prompt:
Chapter: 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."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Lily attempts to further her designs on Gryce by accompanying the Trenors' daughters to church. She believes that Gryce will see how beautiful she looks while peering through long eyelashes over a hymnal and wearing a modest gray dress, and will fall hopelessly in love with her. In an act of rebellion intended to increase Gryce's longing for her, however, Lily purposely misses the omnibus that takes the group of churchgoers to Sunday services. Instead, she interrupts a private conversation between Selden and Bertha, much to the delight of the former and the consternation of the latter. Lily then sets out on foot for the church, hoping to catch Gryce returning from services. She is met by Selden, who surmises that Lily has designs on Gryce. Gryce does indeed return from church on foot, but as part of a group led by Lady Cressida that also includes the Trenors' daughters. Selden, recognizing that their earlier conversation about Americana was due to Lily's interest in snaring Gryce, offers to further his tutelage at length that afternoon.


prompt:
Chapter: 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."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The chapter begins with Lily and Selden venturing out-of-doors for a prolonged conversation. The exhilaration she feels is compared to the only time Lily felt that she had been in love, with Herbert Melson. A man possessing good looks but little income, Melson eventually married an older sister of Gwen. Lily tempers her nostalgia by acknowledging that the handsome young man aged, put on weight, and became a man who incessantly related anecdotes about his children. Wharton describes Selden as an intellectual of dark features and impressive height. Lily admires him because he possesses a sense of superiority over the mannerisms of the wealthy. He tells Lily that he has come to the Trenors' party specifically to see her. Lily intends to use Selden's presence as a prop for her intentions for Gryce. She supposes that spending time with Selden will either relate to Gryce that she is not desperate for his proposal, or it will incite Gryce to jealousy. Earlier that day, Lily had feigned a debilitating headache as a reason to miss an afternoon automobile drive to the Van Osburghs' estate. The headache was intended to elicit Gryce's sympathy, a ploy that Selden observed with much amusement. The conversation between Lily and Selden revolves around their respective definitions of success. For Lily, it is "to get as much as one can out of life." For Selden, it is personal freedom. The couple discusses money. Selden states that, for the rich, money is like air; removed from the comfort of their surroundings, the wealthy gasp like fish out of water. Lily responds that, as an individual adverse to the ways of the rich, he spends much time socializing with them. Selden responds that he considers Lily too worthy for many men of the upper class. Lily answers that perhaps she might perform great acts with the wealth she could receive from a rich husband. Selden tells her that she is pursuing wealth that ultimately will not make her happy, and asks her if she has considered that result. She confesses that she has, but considers his assessment much darker than her own. The conversation puts Lily in a darker mood, and she challenges Selden to explain why he should draw the limitations of her aspirations to her attention when he has nothing to offer her as an alternative. He confesses that if he possessed an alternative, he would give it readily. This admission causes Lily to weep, although Selden is unsure if she is putting on an act. He attempts to better the situation by stating that it is natural for him "to belittle all the things" he is unable to offer Lily. Lily responds that, in belittling the things Lily desires, Selden is belittling her. Their conversation leads to Lily's asking Selden if he wishes to marry her. "I shall look hideous in dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own hats," she tells him. Before the conversation can conclude, the pair observes a passing automobile. When Selden notes that the car is traveling in the wrong direction and cannot be the Trenor party, as they initially assumed, they both seize the opportunity to end the seriousness of their conversation. In answer to Lily's question, "Are you serious?" Selden responds that he was under no risk by being serious, implying that Lily would never consider a proposal from him.


prompt:
Chapter: It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice,
in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.

"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back,
sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while
she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case,
the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.

"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but I'm sure
you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to
let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don't
suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine
your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And
I'm sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even
Bertha kept her hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and
you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known Lawrence
Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just discovered him?
If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it--you
could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you
Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
Lawrence's turning up put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her
think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you
this trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"

Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own
conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's reproachful accents.
But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence.
"I only took a day off--I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and
I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning."

Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its
weakness.

"He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's run away
from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him thoroughly."

Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake him!"

Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily, do
nothing!"

Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean, literally, to
take the next train. There are ways----" But she did not go on to specify
them.

Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty of
them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out.  But don't
deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to
his mother, and she'll protect him!"

"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.

"How you can LAUGH----" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha
really told him?"

"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything.  Oh, you
know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose
she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord Hubert--and there was some
story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"

"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.

"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their
tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity
comes they remember everything."

Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money
I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course."

"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man--she knew
just what to tell him!"

In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case.  Presented
in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was
certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's
words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
char-woman. Mrs. Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the
situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her
friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of
indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had
driven her out again on those dark seas?

If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was
the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive
her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of
occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in
which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long
hours of subjection.

She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm sorry to
have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have
some letters for me to answer--let me at least be useful."

She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption
of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had
proved herself unfit for higher uses.

The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney
and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony
that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady
Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to
lunch at a distant country-house.  At such moments of diminished interest
it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on
this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed
and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few of us are
left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish the men would
always stop away--it's really much nicer without them. Oh, you don't
count, George: one doesn't have to talk to one's husband. But I thought
Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?" she added enquiringly.
"Didn't he intend to, Judy?  He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove
him away? He is rather shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he
has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way.  Do you know, Lily, he
told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you
doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and
always has a lot left over to invest!"

Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some one's duty
to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to
realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to
study the laws of his country."

Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the divorce
laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a
petition against divorce."

Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing
glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to
tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard."

His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed
with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship that will do for
him, it's the crew."

"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated a voyage
with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold."

Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate
expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at him; I think he's very
nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a girl who married him would
always have enough to be comfortable."

She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but
it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the
breast of one of her hearers.

Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than
any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the
heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her
mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to
her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut
deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no
one else--not even Judy Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly.

She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered
request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the
luncheon-table.

"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher
that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at
four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I'm very
glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him
rather severely since she's been here, and she is so keen about going to
fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her
alimony is paid by other women's husbands!"

Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself.  Why should
she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
for a married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
could of course borrow from her women friends--a hundred here or there,
at the utmost--but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
to understand its necessities.  The result of her meditations was the
decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
next morning for Richfield.

At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't
often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
to do."

The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from
the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and
slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.

The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not often I
have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with
me."

"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won the race,
anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent you. Now didn't
she?"

He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could
not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth.

"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with; and she's
quite right," she rejoined.

"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste your time
on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can
get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who've kept a free foot. Let
me light a cigar, will you? I've had a beastly day of it."

He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to
her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand
cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with
a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him
handsome!

As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you have
such a lot of tiresome things to do?"

"I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by
his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a
confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow has to hustle to keep
this kind of thing going." He waved his whip in the direction of the
Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations.
"Judy has no idea of what she spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep
the thing going," he interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his
eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to
live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know where I
should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then.  The women all
think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but to go down town once a
month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of
hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain
to-day, though," he went on after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke
of business, thanks to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily,
I wish you'd try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she'd
only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him.
The man is mad to know the people who don't want to know him, and when a
fellow's in that state there is nothing he won't do for the first woman
who takes him up."

Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's discourse had
started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by
the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She uttered a faint protest.

"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible."

"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner!  Well,
all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him
now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he'll be in
it whether we want him or not, and then he won't be giving away a
half-a-million tip for a dinner."

Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale
to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first words. This vast
mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and "deals"--might she not find in
it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard
of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more
notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and
its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed,
imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a "tip" from Mr.
Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in
a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.

In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal
instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of
explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always
scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal
fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of
inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not
open.

As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile.
"The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me a little
farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day, and it's so restful to
be away from people, with some one who won't mind if I'm a little dull."

She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him--not
battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would
have given their boots to get such a look from.

"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits?  Is your
last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of
everything at bridge last night?"

Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet; and
bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of the things
my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I
don't play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as
the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about
my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a
favour--the very greatest of favours."

Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of
apprehension that she read in them.

"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage----" He broke off, and she
guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs.
Fisher's methods.

"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is, Judy is
angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."

"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense----" his relief broke through in a
laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."

"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her.
But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her
heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great deal of money."

She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning
abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.

"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce?  What--you do?
Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust me to keep my mouth
shut--but Gryce--good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring
yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And
so you gave him the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the
first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther
across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I
could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!"

Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that men
understand a woman's motives better than other women do."

"Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he repeated,
exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.

"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to you,"
Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage; it's impossible.
But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost
entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she
makes me no regular allowance, and lately I've lost money at cards, and I
don't dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but
there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income
of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in
less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know
if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a
moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all
this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can't, at
present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away
tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the
rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
clothes."

At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was
heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of
indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his
wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart's future, he would
have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better
marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of
discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that
he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the
assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he
was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if
she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and
approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she
was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.

Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.

Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Lily returns to the Trenor household to discover that Gryce has departed. Judy tells Lily that Bertha retaliated against Lily for stealing Selden's attention by telling ruinous stories about Lily to Gryce. These stories include Lily's borrowing money to repay a gambling debt, as well as stories about her previous suitors. Judy asks Lily to travel to the train station to meet her husband. Lily goes to the station to greet Trenor, whom she finds repugnant. Trenor tells her that he has just completed a lucrative deal with Rosedale, whose fortune he predicts will soon eclipse his own wealth. On their ride back to his estate, Lily appeals to Trenor to help her invest her money in order to provide a small income for herself. He promises that he can earn her with a small fortune with no risk.