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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
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF MIRTH ***
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