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.

 The novel begins in New York's Grand Central Station, with Lawrence Selden suddenly "refreshed by the sight" of the beautiful Miss Lily Bart. He wonders what she's doing there and realizes that he's always intrigued by her presence. Selden deliberately strolls past her to see if she'll say hello or not. She does. Selden is so arrested by her beauty that he can't believe she's really twenty-nine . Lily explains that she's on her way to Bellomont, the Trenors' house, but missed her train and has two hours to kill. She wants to hang with Selden for a bit. This amuses Selden, who tends to view things from a slightly aloof and removed vantage point. He agrees to be her escort for the afternoon, while internally musing on her incredible beauty. When Lily suggests going someplace "quiet," Selden invites her back to his place, a bachelor pad at an apartment building called the Benedick. He's pleasantly surprised that she accepts his invitation. Lily remarks that Selden's lucky to have his own place like this; too bad she's a woman and isn't allowed to live alone. Selden notes that their mutual acquaintance Gerty Farish has her own place, but Lily writes her off as an unmarriageable girl who doesn't have to worry about a reputation she doesn't have. Then, Lily remembers that Gerty is Selden's cousin and apologizes. She's almost envious of Gerty's freedom, since she herself has to live with her aunt, Mrs. Peniston. Lily banters with Selden, asking why he doesn't come to visit her more often at her aunt's. It can't be that he's afraid she wants to marry him - right? Selden agrees; he has never once thought that Lily wants to marry him. He is once again amused by her flirtations. Lily cuts to the chase. She needs a male friend, one who isn't going to try and seduce her into marriage, but who is edgy enough to be honest with her. Selden gives her a dose of that honesty on the spot: why isn't she married yet at her age? He remarks that marriage is her "vocation," what she was brought up for. She's waiting for the right man. Lily takes a cigarette from Selden and moves around the room, smoking it and examining his book collection of "Americana," a.k.a. American books. He remarks that he's not rich enough to have all the books he wants . The books themselves are dull, he says, except to the "real collector" who "values a thing for its rarity." They discuss the very famous Jefferson Gryce collection and other fun facts. Selden's enjoying himself, but he can never spend long with Lily without wondering about her motives. She questions his financial position further. As it turns out, he's a lawyer, but he doesn't mind having to work for his money. The two of them briefly discuss the party tonight at the Trenors', and Lily realizes she'd better hurry if she wants to make it on time. They say their good-byes. As she exits the building, Lily is nervous that someone will see her leaving. She resents the working woman scrubbing the stairs, who forces Lily to ask her to move in order to get by. As she steps off the stoop, Lily is spotted by Simon Rosedale, a small, blonde, Jewish man with glasses who is new money and trying to climb the social ladder. Lily explains that she was just visiting her dress-maker at the Benedick. But Rosedale knows something is up, since the Benedick is a place for bachelors and because, conveniently, he owns the building. But he implicitly assures Lily that her secret is safe with him, and offers to escort her to the train station. Lily, nervous, refuses his offer and hails a hansom .

