prompt:
Chapter: 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.

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

completion: Lily, more weary than ever, begins her walk home. She has nothing to look forward to but the bottle of chloral by her bedside. She knows that lately it hasn't been as effective as it used to. Someone recognizes Lily and stops her. It turns out to be a young woman named Nettie Struther, who used to belong to Gerty Farish's Girls Club. Nettie recalls that it was Lily's donation that once saved her life. Nettie had been ill and was able to go to the country for rest and rehabilitation with the money Lily gave. Lily realizes that, ironically, it was Gus's money that enabled her to make such a donation. Nettie is shocked to see Lily in such a weary state. She says that whenever she was ill she used to imagine the beautiful and kind Lily Bart living a life of luxury and happiness, and it cheered her to think there was such justice in the world. She offers to take Lily back to her place to rest by the fire. Lily agrees. Once at Nettie's place, Lily realizes how clean and lovely and quaint it is, even though it's small and clearly inexpensive. Nettie is married, but her husband works the night-shift and isn't there. They have a baby, which Nettie now tends to while entertaining her guest. As she feeds her infant its milk, Nettie tells Lily that, originally, she was dating a rather wealthy man whom she thought she was going to marry. But, it soon became clear that he wasn't going to wed a girl from the working class. He took off, and then that's when she came down with her illness and needed the trip to the country. When she came back, George - now her husband - asked her to marry him. Lily offers to hold the baby, and Nettie places her in Lily's arms. Lily feels as though the child becomes a part of her as she sits with it. Nettie hopes aloud that her child grows up to be just like Lily. Lily doesn't. Lily resumes her walk home, feeling much stronger than she did before she ran into Nettie. She had never before seen the affect of her generosities, and she feels less alone having made a human connection. Once home, however, she again sinks into a "deeper loneliness." Lily goes through her remaining possessions, taking out what fancy dresses she has left and spreading them on her bed, trying to re-live the glamour of her former days. Last she comes to the dress she wore at the Brys' party as a living portrait. Lily puts the dresses away just as the apartment building's maid brings by a letter to her from her aunt's lawyers. The letter turns out to be Lily's check - her ten thousand dollar inheritance from Mrs. Peniston. Lily muses that ten months ago, when she first heard the news of the will, ten grand seemed like poverty. Now, it represents incredible wealth to her. Lily sits down to do some book-keeping. She realizes that after paying off her debts she'll barely have enough to live on for three months. Lily finds it miserable to be poor, but she finds it more miserable to be alone. She feels insignificant and rootless, and concludes that "there ha never been a time when she ha had any real relation to life." She feels as though all the men and women she knew in high society were similarly rootless, "like atoms whirling away from each other." The first example she has seen of "the continuity of life" was just now, with Nettie Struther. Lily realizes that Nettie's world is built by her and her husband, that a woman can do wonders if she has the love of a man. She realizes that Selden twice offered this love to her, but is now incapable of doing so again. Lily remembers the feeling of holding Nettie's child; she felt "possessed" by her old "life-hunger." She wants happiness, but all that is left for her now is "the emptiness of renunciation." It's getting late and Lily is tired. She worries that she'll wake up tomorrow and fail to send Gus Trenor the money she owes him, and that she'll continue to put it off, day after day, until the legacy is gone and she slips into tolerating the debt forever. She wishes that life could end now - while she has just come from Selden's and still has her moral resolve. At her desk, Lily writes a check out to Trenor for the nine thousand. She puts it in an envelope with his name on it. Then, she places the check from Mrs. Peniston's estate in an envelope addressed to her own bank and places the two envelopes side by side on her dresser. Having not slept fully in two days, Lily lays down in bed expecting to doze off. But, she can't. She turns to the bottle of chloral by her bed. She knows she's raised it to the maximum dosage lately, but she feels that it couldn't hurt to add just a bit more tonight. Lily knows this is taking a risk - the pharmacist warned her of the chance of overdosing - but she feels it's only a one-in-a-hundred shot. Wharton writes that Lily "did not, in truth, consider this question very closely." After taking the chloral, Lily feels much better. As she lies on the bed, she doesn't feel alone anymore - she feels as though Nettie Struther's child is in her arms. Lily tries to repeat "the word" that she knows she must tell Selden, but she can't grasp what it is. Lily sleeps.


prompt:
Chapter: The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the
air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the
blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step,
and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window.

When such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication in
its breath; and Selden, hastening along the street through the squalor of
its morning confidences, felt himself thrilling with a youthful sense of
adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and
launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and
measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars.

That course, for the moment, led merely to Miss Bart's boarding-house;
but its shabby door-step had suddenly become the threshold of the
untried. As he approached he looked up at the triple row of windows,
wondering boyishly which one of them was hers. It was nine o'clock, and
the house, being tenanted by workers, already showed an awakened front to
the street. He remembered afterward having noticed that only one blind
was down.  He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the
window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was
inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the
dingy scene.

Nine o'clock was an early hour for a visit, but Selden had passed beyond
all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily
Bart at once--he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could
not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come
to his lips sooner--that he had let her pass from him the evening before
without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new
day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning.

Selden ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell; and even in his
state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door
should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he
entered, that it had been opened by Gerty Farish--and that behind her, in
an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed.

"Lawrence!" Gerty cried in a strange voice, "how could you get here so
quickly?"--and the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to
close about his heart.

He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture--he saw the
landlady's imposing bulk sway professionally toward him; but he shrank
back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically mounted the steep
black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately aware that his cousin
was about to lead him.

A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any
minute--and that nothing, upstairs, was to be disturbed. Some one else
exclaimed: "It was the greatest mercy--" then Selden felt that Gerty had
taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be suffered to go up
alone.

In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage
to a closed door. Gerty opened the door, and Selden went in after her.
Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a tempered
golden flood into the room, and in its light Selden saw a narrow bed
along the wall, and on the bed, with motionless hands and calm
unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart.

That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied.  Her real
self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier--what had he to
do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the first time,
neither paled nor brightened at his coming?

Gerty, strangely tranquil too, with the conscious self-control of one who
has ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking gently, as if
transmitting a final message.

"The doctor found a bottle of chloral--she had been sleeping badly for a
long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake.... There is no
doubt of that--no doubt--there will be no question--he has been very
kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left alone with her--to
go over her things before any one else comes. I know it is what she would
have wished."

Selden was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down on
the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate impalpable mask
over the living lineaments he had known.  He felt that the real Lily was
still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible; and the
tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense of
helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier
between them--and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart!  And now,
though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened
to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in vain.

He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gerty
aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by the
extraordinary light in his cousin's face.

"You understand what the doctor has gone for? He has promised that there
shall be no trouble--but of course the formalities must be gone through.
And I asked him to give us time to look through her things first----"

He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. "It won't take
long," she concluded.

"No--it won't take long," he agreed.

She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last look at
the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold she paused to
add: "You will find me downstairs if you want me."

Selden roused himself to detain her. "But why are you going? She would
have wished----"

Gerty shook her head with a smile. "No: this is what she would have
wished----" and as she spoke a light broke through Selden's stony misery,
and he saw deep into the hidden things of love.

The door closed on Gerty, and he stood alone with the motionless sleeper
on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall on his knees,
and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful cheek on the pillow.
They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself
drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.

But he remembered Gerty's warning words--he knew that, though time had
ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly toward the
door. Gerty had given him this supreme half-hour, and he must use it as
she willed.

He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to regain his
consciousness of outward things. There was very little furniture in the
room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover, and set
out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured
pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hair-pins--he shrank
from the poignant intimacy of these trifles, and from the blank surface
of the toilet-mirror above them.

These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the minute
observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her other
renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality
about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the
scant articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small
writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the
empty bottle and glass, and from these also he averted his eyes.

The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he
took up. One bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped and
sealed, Selden, after a moment's hesitation, laid it aside. On the other
letter he read Gus Trenor's name; and the flap of the envelope was still
ungummed.

Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered under it,
steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been writing to
Trenor--writing, presumably, just after their parting of the previous
evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of that last hour, made a mock
of the word he had come to speak, and defiled even the reconciling
silence upon which it fell. He felt himself flung back on all the ugly
uncertainties from which he thought he had cast loose forever. After all,
what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him,
and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was! By what
right--the letter in his hand seemed to ask--by what right was it he who
now passed into her confidence through the gate which death had left
unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last hour
together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in his hand.
Yes--but what if the letter to Trenor had been written afterward?

He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips, addressed
himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After all, that task
would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was
annulled.

He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book and a few
packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly precision which
characterized all her personal habits. He looked through the letters
first, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved to
be few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotion
of the heart, the note he had written her the day after the Brys'
entertainment.

"When may I come to you?"--his words overwhelmed him with a realization
of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of
attainment. Yes--he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to
disown his cowardice now; for had not all his old doubts started to life
again at the mere sight of Trenor's name?

He laid the note in his card-case, folding it away carefully, as
something made precious by the fact that she had held it so; then,
growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his
examination of the papers.

To his surprise, he found that all the bills were receipted; there was
not an unpaid account among them. He opened the cheque-book, and saw
that, the very night before, a cheque of ten thousand dollars from Mrs.
Peniston's executors had been entered in it. The legacy, then, had been
paid sooner than Gerty had led him to expect. But, turning another page
or two, he discovered with astonishment that, in spite of this recent
accession of funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars.  A
rapid glance at the stubs of the last cheques, all of which bore the date
of the previous day, showed that between four or five hundred dollars of
the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the remaining
thousands were comprehended in one cheque, made out, at the same time, to
Charles Augustus Trenor.

Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the desk. He
leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands. The bitter waters
of life surged high about him, their sterile taste was on his lips. Did
the cheque to Trenor explain the mystery or deepen it? At first his mind
refused to act--he felt only the taint of such a transaction between a
man like Trenor and a girl like Lily Bart. Then, gradually, his troubled
vision cleared, old hints and rumours came back to him, and out of the
very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation
of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from Trenor;
but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared, that the
obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the first opportunity
she had freed herself from it, though the act left her face to face with
bare unmitigated poverty.

That was all he knew--all he could hope to unravel of the story.  The
mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this--unless indeed they
had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes,
he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find
there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for
having failed to reach the height of his opportunity.

He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart;
since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her
had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult
for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he HAD loved her--had
been willing to stake his future on his faith in her--and if the moment
had been fated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now
that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives.

It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which
had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had reached out
to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and
in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and
reconciled to her side.

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its
lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made
all clear.

THE END

Notes:

1.  I have modernized this text by modernizing the contractions: do n't
becomes don't, etc.

2.  I have retained the British spelling of words like favour and colour.

3.  I found and corrected one instance of the name "Gertie," which I
changed to "Gerty" to be consistent with rest of the book.

Linda Ruoff

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

completion: Selden wakes early the next morning, elated. He's decided that, once again, he loves Lily Bart and wants to marry her. At 9am, he makes his way over to her boarding house. Looking up at the windows from the outside, he decides that the sill with the flower pot on it must be hers, as it's the only attractive aesthetic touch on an otherwise dingy building. Selden rushes up the stairs, having found "the word" he has to say to Lily. He finds it odd that he was never able to speak this word before, but is ecstatic that it's finally come to him now. At Lily's floor, Selden finds Gerty Farish, who cries out, asking him how he got there so quickly. Uh-oh. Gerty leads him into Lily's room, where Lily lies dead on the bed. Selden recognizes the body as "the real" Lily Bart. Gerty informs him that the doctor found a bottle of chloral and determined an accidental overdose as the cause of death. Gerty decides to leave Selden alone with Lily while they wait for the doctor to come back, since that is what Lily would have wanted. Alone with Lily, Selden realizes they have never been at peace together before. He looks around the room but finds no trace of Lily's personality in this dingy setting. Then he sees the letter addressed to Trenor on her desk and is immediately horrified. Suspicions rise as he wonders if the rumor of their affair was true. Perhaps he doesn't know Lily the way he thought he did.... He looks through her desk some more and finds that she saved a note he had written to her in the past. Next, Selden examines her checkbook, which he finds to be in perfect order - she has no outstanding debts. He sees that she entered her ten thousand dollar legacy from Aunt Peniston in the ledger last night, but that she still shows no remaining balance in her records. Where did the money go? He looks over her check stubs and finds one for nine thousand addressed to Gus Trenor. Selden puts all the pieces together. Lily must have indeed taken money from Trenor in the past, but it's clear that the moral weight of owing him money was too much for her to handle. For this sense of obligation, Selden admires her once again. Selden looks back to Lily, still lying on the bed. He feels as though fate has contrived to keep them apart all these years. Still, he's happy that he loved her as he did, and he decides this love between them saved both of them from utter ruin. He kneels by the bed and leans over her, "and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear."


prompt:
Chapter: Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central
Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from
a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at
that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have
inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and
another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close
of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood
apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the
street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she
was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him.
There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of
far-reaching intentions.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door,
and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she
would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her
skill to the test.

"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"

She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him.
One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss
Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his
last train.

Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against
the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a
ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish
smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after
eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really
eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached
the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?

"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my rescue!"

He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked
what form the rescue was to take.

"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me.  One sits
out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit hotter here than
in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of the women are not a bit
uglier."  She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to
town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had
missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck.  "And there isn't another
till half-past five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her
laces.  "Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on
to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is closed, and I don't
know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively about the station. "It IS
hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after all. If you can spare the time, do
take me somewhere for a breath of air."

He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as
diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his
course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a
moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.

"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"

She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.

"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet a lot of
bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any
difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not," she objected gaily.  "I'm
dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter place?"

He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that
both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In judging Miss
Bart, he had always made use of the "argument from design."

"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll find a
hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her through the
throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in
preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles
and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race?
The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him
feel how highly specialized she was.

A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung refreshingly
over the moist street.

"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged from the
station.

They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As she
moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was conscious of
taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the modelling of her
little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair--was it ever so slightly
brightened by art?--and the thick planting of her straight black lashes.
Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong
and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to
make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious
way, have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities
distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as
though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to
vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture
will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material
was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?

As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and her
lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she paused
with a sigh.

"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty--and what a hideous place New York is!"
She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare.  "Other
cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in
its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered down one of the side-streets.
"Someone has had the humanity to plant a few trees over there. Let us go
into the shade."

"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as they
turned the corner.

"Your street? Do you live here?"

She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone house-fronts,
fantastically varied in obedience to the American craving for novelty,
but fresh and inviting with their awnings and flower-boxes.

"Ah, yes--to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building!  I
don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade.  "Which are
your windows? Those with the awnings down?"

"On the top floor--yes."

"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!"

He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give you a
cup of tea in no time--and you won't meet any bores."

Her colour deepened--she still had the art of blushing at the right
time--but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.

"Why not? It's too tempting--I'll take the risk," she declared.

"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he had never
liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without
afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there
was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.

On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.

"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the
mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out the tea-things and
provided some cake."

He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed
the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks;
then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its
walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he
had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had
sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent
of mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.

Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.

"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What a
miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a luxury of
discontent.

Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.

"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges of a
flat."

"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable,
marriageable girls!"

"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."

She sat up in surprise. "You do?"

"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for
cake.

"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little unkindly. "But I
said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no
maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the
food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know."

"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting the cake.

They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the
kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green
glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its
slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he
was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin
Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the
civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet
seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.

She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that of
Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was your
cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I
like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I
daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure
bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the
horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt's drawing-room I
know I should be a better woman."

"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.

She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be
filled.

"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come oftener?"

"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."

"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on so well
when we meet."

"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I haven't
any cream, you know--shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?"

"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a
thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason," she insisted.

"The reason for what?"

"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in
her charming eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could make you out. Of course
I know there are men who don't like me--one can tell that at a glance.
And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry
them." She smiled up at him frankly. "But I don't think you dislike
me--and you can't possibly think I want to marry you."

"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.

"Well, then----?"

He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against the
chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement.
The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement--he had not supposed
she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only
keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation
but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he
had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.

"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."

"What?"

"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard it as
such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt a slight shiver down
his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured him.

"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you to make
love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She leaned back, sipping
her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that, if they had been in
her aunt's drawing-room, he might almost have tried to disprove her
deduction.

"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't be
afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have
fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except that you are
neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't have to pretend with
you or be on my guard against you." Her voice had dropped to a note of
seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a
child.

"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My aunt is
full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in
the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them would include
wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves.  And the other women--my best
friends--well, they use me or abuse me; but they don't care a straw what
happens to me. I've been about too long--people are getting tired of me;
they are beginning to say I ought to marry."

There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or two
replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he
rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why don't you?"

She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all, and that
is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."

"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably.  "Isn't
marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought up for?"

She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"

"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the first
man who came along."

"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there
must be some one with the requisite qualifications."

She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances when I
first came out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly
poor--and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money."

Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.

"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.

"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all the
family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn't do over
the drawing-room."

"The very thing you are marrying for!"

"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."

"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."

He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting
one between her lips and slipping the others into a little gold case
attached to her long pearl chain.

"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of
her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal
enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids,
and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of
the cheek.

She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between
the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints
of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes lingered on them
caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the
pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost
susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory
enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.

"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and things?"

"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up
something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the big sales."

She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept
them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.

"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"

Selden stared and laughed.

"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector, you see; I
simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of."

She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?"

"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real collector
values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana
sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn't."

She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch fabulous
prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly
badly-printed book that one is never going to read!  And I suppose most
of the owners of Americana are not historians either?"

"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use
those in the public libraries or in private collections.  It seems to be
the mere rarity that attracts the average collector."

He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing,
and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes,
whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finest
in the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a single
volume.

It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted now one
book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her
fingers, while her drooping profile was outlined against the warm
background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder
at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never
be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing,
and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her
next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before him
with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her
familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.

"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy
all the books you want?"

He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby
walls.

"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"

"And having to work--do you mind that?"

"Oh, the work itself is not so bad--I'm rather fond of the law."

"No; but the being tied down: the routine--don't you ever want to get
away, to see new places and people?"

"Horribly--especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer."

She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough--to marry to get
out of it?"

Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.

She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.

"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must, a man may if he chooses." She
surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little shabby--but who cares?  It
doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one
would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for
herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they
don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman?
We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and if we
can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership."

Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with her
lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her case.

"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for such an
investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the Trenors'."

She returned his look interrogatively.

"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity!  But there
are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls, Lady
Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."

She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her
lashes; but he remained imperturbable.

"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the week; and
those big parties bore me."

"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.

"Then why go?"

"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't, I
should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."

"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they both
laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

She glanced at the clock.

"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."

She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while
she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her
slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline--as
though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the
drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan
freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.

He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.

"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."

"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"

"No; good bye here, please."

She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.

"Good bye, then--and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening the door
for her.

On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand
chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and
she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of
prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a char-woman who was
scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and its surrounding implements
took up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts
and brush against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work
and looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the wet cloth
she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad sallow face, slightly
pitted with small-pox, and thin straw-coloured hair through which her
scalp shone unpleasantly.

"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to convey a
criticism of the other's manner.

The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued to
stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings. Lily felt
herself flushing under the look. What did the creature suppose? Could one
never do the simplest, the most harmless thing, without subjecting one's
self to some odious conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled
to think that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her.  The poor thing
was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE such
apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not familiar with
the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her colour rose again as it
occurred to her that the woman's persistent gaze implied a groping among
past associations. But she put aside the thought with a smile at her own
fears, and hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
Fifth Avenue.

Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street for a
hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk she ran
against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his coat, who
raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.

"Miss Bart? Well--of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and she
caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up lids.

"Oh, Mr. Rosedale--how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden intimacy
of his smile.

Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He was a
plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes
fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the
air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. He glanced up
interrogatively at the porch of the Benedick.

"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a tone
which had the familiarity of a touch.

Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
precipitate explanations.

"Yes--I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to catch the
train to the Trenors'."

"Ah--your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know there
were any dress-makers in the Benedick."

"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of this
building?"

"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor, isn't it?
I happen to own the building--that's the way I know." His smile deepened
as he added with increasing assurance: "But you must let me take you to
the station. The Trenors are at Bellomont, of course?  You've barely time
to catch the five-forty.  The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."

Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.

"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a hansom
drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a desperate gesture.

"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you," she said,
extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his protestations,
she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called out a breathless order
to the driver.

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

completion: Set in New York City in the first decade of the twentieth century, the novel begins at Grand Central Station on a Monday afternoon in early September. At the train station, Lawrence Selden is approached by a casual acquaintance, Lily Bart. Lily has two hours to spend before her train arrives, and recruits Selden to entertain her. The pair leaves the station and travels to Selden's apartment building, The Benedick. Over tea in Selden's apartment, Lily reveals her desire to have rooms of her own. She acknowledges that Selden's cousin, Gerty Farish, lives in an apartment, but shares the opinion of most society women -- that only governesses, widows, or unmarriageable women live in apartments. The pair's conversation turns to reasons why Selden seldom visits Lily at her residence in her aunt's -- Mrs. Peniston's -- house. Selden acknowledges that he is not a suitable suitor for Lily, or, at any rate, that he does not visit often because he is aware that Lily is not interested in him romantically. Lily rebukes Selden for presumptuously attempting to initiate a romantic engagement with her, and reveals that she has long considered Selden a confidante. She also reveals that she knows her female peers regard her as tiresome, and are beginning to become more obvious regarding their opinion that she should marry. The two smoke cigarettes, which Lily lights from the end of Selden's, giving him cause to admire her beauty. They discuss the merits of collecting rare and first-edition books. Lily asks Selden if he minds not having enough money to purchase the books he wishes to own. He confesses that he is not a "saint on a pillar," indicating that he wishes to have more money than he earns. The conversation turns to what a man may choose to do in contrast to what a woman is forced to do regarding marriage as an economic arrangement. Lily and Selden discuss the impending weekend party at the Trenor's country estate at Bellomont, and discuss the necessity of her attending society parties in order to meet eligible men, despite the fact that she and Selden agree that the functions are boring. She refuses Selden's offer to escort her back to the train station, and leaves his apartment alone. As she leaves, she sees a cleaning woman on the stairs. She perceives that the cleaning woman is staring at her, perhaps wondering what Lily's business was in Selden's apartment. She dismisses her thoughts concerning the cleaning woman's opinions. As she leaves the apartment building, she is greeted by Simon Rosedale, whom Wharton describes as "a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type." Rosedale questions Lily as to her business at the Benedick, and she lies that she is there to visit her dressmaker. Rosedale reveals that he owns the Benedick and knows of no tenants who make dresses. He offers her a ride to the train station, but she opts to take a passing hansom instead.