Chapter: "Look at those spangles, Miss Bart--every one of 'em sewed on crooked."

The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned
structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side, and passed on to
the next figure in the line.

There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles, under
exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of
their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this
creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood.
Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and
sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were
employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well
clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only one
skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned
with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman's comment,
began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.

To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached
when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.  Instances of
young lady-milliners establishing themselves under fashionable patronage,
and imparting to their "creations" that indefinable touch which the
professional hand can never give, had flattered Gerty's visions of the
future, and convinced even Lily that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch
need not reduce her to dependence on her friends.

The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and would have
taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance set up in Lily by
his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of being involved in a
transaction she would not have cared to examine too closely had soon
afterward defined itself in the light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if
she "saw them through," she would have no reason to be sorry. The
implication that such loyalty would meet with a direct reward had
hastened her flight, and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the
broad bosom of Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
there prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once revived her
hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that her
charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their
capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of
course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes
and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front
shop--a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings--where
her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on
their stands like birds just poising for flight.

But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of fashion
had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere attraction of a
name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but these privileged beings
could command a faith in their powers materially expressed by the
readiness to pay their shop-rent and advance a handsome sum for current
expenses. Where was Lily to find such support? And even could it have
been found, how were the ladies on whose approval she depended to be
induced to give her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy
her friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again,
Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her
self-respect, but too late for public vindication.  Freddy Van Osburgh
was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh
hour--some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale--and despatched
to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always
be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a
summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was
a relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves thus
justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her connection
with the Hatch case in order to show that they had been right.

Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her
share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish's, they met
with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender
ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely
to her friend.

"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you
done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she
flamed out about some money you'd got from Gus; I never knew her so hot
before. You know she'll let him do anything but spend money on his
friends: the only reason she's decent to me now is that she knows I'm not
hard up.--He speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had
no business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth--but I never
COULD understand you, Lily!"

The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs.
Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their
friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina's renowned
millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without
considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher's
influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the
show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a
valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which
Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced,
but resigned to this latest proof of Lily's unreason, agreed that perhaps
in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To
Regina's work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty's watchfulness
continued to hover over her at a distance.

Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later,
and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a
hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the
tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the
other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history--the exact
situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all
the others--but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense
of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
still blundering over the rudiments of the trade.  Lily had no desire
that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had
hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show
herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was
humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still
betrayed her lack of early training.  Remote was the day when she might
aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and
trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the
routine of preparatory work.

She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the
buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss
Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss
Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during
the noon recess; and Lily's head was so heavy with the weight of a
sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of
a dream.

"I TOLD her he'd never look at her again; and he didn't. I wouldn't have,
either--I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion
Ball, and had a hack for her both ways....  She's taken ten bottles, and
her headaches don't seem no better--but she's written a testimonial to
say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture
in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor's hat? The one with the green Paradise?
Here, Miss Haines--it'll be ready right off.... That was one of the
Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset.  How'd I know? Why,
Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat--the blue tulle:
she's tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out--a good deal like Mamie
Leach, on'y thinner...."

On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
It was the strangest part of Lily's strange experience, the hearing of
these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world
she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls' minds. She
had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and
contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
Every girl in Mme. Regina's work-room knew to whom the headgear in her
hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a
definite knowledge of the latter's place in the social system. That Lily
was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had
fallen, she had "gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they
were awed only by success--by the gross tangible image of material
achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
whom it was an effort to talk.

"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I guess you'd
better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."

Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
took it with a suppressed smile.

"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.

Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.

"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily slipped out
last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they
now seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish, she
had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
point of view was less interesting.

She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
"Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair to you."

Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.

"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
AM clumsy."

"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy paused
irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down.  Ever try
orangeine?"

"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I mean to go
home."

She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say.
Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home
with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent--even kindness, the sort
of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just
then.

"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.

She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street
where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty's offer
of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce shrinking from
observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the
promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole,
less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she
could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had
been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now,
perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about
by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done, she
dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wallpaper and
shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the
degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from
fashion to commerce.

But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's at the
corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had
usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn
toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower
crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the
street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.

Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her
before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no
question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch's,
obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist.  Lily was confident that the
clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a
refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her
restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked
on the glass case before her.

The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of
handing out the bottle he paused.

"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked.  Lily's
heart contracted.

What did he mean by looking at her in that way?

"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.

"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off
you go--the doctors don't know why."

The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked
the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged
safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her
relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the
delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her
momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already
stealing over her.

In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the
last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name
uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and
prosperous--but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through
a mist of splintered crystals?  Before she could account for the
phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with
scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions
seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.

"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he exclaimed; and
she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.

"I'm a little tired--it's nothing. Stay with me a moment, please," she
faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!

He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with
the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons
contending hideously in their ears.

"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea.  The
LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no one there at this
hour."

A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed
for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to
the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was
seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between
them.

"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss
Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for
the lady's back."

Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It was the
temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen
stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep--the
midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But
today, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it
to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.

As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude,
though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning
life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty.
The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined
pallour of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips,
as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there.  Against the dull
chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head
stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit ball-room. He
looked at her with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty
were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
unawares.

To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why, Miss Lily,
I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had become of you."

As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications
to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her he had heard of her;
he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and of the talk resulting from
it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was one which he had once assiduously frequented,
and now as devoutly shunned.

Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what
was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You would not be
likely to know about me. I have joined the working classes."

He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean--? Why, what on earth are
you doing?"

"Learning to be a milliner--at least TRYING to learn," she hastily
qualified the statement.

Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off--you ain't
serious, are you?"

"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."

"But I understood--I thought you were with Norma Hatch."

"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"

"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill her cup.

Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for
him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I left her two
months ago."

Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt
sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
Rosedale did not hear?

"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.

"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm on the
edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
herself.

"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
might make things too easy for one."

Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
lost on him.

"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.

"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least too good for
her--and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
have stayed where I was."

"Oh, Freddy----" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed up in that.
It ain't your style."

Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale.  But the old habit of
observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.

Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a minute--don't go
yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
And you haven't told me----" He broke off, conscious of going farther
than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
face, he began again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just
now that you were learning to be a milliner?"

"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."

"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs.
Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her----"

"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next
summer."

"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted."

She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."

"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"

"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on
his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some
money for me in stocks."

She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he
remembered something of the kind.

"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same tone of
eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that he was
speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew
nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had NOT used my
money--that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It
was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation
one could remain under.  Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back.
That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."

She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the
sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer's
mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth
about this transaction, and also that the rumour of her intention to
repay the money should reach Judy Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly
occurred to her that Rosedale, who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was
the fitting person to receive and transmit her version of the facts. She
had even felt a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving
herself of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep blush of
misery.

Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took the
turn she had least expected.

"But see here--if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"

He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her act;
as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to precipitate
her into a fresh act of folly.

"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.

He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little puzzled
eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.

"See here--that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.

Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no--it's merely a
bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her feather scarf.

Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing--I like pluck----" broke
from him disconnectedly.

"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a tremendous
backing. I feel equal to anything now."

Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but her
companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his short
arms into his expensive overcoat.

"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he said.

Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of his
change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she
led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the
distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the
DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking
contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which
she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.

"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss Farish."

"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."

He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped
with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy
vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible
effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"

She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being
frankly touched by it. "Thank you--I shall be very glad," she made
answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.



That evening in her own room Miss Bart--who had fled early from the heavy
fumes of the basement dinner-table--sat musing upon the impulse which had
led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath it she discovered an
increasing sense of loneliness--a dread of returning to the solitude of
her room, while she could be anywhere else, or in any company but her
own. Circumstances, of late, had combined to cut her off more and more
from her few remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily's
behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room, Mrs. Fisher
seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding the
reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come dangerously near to
being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some
verbal ingenuity to extricate herself. She frankly owned to having
brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs.
Hatch--she had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs.
Hatch--and besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was
old enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest bosom
friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of
her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose
house she could count on the "jolly parties" which had become a necessity
to her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of
view.

Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.  Carry
had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps only a
friendship like Gerty's could be proof against such an increasing strain.
Gerty's friendship did indeed hold fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid
her also. For she could not go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden;
and to meet him now would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think
of him, whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur of her
tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams
he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness;
and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her
courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below
such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation
from which she woke each morning with an obliterated past.

Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return; but
at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug gave her a
momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she drew strength to
take up her daily work. The strength was more and more needed as the
perplexities of her future increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs.
Fisher she was only passing through a temporary period of probation,
since they believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme.
Regina's would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller competence
acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the
legacy could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed a
wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she could ever
learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their special work,
the small pay she received would not be a sufficient addition to her
income to compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to use the
legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and in command of
her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to
attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor. But the
task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued to stint
herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the
weight of an intolerable obligation.

These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked the
secret dread that the obligation might not always remain intolerable.
She knew she could not count on her continuity of purpose, and what
really frightened her was the thought that she might gradually
accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she
had accommodated herself to the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as
she had so nearly drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the
advancement of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old
incurable dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned
her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood that
Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take advantage
of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of course impossible
to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered
temptingly before her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her
again, and almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point
of offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected.  Would
she still reject them if they were offered? More and more, with every
fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the
shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her
papers, lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?

What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost; she
could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless night.
Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue and
loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained of bodily
strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only
hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much
longer that hope would last she dared not conjecture.

 Lily is working as a milliner and getting reprimanded by the forewoman for sewing the spangles onto a hat crookedly. She's in a small room with about twenty other working women. It seems that Lily separated from Mrs. Hatch a few weeks after Selden visited. She went back to Gerty, who convinced her that she could use her artistic abilities to make and sell hats. Of course, she wouldn't have to do the grunt-work of sewing - she could just be in charge of the final touches, like ribbons or feathers. Er, not so much. Lily is basically at the bottom of the totem pole since she can barely get her stitches straight. Meanwhile, Gus Trenor and Simon Rosedale "rescued" Bertie Van Osburgh from Mrs. Hatch, and now they all blame Lily for trying to trap him in a marriage beneath his dignity. Mrs. Fisher felt guilty at setting Lily up with Mrs. Hatch in the first place, so she goes to Judy Trenor and tries to get her to take Lily back as a friend. But Judy is having none of it. Mrs. Fisher reprimands Lily, who should have known better than to take money from Mr. Trenor. So Mrs. Fisher and Gerty placed Lily as a milliner in Madam Regina's hat shop. Lily began her work in January, and has been a milliner for about two months now. All the other women laugh at her because she used to be a member of the social elite, but now she's just a terrible hat maker. Awkwardly enough, the other women talk about the ladies who will receive these hats - like Mrs. Dorset and Mrs. Trenor. Miss Haines, the forewoman, tells Lily that her spangles are so awkward that she had better just give the hat to another woman to finish and "go back to binding edges." After leaving work, Lily remembers that, when she was rich, she used to think that the working classes were an interesting group of people. Now, she just finds them to be boring. She returns to her ugly, ill-furnished apartment. On the way, she stops at a chemist's to fill one of Mrs. Hatch's old prescriptions which she pretends is her own. It's for a drug to help her sleep at night. The pharmacist remarks that it's strong and she should be careful not to take too much. Uh-oh. Lily hurries back to her apartment but, on the way, bumps into Rosedale. Lily is so out of it that she can barely carry a conversation, but he offers to get some tea with her and she complies. Rosedale is enthused to have bumped into Lily, and wants to hear all about her life. Lily doesn't hold back; she tells him everything about her current situation. He is shocked that a beautiful woman like Lily has to work for a living. When he asks about the inheritance from her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, Lily explains the whole situation with Gus Trenor and why she owes the money. It's the first time she's really comes clean about everything. She wants someone to hear her story, and she hopes that the news will reach Judy Trenor, who will finally understand that Lily didn't mean to take money from Gus and that she's trying to pay it back. Rosedale offers to help her, but Lily says walking her home is help enough. Later, alone in her rooms, Lily wonders why she revealed everything to Rosedale like that. She determines that she's very lonely, cut off most of her friends - even Mrs. Fisher. Lily's avoiding Gerty, too, because she's afraid of accidentally bumping into Selden while she's over there. Lately she's been turning more and more to the sleeping medication, which at least allows her to wake every morning with a feeling of "obliteration." Meanwhile, she's tempted to use the ten grand inheritance to start her own hat shop, but she worries that, if she does, it might take years to make enough to pay Trenor back, and she doesn't want to remain under his obligation in the meantime. Lily is also concerned that she isn't strong enough to avoid temptation until she gets her inheritance. She also knows that, as another temptation, Rosedale would be more than happy to lend her the money she needs to pay back Trenor.

