryce. Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had
+kept them apart since his hasty withdrawal from Bellomont; but
+Miss Bart was an expert in making the most of the unexpected, and
+the distasteful incidents of the last few minutes--the revelation
+to Selden of precisely that part of her life which she most
+wished him to ignore--increased her longing for shelter, for
+escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite
+situation would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances,
+which kept her in an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every
+possibility of life.
+
+Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of
+an audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal
+actors had left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily
+could discover neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh.
+That both should be missing struck her with foreboding; and she
+charmed Mr. Rosedale by proposing that they should make their way
+to the conservatories at the farther end of the house. There were
+just enough people left in the long suite of rooms to make their
+progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of being followed
+by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off as
+harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
+self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about
+being seen with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the
+object of her search. The latter, however, was not discoverable
+in the conservatories, and Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction
+of failure, was casting about for a way to rid herself of her now
+superfluous companion, when they came upon Mrs. Van Osburgh,
+flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the consciousness of duty
+performed.
+
+She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of
+the tired hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling
+spots in a kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became
+suddenly fixed, and she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential
+gesture. "My dear Lily, I haven't had time for a word with you,
+and now I suppose you are just off. Have you seen Evie? She's
+been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to tell you her
+little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already. The
+engagement is not to be announced till next week--but you are
+such a friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the
+first to know of their happiness."
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+In Mrs. Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in
+October; therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of
+her Fifth Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the
+Dying Gladiator in bronze who occupied the drawing-room window
+resumed their survey of that deserted thoroughfare.
+
+The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston
+the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She "went
+through" the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the
+penitent exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for
+moths as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The
+topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret,
+cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a
+final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in
+penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.
+
+It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on
+the afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The
+journey back to town had not been calculated to soothe her
+nerves. Though Evie Van Osburgh's engagement was still officially
+a secret, it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of
+the family were already possessed; and the trainful of returning
+guests buzzed with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely
+aware of her own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the
+exact quality of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude
+forms in which her friends took their pleasure included a loud
+enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny
+in the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how
+to bear herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the
+exact manner between victory and defeat: every insinuation was
+shed without an effort by the bright indifference of her manner.
+But she was beginning to feel the strain of the attitude; the
+reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust.
+
+
+As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a
+physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings.
+She revolted from the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston's
+black walnut, from the slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles,
+and the mingled odour of sapolio and furniture-polish that
+met her at the door.
+
+The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room
+she was arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of
+soapsuds. Gathering up her skirts, she drew aside with an
+impatient gesture; and as she did so she had the odd sensation of
+having already found herself in the same situation but in
+different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was again
+descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to
+remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found
+herself met by a lifted stare which had once before confronted
+her under similar circumstances. It was the char-woman of the
+Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows, examined her with the
+same unflinching curiosity, the same apparent reluctance to let
+her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss Bart was on her own
+ground.
+
+"Don't you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail," she
+said sharply.
+
+The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of
+excuse, she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth
+across the landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the
+latter swept by. It was insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should
+have such creatures about the house; and Lily entered her room
+resolved that the woman should be dismissed that evening.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to
+remonstrance: since early morning she had been shut up with her
+maid, going over her furs, a process which formed the culminating
+episode in the drama of household renovation. In the evening also
+Lily found herself alone, for her aunt, who rarely dined out, had
+responded to the summons of a Van Alstyne cousin who was passing
+through town. The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness
+and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from her
+brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the
+newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she
+were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's
+existence.
+
+She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
+domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of
+reasons had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among
+them was the fact that she had fewer invitations than usual for
+the autumn. She had so long been accustomed to pass from one
+country-house to another, till the close of the holidays brought
+her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of time confronting
+her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was as she
+had said to Selden--people were tired of her. They would welcome
+her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.
+She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.
+There were moments when she longed blindly for anything
+different, anything strange, remote and untried; but the utmost
+reach of her imagination did not go beyond picturing her usual
+life in a new setting. She could not figure herself as anywhere
+but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower sheds
+perfume.
+
+Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
+returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the
+desolating dulness of New York in October, and the soapy
+discomforts of Mrs. Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to
+what might await her at Bellomont; and with an air of heroic
+devotion she announced her intention of remaining with her
+aunt till the holidays.
+
+Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as
+mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to
+her confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with
+her at such a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought
+competent to see to the hanging of her own curtains), she would
+certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney
+was an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious
+interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston when Lily dined
+out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped
+stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
+admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying
+Gladiator in the window, and the seven-by-five painting of
+Niagara which represented the one artistic excess of Mr.
+Peniston's temperate career.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much
+bored by her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services
+usually is by the person who performs them. She greatly preferred
+the brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a
+crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her
+susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-room should be
+"done over." But when it came to hunting for missing napkins, or
+helping to decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting,
+Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to
+mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax
+and brown soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought
+to keep clean of itself, without extraneous assistance.
+
+Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room
+chandelier--Mrs. Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was
+"company"--Lily seemed to watch her own figure retreating down
+vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a middle age like Grace
+Stepney's. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends
+she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston; whichever
+way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims of
+others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager
+individuality.
+
+A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty
+house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was
+as though all the weariness of the past months had culminated in
+the vacuity of that interminable evening. If only the ring meant
+a summons from the outer world--a token that she was still
+remembered and wanted!
+
+After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the
+announcement that there was a person outside who was asking to
+see Miss Bart; and on Lily's pressing for a more specific
+description, she added:
+
+"It's Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants."
+
+Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a
+woman in a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the
+hall-light. The glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her
+pock-marked face and the reddish baldness visible through thin
+strands of straw-coloured hair. Lily looked at the char-woman in
+surprise.
+
+"Do you wish to see me?" she asked.
+
+"I should like to say a word to you, Miss." The tone was
+neither aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the
+speaker's errand. Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct
+warned Lily to withdraw beyond ear-shot of the hovering
+parlour-maid.
+
+She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room,
+and closed the door when they had entered.
+
+"What is it that you wish?" she enquired.
+
+The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms
+folded in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small
+parcel wrapped in dirty newspaper.
+
+"I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart."
+She spoke the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her
+knowing it made a part of her reason for being there. To Lily the
+intonation sounded like a threat.
+
+"You have found something belonging to me?" she asked, extending
+her hand.
+
+Mrs. Haffen drew back. "Well, if it comes to that, I guess it's
+mine as much as anybody's," she returned.
+
+Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her
+visitor's manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in
+certain directions, there was nothing in her experience to
+prepare her for the exact significance of the present scene. She
+felt, however, that it must be ended as promptly as possible.
+
+"I don't understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you
+asked for me?"
+
+The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently
+prepared to answer it, but like all her class she had to go a
+long way back to make a beginning, and it was only after a pause
+that she replied: "My husband was janitor to the Benedick till
+the first of the month; since then he can't get nothing to do."
+
+Lily remained silent and she continued: "It wasn't no fault of
+our own, neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place
+for, and we was put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy.
+I had a long sickness last winter, and an operation that ate up
+all we'd put by; and it's hard for me and the children, Haffen
+being so long out of a job."
+
+After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a
+place for her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young
+lady's intervention with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air
+of always getting what she wanted that she was used to being
+appealed to as an intermediary, and, relieved of her vague
+apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional formula.
+
+"I am sorry you have been in trouble," she said.
+
+"Oh, that we have, Miss, and it's on'y just beginning. If on'y
+we'd 'a got another situation--but the agent, he's dead against
+us. It ain't no fault of ours, neither, but---"
+
+At this point Lily's impatience overcame her. "If you have
+anything to say to me---" she interposed.
+
+The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.
+
+"Yes, Miss; I'm coming to that," she said. She paused again, with
+her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse
+narrative: "When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of
+the gentlemen's rooms; leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays.
+Some of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never
+saw the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets 'd be fairly
+brimming, and papers falling over on the floor. Maybe havin' so
+many is how they get so careless. Some of 'em is worse than
+others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
+carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore 'em in little
+bits in summer. But sometimes he'd have so many he'd just bunch
+'em together, the way the others did, and tear the lot through
+once--like this."
+
+While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in
+her hand, and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the
+table between Miss Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter
+was torn in two; but with a rapid gesture she laid the torn edges
+together and smoothed out the page.
+
+A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the
+presence of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured--the
+kind of vileness of which people whispered, but which she had
+never thought of as touching her own life. She drew back with a
+motion of disgust, but her withdrawal was checked by a sudden
+discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston's chandelier she had
+recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a large
+disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but
+slightly disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled
+in heavy ink on pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily's
+ear as though she had heard them spoken.
+
+At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
+understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha
+Dorset, and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was
+no date, but the blackness of the ink proved the writing to be
+comparatively recent. The packet in Mrs. Haffen's hand doubtless
+contained more letters of the same kind--a dozen, Lily
+conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her was short,
+but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she was
+conscious of reading them, told a long history--a history over
+which, for the last four years, the friends of the writer had
+smiled and shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless
+"good situations" of the mundane comedy. Now the other side
+presented itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface
+over which conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the
+first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that
+there is nothing society resents so much as having given its
+protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is
+for having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes
+the offender who is found out. And in this case there was no
+doubt of the issue. The code of Lily's world decreed that a
+woman's husband should be the only judge of her conduct: she was
+technically above suspicion while she had the shelter of his
+approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man of George
+Dorset's temper there could be no thought of condonation--the
+possessor of his wife's letters could overthrow with a touch the
+whole structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha
+Dorset's secret had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the
+coincidence tinged Lily's disgust with a confused sense of
+triumph. But the disgust prevailed--all her instinctive
+resistances, of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples,
+rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of
+personal contamination.
+
+She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible
+between herself and her visitor. "I know nothing of these
+letters," she said; "I have no idea why you have brought them
+here."
+
+Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. "I'll tell you why, Miss.
+I brought 'em to you to sell, because I ain't got no other way
+of raising money, and if we don't pay our rent by tomorrow night
+we'll be put out. I never done anythin' of the kind before, and
+if you'd speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr. Rosedale about getting
+Haffen taken on again at the Benedick--I seen you talking to Mr.
+Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr. Selden's
+rooms---"
+
+The blood rushed to Lily's forehead. She understood now--Mrs.
+Haffen supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first
+leap of her anger she was about to ring and order the woman out;
+but an obscure impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden's
+name had started a new train of thought. Bertha Dorset's letters
+were nothing to her--they might go where the current of chance
+carried them! But Selden was inextricably involved in their fate.
+Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such exposure; and in this
+instance the flash of divination which had carried the meaning of
+the letters to Lily's brain had revealed also that they were
+appeals--repeated and therefore probably unanswered--for the
+renewal of a tie which time had evidently relaxed. Nevertheless,
+the fact that the correspondence had been allowed to fall into
+strange hands would convict Selden of negligence in a matter
+where the world holds it least pardonable; and there were graver
+risks to consider where a man of Dorset's ticklish balance was
+concerned.
+
+If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was
+aware only of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued,
+and that therefore she must obtain possession of them. Beyond
+that her mind did not travel. She had, indeed, a quick vision of
+returning the packet to Bertha Dorset, and of the opportunities
+the restitution offered; but this thought lit up abysses from
+which she shrank back ashamed.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had
+already opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table.
+All the letters had been pieced together with strips of thin
+paper. Some were in small fragments, the others merely torn in
+half. Though there were not many, thus spread out they nearly
+covered the table. Lily's glance fell on a word here and
+there--then she said in a low voice: "What do you wish me to pay
+you?"
+
+Mrs. Haffen's face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that
+the young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the
+woman to make the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier
+victory than she had foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.
+
+But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have
+been expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the
+price named, and after a moment's hesitation, met it by a
+counter-offer of half the amount.
+
+Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
+outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to
+restore them to their wrapping.
+
+"I guess they're worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor
+has got to live as well as the rich," she observed sententiously.
+
+
+Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
+resistance.
+
+"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have offered all I
+am willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways
+of getting them."
+
+Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced
+not to know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as
+great as its rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate
+machinery of revenge which a word of this commanding young lady's
+might set in motion.
+
+She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured
+through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but
+that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business
+before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen
+had thought of was that the letters mustn't go any farther.
+
+Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman
+the greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low
+tones. The idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to
+her, but she knew that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen
+would at once increase her original demand.
+
+She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or
+what was the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time
+recorded in minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate
+beat of her pulses, put her in possession of the letters; she
+knew only that the door had finally closed, and that she stood
+alone with the packet in her hand.
+
+She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs.
+Haffen's dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what
+did she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the
+letters had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry
+out his intention. She had no right to keep them--to do so was to
+lessen whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But
+how destroy them so effectually that there should be no second
+risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
+drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like
+the lamps, was never lit except when there was company.
+
+Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she
+heard the opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the
+drawing-room. Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, with a
+colourless skin lined with trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was
+arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new
+and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and
+tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of
+woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
+was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and
+an air of being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.
+
+She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute
+scrutiny. "I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I
+drove up: it's extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to
+draw them down evenly."
+
+Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of
+the glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a
+chair, never in it.
+
+Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. "My dear, you look
+tired; I suppose it's the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van
+Alstyne was full of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in
+for a minute to tell us about it. I think it was odd, their
+serving melons before the CONSOMME: a wedding breakfast should
+always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn't care for the
+bridesmaids' dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
+they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste's, but she says
+they didn't look it. I'm glad you decided not to be a
+bridesmaid; that shade of salmon-pink wouldn't have suited you."
+Mrs. Peniston delighted in discussing the minutest details of
+festivities in which she had not taken part. Nothing would have
+induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue of attending the
+Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in the event
+that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
+extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been
+deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the
+entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van
+Osburgh's gown, and could not even say whether the old Van
+Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table: Mrs. Peniston,
+in short, found that she was of more service as a listener than
+as a narrator.
+
+"Really, Lily, I don't see why you took the trouble to go to the
+wedding, if you don't remember what happened or whom you saw
+there. When I was a girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner
+I went to, and write the names of the people on the back; and I
+never threw away my cotillion favours till after your uncle's
+death, when it seemed unsuitable to have so many coloured things
+about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I remember; and I can
+tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van Alstyne
+reminds me of what I was at that age; it's wonderful how she
+notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the
+wedding-dress was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the
+back, that it must have come from Paquin."
+
+Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
+surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the
+chimney-piece between two malachite vases, passed her lace
+handkerchief between the helmet and its visor.
+
+"I knew it--the parlour-maid never dusts there!" she exclaimed,
+triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
+reseating herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
+best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID
+cost more than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea--a
+combination of sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a
+new man in Paris, who won't take an order till his client has
+spent a day with him at his villa at Neuilly. He says he must
+study his subject's home life--a most peculiar
+arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
+herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things
+and she was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her
+looking better; she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had
+made a match between Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really
+seems to have a very good influence on young men. I hear she is
+interesting herself now in that silly Silverton boy, who has had
+his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has been gambling so
+dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really engaged: Mrs.
+Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it all, and
+Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven--she had almost
+despaired of marrying Evie."
+
+Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed
+itself, not to the furniture, but to her niece.
+
+"Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you
+were to marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they
+had stopped with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite
+sure there was an engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left
+unexpectedly one morning, they all thought he had rushed to town
+for the ring."
+
+Lily rose and moved toward the door.
+
+"I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed," she said; and
+Mrs. Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the
+easel sustaining the late Mr. Peniston's crayon-portrait was not
+exactly in line with the sofa in front of it, presented an
+absent-minded brow to her kiss.
+
+In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the
+grate. It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here
+at least she could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring
+her aunt's disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so,
+however, but dropping into a chair looked wearily about her. Her
+room was large and comfortably-furnished--it was the envy and
+admiration of poor Grace Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted
+with the light tints and luxurious appointments of the
+guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily's existence were spent,
+it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
+bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston's
+bedroom, and the magenta "flock" wall-paper, of a pattern dear to
+the early 'sixties, was hung with large steel engravings
+of an anecdotic character. Lily had tried to mitigate this
+charmless background by a few frivolous touches, in the shape of
+a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk surmounted
+by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as she
+looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of
+the setting she had pictured for herself--an apartment which
+should surpass the complicated luxury of her friends'
+surroundings by the whole extent of that artistic sensibility
+which made her feel herself their superior; in which every tint
+and line should combine to enhance her beauty and give
+distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of
+physical ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so
+that each piece of the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth
+its most aggressive angle.
+
+Her aunt's words had told her nothing new; but they had revived
+the vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious,
+holding her up to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every
+member of their little group. The thought of the ridicule struck
+deeper than any other sensation: Lily knew every turn of the
+allusive jargon which could flay its victims without the shedding
+of blood. Her cheek burned at the recollection, and she rose and
+caught up the letters. She no longer meant to destroy them: that
+intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion of Mrs.
+Peniston's words.
+
+Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and
+sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a
+despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so,
+it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus
+Trenor for the means of buying them.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one
+or two notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning
+to Bellomont; but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation
+to remain with her aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying
+of her solitary existence with Mrs. Peniston, and only the
+excitement of spending her newly-acquired money lightened the
+dulness of the days.
+
+All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in,
+and whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of
+setting aside a part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving
+vision of the risks of the opposite course. It was a keen
+satisfaction to feel that, for a few months at least, she would
+be independent of her friends' bounty, that she could show
+herself abroad without wondering whether some penetrating eye
+would detect in her dress the traces of Judy Trenor's refurbished
+splendour. The fact that the money freed her temporarily from all
+minor obligations obscured her sense of the greater one it
+represented, and having never before known what it was to command
+so large a sum, she lingered delectably over the amusement of
+spending it.
+
+It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she
+had spent an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the
+most complicated elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had
+entered the same establishment with the modest object of having
+her watch repaired. Lily was feeling unusually virtuous. She had
+decided to defer the purchase of the dressing-case till she
+should receive the bill for her new opera-cloak, and the resolve
+made her feel much richer than when she had entered the shop. In
+this mood of self-approval she had a sympathetic eye for others,
+and she was struck by her friend's air of dejection.
+
+Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting of
+a struggling charity in which she was interested. The object of
+the association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a
+reading-room and other modest distractions, where young women of
+the class employed in down town offices might find a home when
+out of work, or in need of rest, and the first year's
+financial report showed so deplorably small a balance that Miss
+Farish, who was convinced of the urgency of the work, felt
+proportionately discouraged by the small amount of interest it
+aroused. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated
+in Lily, and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's
+philanthropic efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy
+seized on the contrast between her own situation and that
+represented by some of Gerty's "cases." These were young girls,
+like herself; some perhaps pretty, some not without a trace of
+her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself leading such a life
+as theirs--a life in which achievement seemed as squalid as
+failure--and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
+price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing
+out her little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the
+amount into Miss Farish's hand.
+
+The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most
+ardent moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in
+herself as a person of charitable instincts: she had never before
+thought of doing good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of
+possessing, but now her horizon was enlarged by the vision of a
+prodigal philanthropy. Moreover, by some obscure process of
+logic, she felt that her momentary burst of generosity had
+justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in which
+she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish's surprise and
+gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a
+sense of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits
+of altruism.
+
+About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend
+the Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The
+invitation was one which, a year earlier, would have provoked a
+less ready response, for the party, though organized by Mrs.
+Fisher, was ostensibly given by a lady of obscure origin and
+indomitable social ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily had
+hitherto avoided. Now, however, she was disposed to coincide with
+Mrs. Fisher's view, that it didn't matter who gave the party, as
+long as things were well done; and doing things well (under
+competent direction) was Mrs. Wellington Bry's strong point. The
+lady (whose consort was known as "Welly" Bry on the Stock
+Exchange and in sporting circles) had already sacrificed
+one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to her
+determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry
+Fisher, she was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of
+committing herself entirely to that lady's guidance. Everything,
+accordingly, was well done, for there was no limit to Mrs.
+Fisher's prodigality when she was not spending her own money, and
+as she remarked to her pupil, a good cook was the best
+introduction to society. If the company was not as select as the
+CUISINE, the Welly Brys at least had the satisfaction of
+figuring for the first time in the society columns in company
+with one or two noticeable names; and foremost among these was of
+course Miss Bart's. The young lady was treated by her hosts with
+corresponding deference; and she was in the mood when such
+attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs. Bry's
+admiration was a mirror in which Lily's self-complacency
+recovered its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads
+as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity;
+and the sense of being of importance among the insignificant was
+enough to restore to Miss Bart the gratifying consciousness of
+power. If these people paid court to her it proved that she was
+still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired; and she was
+not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her fineness,
+in developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.
+
+Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware
+from the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of
+crisp cold and hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body
+to the influences of the winter woods. She returned to town in a
+glow of rejuvenation, conscious of a clearer colour in her
+cheeks,
+a fresh elasticity in her muscles. The future seemed full of a
+vague promise, and all her apprehensions were swept out of sight
+on the buoyant current of her mood.
+
+A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant
+surprise of a visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the
+confidential hour when the tea-table still lingers by the fire in
+friendly expectancy; and his manner showed a readiness to adapt
+itself to the intimacy of the occasion.
+
+Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected
+with her lucky speculations, tried to give him the welcome he
+expected; but there was something in the quality of his geniality
+which chilled her own, and she was conscious of marking each step
+in their acquaintance by a fresh blunder.
+
+Mr. Rosedale--making himself promptly at home in an adjoining
+easy-chair, and sipping his tea critically, with the comment:
+"You ought to go to my man for something really good"--appeared
+totally unconscious of the repugnance which kept her in frozen
+erectness behind the urn. It was perhaps her very manner of
+holding herself aloof that appealed to his collector's passion
+for the rare and unattainable. He gave, at any rate, no sign of
+resenting it and seemed prepared to supply in his own manner all
+the ease that was lacking in hers.
+
+His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his
+box on the opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said
+persuasively: "Mrs. Fisher is coming, and I've secured a
+tremendous admirer of yours, who'll never forgive me if you don't
+accept."
+
+As Lily's silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he
+added with a confidential smile: "Gus Trenor has promised to come
+to town on purpose. I fancy he'd go a good deal farther for the
+pleasure of seeing you."
+
+Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful
+enough to hear her name coupled with Trenor's, and on Rosedale's
+lips the allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.
+
+"The Trenors are my best friends--I think we should all go a long
+way to see each other," she said, absorbing herself in the
+preparation of fresh tea.
+
+Her visitor's smile grew increasingly intimate. "Well, I wasn't
+thinking of Mrs. Trenor at the moment--they say Gus doesn't
+always, you know." Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck
+the right note, he added, with a well-meant effort at diversion:
+"How's your luck been going in Wall Street, by the way? I hear
+Gus pulled off a nice little pile for you last month."
+
+Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that
+her hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady
+them; but her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid
+the tremor might communicate itself to her voice. When
+she spoke, however, it was in a tone of perfect lightness.
+
+"Ah, yes--I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor,
+who helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks
+instead of a mortgage, as my aunt's agent wanted me to do; and as
+it happened, I made a lucky 'turn'--is that what you call it? For
+you make a great many yourself, I believe."
+
+She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her
+attitude, and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of
+glance and manner, a step farther toward intimacy. The protective
+instinct always nerved her to successful dissimulation, and it
+was not the first time she had used her beauty to divert
+attention from an inconvenient topic.
+
+When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
+acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having
+comported himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He
+had always believed he had a light touch and a knowing way with
+women, and the prompt manner in which Miss Bart (as he would have
+phrased it) had "come into line," confirmed his confidence in his
+powers of handling this skittish sex. Her way of glossing over
+the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a tribute to
+his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The girl
+was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means
+of advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking
+advantage of her nervousness.
+
+He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed
+incredible that Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale.
+With all his faults, Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions,
+and was the less likely to overstep them because they were so
+purely instinctive. But Lily recalled with a pang that there were
+convivial moments when, as Judy had confided to her, Gus "talked
+foolishly": in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word had slipped
+from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first shock,
+greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit
+enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the
+mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are
+instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them
+quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle
+bangs irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room
+naturalist may forget that under less artificial conditions it is
+capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all
+the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr.
+Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class
+him with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that
+a little flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his
+hospitality, would suffice to render him innocuous. However,
+there could be no doubt of the expediency of showing herself in
+his box on the opening night of the opera; and after all, since
+Judy Trenor had promised to take him up that winter, it was as
+well to reap the advantage of being first in the field.
+
+For a day or two after Rosedale's visit, Lily's thoughts were
+dogged by the consciousness of Trenor's shadowy claim, and she
+wished she had a clearer notion of the exact nature of the
+transaction which seemed to have put her in his power; but her
+mind shrank from any unusual application, and she was always
+helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover she had not seen Trenor
+since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in his continued
+absence the trace of Rosedale's words was soon effaced by other
+impressions.
+
+When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had
+so completely vanished that the sight of Trenor's ruddy
+countenance in the back of Mr. Rosedale's box filled her with a
+sense of pleasant reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled
+herself to the necessity of appearing as Rosedale's guest on so
+conspicuous an occasion, and it was a relief to find herself
+supported by any one of her own set--for Mrs. Fisher's social
+habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify Miss
+Bart's.
+
+To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty
+in public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of
+dress, the insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the
+general stream of admiring looks of which she felt herself the
+centre. Ah, it was good to be young, to be radiant, to glow with
+the sense of slenderness, strength and elasticity, of well-poised
+lines and happy tints, to feel one's self lifted to a height
+apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
+counterpart of genius!
+
+All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by
+a happy shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized
+Miss Bart, the cause shrank to a pin-point in the general
+brightness of the effect. But brilliant young ladies, a little
+blinded by their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the
+modest satellite drowned in their light is still performing its
+own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If Lily's
+poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base
+thought that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid
+for by Gus Trenor, the latter had not sufficient poetry in his
+composition to lose sight of these prosaic facts. He knew only
+that he had never seen Lily look smarter in her life, that there
+wasn't a woman in the house who showed off good clothes as she
+did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the opportunity of
+making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of gazing
+at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.
+
+It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the
+back of the box, where they found themselves alone between two
+acts, Trenor said, without preamble, and in a tone of sulky
+authority: "Look here, Lily, how is a fellow ever to see anything
+of you? I'm in town three or four days in the week, and you know
+a line to the club will always find me, but you don't seem to
+remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip out
+of me."
+
+The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make
+it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was
+not the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and
+surprised lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled
+incipient signs of familiarity.
+
+"I'm very much flattered by your wanting to see me," she
+returned, essaying lightness instead, "but, unless you have
+mislaid my address, it would have been easy to find me any
+afternoon at my aunt's--in fact, I rather expected you to look me
+up there."
+
+If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt
+was a failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of
+the brows that made him look his dullest when he was angry: "Hang
+going to your aunt's, and wasting the afternoon listening to a
+lot of other chaps talking to you! You know I'm not the
+kind to sit in a crowd and jaw--I'd always rather clear out when
+that sort of circus is going on. But why can't we go off
+somewhere on a little lark together--a nice quiet little
+expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at
+the station?"
+
+He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion,
+and she fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained
+the dark flush on his face and the glistening dampness of his
+forehead.
+
+The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant
+outburst tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with
+a laugh: "I don't see how one can very well take country drives
+in town, but I am not always surrounded by an admiring throng,
+and if you will let me know what afternoon you are coming I will
+arrange things so that we can have a nice quiet talk."
+
+"Hang talking! That's what you always say," returned Trenor,
+whose expletives lacked variety. "You put me off with that at the
+Van Osburgh wedding--but the plain English of it is that, now
+you've got what you wanted out of me, you'd rather have any other
+fellow about."
+
+His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed
+with annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a
+persuasive hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Gus; I can't let you talk to me in that
+ridiculous way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn't we
+take a walk in the Park some afternoon? I agree with you that
+it's amusing to be rustic in town, and if you like I'll meet you
+there, and we'll go and feed the squirrels, and you shall take me
+out on the lake in the steam-gondola."
+
+She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way
+that took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly
+malleable to her will.
+
+"All right, then: that's a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow
+at three o'clock, at the end of the Mall. I'll be there sharp,
+remember; you won't go back on me, Lily?"
+
+But to Miss Bart's relief the repetition of her promise was cut
+short by the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.
+
+Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant
+smile on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since
+their visit at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner
+told her that he recalled the friendly footing on which they had
+last met. He was not a man to whom the expression of admiration
+came easily: his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed
+always barricaded against the expansive emotions. But, where her
+own influence was concerned, Lily's intuitions sent out
+thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow
+sofa she was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few
+women took the trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset,
+and Lily had been kind to him at Bellomont, and was now smiling
+on him with a divine renewal of kindness.
+
+"Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,"
+he began complainingly. "Not a shade of difference between this
+year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the
+singers haven't got new voices. My wife's musical, you know--puts
+me through a course of this every winter. It isn't so bad on
+Italian nights--then she comes late, and there's time to digest.
+But when they give Wagner we have to rush dinner, and I pay up
+for it. And the draughts are damnable--asphyxia in front and
+pleurisy in the back. There's Trenor leaving the box without
+drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don't make
+any difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you'd
+wonder why he's alive; I suppose he's leather inside too.--But I
+came to say that my wife wants you to come down to our place next
+Sunday. Do for heaven's sake say yes. She's got a lot of bores
+coming--intellectual ones, I mean; that's her new line, you
+know, and I'm not sure it ain't worse than the music. Some of 'em
+have long hair, and they start an argument with the soup, and
+don't notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is
+the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass
+Silverton brings them to the house--he writes poetry, you know,
+and Bertha and he are getting tremendously thick. She could write
+better than any of 'em if she chose, and I don't blame her for
+wanting clever fellows about; all I say is: 'Don't let me see 'em
+eat!'"
+
+The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct
+thrill of pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would
+have been nothing surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset;
+but since the Bellomont episode an unavowed hostility had
+kept the two women apart. Now, with a start of inner wonder,
+Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died out. IF YOU WOULD
+FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST INFLICT A HURT
+ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the apothegm.
+If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset's letters, she might have
+continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her
+possession had fed her resentment to satiety.
+
+She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the
+tie an escape from Trenor's importunities.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning.
+Fifth Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging
+upward to the fashionable quarters about the Park, where
+illuminated windows and outspread awnings betokened the usual
+routine of hospitality. Other tributary currents crossed the
+mainstream, bearing their freight to the theatres, restaurants or
+opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded watch-tower of her
+upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the chronic volume
+of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward a Van
+Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
+that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at
+Sherry's.
+
+Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as
+keenly as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a
+looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and
+generalization such as those who take part must proverbially
+forego. No one could have kept a more accurate record of social
+fluctuations, or have put a more unerring finger on the
+distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
+extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a
+special memory for the vicissitudes of the "new people" who rose
+to the surface with each recurring tide, and were either
+submerged beneath its rush or landed triumphantly beyond the
+reach of envious breakers; and she was apt to display a
+remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate, so
+that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost
+always able to say to Grace Stepney--the recipient of her
+prophecies--that she had known exactly what would happen.
+
+This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as
+that in which everybody "felt poor" except the Welly Brys and Mr.
+Simon Rosedale. It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where
+prices fell in accordance with that peculiar law which proves
+railway stocks and bales of cotton to be more sensitive to the
+allotment of executive power than many estimable citizens trained
+to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes supposed
+to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
+dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection:
+fashion sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito,
+general entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and
+short dinners became the fashion.
+
+But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon
+wearied of the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother
+in the shape of any magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken
+pumpkin back again into the golden coach. The mere fact of
+growing richer at a time when most people's investments are
+shrinking, is calculated to attract envious attention; and
+according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale had
+found the secret of performing this miracle.
+
+Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune,
+and there was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one
+of the victims of the crash, who, in the space of twelve short
+months, had made the same number of millions, built a house in
+Fifth Avenue, filled a picture-gallery with old masters,
+entertained all New York in it, and been smuggled out of the
+country between a trained nurse and a doctor, while his creditors
+mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests explained to
+each other that they had dined with him only because they wanted
+to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
+career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of
+his race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But
+he was prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season
+afforded him an unusual opportunity to shine, and he set about
+with patient industry to form a background for his growing glory.
+Mrs. Fisher was of immense service to him at this period. She had
+set off so many newcomers on the social stage that she was like
+one of those pieces of stock scenery which tell the experienced
+spectator exactly what is going to take place. But Mr. Rosedale
+wanted, in the long run, a more individual environment. He was
+sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never
+have credited him with perceiving, because he had no
+corresponding variations of manner; and it was becoming more and
+more clear to him that Miss Bart herself possessed precisely the
+complementary qualities needed to round off his social
+personality.
+
+Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston's
+vision. Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to
+overlook the MINUTIAE of the foreground, and she was much more
+likely to know where Carry Fisher had found the Welly Brys' CHEF
+for them, than what was happening to her own niece. She was not,
+however, without purveyors of information ready to supplement her
+deficiencies. Grace Stepney's mind was like a kind of moral
+fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn by a
+fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
+inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how
+many trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss
+Stepney's head. She was quite aware that she was of interest to
+dingy people, but she assumed that there is only one form of
+dinginess, and that admiration for brilliancy is the natural
+expression of its inferior state. She knew that Gerty Farish
+admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she inspired the
+same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a Gerty
+Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.
+
+In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they
+differed from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss
+Farish's heart was a fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney's
+a precise register of facts as manifested in their relation to
+herself. She had sensibilities which, to Lily, would have seemed
+comic in a person with a freckled nose and red eyelids, who lived
+in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room; but
+poor Grace's limitations gave them a more concentrated inner
+life, as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser
+efflorescence. She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice:
+she did not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and
+predominant, but because she thought that Lily disliked her. It
+is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than
+insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is
+a latent form of unfriendliness. Even such scant civilities as
+Lily accorded to Mr. Rosedale would have made Miss Stepney her
+friend for life; but how could she foresee that such a friend was
+worth cultivating? How, moreover, can a young woman who has never
+been ignored measure the pang which this injury inflicts? And,
+lastly, how could Lily, accustomed to choose between a
+pressure of engagements, guess that she had mortally offended
+Miss Stepney by causing her to be excluded from one of Mrs.
+Peniston's infrequent dinner-parties?
+
+Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense
+of family obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their
+honeymoon she felt it incumbent upon her to light the
+drawing-room lamps and extract her best silver from the Safe
+Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston's rare entertainments were preceded
+by days of heart-rending vacillation as to every detail of the
+feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern of the
+table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary
+discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace
+that, as the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in
+it. For a week the prospect had lighted up Miss Stepney's
+colourless existence; then she had been given to understand that
+it would be more convenient to have her another day. Miss Stepney
+knew exactly what had happened. Lily, to whom family reunions
+were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her aunt that
+a dinner of "smart" people would be much more to the taste of the
+young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her
+niece in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce
+Grace's exile. After all, Grace could come any other day; why
+should she mind being put off?
+
+It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other
+day--and because she knew her relations were in the secret of her
+unoccupied evenings--that this incident loomed gigantically on
+her horizon. She was aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and
+dull resentment was turned to active animosity.
+
+Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the
+dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her
+oblique survey of Fifth Avenue.
+
+"Gus Trenor?--Lily and Gus Trenor?" she said, growing so suddenly
+pale that her visitor was almost alarmed.
+
+"Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don't mean . . ."
+
+"I don't know what you DO mean," said Mrs. Peniston, with a
+frightened quiver in her small fretful voice. "Such things were
+never heard of in my day. And my own niece! I'm not sure I
+understand you. Do people say he's in love with her?"
+
+Mrs. Peniston's horror was genuine. Though she boasted an
+unequalled familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she
+had the innocence of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a
+part of "history," and to whom it never occurs that the scandals
+she reads of in lesson-hours may be repeating themselves in the
+next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her imagination shrouded,
+like the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of course, that
+society was "very much changed," and that many women her mother
+would have thought "peculiar" were now in a position to be
+critical about their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils
+of divorce with her rector, and had felt thankful at times that
+Lily was still unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could
+attach to a young girl's name, above all that it could be lightly
+coupled with that of a married man, was so new to her that she
+was as much aghast as if she had been accused of leaving her
+carpets down all summer, or of violating any of the other
+cardinal laws of housekeeping.
+
+Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel
+the superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was
+really pitiable to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston!
+She smiled at the latter's question. "People always say
+unpleasant things--and certainly they're a great deal together. A
+friend of mine met them the other afternoon in the Park-quite
+late, after the lamps were lit. It's a pity Lily makes herself so
+conspicuous."
+
+"CONSPICUOUS!" gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering
+her voice to mitigate the horror. "What sort of things do they
+say? That he means to get a divorce and marry her?"
+
+Grace Stepney laughed outright. "Dear me, no! He would hardly do
+that. It--it's a flirtation--nothing more."
+
+"A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to
+tell me that, with Lily's looks and advantages, she could find no
+better use for her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man
+almost old enough to be her father?" This argument had such a
+convincing ring that it gave Mrs. Peniston sufficient reassurance
+to pick up her work, while she waited for Grace Stepney to rally
+her scattered forces.
+
+But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. "That's the worst
+of it--people say she isn't wasting her time! Every one knows, as
+you say, that Lily is too handsome and-and charming--to devote
+herself to a man like Gus Trenor unless--"
+
+"Unless?" echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath
+nervously. It was agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to
+shock her to the verge of anger. Miss Stepney was not
+sufficiently familiar with the classic drama to have recalled in
+advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially received, but
+she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a reduced
+wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To
+the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over
+more personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong
+moment to boast of her niece's charms.
+
+"Unless," said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned
+emphasis, "unless there are material advantages to be gained by
+making herself agreeable to him."
+
+She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly
+that Mrs. Peniston's black brocade, with the cut jet fringe,
+would have been hers at the end of the season.
+
+Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same
+idea had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was
+beneath her dignity to have her nerves racked by a dependent
+relative who wore her old clothes.
+
+"If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,"
+she said coldly, "you might at least have chosen a more suitable
+time than just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a
+large dinner."
+
+The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney's last scruples.
+"I don't know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in
+telling you about Lily. I was sure I shouldn't get any thanks for
+it," she returned with a flare of temper. "But I have some family
+feeling left, and as you are the only person who has any
+authority over Lily, I thought you ought to know what is being
+said of her."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Peniston, "what I complain of is that you
+haven't told me yet what IS being said."
+
+"I didn't suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say
+that Gus Trenor pays her bills."
+
+"Pays her bills--her bills?" Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. "I
+can't imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has
+her own income--and I provide for her very handsomely--"
+
+"Oh, we all know that," interposed Miss Stepney drily. "But Lily
+wears a great many smart gowns--"
+
+"I like her to be well-dressed--it's only suitable!"
+
+"Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides."
+
+Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this
+point; but Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame.
+She was like the stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must
+be annihilated to be convinced.
+
+"Gambling debts? Lily?" Mrs. Peniston's voice shook with anger
+and bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out
+of her mind. "What do you mean by her gambling debts?"
+
+"Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily's set one is
+liable to lose a great deal--and I don't suppose Lily always
+wins."
+
+"Who told you that my niece played cards for money?"
+
+"Mercy, cousin Julia, don't look at me as if I were trying to
+turn you against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge.
+Mrs. Gryce told me herself that it was her gambling that
+frightened Percy Gryce--it seems he was really taken with her at
+first. But, of course, among Lily's friends it's quite the custom
+for girls to play for money. In fact, people are inclined to
+excuse her on that account---"
+
+"To excuse her for what?"
+
+"For being hard up--and accepting attentions from men like Gus
+Trenor--and George Dorset---"
+
+Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. "George Dorset? Is there any one
+else? I should like to know the worst, if you please."
+
+"Don't put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a
+good deal with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her--but of
+course that's only natural. And I'm sure there is no truth in the
+horrid things people say; but she HAS been spending a great deal
+of money this winter. Evie Van Osburgh was at Celeste's
+ordering her trousseau the other day--yes, the marriage takes
+place next month--and she told me that Celeste showed her the
+most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And
+people say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of
+Gus; but I'm sure I'm sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a
+kindness."
+
+Mrs. Peniston's genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss
+Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect
+of succeeding to the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to
+reason have generally some crack through which suspicion filters,
+and her visitor's insinuations did not glide off as easily as she
+had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked scenes, and her
+determination to avoid them had always led her to hold herself
+aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls had
+not been supposed to require close supervision. They were
+generally assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of
+courtship and marriage, and interference in such affairs on the
+part of their natural guardians was considered as unwarrantable
+as a spectator's suddenly joining in a game. There had of course
+been "fast" girls even in Mrs. Peniston's early experience; but
+their fastness, at worst, was understood to be a mere excess of
+animal spirits, against which there could be no graver charge
+than that of being "unladylike." The modern fastness appeared
+synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was
+as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the
+drawing-room: it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to
+admit.
+
+She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had
+heard, or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of
+discreet interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and
+a scene, in the shaken state of Mrs. Peniston's nerves, with the
+effects of her dinner not worn off, and her mind still tremulous
+with new impressions, was a risk she deemed it her duty to avoid.
+But there remained in her thoughts a settled deposit of
+resentment against her niece, all the denser because it was not
+to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible of a
+young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the
+charges against her, she must be to blame for their
+having been made. Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a
+contagious illness in the house, and she was doomed to sit
+shivering among her contaminated furniture.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of
+her critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself;
+but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong
+turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road till
+it was too late to take it.
+
+Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not
+imagined that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money
+for her would ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in
+itself still seemed harmless enough; only it was a fertile source
+of harmful complications. As she exhausted the amusement of
+spending the money these complications became more pressing, and
+Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in tracing the causes
+of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the thought that
+she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset. This
+enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of
+friendliness between the two women. Lily's visit to the Dorsets
+had resulted, for both, in the discovery that they could be of
+use to each other; and the civilized instinct finds a subtler
+pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him.
+Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in a new sentimental
+experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher's late property, Ned Silverton,
+was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had once
+remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband's
+attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even
+his self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather
+these were especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her
+experience with Percy Gryce stood her in good stead in
+ministering to Dorset's humours, and if the incentive to please
+was less urgent, the difficulties of her situation were teaching
+her to make much of minor opportunities.
+
+Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such
+difficulties on the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy
+Trenor's lavish impulses, and Dorset's admiration was not likely
+to express itself in financial "tips," even had Lily cared to
+renew her experiences in that line. What she required, for the
+moment, of the Dorsets' friendship, was simply its social
+sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but
+this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In
+her set such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who
+flirted with a married man was merely assumed to be pressing to
+the limit of her opportunities. It was Trenor himself who
+frightened her. Their walk in the Park had not been a success.
+Trenor had married young, and since his marriage his intercourse
+with women had not taken the form of the sentimental small-talk
+which doubles upon itself like the paths in a maze. He was first
+puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led back to the
+same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually losing
+control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
+mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been
+somewhat heavily "touched" by the fall in stocks; his household
+expenses weighed on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all
+sides, a sullen opposition to his wishes, instead of the easy
+good luck he had hitherto encountered.
+
+Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open,
+and descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but
+preferring the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the
+restrictions of a dull season. Since the holidays she had not
+urged Lily to return to Bellomont, and the first time they met in
+town Lily fancied there was a shade of coldness in her manner.
+Was it merely the expression of her displeasure at Miss Bart's
+neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached her? The latter
+contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a sense
+of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root
+anywhere, it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed
+in the sincerity of her friend's affection, though it sometimes
+showed itself in self-interested ways, and she shrank with
+peculiar reluctance from any risk of estranging it. But, aside
+from this, she was keenly conscious of the way in which such an
+estrangement would react on herself. The fact that Gus Trenor was
+Judy's husband was at times Lily's strongest reason for disliking
+him, and for resenting the obligation under which he had placed
+her. To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New
+Year, "proposed" herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had
+learned in advance that the presence of a large party
+would protect her from too great assiduity on Trenor's part, and
+his wife's telegraphic "come by all means" seemed to assure her
+of her usual welcome.
+
+Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always
+prevailed over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her
+hostess's manner. Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the
+experiment of coming to Bellomont was destined not to be
+successful. The party was made up of what Mrs. Trenor called
+"poky people"--her generic name for persons who did not play
+bridge--and, it being her habit to group all such obstructionists
+in one class, she usually invited them together, regardless of
+their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an
+irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in
+common than their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms
+developed in a group lacking the one taste which might have
+amalgamated them, were in this case aggravated by bad weather,
+and by the ill-concealed boredom of their host and hostess. In
+such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to Lily to fuse
+the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a
+service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her
+accustomed zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle
+resistance to her efforts. If Mrs. Trenor's manner toward her was
+unchanged, there was certainly a faint coldness in that of the
+other ladies. An occasional caustic allusion to "your friends the
+Wellington Brys," or to "the little Jew who has bought the
+Greiner house--some one told us you knew him, Miss Bart,"--showed
+Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of society
+which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the
+right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The
+indication was a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have
+smiled at it, trusting to the charm of her personality to dispel
+any prejudice against her. But now she had grown more sensitive
+to criticism and less confident in her power of disarming it. She
+knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont permitted
+themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
+they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment
+behind her back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor's
+manner should seem to justify their disapproval made her seek
+every pretext for avoiding him, and she left Bellomont conscious
+of having failed in every purpose which had taken her
+there.
+
+In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had
+the happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly
+Brys, after much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly
+acquired friends, had decided on the bold move of giving a
+general entertainment. To attack society collectively, when one's
+means of approach are limited to a few acquaintances, is like
+advancing into a strange country with an insufficient number of
+scouts; but such rash tactics have sometimes led to brilliant
+victories, and the Brys had determined to put their fate to the
+touch. Mrs. Fisher, to whom they had entrusted the conduct of the
+affair, had decided that TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music
+were the two baits most likely to attract the desired prey, and
+after prolonged negotiations, and the kind of wire-pulling in
+which she was known to excel, she had induced a dozen fashionable
+women to exhibit themselves in a series of pictures which, by a
+farther miracle of persuasion, the distinguished portrait
+painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed upon to organize.
+
+Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth's
+guidance her vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher
+food than dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in
+the disposal of draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting
+of lights and shadows. Her dramatic instinct was roused by the
+choice of subjects, and the gorgeous reproductions of historic
+dress stirred an imagination which only visual impressions could
+reach. But keenest of all was the exhilaration of displaying her
+own beauty under a new aspect: of showing that her loveliness was
+no mere fixed quality, but an element shaping all emotions to
+fresh forms of grace.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's measures had been well-taken, and society,
+surprised in a dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs.
+Bry's hospitality. The protesting minority were forgotten in the
+throng which abjured and came; and the audience was almost as
+brilliant as the show.
+
+Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
+inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom
+that a man may go where he pleases, it was because he had
+long since learned that his pleasures were mainly to be found in
+a small group of the like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular
+effects, and was not insensible to the part money plays in their
+production: all he asked was that the very rich should live up to
+their calling as stage-managers, and not spend their money in a
+dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be charged with
+doing. Their recently built house, whatever it might lack as a
+frame for domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the
+display of a festal assemblage as one of those airy
+pleasure-halls which the Italian architects improvised to set off
+the hospitality of princes. The air of improvisation was in fact
+strikingly present: so recent, so rapidly-evoked was the whole
+MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the marble columns to learn
+they were not of cardboard, to seat one's self in one of the
+damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it was not painted against
+the wall.
+
+Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found
+himself, from an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with
+frank enjoyment. The company, in obedience to the decorative
+instinct which calls for fine clothes in fine surroundings, had
+dressed rather with an eye to Mrs. Bry's background than to
+herself. The seated throng, filling the immense room without
+undue crowding, presented a surface of rich tissues and jewelled
+shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and the
+flushed splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of
+the room a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch
+curtained with folds of old damask; but in the pause before the
+parting of the folds there was little thought of what they might
+reveal, for every woman who had accepted Mrs. Bry's invitation
+was engaged in trying to find out how many of her friends had
+done the same.
+
+Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that
+indiscriminate and uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss
+Bart's finer perceptions. It may be that Selden's nearness had
+something to do with the quality of his cousin's pleasure; but
+Miss Farish was so little accustomed to refer her enjoyment of
+such scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely
+conscious of a deeper sense of contentment.
+
+"Wasn't it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course
+it would never have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on
+the list, and I should have been so sorry to miss seeing it
+all--and especially Lily herself. Some one told me the ceiling was
+by Veronese--you would know, of course, Lawrence. I suppose it's
+very beautiful, but his women are so dreadfully fat. Goddesses?
+Well, I can only say that if they'd been mortals and had to wear
+corsets, it would have been better for them. I think our women
+are much handsomer. And this room is wonderfully becoming--every
+one looks so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs.
+George Dorset's pearls--I suppose the smallest of them would pay
+the rent of our Girls' Club for a year. Not that I ought to
+complain about the club; every one has been so wonderfully kind.
+Did I tell you that Lily had given us three hundred dollars?
+Wasn't it splendid of her? And then she collected a lot of money
+from her friends--Mrs. Bry gave us five hundred, and Mr. Rosedale
+a thousand. I wish Lily were not so nice to Mr. Rosedale, but she
+says it's no use being rude to him, because he doesn't see the
+difference. She really can't bear to hurt people's feelings--it
+makes me so angry when I hear her called cold and conceited! The
+girls at the club don't call her that. Do you know she has been
+there with me twice?--yes, Lily! And you should have seen their
+eyes! One of them said it was as good as a day in the country
+just to look at her. And she sat there, and laughed and talked
+with them--not a bit as if she were being CHARITABLE, you know,
+but as if she liked it as much as they did. They've been asking
+ever since when she's coming back; and she's promised me---oh!"
+
+Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of the
+curtain on the first TABLEAU--a group of nymphs dancing across
+flower-strewn sward in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's
+Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend for their effect not only on the
+happy disposal of lights and the delusive-interposition of layers
+of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision.
+To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement
+of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive
+fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between
+fact and imagination. Selden's mind was of this order: he could
+yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
+spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry's TABLEAUX wanted none of
+the qualities which go to the producing of such illusions, and
+under Morpeth's organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other
+with the rhythmic march of some splendid frieze, in which the
+fugitive curves of living flesh and the wandering light of young
+eyes have been subdued to plastic harmony without losing the
+charm of life.
+
+The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators
+had been cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types.
+No one, for instance, could have made a more typical Goya than
+Carry Fisher, with her short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated
+glow of her eyes, the provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A
+brilliant Miss Smedden from Brooklyn showed to perfection the
+sumptuous curves of Titian's Daughter, lifting her gold salver
+laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of rippled hair and
+rich brocade, and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed the
+frailer Dutch type, with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes
+and lashes, made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin,
+against a curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs
+garlanding the altar of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny
+textures, pearl-woven heads and marble architecture; and a
+Watteau group of lute-playing comedians, lounging by a fountain
+in a sunlit glade.
+
+Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in
+Selden, leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even
+Gerty Farish's running commentary--"Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson
+looks!" or: "That must be Kate Corby, to the right there, in
+purple"--did not break the spell of the illusion. Indeed, so
+skilfully had the personality of the actors been subdued to the
+scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of the
+audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
+suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly
+the portrait of Miss Bart.
+
+Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of
+personality--the unanimous "Oh!" of the spectators was a tribute,
+not to the brush-work of Reynolds's "Mrs. Lloyd" but to the flesh
+and blood loveliness of Lily Bart. She had shown her artistic
+intelligence in selecting a type so like her own that she could
+embody the person represented without ceasing to be
+herself. It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into,
+Reynolds's canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by
+the beams of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a
+splendid setting--she had thought for a moment of representing
+Tiepolo's Cleopatra--had yielded to the truer instinct of
+trusting to her unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a
+picture without distracting accessories of dress or surroundings.
+Her pale draperies, and the background of foliage against which
+she stood, served only to relieve the long dryad-like curves that
+swept upward from her poised foot to her lifted arm. The noble
+buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace,
+revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always
+felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
+her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he
+seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the
+trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a
+note of that eternal harmony of which her beauty was a part.
+
+"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad,
+there isn't a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she
+wanted us to know it!"
+
+These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
+Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden's
+shoulder whenever the parting of the curtains presented any
+exceptional opportunity for the study of the female outline,
+affected their hearer in an unexpected way. It was not the first
+time that Selden had heard Lily's beauty lightly remarked on, and
+hitherto the tone of the comments had imperceptibly coloured his
+view of her. But now it woke only a motion of indignant contempt.
+This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by
+which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban for a
+judgment on Miranda?
+
+In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel
+the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus
+detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out
+suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had
+once met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing
+to be with her again.
+
+He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. "Wasn't she
+too beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple
+dress? It makes her look like the real Lily--the Lily I know."
+
+He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he
+corrected; and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding,
+exclaimed joyfully: "I'll tell her that! She always says you
+dislike her."
+
+The performance over, Selden's first impulse was to seek Miss
+Bart. During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX,
+the actors had seated themselves here and there in the audience,
+diversifying its conventional appearance by the varied
+picturesqueness of their dress. Lily, however, was not among
+them, and her absence served to protract the effect she had
+produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see her too
+soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
+detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh
+wedding, and on his side the avoidance had been intentional.
+Tonight, however, he knew that, sooner or later, he should find
+himself at her side; and though he let the dispersing crowd drift
+him whither it would, without making an immediate effort to reach
+her, his procrastination was not due to any lingering resistance,
+but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in the sense of complete
+surrender.
+
+Lily had not an instant's doubt as to the meaning of the murmur
+greeting her appearance. No other tableau had been received with
+that precise note of approval: it had obviously been called forth
+by herself, and not by the picture she impersonated. She had
+feared at the last moment that she was risking too much in
+dispensing with the advantages of a more sumptuous setting, and
+the completeness of her triumph gave her an intoxicating sense of
+recovered power. Not caring to diminish the impression she had
+produced, she held herself aloof from the audience till the
+movement of dispersal before supper, and thus had a second
+opportunity of showing herself to advantage, as the throng poured
+slowly into the empty drawing-room where she was standing.
+
+She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed
+itself as the circulation became general, and the individual
+comments on her success were a delightful prolongation of
+the collective applause. At such moments she lost something of
+her natural fastidiousness, and cared less for the quality of the
+admiration received than for its quantity. Differences of
+personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in which
+her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
+approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning
+on Ned Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of
+capturing for himself.
+
+Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs.
+Fisher, as whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should
+break up the group before Selden reached the threshold of the
+room. One or two of the men wandered off in search of their
+partners for supper, and the others, noticing Selden's approach,
+gave way to him in accordance with the tacit freemasonry of the
+ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he reached her;
+and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the satisfaction
+of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen as it
+rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
+felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced.
+She read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation
+of her triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was
+for him only she cared to be beautiful.
+
+Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in
+silence, and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but
+against the tide which was setting thither. The faces about her
+flowed by like the streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed
+where Selden was leading her, till they passed through a glass
+doorway at the end of the long suite of rooms and stood suddenly
+in the fragrant hush of a garden. Gravel grated beneath their
+feet, and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer
+night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the depths of
+foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
+lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the
+splash of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of
+music that might have been blown across a sleeping lake.
+
+Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene
+as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have
+surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or
+to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a
+starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than
+the sweetness of being alone in it together. At length Lily
+withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so that her white-robed
+slimness was outlined against the dusk of the branches. Selden
+followed her, and still without speaking they seated themselves
+on a bench beside the fountain.
+
+Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a
+child. "You never speak to me--you think hard things of me," she
+murmured.
+
+"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.
+
+"Then why do we never see each other? Why can't we be friends?
+You promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as
+though the words were drawn from her unwillingly.
+
+"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a
+low voice.
+
+She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft
+motion of a flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips
+touched. She drew back and rose from her seat. Selden rose too,
+and they stood facing each other. Suddenly she caught his hand
+and pressed it a moment against her cheek.
+
+"Ah, love me, love me--but don't tell me so!" she sighed with her
+eyes in his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped
+through the arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the
+room beyond.
+
+Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the
+transiency of exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but
+presently he reentered the house and made his way through the
+deserted rooms to the door. A few sumptuously-cloaked ladies were
+already gathered in the marble vestibule, and in the coat-room he
+found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.
+
+The former, at Selden's approach, paused in the careful selection
+of a cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near
+the door.
+
+"Hallo, Selden, going too? You're an Epicurean like myself, I
+see: you don't want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin.
+Gad, what a show of good-looking women; but not one of
+'em could touch that little cousin of mine. Talk of
+jewels--what's a woman want with jewels when she's got herself to
+show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they wear cover up
+their figures when they've got 'em. I never knew till tonight
+what an outline Lily has."
+
+"It's not her fault if everybody don't know it now," growled
+Trenor, flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined
+coat. "Damned bad taste, I call it--no, no cigar for me. You
+can't tell what you're smoking in one of these new houses--likely
+as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay for supper? Not if I know
+it! When people crowd their rooms so that you can't get near any
+one you want to speak to, I'd as soon sup in the elevated at the
+rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says life's
+too short to spend it in breaking in new people."
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bedside.
+
+One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to
+town that afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would
+be able to dine with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote
+briefly that an important case called him to Albany, whence he
+would be unable to return till the evening, and asked Lily to let
+him know at what hour on the following day she would see him.
+
+Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his
+letter. The scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part
+of her dreams; she had not expected to wake to such evidence of
+its reality. Her first movement was one of annoyance: this
+unforeseen act of Selden's added another complication to life. It
+was so unlike him to yield to such an irrational impulse! Did he
+really mean to ask her to marry him? She had once shown him the
+impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent behaviour seemed
+to prove that he had accepted the situation with a reasonableness
+somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more agreeable
+to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the cost
+of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as
+the sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing
+the episode of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she
+could not marry him, it would be kinder to him, as well as easier
+for herself, to write a line amicably evading his request to see
+her: he was not the man to mistake such a hint, and when next
+they met it would be on their usual friendly footing.
+
+Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted
+to write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her
+resolve. She was still languid from her brief sleep and the
+exhilaration of the evening, and the sight of Selden's writing
+brought back the culminating moment of her triumph: the moment
+when she had read in his eyes that no philosophy was proof
+against her power. It would be pleasant to have that sensation
+again . . . no one else could give it to her in its fulness; and
+she could not bear to mar her mood of luxurious retrospection
+by an act of definite refusal. She took up her pen and wrote hastily:
+"TOMORROW AT FOUR;" murmuring to herself, as she slipped the sheet
+into its envelope: "I can easily put him off when tomorrow comes."
+
+
+
+Judy Trenor's summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first
+time she had received a direct communication from Bellomont since
+the close of her last visit there, and she was still visited by
+the dread of having incurred Judy's displeasure. But this
+characteristic command seemed to reestablish their former
+relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that her friend had
+probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys'
+entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast,
+perhaps for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband,
+perhaps because, as Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she
+"couldn't bear new people when she hadn't discovered them
+herself." At any rate, though she remained haughtily at
+Bellomont, Lily suspected in her a devouring eagerness to hear of
+what she had missed, and to learn exactly in what measure Mrs.
+Wellington Bry had surpassed all previous competitors for social
+recognition. Lily was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but
+it happened that she was dining out. She determined, however, to
+see Mrs. Trenor for a few moments, and ringing for her maid she
+despatched a telegram to say that she would be with her friend
+that evening at ten.
+
+She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal
+feast a few of the performers of the previous evening. There was
+to be plantation music in the studio after dinner--for Mrs. Fisher,
+despairing of the republic, had taken up modelling, and annexed to
+her small crowded house a spacious apartment, which, whatever its
+uses in her hours of plastic inspiration, served at other times
+for the exercise of an indefatigable hospitality. Lily was
+reluctant to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and she would have
+liked to lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs; but she
+could not break her engagement with Judy, and shortly after ten
+she asked her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove up Fifth
+Avenue to the Trenors'.
+
+She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that
+Judy's presence in town was not signalized by a greater
+promptness in admitting her; and her surprise was increased when,
+instead of the expected footman, pushing his shoulders into a
+tardy coat, a shabby care-taking person in calico let her into
+the shrouded hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the
+threshold of the drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual
+volubility while he relieved her of her cloak and drew her into
+the room.
+
+"Come along to the den; it's the only comfortable place in the
+house. Doesn't this room look as if it was waiting for the body
+to be brought down? Can't see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up
+in this awful slippery white stuff--it's enough to give a fellow
+pneumonia to walk through these rooms on a cold day. You look a
+little pinched yourself, by the way: it's rather a sharp night
+out. I noticed it walking up from the club. Come along, and I'll
+give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast yourself over the
+fire and try some of my new Egyptians--that little Turkish chap
+at the Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try, and
+if you like 'em I'll get out a lot for you: they don't have 'em
+here yet, but I'll cable."
+
+He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where
+Mrs. Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there
+was an air of occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers,
+newspapers, a littered writing-table, and a general aspect of
+lamp-lit familiarity, so that it was a surprise not to see Judy's
+energetic figure start up from the arm-chair near the fire.
+
+It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat
+in question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and
+near it stood one of those intricate folding tables which British
+ingenuity has devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco
+and spirits. The sight of such appliances in a drawing-room was
+not unusual in Lily's set, where smoking and drinking were
+unrestricted by considerations of time and place, and her first
+movement was to help herself to one of the cigarettes recommended
+by Trenor, while she checked his loquacity by asking, with a
+surprised glance: "Where's Judy?"
+
+Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and
+perhaps by prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending
+over the latter to decipher their silver labels.
+
+"Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy
+water--you do look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your
+nose is red. I'll take another glass to keep you
+company--Judy?--Why, you see, Judy's got a devil of a head
+ache--quite knocked out with it, poor thing--she asked me to
+explain--make it all right, you know--Do come up to the fire,
+though; you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me make you
+comfortable, there's a good girl."
+
+He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her
+toward a low seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed
+herself quietly.
+
+"Do you mean to say that Judy's not well enough to see me?
+Doesn't she want me to go upstairs?"
+
+Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to
+set it down before he answered.
+
+"Why, no--the fact is, she's not up to seeing anybody. It came on
+suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully
+sorry she was--if she'd known where you were dining she'd have
+sent you word."
+
+"She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram.
+But it doesn't matter, of course. I suppose if she's so poorly
+she won't go back to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and
+see her then."
+
+"Yes: exactly--that's capital. I'll tell her you'll pop in
+tomorrow morning. And now do sit down a minute, there's a dear,
+and let's have a nice quiet jaw together. You won't take a drop,
+just for sociability? Tell me what you think of that cigarette.
+Why, don't you like it? What are you chucking it away for?"
+
+"I am chucking it away because I must go, if you'll have the
+goodness to call a cab for me," Lily returned with a smile.
+
+She did not like Trenor's unusual excitability, with its too
+evident explanation, and the thought of being alone with him,
+with her friend out of reach upstairs, at the other end of the
+great empty house, did not conduce to a desire to prolong their
+TETE-A-TETE.
+
+But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved
+between herself and the door.
+
+"Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy'd been here
+you'd have sat gossiping till all hours--and you can't even give
+me five minutes! It's always the same story. Last night I
+couldn't get near you--I went to that damned vulgar party just to
+see you, and there was everybody talking about you, and asking me
+if I'd ever seen anything so stunning, and when I tried to come
+up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just went on
+laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be
+able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when you were
+mentioned."
+
+He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in
+which resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she
+had regained her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the
+middle of the room, while her slight smile seemed to put an ever
+increasing distance between herself and Trenor.
+
+Across it she said: "Don't be absurd, Gus. It's past eleven, and
+I must really ask you to ring for a cab."
+
+He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown
+to detest.
+
+"And supposing I won't ring for one--what'll you do then?"
+
+"I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her."
+
+Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. "Look
+here, Lily: won't you give me five minutes of your own accord?"
+
+"Not tonight, Gus: you---"
+
+"Very good, then: I'll take 'em. And as many more as I want." He
+had squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in
+his pockets. He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.
+
+"Go and sit down there, please: I've got a word to say to you."
+
+Lily's quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew
+herself up and moved toward the door.
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time.
+I shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once."
+
+He burst into a laugh. "Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you
+won't find Judy. She ain't there."
+
+Lily cast a startled look upon him. "Do you mean that Judy is not
+in the house--not in town?" she exclaimed.
+
+"That's just what I do mean," returned Trenor, his bluster
+sinking to sullenness under her look.
+
+"Nonsense--I don't believe you. I am going upstairs," she said
+impatiently.
+
+He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold
+unimpeded.
+
+"Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont."
+
+But Lily had a flash of reassurance. "If she hadn't come she
+would have sent me word---"
+
+"She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know."
+
+"I received no message."
+
+"I didn't send any."
+
+The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her
+opponent through a blur of scorn that made all other
+considerations indistinct.
+
+"I can't imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on
+me; but if you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour
+I must again ask you to send for a cab."
+
+It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung
+by irony it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry
+streaks on Trenor's face might have been raised by an actual
+lash.
+
+"Look here, Lily, don't take that high and mighty tone with me."
+He had again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive
+shrinking from him she let him regain command of the threshold.
+"I DID play a trick on you; I own up to it; but if you think I'm
+ashamed you're mistaken. Lord knows I've been patient
+enough--I've hung round and looked like an ass. And all the while
+you were letting a lot of other fellows make up to you . . .
+letting 'em make fun of me, I daresay . . . I'm not sharp, and
+can't dress my friends up to look funny, as you do . . . but I
+can tell when it's being done to me . . . I can tell fast enough
+when I'm made a fool of . . ."
+
+"Ah, I shouldn't have thought that!" flashed from Lily; but her
+laugh dropped to silence under his look.
+
+"No; you wouldn't have thought it; but you'll know better
+now. That's what you're here for tonight. I've been waiting for a
+quiet time to talk things over, and now I've got it I mean to
+make you hear me out."
+
+His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
+steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily
+than the excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of
+mind forsook her. She had more than once been in situations where
+a quick sword-play of wit had been needful to cover her retreat;
+but her frightened heart-throbs told her that here such skill
+would not avail.
+
+To gain time she repeated: "I don't understand what you want."
+
+Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw
+himself in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.
+
+"I'll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I
+stand. Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally
+allowed to have a seat at table."
+
+She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of
+having to conciliate where she longed to humble.
+
+"I don't know what you mean--but you must see, Gus, that I can't
+stay here talking to you at this hour---"
+
+"Gad, you go to men's houses fast enough in broad day
+light--strikes me you're not always so deuced careful of
+appearances."
+
+The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that
+follows on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then--this was
+the way men talked of her--She felt suddenly weak and
+defenceless: there was a throb of self-pity in her throat. But
+all the while another self was sharpening her to vigilance,
+whispering the terrified warning that every word and gesture must
+be measured.
+
+"If you have brought me here to say insulting things---" she
+began.
+
+Trenor laughed. "Don't talk stage-rot. I don't want to insult
+you. But a man's got his feelings--and you've played with mine
+too long. I didn't begin this business--kept out of the way, and
+left the track clear for the other chaps, till you rummaged me
+out and set to work to make an ass of me--and an easy job you had
+of it, too. That's the trouble--it was too easy for
+you--you got reckless--thought you could turn me inside out, and
+chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that
+ain't playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. Of
+course I know now what you wanted--it wasn't my beautiful eyes
+you were after--but I tell you what, Miss Lily, you've got to pay
+up for making me think so---"
+
+He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward
+her with a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every
+nerve tore at her to retreat as he advanced.
+
+"Pay up?" she faltered. "Do you mean that I owe you money?"
+
+He laughed again. "Oh, I'm not asking for payment in kind. But
+there's such a thing as fair play--and interest on one's
+money--and hang me if I've had as much as a look from you---"
+
+"Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me
+how to invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of
+business . . . you told me it was all right---"
+
+"It WAS all right--it is, Lily: you're welcome to all of it, and
+ten times more. I'm only asking for a word of thanks from you."
+He was closer still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the
+frightened self in her was dragging the other down.
+
+"I HAVE thanked you; I've shown I was grateful. What more have
+you done than any friend might do, or any one accept from a
+friend?"
+
+Trenor caught her up with a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted
+as much before--and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to
+chuck me. I don't care how you settled your score with them--if
+you fooled 'em I'm that much to the good. Don't stare at me like
+that--I know I'm not talking the way a man is supposed to talk to
+a girl--but, hang it, if you don't like it you can stop me quick
+enough--you know I'm mad about you--damn the money, there's
+plenty more of it--if THAT bothers you . . . I was a brute,
+Lily--Lily!--just look at me---"
+
+Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke--wave crashing on
+wave so close that the moral shame was one with the physical
+dread. It seemed to her that self-esteem would have made
+her invulnerable--that it was her own dishonour which put a
+fearful solitude about her.
+
+His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew
+back from him with a desperate assumption of scorn.
+
+"I've told you I don't understand--but if I owe you money you
+shall be paid---"
+
+Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had
+called out the primitive man.
+
+"Ah--you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale--and take your chances
+of fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless--unless you've
+settled your other scores already--and I'm the only one left out
+in the cold!"
+
+She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words--the words were
+worse than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body--in
+her throat, her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes
+travelled despairingly about the room--they lit on the bell, and
+she remembered that help was in call. Yes, but scandal with it--a
+hideous mustering of tongues. No, she must fight her way out
+alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to be in the
+house with Trenor--there must be nothing to excite conjecture in
+her way of leaving it.
+
+She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.
+
+"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to
+say?"
+
+To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless
+stare. With his last gust of words the flame had died out,
+leaving him chill and humbled. It was as though a cold air had
+dispersed the fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed
+before him black and naked as the ruins of a fire. Old habits,
+old restraints, the hand of inherited order, plucked back the
+bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts. Trenor's
+eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
+ledge.
+
+"Go home! Go away from here"---he stammered, and turning his back
+on her walked toward the hearth.
+
+The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate
+lucidity. The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and
+she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside
+herself, bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the
+order for a hansom, directing him to put her in it when
+it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but an
+insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly,
+and nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to
+exchange light words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual
+messages for Judy, while all the while she shook with inward
+loathing. On the doorstep, with the street before her, she felt a
+mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as the prisoner's first
+draught of free air; but the clearness of brain continued, and
+she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
+lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there
+something half-familiar in its outline?--which, as she entered
+the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the
+obscurity of the side street.
+
+But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering
+darkness closed on her. "I can't think--I can't think," she
+moaned, and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab.
+She seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves
+in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being
+to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a
+house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and
+her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene
+where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
+huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies
+might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the
+dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their
+wings was in her brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the
+streets passing--the familiar alien streets. All she looked on
+was the same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed
+between today and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed
+simple, natural, full of daylight--and she was alone in a place
+of darkness and pollution.--Alone! It was the loneliness that
+frightened her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street
+corner, and she saw that the hands marked the half hour after
+eleven. Only half-past eleven--there were hours and hours left of
+the night! And she must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on
+her bed. Her soft nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had
+none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the
+slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
+vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed--and the darkness
+would frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary
+details of the room would brand themselves forever on her brain.
+She had always hated her room at Mrs. Peniston's--its ugliness,
+its impersonality, the fact that nothing in it was really hers.
+To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room may open
+almost human arms, and the being to whom no four walls mean more
+than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
+
+Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
+superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But
+even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to
+think of Mrs. Peniston's mind as offering shelter or
+comprehension to such misery as Lily's. As the pain that can be
+told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little
+healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by
+enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion
+holding its breath.
+
+She started up and looked forth on the passing streets.
+Gerty!--they were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach
+there before this labouring anguish burst from her breast to her
+lips--if only she could feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she
+shook in the ague-fit of fear that was coming upon her! She
+pushed up the door in the roof and called the address to the
+driver. It was not so late--Gerty might still be waking. And even
+if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate every
+recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her
+friend's call.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys'
+entertainment, woke from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were
+less vivid in hue, more subdued to the half-tints of her
+personality and her experience, they were for that very reason
+better suited to her mental vision. Such flashes of joy as Lily
+moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in
+the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through the
+cracks of other people's lives.
+
+Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a
+mild but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's
+growing kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended
+his liking to Lily Bart. If these two factors seem incompatible
+to the student of feminine psychology, it must be remembered that
+Gerty had always been a parasite in the moral order, living on
+the crumbs of other tables, and content to look through the
+window at the banquet spread for her friends. Now that she was
+enjoying a little private feast of her own, it would have seemed
+incredibly selfish not to lay a plate for a friend; and there was
+no one with whom she would rather have shared her enjoyment than
+Miss Bart.
+
+As to the nature of Selden's growing kindness, Gerty would no
+more have dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a
+butterfly's colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize
+on the wonder would be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it
+fade and stiffen in her hand: better the sense of beauty
+palpitating out of reach, while she held her breath and watched
+where it would alight. Yet Selden's manner at the Brys' had
+brought the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be
+beating in her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so
+responsive, so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual
+manner had an absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and
+was grateful for, as the liveliest sentiment her presence was
+likely to inspire; but she was quick to feel in him a change
+implying that for once she could give pleasure as well as receive
+it.
+
+And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy
+should be reached through their interest in Lily Bart!
+
+Gerty's affection for her friend--a sentiment that had learned to
+keep itself alive on the scantiest diet--had grown to active
+adoration since Lily's restless curiosity had drawn her into the
+circle of Miss Farish's work. Lily's taste of beneficence had
+wakened in her a momentary appetite for well-doing. Her visit to
+the Girls' Club had first brought her in contact with the
+dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with
+philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were
+pedestalled on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo
+of dinginess lay all around and beneath that little illuminated
+circle in which life reached its finest efflorescence, as the mud
+and sleet of a winter night enclose a hot-house filled with
+tropical flowers. All this was in the natural order of things,
+and the orchid basking in its artificially created atmosphere
+could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by the
+ice on the panes.
+
+But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract
+conception of poverty, another to be brought in contact with its
+human embodiments. Lily had never conceived of these victims of
+fate otherwise than in the mass. That the mass was composed of
+individual lives, innumerable separate centres of sensation, with
+her own eager reachings for pleasure, her own fierce revulsions
+from pain--that some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in
+shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on
+gladness, and young lips shaped for love--this discovery gave
+Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes
+decentralize a life. Lily's nature was incapable of such renewal:
+she could feel other demands only through her own, and no pain
+was long vivid which did not press on an answering nerve. But for
+the moment she was drawn out of herself by the interest of her
+direct relation with a world so unlike her own. She had
+supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or two
+of Miss Farish's most appealing subjects, and the admiration and
+interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club
+ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.
+
+Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to
+disentangle the mixed threads of which Lily's philanthropy was
+woven. She supposed her beautiful friend to be actuated by the
+same motive as herself--that sharpening of the moral
+vision which makes all human suffering so near and insistent that
+the other aspects of life fade into remoteness. Gerty lived by
+such simple formulas that she did not hesitate to class her
+friend's state with the emotional "change of heart" to which her
+dealings with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in
+the thought that she had been the humble instrument of this
+renewal. Now she had an answer to all criticisms of Lily's
+conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real Lily," and the
+discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her placid
+acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities--a
+sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the
+receipt of a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine with
+her that evening.
+
+While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement
+produced in her small household, Selden was at one with her in
+thinking with intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called
+him to Albany was not complicated enough to absorb all his
+attention, and he had the professional faculty of keeping a part
+of his mind free when its services were not needed. This
+part--which at the moment seemed dangerously like the whole--was
+filled to the brim with the sensations of the previous evening.
+Selden understood the symptoms: he recognized the fact that he
+was paying up, as there had always been a chance of his having to
+pay up, for the voluntary exclusions of his past. He had meant to
+keep free from permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling,
+but because, in a different way, he was, as much as Lily, the
+victim of his environment. There had been a germ of truth in his
+declaration to Gerty Farish that he had never wanted to marry a
+"nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his cousin's vocabulary,
+certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to preclude the
+luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a charming
+mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still
+emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was
+the kind of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her,
+stimulates her, and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one
+of the couple cared for money, but their disdain of it took the
+form of always spending a little more than was prudent. If their
+house was shabby, it was exquisitely kept; if there were good
+books on the shelves there were also good dishes on the
+table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
+understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of
+restraint and discrimination in buying that they never quite knew
+how it was that the bills mounted up.
+
+Though many of Selden's friends would have called his parents
+poor, he had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means
+were felt only as a check on aimless profusion: where the few
+possessions were so good that their rarity gave them a merited
+relief, and abstinence was combined with elegance in a way
+exemplified by Mrs. Selden's knack of wearing her old velvet as
+if it were new. A man has the advantage of being delivered early
+from the home point of view, and before Selden left college he
+had learned that there are as many different ways of going
+without money as of spending it. Unfortunately, he found no way
+as agreeable as that practised at home; and his views of
+womankind in especial were tinged by the remembrance of the one
+woman who had given him his sense of "values." It was from her
+that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side of life:
+the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the
+Epicurean's pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling
+appeared to him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending
+of the two ingredients so essential as in the character of a
+pretty woman.
+
+It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great
+deal besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly
+conceive of a love which should broaden and deepen till it became
+the central fact of life. What he could not accept, in his own
+case, was the makeshift alternative of a relation that should be
+less than this: that should leave some portions of his nature
+unsatisfied, while it put an undue strain on others. He would
+not, in other words, yield to the growth of an affection which
+might appeal to pity yet leave the understanding untouched:
+sympathy should no more delude him than a trick of the eyes, the
+grace of helplessness than a curve of the cheek.
+
+But now--that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows.
+His reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less
+important than the question as to when Lily would receive his
+note! He yielded himself to the charm of trivial
+preoccupations, wondering at what hour her reply would be sent,
+with what words it would begin. As to its import he had no
+doubt--he was as sure of her surrender as of his own. And so he
+had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard
+worker, on a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam
+of light travel gradually across his room. But if the new light
+dazzled, it did not blind him. He could still discern the outline
+of facts, though his own relation to them had changed. He was no
+less conscious than before of what was said of Lily Bart, but he
+could separate the woman he knew from the vulgar estimate of her.
+His mind turned to Gerty Farish's words, and the wisdom of the
+world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of innocence.
+BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD--even the
+hidden god in their neighbour's breast! Selden was in the state
+of impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love
+produces. His craving was for the companionship of one whose
+point of view should justify his own, who should confirm, by
+deliberate observation, the truth to which his intuitions had
+leaped. He could not wait for the midday recess, but seized a
+moment's leisure in court to scribble his telegram to Gerty
+Farish.
+
+Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a
+note from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only a
+line of rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away
+disappointed when he was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.
+
+"Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me--I've ordered a
+canvas-back."
+
+He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall
+glass at his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.
+
+Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.
+
+"Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight.
+I shall have the club to myself. You know how I'm living this
+winter, rattling round in that empty house. My wife meant to come
+to town today, but she's put it off again, and how is a fellow to
+dine alone in a room with the looking-glasses covered, and
+nothing but a bottle of Harvey sauce on the side-board? I say,
+Lawrence, chuck your engagement and take pity on me--it gives me
+the blue devils to dine alone, and there's nobody but
+that canting ass Wetherall in the club."
+
+"Sorry, Gus--I can't do it."
+
+As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor's
+face, the unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead,
+the way his jewelled rings were wedged in the creases of his fat
+red fingers. Certainly the beast was predominating--the beast at
+the bottom of the glass. And he had heard this man's name coupled
+with Lily's! Bah--the thought sickened him; all the way back to
+his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor's fat creased
+hands---
+
+On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew
+what was in it before he broke the seal--a grey seal with BEYOND!
+beneath a flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond--beyond the
+ugliness, the pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the
+soul---
+
+
+
+Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden
+entered it. Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and
+ingenuity, spoke to him in the language just then sweetest to his
+ear. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling
+matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. Gerty
+sparkled too; or at least shone with a tempered radiance. He had
+never before noticed that she had "points"--really, some good
+fellow might do worse . . . Over the little dinner (and here,
+again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she ought to
+marry--he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had made
+the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep
+such gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that
+Lily could trim her own hats--she had told him so the day of
+their walk at Bellomont.
+
+He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little
+repast he kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being
+the centre of observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she
+had manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an
+extraordinary interest in her household arrangements:
+complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized
+every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
+about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise
+delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful
+generalizations on the burden of a large establishment.
+
+When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as
+snugly as bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and
+poured it into her grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he
+leaned back, basking in the warm fragrance, lighted on a recent
+photograph of Miss Bart, and the desired transition was effected
+without an effort. The photograph was well enough--but to catch
+her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed with him--never
+had she been so radiant. But could photography capture that
+light? There had been a new look in her face--something
+different; yes, Selden agreed there had been something different.
+The coffee was so exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such
+a contrast to the watery stuff at the club! Ah, your poor
+bachelor with his impersonal club fare, alternating with the
+equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A man who lived
+in lodgings missed the best part of life--he pictured the
+flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's
+compassion for the man . . . But to return to Lily--and again and
+again he returned, questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on,
+draining her inmost thoughts of their stored tenderness for her
+friend.
+
+At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this
+perfect communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily
+helped to confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt
+together on the fact that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced
+her generous impulses--her restlessness and discontent. The fact
+that her life had never satisfied her proved that she was made
+for better things. She might have married more than once--the
+conventional rich marriage which she had been taught to consider
+the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she had
+always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in
+love with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be
+engaged, and her dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This
+view of the Gryce incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not
+to be instantly adopted by him, with a flash of retrospective
+contempt for what had once seemed the obvious solution. If
+rejection there had been--and he wondered now that he had
+ever doubted it!--then he held the key to the secret, and the
+hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with
+dawn. It was he who had wavered and disowned the face of
+opportunity--and the joy now warming his breast might have been a
+familiar inmate if he had captured it in its first flight.
+
+It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings
+in Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing
+Selden, repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been
+understood---" and all the while she herself seemed to be sitting
+in the centre of a great glare of comprehension. The little
+confidential room, where a moment ago their thoughts had touched
+elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly vastness, separating
+her from Selden by all the length of her new vision of the
+future--and that future stretched out interminably, with her
+lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.
+
+"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them,"
+she heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't
+you?" and: "She has it in her to become whatever she is believed
+to be--you'll help her by believing the best of her?"
+
+The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language
+which has seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is
+found to be unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of
+Lily--that was all! There had been a third at the feast she had
+spread for him, and that third had taken her own place. She tried
+to follow what he was saying, to cling to her own part in the
+talk--but it was all as meaningless as the boom of waves in a
+drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
+sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
+
+Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she
+could yield to the blessed waves.
+
+"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music
+afterward; I believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the
+foolish pink-faced clock that was drumming out this hideous
+hour. "A quarter past ten? I might look in there now; the Fisher
+evenings are amusing. I haven't kept you up too late, Gerty? You
+look tired--I've rambled on and bored you." And in the
+unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss upon
+her cheek.
+
+
+
+At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen
+voices greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he
+dropped into a seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search
+of Miss Bart. But she was not there, and the discovery gave him a
+pang out of all proportion to its seriousness; since the note in
+his breast-pocket assured him that at four the next day they
+would meet. To his impatience it seemed immeasurably long to
+wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to Mrs. Fisher
+to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with her.
+
+"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where.
+Wasn't she wonderful last night?"
+
+"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a
+neighbouring arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when
+it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction--I
+thought seriously of speaking to cousin Julia."
+
+"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher
+said to Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the
+general derision: "But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's
+married--TOWN TALK was full of her this morning."
+
+"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne,
+stroking his moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the
+dirty sheet? No, of course not; some fellow showed it to me--but
+I'd heard the stories before. When a girl's as good-looking as
+that she'd better marry; then no questions are asked. In our
+imperfectly organized society there is no provision as yet for
+the young woman who claims the privileges of marriage without
+assuming its obligations."
+
+"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of
+Mr. Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.
+
+"Rosedale--good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his
+eye-glass. "Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on
+us."
+
+"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our
+family," Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who
+sat in oppressive bridal finery at the other side of the room,
+quelled him with the judicial reflection: "In Lily's
+circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a standard."
+
+"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs.
+Fisher rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off
+his head. What do you think he said to me after her TABLEAU?
+'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I could get Paul Morpeth to paint her
+like that, the picture'd appreciate a hundred per cent in ten
+years.'"
+
+"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
+restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.
+
+"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs.
+Where was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't
+heard of anything."
+
+"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish
+who had arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in,
+and she gave the driver the Trenors' address."
+
+"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
+closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."
+
+"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come
+now, Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no
+head for numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an
+adjoining foot, and the smile that circled the room.
+
+In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands
+with his hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he
+wondered why he had stayed in it so long.
+
+On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's:
+"It seems to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you
+disapprove of."
+
+Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
+element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her
+beyond! That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He
+knew that Perseus's task is not done when he has loosed
+Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she
+cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he
+beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had strength for
+both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him. It
+was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win
+through, but a clogging morass of old associations and habits,
+and for the moment its vapours were in his throat. But he would
+see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the
+dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to
+safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor with which he was
+trying to build up a defence against the influences of the last
+hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
+which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so
+swayed by them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life,
+if his own view of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he
+saw her reflected?
+
+The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and
+he strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of
+the night. At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him
+with an offer of company.
+
+"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now
+that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.
+It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on
+the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as
+divorce: both tend to obscure the moral issue."
+
+Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than
+Van Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter
+confined himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in
+control. Happily Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of
+social aspects, and with Selden for audience was eager to show
+the sureness of his touch. Mrs. Fisher lived in an East side
+street near the Park, and as the two men walked down Fifth Avenue
+the new architectural developments of that versatile thoroughfare
+invited Van Alstyne's comment.
+
+"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder!
+The man who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are
+put on the table at once. His facade is a complete architectural
+meal; if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought
+the money had given out. Not a bad purchase for Rosedale, though:
+attracts attention, and awes the Western sight-seer. By and bye
+he'll get out of that phase, and want something that the crowd
+will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he marries my
+clever cousin---"
+
+Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'?
+Rather clever of its kind, don't you think?"
+
+They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich
+restraint of line, which suggested the clever corseting of a
+redundant figure.
+
+"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to
+Europe, and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a
+copy of the TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt
+furniture is thought to be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever
+chap that architect is, though--how he takes his client's
+measure! He has put the whole of Mrs. Bry in his use of the
+composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember, he chose the
+Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
+Trenor house is one of his best things--doesn't look like a
+banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to
+build out a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that
+point keeps her at Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys'
+ball-room must rankle: you may be sure she knows 'em as well as
+if she'd been there last night with a yard-measure. Who said she
+was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She isn't, I know; Mrs.
+Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I suppose Gus
+lives in the back."
+
+He had halted opposite the Trenors' corner, and Selden perforce
+stayed his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited;
+only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional
+occupancy.
+
+"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred
+and fifty feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's
+to be, with a gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on
+above. I suggested changing the entrance, and carrying the
+drawing-room across the whole Fifth Avenue front; you see the
+front door corresponds with the windows---"
+
+The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration
+dropped to a startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures
+were seen silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment
+a hansom halted at the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated
+down to it in a haze of evening draperies; while the other, black
+and bulky, remained persistently projected against the light.
+
+For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident
+were silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off,
+and the whole scene slipped by as if with the turn of a
+stereopticon.
+
+Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.
+
+"A--hem--nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I
+know I may count on you--appearances are deceptive--and Fifth
+Avenue is so imperfectly lighted---"
+
+"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street
+without seeing the other's extended hand.
+
+
+
+Alone with her cousin's kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He
+had kissed her before--but not with another woman on his lips. If
+he had spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming
+the dark flood as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot
+through with glory, and it was harder to drown at sunrise than in
+darkness. Gerty hid her face from the light, but it pierced to
+the crannies of her soul. She had been so contented, life had
+seemed so simple and sufficient--why had he come to trouble her
+with new hopes? And Lily--Lily, her best friend! Woman-like, she
+accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily, her fond
+imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
+her--had understood and sympathized with the modest independence
+of her life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in
+the nice balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical
+and simple in his view of her: his cleverness had never overawed
+her because she had felt at home in his heart. And now she was
+thrust out, and the door barred against her by Lily's hand! Lily,
+for whose admission there she herself had pleaded! The situation
+was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She knew Selden--she
+saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped to dispel
+his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
+him--she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known
+to each other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted
+was inconscient; he had never guessed her foolish secret; but
+Lily--Lily must have known! When, in such matters, are a woman's
+perceptions at fault? And if she knew, then she had deliberately
+despoiled her friend, and in mere wantonness of power,
+since, even to Gerty's suddenly flaming jealousy, it seemed
+incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden's wife. Lily might
+be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable
+of living without it, and Selden's eager investigations into the
+small economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as
+tragically duped as herself.
+
+She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were
+crumbling to cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade.
+Just beneath it stood the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out
+imperially on the cheap gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the
+little room. Could Selden picture her in such an interior? Gerty
+felt the poverty, the insignificance of her surroundings: she
+beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the cruelty of
+Lily's judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
+dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily
+ever really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was
+the taste of new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature
+experimenting in a laboratory.
+
+The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose
+with a start. She had an appointment early the next morning with
+a district visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp,
+covered the fire, and went into her bedroom to undress. In the
+little glass above her dressing-table she saw her face reflected
+against the shadows of the room, and tears blotted the
+reflection. What right had she to dream the dreams of loveliness?
+A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly as she
+undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
+setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life
+must be taken up as though there had been no break in its
+routine. Her servant did not come till eight o'clock, and she
+prepared her own tea-tray and placed it beside the bed. Then she
+locked the door of the flat, extinguished her light and lay down.
+But on her bed sleep would not come, and she lay face to face
+with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It closed with her in the
+darkness like some formless evil to be blindly grappled with.
+Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight forces,
+were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
+wanted happiness--wanted it as fiercely and unscrupulously as Lily
+did, but without Lily's power of obtaining it. And in her conscious
+impotence she lay shivering, and hated her friend---
+
+A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a
+light and stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat
+incoherently, then she felt the sobering touch of fact, and
+remembered that such calls were not unknown in her charitable
+work. She flung on her dressing-gown to answer the summons, and
+unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision of Lily Bart.
+
+Gerty's first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as
+though Lily's presence flashed too sudden a light upon her
+misery. Then she heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her
+friend's face, and felt herself caught and clung to.
+
+"Lily--what is it?" she exclaimed.
+
+Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one
+who has gained shelter after a long flight.
+
+"I was so cold--I couldn't go home. Have you a fire?"
+
+Gerty's compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of
+habit, swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one
+who needed help--for what reason, there was no time to pause and
+conjecture: disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty's
+lips, and made her draw her friend silently into the sitting-room
+and seat her by the darkened hearth.
+
+"There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute."
+
+She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It
+flashed strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes,
+and smote on the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at
+each other in silence; then Lily repeated: "I couldn't go home."
+
+"No--no--you came here, dear! You're cold and tired--sit quiet,
+and I'll make you some tea."
+
+Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade:
+all personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and
+experience had taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before
+the wound is probed.
+
+Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind
+her soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has
+kept wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she
+pushed it away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.
+
+"I came here because I couldn't bear to be alone," she said.
+
+Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.
+
+"Lily! Something has happened--can't you tell me?"
+
+"I couldn't bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my
+room at Aunt Julia's--so I came here---"
+
+She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty
+in a fresh burst of fear.
+
+"Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their
+wings--alone, at night, in the dark? But you don't know--there is
+nothing to make the dark dreadful to you---"
+
+The words, flashing back on Gerty's last hours, struck from her a
+faint derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery,
+was blinded to everything outside it.
+
+"You'll let me stay? I shan't mind when daylight comes--Is it
+late? Is the night nearly over? It must be awful to be
+sleepless--everything stands by the bed and stares---"
+
+Miss Farish caught her straying hands. "Lily, look at me!
+Something has happened--an accident? You have been
+frightened--what has frightened you? Tell me if you can--a word
+or two--so that I can help you."
+
+Lily shook her head.
+
+"I am not frightened: that's not the word. Can you imagine
+looking into your glass some morning and seeing a
+disfigurement--some hideous change that has come to you while you
+slept? Well, I seem to myself like that--I can't bear to see
+myself in my own thoughts--I hate ugliness, you know--I've always
+turned from it--but I can't explain to you--you wouldn't
+understand."
+
+She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.
+
+"How long the night is! And I know I shan't sleep tomorrow. Some
+one told me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors.
+And he was not wicked, only unfortunate--and I see now how he
+must have suffered, lying alone with his thoughts! But I am
+bad--a bad girl--all my thoughts are bad--I have always had bad
+people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought I could
+manage my own life--I was proud--proud! but now I'm on their
+level---"
+
+Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.
+
+Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of
+experience, till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech.
+She had first imagined some physical shock, some peril of the
+crowded streets, since Lily was presumably on her way home from
+Carry Fisher's; but she now saw that other nerve-centres were
+smitten, and her mind trembled back from conjecture.
+
+Lily's sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.
+
+"There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me--do they ever pick
+themselves up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?"
+
+"Lily! you mustn't speak so--you're dreaming."
+
+"Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning
+back--your old self rejects you, and shuts you out."
+
+She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness.
+"Go to bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I'll watch here
+by the fire, and you'll leave the light, and your door open. All
+I want is to feel that you are near me." She laid both hands on
+Gerty's shoulders, with a smile that was like sunrise on a sea
+strewn with wreckage.
+
+"I can't leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
+frozen--you must undress and be made warm." Gerty paused with
+sudden compunction. "But Mrs. Peniston--it's past midnight! What
+will she think?"
+
+"She goes to bed. I have a latch-key. It doesn't matter--I can't
+go back there."
+
+"There's no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me
+where you have been. Listen, Lily--it will help you to speak!"
+She regained Miss Bart's hands, and pressed them against her.
+"Try to tell me--it will clear your poor head. Listen--you were
+dining at Carry Fisher's." Gerty paused and added with a flash of
+heroism: "Lawrence Selden went from here to find you."
+
+At the word, Lily's face melted from locked anguish to the open
+misery of a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with
+tears.
+
+"He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he
+tried to help me. He told me--he warned me long ago--he foresaw
+that I should grow hateful to myself!"
+
+The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened
+the springs of self-pity in her friend's dry breast, and tear by
+tear Lily poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped
+sideways in Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately
+Selden's had leaned, in a beauty of abandonment that drove home
+to Gerty's aching senses the inevitableness of her own defeat.
+Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on Lily's part to rob her of
+her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was to see in it a
+natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to such as
+Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they
+despoil. But if Selden's infatuation seemed a fatal necessity,
+the effect that his name produced shook Gerty's steadfastness
+with a last pang. Men pass through such superhuman loves and
+outlive them: they are the probation subduing the heart to human
+joys. How gladly Gerty would have welcomed the ministry of
+healing: how willingly have soothed the sufferer back to
+tolerance of life! But Lily's self-betrayal took this last hope
+from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the
+siren who loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead
+from their adventure.
+
+Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. "Gerty, you know
+him--you understand him--tell me; if I went to him, if I told
+him everything--if I said: 'I am bad through and through--I want
+admiration, I want excitement, I want money--' yes, MONEY!
+That's my shame, Gerty--and it's known, it's said of me--it's
+what men think of me--If I said it all to him--told him the
+whole story--said plainly: 'I've sunk lower than the lowest, for
+I've taken what they take, and not paid as they pay'--oh, Gerty,
+you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him everything
+would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me, and
+save me from loathing myself?"
+
+Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation
+had come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As
+a dark river sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her
+chance of happiness surge past under a flash of temptation. What
+prevented her from saying: "He is like other men?" She
+was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so would have been
+like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before herself
+in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of
+her own passion.
+
+"Yes: I know him; he will help you," she said; and in a moment
+Lily's passion was weeping itself out against her breast.
+
+There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay
+down on it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily's dress and
+persuaded her to put her lips to the warm tea. The light
+extinguished, they lay still in the darkness, Gerty shrinking to
+the outer edge of the narrow couch to avoid contact with her
+bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be caressed, she had
+long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses toward her
+friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily's
+nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the
+sheet stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer
+rest, a strand of her hair swept Gerty's cheek with its
+fragrance. Everything about her was warm and soft and scented:
+even the stains of her grief became her as rain-drops do the
+beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her side, in
+the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs
+from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her
+hand, groped for her friend's, and held it fast.
+
+"Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things," she
+moaned; and Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing
+her head in its hollow as a mother makes a nest for a tossing
+child. In the warm hollow Lily lay still and her breathing grew
+low and regular. Her hand still dung to Gerty's as if to ward off
+evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers relaxed, her head sank
+deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she slept.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+When lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light
+was in the room.
+
+She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings;
+then memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In
+the cold slant of light reflected from the back wall of a
+neighbouring building, she saw her evening dress and opera cloak
+lying in a tawdry heap on a chair. Finery laid off is as
+unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily
+that, at home, her maid's vigilance had always spared her the
+sight of such incongruities. Her body ached with fatigue, and
+with the constriction of her attitude in Gerty's bed. All through
+her troubled sleep she had been conscious of having no space to
+toss in, and the long effort to remain motionless made her feel
+as if she had spent her night in a train.
+
+This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself;
+then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding mental
+prostration, a languor of horror more insufferable than the first
+rush of her disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning
+with this weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh
+effort. She must find some way out of the slough into which she
+had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the dread of her
+morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But she
+was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She
+lay back, looking about the poor slit of a room with a renewal of
+physical distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings,
+brought no freshness through the window; steam-heat was beginning
+to sing in a coil of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking
+penetrated the crack of the door.
+
+The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a
+cup of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary
+light, and her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of
+her skin.
+
+She glanced shyly at Lily, asking in an embarrassed tone how she
+felt; Lily answered with the same constraint, and raised herself
+up to drink the tea.
+
+"I must have been over-tired last night; I think I had a
+nervous attack in the carriage," she said, as the drink brought
+clearness to her sluggish thoughts.
+
+"You were not well; I am so glad you came here," Gerty returned.
+
+"But how am I to get home? And Aunt Julia--?"
+
+"She knows; I telephoned early, and your maid has brought your
+things. But won't you eat something? I scrambled the eggs
+myself."
+
+Lily could not eat; but the tea strengthened her to rise and
+dress under her maid's searching gaze. It was a relief to her
+that Gerty was obliged to hasten away: the two kissed silently,
+but without a trace of the previous night's emotion.
+
+Lily found Mrs. Peniston in a state of agitation. She had sent
+for Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the
+storm of enquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had
+an attack of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher's; that,
+fearing she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone
+to Miss Farish's instead; but that a quiet night had restored
+her, and that she had no need of a doctor.
+
+This was a relief to Mrs. Peniston, who could give herself up to
+her own symptoms, and Lily was advised to go and lie down, her
+aunt's panacea for all physical and moral disorders. In the
+solitude of her own room she was brought back to a sharp
+contemplation of facts. Her daylight view of them necessarily
+differed from the cloudy vision of the night. The winged furies
+were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea.
+But her fears seemed the uglier, thus shorn of their vagueness;
+and besides, she had to act, not rave. For the first time she
+forced herself to reckon up the exact amount of her debt to
+Trenor; and the result of this hateful computation was the
+discovery that she had, in all, received nine thousand dollars
+from him. The flimsy pretext on which it had been given and
+received shrivelled up in the blaze of her shame: she knew that
+not a penny of it was her own, and that to restore her
+self-respect she must at once repay the whole amount. The
+inability thus to solace her outraged feelings gave her a
+paralyzing sense of insignificance. She was realizing for the
+first time that a woman's dignity may cost more to keep up than
+her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral
+attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the
+world appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.
+
+After luncheon, when Grace Stepney's prying eyes had been
+removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went
+upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself
+in her black satin arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a
+bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice
+Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the same distaste
+which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings of the
+court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare
+confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was
+associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from
+Mrs. Peniston's lips. That lady's dread of a scene gave her an
+inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not
+have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of
+right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail
+it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the
+present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means
+of escape from an intolerable situation.
+
+Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. "You're a bad colour,
+Lily: this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,"
+she said.
+
+Miss Bart saw an opening. "I don't think it's that, Aunt Julia;
+I've had worries," she replied.
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a
+purse closing against a beggar.
+
+"I'm sorry to bother you with them," Lily continued, "but I
+really believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by
+anxious thoughts--"
+
+"I should have said Carry Fisher's cook was enough to account for
+it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891--the spring
+of the year we went to Aix--and I remember dining there two days
+before we sailed, and feeling SURE the coppers hadn't been
+scoured."
+
+"I don't think I ate much; I can't eat or sleep." Lily paused,
+and then said abruptly: "The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some
+money."
+
+Mrs. Peniston's face clouded perceptibly, but did not
+express the astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent,
+and Lily was forced to continue: "I have been foolish---"
+
+"No doubt you have: extremely foolish," Mrs. Peniston interposed.
+"I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses--not
+to mention the handsome presents I've always given you---"
+
+"Oh, you've been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget
+your kindness. But perhaps you don't quite realize the expense a
+girl is put to nowadays---"
+
+"I don't realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your
+clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely
+dressed; but I paid Celeste's bill for you last October."
+
+Lily hesitated: her aunt's implacable memory had never been more
+inconvenient. "You were as kind as possible; but I have had to
+get a few things since---"
+
+"What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me
+see the bill--I daresay the woman is swindling you."
+
+"Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully
+expensive; and one needs so many different kinds, with country
+visits, and golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo---"
+
+"Let me see the bill," Mrs. Peniston repeated.
+
+Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not
+yet sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented
+was only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.
+
+"She hasn't sent in the bill for my winter things, but I KNOW
+it's large; and there are one or two other things; I've been
+careless and imprudent--I'm frightened to think of what I owe---"
+
+She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston,
+vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not
+be without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that
+of making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.
+
+"Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and
+after frightening me to death by your performance of last night
+you might at least choose a better time to worry me with such
+matters." Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a
+tablet of digitalis. "If you owe Celeste another
+thousand, she may send me her account," she added, as though to
+end the discussion at any cost.
+
+"I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a
+time; but I have really no choice--I ought to have spoken
+sooner--I owe a great deal more than a thousand dollars."
+
+"A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!"
+
+"I told you it was not only Celeste. I--there are other
+bills--more pressing--that must be settled."
+
+"What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone
+off your head," said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. "But if you
+have run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put
+aside your monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay
+quietly here until next spring, instead of racing about all over
+the country, you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four
+or five months you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the
+dress-maker now."
+
+Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract
+even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of
+paying Celeste's bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the
+dress-maker's account, and would make out the cheque to her and
+not to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day
+was over!
+
+"The debts I speak of are--different--not like tradesmen's
+bills," she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston's look made her
+almost afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected
+anything? The idea precipitated Lily's avowal.
+
+"The fact is, I've played cards a good deal--bridge; the women
+all do it; girls too--it's expected. Sometimes I've won--won a
+good deal--but lately I've been unlucky--and of course such debts
+can't be paid off gradually---"
+
+She paused: Mrs. Peniston's face seemed to be petrifying as she
+listened.
+
+"Cards--you've played cards for money? It's true, then: when I
+was told so I wouldn't believe it. I won't ask if the other
+horrors I was told were true too; I've heard enough for the state
+of my nerves. When I think of the example you've had in this
+house! But I suppose it's your foreign bringing-up--no one knew
+where your mother picked up her friends. And her Sundays were a
+scandal--that I know."
+
+Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. "You play cards on Sunday?"
+
+Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at
+Bellomont and with the Dorsets.
+
+"You're hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for
+cards, but a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and
+one drifts into doing what the others do. I've had a dreadful
+lesson, and if you'll help me out this time I promise you--"
+
+Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. "You needn't make any
+promises: it's unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn't
+undertake to pay your gambling debts."
+
+"Aunt Julia! You don't mean that you won't help me?"
+
+"I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I
+countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker, I
+will settle with her--beyond that I recognize no obligation to
+assume your debts."
+
+Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt.
+Pride stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her
+lips: "Aunt Julia, I shall be disgraced--I--" But she could go no
+farther. If her aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of
+the gambling debts, in what spirit would she receive the terrible
+avowal of the truth?
+
+"I consider that you ARE disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your
+conduct far more than by its results. You say your friends have
+persuaded you to play cards with them; well, they may as well
+learn a lesson too. They can probably afford to lose a little
+money--and at any rate, I am not going to waste any of mine in
+paying them. And now I must ask you to leave me--this scene has
+been extremely painful, and I have my own health to consider.
+Draw down the blinds, please; and tell Jennings I will see no one
+this afternoon but Grace Stepney."
+
+Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was
+trembling with fear and anger--the rush of the furies' wings was
+in her ears. She walked up and down the room with blind irregular
+steps. The last door of escape was closed--she felt herself shut
+in with her dishonour.
+
+Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the
+chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she
+remembered that Selden was to come to her at four. She had
+meant to put him off with a word--but now her heart leaped at the
+thought of seeing him. Was there not a promise of rescue in his
+love? As she had lain at Gerty's side the night before, she had
+thought of his coming, and of the sweetness of weeping out her
+pain upon his breast. Of course she had meant to clear herself of
+its consequences before she met him--she had never really doubted
+that Mrs. Peniston would come to her aid. And she had felt, even
+in the full storm of her misery, that Selden's love could not be
+her ultimate refuge; only it would be so sweet to take a moment's
+shelter there, while she gathered fresh strength to go on.
+
+But now his love was her only hope, and as she sat alone with her
+wretchedness the thought of confiding in him became as seductive
+as the river's flow to the suicide. The first plunge would be
+terrible--but afterward, what blessedness might come! She
+remembered Gerty's words: "I know him--he will help you"; and her
+mind clung to them as a sick person might cling to a healing
+relic. Oh, if he really understood--if he would help her to
+gather up her broken life, and put it together in some new
+semblance in which no trace of the past should remain! He had
+always made her feel that she was worthy of better things, and
+she had never been in greater need of such solace. Once and again
+she shrank at the thought of imperilling his love by her
+confession: for love was what she needed--it would take the glow
+of passion to weld together the shattered fragments of her
+self-esteem. But she recurred to Gerty's words and held fast to
+them. She was sure that Gerty knew Selden's feeling for her, and
+it had never dawned upon her blindness that Gerty's own judgment
+of him was coloured by emotions far more ardent than her own.
+
+Four o'clock found her in the drawing-room: she was sure that
+Selden would be punctual. But the hour came and passed--it moved
+on feverishly, measured by her impatient heart-beats. She had
+time to take a fresh survey of her wretchedness, and to fluctuate
+anew between the impulse to confide in Selden and the dread of
+destroying his illusions. But as the minutes passed the need of
+throwing herself on his comprehension became more urgent: she
+could not bear the weight of her misery alone. There would be a
+perilous moment, perhaps: but could she not trust to her
+beauty to bridge it over, to land her safe in the shelter of his
+devotion?
+
+But the hour sped on and Selden did not come. Doubtless he had
+been detained, or had misread her hurriedly scrawled note, taking
+the four for a five. The ringing of the door-bell a few minutes
+after five confirmed this supposition, and made Lily hastily
+resolve to write more legibly in future. The sound of steps in
+the hall, and of the butler's voice preceding them, poured fresh
+energy into her veins. She felt herself once more the alert and
+competent moulder of emergencies, and the remembrance of her
+power over Selden flushed her with sudden confidence. But when
+the drawing-room door opened it was Rosedale who came in.
+
+The reaction caused her a sharp pang, but after a passing
+movement of irritation at the clumsiness of fate, and at her own
+carelessness in not denying the door to all but Selden, she
+controlled herself and greeted Rosedale amicably. It was annoying
+that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in
+possession, but Lily was mistress of the art of ridding herself
+of superfluous company, and to her present mood Rosedale seemed
+distinctly negligible.
+
+His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few
+moments' conversation. She had caught at the Brys' entertainment
+as an easy impersonal subject, likely to tide them over the
+interval till Selden appeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously
+planted beside the tea-table, his hands in his pockets, his legs
+a little too freely extended, at once gave the topic a personal
+turn.
+
+"Pretty well done--well, yes, I suppose it was: Welly Bry's got
+his back up and don't mean to let go till he's got the hang of
+the thing. Of course, there were things here and there--things
+Mrs. Fisher couldn't be expected to see to--the champagne wasn't
+cold, and the coats got mixed in the coat-room. I would have
+spent more money on the music. But that's my character: if I want
+a thing I'm willing to pay: I don't go up to the counter, and
+then wonder if the article's worth the price. I wouldn't be
+satisfied to entertain like the Welly Brys; I'd want something
+that would look more easy and natural, more as if I took it in my
+stride. And it takes just two things to do that, Miss
+Bart: money, and the right woman to spend it."
+
+He paused, and examined her attentively while she affected to
+rearrange the tea-cups.
+
+"I've got the money," he continued, clearing his throat, "and
+what I want is the woman--and I mean to have her too."
+
+He leaned forward a little, resting his hands on the head of his
+walking-stick. He had seen men of Ned Van Alstyne's type bring
+their hats and sticks into a drawing-room, and he thought it
+added a touch of elegant familiarity to their appearance.
+
+Lily was silent, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting
+on his face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration
+would take some time to make, and that Selden must surely appear
+before the moment of refusal had been reached. Her brooding look,
+as of a mind withdrawn yet not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale
+full of a subtle encouragement. He would not have liked any
+evidence of eagerness.
+
+"I mean to have her too," he repeated, with a laugh intended to
+strengthen his self-assurance. "I generally HAVE got what I
+wanted in life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I've got more than
+I know how to invest; and now the money doesn't seem to be of any
+account unless I can spend it on the right woman. That's what I
+want to do with it: I want my wife to make all the other women
+feel small. I'd never grudge a dollar that was spent on that. But
+it isn't every woman can do it, no matter how much you spend on
+her. There was a girl in some history book who wanted gold
+shields, or something, and the fellows threw 'em at her, and she
+was crushed under 'em: they killed her. Well, that's true enough:
+some women looked buried under their jewelry. What I want is a
+woman who'll hold her head higher the more diamonds I put on it.
+And when I looked at you the other night at the Brys', in that
+plain white dress, looking as if you had a crown on, I said to
+myself: 'By gad, if she had one she'd wear it as if it grew on
+her.'"
+
+Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his
+theme: "Tell you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs
+more than all the rest of 'em put together. If a woman's
+going to ignore her pearls, they want to be better than anybody
+else's--and so it is with everything else. You know what I
+mean--you know it's only the showy things that are cheap. Well, I
+should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if
+she wanted to. I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and
+that's the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to
+demean herself in that way." He paused, and then added, with an
+unfortunate lapse to an earlier manner: "I guess you know the
+lady I've got in view, Miss Bart."
+
+Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge.
+Even through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr.
+Rosedale's millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough
+of them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them
+grew increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden's expected
+coming. The contrast was too grotesque: she could scarcely
+suppress the smile it provoked. She decided that directness would
+be best.
+
+"If you mean me, Mr. Rosedale, I am very grateful--very much
+flattered; but I don't know what I have ever done to make you
+think--"
+
+"Oh, if you mean you're not dead in love with me, I've got sense
+enough left to see that. And I ain't talking to you as if you
+were--I presume I know the kind of talk that's expected under
+those circumstances. I'm confoundedly gone on you--that's about
+the size of it--and I'm just giving you a plain business
+statement of the consequences. You're not very fond of
+me--YET--but you're fond of luxury, and style, and amusement, and
+of not having to worry about cash. You like to have a good time,
+and not have to settle for it; and what I propose to do is to
+provide for the good time and do the settling."
+
+He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: "You are
+mistaken in one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am
+prepared to settle for."
+
+She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words
+implied a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was
+prepared to meet and repudiate it. But if he recognized her
+meaning it failed to abash him, and he went on in the same tone:
+"I didn't mean to give offence; excuse me if I've spoken too
+plainly. But why ain't you straight with me--why do you
+put up that kind of bluff? You know there've been times when you
+were bothered--damned bothered--and as a girl gets older, and
+things keep moving along, why, before she knows it, the things
+she wants are liable to move past her and not come back. I don't
+say it's anywhere near that with you yet; but you've had a taste
+of bothers that a girl like yourself ought never to have known
+about, and what I'm offering you is the chance to turn your back
+on them once for all."
+
+The colour burned in Lily's face as he ended; there was no
+mistaking the point he meant to make, and to permit it to pass
+unheeded was a fatal confession of weakness, while to resent it
+too openly was to risk offending him at a perilous moment.
+Indignation quivered on her lip; but it was quelled by the secret
+voice which warned her that she must not quarrel with him. He
+knew too much about her, and even at the moment when it was
+essential that he should show himself at his best, he did not
+scruple to let her see how much he knew. How then would he use
+his power when her expression of contempt had dispelled his one
+motive for restraint? Her whole future might hinge on her way
+of answering him: she had to stop and consider that, in the
+stress of her other anxieties, as a breathless fugitive may have
+to pause at the cross-roads and try to decide coolly which turn
+to take.
+
+"You are quite right, Mr. Rosedale. I HAVE had bothers; and
+I am grateful to you for wanting to relieve me of them. It is
+not always easy to be quite independent and self-respecting
+when one is poor and lives among rich people; I have been
+careless about money, and have worried about my bills. But I
+should be selfish and ungrateful if I made that a reason for
+accepting all you offer, with no better return to make than
+the desire to be free from my anxieties. You must give me
+time--time to think of your kindness--and of what I could
+give you in return for it---"
+
+She held out her hand with a charming gesture in which
+dismissal was shorn of its rigour. Its hint of future leniency
+made Rosedale rise in obedience to it, a little flushed with his
+unhoped-for success, and disciplined by the tradition of his
+blood to accept what was conceded, without undue haste to
+press for more. Something in his prompt acquiescence frightened
+her; she felt behind it the stored force of a patience that
+might subdue the strongest will. But at least they had parted
+amicably, and he was out of the house without meeting
+Selden--Selden, whose continued absence now smote her with
+a new alarm. Rosedale had remained over an hour, and she
+understood that it was now too late to hope for Selden. He
+would write explaining his absence, of course; there would be
+a note from him by the late post. But her confession would
+have to be postponed; and the chill of the delay settled heavily
+on her fagged spirit.
+
+It lay heavier when the postman's last ring brought no note
+for her, and she had to go upstairs to a lonely night--a night
+as grim and sleepless as her tortured fancy had pictured it to
+Gerty. She had never learned to live with her own thoughts,
+and to be confronted with them through such hours of lucid
+misery made the confused wretchedness of her previous vigil
+seem easily bearable.
+
+Daylight disbanded the phantom crew, and made it clear
+to her that she would hear from Selden before noon; but the
+day passed without his writing or coming. Lily remained at
+home, lunching and dining alone with her aunt, who complained of
+flutterings of the heart, and talked icily on general
+topics. Mrs. Peniston went to bed early, and when she had
+gone Lily sat down and wrote a note to Selden. She was
+about to ring for a messenger to despatch it when her eye fell
+on a paragraph in the evening paper which lay at her elbow:
+"Mr. Lawrence Selden was among the passengers sailing this
+afternoon for Havana and the West Indies on the Windward
+Liner Antilles."
+
+She laid down the paper and sat motionless, staring at her
+note. She understood now that he was never coming--that
+he had gone away because he was afraid that he might come.
+She rose, and walking across the floor stood gazing at herself
+for a long time in the brightly-lit mirror above the mantel-
+piece. The lines in her face came out terribly--she looked
+old; and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she look
+to other people? She moved away, and began to wander
+aimlessly about the room, fitting her steps with mechanical
+precision between the monstrous roses of Mrs. Peniston's
+Axminster. Suddenly she noticed that the pen with which she
+had written to Selden still rested against the uncovered
+inkstand. She seated herself again, and taking out an envelope,
+addressed it rapidly to Rosedale. Then she laid out a sheet of
+paper, and sat over it with suspended pen. It had been easy
+enough to write the date, and "Dear Mr. Rosedale"--but after that
+her inspiration flagged. She meant to tell him to come
+to her, but the words refused to shape themselves. At length
+she began: "I have been thinking---" then she laid the pen
+down, and sat with her elbows on the table and her face hidden in
+her hands.
+
+Suddenly she started up at the sound of the door-bell. It
+was not late--barely ten o'clock--and there might still be a
+note from Selden, or a message--or he might be there himself, on
+the other side of the door! The announcement of his
+sailing might have been a mistake--it might be another Lawrence
+Selden who had gone to Havana--all these possibilities
+had time to flash through her mind, and build up the conviction
+that she was after all to see or hear from him, before the
+drawing-room door opened to admit a servant carrying a
+telegram.
+
+Lily tore it open with shaking hands, and read Bertha Dorset's
+name below the message: "Sailing unexpectedly tomorrow. Will you
+join us on a cruise in Mediterranean?"
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK TWO
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+It came vividly to Selden on the Casino steps that Monte Carlo
+had, more than any other place he knew, the gift of accommodating
+itself to each man's humour. His own, at the moment, lent it a
+festive readiness of welcome that might well, in a disenchanted
+eye, have turned to paint and facility. So frank an appeal for
+participation--so outspoken a recognition of the holiday vein in
+human nature--struck refreshingly on a mind jaded by prolonged
+hard work in surroundings made for the discipline of the senses.
+As he surveyed the white square set in an exotic coquetry of
+architecture, the studied tropicality of the gardens, the groups
+loitering in the foreground against mauve mountains which
+suggested a sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting
+of scenes--as he took in the whole outspread effect of light and
+leisure, he felt a movement of revulsion from the last few months
+of his life.
+
+The New York winter had presented an interminable perspective of
+snow-burdened days, reaching toward a spring of raw sunshine and
+furious air, when the ugliness of things rasped the eye as the
+gritty wind ground into the skin. Selden, immersed in his work,
+had told himself that external conditions did not matter to a man
+in his state, and that cold and ugliness were a good tonic for
+relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent case summoned him abroad to
+confer with a client in Paris, he broke reluctantly with the
+routine of the office; and it was only now that, having
+despatched his business, and slipped away for a week in the
+south, he began to feel the renewed zest of spectatorship that is
+the solace of those who take an objective interest in life.
+
+The multiplicity of its appeals--the perpetual surprise of its
+contrasts and resemblances! All these tricks and turns of the
+show were upon him with a spring as he descended the Casino steps
+and paused on the pavement at its doors. He had not been abroad
+for seven years--and what changes the renewed contact produced!
+If the central depths were untouched, hardly a pin-point of
+surface remained the same. And this was the very place to
+bring out the completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the
+perpetuities, might have left him as he was: but this tent
+pitched for a day's revelry spread a roof of oblivion between
+himself and his fixed sky.
+
+It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its
+climax and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens
+would soon dissolve and re-form in other scenes. Meanwhile the
+last moments of the performance seemed to gain an added
+brightness from the hovering threat of the curtain. The quality
+of the air, the exuberance of the flowers, the blue intensity of
+sea and sky, produced the effect of a closing TABLEAU, when all
+the lights are turned on at once. This impression was presently
+heightened by the way in which a consciously conspicuous group of
+people advanced to the middle front, and stood before Selden with
+the air of the chief performers gathered together by the
+exigencies of the final effect. Their appearance confirmed the
+impression that the show had been staged regardless of expense,
+and emphasized its resemblance to one of those "costume-plays" in
+which the protagonists walk through the passions without
+displacing a drapery. The ladies stood in unrelated attitudes
+calculated to isolate their effects, and the men hung about them
+as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors are named in the
+programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly fused the group
+by arresting the attention of one of its members.
+
+"Why, Mr. Selden!" Mrs. Fisher exclaimed in surprise; and with a
+gesture toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she
+added plaintively: "We're starving to death because we can't
+decide where to lunch."
+
+Welcomed into their group, and made the confidant of their
+difficulty, Selden learned with amusement that there were several
+places where one might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit
+something by lunching; so that eating actually became a minor
+consideration on the very spot consecrated to its rites.
+
+"Of course one gets the best things at the TERRASSE--but that
+looks as if one hadn't any other reason for being there: the
+Americans who don't know any one always rush for the best food.
+And the Duchess of Beltshire has taken up Becassin's lately,"
+Mrs. Bry earnestly summed up.
+
+Mrs. Bry, to Mrs. Fisher's despair, had not progressed beyond the
+point of weighing her social alternatives in public. She could
+not acquire the air of doing things because she wanted to, and
+making her choice the final seal of their fitness.
+
+Mr. Bry, a short pale man, with a business face and leisure
+clothes, met the dilemma hilariously.
+
+"I guess the Duchess goes where it's cheapest, unless she can get
+her meal paid for. If you offered to blow her off at the TERRASSE
+she'd turn up fast enough."
+
+But Mrs. Jack Stepney interposed. "The Grand Dukes go to that
+little place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it's the only
+restaurant in Europe where they can cook peas."
+
+Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming
+worn smile, and the air of having spent his best years in
+piloting the wealthy to the right restaurant, assented with
+gentle emphasis: "It's quite that."
+
+"PEAS?" said Mr. Bry contemptuously. "Can they cook terrapin? It
+just shows," he continued, "what these European markets are, when
+a fellow can make a reputation cooking peas!"
+
+Jack Stepney intervened with authority. "I don't know that I
+quite agree with Dacey: there's a little hole in Paris, off the
+Quai Voltaire--but in any case, I can't advise the Condamine
+GARGOTE; at least not with ladies."
+
+Stepney, since his marriage, had thickened and grown prudish, as
+the Van Osburgh husbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his
+surprise and discomfiture, had developed an earth-shaking
+fastness of gait which left him trailing breathlessly in her
+wake.
+
+"That's where we'll go then!" she declared, with a heavy toss of
+her plumage. "I'm so tired of the TERRASSE: it's as dull as one
+of mother's dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us who
+all the awful people are at the other place--hasn't he, Carry?
+Now, Jack, don't look so solemn!"
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Bry, "all I want to know is who their
+dress-makers are."
+
+"No doubt Dacey can tell you that too," remarked Stepney, with an
+ironic intention which the other received with the light murmur,
+"I can at least FIND OUT, my dear fellow"; and Mrs. Bry
+having declared that she couldn't walk another step, the party
+hailed two or three of the light phaetons which hover attentively
+on the confines of the gardens, and rattled off in procession
+toward the Condamine.
+
+Their destination was one of the little restaurants overhanging
+the boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low
+intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which
+they presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the
+intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of
+twin promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by
+the mediaeval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left
+the terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house. Between the
+two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a light coming and
+going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the culminating
+moment of luncheon, the majestic advance of a great steam-yacht
+drew the company's attention from the peas.
+
+"By Jove, I believe that's the Dorsets back!" Stepney exclaimed;
+and Lord Hubert, dropping his single eye-glass, corroborated:
+"It's the Sabrina--yes."
+
+"So soon? They were to spend a month in Sicily," Mrs. Fisher
+observed.
+
+"I guess they feel as if they had: there's only one up-to-date
+hotel in the whole place," said Mr. Bry disparagingly.
+
+"It was Ned Silverton's idea--but poor Dorset and Lily Bart must
+have been horribly bored." Mrs. Fisher added in an undertone to
+Selden: "I do hope there hasn't been a row."
+
+"It's most awfully jolly having Miss Bart back," said Lord
+Hubert, in his mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added
+ingenuously: "I daresay the Duchess will dine with us, now that
+Lily's here."
+
+"The Duchess admires her immensely: I'm sure she'd be charmed to
+have it arranged," Lord Hubert agreed, with the professional
+promptness of the man accustomed to draw his profit from
+facilitating social contacts: Selden was struck by the
+businesslike change in his manner.
+
+"Lily has been a tremendous success here," Mrs. Fisher continued,
+still addressing herself confidentially to Selden. "She looks ten
+years younger--I never saw her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her
+everywhere in Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia
+had her to stop for a week at Cimiez. People say that was one
+reason why Bertha whisked the yacht off to Sicily: the Crown
+Princess didn't take much notice of her, and she couldn't bear to
+look on at Lily's triumph."
+
+Selden made no reply. He was vaguely aware that Miss Bart was
+cruising in the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not
+occurred to him that there was any chance of running across her
+on the Riviera, where the season was virtually at an end. As he
+leaned back, silently contemplating his filigree cup of Turkish
+coffee, he was trying to put some order in his thoughts, to tell
+himself how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He
+had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of
+emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his
+feelings, and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which
+the sight of the Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to
+think that his three months of engrossing professional work,
+following on the sharp shock of his disillusionment, had cleared
+his mind of its sentimental vapours. The feeling he had nourished
+and given prominence to was one of thankfulness for his escape:
+he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a dangerous
+accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises. Now
+he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realized that after all he
+had not come off unhurt.
+
+An hour later, at Mrs. Fisher's side in the Casino gardens, he
+was trying to find fresh reasons for forgetting the injury
+received in the contemplation of the peril avoided. The party had
+dispersed with the loitering indecision characteristic of social
+movements at Monte Carlo, where the whole place, and the long
+gilded hours of the day, seem to offer an infinity of ways of
+being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally gone off in quest of
+the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with the delicate
+negotiation of securing that lady's presence at dinner, the
+Stepneys had left for Nice in their motor-car, and Mr. Bry had
+departed to take his place in the pigeon shooting match which was
+at the moment engaging his highest faculties.
+
+Mrs. Bry, who had a tendency to grow red and stertorous after
+luncheon, had been judiciously prevailed upon by Carry
+Fisher to withdraw to her hotel for an hour's repose; and Selden
+and his companion were thus left to a stroll propitious to
+confidences. The stroll soon resolved itself into a tranquil
+session on a bench overhung with laurel and Banksian roses, from
+which they caught a dazzle of blue sea between marble balusters,
+and the fiery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like from
+the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter
+of the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the
+smoking of many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these
+influences, suffered Mrs. Fisher to unfold to him the history of
+her recent experiences. She had come abroad with the Welly Brys
+at the moment when fashion flees the inclemency of the New York
+spring. The Brys, intoxicated by their first success, already
+thirsted for new kingdoms, and Mrs. Fisher, viewing the Riviera
+as an easy introduction to London society, had guided their
+course thither. She had affiliations of her own in every capital,
+and a facility for picking them up again after long absences; and
+the carefully disseminated rumour of the Brys' wealth had at once
+gathered about them a group of cosmopolitan pleasure-seekers.
+
+"But things are not going as well as I expected," Mrs. Fisher
+frankly admitted. "It's all very well to say that every body with
+money can get into society; but it would be truer to say that
+NEARLY everybody can. And the London market is so glutted with
+new Americans that, to succeed there now, they must be either
+very clever or awfully queer. The Brys are neither. HE would get
+on well enough if she'd let him alone; they like his slang and
+his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by trying to
+repress him and put herself forward. If she'd be natural
+herself--fat and vulgar and bouncing--it would be all right; but
+as soon as she meets anybody smart she tries to be slender and
+queenly. She tried it with the Duchess of Beltshire and Lady
+Skiddaw, and they fled. I've done my best to make her see her
+mistake--I've said to her again and again: 'Just let yourself go,
+Louisa'; but she keeps up the humbug even with me--I believe she
+keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the door shut.
+
+"The worst of it is," Mrs. Fisher went on, "that she thinks it's
+all MY fault. When the Dorsets turned up here six weeks ago, and
+everybody began to make a fuss about Lily Bart, I could
+see Louisa thought that if she'd had Lily in tow instead of me
+she would have been hob-nobbing with all the royalties by this
+time. She doesn't realize that it's Lily's beauty that does it:
+Lord Hubert tells me Lily is thought even handsomer than when he
+knew her at Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously
+admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted
+to marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking
+step-son turned up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him
+while her marriage-settlements with the step-father were being
+drawn up. Some people said the young man did it on purpose. You
+can fancy the scandal: there was an awful row between the men,
+and people began to look at Lily so queerly that Mrs. Peniston
+had to pack up and finish her cure elsewhere. Not that SHE ever
+understood: to this day she thinks that Aix didn't suit her, and
+mentions her having been sent there as proof of the incompetence
+of French doctors. That's Lily all over, you know: she works like
+a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she
+ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes
+off on a picnic."
+
+Mrs. Fisher paused and looked reflectively at the deep shimmer of
+sea between the cactus-flowers. "Sometimes," she added, "I think
+it's just flightiness--and sometimes I think it's because, at
+heart, she despises the things she's trying for. And it's the
+difficulty of deciding that makes her such an interesting study."
+She glanced tentatively at Selden's motionless profile, and
+resumed with a slight sigh: "Well, all I can say is, I wish she'd
+give ME some of her discarded opportunities. I wish we could
+change places now, for instance. She could make a very good thing
+out of the Brys if she managed them properly, and I should know
+just how to look after George Dorset while Bertha is reading
+Verlaine with Neddy Silverton."
+
+She met Selden's sound of protest with a sharp derisive glance.
+"Well, what's the use of mincing matters? We all know that's what
+Bertha brought her abroad for. When Bertha wants to have a good
+time she has to provide occupation for George. At first I thought
+Lily was going to play her cards well THIS time, but there are
+rumours that Bertha is jealous of her success here and at Cannes,
+and I shouldn't be surprised if there were a break any
+day. Lily's only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly--oh,
+very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it's
+necessary that George's attention should be pretty continuously
+distracted. And I'm bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe
+he'd marry her tomorrow if he found out there was anything wrong
+with Bertha. But you know him--he's as blind as he's jealous; and
+of course Lily's present business is to keep him blind. A clever
+woman might know just the right moment to tear off the bandage:
+but Lily isn't clever in that way, and when George does open his
+eyes she'll probably contrive not to be in his line of vision."
+
+Selden tossed away his cigarette. "By Jove--it's time for my
+train," he exclaimed, with a glance at his watch; adding, in
+reply to Mrs. Fisher's surprised comment--"Why, I thought of
+course you were at Monte!"--a murmured word to the effect that he
+was making Nice his head-quarters.
+
+"The worst of it is, she snubs the Brys now," he heard
+irrelevantly flung after him.
+
+Ten minutes later, in the high-perched bedroom of an hotel
+overlooking the Casino, he was tossing his effects into a couple
+of gaping portmanteaux, while the porter waited outside to
+transport them to the cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge
+down the steep white road to the station to land him safely in
+the afternoon express for Nice; and not till he was installed in
+the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim to himself, with
+a reaction of self-contempt: "What the deuce am I running away
+from?"
+
+The pertinence of the question checked Selden's fugitive impulse
+before the train had started. It was ridiculous to be flying like
+an emotional coward from an infatuation his reason had conquered.
+He had instructed his bankers to forward some important business
+letters to Nice, and at Nice he would quietly await them. He was
+already annoyed with himself for having left Monte Carlo, where
+he had intended to pass the week which remained to him before
+sailing; but it would now be difficult to return on his steps
+without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride
+recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself
+beyond the probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had
+detached himself from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a
+social instance; and viewed in a more personal ways she was not
+likely to be a reassuring object of study. Chance encounters, or
+even the repeated mention of her name, would send his thoughts
+back into grooves from which he had resolutely detached them;
+whereas, if she could be entirely excluded from his life, the
+pressure of new and varied impressions, with which no thought of
+her was connected, would soon complete the work of separation.
+Mrs. Fisher's conversation had, indeed, operated to that end; but
+the treatment was too painful to be voluntarily chosen while
+milder remedies were untried; and Selden thought he could trust
+himself to return gradually to a reasonable view of Miss Bart, if
+only he did not see her.
+
+Having reached the station early, he had arrived at this point in
+his reflections before the increasing throng on the platform
+warned him that he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the
+next moment there was a hand on the door, and he turned to
+confront the very face he was fleeing.
+
+Miss Bart, glowing with the haste of a precipitate descent upon
+the train, headed a group composed of the Dorsets, young
+Silverton and Lord Hubert Dacey, who had barely time to spring
+into the carriage, and envelop Selden in ejaculations of surprise
+and welcome, before the whistle of departure sounded. The party,
+it appeared, were hastening to Nice in response to a sudden
+summons to dine with the Duchess of Beltshire and to see the
+water-fete in the bay; a plan evidently improvised--in spite of
+Lord Hubert's protesting "Oh, I say, you know,"--for the express
+purpose of defeating Mrs. Bry's endeavour to capture the Duchess.
+
+During the laughing relation of this manoeuvre, Selden had time
+for a rapid impression of Miss Bart, who had seated herself
+opposite to him in the golden afternoon light. Scarcely three
+months had elapsed since he had parted from her on the threshold
+of the Brys' conservatory; but a subtle change had passed over
+the quality of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through
+which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically
+visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of
+crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
+brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as
+a rejuvenation: to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and
+arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final
+shape.
+
+He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
+competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she
+took up the thread of their intercourse as though that thread had
+not been snapped with a violence from which he still reeled. Such
+facility sickened him--but he told himself that it was with the
+pang which precedes recovery. Now he would really get well--would
+eject the last drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt
+himself calmer in her presence than he had learned to be in the
+thought of her. Her assumptions and elisions, her short-cuts and
+long DETOURS, the skill with which she contrived to meet him at a
+point from which no inconvenient glimpses of the past were
+visible, suggested what opportunities she had had for practising
+such arts since their last meeting. He felt that she had at last
+arrived at an understanding with herself: had made a pact with
+her rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of
+self-government, under which all vagrant tendencies were either
+held captive or forced into the service of the state.
+
+And he saw other things too in her manner: saw how it had
+adjusted itself to the hidden intricacies of a situation in
+which, even after Mrs. Fisher's elucidating flashes, he still
+felt himself agrope. Surely Mrs. Fisher could no longer charge
+Miss Bart with neglecting her opportunities! To Selden's
+exasperated observation she was only too completely alive to
+them. She was "perfect" to every one: subservient to Bertha's
+anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods,
+brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom
+met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young
+Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her
+only as of something vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden
+noted the fine shades of manner by which she harmonized herself
+with her surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such
+adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was
+on the edge of something--that was the impression left with him.
+He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one
+graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that
+the ground was failing her.
+
+On the Promenade des Anglais, where Ned Silverton hung on him for
+the half hour before dinner, he received a deeper impression of
+the general insecurity. Silverton was in a mood of Titanic
+pessimism. How any one could come to such a damned hole as the
+Riviera--any one with a grain of imagination--with the whole
+Mediterranean to choose from: but then, if one's estimate of a
+place depended on the way they broiled a spring chicken! Gad!
+what a study might be made of the tyranny of the stomach--the way
+a sluggish liver or insufficient gastric juices might affect the
+whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in
+reach--chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the "statutory
+causes"; a woman's life might be ruined by a man's inability to
+digest fresh bread. Grotesque? Yes--and tragic--like most
+absurdities. There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears
+a comic mask.... Where was he? Oh--the reason they chucked Sicily
+and rushed back? Well--partly, no doubt, Miss Bart's desire to
+get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a stone to art and
+poetry--the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And of course
+she persuaded Dorset that the Italian food was bad for him. Oh,
+she could make him believe anything--ANYTHING! Mrs. Dorset was
+aware of it--oh, perfectly: nothing SHE didn't see! But she could
+hold her tongue--she'd had to, often enough. Miss Bart was an
+intimate friend--she wouldn't hear a word against her. Only it
+hurts a woman's pride--there are some things one doesn't get used
+to . . . All this in confidence, of course? Ah--and there were
+the ladies signalling from the balcony of the hotel.... He
+plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative
+cigar.
+
+The conclusions it led him to were fortified, later in the
+evening, by some of those faint corroborative hints that generate
+a light of their own in the dusk of a doubting mind. Selden,
+stumbling on a chance acquaintance, had dined with him, and
+adjourned, still in his company, to the brightly lit Promenade,
+where a line of crowded stands commanded the glittering darkness
+of the waters. The night was soft and persuasive. Overhead hung
+a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from
+the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the
+coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to
+ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats. Down the
+lantern-hung Promenade, snatches of band-music floated above the
+hum of the crowd and the soft tossing of boughs in dusky gardens;
+and between these gardens and the backs of the stands there
+flowed a stream of people in whom the vociferous carnival mood
+seemed tempered by the growing languor of the season.
+
+Selden and his companion, unable to get seats on one of the
+stands facing the bay, had wandered for a while with the throng,
+and then found a point of vantage on a high garden-parapet above
+the Promenade. Thence they caught but a triangular glimpse of
+the water, and of the flashing play of boats across its surface;
+but the crowd in the street was under their immediate view, and
+seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than the show
+itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and,
+dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first
+corner and turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long
+garden-walls overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the
+pavement; an empty cab trailed along the deserted thoroughfare,
+and presently Selden saw two persons emerge from the opposite
+shadows, signal to the cab, and drive off in it toward the centre
+of the town. The moonlight touched them as they paused to enter
+the carriage, and he recognized Mrs. Dorset and young Silverton.
+
+Beneath the nearest lamp-post he glanced at his watch and saw
+that the time was close on eleven. He took another cross street,
+and without breasting the throng on the Promenade, made his way
+to the fashionable club which overlooks that thoroughfare. Here,
+amid the blaze of crowded baccarat tables, he caught sight of
+Lord Hubert Dacey, seated with his habitual worn smile behind a
+rapidly dwindling heap of gold. The heap being in due course
+wiped out, Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining Selden,
+adjourned with him to the deserted terrace of the club. It was
+now past midnight, and the throng on the stands was dispersing,
+while the long trails of red-lit boats scattered and faded
+beneath a sky repossessed by the tranquil splendour of the moon.
+
+Lord Hubert looked at his watch. "By Jove, I promised to
+join the Duchess for supper at the LONDON HOUSE; but it's past
+twelve, and I suppose they've all scattered. The fact is, I lost
+them in the crowd soon after dinner, and took refuge here, for my
+sins. They had seats on one of the stands, but of course they
+couldn't stop quiet: the Duchess never can. She and Miss Bart
+went off in quest of what they call adventures--gad, it ain't
+their fault if they don't have some queer ones!" He added
+tentatively, after pausing to grope for a cigarette: "Miss Bart's
+an old friend of yours, I believe? So she told me.--Ah, thanks--I
+don't seem to have one left." He lit Selden's proffered
+cigarette, and continued, in his high-pitched drawling tone:
+"None of my business, of course, but I didn't introduce her to
+the Duchess. Charming woman, the Duchess, you understand; and a
+very good friend of mine; but RATHER a liberal education."
+
+Selden received this in silence, and after a few puffs Lord
+Hubert broke out again: "Sort of thing one can't communicate to
+the young lady--though young ladies nowadays are so competent to
+judge for themselves; but in this case--I'm an old friend too,
+you know . . . and there seemed no one else to speak to. The
+whole situation's a little mixed, as I see it--but there used to
+be an aunt somewhere, a diffuse and innocent person, who was
+great at bridging over chasms she didn't see . . . Ah, in New
+York, is she? Pity New York's such a long way off!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found
+herself alone on the deck of the Sabrina. The cushioned chairs,
+disposed expectantly under the wide awning, showed no signs of
+recent occupancy, and she presently learned from a steward that
+Mrs. Dorset had not yet appeared, and that the
+gentlemen--separately--had gone ashore as soon as they had
+breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over
+the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the
+spectacle before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore
+in a bath of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp
+white line of foam at the base of the shore; against its
+irregular eminences, hotels and villas flashed from the greyish
+verdure of olive and eucalyptus; and the background of bare and
+finely-pencilled mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light.
+
+
+How beautiful it was--and how she loved beauty! She had always
+felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain
+obtusenesses of feeling of which she was less proud; and during
+the last three months she had indulged it passionately. The
+Dorsets' invitation to go abroad with them had come as an almost
+miraculous release from crushing difficulties; and her faculty
+for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off problems of
+conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had arisen,
+made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a
+postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications
+existed for her only in the environment that had produced them;
+she did not mean to slight or ignore them, but they lost their
+reality when they changed their background. She could not have
+remained in New York without repaying the money she owed to
+Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious debt she might even have
+faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident of placing the
+Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them dwindle
+out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled
+past them.
+
+Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to
+aid this illusion of distance. She had been plunged into
+new scenes, and had found in them a renewal of old hopes and
+ambitions. The cruise itself charmed her as a romantic adventure.
+She was vaguely touched by the names and scenes amid which she
+moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading Theocritus by
+moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories, with a
+thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her
+intellectual superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had
+really given her more pleasure. The gratification of being
+welcomed in high company, and of making her own ascendency felt
+there, so that she found herself figuring once more as the
+"beautiful Miss Bart" in the interesting journal devoted to
+recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions--all
+these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of
+memory the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had
+escaped.
+
+If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was
+sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to
+feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with
+which she was familiar. Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of
+the skill with which she had adapted herself to somewhat delicate
+conditions. She had reason to think that she had made herself
+equally necessary to her host and hostess; and if only she had
+seen any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a financial
+profit from the situation, there would have been no cloud on her
+horizon. The truth was that her funds, as usual, were
+inconveniently low; and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this
+vulgar embarrassment be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a
+pressing one; she could worry along, as she had so often done
+before, with the hope of some happy change of fortune to sustain
+her; and meanwhile life was gay and beautiful and easy, and she
+was conscious of figuring not unworthily in such a setting.
+
+She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of
+Beltshire, and at twelve o'clock she asked to be set ashore in
+the gig. Before this she had sent her maid to enquire if she
+might see Mrs. Dorset; but the reply came back that the latter
+was tired, and trying to sleep. Lily thought she understood the
+reason of the rebuff. Her hostess had not been included in the
+Duchess's invitation, though she herself had made the
+most loyal efforts in that direction. But her grace was
+impervious to hints, and invited or omitted as she chose. It was
+not Lily's fault if Mrs. Dorset's complicated attitudes did not
+fall in with the Duchess's easy gait. The Duchess, who seldom
+explained herself, had not formulated her objection beyond
+saying: "She's rather a bore, you know. The only one of your
+friends I like is that little Mr. Bry--HE'S funny--" but Lily
+knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether sorry
+to be thus distinguished at her friend's expense. Bertha
+certainly HAD grown tiresome since she had taken to poetry and
+Ned Silverton.
+
+On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from the
+Sabrina; and the Duchess's little breakfast, organized by Lord
+Hubert with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter to Lily
+for not including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of late, had
+grown more than usually morose and incalculable, and Ned
+Silverton went about with an air that seemed to challenge the
+universe. The freedom and lightness of the ducal intercourse made
+an agreeable change from these complications, and Lily was
+tempted, after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her companions
+to the hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to play;
+her diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the
+adventure; but it amused her to sit on a divan, under the
+doubtful protection of the Duchess's back, while the latter hung
+above her stakes at a neighbouring table.
+
+The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the
+afternoon hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the
+Sunday crowd in a lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass,
+identities were hardly distinguishable; but Lily presently saw
+Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in
+the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing
+after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug. Mrs. Bry pressed
+on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in
+the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
+towing-line, and let herself float to the girl's side.
+
+"Lose her?" she echoed the latter's query, with an indifferent
+glance at Mrs. Bry's retreating back. "I daresay--it doesn't
+matter: I HAVE lost her already." And, as Lily exclaimed,
+she added: "We had an awful row this morning. You know, of
+course, that the Duchess chucked her at dinner last night, and
+she thinks it was my fault--my want of management. The worst of
+it is, the message--just a mere word by telephone--came so late
+that the dinner HAD to be paid for; and Becassin HAD run it
+up--it had been so drummed into him that the Duchess was coming!"
+Mrs. Fisher indulged in a faint laugh at the remembrance. "Paying
+for what she doesn't get rankles so dreadfully with Louisa: I
+can't make her see that it's one of the preliminary steps to
+getting what you haven't paid for--and as I was the nearest thing
+to smash, she smashed me to atoms, poor dear!"
+
+Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came
+naturally to her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to
+Mrs. Fisher.
+
+"If there's anything I can do--if it's only a question of meeting
+the Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing---"
+
+But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. "My dear, I
+have my pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn't manage the
+Duchess, and I can't palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine.
+I've taken the final step: I go to Paris tonight with the Sam
+Gormers. THEY'RE still in the elementary stage; an Italian Prince
+is a great deal more than a Prince to them, and they're always on
+the brink of taking a courier for one. To save them from that is
+my present mission." She laughed again at the picture. "But
+before I go I want to make my last will and testament--I want to
+leave you the Brys."
+
+"Me?" Miss Bart joined in her amusement. "It's charming of you to
+remember me, dear; but really---"
+
+"You're already so well provided for?" Mrs. Fisher flashed a
+sharp glance at her. "ARE you, though, Lily--to the point of
+rejecting my offer?"
+
+Miss Bart coloured slowly. "What I really meant was, that the
+Brys wouldn't in the least care to be so disposed of."
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an
+unflinching eye. "What you really meant was that you've snubbed
+the Brys horribly; and you know that they know---"
+
+"Carry!"
+
+"Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you'd
+even managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina--especially
+when royalties were coming! But it's not too late," she ended
+earnestly, "it's not too late for either of you."
+
+Lily smiled. "Stay over, and I'll get the Duchess to dine with
+them."
+
+"I shan't stay over--the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT,"
+said Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. "But get the Duchess to dine
+with them all the same."
+
+Lily's smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend's
+importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. "I'm sorry
+I have been negligent about the Brys---" she began.
+
+"Oh, as to the Brys--it's you I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Fisher
+abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered
+voice: "You know we all went on to Nice last night when the
+Duchess chucked us. It was Louisa's idea--I told her what I
+thought of it."
+
+Miss Bart assented. "Yes--I caught sight of you on the way back,
+at the station."
+
+"Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George
+Dorset--that horrid little Dabham who does 'Society Notes from
+the Riviera'--had been dining with us at Nice. And he's telling
+everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight."
+
+"Alone--? When he was with us?" Lily laughed, but her laugh faded
+into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher's
+look. "We DID come back alone--if that's so very dreadful! But
+whose fault was it? The Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez
+with the Crown Princess; Bertha got bored with the show, and went
+off early, promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on
+time, but she didn't--she didn't turn up at all!"
+
+Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents,
+with careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher
+received it in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have
+lost sight of her friend's part in the incident: her inward
+vision had taken another slant.
+
+"Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get
+back?"
+
+"Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for
+the FETE. At any rate, I know she's safe on the yacht, though I
+haven't yet seen her; but you see it was not my fault," Lily
+summed up.
+
+"Not your fault that Bertha didn't turn up? My poor child, if
+only you don't have to pay for it!" Mrs. Fisher rose--she had
+seen Mrs. Bry surging back in her direction. "There's Louisa, and
+I must be off--oh, we're on the best of terms externally; we're
+lunching together; but at heart it's ME she's lunching on," she
+explained; and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added:
+"Remember, I leave her to you; she's hovering now, ready to take
+you in."
+
+
+
+Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher's leave-taking away
+with her from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before
+leaving, the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry's
+good graces. An affable advance--a vague murmur that they must
+see more of each other--an allusive glance to a near future that
+was felt to include the Duchess as well as the Sabrina--how
+easily it was all done, if one possessed the knack of doing it!
+She wondered at herself, as she had so often wondered, that,
+possessing the knack, she did not more consistently exercise it.
+But sometimes she was forgetful--and sometimes, could it be that
+she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious
+of a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to
+the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across
+on the Casino steps, that he might really get the Duchess to dine
+with the Brys, if SHE undertook to have them asked on the
+Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help, with the readiness on
+which she could always count: it was his only way of ever
+reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more for
+her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as
+she advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it
+been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden?
+She thought not--time and change seemed so completely to have
+relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite
+reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the
+recent past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained
+a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear
+that they were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down
+to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next
+steamer. No--that part of the past had merely surged up for a
+moment on the fleeing surface of events; and now that it was
+submerged again, the uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.
+
+They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George
+Dorset descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for
+her across the square. She had meant to drive down to the quay
+and regain the yacht; but she now had the immediate impression
+that something more was to happen first.
+
+"Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?" he began, putting
+the second question before the first was answered, and not
+waiting for a reply to either before he directed her silently
+toward the comparative seclusion of the lower gardens.
+
+She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous
+tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its
+sallowness had paled to a leaden white against which his
+irregular eyebrows and long reddish moustache were relieved with
+a saturnine effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd
+mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious.
+
+He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps,
+till they reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino;
+then, pulling up abruptly, he said: "Have you seen Bertha?"
+
+"No--when I left the yacht she was not yet up."
+
+He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a
+disabled clock. "Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at
+what time she came on board? This morning at seven!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+"At seven?" Lily started. "What happened--an accident to the
+train?"
+
+He laughed again. "They missed the train--all the trains--they
+had to drive back."
+
+"Well---?" She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this
+necessity accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.
+
+"Well, they couldn't get a carriage at once--at that time of
+night, you know--" the explanatory note made it almost
+seem as though he were putting the case for his wife--"and when
+they finally did, it was only a one-horse cab, and the horse was
+lame!"
+
+"How tiresome! I see," she affirmed, with the more earnestness
+because she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and
+after a pause she added: "I'm so sorry--but ought we to have
+waited?"
+
+"Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the
+four of us, do you think?"
+
+She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh
+intended to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of
+it. "Well, it would have been difficult; we should have had to
+walk by turns. But it would have been jolly to see the sunrise."
+
+"Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly," he agreed.
+
+"Was it? You saw it, then?"
+
+"I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them."
+
+"Naturally--I suppose you were worried. Why didn't you call on me
+to share your vigil?"
+
+He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand.
+"I don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said
+with sudden grimness.
+
+Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and
+as in one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of
+keeping her sense of it out of her eyes.
+
+"DENOUEMENT--isn't that too big a word for such a small incident?
+The worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has
+probably slept off by this time."
+
+She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain
+to her in the glare of his miserable eyes.
+
+"Don't--don't---!" he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child;
+and while she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to
+ignore any cause for it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation,
+he dropped down on the bench near which they had paused, and
+poured out the wretchedness of his soul.
+
+It was a dreadful hour--an hour from which she emerged shrinking
+and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual
+glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of
+such an outbreak; but rather because, here and there
+throughout the three months, the surface of life had shown such
+ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had always been on the
+alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation
+had presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid image--that
+of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping
+road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted
+mending, and wondering what would give way first.
+Well--everything had given way now; and the wonder was that the
+crazy outfit had held together so long. Her sense of being
+involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it from the
+road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his
+furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made
+her feel the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his
+life. But for her, what ear would have been open to his cries?
+And what hand but hers could drag him up again to a footing of
+sanity and self-respect? All through the stress of the struggle
+with him, she had been conscious of something faintly maternal in
+her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the present, if he
+clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to feel
+some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted her to
+suffer with him, not to help him to suffer less.
+
+Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain
+his frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an
+apathy so deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the
+passers-by would think it the result of a seizure, and stop to
+offer their aid. But Monte Carlo is, of all places, the one where
+the human bond is least close, and odd sights are the least
+arresting. If a glance or two lingered on the couple, no
+intrusive sympathy disturbed them; and it was Lily herself who
+broke the silence by rising from her seat. With the clearing of
+her vision the sweep of peril had extended, and she saw that the
+post of danger was no longer at Dorset's side.
+
+"If you won't go back, I must--don't make me leave you!" she
+urged.
+
+But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: "What are you
+going to do? You really can't sit here all night."
+
+"I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers." He sat up,
+roused by a new thought. "By Jove, Selden's at Nice--I'll send
+for Selden!"
+
+Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. "No, no, NO!"
+she protested.
+
+He swung round on her distrustfully. "Why not Selden? He's a
+lawyer isn't he? One will do as well as another in a case like
+this."
+
+"As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to
+help you."
+
+"You do--by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn't been
+for you I'd have ended the thing long ago. But now it's got to
+end." He rose suddenly, straightening himself with an effort.
+"You can't want to see me ridiculous."
+
+She looked at him kindly. "That's just it." Then, after a
+moment's pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with
+a flash of inspiration: "Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You'll
+have time to do it before dinner."
+
+"Oh, DINNER---" he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
+rejoinder: "Dinner on board, remember; we'll put it off till nine
+if you like."
+
+It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the
+quay, and she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her, she
+began to wonder what had been happening on the yacht. Of
+Silverton's whereabouts there had been no mention. Had he
+returned to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha--the dread alternative
+sprang on her suddenly--could Bertha, left to herself, have gone
+ashore to rejoin him? Lily's heart stood still at the thought.
+All her concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only
+because, in such affairs, the woman's instinct is to side with
+the man, but because his case made a peculiar appeal to her
+sympathies. He was so desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his
+earnestness was of so different a quality from Bertha's, though
+hers too was desperate enough. The difference was that Bertha was
+in earnest only about herself, while he was in earnest about her.
+But now, at the actual crisis, this difference seemed to throw
+the weight of destitution on Bertha's side, since at least he had
+her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any rate, viewed
+less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were for
+the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went
+out. She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither was she
+without a sense of obligation, the heavier for having so little
+personal liking to sustain it. Bertha had been kind to her, they
+had lived together, during the last months, on terms of easy
+friendship, and the sense of friction of which Lily had recently
+become aware seemed to make it the more urgent that she should
+work undividedly in her friend's interest.
+
+It was in Bertha's interest, certainly, that she had despatched
+Dorset to consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of
+the situation accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the
+safest in which Dorset could find himself. Who but Selden could
+thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the
+obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would
+be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the
+obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through she could
+trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust in
+the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.
+
+Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the
+conviction strengthened her for the task that remained. She and
+Bertha had never been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis
+the barriers of reserve must surely fall: Dorset's wild allusions
+to the scene of the morning made Lily feel that they were down
+already, and that any attempt to rebuild them would be beyond
+Bertha's strength. She pictured the poor creature shivering
+behind her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense the moment
+when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered. If
+only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As
+the gig traversed the short distance between the quay and the
+yacht, Lily grew more than ever alarmed at the possible
+consequences of her long absence. What if the wretched Bertha,
+finding in all the long hours no soul to turn to--but by this
+time Lily's eager foot was on the side-ladder, and her first step
+on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be
+unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck,
+the wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated
+elegance, sat dispensing tea to the Duchess of Beltshire and Lord
+Hubert.
+
+The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that
+Bertha, at least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was
+proportionately disconcerted by the blankness of the look
+returned. But in an instant she saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of
+necessity, to look blank before the others, and that, to mitigate
+the effect of her own surprise, she must at once produce some
+simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions made it
+easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess: "Why, I thought you'd
+gone back to the Princess!" and this sufficed for the lady she
+addressed, if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert.
+
+At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the
+Duchess was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first
+rushed out to the yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the
+subject of tomorrow's dinner--the dinner with the Brys, to which
+Lord Hubert had finally insisted on dragging them.
+
+"To save my neck, you know!" he explained, with a glance that
+appealed to Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the
+Duchess added, with her noble candour: "Mr. Bry has promised him
+a tip, and he says if we go he'll pass it onto us."
+
+This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to
+Lily, Mrs. Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at
+the close of which Lord Hubert, from half way down the
+side-ladder, called back, with an air of numbering heads: "And of
+course we may count on Dorset too?"
+
+"Oh, count on him," his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up
+well to the last--but as she turned back from waving her adieux
+over the side, Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and
+the soul of fear look out.
+
+Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady
+her muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control
+when, dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she
+remarked to Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: "I suppose I
+ought to say good morning."
+
+If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the
+vaguest sense of what was expected of her in return. There was
+something unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset's
+composure, and she had to force the light tone in which she
+answered: "I tried to see you this morning, but you were not yet
+up."
+
+"No--I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station
+I thought we ought to wait for you till the last train."
+She spoke very gently, but with just the least tinge of reproach.
+
+"You missed us? You waited for us at the station?" Now indeed
+Lily was too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other's
+words or keep watch on her own. "But I thought you didn't get to
+the station till after the last train had left!"
+
+Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with
+the immediate query: "Who told you that?"
+
+"George--I saw him just now in the gardens."
+
+"Ah, is that George's version? Poor George--he was in no state to
+remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this
+morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if
+he found him?"
+
+Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset
+settled herself indolently in her seat. "He'll wait to see him;
+he was horribly frightened about himself. It's very bad for him
+to be worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always
+brings on an attack."
+
+This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but
+it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so
+incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could
+only falter out doubtfully: "Anything upsetting?"
+
+"Yes--such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the
+small hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big
+responsibility in such a scandalous place after midnight."
+
+At that--at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable
+audacity of it--Lily could not restrain the tribute of an
+astonished laugh.
+
+"Well, really--considering it was you who burdened him with the
+responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. "By not having
+the superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush
+for the train? Or the imagination to believe that you'd take it
+without us--you and he all alone--instead of waiting quietly in
+the station till we DID manage to meet you?"
+
+Lily's colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was
+pursuing an object, following a line she had marked out for
+herself. Only, with such a doom impending, why waste time in
+these childish efforts to avert it? The puerility of the
+attempt disarmed Lily's indignation: did it not prove how
+horribly the poor creature was frightened?
+
+"No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice," she returned.
+
+"Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first
+opportunity to rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear
+Lily, you are not a child to be led by the hand!"
+
+"No--nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that's what you are
+doing to me now."
+
+Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. "Lecture you--I? Heaven
+forbid! I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it's
+usually the other way round, isn't it? I'm expected to take
+hints, not to give them: I've positively lived on them all these
+last months."
+
+"Hints--from me to you?" Lily repeated.
+
+"Oh, negative ones merely--what not to be and to do and to see.
+And I think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if
+you'll let me say so, I didn't understand that one of my negative
+duties was NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence too
+far."
+
+A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered
+treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But
+compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive
+recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the
+tracked creature's attempt to cloud the medium through which it
+was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim: "You poor soul,
+don't double and turn--come straight back to me, and we'll find a
+way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of
+Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly,
+letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its
+accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went
+down to her cabin.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Miss Bart's telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his
+hotel; and having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The
+message necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that
+he had recently heard and seen made these but too easy to fill
+in. On the whole he was surprised; for though he had perceived
+that the situation contained all the elements of an explosion, he
+had often enough, in the range of his personal experience, seen
+just such combinations subside into harmlessness. Still, Dorset's
+spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless disregard of
+appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and it was
+less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from
+a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the
+pair to safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for
+either lay in repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of
+his to consider: he had only, on general principles, to think of
+averting a scandal, and his desire to avert it was increased by
+his fear of its involving Miss Bart. There was nothing specific
+in this apprehension; he merely wished to spare her the
+embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the public
+washing of the Dorset linen.
+
+How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw
+even more vividly after his two hours' talk with poor Dorset. If
+anything came out at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of
+accumulated moral rags as left him, after his visitor had gone,
+with the feeling that he must fling open the windows and have his
+room swept out. But nothing should come out; and happily for his
+side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced together, could
+not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a
+homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit--there
+were missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all
+of which it was naturally Selden's business to make the most of
+in putting them under his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's
+mood the completest demonstration could not carry conviction, and
+Selden saw that for the moment all he could do was to soothe and
+temporize, to offer sympathy and to counsel prudence. He let
+Dorset depart charged to the brim with the sense that, till
+their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly noncommittal
+attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted for the
+present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not
+long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet
+Dorset, the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile
+he counted not a little on the reaction of weakness and
+self-distrust that, in such natures, follows on every unwonted
+expenditure of moral force; and his telegraphic reply to Miss
+Bart consisted simply in the injunction: "Assume that everything
+is as usual."
+
+On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day
+was lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's
+imperative bidding, had actually returned in time for a late
+dinner on the yacht. The repast had been the most difficult
+moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of the abysmal silences
+which so commonly followed on what his wife called his "attacks"
+that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this cause;
+but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to
+make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the
+brunt of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed
+in a grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object
+of one herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous,
+because the most perplexing, element in the situation. As she
+tried to fan the weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and
+again, the crumbling structure of "appearances," her own
+attention was perpetually distracted by the question: "What on
+earth can she be driving at?" There was something positively
+exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If only
+she would have given her friend a hint they might still have
+worked together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while
+she was thus obstinately shut out from participation? To be of
+use was what she honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but
+for the Dorsets'. She had not thought of her own situation at
+all: she was simply engrossed in trying to put a little order in
+theirs. But the close of the short dreary evening left her with a
+sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not tried to see
+Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of his
+confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who
+should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the
+infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her
+rescuing hand.
+
+Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and
+it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that
+more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down
+the silent passage and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an
+apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of
+what had occurred between the confronted pair. One fact alone
+outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to
+ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton. No one
+referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept it
+in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was
+another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that
+Dorset now avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps
+he was repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day;
+perhaps only trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Selden's
+counsel to behave "as usual." Such instructions no more make for
+easiness of attitude than the photographer's behest to "look
+natural"; and in a creature as unconscious as poor Dorset of the
+appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to maintain a
+pose was sure to result in queer contortions.
+
+It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own
+resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset
+was still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early;
+and feeling too restless to remain alone, she too had herself
+ferried ashore. Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself
+to a group of acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and
+in whose company she was returning to the rooms when she
+encountered Selden crossing the square. She could not, at the
+moment, separate herself definitely from her party, who had
+hospitably assumed that she would remain with them till they took
+their departure; but she found time for a momentary pause of
+enquiry, to which he promptly returned: "I've seen him
+again--he's just left me."
+
+She waited before him anxiously. "Well? what has happened? What
+WILL happen?"
+
+"Nothing as yet--and nothing in the future, I think."
+
+"It's over, then? It's settled? You're sure?"
+
+He smiled. "Give me time. I'm not sure--but I'm a good deal
+surer." And with that she had to content herself, and hasten on
+to the expectant group on the steps.
+
+Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness,
+had even stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes.
+And now, as he turned away, strolling down the hill toward the
+station, that anxiety remained with him as the visible
+justification of his own. It was not, indeed, anything specific
+that he feared: there had been a literal truth in his declaration
+that he did not think anything would happen. What troubled him
+was that, though Dorset's attitude had perceptibly changed, the
+change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not
+been produced by Selden's arguments, or by the action of his own
+soberer reason. Five minutes' talk sufficed to show that some
+alien influence had been at work, and that it had not so much
+subdued his resentment as weakened his will, so that he moved
+under it in a state of apathy, like a dangerous lunatic who has
+been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however exerted, it worked
+for the general safety: the question was how long it would last,
+and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On
+these points Selden could gain no light; for he saw that one
+effect of the transformation had been to shut him off from free
+communion with Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the
+irresistible desire to discuss his wrong; but, though he revolved
+about it with the same forlorn tenacity, Selden was aware that
+something always restrained him from full expression. His state
+was one to produce first weariness and then impatience in his
+hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden began to feel that
+he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of
+the sequel.
+
+It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the
+station when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his
+brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was
+conscious of a gradual change in his purpose. The change had been
+produced by the look in her eyes; and in his eagerness to define
+the nature of that look, he dropped into a seat in the gardens,
+and sat brooding upon the question. It was natural enough, in all
+conscience, that she should appear anxious: a young woman
+placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a
+couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her
+concern for her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her
+own position. The worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss
+Bart's state of mind, so many alternative readings were possible;
+and one of these, in Selden's troubled mind, took the ugly form
+suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl was afraid, was she afraid
+for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread
+of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally
+involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs.
+Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously
+unkind; but Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial
+quarrel there are generally counter-charges to be brought, and
+that they are brought with the greater audacity where the
+original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher had not hesitated
+to suggest the likelihood of Dorset's marrying Miss Bart if
+"anything happened"; and though Mrs. Fisher's conclusions were
+notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from
+which they were drawn. Dorset had apparently shown marked
+interest in the girl, and this interest might be used to cruel
+advantage in his wife's struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew
+that Bertha would fight to the last round of powder: the rashness
+of her conduct was illogically combined with a cold determination
+to escape its consequences. She could be as unscrupulous in
+fighting for herself as she was reckless in courting danger, and
+whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely to be used
+as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just what
+course she was likely to take, but his perplexity increased his
+apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must
+speak again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the
+situation--and he had always honestly tried to resist judging her
+by her surroundings--however free she might be from any personal
+connection with it, she would be better out of the way of a
+possible crash; and since she had appealed to him for help, it
+was clearly his business to tell her so.
+
+This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him
+back to the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her
+disappearing; but a prolonged exploration of the crowd
+failed to put him on her traces. He saw instead, to his surprise,
+Ned Silverton loitering somewhat ostentatiously about the tables;
+and the discovery that this actor in the drama was not only
+hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the exposure of the
+footlights, though it might have seemed to imply that all peril
+was over, served rather to deepen Selden's sense of foreboding.
+Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to
+see Miss Bart move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed
+inevitably to do at least a dozen times a day; but here again he
+waited vainly for a glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly
+forced on him that she had gone back to the Sabrina. It would be
+difficult to follow her there, and still more difficult, should
+he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a private word; and he
+had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative of writing,
+when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled before
+him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry.
+
+Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord
+Hubert that Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in
+Dorset's company; an announcement so evidently disconcerting to
+him that Mrs. Bry, after a glance from her companion, which
+seemed to act like the pressure on a spring, brought forth the
+prompt proposal that he should come and meet his friends at
+dinner that evening--"At Becassin's--a little dinner to the
+Duchess," she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove
+the pressure.
+
+Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company
+brought him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant,
+where he paused to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the
+brightly lit terrace. There, while the Brys hovered within over
+the last agitating alternatives of the MENU, he kept watch for
+the guests from the Sabrina, who at length rose on the horizon in
+company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw and the Stepneys.
+From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss Bart on the
+pretext of a moment's glance into one of the brilliant shops
+along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered
+together in the white dazzle of a jeweller's window: "I stopped
+over to see you--to beg of you to leave the yacht."
+
+The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former
+fear. "To leave--? What do you mean? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?"
+
+The glare from the jeweller's window, deepening the pallour of
+her face, gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic
+mask. "Nothing will, I am sure; but while there's even a doubt
+left, how can you think I would leave Bertha?"
+
+The words rang out on a note of contempt--was it possibly of
+contempt for himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to
+the extent of insisting, with an undeniable throb of added
+interest: "You have yourself to think of, you know--" to which,
+with a strange fall of sadness in her voice, she answered,
+meeting his eyes: "If you knew how little difference that makes!"
+
+"Oh, well, nothing WILL happen," he said, more for his own
+reassurance than for hers; and "Nothing, nothing, of course!" she
+valiantly assented, as they turned to overtake their companions.
+
+In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry's
+illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from
+the familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his
+wife once more presenting their customary faces to the world, she
+engrossed in establishing her relation with an intensely new
+gown, he shrinking with dyspeptic dread from the multiplied
+solicitations of the MENU. The mere fact that they thus showed
+themselves together, with the utmost openness the place afforded,
+seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their differences were
+composed. How this end had been attained was still matter for
+wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested
+confidently in the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same
+view by telling himself that her opportunities for observation
+had been ampler than his own.
+
+Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses,
+in which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken
+away from Lord Hubert's restraining hand, Selden's general
+watchfulness began to lose itself in a particular study of Miss
+Bart. It was one of the days when she was so handsome
+that to be handsome was enough, and all the rest--her grace, her
+quickness, her social felicities--seemed the overflow of a
+bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the way in
+which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable shades, from
+the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just
+such company, the fine flower and complete expression of the
+state she aspired to, that the differences came out with special
+poignancy, her grace cheapening the other women's smartness as
+her finely-discriminated silences made their chatter dull. The
+strain of the last hours had restored to her face the deeper
+eloquence which Selden had lately missed in it, and the bravery
+of her words to him still fluttered in her voice and eyes. Yes,
+she was matchless--it was the one word for her; and he could give
+his admiration the freer play because so little personal feeling
+remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not
+at the lurid moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober
+after-light of discrimination, where he saw her definitely
+divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which seemed to
+deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before him again
+in its completeness--the choice in which she was content to rest:
+in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the
+talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the
+freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident setting
+of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a
+special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little
+Dabham of the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world
+where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society
+column had become the roll of fame.
+
+It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham,
+wedged in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours,
+suddenly became the centre of Selden's scrutiny. How much did he
+know of what was going on, and how much, for his purpose, was
+still worth finding out? His little eyes were like tentacles
+thrown out to catch the floating intimations with which, to
+Selden, the air at moments seemed thick; then again it cleared to
+its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it for the
+journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies' gowns.
+Mrs. Dorset's, in particular, challenged all the wealth
+of Mr. Dabham's vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties
+worthy of what he would have called "the literary style." At
+first, as Selden had noticed, it had been almost too preoccupying
+to its wearer; but now she was in full command of it, and was
+even producing her effects with unwonted freedom. Was she not,
+indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was
+not Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural
+transition, too jerkily wavering between the same extremes?
+Dorset indeed was always jerky; but it seemed to Selden that
+tonight each vibration swung him farther from his centre.
+
+The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the
+evident satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic
+majesty between Lord Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to
+be calling on Mrs. Fisher to witness her achievement. Short of
+Mrs. Fisher her audience might have been called complete; for the
+restaurant was crowded with persons mainly gathered there for the
+purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as to the names
+and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry,
+conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading,
+and that each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily
+with all the pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to
+deserve. Selden, catching the glance, wondered what part Miss
+Bart had played in organizing the entertainment. She did, at
+least, a great deal to adorn it; and as he watched the bright
+security with which she bore herself, he smiled to think that he
+should have fancied her in need of help. Never had she appeared
+more serenely mistress of the situation than when, at the moment
+of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about the
+table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the
+shoulders to receive her cloak from Dorset.
+
+The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry's exceptional cigars
+and a bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables
+were empty; but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to
+give relief to the leave-taking of Mrs. Bry's distinguished
+guests. This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact
+that it involved, on the part of the Duchess and Lady Skiddaw,
+definite farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where
+they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to
+England. The quality of Mrs. Bry's hospitality, and of the tips
+her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the
+English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest
+light over their hostess's future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and
+the Stepneys were also visibly included, and the whole scene had
+touches of intimacy worth their weight in gold to the watchful
+pen of Mr. Dabham.
+
+A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister
+that they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry
+of this departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the
+door, offered to convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay.
+The offer was accepted, and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her
+husband in attendance. Miss Bart had lingered for a last word
+with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry was pressing a
+final, and still more expensive, cigar, called out: "Come on,
+Lily, if you're going back to the yacht."
+
+Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had
+paused on her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table.
+
+"Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht," she said in a voice
+of singular distinctness.
+
+A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the
+verge of congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her
+husband, and Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations,
+was mainly conscious of a longing to grip Dabham by the collar
+and fling him out into the street.
+
+Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife's side. His face
+was white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes.
+"Bertha!--Miss Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . .
+some mistake . . ."
+
+"Miss Bart remains here," his wife rejoined incisively. "And, I
+think, George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer."
+
+Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in
+admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group
+about her. She had paled a little under the shock of the insult,
+but the discomposure of the surrounding faces was not reflected
+in her own. The faint disdain of her smile seemed to lift
+her high above her antagonist's reach, and it was not till she
+had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance between
+them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess.
+
+"I am joining the Duchess tomorrow," she explained, "and it
+seemed easier for me to remain on shore for the night."
+
+She held firmly to Mrs. Bry's wavering eye while she gave this
+explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative
+glance from one to another of the women's faces. She read their
+incredulity in their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness
+of the men behind them, and for a miserable half-second he
+thought she quivered on the brink of failure. Then, turning to
+him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery of her recovered
+smile--"Dear Mr. Selden," she said, "you promised to see me to my
+cab."
+
+
+
+Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden
+moved toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of
+warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the
+cab had been tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her
+hand on his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received
+them, and pausing beside a bench, he said: "Sit down a moment."
+
+She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp
+at the bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of
+her face. Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak,
+fearful lest any word he chose should touch too roughly on her
+wound, and kept also from free utterance by the wretched doubt
+which had slowly renewed itself within him. What had brought her
+to this pass? What weakness had placed her so abominably at her
+enemy's mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have turned into an
+enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the support
+of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands
+to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind,
+reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between
+smoke and fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the
+corroboration of his own impressions, while they deepened his pity
+also increased his constraint, since, whichever way he sought a free
+outlet for sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder.
+
+Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as
+accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from
+her; but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him
+short with a question.
+
+"Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the
+morning."
+
+"An hotel--HERE--that you can go to alone? It's not possible."
+
+She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. "What IS,
+then? It's too wet to sleep in the gardens."
+
+"But there must be some one---"
+
+"Some one to whom I can go? Of course--any number--but at THIS
+hour? You see my change of plan was rather sudden---"
+
+"Good God--if you'd listened to me!" he cried, venting his
+helplessness in a burst of anger.
+
+She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. "But
+haven't I?" she rejoined. "You advised me to leave the yacht, and
+I'm leaving it."
+
+He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither
+to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence
+he had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive
+hour was past.
+
+She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty,
+like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.
+
+"Lily!" he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but--"Oh,
+not now," she gently admonished him; and then, in all the
+sweetness of her recovered composure: "Since I must find shelter
+somewhere, and since you're so kindly here to help me---"
+
+He gathered himself up at the challenge. "You will do as I tell
+you? There's but one thing, then; you must go straight to your
+cousins, the Stepneys."
+
+"Oh--" broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance;
+but he insisted: "Come--it's late, and you must appear to have
+gone there directly."
+
+He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a
+last gesture of protest. "I can't--I can't--not that--you don't
+know Gwen: you mustn't ask me!"
+
+"I MUST ask you--you must obey me," he persisted, though infected
+at heart by her own fear.
+
+Her voice sank to a whisper: "And if she refuses?"--but, "Oh,
+trust me--trust me!" he could only insist in return; and yielding
+to his touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of
+the square.
+
+In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief
+drive which carried them to the illuminated portals of the
+Stepneys' hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the
+raised hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced
+the showy hall, awaiting the latter's descent. Ten minutes later
+the two men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians
+of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a
+last flare of reluctance.
+
+"It's understood, then?" he stipulated nervously, with his hand
+on Selden's arm. "She leaves tomorrow by the early train--and my
+wife's asleep, and can't be disturbed."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The blinds of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down
+against the oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the
+faces of her assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of
+bereavement. They were all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and
+Melsons--even a stray Peniston or two, indicating, by a greater
+latitude in dress and manner, the fact of remoter relationship
+and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in fact, secure in
+the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's property "went
+back"; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal
+of his widow's private fortune and on the uncertainty of its
+extent. Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew,
+tacitly took the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper
+gloss of his mourning and the subdued authority of his manner;
+while his wife's bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the
+heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old
+Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her in a coat that made
+affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the
+eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and
+smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson:
+"I couldn't BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere else!"
+
+A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening
+of the door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black
+dress, with Gerty Farish at her side. The women's faces, as she
+paused interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in
+hesitation. One or two made faint motions of recognition, which
+might have been subdued either by the solemnity of the scene, or
+by the doubt as to how far the others meant to go; Mrs. Jack
+Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney, with a sepulchral
+gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily, ignoring the
+invitation, as well as Jack Stepney's official attempt to direct
+her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
+herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed
+apart from the others.
+
+It was the first time that she had faced her family since her
+return from Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived
+any uncertainty in their welcome, it served only to add a tinge
+of irony to the usual composure of her bearing. The shock of
+dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard from Gerty Farish
+of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated, almost at
+once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
+be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with
+considerable uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt.
+Mrs. Peniston had vehemently opposed her niece's departure with
+the Dorsets, and had marked her continued disapproval by not
+writing during Lily's absence. The certainty that she had heard
+of the rupture with the Dorsets made the prospect of the meeting
+more formidable; and how should Lily have repressed a quick sense
+of relief at the thought that, instead of undergoing the
+anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
+long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase,
+"always understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely
+for her niece; and in the latter's mind the understanding had
+long since crystallized into fact.
+
+"She gets everything, of course--I don't see what we're here
+for," Mrs. Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned
+Van Alstyne; and the latter's deprecating murmur--"Julia was
+always a just woman"--might have been interpreted as signifying
+either acquiescence or doubt.
+
+"Well, it's only about four hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney
+rejoined with a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced
+by the lawyer's preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They
+won't find a towel missing--I went over them with her the very
+day---"
+
+Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour
+of fresh mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's
+lawyer, solemnly erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the
+room, began to rattle through the preamble of the will.
+
+"It's like being in church," she reflected, wondering vaguely
+where Gwen Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed
+how stout Jack had grown--he would soon be almost as plethoric as
+Herbert Melson, who sat a few feet off, breathing puffily as he
+leaned his black-gloved hands on his stick.
+
+"I wonder why rich people always grow fat--I suppose it's because
+there's nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be
+careful of my figure," she mused, while the lawyer droned on
+through a labyrinth of legacies. The servants came first, then a
+few charitable institutions, then several remoter Melsons and
+Stepneys, who stirred consciously as their names rang out, and
+then subsided into a state of impassiveness befitting the
+solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney, and a
+cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few
+thousands: Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them.
+Then she heard her own name--"to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand
+dollars--" and after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil
+of unintelligible periods, from which the concluding phrase
+flashed out with startling distinctness: "and the residue of my
+estate to my dear cousin and name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney."
+
+There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads,
+and a surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss
+Stepney wailed out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled
+ball of a black-edged handkerchief.
+
+Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for
+the first time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed
+aware of her presence; she was probing the very depths of
+insignificance. And under her sense of the collective
+indifference came the acuter pang of hopes deceived.
+Disinherited--she had been disinherited--and for Grace Stepney!
+She met Gerty's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing
+effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There
+was something to be done before she left the house: to be done
+with all the nobility she knew how to put into such gestures. She
+advanced to the group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her
+hand said simply: "Dear Grace, I am so glad."
+
+The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space
+created itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no
+one advanced to fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about
+her, calmly taking the measure of her situation. She heard some
+one ask a question about the date of the will; she caught a
+fragment of the lawyer's answer--something about a sudden
+summons, and an "earlier instrument." Then the tide of dispersal
+began to drift past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert Melson
+stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group
+escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she
+should take, though she lived but a street or two away; and
+Miss Bart and Gerty found themselves almost alone in the purple
+drawing-room, which more than ever, in its stuffy dimness,
+resembled a well-kept family vault, in which the last corpse had
+just been decently deposited.
+
+
+
+In Gerty Farish's sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the
+two friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of
+laughter: it struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt's
+legacy should so nearly represent the amount of her debt to
+Trenor. The need of discharging that debt had reasserted itself
+with increased urgency since her return to America, and she spoke
+her first thought in saying to the anxiously hovering Gerty: "I
+wonder when the legacies will be paid."
+
+But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into
+a larger indignation. "Oh, Lily, it's unjust; it's cruel--Grace
+Stepney must FEEL she has no right to all that money!"
+
+"Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her
+money," Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.
+
+"But she was devoted to you--she led every one to think--" Gerty
+checked herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to
+her with a direct look. "Gerty, be honest: this will was made
+only six weeks ago. She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?"
+
+"Every one heard, of course, that there had been some
+disagreement--some misunderstanding---"
+
+"Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?"
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry
+George Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous.
+Isn't that what she told Gwen Stepney?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't listen to such horrors."
+
+"I MUST listen to them--I must know where I stand." She paused,
+and again sounded a faint note of derision. "Did you
+notice the women? They were afraid to snub me while they thought
+I was going to get the money--afterward they scuttled off as if I
+had the plague." Gerty remained silent, and she continued: "I
+stayed on to see what would happen. They took their cue from Gwen
+Stepney and Lulu Melson--I saw them watching to see what Gwen
+would do.--Gerty, I must know just what is being said of me."
+
+"I tell you I don't listen---"
+
+"One hears such things without listening." She rose and laid her
+resolute hands on Miss Farish's shoulders. "Gerty, are people
+going to cut me?"
+
+"Your FRIENDS, Lily--how can you think it?"
+
+"Who are one's friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor
+trustful darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!" She
+kissed Gerty with a whimsical murmur. "You'd never let it make
+any difference--but then you're fond of criminals, Gerty! How
+about the irreclaimable ones, though? For I'm absolutely
+impenitent, you know."
+
+She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty,
+towering like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled
+Gerty, who could only falter out: "Lily, Lily--how can you laugh
+about such things?"
+
+"So as not to weep, perhaps. But no--I'm not of the tearful
+order. I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the
+knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes." She
+took a restless turn about the room, and then, reseating herself,
+lifted the bright mockery of her eyes to Gerty's anxious
+countenance.
+
+"I shouldn't have minded, you know, if I'd got the money--" and
+at Miss Farish's protesting "Oh!" she repeated calmly: "Not a
+straw, my dear; for, in the first place, they wouldn't have quite
+dared to ignore me; and if they had, it wouldn't have mattered,
+because I should have been independent of them. But now--!" The
+irony faded from her eyes, and she bent a clouded face upon her
+friend.
+
+"How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have
+been yours, but after all that makes no difference. The important
+thing---" Gerty paused, and then continued firmly: "The important
+thing is that you should clear yourself--should tell your friends
+the whole truth."
+
+"The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth? Where a
+woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In
+this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's
+story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box,
+and it's convenient to be on good terms with her."
+
+Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. "But what IS
+your story, Lily? I don't believe any one knows it yet."
+
+"My story?--I don't believe I know it myself. You see I never
+thought of preparing a version in advance as Bertha did--and if I
+had, I don't think I should take the trouble to use it now."
+
+But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: "I don't want
+a version prepared in advance--but I want you to tell me exactly
+what happened from the beginning."
+
+"From the beginning?" Miss Bart gently mimicked her. "Dear Gerty,
+how little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning
+was in my cradle, I suppose--in the way I was brought up, and the
+things I was taught to care for. Or no--I won't blame anybody for
+my faults: I'll say it was in my blood, that I got it from some
+wicked pleasure-loving ancestress, who reacted against the homely
+virtues of New Amsterdam, and wanted to be back at the court of
+the Charleses!" And as Miss Farish continued to press her with
+troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: "You asked me just now
+for the truth--well, the truth about any girl is that once she's
+talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her case
+the worse it looks.--My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a
+cigarette about you?"
+
+
+
+In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing,
+Lily Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last
+week in June, and none of her friends were in town. The few
+relatives who had stayed on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs.
+Peniston's will, had taken flight again that afternoon to Newport
+or Long Island; and not one of them had made any proffer of
+hospitality to Lily. For the first time in her life she found
+herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at the actual
+moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
+sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire,
+hearing of the catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly
+offered her protection, and under her sheltering wing Lily had
+made an almost triumphant progress to London. There she had been
+sorely tempted to linger on in a society which asked of her only
+to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously how she
+had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
+parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once
+to her aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in
+London, abounded in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be
+told that the Duchess's championship was not the best road to
+social rehabilitation, and as she was besides aware that her
+noble defender might at any moment drop her in favour of a new
+PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America. But she
+had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
+that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the
+Stepneys, the Brys--all the actors and witnesses in the miserable
+drama--had preceded her with their version of the case; and, even
+had she seen the least chance of gaining a hearing for her own,
+some obscure disdain and reluctance would have restrained her.
+She knew it was not by explanations and counter-charges that she
+could ever hope to recover her lost standing; but even had she
+felt the least trust in their efficacy, she would still have been
+held back by the feeling which had kept her from defending
+herself to Gerty Farish--a feeling that was half pride and half
+humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly
+sacrificed to Bertha Dorset's determination to win back her
+husband, and though her own relation to Dorset had been that of
+the merest good-fellowship, yet she had been perfectly aware from
+the outset that her part in the affair was, as Carry Fisher
+brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from his wife.
+That was what she was "there for": it was the price she had
+chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care.
+Her habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of
+introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on
+the situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with
+which she had carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the
+part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all
+the ugliness of failure.
+
+She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of
+consequences resulting from that failure; and these became
+clearer to her with every day of her weary lingering in town. She
+stayed on partly for the comfort of Gerty Farish's nearness, and
+partly for lack of knowing where to go. She understood well
+enough the nature of the task before her. She must set out to
+regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the
+first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as
+possible, on how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes
+were mainly centred on Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of
+easy-going tolerance for those who were amusing or useful to her,
+and in the noisy rush of whose existence the still small voice of
+detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy, though she
+must have been apprised of Miss Bart's return, had not even
+recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend's
+bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily's side might have been
+perilous: there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy
+chance of an accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late
+in the season, there was always a hope of running across her
+friends in their frequent passages through town.
+
+To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants
+they frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she
+lunched luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.
+
+"My dear Gerty, you wouldn't have me let the head-waiter see that
+I've nothing to live on but Aunt Julia's legacy? Think of Grace
+Stepney's satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on
+cold mutton and tea! What sweet shall we have today, dear--COUPE
+JACQUES or PECHES A LA MELBA?"
+
+She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of
+colour, and Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the
+advance, from an inner room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and
+Carry Fisher. It was impossible for these ladies and their
+companions--among whom Lily had at once distinguished both Trenor
+and Rosedale--not to pass, in going out, the table at which the
+two girls were seated; and Gerty's sense of the fact betrayed
+itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss Bart, on
+the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace, and
+neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait
+for them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness
+which she could impart to the most strained situations. Such
+embarrassment as was shown was on Mrs. Trenor's side, and
+manifested itself in the mingling of exaggerated warmth with
+imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed pleasure at
+seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization,
+which included neither enquiries as to her future nor the
+expression of a definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed
+in the language of these omissions, knew that they were equally
+intelligible to the other members of the party: even Rosedale,
+flushed as he was with the importance of keeping such company, at
+once took the temperature of Mrs. Trenor's cordiality, and
+reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss Bart. Trenor, red
+and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the pretext
+of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group
+soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor's wake.
+
+It was over in a moment--the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on
+the result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA
+MELBA--but Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of
+her fate. Where Judy Trenor led, all the world would follow; and
+Lily had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in
+vain to fleeing sails.
+
+In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor's complaints of Carry
+Fisher's rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected
+acquaintance with her husband's private affairs. In the large
+tumultuous disorder of the life at Bellomont, where no one seemed
+to have time to observe any one else, and private aims and
+personal interests were swept along unheeded in the rush of
+collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from
+inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed
+money of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same
+transaction on Lily's part? If she was careless of his affections
+she was plainly jealous of his pocket; and in that fact Lily read
+the explanation of her rebuff. The immediate result of these
+conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay back her debt to
+Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a thousand
+dollars of Mrs. Peniston's legacy left, and nothing to live on
+but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty
+Farish's wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to
+the imperative claim of her wounded pride. She must be
+quits with the Trenors first; after that she would take thought
+for the future.
+
+In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that
+her legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of
+her aunt's will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she
+wrote to enquire the cause of the delay. There was another
+interval before Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, who was also one of the
+executors, replied to the effect that, some questions having
+arisen relative to the interpretation of the will, he and his
+associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till
+the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their
+settlement. Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the
+effect of a personal appeal; but she returned from her expedition
+with a sense of the powerlessness of beauty and charm against the
+unfeeling processes of the law. It seemed intolerable to live on
+for another year under the weight of her debt; and in her
+extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney, who still lingered
+in town, immersed in the delectable duty of "going over" her
+benefactress's effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a
+favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still;
+and one morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston's, where
+Grace, for the facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a
+provisional abode.
+
+The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she
+had so long commanded, increased Lily's desire to shorten the
+ordeal; and when Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room,
+rustling with the best quality of crape, her visitor went
+straight to the point: would she be willing to advance the amount
+of the expected legacy?
+
+Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
+inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not
+realized the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think
+that only the payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss
+Stepney herself had not received a penny of her inheritance, and
+was paying rent--yes, actually!--for the privilege of living in a
+house that belonged to her. She was sure it was not what poor
+dear cousin Julia would have wished--she had told the executors
+so to their faces; but they were inaccessible to reason, and
+there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily take example by
+her, and be patient--let them both remember how
+beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.
+
+Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of
+this example. "But you will have everything, Grace--it would be
+easy for you to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for."
+
+"Borrow--easy for me to borrow?" Grace Stepney rose up before her
+in sable wrath. "Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise
+money on my expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well
+her unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why,
+Lily, if you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being
+in debt that brought on her illness--you remember she had a
+slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I don't know the
+particulars, of course--I don't WANT to know them--but there were
+rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy--no one
+could be with her without seeing that. I can't help it if you are
+offended by my telling you this now--if I can do anything to make
+you realize the folly of your course, and how deeply SHE
+disapproved of it, I shall feel it is the truest way of making up
+to you for her loss."
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that
+she was taking a final leave of her old life. The future
+stretched before her dull and bare as the deserted length of
+Fifth Avenue, and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few
+cabs trailing in quest of fares that did not come. The
+completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she
+reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a hansom which
+pulled up at sight of her.
+
+From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a
+signalling hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to
+the street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace.
+
+"My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town? When I saw
+you the other day at Sherry's I didn't have time to ask---" She
+broke off, and added with a burst of frankness: "The truth is I
+was HORRID, Lily, and I've wanted to tell you so ever since."
+
+"Oh---" Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent
+clasp; but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: "Look
+here, Lily, don't let's beat about the bush: half the trouble in
+life is caused by pretending there isn't any. That's not my way,
+and I can only say I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself for following
+the other women's lead. But we'll talk of that by and bye--tell
+me now where you're staying and what your plans are. I don't
+suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace Stepney,
+eh?--and it struck me you might be rather at loose ends."
+
+In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest
+friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile: "I am at
+loose ends for the moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and
+she's good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare
+the time."
+
+Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "H'm--that's a temperate joy.
+Oh, I know--Gerty's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put
+together; but A LA LONGUE you're used to a little higher
+seasoning, aren't you, dear? And besides, I suppose she'll be off
+herself before long--the first of August, you say? Well,
+look here, you can't spend your summer in town; we'll talk of
+that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a few
+things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers'
+tonight?"
+
+And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the
+suggestion, she continued with her easy laugh: "You don't know
+them and they don't know you; but that don't make a rap of
+difference. They've taken the Van Alstyne place at Roslyn, and
+I've got CARTE BLANCHE to bring my friends down there--the more
+the merrier. They do things awfully well, and there's to be
+rather a jolly party there this week---" she broke off, checked
+by an undefinable change in Miss Bart's expression. "Oh, I don't
+mean YOUR particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but
+very good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line
+of their own: what they want is to have a good time, and to have
+it in their own way. They gave the other thing a few months'
+trial, under my distinguished auspices, and they were really
+doing extremely well--getting on a good deal faster than the
+Brys, just because they didn't care as much--but suddenly they
+decided that the whole business bored them, and that what they
+wanted was a crowd they could really feel at home with. Rather
+original of them, don't you think so? Mattie Gormer HAS got
+aspirations still; women always have; but she's awfully
+easy-going, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be
+the most important people in sight, so they've started a sort of
+continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney
+Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and
+doesn't put on airs. I think it's awfully good fun myself--some
+of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that's going,
+and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell, who
+made such a hit last spring in 'The Winning of Winny'; and Paul
+Morpeth--he's painting Mattie Gormer--and the Dick Bellingers,
+and Kate Corby--well, every one you can think of who's jolly and
+makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my
+dear--it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in
+town, and you'll find clever people as well as noisy
+ones--Morpeth, who admires Mattie enormously, always brings one
+or two of his set."
+
+Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority.
+"Jump in now, there's a dear, and we'll drive round to your hotel
+and have your things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two
+maids can meet us at the train."
+
+
+
+It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town--of
+that no doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a
+leafy verandah, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward
+picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment and
+men in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstyne house and its
+rambling dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity with
+the Gormers' week-end guests, who now, in the radiance of the
+Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in
+quest of the various distractions the place afforded:
+distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries,
+from bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches
+without. Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the
+crowd as carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express
+train. The blonde and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have
+figured the conductor, calmly assigning seats to the rush of
+travellers, while Carry Fisher represented the porter pushing
+their bags into place, giving them their numbers for the
+dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The
+train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed--life whizzed on
+with a deafening' rattle and roar, in which one traveller at
+least found a welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts.
+The Gormer MILIEU represented a social out-skirt which Lily had
+always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now that she was
+in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature
+approximating the real thing as the "society play" approaches the
+manners of the drawing-room. The people about her were doing the
+same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and the Dorsets: the
+difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner, from the
+pattern of the men's waistcoats to the inflexion of the women's
+voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was
+more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more
+familiarity--but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a
+fresher capacity for enjoyment.
+
+Miss Bart's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical
+friendliness that first irritated her pride and then brought her
+to a sharp sense of her own situation--of the place in life
+which, for the moment, she must accept and make the best of.
+These people knew her story--of that her first long talk with
+Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly branded as the
+heroine of a "queer" episode--but instead of shrinking from her
+as her own friends had done, they received her without question
+into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past
+as easily as they did Miss Anstell's, and with no apparent sense
+of any difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was
+that she should--in her own way, for they recognized a diversity
+of gifts--contribute as much to the general amusement as that
+graceful actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the
+most varied order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be
+"stuck-up," to mark a sense of differences and distinctions,
+would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer set. To be taken
+in on such terms--and into such a world!--was hard enough to the
+lingering pride in her; but she realized, with a pang of
+self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after all, be
+harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious
+charm of slipping back into a life where every material
+difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling
+hotel in a dusty deserted city to the space and luxury of a great
+country-house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of
+moral lassitude agreeable enough after the nervous tension and
+physical discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must
+yield to the refreshment her senses craved--after that she would
+reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her
+enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the
+unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality
+and courting the approval of people she had disdained under other
+conditions. But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a
+hard glaze of indifference was fast forming over her delicacies
+and susceptibilities, and each concession to expediency hardened
+the surface a little more.
+
+On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux,
+the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the
+life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up
+the same existence in a different setting: some at Newport, some
+at Bar Harbour, some in the elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack
+camp. Even Gerty Farish, who welcomed Lily's return with tender
+solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt with whom she
+spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily herself remained
+without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the great
+current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
+transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch
+for a day or two on the way to the Brys' camp, came to the rescue
+with a new suggestion.
+
+"Look here, Lily--I'll tell you what it is: I want you to take my
+place with Mattie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out
+to Alaska next month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the
+laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her of
+the bother of arranging things; but the Brys want me too--oh,
+yes, we've made it up: didn't I tell you?--and, to put it
+frankly, though I like the Gormers best, there's more profit for
+me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try Newport this
+summer, and if I can make it a success for them they--well,
+they'll make it a success for me." Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands
+enthusiastically. "Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea
+the better I like it--quite as much for you as for myself. The
+Gormers have both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip
+to Alaska is--well--the very thing I should want for you just at
+present."
+
+Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. "To take me out of
+my friends' way, you mean?" she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher
+responded with a deprecating kiss: "To keep you out of their
+sight till they realize how much they miss you."
+
+
+
+Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if
+it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at
+least the negative advantage of removing her from the fiery
+centre of criticism and discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the
+plan with all the energy of her somewhat inarticulate nature. She
+had even offered to give up her visit to Lake George, and remain
+in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would renounce her journey;
+but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this plan under a
+sufficiently valid reason.
+
+"You dear innocent, don't you see," she protested, "that Carry is
+quite right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about
+among people as much as possible? If my old friends choose to
+believe lies about me I shall have to make new ones, that's all;
+and you know beggars mustn't be choosers. Not that I don't like
+Mattie Gormer--I DO like her: she's kind and honest and
+unaffected; and don't you suppose I feel grateful to her for
+making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own
+family have unanimously washed their hands of me?"
+
+Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that
+Lily was cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she
+would never have cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting
+back now to her former manner of life, she was forfeiting her
+last chance of ever escaping from it. Gerty had but an obscure
+conception of what Lily's actual experience had been: but its
+consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity since the
+memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to
+her friend's extremity. To characters like Gerty's such a
+sacrifice constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in
+whose behalf it has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must
+continue to help her; and helping her, must believe in her,
+because faith is the main-spring of such natures. But even if
+Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the amenities of life,
+could have returned to the barrenness of a New York August,
+mitigated only by poor Gerty's presence, her worldly wisdom would
+have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew
+that Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be
+the first step toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to
+linger on in town out of season was a fatal admission of defeat.
+From the Gormers' tumultuous progress across their native
+continent, she returned with an altered view of her situation.
+The renewed habit of luxury--the daily waking to an assured
+absence of care and presence of material ease--gradually blunted
+her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of
+the void they could not fill. Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating
+good-nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who
+treated Lily precisely as they treated each other--all these
+characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her
+endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in her companions,
+the less justification she found for making use of them. The
+longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a
+fixed idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the
+inevitable perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh
+concessions from her pride. These, for the moment, took the
+unpleasant form of continuing to cling to her hosts after their
+return from Alaska. Little as she was in the key of their MILIEU,
+her immense social facility, her long habit of adapting herself
+to others without suffering her own outline to be blurred, the
+skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her craft,
+had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
+resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of
+easy elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder
+passages of the band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood
+indeed a little in awe of her; but Mattie's following, headed by
+Paul Morpeth, made her feel that they prized her for the very
+qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If Morpeth, whose
+social indolence was as great as his artistic activity, had
+abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence,
+where the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored,
+and a man could either break his engagements, or keep them in a
+painting-jacket and slippers, he still preserved his sense of
+differences, and his appreciation of graces he had no time to
+cultivate. During the preparations for the Brys' TABLEAUX he had
+been immensely struck by Lily's plastic possibilities--"not the
+face: too self-controlled for expression; but the rest of
+her--gad, what a model she'd make!"--and though his abhorrence of
+the world in which he had seen her was too great for him to think
+of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the privilege of
+having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in Mattie
+Gormer's dishevelled drawing-room.
+
+Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little
+nucleus of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of
+her course in lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor
+was she without pale glimpses of her own world, especially since
+the breaking-up of the Newport season had set the social current
+once more toward Long Island. Kate Corby, whose tastes
+made her as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was rendered by her
+necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers, where, after
+a first stare of surprise, she took Lily's presence almost too
+much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing
+frequently in the neighbourhood, drove over to impart her
+experiences and give Lily what she called the latest report from
+the weather-bureau; and the latter, who had never directly
+invited her confidence, could yet talk with her more freely than
+with Gerty Farish, in whose presence it was impossible even to
+admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher conveniently took
+for granted.
+
+Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not
+wish to probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to
+view it from the outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly;
+and these conclusions, at the end of a confidential talk, she
+summed up to her friend in the succinct remark: "You must marry
+as soon as you can."
+
+Lily uttered a faint laugh--for once Mrs. Fisher lacked
+originality. "Do you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the
+unfailing panacea of 'a good man's love'?"
+
+"No--I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that
+description," said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.
+
+"Either? Are there actually two?"
+
+"Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half--for the moment."
+
+Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. "Other things
+being equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?"
+
+"Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons--George Dorset."
+
+"Oh---" Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
+unrebuffed. "Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when
+they first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly
+with them again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a
+madwoman, and George's powers of credulity are very nearly
+exhausted. They're at their place here, you know, and I spent
+last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly party--no one else but
+poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a galley-slave (they used to
+talk of my making that poor boy unhappy!)--and after
+luncheon George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the
+end would have to come soon."
+
+Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. "As far as that goes, the
+end will never come--Bertha will always know how to get him back
+when she wants him."
+
+Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. "Not if he has
+any one else to turn to! Yes--that's just what it comes to: the
+poor creature can't stand alone. And I remember him such a good
+fellow, full of life and enthusiasm." She paused, and went on,
+dropping her glance from Lily's: "He wouldn't stay with her ten
+minutes if he KNEW---"
+
+"Knew---?" Miss Bart repeated.
+
+"What YOU must, for instance--with the opportunities you've had!
+If he had positive proof, I mean---"
+
+Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. "Please
+let us drop the subject, Carry: it's too odious to me." And to
+divert her companion's attention she added, with an attempt at
+lightness: "And your second candidate? We must not forget him."
+
+Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. "I wonder if you'll cry out just as
+loud if I say--Sim Rosedale?"
+
+Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at
+her friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a
+possibility which, in the last weeks, had more than once recurred
+to her; but after a moment she said carelessly: "Mr. Rosedale
+wants a wife who can establish him in the bosom of the Van
+Osburghs and Trenors."
+
+Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. "And so YOU could--with his
+money! Don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you
+both?"
+
+"I don't see any way of making him see it," Lily returned, with a
+laugh intended to dismiss the subject.
+
+But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had
+taken leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her
+annexation by the Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on
+penetrating to the inner Paradise from which she was now
+excluded; but once or twice, when nothing better offered, he had
+turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he had left her in
+no doubt as to his view of her situation. That he still
+admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the
+Gormer circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there
+were no puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his
+approval. But it was in the quality of his admiration that she
+read his shrewd estimate of her case. He enjoyed letting the
+Gormers see that he had known "Miss Lily"--she was "Miss Lily" to
+him now--before they had had the faintest social existence:
+enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with the distance
+to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt that
+that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing
+social current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large
+interests and manifold preoccupations permits himself in his
+hours of ease.
+
+The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and
+of meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new
+friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than
+ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection
+rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact
+that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor,
+and was sure to put the basest construction on it, seemed to
+place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at Carry Fisher's
+suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she disliked
+Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
+gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was
+always less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable
+persistency which she had always felt in him, he was making his
+way through the dense mass of social antagonisms. Already his
+wealth, and the masterly use he had made of it, were giving him
+an enviable prominence in the world of affairs, and placing Wall
+Street under obligations which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In
+response to these claims, his name began to figure on municipal
+committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
+distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the
+fashionable clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He
+had figured once or twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned
+to speak with just the right note of disdain of the big Van
+Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was a wife whose
+affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his ascent.
+It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed
+his affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had
+mounted nearer to the goal, while she had lost the power to
+abbreviate the remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with
+the clearness of vision that came to her in moments of
+despondency. It was success that dazzled her--she could
+distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And
+the twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually
+lighted by a faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian
+motive of Rosedale's wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the
+heat of personal inclination. She would not have detested him so
+heartily had she not known that he dared to admire her. What,
+then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive had
+ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him--he
+had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if
+she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive
+state, he had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her
+for love, now that he had no other reason for marrying her?
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were
+engaged in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a
+part of Miss Bart's duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits
+of inspection to the new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged
+into problems of lighting and sanitation, Lily had leisure to
+wander, in the bright autumn air, along the tree-fringed bay to
+which the land declined. Little as she was addicted to solitude,
+there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from
+the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being swept
+passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she
+had no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and
+squander money, while she felt herself of no more account among
+them than an expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.
+
+It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore
+one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came
+suddenly upon the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was
+in the immediate neighbourhood of the Gormers' newly-acquired
+estate, and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily
+had caught one or two passing glimpses of the couple; but they
+moved in so different an orbit that she had not considered the
+possibility of a direct encounter.
+
+Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did
+not see Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight,
+instead of bringing him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent
+him toward her with an eagerness which found expression in his
+opening words.
+
+"Miss Bart!--You'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to
+meet you--I should have written to you if I'd dared." His face,
+with its tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven
+uneasy look, as though life had become an unceasing race between
+himself and the thoughts at his heels.
+
+The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he
+pressed on, as if encouraged by her tone: "I wanted to
+apologize--to ask you to forgive me for the miserable part I
+played---"
+
+She checked him with a quick gesture. "Don't let us speak of it:
+I was very sorry for you," she said, with a tinge of disdain
+which, as she instantly perceived, was not lost on him.
+
+He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she
+repented the thrust. "You might well be; you don't know--you must
+let me explain. I was deceived: abominably deceived---"
+
+"I am still more sorry for you, then," she interposed, without
+irony; "but you must see that I am not exactly the person with
+whom the subject can be discussed."
+
+He met this with a look of genuine wonder. "Why not? Isn't it to
+you, of all people, that I owe an explanation---"
+
+"No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear
+to me."
+
+"Ah---" he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute
+hand switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made
+a movement to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: "Miss
+Bart, for God's sake don't turn from me! We used to be good
+friends--you were always kind to me--and you don't know how I
+need a friend now."
+
+The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in
+Lily's breast. She too needed friends--she had tasted the pang of
+loneliness; and her resentment of Bertha Dorset's cruelty
+softened her heart to the poor wretch who was after all the chief
+of Bertha's victims.
+
+"I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you," she
+said. "But you must understand that after what has happened we
+can't be friends again--we can't see each other."
+
+"Ah, you ARE kind--you're merciful--you always were!" He fixed
+his miserable gaze on her. "But why can't we be friends--why not,
+when I've repented in dust and ashes? Isn't it hard that you
+should condemn me to suffer for the falseness, the treachery of
+others? I was punished enough at the time--is there to be no
+respite for me?"
+
+"I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
+reconciliation which was effected at my expense," Lily began,
+with renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: "Don't put
+it in that way--when that's been the worst of my
+punishment. My God! what could I do--wasn't I powerless? You were
+singled out as a sacrifice: any word I might have said would have
+been turned against you---"
+
+"I have told you I don't blame you; all I ask you to understand
+is that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me--after all that
+her behaviour has since implied--it's impossible that you and I
+should meet."
+
+He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. "Is
+it--need it be? Mightn't there be circumstances---?" he checked
+himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he
+began again: "Miss Bart, listen--give me a minute. If we're not
+to meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we
+can't be friends after--after what has happened. But can't I at
+least appeal to your pity? Can't I move you if I ask you to think
+of me as a prisoner--a prisoner you alone can set free?"
+
+Lily's inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it
+possible that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher's
+adumbrations?
+
+"I can't see how I can possibly be of any help to you," she
+murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of
+his look.
+
+Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his
+stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he
+said, with an abrupt drop to docility: "You WOULD see, if you'd
+be as merciful as you used to be: and heaven knows I've never
+needed it more!"
+
+She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder
+of her influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by
+suffering, and the sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life
+disarmed her contempt for his weakness.
+
+"I am very sorry for you--I would help you willingly; but you
+must have other friends, other advisers."
+
+"I never had a friend like you," he answered simply. "And
+besides--can't you see?--you're the only person"--his voice
+dropped to a whisper--"the only person who knows."
+
+Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in
+precipitate throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted
+his eyes to her entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You
+understand? I'm desperate--I'm at the end of my tether. I
+want to be free, and you can free me. I know you can. You don't
+want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't want to
+take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind--your eyes
+are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with
+you to show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you
+back. You understand, of course--there wouldn't be a hint of
+publicity--not a sound or a syllable to connect you with the
+thing. It would never come to that, you know: all I need is to be
+able to say definitely: 'I know this--and this--and this'--and the
+fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and the whole
+abominable business swept out of sight in a second."
+
+He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of
+exhaustion between his words; and through the breaks she caught,
+as through the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of
+peace and safety. For there was no mistaking the definite
+intention behind his vague appeal; she could have filled up the
+blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's insinuations. Here was a
+man who turned to her in the extremity of his loneliness and his
+humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he would be hers
+with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to make
+him so lay in her hand--lay there in a completeness he could not
+even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be
+hers at a stroke--there was something dazzling in the
+completeness of the opportunity.
+
+She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch
+of the deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her--fear of
+herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her
+past weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her
+toward the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned
+quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.
+
+"Goodbye--I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."
+
+"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that
+you abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could
+have saved me!"
+
+"Goodbye--goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she
+moved away she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At
+least you'll let me see you once more?"
+
+
+
+Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the
+lawn toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her
+hostess might be speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of
+her delay; for, like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer
+disliked to be kept waiting.
+
+As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton
+with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the
+direction of the gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer,
+with a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At
+sight of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she
+said with a slight laugh: "Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought
+you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorset--she said
+she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call."
+
+Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her
+experience of Bertha's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to
+include the neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer,
+relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a
+deprecating laugh: "Of course what really brought her was
+curiosity--she made me take her all over the house. But no one
+could have been nicer--no airs, you know, and so good-natured: I
+can quite see why people think her so fascinating."
+
+This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting
+with Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet
+immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was
+not in Bertha's habits to be neighbourly, much less to make
+advances to any one outside the immediate circle of her
+affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of
+outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only
+when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
+capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware,
+given them special value in the eyes of the persons she
+distinguished. Lily saw this now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable
+complacency, and in the happy irrelevance with which, for the
+next day or two, she quoted Bertha's opinions and
+speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret ambitions
+which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence, and the attitude of her
+companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating
+afresh in the glow of Bertha's advances; and whatever the cause
+of the latter, Lily saw that, if they were followed up, they were
+likely to have a disturbing effect upon her own future.
+
+She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new
+friends by one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent;
+and on her return from this somewhat depressing excursion she was
+immediately conscious that Mrs. Dorset's influence was still in
+the air. There had been another exchange of visits, a tea at a
+country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball; there was even a
+rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer, with an
+unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
+conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.
+
+The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell
+Sunday with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish's aid, had
+discovered a small private hotel where she might establish
+herself for the winter. The hotel being on the edge of a
+fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the few square feet she
+was to occupy was considerably in excess of her means; but she
+found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters in the
+argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
+importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was
+impossible for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a
+week ahead, to lapse into a form of existence like Gerty
+Farish's. She had never been so near the brink of insolvency; but
+she could at least manage to meet her weekly hotel bill, and
+having settled the heaviest of her previous debts out of the
+money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair margin
+of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
+enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity.
+Her rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of
+brick walls and fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark
+restaurant with its surcharged ceiling and haunting smell of
+coffee--all these material discomforts, which were yet to be
+accounted as so many privileges soon to be withdrawn, kept
+constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
+her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels.
+Beat about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it
+was that she must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction
+she was fortified by an unexpected visit from George Dorset.
+
+She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town,
+pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few
+knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush
+exuberances; but the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he
+said meekly that he hadn't come to bother her--that he asked
+only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything
+she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
+himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy
+that had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of
+questioning her about herself, and as she replied, she saw that,
+for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated
+the dense surface of his self-absorption. Was it possible that
+her old beast of an aunt had actually cut her off? That she was
+living alone like this because there was no one else for her to
+go to, and that she really hadn't more than enough to keep alive
+on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The fibres of
+sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
+intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings
+might mean--and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous
+perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might
+serve him.
+
+When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must
+dress for dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to
+blurt out: "It's been such a comfort--do say you'll let me see
+you again--" But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give
+an assent; and she said with friendly decisiveness: "I'm
+sorry--but you know why I can't."
+
+He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before
+her embarrassed but insistent. "I know how you might, if you
+would--if things were different--and it lies with you to make
+them so. It's just a word to say, and you put me out of my
+misery!"
+
+Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the
+nearness of the temptation. "You're mistaken; I know nothing; I
+saw nothing," she exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of
+reiteration, to build a barrier between herself and her peril;
+and as he turned away, groaning out "You sacrifice us both," she
+continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: "I know
+nothing--absolutely nothing."
+
+
+
+Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with
+Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met
+she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour.
+There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and
+she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to
+the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of
+expediency. The task was not an easy one; but neither was it
+easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the thought of what
+George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer. Baseness for
+baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when
+a marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of
+her difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range
+beyond the day of plighting: after that everything faded into a
+haze of material well-being, in which the personality of her
+benefactor remained mercifully vague. She had learned, in her
+long vigils, that there were certain things not good to think of,
+certain midnight images that must at any cost be exorcised--and
+one of these was the image of herself as Rosedale's wife.
+
+Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys'
+Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at
+Tuxedo; and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset's
+visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her
+hostess was still out, and the firelit quiet of the small silent
+house descended on her spirit with a sense of peace and
+familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had ever before
+been evoked by Carry Fisher's surroundings; but, contrasted to
+the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of
+repose and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in
+the quiet competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her
+room. Mrs. Fisher's unconventionality was, after all, a merely
+superficial divergence from an inherited social creed, while the
+manners of the Gormer circle represented their first attempt to
+formulate such a creed for themselves.
+
+It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had
+found herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of
+familiar associations had almost prepared her, as she descended
+the stairs before dinner, to enter upon a group of her old
+acquaintances. But this expectation was instantly checked by the
+reflection that the friends who remained loyal were precisely
+those who would be least willing to expose her to such
+encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
+instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room
+hearth before his hostess's little girl.
+
+Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily;
+yet she could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his
+advances to the child. They were not, at any rate, the
+premeditated and perfunctory endearments of the guest under his
+hostess's eye, for he and the little girl had the room to
+themselves; and something in his attitude made him seem a simple
+and kindly being compared to the small critical creature who
+endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind--Lily, from the
+threshold, had time to feel--kind in his gross, unscrupulous,
+rapacious way, the way of the predatory creature with his mate.
+She had but a moment in which to consider whether this glimpse of
+the fireside man mitigated her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a
+more concrete and intimate form; for at sight of her he was
+immediately on his feet again, the florid and dominant Rosedale
+of Mattie Gormer's drawing-room.
+
+It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as
+her only fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met
+since the latter's tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew
+that the acuteness which enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and
+pleasant course through a world of antagonistic forces was not
+infrequently exercised for the benefit of her friends. It was, in
+fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she actively gleaned
+her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real sympathies
+were on the other side--with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
+unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn
+stubble of success.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of
+exposing Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated
+impression of Rosedale's personality. Kate Corby and two
+or three men dropped in to dinner, and Lily, alive to every
+detail of her friend's method, saw that such opportunities as had
+been contrived for her were to be deferred till she had, as it
+were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
+sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a
+sufferer resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of
+almost lethargic helplessness continued when, after the departure
+of the guests, Mrs. Fisher followed her upstairs.
+
+"May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk
+in my room we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about
+her with the eye of the solicitous hostess. "I hope you've
+managed to make yourself comfortable, dear? Isn't it a jolly
+little house? It's such a blessing to have a few quiet weeks with
+the baby."
+
+Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively
+maternal that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could
+ever get time and money enough, she would not end by devoting
+them both to her daughter.
+
+"It's a well-earned rest: I'll say that for myself," she
+continued, sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed
+lounge near the fire. "Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often
+used to wish myself back with the Gormers. Talk of love making
+people jealous and suspicious--it's nothing to social ambition!
+Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering whether the women who
+called on us called on ME because I was with her, or on HER
+because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to find
+out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
+rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a
+single acquaintance--when, all the while, that was what she had
+me there for, and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when
+the season was over!"
+
+Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause,
+and the practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an
+occasional resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at
+crucial moments, the purpose of the juggler's chatter while he
+shifts the contents of his sleeves. Through the haze of her
+cigarette smoke she continued to gaze meditatively at Miss Bart,
+who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
+toilet-table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened
+undulations of her hair.
+
+"Your hair's wonderful, Lily. Thinner--? What does that matter,
+when it's so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go
+straight to their hair--but yours looks as if there had never
+been an anxious thought under it. I never saw you look better
+than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer told me that Morpeth
+wanted to paint you--why don't you let him?"
+
+Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to
+the reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she
+said, with a slight touch of irritation: "I don't care to accept
+a portrait from Paul Morpeth."
+
+Mrs. Fisher mused. "N--no. And just now, especially--well, he
+can do you after you're married." She waited a moment, and then
+went on: "By the way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day.
+She turned up here last Sunday--and with Bertha Dorset, of all
+people in the world!"
+
+She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on
+her hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained
+its unwavering stroke from brow to nape.
+
+"I never was more astonished," Mrs. Fisher pursued. "I don't know
+two women less predestined to intimacy--from Bertha's standpoint,
+that is; for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that
+she should be singled out--I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks
+it is fascinating the anaconda. Well, you know I've always told
+you that Mattie secretly longed to bore herself with the really
+fashionable; and now that the chance has come, I see that she's
+capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it."
+
+Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon
+her friend. "Including ME?" she suggested.
+
+"Ah, my dear," murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log
+from the hearth.
+
+"That's what Bertha means, isn't it?" Miss Bart went on steadily.
+"For of course she always means something; and before I left Long
+Island I saw that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie."
+
+Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate.
+To think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only
+a subtler form of snobbishness! Bertha can already make her
+believe anything she pleases--and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor
+child, by insinuating horrors about you."
+
+Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. "The world is
+too vile," she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's
+anxious scrutiny.
+
+"It's not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in
+it is to fight it on its own terms--and above all, my dear, not
+alone!" Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a
+resolute grasp. "You've told me so little that I can only guess
+what has been happening; but in the rush we all live in there's
+no time to keep on hating any one without a cause, and if Bertha
+is still nasty enough to want to injure you with other people it
+must be because she's still afraid of you. From her standpoint
+there's only one reason for being afraid of you; and my own idea
+is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
+hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you
+don't care for that particular form of retaliation, the only
+thing to save you from Bertha is to marry somebody else."
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the
+cheerless distinctness of a winter dawn. It outlined the facts
+with a cold precision unmodified by shade or colour, and
+refracted, as it were, from the blank walls of the surrounding
+limitations: she had opened windows from which no sky was ever
+visible. But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must
+employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot
+stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate
+her case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with
+it, however, she went the full length of its consequences; and
+these had never been more clearly present to her than when, the
+next afternoon, she set out for a walk with Rosedale.
+
+It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted
+with the light of summer, and something in the lines of the
+landscape, and in the golden haze which bathed them, recalled to
+Miss Bart the September afternoon when she had climbed the slopes
+of Bellomont with Selden. The importunate memory was kept before
+her by its ironic contrast to her present situation, since her
+walk with Selden had represented an irresistible flight from just
+such a climax as the present excursion was designed to bring
+about. But other memories importuned her also; the recollection
+of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through some
+malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always
+failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady
+enough now. She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation
+must begin again, and against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset
+should succeed in breaking up her friendship with the Gormers;
+and her longing for shelter and security was intensified by the
+passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only wealth and
+predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of Rosedale--the
+Rosedale she felt it in her power to create--she would at least
+present an invulnerable front to her enemy.
+
+She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant,
+to keep up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale
+was too frankly tending. As she walked beside him, shrinking in
+every nerve from the way in which his look and tone made free of
+her, yet telling herself that this momentary endurance of his
+mood was the price she must pay for her ultimate power over him,
+she tried to calculate the exact point at which concession must
+turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be made
+equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
+impenetrable to such hints, and she had a sense of something hard
+and self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner.
+
+They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky
+glen above the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination
+of an impassioned period by turning upon him the grave loveliness
+of her gaze.
+
+"I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale," she said quietly; "and
+I am ready to marry you whenever you wish."
+
+Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received
+this announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet,
+where he halted before her in an attitude of almost comic
+discomfiture.
+
+"For I suppose that is what you do wish," she continued, in the
+same quiet tone. "And, though I was unable to consent when you
+spoke to me in this way before, I am ready, now that I know you
+so much better, to trust my happiness to your hands."
+
+She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on
+such occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown
+across the tortuous darkness of the situation. In its
+inconvenient brightness Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as
+though conscious that every avenue of escape was unpleasantly
+illuminated.
+
+Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case,
+in which, with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a
+gold-tipped cigarette. Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it
+a moment before saying: "My dear Miss Lily, I'm sorry if there's
+been any little misapprehension between us-but you made me feel
+my suit was so hopeless that I had really no intention of
+renewing it."
+
+Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked
+the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity:
+"I have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression
+that my decision was final."
+
+Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held
+him in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added,
+with the faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we
+bid each other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having
+once thought of me as you did."
+
+The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled
+a vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite
+inaccessibleness, the sense of distance she could convey without
+a hint of disdain, that made it most difficult for him to give
+her up.
+
+"Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain't we going to be good
+friends all the same?" he urged, without releasing her hand.
+
+She drew it away quietly. "What is your idea of being good
+friends?" she returned with a slight smile. "Making love to me
+without asking me to marry you?" Rosedale laughed with a
+recovered sense of ease.
+
+"Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose. I can't help
+making love to you--I don't see how any man could; but I don't
+mean to ask you to marry me as long as I can keep out of it."
+
+She continued to smile. "I like your frankness; but I am afraid
+our friendship can hardly continue on those terms." She turned
+away, as though to mark that its final term had in fact been
+reached, and he followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense
+of her having after all kept the game in her own hands.
+
+"Miss Lily---" he began impulsively; but she walked on without
+seeming to hear him.
+
+He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreating
+hand on her arm. "Miss Lily--don't hurry away like that. You're
+beastly hard on a fellow; but if you don't mind speaking the
+truth I don't see why you shouldn't allow me to do the same."
+
+She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away
+instinctively from his touch, though she made no effort to evade
+his words.
+
+"I was under the impression," she rejoined, "that you had done so
+without waiting for my permission."
+
+"Well--why shouldn't you hear my reasons for doing it, then?
+We're neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking
+is going to hurt us. I'm all broken up on you: there's nothing
+new in that. I'm more in love with you than I was this time last
+year; but I've got to face the fact that the situation is
+changed."
+
+She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic
+composure. "You mean to say that I'm not as desirable a match as
+you thought me?"
+
+"Yes; that's what I do mean," he answered resolutely. "I won't go
+into what's happened. I don't believe the stories about you--I
+don't WANT to believe them. But they're there, and my not
+believing them ain't going to alter the situation."
+
+She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked
+the retort on her lip and she continued to face him composedly.
+"If they are not true," she said, "doesn't THAT alter the
+situation?"
+
+He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes,
+which made her feel herself no more than some superfine human
+merchandise. "I believe it does in novels; but I'm certain it
+don't in real life. You know that as well as I do: if we're
+speaking the truth, let's speak the whole truth. Last year I was
+wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at me: this year--well,
+you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in the interval?
+Your situation, that's all. Then you thought you could do better;
+now---"
+
+"You think you can?" broke from her ironically.
+
+"Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is." He stood before her, his
+hands in his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid
+waistcoat. "It's this way, you see: I've had a pretty steady
+grind of it these last years, working up my social position.
+Think it's funny I should say that? Why should I mind saying I
+want to get into society? A man ain't ashamed to say he wants to
+own a racing stable or a picture gallery. Well, a taste for
+society's just another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want to get even
+with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year--put it
+that way if it sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of
+the best houses; and I'm getting it too, little by little. But I
+know the quickest way to queer yourself with the right
+people is to be seen with the wrong ones; and that's the reason I
+want to avoid mistakes."
+
+Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might
+have expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his
+candour, and after a moment's pause he went on: "There it is, you
+see. I'm more in love with you than ever, but if I married you
+now I'd queer myself for good and all, and everything I've worked
+for all these years would be wasted."
+
+She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment
+had faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had
+so long moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of
+an avowed expediency.
+
+"I understand you," she said. "A year ago I should have been of
+use to you, and now I should be an encumbrance; and I like you
+for telling me so quite honestly." She extended her hand with a
+smile.
+
+Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosedale's
+self-command. "By George, you're a dead game sport, you are!" he
+exclaimed; and as she began once more to move away, he broke out
+suddenly--"Miss Lily--stop. You know I don't believe those
+stories--I believe they were all got up by a woman who didn't
+hesitate to sacrifice you to her own convenience---"
+
+Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain: it was easier to
+endure his insolence than his commiseration.
+
+"You are very kind; but I don't think we need discuss the matter
+farther."
+
+But Rosedale's natural imperviousness to hints made it easy for
+him to brush such resistance aside. "I don't want to discuss
+anything; I just want to put a plain case before you," he
+persisted.
+
+She paused in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose
+in his look and tone; and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly
+upon her: "The wonder to me is that you've waited so long to get
+square with that woman, when you've had the power in your hands."
+She continued silent under the rush of astonishment that his
+words produced, and he moved a step closer to ask with low-toned
+directness: "Why don't you use those letters of hers you bought
+last year?"
+
+Lily stood speechless under the shock of the interrogation. In
+the words preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion
+to her supposed influence over George Dorset; nor did the
+astonishing indelicacy of the reference diminish the likelihood
+of Rosedale's resorting to it. But now she saw how far short of
+the mark she had fallen; and the surprise of learning that he had
+discovered the secret of the letters left her, for the moment,
+unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of
+putting his knowledge.
+
+Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his
+point; and he went on quickly, as though to secure completer
+control of the situation: "You see I know where you stand--I know
+how completely she's in your power. That sounds like stage-talk,
+don't it?--but there's a lot of truth in some of those old gags;
+and I don't suppose you bought those letters simply because
+you're collecting autographs."
+
+She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment: her
+only clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his
+power.
+
+"You're wondering how I found out about 'em?" he went on,
+answering her look with a note of conscious pride. "Perhaps
+you've forgotten that I'm the owner of the Benedick-but never
+mind about that now. Getting on to things is a mighty useful
+accomplishment in business, and I've simply extended it to my
+private affairs. For this IS partly my affair, you see--at least,
+it depends on you to make it so. Let's look the situation
+straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorset, for reasons we needn't go into,
+did you a beastly bad turn last spring. Everybody knows what Mrs.
+Dorset is, and her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath
+where their own interests were concerned; but as long as they're
+out of the row it's much easier to follow her lead than to set
+themselves against it, and you've simply been sacrificed to their
+laziness and selfishness. Isn't that a pretty fair statement of
+the case?--Well, some people say you've got the neatest kind of
+an answer in your hands: that George Dorset would marry you
+tomorrow, if you'd tell him all you know, and give him the chance
+to show the lady the door. I daresay he would; but you don't seem
+to care for that particular form of getting even, and,
+taking a purely business view of the question, I think you're
+right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out with perfectly clean
+hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to get Bertha
+Dorset to back you up, instead of trying to fight her."
+
+He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time
+for the expression of her gathering resistance; and as he pressed
+on, expounding and elucidating his idea with the directness of
+the man who has no doubts of his cause, she found the indignation
+gradually freezing on her lip, found herself held fast in the
+grasp of his argument by the mere cold strength of its
+presentation. There was no time now to wonder how he had heard of
+her obtaining the letters: all her world was dark outside the
+monstrous glare of his scheme for using them. And it was not,
+after the first moment, the horror of the idea that held her
+spell-bound, subdued to his will; it was rather its subtle
+affinity to her own inmost cravings. He would marry her tomorrow
+if she could regain Bertha Dorset's friendship; and to induce the
+open resumption of that friendship, and the tacit retractation of
+all that had caused its withdrawal, she had only to put to the
+lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously
+delivered into her hands. Lily saw in a flash the advantage of
+this course over that which poor Dorset had pressed upon her. The
+other plan depended for its success on the infliction of an open
+injury, while this reduced the transaction to a private
+understanding, of which no third person need have the remotest
+hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of business-like give-and-take,
+this understanding took on the harmless air of a mutual
+accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision of
+boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it as a
+perpetual adjustment, a play of party politics, in which every
+concession had its recognized equivalent: Lily's tired mind was
+fascinated by this escape from fluctuating ethical estimates into
+a region of concrete weights and measures.
+
+Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only
+a gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-
+reaching perception of the chances it offered; for as she
+continued to stand before him without speaking, he broke out,
+with a quick return upon himself: "You see how simple it is,
+don't you? Well, don't be carried away by the idea that it's TOO simple.
+It isn't exactly as if you'd started in with a clean
+bill of health. Now we're talking let's call things by
+their right names, and clear the whole business up. You know well
+enough that Bertha Dorset couldn't have touched you if there
+hadn't been--well--questions asked before--little points of
+interrogation, eh? Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with
+stingy relatives, I suppose; anyhow, they DID happen, and she
+found the ground prepared for her. Do you see where I'm coming
+out? You don't want these little questions cropping up again.
+It's one thing to get Bertha Dorset into line--but what you want
+is to keep her there. You can frighten her fast enough--but how
+are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you're
+as powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won't do that
+for you as you are now; but with a big backing behind you, you'll
+keep her just where you want her to be. That's MY share in the
+business--that's what I'm offering you. You can't put the thing
+through without me--don't run away with any idea that you can. In
+six months you'd be back again among your old worries, or worse
+ones; and here I am, ready to lift you out of 'em tomorrow if you
+say so. DO you say so, Miss Lily?" he added, moving suddenly
+nearer.
+
+The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to
+startle Lily out of the state of tranced subservience into which
+she had insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the
+groping consciousness, and it came to her now through the
+disgusted perception that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a
+matter of course, the likelihood of her distrusting him and
+perhaps trying to cheat him of his share of the spoils. This
+glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the whole transaction
+in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential baseness of the
+act lay in its freedom from risk.
+
+She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying, in a
+voice that was a surprise to her own ears: "You are
+mistaken--quite mistaken--both in the facts and in what you infer
+from them."
+
+Rosedale stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash in a
+direction so different from that toward which she had appeared to
+be letting him guide her.
+
+"Now what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each
+other!" he exclaimed; and to her murmur of "Ah, we do NOW," he
+retorted with a sudden burst of violence: "I suppose it's because
+the letters are to HIM, then? Well, I'll be damned if I see what
+thanks you've got from him!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world
+was in transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue,
+still deserted at the week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a
+broadening stream of carriages between house-fronts gradually
+restored to consciousness.
+
+The Horse Show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing
+semblance of reanimation, filling the theatres and restaurants
+with a human display of the same costly and high-stepping kind as
+circled daily about its ring. In Miss Bart's world the Horse
+Show, and the public it attracted, had ostensibly come to be
+classed among the spectacles disdained of the elect; but, as the
+feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance on his village
+green, so society, unofficially and incidentally, still
+condescended to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the
+rest, was not above seizing such an occasion for the display of
+herself and her horses; and Lily was given one or two
+opportunities of appearing at her friend's side in the most
+conspicuous box the house afforded. But this lingering semblance
+of intimacy made her only the more conscious of a change in the
+relation between Mattie and herself, of a dawning discrimination,
+a gradually formed social standard, emerging from Mrs. Gormer's
+chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should
+constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew
+that, once the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift
+of fashionable life would facilitate Mattie's detachment from
+her. She had, in short, failed to make herself indispensable; or
+rather, her attempt to do so had been thwarted by an influence
+stronger than any she could exert. That influence, in its last
+analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha Dorset's social
+credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.
+
+Lily knew that Rosedale had overstated neither the difficulty of
+her own position nor the completeness of the vindication he
+offered: once Bertha's match in material resources, her superior
+gifts would make it easy for her to dominate her adversary. An
+understanding of what such domination would mean, and of the
+disadvantages accruing from her rejection of it, was
+brought home to Lily with increasing clearness during the early
+weeks of the winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a semblance of
+movement outside the main flow of the social current; but with
+the return to town, and the concentrating of scattered
+activities, the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her
+old habits of life marked her as being unmistakably excluded from
+them. If one were not a part of the season's fixed routine, one
+swung unsphered in a void of social non-existence. Lily, for all
+her dissatisfied dreaming, had never really conceived the
+possibility of revolving about a different centre: it was easy
+enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any
+other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted
+her, and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the
+abnormal value suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and
+insignificant details of her former life. Its very drudgeries had
+a charm now that she was involuntarily released from them:
+card-leaving, note-writing, enforced civilities to the dull and
+elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious dinners--how
+pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness of
+her days! She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself,
+with a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her
+world; nor did she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which
+sometimes produce a wholesome reaction of contempt in their
+victim. Society did not turn away from her, it simply drifted by,
+preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to the full
+measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the
+creature of its favour.
+
+She had rejected Rosedale's suggestion with a promptness of scorn
+almost surprising to herself: she had not lost her capacity for
+high flashes of indignation. But she could not breathe long on
+the heights; there had been nothing in her training to develop
+any continuity of moral strength: what she craved, and really
+felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest
+attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her intermittent
+impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her self-respect.
+If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only
+afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on
+a slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without
+conscious effort; her whole being had risen against it;
+and she did not yet perceive that, by the mere act of listening
+to him, she had learned to live with ideas which would once have
+been intolerable to her.
+
+
+
+
+To Gerty Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer if less
+discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle
+were already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what
+hostages Lily had already given to expediency; but she saw her
+passionately and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of
+"keeping up." Gerty could smile now at her own early dream of her
+friend's renovation through adversity: she understood clearly
+enough that Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the
+unimportance of what they have lost. But this very fact, to
+Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid, the
+more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
+conscious of needing.
+
+Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss
+Farish's stairs. There was something irritating to her in the
+mute interrogation of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real
+difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one
+whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the
+restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the charm of
+contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which
+her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon,
+she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend,
+this sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual
+intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the
+brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable
+procession of fastidiously-equipped carriages--giving her,
+through the little squares of brougham-windows, peeps of familiar
+profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing
+notes and cards to attendant footmen--this glimpse of the
+ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more
+than ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's
+stairs, and of the cramped blind alley of life to which they led.
+Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people: how many
+thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such
+stairs all over the world at that very moment--figures as shabby
+and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged lady in limp
+black who descended Gerty's flight as Lily climbed to it!
+
+"That was poor Miss Jane Silverton--she came to talk things over
+with me: she and her sister want to do something to support
+themselves," Gerty explained, as Lily followed her into the
+sitting-room.
+
+"To support themselves? Are they so hard up?" Miss Bart asked
+with a touch of irritation: she had not come to listen to the
+woes of other people.
+
+"I'm afraid they have nothing left: Ned's debts have swallowed up
+everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away
+from Carry Fisher; they thought Bertha Dorset would be such a
+good influence, because she doesn't care for cards, and--well,
+she talked quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as
+if Ned were her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on
+the yacht, so that he might have a chance to drop cards and
+racing, and take up his literary work again."
+
+Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of
+her departing visitor. "But that isn't all; it isn't even the
+worst. It seems that Ned has quarrelled with the Dorsets; or at
+least Bertha won't allow him to see her, and he is so unhappy
+about it that he has taken to gambling again, and going about
+with all sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Van Osburgh
+accuses him of having had a very bad influence on Freddy, who
+left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever
+since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene; and
+Jack Stepney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss
+Jane that Freddy was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to
+whom Ned had introduced him, and that they could do nothing with
+him because now he's of age he has his own money. You can fancy
+how poor Miss Jane felt--she came to me at once, and seemed to
+think that if I could get her something to do she could earn
+enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away--I'm afraid she has
+no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his evenings
+at bridge. And he was horribly in debt when he came back from the
+cruise--I can't see why he should have spent so much more money
+under Bertha's influence than Carry's: can you?"
+
+Lily met this query with an impatient gesture. "My dear Gerty, I
+always understand how people can spend much more money--never how
+they can spend any less!"
+
+She loosened her furs and settled herself in Gerty's easy-chair,
+while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups.
+
+"But what can they do--the Miss Silvertons? How do they mean to
+support themselves?" she asked, conscious that the note of
+irritation still persisted in her voice. It was the very last
+topic she had meant to discuss--it really did not interest her in
+the least--but she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to
+know how the two colourless shrinking victims of young
+Silverton's sentimental experiments meant to cope with the grim
+necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold.
+
+"I don't know--I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane
+reads aloud very nicely--but it's so hard to find any one who is
+willing to be read to. And Miss Annie paints a little---"
+
+"Oh, I know--apple-blossoms on blotting-paper; just the kind of
+thing I shall be doing myself before long!" exclaimed Lily,
+starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened
+destruction to Miss Farish's fragile tea-table.
+
+Lily bent over to steady the cups; then she sank back into her
+seat. "I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in--how
+beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat! Oh, Gerty, I
+wasn't meant to be good," she sighed out incoherently.
+
+Gerty lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the
+eyes shone with a peculiar sleepless lustre.
+
+"You look horribly tired, Lily; take your tea, and let me give
+you this cushion to lean against."
+
+Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with
+an impatient hand.
+
+"Don't give me that! I don't want to lean back--I shall go to
+sleep if I do."
+
+"Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse," Gerty urged
+affectionately.
+
+"No--no; don't be quiet; talk to me--keep me awake! I don't sleep
+at night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over
+me."
+
+"You don't sleep at night? Since when?"
+
+"I don't know--I can't remember." She rose and put the empty cup
+on the tea-tray. "Another, and stronger, please; if I don't keep
+awake now I shall see horrors tonight--perfect horrors!"
+
+"But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea."
+
+"No, no--give it to me; and don't preach, please," Lily returned
+imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gerty noticed
+that her hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup.
+
+"But you look so tired: I'm sure you must be ill---"
+
+Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. "Do I look ill? Does my
+face show it?" She rose and walked quickly toward the little
+mirror above the writing-table. "What a horrid
+looking-glass--it's all blotched and discoloured. Any one would
+look ghastly in it!" She turned back, fixing her plaintive eyes
+on Gerty. "You stupid dear, why do you say such odious things to
+me? It's enough to make one ill to be told one looks so! And
+looking ill means looking ugly." She caught Gerty's wrists, and
+drew her close to the window. "After all, I'd rather know the
+truth. Look me straight in the face, Gerty, and tell me: am I
+perfectly frightful?"
+
+"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and
+your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden---"
+
+"Ah, they WERE pale, then--ghastly pale, when I came in? Why
+don't you tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright
+now because I'm so nervous--but in the mornings they look like
+lead. And I can see the lines coming in my face--the lines of
+worry and disappointment and failure! Every sleepless night
+leaves a new one--and how can I sleep, when I have such dreadful
+things to think about?"
+
+"Dreadful things--what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her
+wrists from her friend's feverish fingers.
+
+"What things? Well, poverty, for one--and I don't know any that's
+more dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness
+into the easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if
+I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of
+course I understand--he spends it on living with the rich. You
+think we live ON the rich, rather than with them: and so we do,
+in a sense--but it's a privilege we have to pay for! We eat their
+dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use
+their carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars--yes,
+but there's a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man
+pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his
+means, by flowers and presents--and--and--lots of other things
+that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too--oh, yes, I've
+had to take up bridge again--and by going to the best dress-makers,
+and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always
+keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"
+
+She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat
+there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above
+her fagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the
+change in her face--of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed
+suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up,
+and the vision vanished.
+
+"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't--I'm sick
+to death of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly
+kills me--it's what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so
+crazy for your strong tea. For I can't go on in this way much
+longer, you know--I'm nearly at the end of my tether. And then
+what can I do--how on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see
+myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton woman--slinking
+about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted
+blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and
+thousands of women trying to do the same thing already, and not
+one of the number who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I
+have!"
+
+She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. "It's late,
+and I must be off--I have an appointment with Carry Fisher. Don't
+look so worried, you dear thing--don't think too much about the
+nonsense I've been talking." She was before the mirror again,
+adjusting her hair with a light hand, drawing down her veil, and
+giving a dexterous touch to her furs. "Of course, you know, it
+hasn't come to the employment agencies and the painted
+blotting-pads yet; but I'm rather hard-up just for the moment,
+and if I could find something to do--notes to write and
+visiting-lists to make up, or that kind of thing--it would tide
+me over till the legacy is paid. And Carry has promised to find
+somebody who wants a kind of social secretary--you know she makes
+a specialty of the helpless rich."
+
+
+
+
+Miss Bart had not revealed to Gerty the full extent of her
+anxiety. She was in fact in urgent and immediate need of money:
+money to meet the vulgar weekly claims which could neither be
+deferred nor evaded. To give up her apartment, and shrink to the
+obscurity of a boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of
+a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an expedient which
+could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it seemed
+wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find
+some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do
+this was one which she had never before seriously considered, and
+the discovery that, as a bread-winner, she was likely to prove as
+helpless and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton, was a severe
+shock to her self-confidence.
+
+Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation,
+as a person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate
+any situation in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined
+that such gifts would be of value to seekers after social
+guidance; but there was unfortunately no specific head under
+which the art of saying and doing the right thing could be
+offered in the market, and even Mrs. Fisher's resourcefulness
+failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in
+the vague wealth of Lily's graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of
+indirect expedients for enabling her friends to earn a living,
+and could conscientiously assert that she had put several
+opportunities of this kind before Lily; but more legitimate
+methods of bread-winning were as much out of her line as they
+were beyond the capacity of the sufferers she was generally
+called upon to assist. Lily's failure to profit by the chances
+already afforded her might, moreover, have justified the
+abandonment of farther effort on her behalf; but Mrs. Fisher's
+inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at creating
+artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the
+pursuance of this end she at once started on a voyage of
+discovery in Miss Bart's behalf; and as the result of her
+explorations she now summoned the latter with the announcement
+that she had "found something."
+
+
+
+
+Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend's
+plight, and her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her
+that Lily, for the present, had no wish for the kind of help she
+could give. Miss Farish could see no hope for her friend but in a
+life completely reorganized and detached from its old
+associations; whereas all Lily's energies were centred in the
+determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to keep
+herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion
+could be maintained. Pitiable as such an attitude seemed to
+Gerty, she could not judge it as harshly as Selden, for instance,
+might have done. She had not forgotten the night of emotion when
+she and Lily had lain in each other's arms, and she had seemed to
+feel her very heart's blood passing into her friend. The
+sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough; no trace
+remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour; but
+Gerty's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with
+obscure and inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with
+a silent forbearance which took no account of time. She could
+not, however, deny herself the solace of taking anxious counsel
+with Lawrence Selden, with whom, since his return from Europe,
+she had renewed her old relation of cousinly confidence.
+
+Selden himself had never been aware of any change in their
+relation. He found Gerty as he had left her, simple, undemanding
+and devoted, but with a quickened intelligence of the heart which
+he recognized without seeking to explain it. To Gerty herself it
+would once have seemed impossible that she should ever again talk
+freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had passed in the secrecy
+of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when the mist of the
+struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of self, a
+deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
+current of human understanding.
+
+It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that
+Gerty had the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden.
+The latter, having presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had
+lingered on through the dowdy animation of his cousin's
+tea-hour, conscious of something in her voice and eye which
+solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last visitor was gone
+Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen Miss Bart.
+
+Selden's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of
+surprise.
+
+"I haven't seen her at all--I've perpetually missed seeing her
+since she came back."
+
+This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
+hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by
+adding: "I've wanted to see her--but she seems to have been
+absorbed by the Gormer set since her return from Europe."
+
+"That's all the more reason: she's been very unhappy."
+
+"Unhappy at being with the Gormers?"
+
+"Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too
+is at an end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind
+since Bertha Dorset quarrelled with her."
+
+"Ah---" Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window,
+where he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his
+cousin continued to explain: "Judy Trenor and her own family have
+deserted her too--and all because Bertha Dorset has said such
+horrible things. And she is very poor--you know Mrs. Peniston cut
+her off with a small legacy, after giving her to understand that
+she was to have everything."
+
+"Yes--I know," Selden assented curtly, turning back into the
+room, but only to stir about with restless steps in the
+circumscribed space between door and window. "Yes--she's been
+abominably treated; but it's unfortunately the precise thing that
+a man who wants to show his sympathy can't say to her."
+
+His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. "There
+would be other ways of showing your sympathy," she suggested.
+
+Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little
+sofa which projected from the hearth. "What are you thinking of,
+you incorrigible missionary?" he asked.
+
+Gerty's colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only
+answer. Then she made it more explicit by saying: "I am
+thinking of the fact that you and she used to be great
+friends--that she used to care immensely for what you thought of
+her--and that, if she takes your staying away as a sign of what
+you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her
+unhappiness."
+
+"My dear child, don't add to it still more--at least to your
+conception of it--by attributing to her all sorts of
+susceptibilities of your own." Selden, for his life, could not
+keep a note of dryness out of his voice; but he met Gerty's look
+of perplexity by saying more mildly: "But, though you immensely
+exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss Bart,
+you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it--if you ask me to." He
+laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between
+them, on the current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges
+of meaning which fill the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty
+had the feeling that he measured the cost of her request as
+plainly as she read the significance of his reply; and the sense
+of all that was suddenly clear between them made her next words
+easier to find.
+
+"I do ask you, then; I ask you because she once told me that you
+had been a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has
+never needed it before. You know how dependent she has always
+been on ease and luxury--how she has hated what was shabby and
+ugly and uncomfortable. She can't help it--she was brought up
+with those ideas, and has never been able to find her way out of
+them. But now all the things she cared for have been taken from
+her, and the people who taught her to care for them have
+abandoned her too; and it seems to me that if some one could
+reach out a hand and show her the other side--show her how much
+is left in life and in herself---" Gerty broke off, abashed at
+the sound of her own eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of
+giving precise expression to her vague yearning for her friend's
+retrieval. "I can't help her myself: she's passed out of my
+reach," she continued. "I think she's afraid of being a burden to
+me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed dreadfully
+worried about her future: she said Carry Fisher was trying to
+find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that
+she had taken a position as private secretary, and that I was not
+to be anxious, for everything was all right, and she
+would come in and tell me about it when she had time; but she has
+never come, and I don't like to go to her, because I am afraid of
+forcing myself on her when I'm not wanted. Once, when we were
+children, and I had rushed up after a long separation, and thrown
+my arms about her, she said: 'Please don't kiss me unless I ask
+you to, Gerty'--and she DID ask me, a minute later; but since
+then I've always waited to be asked."
+
+Selden had listened in silence, with the concentrated look which
+his thin dark face could assume when he wished to guard it
+against any involuntary change of expression. When his cousin
+ended, he said with a slight smile: "Since you've learned the
+wisdom of waiting, I don't see why you urge me to rush in--" but
+the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add, as he rose to take
+leave: "Still, I'll do what you wish, and not hold you
+responsible for my failure."
+
+Selden's avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as
+he had allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the
+memory of their last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat
+of his indignation, he had anxiously watched for her return; but
+she had disappointed him by lingering in England, and when she
+finally reappeared it happened that business had called him to the
+West, whence he came back only to learn that she was starting for
+Alaska with the Gormers. The revelation of this suddenly-established
+intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her. If, at a
+moment when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could
+cheerfully commit its reconstruction to the Gormers, there was no
+reason why such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable.
+Every step she took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the
+region where, once or twice, he and she had met for an illumined
+moment; and the recognition of this fact, when its first pang had
+been surmounted, produced in him a sense of negative relief. It was
+much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct
+than by the rare deviations from it which had thrown her so
+disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made the
+recurrence of such deviations more unlikely, confirmed the sense
+of relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her.
+
+But Gerty Farish's words had sufficed to make him see how
+little this view was really his, and how impossible it was for
+him to live quietly with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that
+she was in need of help--even such vague help as he could
+offer--was to be at once repossessed by that thought; and by the
+time he reached the street he had sufficiently convinced himself
+of the urgency of his cousin's appeal to turn his steps directly
+toward Lily's hotel.
+
+There his zeal met a check in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart
+had moved away; but, on his pressing his enquiries, the clerk
+remembered that she had left an address, for which he presently
+began to search through his books.
+
+It was certainly strange that she should have taken this step
+without letting Gerty Farish know of her decision; and Selden
+waited with a vague sense of uneasiness while the address was
+sought for. The process lasted long enough for uneasiness to turn
+to apprehension; but when at length a slip of paper was handed
+him, and he read on it: "Care of Mrs. Norma Hatch, Emporium
+Hotel," his apprehension passed into an incredulous stare, and
+this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper in
+two, and turned to walk quickly homeward.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the
+Emporium Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical
+satisfaction. The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the
+luxury of lying once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking
+across a spacious sunlit room at a breakfast-table set invitingly
+near the fire. Analysis and introspection might come later; but
+for the moment she was not even troubled by the excesses of the
+upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture. The
+sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some
+dense mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled
+the faintest note of criticism.
+
+When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady
+to whom Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of
+entering a new world. Carry's vague presentment of Mrs. Norma
+Hatch (whose reversion to her Christian name was explained as the
+result of her latest divorce), left her under the implication of
+coming "from the West," with the not unusual extenuation of
+having brought a great deal of money with her. She was, in short,
+rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily's hand. Mrs.
+Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
+owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she "knew about"
+through Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the
+Falstaff of a certain section of festive dub life. Socially, Mr.
+Stancy might have been said to form a connecting link between the
+Gormer world and the more dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart now
+found herself entering. It was, however, only figuratively that
+the illumination of Mrs. Hatch's world could be described as dim:
+in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a blaze of electric
+light, impartially projected from various ornamental excrescences
+on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she
+rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
+appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the
+fixity of something impaled and shown under glass. This did not
+preclude the immediate discovery that she was some years younger
+than her visitor, and that under her showiness, her ease,
+the aggression of her dress and voice, there persisted that
+ineradicable innocence which, in ladies of her nationality, so
+curiously coexists with startling extremes of experience.
+
+The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her
+as its inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the
+fashionable New York hotel--a world over-heated,
+over-upholstered, and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for
+the gratification of fantastic requirements, while the comforts
+of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a desert. Through
+this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly
+upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
+permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity
+from restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room,
+from "art exhibit" to dress-maker's opening. High-stepping horses
+or elaborately equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into
+vague metropolitan distances, whence they returned, still more
+wan from the weight of their sables, to be sucked back into the
+stifling inertia of the hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in
+the background of their lives, there was doubtless a real past,
+peopled by real human activities: they themselves were probably
+the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies, diversified
+contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no
+more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.
+
+Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering
+that Mrs. Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady,
+though still floating in the void, showed faint symptoms of
+developing an outline; and in this endeavour she was actively
+seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy. It was Mr. Stancy, a man of
+large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial occasions and
+of a chivalry finding expression in "first-night" boxes and
+thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch
+from the scene of her first development to the higher stage of
+hotel life in the metropolis. It was he who had selected the
+horses with which she had taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had
+introduced her to the photographer whose portraits of her formed
+the recurring ornament of "Sunday Supplements," and had got
+together the group which constituted her social world. It was a
+small group still, with heterogeneous figures suspended
+in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily did not take long to learn
+that its regulation was no longer in Mr. Stancy's hands. As often
+happens, the pupil had outstripped the teacher, and Mrs. Hatch
+was already aware of heights of elegance as well as depths of
+luxury beyond the world of the Emporium. This discovery at once
+produced in her a craving for higher guidance, for the adroit
+feminine hand which should give the right turn to her
+correspondence, the right "look" to her hats, the right
+succession to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the
+regulator of a germinating social life that Miss Bart's guidance
+was required; her ostensible duties as secretary being restricted
+by the fact that Mrs. Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write
+to.
+
+The daily details of Mrs. Hatch's existence were as strange to
+Lily as its general tenor. The lady's habits were marked by an
+Oriental indolence and disorder peculiarly trying to her
+companion. Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together
+outside the bounds of time and space. No definite hours were
+kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day flowed into one
+another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that
+one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner
+was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which
+prolonged Mrs. Hatch's vigil till daylight.
+
+Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange
+throng of hangers-on--manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers,
+teachers of bridge, of French, of "physical development": figures
+sometimes indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs.
+Hatch's relation to them, from the visitors constituting her
+recognized society. But strangest of all to Lily was the
+encounter, in this latter group, of several of her acquaintances.
+She had supposed, and not without relief, that she was passing,
+for the moment, completely out of her own circle; but she found
+that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence overlapped
+the edge of Mrs. Fisher's world, had drawn several of its
+brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned
+Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch's
+drawing-room was one of Lily's first astonishments; but she soon
+discovered that he was not Mr. Stancy's most important
+recruit. It was on little Freddy Van Osburgh, the small slim heir
+of the Van Osburgh millions, that the attention of Mrs. Hatch's
+group was centred. Freddy, barely out of college, had risen above
+the horizon since Lily's eclipse, and she now saw with surprise
+what an effulgence he shed on the outer twilight of Mrs. Hatch's
+existence. This, then, was one of the things that young men "went
+in" for when released from the official social routine; this
+was the kind of "previous engagement" that so frequently caused
+them to disappoint the hopes of anxious hostesses. Lily had an
+odd sense of being behind the social tapestry, on the side where
+the threads were knotted and the loose ends hung. For a moment
+she found a certain amusement in the show, and in her own share
+of it: the situation had an ease and unconventionality distinctly
+refreshing after her experience of the irony of conventions. But
+these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions from the long
+disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of Mrs.
+Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed
+packed with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible
+pretty woman of her acquaintance had her inherited obligations,
+her conventional benevolences, her share in the working of the
+great civic machine; and all hung together in the solidarity of
+these traditional functions. The performance of specific duties
+would have simplified Miss Bart's position; but the vague
+attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its perplexities.
+
+It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs.
+Hatch showed from the first an almost touching desire for Lily's
+approval. Far from asserting the superiority of wealth, her
+beautiful eyes seemed to urge the plea of inexperience: she
+wanted to do what was "nice," to be taught how to be "lovely."
+The difficulty was to find any point of contact between her
+ideals and Lily's.
+
+Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of
+aspirations culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion
+journals, and a gaudy world of sport still more completely beyond
+her companion's ken. To separate from these confused conceptions
+those most likely to advance the lady on her way, was Lily's
+obvious duty; but its performance was hampered by
+rapidly-growing doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and more
+aware of a certain ambiguity in her situation. It was not that
+she had, in the conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch's
+irreproachableness. The lady's offences were always against taste
+rather than conduct; her divorce record seemed due to
+geographical rather than ethical conditions; and her worst
+laxities were likely to proceed from a wandering and extravagant
+good-nature. But if Lily did not mind her detaining her manicure
+for luncheon, or offering the "Beauty-Doctor" a seat in Freddy
+Van Osburgh's box at the play, she was not equally at ease in
+regard to some less apparent lapses from convention. Ned
+Silverton's relation to Stancy seemed, for instance, closer and
+less clear than any natural affinities would warrant; and both
+appeared united in the effort to cultivate Freddy Van Osburgh's
+growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was as yet nothing definable
+in the situation, which might well resolve itself into a huge
+joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a vague sense
+that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich and
+too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
+Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the
+social development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his
+part, a permanent interest in the lady's future. There were
+moments when Lily found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the
+case. The thought of launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at
+the perfidious bosom of society was not without its charm: Miss
+Bart had even beguiled her leisure with visions of the fair Norma
+introduced for the first time to a family banquet at the Van
+Osburghs'. But the thought of being personally connected with the
+transaction was less agreeable; and her momentary flashes of
+amusement were followed by increasing periods of doubt.
+
+The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon,
+she was surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her
+alone in the wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch's world
+the tea-hour was not dedicated to social rites, and the lady was
+in the hands of her masseuse.
+
+Selden's entrance had caused Lily an inward start of
+embarrassment; but his air of constraint had the effect of
+restoring her self-possession, and she took at once the tone of
+surprise and pleasure, wondering frankly that he should
+have traced her to so unlikely a place, and asking what had
+inspired him to make the search.
+
+Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen
+him so little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of
+any obstructions she might put in his way. "I wanted to see you,"
+he said; and she could not resist observing in reply that he had
+kept his wishes under remarkable control. She had in truth felt
+his long absence as one of the chief bitternesses of the last
+months: his desertion had wounded sensibilities far below the
+surface of her pride.
+
+Selden met the challenge with directness. "Why should I have
+come, unless I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only
+excuse for imagining you could want me."
+
+This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash
+of keenness to her answer. "Then you have come now because you
+think you can be of use to me?"
+
+He hesitated again. "Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to
+talk things over with."
+
+For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the
+idea that his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a
+personal significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in
+seeing him. Even under the most adverse conditions, that pleasure
+always made itself felt: she might hate him, but she had never
+been able to wish him out of the room. She was very near hating
+him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on
+his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his
+clothes--she was conscious that even these trivial things were
+inwoven with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness
+came upon her, and the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an
+impulse of resistance to this stealing influence now prompted her
+to say: "It's very good of you to present yourself in that
+capacity; but what makes you think I have anything particular to
+talk about?"
+
+Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question
+was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were
+unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The
+situation between them was one which could have been cleared up
+only by a sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training
+and habit of mind were against the chances of such an
+explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into
+resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony,
+as they faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs.
+Hatch's elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the
+apartment peopled by its monstrous mates, served at length to
+suggest the turn of Selden's reply.
+
+"Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch's secretary;
+and I knew she was anxious to hear how you were getting on."
+
+Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible
+softening. "Why didn't she look me up herself, then?" she asked.
+
+"Because, as you didn't send her your address, she was afraid of
+being importunate." Selden continued with a smile: "You see no
+such scruples restrained me; but then I haven't as much to risk
+if I incur your displeasure."
+
+Lily answered his smile. "You haven't incurred it as yet; but I
+have an idea that you are going to."
+
+"That rests with you, doesn't it? You see my initiative doesn't
+go beyond putting myself at your disposal."
+
+"But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?" she asked in
+the same light tone.
+
+Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room; then he
+said, with a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this
+final inspection: "You are to let me take you away from here."
+
+Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened
+under it and said coldly: "And may I ask where you mean me to
+go?"
+
+"Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential
+thing is that it should be away from here."
+
+The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much
+the words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his
+feelings while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her,
+perhaps even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of
+her friends, and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into
+her life with this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse
+in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," she said, "for taking such
+an interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am,
+and have no intention of leaving."
+
+Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
+uncontrollable expectancy.
+
+"That simply means that you don't know where you are!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. "If you have come
+here to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch---"
+
+"It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am
+concerned."
+
+"My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed
+of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were
+quite resigned to seeing me starve."
+
+"Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you
+can always find a home with Gerty till you are independent
+again."
+
+"You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I
+suppose you mean--till my aunt's legacy is paid?"
+
+"I do mean that; Gerty told me of it," Selden acknowledged
+without embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any
+false constraint in speaking his mind.
+
+"But Gerty does not happen to know," Miss Bart rejoined, "that I
+owe every penny of that legacy."
+
+"Good God!" Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by
+the abruptness of the statement.
+
+"Every penny of it, and more too," Lily repeated; "and you now
+perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than
+take advantage of Gerty's kindness. I have no money left, except
+my small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself
+alive."
+
+Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone:
+"But with your income and Gerty's--since you allow me to go so
+far into the details of the situation--you and she could surely
+contrive a life together which would put you beyond the need of
+having to support yourself. Gerty, I know, is eager to make such
+an arrangement, and would be quite happy in it---"
+
+"But I should not," Miss Bart interposed. "There are many reasons
+why it would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself." She
+paused a moment, and as he seemed to await a farther
+explanation, added with a quick lift of her head: "You will
+perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons."
+
+"I have no claim to know them," Selden answered, ignoring her
+tone; "no claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one
+I have already made. And my right to make that is simply the
+universal right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her
+unconsciously placed in a false position."
+
+Lily smiled. "I suppose," she rejoined, "that by a false position
+you mean one outside of what we call society; but you must
+remember that I had been excluded from those sacred precincts
+long before I met Mrs. Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very
+little real difference in being inside or out, and I remember
+your once telling me that it was only those inside who took the
+difference seriously."
+
+She had not been without intention in making this allusion to
+their memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd
+tremor of the nerves to see what response it would bring; but the
+result of the experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow
+the allusion to deflect him from his point; he merely said with
+completer fulness of emphasis: "The question of being inside or
+out is, as you say, a small one, and it happens to have nothing
+to do with the case, except in so far as Mrs. Hatch's desire to
+be inside may put you in the position I call false."
+
+In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had
+the effect of confirming Lily's resistance. The very
+apprehensions he aroused hardened her against him: she had been
+on the alert for the note of personal sympathy, for any sign of
+recovered power over him; and his attitude of sober impartiality,
+the absence of all response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride
+to blind resentment of his interference. The conviction that he
+had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits he conceived
+her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her aid,
+strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth
+farther into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her
+situation to be, she would rather persist in darkness than owe
+her enlightenment to Selden.
+
+"I don't know," she said, when he had ceased to speak, "why you
+imagine me to be situated as you describe; but as you
+have always told me that the sole object of a bringing-up like
+mine was to teach a girl to get what she wants, why not assume
+that that is precisely what I am doing?"
+
+The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear
+barrier raised against farther confidences: its brightness held
+him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of
+hearing as he rejoined: "I am not sure that I have ever called
+you a successful example of that kind of bringing-up."
+
+Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled
+herself with a light laugh. "Ah, wait a little longer--give me a
+little more time before you decide!" And as he wavered before
+her, still watching for a break in the impenetrable front she
+presented: "Don't give me up; I may still do credit to my
+training!" she affirmed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+"Look at those spangles, Miss Bart--every one of 'em sewed on
+crooked."
+
+The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the
+condemned structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side,
+and passed on to the next figure in the line.
+
+There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged
+profiles, under exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light
+above the utensils of their art; for it was something more than
+an industry, surely, this creation of ever-varied settings for
+the face of fortunate womanhood. Their own faces were sallow with
+the unwholesomeness of hot air and sedentary toil, rather than
+with any actual signs of want: they were employed in a
+fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well clothed
+and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
+colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was
+only one skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and
+that now burned with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the
+forewoman's comment, began to strip the hat-frame of its
+over-lapping spangles.
+
+To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been
+reached when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.
+Instances of young lady-milliners establishing themselves under
+fashionable patronage, and imparting to their "creations" that
+indefinable touch which the professional hand can never give, had
+flattered Gerty's visions of the future, and convinced even Lily
+that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch need not reduce her to
+dependence on her friends.
+
+The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and
+would have taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance
+set up in Lily by his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of
+being involved in a transaction she would not have cared to
+examine too closely had soon afterward defined itself in the
+light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if she "saw them through,"
+she would have no reason to be sorry. The implication that such
+loyalty would meet with a direct reward had hastened her flight,
+and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the broad bosom of
+Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie there
+prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once revived her
+hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that
+her charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of
+their capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to
+advantage. And of course only these finishing touches would be
+expected of her: subordinate fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked
+fingers, would prepare the shapes and stitch the linings, while
+she presided over the charming little front shop--a shop all white
+panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings--where her finished
+creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on their
+stands like birds just poising for flight.
+
+But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
+green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of
+fashion had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere
+attraction of a name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but
+these privileged beings could command a faith in their powers
+materially expressed by the readiness to pay their shop-rent and
+advance a handsome sum for current expenses. Where was Lily to
+find such support? And even could it have been found, how were
+the ladies on whose approval she depended to be induced to give
+her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy her
+friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
+imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once
+again, Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to
+save her self-respect, but too late for public vindication.
+Freddy Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been
+rescued at the eleventh hour--some said by the efforts of Gus
+Trenor and Rosedale--and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van
+Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss
+Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a summing-up and
+corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was a
+relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves
+thus justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her
+connection with the Hatch case in order to show that they had
+been right.
+
+Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
+resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for
+her share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish's,
+they met with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her
+failure in tender ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of
+candour, put the case squarely to her friend.
+
+"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than
+the others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But
+what HAVE you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about
+giving you a start she flamed out about some money you'd got from
+Gus; I never knew her so hot before. You know she'll let him do
+anything but spend money on his friends: the only reason she's
+decent to me now is that she knows I'm not hard up.--He
+speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had no
+business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth--but I never
+COULD understand you, Lily!"
+
+The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much
+deliberation, Mrs. Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in
+their effort to help their friend, decided on placing her in the
+work-room of Mme. Regina's renowned millinery establishment. Even
+this arrangement was not effected without considerable
+negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
+untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact
+that she owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry
+Fisher's influence. She had been willing from the first to employ
+Lily in the show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable
+beauty might be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss
+Bart opposed a negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while
+Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced, but resigned to this latest
+proof of Lily's unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would
+be more useful that she should learn the trade. To Regina's
+work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
+Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty's
+watchfulness continued to hover over her at a distance.
+
+Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two
+months later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability
+to sew spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she
+heard a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object
+of criticism and amusement to the other work-women. They were,
+of course, aware of her history--the exact situation of
+every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all the
+others--but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward
+sense of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored
+fingers were still blundering over the rudiments of the trade.
+Lily had no desire that they should recognize any social
+difference in her; but she had hoped to be received as their
+equal, and perhaps before long to show herself their superior by
+a special deftness of touch, and it was humiliating to find that,
+after two months of drudgery, she still betrayed her lack of
+early training. Remote was the day when she might aspire to
+exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
+experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of
+shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her
+inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.
+
+She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently
+to the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going
+of Miss Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual,
+because Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to
+be opened even during the noon recess; and Lily's head was so
+heavy with the weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of
+her companions had the incoherence of a dream.
+
+"I TOLD her he'd never look at her again; and he didn't. I
+wouldn't have, either--I think she acted real mean to him. He
+took her to the Arion Ball, and had a hack for her both ways....
+She's taken ten bottles, and her headaches don't seem no
+better--but she's written a testimonial to say the first bottle
+cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture in the
+paper.... Mrs. Trenor's hat? The one with the green Paradise?
+Here, Miss Haines--it'll be ready right off.... That was one of
+the Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How'd I
+know? Why, Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot
+hat--the blue tulle: she's tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed
+out--a good deal like Mamie Leach, on'y thinner...."
+
+On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
+startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the
+surface. It was the strangest part of Lily's strange experience,
+the hearing of these names, the seeing the fragmentary
+and distorted image of the world she had lived in reflected in
+the mirror of the working-girls' minds. She had never before
+suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous
+freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
+underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and
+self-indulgence. Every girl in Mme. Regina's work-room knew to
+whom the headgear in her hands was destined, and had her opinion
+of its future wearer, and a definite knowledge of the latter's
+place in the social system. That Lily was a star fallen from that
+sky did not, after the first stir of curiosity had subsided,
+materially add to their interest in her. She had fallen, she had
+"gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they were awed
+only by success--by the gross tangible image of material
+achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view
+merely kept them at a little distance from her, as though she
+were a foreigner with whom it was an effort to talk.
+
+"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I
+guess you'd better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."
+
+Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was
+right: the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What
+made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing
+distaste for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt
+tired and confused: it was an effort to put her thoughts
+together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who took it
+with a suppressed smile.
+
+"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.
+
+Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured
+ill of Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable
+apprentice among her workers. In that temple of art no raw
+beginners were wanted, and Miss Haines would have been more than
+human had she not taken a certain pleasure in seeing her
+forebodings confirmed.
+
+"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily
+slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She did
+not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the
+street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old
+standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished
+and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they now
+seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish,
+she had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but
+that was because she looked down on them from above, from the
+happy altitude of her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was
+on a level with them, the point of view was less interesting.
+
+She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss
+Kilroy. "Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well
+as I can when you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair
+to you."
+
+Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time
+since real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.
+
+"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was
+right. I AM clumsy."
+
+"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy
+paused irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down.
+Ever try orangeine?"
+
+"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I
+mean to go home."
+
+She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more
+to say. Lily was aware that the other was on the point of
+offering to go home with her, but she wanted to be alone and
+silent--even kindness, the sort of kindness that Miss Kilroy
+could give, would have jarred on her just then.
+
+"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.
+
+She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the
+street where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused
+Gerty's offer of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce
+shrinking from observation and sympathy was beginning to develop
+in her, and the promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy
+seemed, on the whole, less endurable than the solitude of a hall
+bedroom in a house where she could come and go unremarked among
+other workers. For a while she had been sustained by this desire
+for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from increasing
+physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by hours of
+unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
+ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done,
+she dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its
+blotched wallpaper and shabby paint; and she hated every step of
+the walk thither, through the degradation of a New York street in
+the last stages of decline from fashion to commerce.
+
+But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's
+at the corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another
+street: she had usually done so of late. But today her steps were
+irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she
+tried to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her
+back, and she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the
+sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.
+
+Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited
+on her before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There
+could be no question about the prescription: it was a copy of one
+of Mrs. Hatch's, obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist.
+Lily was confident that the clerk would fill it without
+hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a refusal, or even of an
+expression of doubt, communicated itself to her restless hands as
+she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked on the
+glass case before her.
+
+The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the
+act of handing out the bottle he paused.
+
+"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked.
+Lily's heart contracted.
+
+What did he mean by looking at her in that way?
+
+"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.
+
+"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more,
+and off you go--the doctors don't know why."
+
+The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back,
+choked the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at
+length she emerged safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with
+the intensity of her relief. The mere touch of the packet
+thrilled her tired nerves with the delicious promise of a night
+of sleep, and in the reaction from her momentary fear she felt as
+if the first fumes of drowsiness were already stealing over her.
+
+In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down
+the last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she
+heard her name uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale,
+fur-coated, glossy and prosperous--but why did she seem to see
+him so far off, and as if through a mist of splintered crystals?
+Before she could account for the phenomenon she found herself
+shaking hands with him. They had parted with scorn on her side
+and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions seemed to
+vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
+wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he
+exclaimed; and she forced her lips into a pallid smile of
+reassurance.
+
+"I'm a little tired--it's nothing. Stay with me a moment,
+please," she faltered. That she should be asking this service of
+Rosedale!
+
+He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they
+stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams
+and waggons contending hideously in their ears.
+
+"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of
+tea. The LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no
+one there at this hour."
+
+A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness,
+seemed for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps
+brought them to the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a
+moment later he was seated opposite to her, and the waiter had
+placed the tea-tray between them.
+
+"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done
+up, Miss Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get
+a cushion for the lady's back."
+
+Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It
+was the temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her
+craving for the keen stimulant was forever conflicting with that
+other craving for sleep--the midnight craving which only the
+little phial in her hand could still. But today, at any rate, the
+tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it to pour warmth
+and resolution into her empty veins.
+
+As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter
+lassitude, though the first warm draught already tinged her face
+with returning life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant
+surprise of her beauty. The dark pencilling of fatigue under her
+eyes, the morbid blue-veined pallour of the temples,
+brought out the brightness of her hair and lips, as though all
+her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull
+chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of
+her head stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit
+ball-room. He looked at her with a startled uncomfortable
+feeling, as though her beauty were a forgotten enemy that had
+lain in ambush and now sprang out on him unawares.
+
+To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why,
+Miss Lily, I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had
+become of you."
+
+As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the
+complications to which this might lead. Though he had not seen
+her he had heard of her; he knew of her connection with Mrs.
+Hatch, and of the talk resulting from it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was
+one which he had once assiduously frequented, and now as devoutly
+shunned.
+
+Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind,
+saw what was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You
+would not be likely to know about me. I have joined the working
+classes."
+
+He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean--? Why, what on earth
+are you doing?"
+
+"Learning to be a milliner--at least TRYING to learn," she
+hastily qualified the statement.
+
+Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off--you
+ain't serious, are you?"
+
+"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."
+
+"But I understood--I thought you were with Norma Hatch."
+
+"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"
+
+"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill
+her cup.
+
+Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic
+held for him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I
+left her two months ago."
+
+Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she
+felt sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what
+was there that Rosedale did not hear?
+
+"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at
+lightness.
+
+"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm
+on the edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently
+than she had ever looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was
+urging her to put her case to this man, from whose curiosity she
+had always so fiercely defended herself.
+
+"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand
+that she might make things too easy for one."
+
+Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that
+allusiveness was lost on him.
+
+"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and
+immersed in the light of her full gaze that he found himself
+being drawn into strange depths of intimacy. He who had had to
+subsist on mere fugitive glances, looks winged in flight and
+swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes settling on him
+with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.
+
+"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping
+Mrs. Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least
+too good for her--and as they still continue to say it, I see
+that I might as well have stayed where I was."
+
+"Oh, Freddy---" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of
+its unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he
+had acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed
+up in that. It ain't your style."
+
+Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that
+the words gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there,
+drinking more tea, and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale.
+But the old habit of observing the conventions reminded her that
+it was time to bring their colloquy to an end, and she made a
+faint motion to push back her chair.
+
+Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a
+minute--don't go yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You
+look thoroughly played out. And you haven't told me---" He broke
+off, conscious of going farther than he had meant. She saw the
+struggle and understood it; understood also the nature of the
+spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her face, he began
+again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just now
+that you were learning to be a milliner?"
+
+"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."
+
+"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had
+turned you down: Mrs. Fisher told me about it. But I understood
+you got a legacy from her---"
+
+"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid
+till next summer."
+
+"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you
+wanted."
+
+She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."
+
+"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"
+
+"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her
+eyes on his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about
+having made some money for me in stocks."
+
+She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered
+that he remembered something of the kind.
+
+"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same
+tone of eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that
+he was speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of
+me, but I knew nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he
+had NOT used my money--that what he said he had made for me he
+had really given me. It was meant in kindness, of course; but it
+was not the sort of obligation one could remain under.
+Unfortunately I had spent the money before I discovered my
+mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back. That is
+the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."
+
+She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between
+the sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into
+her hearer's mind. She had a passionate desire that some one
+should know the truth about this transaction, and also that the
+rumour of her intention to repay the money should reach Judy
+Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly occurred to her that Rosedale,
+who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was the fitting person to
+receive and transmit her version of the facts. She had even felt
+a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving herself
+of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
+telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep
+blush of misery.
+
+Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took
+the turn she had least expected.
+
+"But see here--if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"
+
+He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of
+her act; as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about
+to precipitate her into a fresh act of folly.
+
+"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.
+
+He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little
+puzzled eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.
+
+"See here--that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.
+
+Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no--it's
+merely a bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her
+feather scarf.
+
+Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice
+her movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing--I like pluck---"
+broke from him disconnectedly.
+
+"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a
+tremendous backing. I feel equal to anything now."
+
+Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but
+her companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping
+his short arms into his expensive overcoat.
+
+"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he
+said.
+
+Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of
+his change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue
+again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas
+which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed
+with increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners,
+Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the
+neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which she finally
+paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
+
+"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss
+Farish."
+
+"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."
+
+He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows
+draped with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the
+muddy vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a
+visible effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"
+
+She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of
+being frankly touched by it. "Thank you--I shall be very
+glad," she made answer, in the first sincere words she had ever
+spoken to him.
+
+
+
+That evening in her own room Miss Bart--who had fled early from
+the heavy fumes of the basement dinner-table--sat musing upon the
+impulse which had led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath
+it she discovered an increasing sense of loneliness--a dread of
+returning to the solitude of her room, while she could be
+anywhere else, or in any company but her own. Circumstances, of
+late, had combined to cut her off more and more from her few
+remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
+perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on
+Lily's behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room,
+Mrs. Fisher seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily,
+understanding the reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in
+fact come dangerously near to being involved in the episode of
+Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some verbal ingenuity to
+extricate herself. She frankly owned to having brought Lily and
+Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs. Hatch--she
+had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs. Hatch--and
+besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was old
+enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
+brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest
+bosom friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the
+narrowness of her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate
+Mrs. Fisher, at whose house she could count on the "jolly
+parties" which had become a necessity to her since marriage had
+emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of view.
+
+Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.
+Carry had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and
+perhaps only a friendship like Gerty's could be proof against
+such an increasing strain. Gerty's friendship did indeed hold
+fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid her also. For she could not
+go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden; and to meet him now
+would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think of him,
+whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
+thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur
+of her tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why
+she had turned again to Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy
+snatches of her natural dreams he came to her sometimes in the
+old guise of fellowship and tenderness; and she would rise from
+the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her courage. But in the
+sleep which the phial procured she sank far below such
+half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless
+annihilation from which she woke each morning with an obliterated
+past.
+
+Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would
+return; but at least they did not importune her waking hour. The
+drug gave her a momentary illusion of complete renewal, from
+which she drew strength to take up her daily work. The strength
+was more and more needed as the perplexities of her future
+increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs. Fisher she was only
+passing through a temporary period of probation, since they
+believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme. Regina's
+would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
+realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller
+competence acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily
+herself, aware that the legacy could not be put to such a use,
+the preliminary training seemed a wasted effort. She understood
+clearly enough that, even if she could ever learn to compete with
+hands formed from childhood for their special work, the small pay
+she received would not be a sufficient addition to her income to
+compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
+fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to
+use the legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and
+in command of her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient
+tact and ability to attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the
+business succeeded she could gradually lay aside money enough to
+discharge her debt to Trenor. But the task might take years to
+accomplish, even if she continued to stint herself to the utmost;
+and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the weight of an
+intolerable obligation.
+
+These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked
+the secret dread that the obligation might not always remain
+intolerable. She knew she could not count on her continuity of
+purpose, and what really frightened her was the thought that she
+might gradually accommodate herself to remaining
+indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she had accommodated herself to
+the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as she had so nearly
+drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the advancement
+of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old incurable
+dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
+tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately
+warned her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She
+understood that Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the
+longing to take advantage of his offer began to haunt her
+insidiously. It was of course impossible to accept a loan from
+Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered temptingly before
+her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her again, and
+almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point of
+offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected.
+Would she still reject them if they were offered? More and more,
+with every fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies
+seem to take the shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand,
+safely locked among her papers, lay the means of ending their
+pursuit. The temptation, which her scorn of Rosedale had once
+enabled her to reject, now insistently returned upon her; and how
+much strength was left her to oppose it?
+
+What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the
+utmost; she could not trust herself again to the perils of a
+sleepless night. Through the long hours of silence the dark
+spirit of fatigue and loneliness crouched upon her breast,
+leaving her so drained of bodily strength that her morning
+thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only hope of renewal lay
+in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much longer that
+hope would last she dared not conjecture.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the
+afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April,
+and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the
+ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt
+roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective
+of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate
+haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
+
+As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the
+passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had
+disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for
+Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
+Among them was Mrs. Van Osburgh, swaying majestically in her
+C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy Gryce at her side, and the new
+heir to the Gryce millions enthroned before them on his nurse's
+knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch's electric victoria, in
+which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of a spring
+toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
+came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over
+for her annual tarpon fishing and a dip into "the street."
+
+This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense
+of aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She
+had nothing to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to
+come; for the season was over in millinery as well as in society,
+and a week earlier Mme. Regina had notified her that her services
+were no longer required. Mme. Regina always reduced her staff on
+the first of May, and Miss Bart's attendance had of late been so
+irregular--she had so often been unwell, and had done so little
+work when she came--that it was only as a favour that her
+dismissal had hitherto been deferred.
+
+Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was
+conscious of having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It
+was bitter to acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but
+the fact had been brought home to her that as a
+bread-winner she could never compete with professional ability.
+Since she had been brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly
+blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose; but the
+discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
+efficiency.
+
+As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from
+the fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next
+morning. The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging
+to the life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence
+of the boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to
+return to it as late as possible; and she was walking slowly now
+in order to postpone the detested approach to her doorstep.
+
+But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest
+from the fact that it was occupied--and indeed filled--by the
+conspicuous figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take
+on an added amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.
+
+The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.
+Rosedale, a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to
+enquire if she had recovered from her indisposition; but since
+then she had not seen or heard from him, and his absence seemed
+to betoken a struggle to keep away, to let her pass once more out
+of his life. If this were the case, his return showed that the
+struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man
+to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance. He was
+too busy, too practical, and above all too much preoccupied with
+his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable asides.
+
+In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas
+grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes,
+he looked about him with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat
+distrustfully on the dusty console adorned with a Rogers
+statuette.
+
+Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he
+deposited himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched
+antimacassar which scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of
+skin above his collar.
+
+"My goodness--you can't go on living here!" he exclaimed.
+
+Lily smiled at his tone. "I am not sure that I can; but I have
+gone over my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall
+be able to manage it."
+
+"Be able to manage it? That's not what I mean--it's no place for
+you!"
+
+"It's what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last
+week."
+
+"Out of work--out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea
+of your having to work--it's preposterous." He brought out his
+sentences in short violent jerks, as though they were forced up
+from a deep inner crater of indignation. "It's a farce--a crazy
+farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed on the long vista of the room
+reflected in the blotched glass between the windows.
+
+Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. "I don't
+know why I should regard myself as an exception---" she began.
+
+"Because you ARE; that's why; and your being in a place like this
+is a damnable outrage. I can't talk of it calmly."
+
+She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual
+glibness; and there was something almost moving to her in his
+inarticulate struggle with his emotions.
+
+He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on
+its beam ends, and placed himself squarely before her.
+
+"Look here, Miss Lily, I'm going to Europe next week: going over
+to Paris and London for a couple of months--and I can't leave you
+like this. I can't do it. I know it's none of my business--you've
+let me understand that often enough; but things are worse with
+you now than they have been before, and you must see that you've
+got to accept help from somebody. You spoke to me the other day
+about some debt to Trenor. I know what you mean--and I respect
+you for feeling as you do about it."
+
+A blush of surprise rose to Lily's pale face, but before she
+could interrupt him he had continued eagerly: "Well, I'll lend
+you the money to pay Trenor; and I won't--I--see here, don't take
+me up till I've finished. What I mean is, it'll be a plain
+business arrangement, such as one man would make with another.
+Now, what have you got to say against that?"
+
+Lily's blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and
+gratitude were mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves
+in the unexpected gentleness of her reply.
+
+"Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that
+I can never again be sure of understanding the plainest business
+arrangement." Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ
+of injustice, she added, even more kindly: "Not that I don't
+appreciate your kindness--that I'm not grateful for it. But a
+business arrangement between us would in any case be impossible,
+because I shall have no security to give when my debt to Gus
+Trenor has been paid."
+
+Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the
+note of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as
+closing the question between them.
+
+In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing
+through his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the
+inexorableness of her course--however little he penetrated its
+motive--she saw that it unmistakably tended to strengthen her
+hold over him. It was as though the sense in her of unexplained
+scruples and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy
+of feature, the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an
+external rarity, an air of being impossible to match. As he
+advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
+greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had
+learned to distinguish minor differences of design and quality in
+some long-coveted object.
+
+Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at
+once, on the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset;
+and the temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little
+by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike for
+Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was
+penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating
+qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather
+helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
+through the hard surface of his material ambitions.
+
+Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a
+gesture which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.
+
+"If you'd only let me, I'd set you up over them all--I'd put you
+where you could wipe your feet on 'em!" he declared; and
+it touched her oddly to see that his new passion had not altered
+his old standard of values.
+
+
+
+Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
+situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on
+it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew,
+had she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour
+that might be called the conventionalities of the moral life?
+What debt did she owe to a social order which had condemned and
+banished her without trial? She had never been heard in her own
+defence; she was innocent of the charge on which she had been
+found guilty; and the irregularity of her conviction might seem
+to justify the use of methods as irregular in recovering her lost
+rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin
+her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to make private
+use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all, half
+the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it.
+Call it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it
+injures no one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly
+forfeited, and he must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea
+in its defence.
+
+The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable
+ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of
+failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the
+selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that
+she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake
+her life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let
+the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded. She
+could not hold herself much to blame for this ineffectiveness,
+and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited
+tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
+highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out
+of its narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She
+had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does
+nature round the rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast?
+And was it her fault that the purely decorative mission is less
+easily and harmoniously fulfilled among social beings
+than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be hampered by
+material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?
+
+These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out
+their battle in her breast during the long watches of the night;
+and when she rose the next morning she hardly knew where the
+victory lay. She was exhausted by the reaction of a night without
+sleep, coming after many nights of rest artificially obtained;
+and in the distorting light of fatigue the future stretched out
+before her grey, interminable and desolate.
+
+She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
+friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the
+intimate domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings
+of the street. Her week of idleness had brought home to her with
+exaggerated force these small aggravations of the boarding-house
+world, and she yearned for that other luxurious world, whose
+machinery is so carefully concealed that one scene flows into
+another without perceptible agency.
+
+At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's
+she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the
+uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in
+the hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once
+out of the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had
+avoided Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner's, and she
+was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.
+
+The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold
+grey sky threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild
+spirals up and down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue
+toward the Park, hoping to find a sheltered nook where she might
+sit; but the wind chilled her, and after an hour's wandering
+under the tossing boughs she yielded to her increasing weariness,
+and took refuge in a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street. She
+was not hungry, and had meant to go without luncheon; but she was
+too tired to return home, and the long perspective of white
+tables showed alluringly through the windows.
+
+The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the
+rapid absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of
+shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily
+shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of
+profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and
+it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for
+days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive
+glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the sallow
+preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
+music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those
+who sat by themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or
+devouring magazines between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily
+alone was stranded in a great waste of disoccupation.
+
+She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her
+portion of stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and
+livelier when she emerged once more into the street. She realized
+now that, as she sat in the restaurant, she had unconsciously
+arrived at a final decision. The discovery gave her an immediate
+illusion of activity: it was exhilarating to think that she had
+actually a reason for hurrying home. To prolong her enjoyment of
+the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was so great
+that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
+way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the
+discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite
+demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any
+recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but just when one has come
+to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild
+irrational gallop.
+
+She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still
+early enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before
+putting her plan into execution. The delay did not perceptibly
+weaken her resolve. She was frightened and yet stimulated by the
+reserved force of resolution which she felt within herself: she
+saw it was going to be easier, a great deal easier, than she had
+imagined.
+
+At five o'clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a
+sealed packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even
+the contact with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had
+half-expected it would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of
+indifference, as though the vigorous exertion of her will had
+finally benumbed her finer sensibilities.
+
+She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and
+went out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still
+high, but a threat of rain darkened the sky and cold
+gusts shook the signs projecting from the basement shops along
+the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and began to walk slowly
+northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Dorset's
+habits to know that she could always be found at home after five.
+She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
+visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that
+she had guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a
+note which she meant to send up with her name, and which she
+thought would secure her admission.
+
+She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset's, thinking
+that the quick movement through the cold evening air would help
+to steady her nerves; but she really felt no need of being
+tranquillized. Her survey of the situation remained calm and
+unwavering.
+
+As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and a
+rush of cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella and
+the moisture quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She was
+still half a mile from her destination, and she decided to walk
+across to Madison Avenue and take the electric car. As she turned
+into the side street, a vague memory stirred in her. The row of
+budding trees, the new brick and limestone house-fronts, the
+Georgian flat-house with flowerboxes on its balconies, were
+merged together into the setting of a familiar scene. It was down
+this street that she had walked with Selden, that September day
+two years ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered
+together. The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed
+sensations--longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of
+the only spring her heart had ever known. It was strange to find
+herself passing his house on such an errand. She seemed suddenly
+to see her action as he would see it--and the fact of his own
+connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she must
+trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled
+her blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the
+day of their first talk together! Even then her feet had been set
+in the path she was now following--even then she had resisted the
+hand he had held out.
+
+All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
+overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been
+ready to help her--to help her by loving her, as he had said--and
+if, the third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself
+could she accuse? . . . Well, that part of her life was over; she
+did not know why her thoughts still clung to it. But the sudden
+longing to see him remained; it grew to hunger as she paused on
+the pavement opposite his door. The street was dark and empty,
+swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of the
+bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a
+light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the
+house.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps
+made tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little
+fire flickered on the hearth, and Selden's easy-chair, which
+stood near it, had been pushed aside when he rose to admit her.
+
+He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent,
+waiting for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the
+threshold, assailed by a rush of memories.
+
+The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from
+which he had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the
+chair he had leaned against while she examined the precious
+volume. But then the wide September light had filled the room,
+making it seem a part of the outer world: now the shaded lamps
+and the warm hearth, detaching it from the gathering darkness of
+the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.
+
+Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden's silence,
+Lily turned to him and said simply: "I came to tell you that I
+was sorry for the way we parted--for what I said to you that day
+at Mrs. Hatch's."
+
+The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the
+stairs, she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit,
+but she now felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of
+misunderstanding that hung between them.
+
+Selden returned her look with a smile. "I was sorry too that we
+should have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn't bring
+it on myself. Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking---"
+
+"So that you really didn't care---?" broke from her with a flash
+of her old irony.
+
+"So that I was prepared for the consequences," he corrected
+good-humouredly. "But we'll talk of all this later. Do come and
+sit by the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you'll let me
+put a cushion behind you."
+
+While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room,
+and paused near his writing-table, where the lamp,
+striking upward, cast exaggerated shadows on the pallour of her
+delicately-hollowed face.
+
+"You look tired--do sit down," he repeated gently.
+
+She did not seem to hear the request. "I wanted you to know that
+I left Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you," she said, as
+though continuing her confession.
+
+"Yes--yes; I know," he assented, with a rising tinge of
+embarrassment.
+
+"And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had
+already begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with
+her--for the reasons you gave me; but I wouldn't admit it--I
+wouldn't let you see that I understood what you meant."
+
+"Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out--don't
+overwhelm me with the sense of my officiousness!"
+
+His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would
+have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment,
+jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange
+state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being
+already at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that
+any one should think it necessary to linger in the conventional
+outskirts of word-play and evasion.
+
+"It was not that--I was not ungrateful," she insisted. But the
+power of expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her
+throat, and two tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.
+
+Selden moved forward and took her hand. "You are very tired. Why
+won't you sit down and let me make you comfortable?"
+
+He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion
+behind her shoulders.
+
+"And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always
+have that amount of hospitality at my command."
+
+She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not
+weep easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted
+itself, though she was still too tremulous to speak.
+
+"You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes," Selden
+continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.
+
+His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon
+when they had sat together over his tea-table and talked
+jestingly of her future. There were moments when that day seemed
+more remote than any other event in her life; and yet she could
+always relive it in its minutest detail.
+
+She made a gesture of refusal. "No: I drink too much tea. I would
+rather sit quiet--I must go in a moment," she added confusedly.
+
+Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the
+mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more
+distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her
+self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but
+now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager
+feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment
+to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate
+outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining impulse
+was still lacking.
+
+The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done.
+She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in
+which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to
+the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only
+ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with
+redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden's
+inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the
+mere longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she
+had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.
+
+"I must go," she repeated, making a motion to rise from her
+chair. "But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted
+to tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me
+at Bellomont, and that sometimes--sometimes when I seemed
+farthest from remembering them--they have helped me, and kept me
+from mistakes; kept me from really becoming what many people have
+thought me."
+
+Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words
+would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not
+leave him without trying to make him understand that she had
+saved herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life.
+
+A change had come over Selden's face as she spoke. Its guarded
+look had yielded to an expression still untinged by personal
+emotion, but full of a gentle understanding.
+
+"I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has
+really made the difference. The difference is in yourself--it
+will always be there. And since it IS there, it can't really
+matter to you what people think: you are so sure that your
+friends will always understand you."
+
+"Ah, don't say that--don't say that what you have told me has
+made no difference. It seems to shut me out--to leave me all
+alone with the other people." She had risen and stood before him,
+once more completely mastered by the inner urgency of the moment.
+The consciousness of his half-divined reluctance had vanished.
+Whether he wished it or not, he must see her wholly for once
+before they parted.
+
+Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in
+the eyes as she continued. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance
+to escape from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I
+was a coward. Afterward I saw my mistake--I saw I could never be
+happy with what had contented me before. But it was too late: you
+had judged me--I understood. It was too late for happiness--but
+not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed.
+That is all I have lived on--don't take it from me now! Even in
+my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
+Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I
+needed the help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have
+resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have
+pulled me down. And then I remembered--I remembered your saying
+that such a life could never satisfy me; and I was ashamed to
+admit to myself that it could. That is what you did for me--that
+is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you that I
+have always remembered; and that I have tried--tried hard . . ."
+
+She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing
+out her handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds
+of her dress. A wave of colour suffused her, and the words died
+on her lips. Then she lifted her eyes to his and went on in an
+altered voice.
+
+"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very
+useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent
+existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine
+I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was
+of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds that one
+only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be thrown out
+into the rubbish heap--and you don't know what it's like in the
+rubbish heap!"
+
+Her lips wavered into a smile--she had been distracted by the
+whimsical remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two
+years earlier, in that very room. Then she had been planning to
+marry Percy Gryce--what was it she was planning now?
+
+The blood had risen strongly under Selden's dark skin, but his
+emotion showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.
+
+"You have something to tell me--do you mean to marry?" he said
+abruptly.
+
+Lily's eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
+self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the
+light of his question, she had paused to ask herself if her
+decision had really been taken when she entered the room.
+
+"You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!"
+she said with a faint smile.
+
+"And you have come to it now?"
+
+"I shall have to come to it--presently. But there is something
+else I must come to first." She paused again, trying to transmit
+to her voice the steadiness of her recovered smile. "There is
+some one I must say goodbye to. Oh, not YOU--we are sure to see
+each other again--but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her
+with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have
+brought her back to you--I am going to leave her here. When I go
+out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that
+she has stayed with you--and she'll be no trouble, she'll take up
+no room."
+
+She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will
+you let her stay with you?" she asked.
+
+He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling
+that had not yet risen to his lips. "Lily--can't I help you?" he
+exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me
+once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well--you did
+love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always
+helped me. But the moment is gone--it was I who let it go. And
+one must go on living. Goodbye."
+
+She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other
+with a kind of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of
+death. Something in truth lay dead between them--the love she had
+killed in him and could no longer call to life. But something
+lived between them also, and leaped up in her like an
+imperishable flame: it was the love his love had kindled, the
+passion of her soul for his.
+
+In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
+understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self
+with him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it
+must still continue to be hers.
+
+Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her
+with a strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the
+situation had vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt
+it only as one of those rare moments which lift the veil from
+their faces as they pass.
+
+"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I
+can't let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may
+change--but they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."
+
+She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see
+that now. Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe,
+whatever happens."
+
+"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"
+
+She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.
+
+"Nothing at present--except that I am very cold, and that before
+I go you must make up the fire for me."
+
+She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.
+Puzzled by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically
+gathered a handful of wood from the basket and tossed it on the
+fire. As he did so, he noticed how thin her hands looked against
+the rising light of the flames. He saw too, under the loose lines
+of her dress, how the curves of her figure had shrunk to
+angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of the
+flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified
+the blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones
+to her eyes. She knelt there for a few moments in
+silence; a silence which he dared not break. When she rose he
+fancied that he saw her draw something from her dress and drop it
+into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at the time. His
+faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the word
+to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
+shoulders. "Goodbye," she said, and as he bent over her she
+touched his forehead with her lips.
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was
+a momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on
+unconscious of her surroundings. She was still treading the
+buoyant ether which emanates from the high moments of life. But
+gradually it shrank away from her and she felt the dull pavement
+beneath her feet. The sense of weariness returned with
+accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that she could walk
+no farther. She had reached the corner of Forty-first Street and
+Fifth Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there were
+seats where she might rest.
+
+That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she
+entered it, and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of
+an electric street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of
+her veins, and she told herself that she must not sit long in the
+penetrating dampness which struck up from the wet asphalt. But
+her will-power seemed to have spent itself in a last great
+effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction which follows on
+an unwonted expenditure of energy. And besides, what was there to
+go home to? Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room--that
+silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves
+than the most discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral
+by her bed. The thought of the chloral was the only spot of light
+in the dark prospect: she could feel its lulling influence
+stealing over her already. But she was troubled by the thought
+that it was losing its power--she dared not go back to it too
+soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been more broken
+and less profound; there had been nights when she was perpetually
+floating up through it to consciousness. What if the effect of
+the drug should gradually fail, as all narcotics were said to
+fail? She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the
+dose; and she had heard before of the capricious and incalculable
+action of the drug. Her dread of returning to a sleepless night
+was so great that she lingered on, hoping that excessive
+weariness would reinforce the waning power of the chloral.
+
+Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second
+Street was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the
+lingering occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now
+and then a stray figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the
+path where Lily sat, looming black for a moment in the white
+circle of electric light. One or two of these passers-by
+slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely figure;
+but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny.
+
+Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing
+shadows remained stationary between her line of vision and the
+gleaming asphalt; and raising her eyes she saw a young woman
+bending over her.
+
+"Excuse me--are you sick?--Why, it's Miss Bart!" a half-familiar
+voice exclaimed.
+
+Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with
+a bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome
+refinement which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its
+common prettiness was redeemed by the strong and generous curve
+of the lips.
+
+"You don't remember me," she continued, brightening with the
+pleasure of recognition, "but I'd know you anywhere, I've thought
+of you such a lot. I guess my folks all know your name by heart.
+I was one of the girls at Miss Farish's club--you helped me to go
+to the country that time I had lung-trouble. My name's Nettie
+Struther. It was Nettie Crane then--but I daresay you don't
+remember that either."
+
+Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie
+Crane's timely rescue from disease had been one of the most
+satisfying incidents of her connection with Gerty's charitable
+work. She had furnished the girl with the means to go to a
+sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with a peculiar
+irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor's.
+
+She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not
+forgotten; but her voice failed in the effort, and she felt
+herself sinking under a great wave of physical weakness. Nettie
+Struther, with a startled exclamation, sat down and slipped a
+shabbily-clad arm behind her back.
+
+"Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you
+feel better."
+
+A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from
+the pressure of the supporting arm.
+
+"I'm only tired--it is nothing," she found voice to say in a
+moment; and then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion's
+eyes, she added involuntarily: "I have been unhappy--in great
+trouble."
+
+"YOU in trouble? I've always thought of you as being so high up,
+where everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real
+mean, and got to wondering why things were so queerly fixed in
+the world, I used to remember that you were having a lovely time,
+anyhow, and that seemed to show there was a kind of justice
+somewhere. But you mustn't sit here too long--it's fearfully
+damp. Don't you feel strong enough to walk on a little ways now?"
+she broke off.
+
+"Yes--yes; I must go home," Lily murmured, rising.
+
+Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her
+side. She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged
+victims of over-work and anaemic parentage: one of the
+superfluous fragments of life destined to be swept prematurely
+into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so lately
+expressed her dread. But Nettie Struther's frail envelope was now
+alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for
+her, she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a
+struggle.
+
+"I am very glad to have seen you," Lily continued, summoning a
+smile to her unsteady lips. "It'll be my turn to think of you as
+happy--and the world will seem a less unjust place to me too."
+
+"Oh, but I can't leave you like this--you're not fit to go home
+alone. And I can't go with you either!" Nettie Struther wailed
+with a start of recollection. "You see, it's my husband's
+night-shift--he's a motor-man--and the friend I leave the baby
+with has to step upstairs to get HER husband's supper at seven. I
+didn't tell you I had a baby, did I? She'll be four months old
+day after tomorrow, and to look at her you wouldn't think I'd
+ever had a sick day. I'd give anything to show you the baby, Miss
+Bart, and we live right down the street here--it's only three
+blocks off." She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily's face, and
+then added with a burst of courage: "Why won't you get right into
+the cars and come home with me while I get baby's supper?
+It's real warm in our kitchen, and you can rest there, and I'll
+take YOU home as soon as ever she drops off to sleep."
+
+It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther's match
+had made a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed
+itself to Lily as extraordinarily small and almost miraculously
+clean. A fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron
+stove, and near it stood a crib in which a baby was sitting
+upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for expression on a
+countenance still placid with sleep.
+
+Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring,
+and excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her
+return, Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited
+Miss Bart to the rocking-chair near the stove.
+
+"We've got a parlour too," she explained with pardonable pride;
+"but I guess it's warmer in here, and I don't want to leave you
+alone while I'm getting baby's supper."
+
+On receiving Lily's assurance that she much preferred the
+friendly proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded
+to prepare a bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied
+to the baby's impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation
+went on, she seated herself with a beaming countenance beside her
+visitor.
+
+"You're sure you won't let me warm up a drop of coffee for you,
+Miss Bart? There's some of baby's fresh milk left over--well,
+maybe you'd rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It's
+too lovely having you here. I've thought of it so often that I
+can't believe it's really come true. I've said to George again
+and again: 'I just wish Miss Bart could see me NOW--' and I used
+to watch for your name in the papers, and we'd talk over what you
+were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I
+haven't seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be
+afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I'd
+get sick myself, fretting about it." Her lips broke into a
+reminiscent smile. "Well, I can't afford to be sick again, that's
+a fact: the last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off
+that time I never thought I'd come back alive, and I didn't much
+care if I did. You see I didn't know about George and the baby
+then."
+
+She paused to readjust the bottle to the child's bubbling mouth.
+
+"You precious--don't you be in too much of a hurry! Was it mad
+with mommer for getting its supper so late? Marry
+Anto'nette--that's what we call her: after the French queen in
+that play at the Garden--I told George the actress reminded me of
+you, and that made me fancy the name . . . I never thought I'd
+get married, you know, and I'd never have had the heart to go on
+working just for myself."
+
+She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily's
+eyes, went on, with a flush rising under her anaemic skin: "You
+see I wasn't only just SICK that time you sent me off--I was
+dreadfully unhappy too. I'd known a gentleman where I was
+employed--I don't know as you remember I did type-writing in a
+big importing firm--and--well--I thought we were to be married:
+he'd gone steady with me six months and given me his mother's
+wedding ring. But I presume he was too stylish for me--he
+travelled for the firm, and had seen a great deal of society.
+Work girls aren't looked after the way you are, and they don't
+always know how to look after themselves. I didn't . . . and it
+pretty near killed me when he went away and left off writing . . .
+ It was then I came down sick--I thought it was the end of
+everything. I guess it would have been if you hadn't sent me off.
+But when I found I was getting well I began to take heart in
+spite of myself. And then, when I got back home, George came
+round and asked me to marry him. At first I thought I couldn't,
+because we'd been brought up together, and I knew he knew about
+me. But after a while I began to see that that made it easier. I
+never could have told another man, and I'd never have married
+without telling; but if George cared for me enough to have me as
+I was, I didn't see why I shouldn't begin over again--and I did."
+
+The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted
+her irradiated face from the child on her knees. "But, mercy, I
+didn't mean to go on like this about myself, with you sitting
+there looking so fagged out. Only it's so lovely having you here,
+and letting you see just how you've helped me." The baby had sunk
+back blissfully replete, and Mrs. Struther softly rose to
+lay the bottle aside. Then she paused before Miss Bart.
+
+"I only wish I could help YOU--but I suppose there's nothing on
+earth I could do," she murmured wistfully.
+
+Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her
+arms; and the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child
+in them.
+
+The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage,
+made an instinctive motion of resistance; but the soothing
+influences of digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight
+sink trustfully against her breast. The child's confidence in its
+safety thrilled her with a sense of warmth and returning life,
+and she bent over, wondering at the rosy blur of the little face,
+the empty clearness of the eyes, the vague tendrilly motions of
+the folding and unfolding fingers. At first the burden in her
+arms seemed as light as a pink cloud or a heap of down, but as
+she continued to hold it the weight increased, sinking deeper,
+and penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness, as though
+the child entered into her and became a part of herself.
+
+She looked up, and saw Nettie's eyes resting on her with
+tenderness and exultation.
+
+"Wouldn't it be too lovely for anything if she could grow up to
+be just like you? Of course I know she never COULD--but mothers
+are always dreaming the craziest things for their children."
+
+Lily clasped the child close for a moment and laid her back in
+her mother's arms.
+
+"Oh, she must not do that--I should be afraid to come and see her
+too often!" she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs.
+Struther's anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the
+promise that of course she would come back soon, and make
+George's acquaintance, and see the baby in her bath, she passed
+out of the kitchen and went alone down the tenement stairs.
+
+
+
+As she reached the street she realized that she felt stronger and
+happier: the little episode had done her good. It was the first
+time she had ever come across the results of her spasmodic
+benevolence, and the surprised sense of human fellowship took the
+mortal chill from her heart.
+
+It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the
+reaction of a deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o'clock,
+and the light and odours proceeding from the basement made it
+manifest that the boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened
+up to her room, lit the gas, and began to dress. She did not mean
+to pamper herself any longer, to go without food because her
+surroundings made it unpalatable. Since it was her fate to live
+in a boarding-house, she must learn to fall in with the
+conditions of the life. Nevertheless she was glad that, when she
+descended to the heat and glare of the dining-room, the repast
+was nearly over.
+
+
+
+In her own room again, she was seized with a sudden fever of
+activity. For weeks past she had been too listless and
+indifferent to set her possessions in order, but now she began to
+examine systematically the contents of her drawers and cupboard.
+She had a few handsome dresses left--survivals of her last phase
+of splendour, on the Sabrina and in London--but when she had been
+obliged to part with her maid she had given the woman a generous
+share of her cast-off apparel. The remaining dresses, though they
+had lost their freshness, still kept the long unerring lines, the
+sweep and amplitude of the great artist's stroke, and as she
+spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn
+rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold:
+each fall of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in
+the record of her past. She was startled to find how the
+atmosphere of her old life enveloped her. But, after all, it was
+the life she had been made for: every dawning tendency in her had
+been carefully directed toward it, all her interests and
+activities had been taught to centre around it. She was like some
+rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every bud
+had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.
+
+Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap
+of white drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was
+the Reynolds dress she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been
+impossible for her to give it away, but she had never seen it
+since that night, and the long flexible folds, as she
+shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets which came to her
+like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she had stood
+with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the
+dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light,
+some note of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of
+pleasure. She was still in a state of highly-wrought
+impressionability, and every hint of the past sent a lingering
+tremor along her nerves.
+
+She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds
+dress when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the
+Irish maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the
+light, Lily read with surprise the address stamped on the upper
+corner of the envelope. It was a business communication from the
+office of her aunt's executors, and she wondered what unexpected
+development had caused them to break silence before the appointed
+time. She opened the envelope and a cheque fluttered to the
+floor. As she stooped to pick it up the blood rushed to her face.
+The cheque represented the full amount of Mrs. Peniston's legacy,
+and the letter accompanying it explained that the executors,
+having adjusted the business of the estate with less delay than
+they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for
+the payment of the bequests.
+
+Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and
+spreading out the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND
+DOLLARS written across it in a steely business hand. Ten months
+earlier the amount it stood for had represented the depths of
+penury; but her standard of values had changed in the interval,
+and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of the pen. As
+she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the visions
+mounting to her brain, and after a while she lifted the lid of
+the desk and slipped the magic formula out of sight. It was
+easier to think without those five figures dancing before her
+eyes; and she had a great deal of thinking to do before she
+slept.
+
+She opened her cheque-book, and plunged into such anxious
+calculations as had prolonged her vigil at Bellomont on the night
+when she had decided to marry Percy Gryce. Poverty simplifies
+book-keeping, and her financial situation was easier to ascertain
+than it had been then; but she had not yet learned the
+control of money, and during her transient phase of luxury at the
+Emporium she had slipped back into habits of extravagance which
+still impaired her slender balance. A careful examination of her
+cheque-book, and of the unpaid bills in her desk, showed that,
+when the latter had been settled, she would have barely enough to
+live on for the next three or four months; and even after that,
+if she were to continue her present way of living, without
+earning any additional money, all incidental expenses must be
+reduced to the vanishing point. She hid her eyes with a shudder,
+beholding herself at the entrance of that ever-narrowing
+perspective down which she had seen Miss Silverton's dowdy figure
+take its despondent way.
+
+It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty
+that she turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of
+deeper empoverishment--of an inner destitution compared to which
+outward conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed
+miserable to be poor--to look forward to a shabby, anxious
+middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial
+to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the
+boarding-house. But there was something more miserable still--it
+was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept
+like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the
+years. That was the feeling which possessed her now--the feeling
+of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the
+whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor
+little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood
+submerged them. And as she looked back she saw that there had
+never been a time when she had had any real relation to life. Her
+parents too had been rootless, blown hither and thither on every
+wind of fashion, without any personal existence to shelter them
+from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without any one
+spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no
+centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which
+her heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for
+itself and tenderness for others. In whatever form a
+slowly-accumulated past lives in the blood--whether in the
+concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories, or
+in the conception of the house not built with hands, but
+made up of inherited passions and loyalties--it has the same
+power of broadening and deepening the individual existence, of
+attaching it by mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum
+of human striving.
+
+Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to
+Lily. She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her
+mating-instinct; but they had been checked by the disintegrating
+influences of the life about her. All the men and women she knew
+were like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild
+centrifugal dance: her first glimpse of the continuity of life
+had come to her that evening in Nettie Struther's kitchen.
+
+The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up
+the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them,
+seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It
+was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant
+margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the
+frail audacious permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of
+a cliff--a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together
+that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.
+
+Yes--but it had taken two to build the nest; the man's faith as
+well as the woman's courage. Lily remembered Nettie's words: I
+KNEW HE KNEW ABOUT ME. Her husband's faith in her had made her
+renewal possible--it is so easy for a woman to become what the
+man she loves believes her to be! Well--Selden had twice been
+ready to stake his faith on Lily Bart; but the third trial had
+been too severe for his endurance. The very quality of his love
+had made it the more impossible to recall to life. If it had been
+a simple instinct of the blood, the power of her beauty might
+have revived it. But the fact that it struck deeper, that it was
+inextricably wound up with inherited habits of thought and
+feeling, made it as impossible to restore to growth as a
+deep-rooted plant torn from its bed. Selden had given her of his
+best; but he was as incapable as herself of an uncritical return
+to former states of feeling.
+
+There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory
+of his faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman
+can live on her memories. As she held Nettie Struther's
+child in her arms the frozen currents of youth had loosed
+themselves and run warm in her veins: the old life-hunger
+possessed her, and all her being clamoured for its share of
+personal happiness. Yes--it was happiness she still wanted, and
+the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no
+account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser
+possibilities, and she saw that nothing now remained to her but
+the emptiness of renunciation.
+
+It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed
+her. It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid wakeful
+fatigue, a wan lucidity of mind against which all the
+possibilities of the future were shadowed forth gigantically. She
+was appalled by the intense cleanness of the vision; she seemed
+to have broken through the merciful veil which intervenes between
+intention and action, and to see exactly what she would do in all
+the long days to come. There was the cheque in her desk, for
+instance--she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor; but
+she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing
+so, would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought
+terrified her--she dreaded to fall from the height of her last
+moment with Lawrence Selden. But how could she trust herself to
+keep her footing? She knew the strength of the opposing
+impulses-she could feel the countless hands of habit dragging her
+back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an intense
+longing to prolong, to perpetuate, the momentary exaltation of
+her spirit. If only life could end now--end on this tragic yet
+sweet vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of
+kinship with all the loving and foregoing in the world!
+
+She reached out suddenly and, drawing the cheque from her
+writing-desk, enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to
+her bank. She then wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it,
+without an accompanying word, in an envelope inscribed with his
+name, laid the two letters side by side on her desk. After that
+she continued to sit at the table, sorting her papers and
+writing, till the intense silence of the house reminded her of
+the lateness of the hour. In the street the noise of wheels had
+ceased, and the rumble of the "elevated" came only at long
+intervals through the deep unnatural hush. In the mysterious
+nocturnal separation from all outward signs of life, she
+felt herself more strangely confronted with her fate. The
+sensation made her brain reel, and she tried to shut out
+consciousness by pressing her hands against her eyes. But the
+terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her
+future--she felt as though the house, the street, the world were
+all empty, and she alone left sentient in a lifeless universe.
+
+But this was the verge of delirium . . . she had never hung so
+near the dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she
+wanted--she remembered that she had not closed her eyes for two
+nights. The little bottle was at her bed-side, waiting to lay its
+spell upon her. She rose and undressed hastily, hungering now for
+the touch of her pillow. She felt so profoundly tired that she
+thought she must fall asleep at once; but as soon as she had lain
+down every nerve started once more into separate wakefulness. It
+was as though a great blaze of electric light had been turned on
+in her head, and her poor little anguished self shrank and
+cowered in it, without knowing where to take refuge.
+
+She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness
+was possible: her whole past was reenacting itself at a hundred
+different points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could
+still this legion of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion
+would have been sweet compared to this shrill beat of activities;
+but weariness had dropped from her as though some cruel stimulant
+had been forced into her veins.
+
+She could bear it--yes, she could bear it; but what strength
+would be left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared--the
+next day pressed close upon her, and on its heels came the days
+that were to follow--they swarmed about her like a shrieking mob.
+She must shut them out for a few hours; she must take a brief
+bath of oblivion. She put out her hand, and measured the soothing
+drops into a glass; but as she did so, she knew they would be
+powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain. She had
+long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she
+felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in
+doing so--she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at
+all, it might be a sleep without waking. But after all that was
+but one chance in a hundred: the action of the drug was
+incalculable, and the addition of a few drops to the regular dose
+would probably do no more than procure for her the rest she so
+desperately needed....
+
+She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely--the
+physical craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her
+mind shrank from the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes
+contract in a blaze of light--darkness, darkness was what she
+must have at any cost. She raised herself in bed and swallowed
+the contents of the glass; then she blew out her candle and lay
+down.
+
+She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the
+first effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form
+they would take--the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the
+soft approach of passiveness, as though an invisible hand made
+magic passes over her in the darkness. The very slowness and
+hesitancy of the effect increased its fascination: it was
+delicious to lean over and look down into the dim abysses of
+unconsciousness. Tonight the drug seemed to work more slowly than
+usual: each passionate pulse had to be stilled in turn, and it
+was long before she felt them dropping into abeyance, like
+sentinels falling asleep at their posts. But gradually the sense
+of complete subjugation came over her, and she wondered languidly
+what had made her feel so uneasy and excited. She saw now that
+there was nothing to be excited about--she had returned to her
+normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be so difficult after
+all: she felt sure that she would have the strength to meet it.
+She did not quite remember what it was that she had been afraid
+to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her. She had been
+unhappy, and now she was happy--she had felt herself alone, and
+now the sense of loneliness had vanished.
+
+She stirred once, and turned on her side, and as she did so, she
+suddenly understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was
+odd--but Nettie Struther's child was lying on her arm: she felt
+the pressure of its little head against her shoulder. She did not
+know how it had come there, but she felt no great surprise at the
+fact, only a gentle penetrating thrill of warmth and pleasure.
+She settled herself into an easier position, hollowing her arm to
+pillow the round downy head, and holding her breath lest
+a sound should disturb the sleeping child.
+
+As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she
+must tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life
+clear between them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered
+vague and luminous on the far edge of thought--she was afraid of
+not remembering it when she woke; and if she could only remember
+it and say it to him, she felt that everything would be well.
+
+Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold
+her. She struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought to
+keep awake on account of the baby; but even this feeling was
+gradually lost in an indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through
+which, of a sudden, a dark flash of loneliness and terror tore
+its way.
+
+She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock: for a
+moment she seemed to have lost her hold of the child. But no--she
+was mistaken--the tender pressure of its body was still close to
+hers: the recovered warmth flowed through her once more, she
+yielded to it, sank into it, and slept.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer
+in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street,
+mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings
+of the door-step, and struck prismatic glories from the panes of
+her darkened window.
+
+When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is
+intoxication in its breath; and Selden, hastening along the
+street through the squalor of its morning confidences, felt
+himself thrilling with a youthful sense of adventure. He had cut
+loose from the familiar shores of habit, and launched himself on
+uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and measures were
+left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars.
+
+That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart's
+boarding-house; but its shabby door-step had suddenly become the
+threshold of the untried. As he approached he looked up at the
+triple row of windows, wondering boyishly which one of them was
+hers. It was nine o'clock, and the house, being tenanted by
+workers, already showed an awakened front to the street. He
+remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind was down.
+He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the
+window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers:
+it was inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch
+of beauty in the dingy scene.
+
+Nine o'clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed
+beyond all such conventional observances. He only knew that he
+must see Lily Bart at once--he had found the word he meant to say
+to her, and it could not wait another moment to be said. It was
+strange that it had not come to his lips sooner--that he had let
+her pass from him the evening before without being able to speak
+it. But what did that matter, now that a new day had come? It was
+not a word for twilight, but for the morning.
+
+Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in
+his state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him
+that the door should open so promptly. It was still more
+of a surprise to see, as he entered, that it had been opened by
+Gerty Farish--and that behind her, in an agitated blur, several
+other figures ominously loomed.
+
+"Lawrence!" Gerty cried in a strange voice, "how could you get
+here so quickly?"--and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed
+instantly to close about his heart.
+
+He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture--he
+saw the landlady's imposing bulk sway professionally toward him;
+but he shrank back, putting up his hand, while his eyes
+mechanically mounted the steep black walnut stairs, up which he
+was immediately aware that his cousin was about to lead him.
+
+A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at
+any minute--and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some
+one else exclaimed: "It was the greatest mercy--" then Selden
+felt that Gerty had taken him gently by the hand, and that they
+were to be suffered to go up alone.
+
+In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the
+passage to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went
+in after her. Though the blind was down, the irresistible
+sunlight poured a tempered golden flood into the room, and in its
+light Selden saw a narrow bed along the wall, and on the bed,
+with motionless hands and calm unrecognizing face, the semblance
+of Lily Bart.
+
+That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied.
+Her real self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours
+earlier--what had he to do with this estranged and tranquil face
+which, for the first time, neither paled nor brightened at his
+coming?
+
+Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of
+one who has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking
+gently, as if transmitting a final message.
+
+"The doctor found a bottle of chloral--she had been sleeping
+badly for a long time, and she must have taken an overdose by
+mistake.... There is no doubt of that--no doubt--there will be no
+question--he has been very kind. I told him that you and I would
+like to be left alone with her--to go over her things before any
+one else comes. I know it is what she would have wished."
+
+Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood
+looking down on the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a
+delicate impalpable mask over the living lineaments he had known.
+He felt that the real Lily was still there, close to him, yet
+invisible and inaccessible; and the tenuity of the barrier
+between them mocked him with a sense of helplessness. There had
+never been more than a little impalpable barrier between
+them--and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart! And now,
+though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly
+hardened to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in
+vain.
+
+He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from
+Gerty aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was
+struck by the extraordinary light in his cousin's face.
+
+"You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised
+that there shall be no trouble--but of course the formalities
+must be gone through. And I asked him to give us time to look
+through her things first---"
+
+He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. "It won't
+take long," she concluded.
+
+"No--it won't take long," he agreed.
+
+She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last
+look at the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold
+she paused to add: "You will find me downstairs if you want me."
+
+Selden roused himself to detain her. "But why are you going? She
+would have wished---"
+
+Gerty shook her head with a smile. "No: this is what she would
+have wished---" and as she spoke a light broke through Selden's
+stony misery, and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.
+
+The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless
+sleeper on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to
+fall on his knees, and rest his throbbing head against the
+peaceful cheek on the pillow. They had never been at peace
+together, they two; and now he felt himself drawn downward into
+the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.
+
+But he remembered Gerty's warning words--he knew that, though
+time had ceased in this room, its feet were hastening
+relentlessly toward the door. Gerty had given him this supreme
+half-hour, and he must use it as she willed.
+
+He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to
+regain his consciousness of outward things. There was very little
+furniture in the room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread
+with a lace cover, and set out with a few gold-topped boxes and
+bottles, a rose-coloured pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with
+tortoise-shell hair-pins--he shrank from the poignant intimacy of
+these trifles, and from the blank surface of the toilet-mirror
+above them.
+
+These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the
+minute observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her
+other renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of
+her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in the
+scrupulous neatness of the scant articles of furniture: a
+washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little
+table near the bed. On this table stood the empty bottle and
+glass, and from these also he averted his eyes.
+
+The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters
+which he took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was
+stamped and sealed, Selden, after a moment's hesitation, laid it
+aside. On the other letter he read Gus Trenor's name; and the
+flap of the envelope was still ungummed.
+
+Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered
+under it, steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been
+writing to Trenor--writing, presumably, just after their parting
+of the previous evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of
+that last hour, made a mock of the word he had come to speak, and
+defiled even the reconciling silence upon which it fell. He felt
+himself flung back on all the ugly uncertainties from which he
+thought he had cast loose forever. After all, what did he know of
+her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him, and
+measured by the world's estimate, how little that was! By what
+right--the letter in his hand seemed to ask--by what right was it
+he who now passed into her confidence through the gate which
+death had left unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right
+of their last hour together, the hour when she herself had placed
+the key in his hand. Yes--but what if the letter to Trenor had
+been written afterward?
+
+He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips,
+addressed himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After
+all, that task would be easier to perform, now that his personal
+stake in it was annulled.
+
+He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book
+and a few packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly
+precision which characterized all her personal habits. He looked
+through the letters first, because it was the most difficult part
+of the work. They proved to be few and unimportant, but among
+them he found, with a strange commotion of the heart, the note he
+had written her the day after the Brys' entertainment.
+
+"When may I come to you?"--his words overwhelmed him with a
+realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the
+very moment of attainment. Yes--he had always feared his fate,
+and he was too honest to disown his cowardice now; for had not
+all his old doubts started to life again at the mere sight of
+Trenor's name?
+
+He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
+something made precious by the fact that she had held it so;
+then, growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued
+his examination of the papers.
+
+To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted;
+there was not an unpaid account among them. He opened the
+cheque-book, and saw that, the very night before, a cheque of ten
+thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston's executors had been entered
+in it. The legacy, then, had been paid sooner than Gerty had led
+him to expect. But, turning another page or two, he discovered
+with astonishment that, in spite of this recent accession of
+funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars. A rapid
+glance at the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the
+date of the previous day, showed that between four or five
+hundred dollars of the legacy had been spent in the settlement of
+bills, while the remaining thousands were comprehended in one
+cheque, made out, at the same time, to Charles Augustus Trenor.
+
+Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the
+desk. He leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his
+hands. The bitter waters of life surged high about him, their
+sterile taste was on his lips. Did the cheque to Trenor explain
+the mystery or deepen it? At first his mind refused to act--he
+felt only the taint of such a transaction between a man like
+Trenor and a girl like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled
+vision cleared, old hints and rumours came back to him, and out
+of the very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed
+an explanation of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had
+taken money from Trenor; but true also, as the contents of the
+little desk declared, that the obligation had been intolerable to
+her, and that at the first opportunity she had freed herself from
+it, though the act left her face to face with bare unmitigated
+poverty.
+
+That was all he knew--all he could hope to unravel of the story.
+The mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this--unless
+indeed they had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon
+his forehead. Yes, he could now read into that farewell all that
+his heart craved to find there; he could even draw from it
+courage not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the
+height of his opportunity.
+
+He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them
+apart; since his very detachment from the external influences
+which swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and
+made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. But
+at least he HAD loved her--had been willing to stake his future
+on his faith in her--and if the moment had been fated to pass
+from them before they could seize it, he saw now that, for both,
+it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.
+
+It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over
+themselves, which had kept them from atrophy and extinction;
+which, in her, had reached out to him in every struggle against
+the influence of her surroundings, and in him, had kept alive the
+faith that now drew him penitent and reconciled to her side.
+
+He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment
+to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the
+word which made all clear.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+Notes:
+
+1. I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions:
+do n't becomes don't, etc.
+
+2. I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and
+colour.
+
+3. I found and corrected one instance of the name "Gertie,"
+which I changed to "Gerty" to be consistent with rest of the
+book.
+
+Linda Ruoff
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
+
+
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