Chapter: The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note from her
hostess.

"Dearest Lily," it ran, "if it is not too much of a bore to be down by
ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with some tiresome
things?"

Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a sigh. It
WAS a bore to be down by ten--an hour regarded at Bellomont as vaguely
synchronous with sunrise--and she knew too well the nature of the
tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg, the secretary, had been called
away, and there would be notes and dinner-cards to write, lost addresses
to hunt up, and other social drudgery to perform. It was understood that
Miss Bart should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
recognized the obligation without a murmur.

Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the previous
night's review of her cheque-book had produced.  Everything in her
surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and amenity. The windows
stood open to the sparkling freshness of the September morning, and
between the yellow boughs she caught a perspective of hedges and
parterres leading by degrees of lessening formality to the free
undulations of the park. Her maid had kindled a little fire on the
hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted
across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old
marquetry desk.  Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray,
with its harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters.  There
was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied luxury; but, though
they formed a part of her atmosphere, she never lost her sensitiveness to
their charm. Mere display left her with a sense of superior distinction;
but she felt an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.

Mrs. Trenor's summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that she
was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions leave
lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had meant to take
warning by the little creases which her midnight survey had revealed.

The matter-of-course tone of Mrs. Trenor's greeting deepened her
irritation. If one did drag one's self out of bed at such an hour, and
come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of note-writing, some special
recognition of the sacrifice seemed fitting. But Mrs. Trenor's tone
showed no consciousness of the fact.

"Oh, Lily, that's nice of you," she merely sighed across the chaos of
letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave an incongruously
commercial touch to the slender elegance of her writing-table.

"There are such lots of horrors this morning," she added, clearing a
space in the centre of the confusion and rising to yield her seat to Miss
Bart.

Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her from
redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile
activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished
play of feature. It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she
seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated
instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a
crowd. The collective nature of her interests exempted her from the
ordinary rivalries of her sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than
that of hatred for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have
more amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed by
Mr. Trenor's bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate triumph in
such competitions, success had developed in her an unscrupulous good
nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss Bart's utilitarian
classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor ranked as the woman who was
least likely to "go back" on her.

"It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor declared, as
her friend seated herself at the desk. "She says her sister is going to
have a baby--as if that were anything to having a house-party! I'm sure I
shall get most horribly mixed up and there will be some awful rows. When
I was down at Tuxedo I asked a lot of people for next week, and I've
mislaid the list and can't remember who is coming. And this week is going
to be a horrid failure too--and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and tell
her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the Wetheralls--that
was a blunder of Gus's. They disapprove of Carry Fisher, you know. As if
one could help having Carry Fisher! It WAS foolish of her to get that
second divorce--Carry always overdoes things--but she said the only way
to get a penny out of Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony.
And poor Carry has to consider every dollar. It's really absurd of Alice
Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks of what
society is coming to. Some one said the other day that there was a
divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows. Besides,
Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in a good humour when we have
bores in the house. Have you noticed that ALL the husbands like her? All,
I mean, except her own. It's rather clever of her to have made a
specialty of devoting herself to dull people--the field is such a large
one, and she has it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no
doubt--I know she borrows money of Gus--but then I'd PAY her to keep him
in a good humour, so I can't complain, after all."

Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart's efforts to
unravel her tangled correspondence.

"But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry," she resumed, with a fresh note
of lament. "The truth is, I'm awfully disappointed in Lady Cressida
Raith."

"Disappointed? Had you known her before?"

"Mercy, no--never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her over with
letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van Osburgh was
asking a big party to meet her this week, so I thought it would be fun to
get her away, and Jack Stepney, who knew her in India, managed it for me.
Maria was furious, and actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite
herself here, so that they shouldn't be QUITE out of it--if I'd known
what Lady Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
thought any friend of the Skiddaws' was sure to be amusing. You remember
what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I simply had to send the
girls out of the room. Besides, Lady Cressida is the Duchess of
Beltshire's sister, and I naturally supposed she was the same sort; but
you never can tell in those English families. They are so big that
there's room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the
moral one--married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East End.
Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman's wife, who
wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take her all through the
glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to death by asking him the names
of the plants. Fancy treating Gus as if he were the gardener!"

Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.

"Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to meeting
Carry Fisher," said Miss Bart pacifically.

"I'm sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and if she
takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will be too
depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so useful at the
right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once a year, and she
would have given just the right tone to things. I always have horrid luck
about the Bishop's visits," added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was
being fed by a rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; "last year, when he
came, Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
Wintons and the Farleys--five divorces and six sets of children between
them!"

"When is Lady Cressida going?" Lily enquired.

Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. "My dear, if one only knew! I
was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I actually forgot to
name a date, and Gus says she told some one she meant to stop here all
winter."

"To stop here? In this house?"

"Don't be silly--in America. But if no one else asks her--you know they
NEVER go to hotels."

"Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you."

"No--I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to put in
while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You should have
seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you know--if she stays here
all the autumn she'll spoil everything, and Maria Van Osburgh will simply
exult."

At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor's voice trembled with self-pity.

"Oh, Judy--as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!" Miss Bart
tactfully protested. "You know perfectly well that, if Mrs. Van Osburgh
were to get all the right people and leave you with all the wrong ones,
you'd manage to make things go off, and she wouldn't."

Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor's complacency;
but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.

"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented. "Everything has gone wrong
this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me."

"Furious with you? Why?"

"Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he wouldn't,
after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think it's my fault."

Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she had
begun.

"I thought that was all over," she said.

"So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.  But I
fancy she's out of a job just at present--and some one gave me a hint
that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask him--but I couldn't make
him come; and now I suppose she'll take it out of me by being perfectly
nasty to every one else."

"Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming--to some one
else."

Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. "She knows he wouldn't mind. And
who else is there? Alice Wetherall won't let Lucius out of her sight.
Ned Silverton can't take his eyes off Carry Fisher--poor boy! Gus is
bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her too well--and--well, to be sure,
there's Percy Gryce!"

She sat up smiling at the thought.

Miss Bart's countenance did not reflect the smile.

"Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off."

"You mean that she'd shock him and he'd bore her? Well, that's not such a
bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won't take it into her head to be
nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose for you."

Lily laughed. "MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no show
against Bertha."

"Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I'm not really, you know.  Every one
knows you're a thousand times handsomer and cleverer than Bertha; but
then you're not nasty. And for always getting what she wants in the long
run, commend me to a nasty woman."

Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. "I thought you were so fond of
Bertha."

"Oh, I am--it's much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But she IS
dangerous--and if I ever saw her up to mischief it's now.  I can tell by
poor George's manner. That man is a perfect barometer--he always knows
when Bertha is going to----"

"To fall?" Miss Bart suggested.

"Don't be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of course I
don't say there's any real harm in Bertha. Only she delights in making
people miserable, and especially poor George."

"Well, he seems cut out for the part--I don't wonder she likes more
cheerful companionship."

"Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry him he
would be quite different. Or if she'd leave him alone, and let him
arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn't dare lose her hold of him
on account of the money, and so when HE isn't jealous she pretends to be."

Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat following her
train of thought with frowning intensity.

"Do you know," she exclaimed after a long pause, "I believe I'll call up
Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST come?"

"Oh, don't," said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The blush
surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who, though not
commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at her with puzzled
eyes.

"Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike him so
much?"

"Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the benevolent
intention of protecting me from Bertha--I don't think I need your
protection."

Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. "Lily!----PERCY? Do you mean to
say you've actually done it?"

Miss Bart smiled. "I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are getting to
be very good friends."

"H'm--I see." Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know they say
he has eight hundred thousand a year--and spends nothing, except on some
rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and will leave him a
lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY," her friend adjured her.

Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. "I shouldn't, for
instance," she remarked, "be in any haste to tell him that he had a lot
of rubbishy old books."

"No, of course not; I know you're wonderful about getting up people's
subjects. But he's horribly shy, and easily shocked, and--and----"

"Why don't you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on the hunt
for a rich husband?"

"Oh, I don't mean that; he wouldn't believe it of you--at first," said
Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. "But you know things are rather
lively here at times--I must give Jack and Gus a hint--and if he thought
you were what his mother would call fast--oh, well, you know what I mean.
Don't wear your scarlet CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don't smoke if you
can help it, Lily dear!"

Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile. "You're very kind,
Judy: I'll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year's dress you sent
me this morning. And if you are really interested in my career, perhaps
you'll be kind enough not to ask me to play bridge again this evening."

"Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life you'll
lead! But of course I won't--why didn't you give me a hint last night?
There's nothing I wouldn't do, you poor duck, to see you happy!"

And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex's eagerness to smooth the course of
true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.

"You're quite sure," she added solicitously, as the latter extricated
herself, "that you wouldn't like me to telephone for Lawrence Selden?"

"Quite sure," said Lily.



The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satisfaction Miss
Bart's ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.

As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at Bellomont, she
smiled at Mrs. Trenor's fear that she might go too fast. If such a
warning had ever been needful, the years had taught her a salutary
lesson, and she flattered herself that she now knew how to adapt her pace
to the object of pursuit. In the case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well
to flutter ahead, losing herself elusively and luring him on from depth
to depth of unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was
propitious to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word,
had shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had even
hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no surprise at
her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint, Lily found herself
the centre of that feminine solicitude which envelops a young woman in
the mating season. A solitude was tacitly created for her in the crowded
existence of Bellomont, and her friends could not have shown a greater
readiness for self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a sympathetic
comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in her esteem as she saw
the consideration he inspired.

The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot propitious
to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning against the
balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little distance from the
animated group about the tea-table, she might have been lost in the mazes
of an inarticulate happiness. In reality, her thoughts were finding
definite utterance in the tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in
store for her. From where she stood she could see them embodied in the
form of Mr. Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all the
energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had combined to endow
her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in the task of municipal
reform.

Mrs. Fisher's latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been preceded by
an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn replaced an energetic
advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher was small, fiery and dramatic;
and her hands and eyes were admirable instruments in the service of
whatever causes she happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault
common to enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part
of her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce's attitude.  Lily
herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of catching cold
if he remained out of doors too long at that hour, and the fear that, if
he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a paper
to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what he called
"committing himself," and tenderly as he cherished his health, he
evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink
till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast
agonized glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was
to sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had learned
the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief, and was fully
aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's volubility was enhancing her
own repose.

She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning across the garden
from the tennis court.

The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance in which
Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in contemplating
what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation.  Miss Van Osburgh
was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had
once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste
was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger
makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
been reduced to a crust.

Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl's
turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled,
while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching
boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile.

"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to get
everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas
I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were
going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me
hopelessly out of time."

As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way--he looked
like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast--while Gwen's
countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.
But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices
and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent
by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they
had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short, made for
each other by every law of moral and physical correspondence----"Yet they
wouldn't look at each other," Lily mused, "they never do. Each of them
wants a creature of a different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all
sorts of intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even
guess the existence of. And they always get what they want."

She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a slight
cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly amenities were
subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of the necessity of not
exciting enmities at this crucial point of her career, dropped aside
while the happy couple proceeded toward the tea-table.

Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her head
against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The fragrance of the
late blossoms seemed an emanation of the tranquil scene, a landscape
tutored to the last degree of rural elegance. In the foreground glowed
the warm tints of the gardens.  Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal
pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle;
and through a long glade the river widened like a lake under the silver
light of September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she was
content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The certainty
that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load
from her mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal
not to leave a sense of relief which a less discerning intelligence might
have taken for happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be
able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns
than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would
be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the
relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered;
instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old
scores she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And
she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr. Gryce
was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses and emotions.
He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice
the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily had known the species before:
she was aware that such a guarded nature must find one huge outlet of
egoism, and she determined to be to him what his Americana had hitherto
been: the one possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money
on it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her husband's
vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite form
of self-indulgence. The system might at first necessitate a resort to
some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended it should
free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she would be able to
play the game in her own way. How should she have distrusted her powers?
Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have
been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of
permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end.

And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she
had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this
crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her
poverty had seemed to exclude her.  These people whom she had ridiculed
and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed circle
about which all her desires revolved. They were not as brutal and
self-engrossed as she had fancied--or rather, since it would no longer be
necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature became
less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged
according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was
turning its illuminated face to Lily.

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable
qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of
emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness
now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the
only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks
and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing
allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a
disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
the people who were not able to live as they lived.

The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs of the
long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of wheels, and
divined that more visitors were approaching. There was a movement behind
her, a scattering of steps and voices: it was evident that the party
about the tea-table was breaking up.  Presently she heard a tread behind
her on the terrace. She supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means
to escape from his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his
coming to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the fire-side.

She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved; but her
greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who had approached
her was Lawrence Selden.

"You see I came after all," he said; but before she had time to answer,
Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with her host, had
stepped between them with a little gesture of appropriation.



The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the punctual
appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the household to the
little church at the gates. Whether any one got into the omnibus or not
was a matter of secondary importance, since by standing there it not only
bore witness to the orthodox intentions of the family, but made Mrs.
Trenor feel, when she finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow
vicariously made use of it.

It was Mrs. Trenor's theory that her daughters actually did go to church
every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions calling her to the
rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping their mother in her room
till luncheon, there was seldom any one present to verify the fact. Now
and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue--when the house had been too
uproarious over night--Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight
frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually,
as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the
church bells were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven
away empty.

Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious observances
was repugnant to her early traditions, and that during her visits to
Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel and Hilda to church. This
tallied with the assurance, also confidentially imparted, that, never
having played bridge before, she had been "dragged into it" on the night
of her arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in consequence
of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of betting.  Mr. Gryce was
undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked the ease and glitter of the
life, and the lustre conferred on him by being a member of this group of
rich and conspicuous people.  But he thought it a very materialistic
society; there were times when he was frightened by the talk of the men
and the looks of the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for
all her ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to learn that
she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors to church on Sunday
morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep before the door, his light
overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he
reflected agreeably on the strength of character which kept her true to
her early training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.

For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference on the
part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the hope that Miss
Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes were flying, however;
the big chestnuts pawed the ground and flecked their impatient sides with
foam; the coachman seemed to be slowly petrifying on the box, and the
groom on the doorstep; and still the lady did not come.  Suddenly,
however, there was a sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the
doorway, and Mr. Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a
nervous start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
into the carriage.

The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of
human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single
one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. It is true that
the Bellomont puppets did not go to church; but others equally important
did--and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall's circle was so large that God was
included in their visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and
resigned, with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after
them Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's veils
and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church with
her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that they didn't
mind doing it to please her, though they couldn't fancy what had put the
idea in her head, and though for their own part they would much rather
have played lawn tennis with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she
was coming. The Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets, who, on
seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were not to walk
across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall's horrified protest that the
church was a mile away, her ladyship, after a glance at the height of the
other's heels, acquiesced in the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce
found himself rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare
he felt not the least concern.

It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known that Miss
Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even risen earlier than
usual in the execution of her purpose. She had an idea that the sight of
her in a grey gown of devotional cut, with her famous lashes drooped
above a prayer-book, would put the finishing touch to Mr. Gryce's
subjugation, and render inevitable a certain incident which she had
resolved should form a part of the walk they were to take together after
luncheon. Her intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor
Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies,
hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant
in the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was
carrying her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see
herself or Bertha Dorset?  It was the last question which, at that
moment, should have engaged her. She might better have contented herself
with thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons of
his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the ill-humour
of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she learned from Mrs. Trenor
that Selden had come of his own accord.  "He didn't even wire me--he just
happened to find the trap at the station. Perhaps it's not over with
Bertha after all," Mrs. Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to
arrange her dinner-cards accordingly.

Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless she had
lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset's call, it was at her
own that he would stay. So much the previous evening had told her. Mrs.
Trenor, true to her simple principle of making her married friends happy,
had placed Selden and Mrs. Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in
obedience to the time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had
separated Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George Dorset,
while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.

George Dorset's talk did not interfere with the range of his neighbour's
thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on finding out the
deleterious ingredients of every dish and diverted from this care only by
the sound of his wife's voice. On this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset
took no part in the general conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs
with Selden, and turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her
host, who, far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset,
however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such evident concern that,
when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist
bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin
neck for a glimpse of her between the lights.

Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on opposite
sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe Mrs. Dorset
also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to set up a rapid
comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison
which was her undoing. Why else had she suddenly grown interested in
Selden? She had known him for eight years or more: ever since her return
to America he had formed a part of her background. She had always been
glad to sit next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities needful
to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy with her own
affairs to regard him as more than one of the pleasant accessories of
life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw that her
sudden preoccupation with Selden was due to the fact that his presence
shed a new light on her surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant
or exceptional; in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one
man who had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the
show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage
in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the
world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on
her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always
open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having
once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's
distinction that he had never forgotten the way out.

That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily, turning
her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little world through his
retina: it was as though the pink lamps had been shut off and the dusty
daylight let in. She looked down the long table, studying its occupants
one by one, from Gus Trenor, with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between
his shoulders, as he preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the
opposite end of the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
good-looks, of a jeweller's window lit by electricity. And between the
two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and trivial these people
were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with
her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a
"spicy paragraph"; young Silverton, who had meant to live on
proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had
become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list,
whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and
the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod
of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they
were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes,
half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all
the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that
there is no one richer than her father.

Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had
seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was
gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up.  That very afternoon
they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were
merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she
saw the poverty of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to
be more disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way in which, a few
hours since, she had felt the centripetal force of their standards. She
closed her eyes an instant, and the vacuous routine of the life she had
chosen stretched before her like a long white road without dip or
turning: it was true she was to roll over it in a carriage instead of
trudging it on foot, but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of
a short cut which is denied to those on wheels.

She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from the
depths of his lean throat.

"I say, do look at her," he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
lugubrious merriment--"I beg your pardon, but do just look at my wife
making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would really suppose she
was gone on him--and it's all the other way round, I assure you."

Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was affording
Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly appeared, as he said, that
Mrs. Dorset was the more active participant in the scene: her neighbour
seemed to receive her advances with a temperate zest which did not
distract him from his dinner. The sight restored Lily's good humour, and
knowing the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset's marital fears assumed,
she asked gaily: "Aren't you horribly jealous of her?"

Dorset greeted the sally with delight. "Oh, abominably--you've just hit
it--keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's what has knocked
my digestion out--being so infernally jealous of her.--I can't eat a
mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added suddenly, pushing back his
plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable,
accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other
people's cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of
melted butter.

It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man as well
as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his grievances into it he was
not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At any rate he engaged Lily so long
that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other
side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering
Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was
jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a handspring.

"And of course you'll have Sim Rosedale as best man!" Lily heard her
fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney responded,
as if struck: "Jove, that's an idea. What a thumping present I'd get out
of him!"

SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive, obtruded
itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one of the many hated
possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If she did not marry Percy
Gryce, the day might come when she would have to be civil to such men as
Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM? But she meant to marry him--she was
sure of him and sure of herself. She drew back with a shiver from the
pleasant paths in which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet
once more in the middle of the long white road....  When she went
upstairs that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
forwarded them all to Bellomont.

Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most earnest
conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore herself betimes
from the lingering enjoyment of her breakfast-tray, rang to have her grey
gown laid out, and despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs.
Trenor.

But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of
rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they roused a
smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough to kindle Lily's
imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and the borrowed prayer-book
flashed a long light down the years. She would have to go to church with
Percy Gryce every Sunday. They would have a front pew in the most
expensive church in New York, and his name would figure handsomely in the
list of parish charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would
be made a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no DIVORCEES
were included, except those who had showed signs of penitence by being
re-married to the very wealthy. There was nothing especially arduous in
this round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that
great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent
to be bored on such a morning?  Lily had slept well, and her bath had
filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected in the
clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this morning, or else the
glass was at a happier angle.

And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and
truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold; below the dewy bloom
of the lawns the woodlands blushed and smouldered, and the hills across
the river swam in molten blue.  Every drop of blood in Lily's veins
invited her to happiness.

The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning behind her
shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She was too late,
then--but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of Mr. Gryce's
crestfallen face even suggested that she had done wisely in absenting
herself, since the disappointment he so candidly betrayed would surely
whet his appetite for the afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to
miss; one glance at the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall
its necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could
muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough
with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free
field till luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and
Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be
having her hair shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her
host for a drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of
young despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies, this left
only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never came down till
luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden her to expose herself
to the crude air of the morning.

To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special thought;
wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with her plans.
These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a dress somewhat more
rustic and summerlike in style than the garment she had first selected,
and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a
lady in quest of exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of
dogs by the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship.  She put
aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and assuring the
joyous volunteers that she might presently have a use for their company,
sauntered on through the empty drawing-room to the library at the end of
the house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the old
manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions
of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass urns. A
few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies
with large head-dresses and small bodies, hung between the shelves lined
with pleasantly-shabby books: books mostly contemporaneous with the
ancestors in question, and to which the subsequent Trenors had made no
perceptible additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used
for reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking-room or a
quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however, that it
might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only member of the
party in the least likely to put it to its original use. She advanced
noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered with easy-chairs, and before
she reached the middle of the room she saw that she had not been
mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in fact seated at its farther end; but
though a book lay on his knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but
directed to a lady whose lace-clad figure, as she leaned back in an
adjoining chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
dusky leather upholstery.

Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she seemed
about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she announced her
approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made the couple raise
their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank displeasure, and Selden
with his usual quiet smile. The sight of his composure had a disturbing
effect on Lily; but to be disturbed was in her case to make a more
brilliant effort at self-possession.

"Dear me, am I late?" she asked, putting a hand in his as he advanced to
greet her.

"Late for what?" enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. "Not for luncheon,
certainly--but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?"

"Yes, I had," said Lily confidingly.

"Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is entirely at
your disposal." Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and her antagonist felt
a certain pleasure in prolonging her distress.

"Oh, dear, no--do stay," she said good-humouredly. "I don't in the least
want to drive you away."

"You're awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr. Selden's
engagements."

The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not lost on
its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping to pick
up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach.  The latter's eyes widened
charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.

"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go to
church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me.  HAS it
started, do you know?"

She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away some
time since.

"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go to
church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well, I shall
have the credit of trying, at any rate--and the advantage of escaping
part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself, after all!"

And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss Bart
strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling grace down the
long perspective of the garden walk.

She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a fact not
lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway looking after her
with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is that she was conscious of
a somewhat keen shock of disappointment. All her plans for the day had
been built on the assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come
to Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to find him on
the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in a situation which
might well denote that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it
possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when she
never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw
no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden
might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of
town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their
judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted; competition put
her on her mettle, and she reflected that Selden's coming, if it did not
declare him to be still in Mrs. Dorset's toils, showed him to be so
completely free from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.

These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to
carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from
the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to
sink into a rustic seat at a bend of the walk. The spot was charming, and
Lily was not insensible to the charm, or to the fact that her presence
enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude
except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she
rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked;
the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her
lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to
find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a
vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness
about her.

Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead, digging the
ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade.  As she did so a
step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at her side.

"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch up with
you."

She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been sitting
under that tree for an hour."

"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague laugh:

"Well--waiting to see if you would come."

"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the one
involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should come?"

"If I waited long enough--but you see I had only a limited time to give
to the experiment."

"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"

"No; by my other engagement."

"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"

"No; but to come home from church with another person."

"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives.
And is the other person coming home this way?"

Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find out, it
is my business to get to church before the service is over."

"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case
the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve
of driving back in the omnibus."

Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the
bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in such an
emergency?" she enquired.

Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you," he
cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"

"Walking a mile in an hour--you must own that the omnibus would be
quicker!"

"Ah--but will he find you in the end? That's the only test of success."

They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had
felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily's
face changed, and she said: "Well, if it is, he has succeeded."

Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing
toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had
evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the church-goers had
thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily's companion looked rapidly
from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking
respectfully at Lady Cressida's side with his little sidelong look of
nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs.
Wetherall and the Trenors.

"Ah--now I see why you were getting up your Americana!" Selden exclaimed
with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with which the sally
was received checked whatever amplifications he had meant to give it.

That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors, or even
about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden that he had a
momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number of possibilities; but
she rose gallantly to the defence of her confusion, by saying, as its
object approached: "That was why I was waiting for you--to thank you for
having given me so many points!"

"Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short time," said
Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss Bart; and while she
signalled a response to their boisterous greeting, he added quickly:
"Won't you devote your afternoon to it? You know I must be off tomorrow
morning. We'll take a walk, and you can thank me at your leisure."



The afternoon was perfect. A deeper stillness possessed the air, and the
glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which diffused the
brightness without dulling it.

In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill; but as
the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long slopes
beyond the high-road, Lily and her companion reached a zone of lingering
summer. The path wound across a meadow with scattered trees; then it
dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling sprays of bramble,
whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves, the country unrolled
itself in pastoral distances.

Higher up, the lane showed thickening tufts of fern and of the creeping
glossy verdure of shaded slopes; trees began to overhang it, and the
shade deepened to the checkered dusk of a beech-grove. The boles of the
trees stood well apart, with only a light feathering of undergrowth; the
path wound along the edge of the wood, now and then looking out on a
sunlit pasture or on an orchard spangled with fruit.

Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the
appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the
fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below
her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of
herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the
nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down
was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of
an oak-grove.  Two or three red farm-houses dozed under the apple-trees,
and the white wooden spire of a village church showed beyond the shoulder
of the hill; while far below, in a haze of dust, the high-road ran
between the fields.

"Let us sit here," Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge of
rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders.

Lily dropped down on the rock, glowing with her long climb. She sat
quiet, her lips parted by the stress of the ascent, her eyes wandering
peacefully over the broken ranges of the landscape. Selden stretched
himself on the grass at her feet, tilting his hat against the level
sun-rays, and clasping his hands behind his head, which rested against
the side of the rock.  He had no wish to make her talk; her
quick-breathing silence seemed a part of the general hush and harmony of
things. In his own mind there was only a lazy sense of pleasure, veiling
the sharp edges of sensation as the September haze veiled the scene at
their feet. But Lily, though her attitude was as calm as his, was
throbbing inwardly with a rush of thoughts. There were in her at the
moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration,
the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But
gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed
to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit
quivered for flight.

She could not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed
to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it
love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts
and sensations? How much of it was owing to the spell of the perfect
afternoon, the scent of the fading woods, the thought of the dulness she
had fled from? Lily had no definite experience by which to test the
quality of her feelings.  She had several times been in love with
fortunes or careers, but only once with a man. That was years ago, when
she first came out, and had been smitten with a romantic passion for a
young gentleman named Herbert Melson, who had blue eyes and a little wave
in his hair. Mr. Melson, who was possessed of no other negotiable
securities, had hastened to employ these in capturing the eldest Miss Van
Osburgh: since then he had grown stout and wheezy, and was given to
telling anecdotes about his children. If Lily recalled this early emotion
it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only
point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which
she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a
conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance.  She had
not known again till today that lightness, that glow of freedom; but now
it was something more than a blind groping of the blood. The peculiar
charm of her feeling for Selden was that she understood it; she could put
her finger on every link of the chain that was drawing them together.
Though his popularity was of the quiet kind, felt rather than actively
expressed among his friends, she had never mistaken his inconspicuousness
for obscurity. His reputed cultivation was generally regarded as a slight
obstacle to easy intercourse, but Lily, who prided herself on her
broad-minded recognition of literature, and always carried an Omar Khayam
in her travelling-bag, was attracted by this attribute, which she felt
would have had its distinction in an older society. It was, moreover, one
of his gifts to look his part; to have a height which lifted his head
above the crowd, and the keenly-modelled dark features which, in a land
of amorphous types, gave him the air of belonging to a more specialized
race, of carrying the impress of a concentrated past. Expansive persons
found him a little dry, and very young girls thought him sarcastic; but
this air of friendly aloofness, as far removed as possible from any
assertion of personal advantage, was the quality which piqued Lily's
interest.  Everything about him accorded with the fastidious element in
her taste, even to the light irony with which he surveyed what seemed to
her most sacred. She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being able to
convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever
met.

It was the unconscious prolongation of this thought which led her to say
presently, with a laugh: "I have broken two engagements for you today.
How many have you broken for me?"

"None," said Selden calmly. "My only engagement at Bellomont was with
you."

She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.

"Did you really come to Bellomont to see me?"

"Of course I did."

Her look deepened meditatively. "Why?" she murmured, with an accent which
took all tinge of coquetry from the question.

"Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you
are doing."

"How do you know what I should be doing if you were not here?"

Selden smiled. "I don't flatter myself that my coming has deflected your
course of action by a hair's breadth."

"That's absurd--since, if you were not here, I could obviously not be
taking a walk with you."

"No; but your taking a walk with me is only another way of making use of
your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you
are using today. It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce
premeditated effects extemporaneously."

Lily smiled also: his words were too acute not to strike her sense of
humour. It was true that she meant to use the accident of his presence as
part of a very definite effect; or that, at least, was the secret pretext
she had found for breaking her promise to walk with Mr. Gryce.  She had
sometimes been accused of being too eager--even Judy Trenor had warned
her to go slowly.  Well, she would not be too eager in this case; she
would give her suitor a longer taste of suspense. Where duty and
inclination jumped together, it was not in Lily's nature to hold them
asunder. She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a headache:
the horrid headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to
church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse.  She looked
languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her
hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered rather
nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the
future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not
to expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of
exposure.

Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him, since
she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the party who, after
luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit to the Van Osburghs at
Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her disinterestedness, and, to escape
from the threatened vacuity of the afternoon, had taken her advice and
departed mournfully, in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged
down the avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement.  She had made no reply to
his suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as her
plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included in it.
The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the stair and
strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.

She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at her
feet.

"I thought, after all, the air might do me good," she explained; and he
agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.

The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and Selden had
the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of leisure and safety gave
the last touch of lightness to her spirit. With so much time to talk, and
no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of
mental vagrancy.

She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge with a
touch of resentment.

"I don't know," she said, "why you are always accusing me of
premeditation."

"I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you had to
follow a certain line--and if one does a thing at all it is a merit to do
it thoroughly."

"If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged to
think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation. But you
must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I never yield to
an impulse."

"Ah, but I don't suppose that: haven't I told you that your genius lies
in converting impulses into intentions?"

"My genius?" she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. "Is there any
final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven't succeeded."

Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her.  "Success--what
is success? I shall be interested to have your definition."

"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I
suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"

"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his
elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of
success," he said, "is personal freedom."

"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"

"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from
all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
spirit--that's what I call success."

She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know--I know--it's
strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."

He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling so rare
with you?" he said.

She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly sordid, don't
you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any choice. There was no
one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit."

"There never is--it's a country one has to find the way to one's self."

"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told me."

"Ah, there are sign-posts--but one has to know how to read them."

"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of eagerness.
"Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign--and
yesterday--last evening at dinner--I suddenly saw a little way into your
republic."

Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had
found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a
reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.
His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have
been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should
interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this
weakness had become the most interesting thing about her.  He had come on
her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm.
THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and
the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It
was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning
intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be
the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.

"Well," he said, "did it make you want to see more? Are you going to
become one of us?"

He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand
toward the case.

"Oh, do give me one--I haven't smoked for days!"

"Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont."

"Yes--but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER; and at
the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER."

"Ah, then I'm afraid we can't let you into the republic."

"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"

"Not in the least, though I'm bound to say there are not many married
people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it's as hard for
rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven."

"That's unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the
only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."

"You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to
have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs
are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich
people--they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all
the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and
gasp!"

Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.

"It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal of your
time in the element you disapprove of."

Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried
to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in
another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back
again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your
friends have lost."

Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that the
people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and
not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only
use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at
them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"

"That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is
that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not
the critics on the fence. It's just the other way with most shows--the
audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is
on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an
escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes
the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden
raised himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of
splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it
is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we're all the
raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that
tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society
like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of
purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton--he's really too good to be used
to refurbish anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out
to discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding it in
Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"

"Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to
write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society
that he is likely to lose them?"

Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our generous ideas
illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a sufficient condemnation
of society to find one's self accepting such phraseology?  I very nearly
acquired the jargon at Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter
the colour of beliefs."

She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation.  His
habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and
compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory
where his faiths were formed.

"Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed; "why do you
call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create
arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."

"It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D'ETAT and seat
you on the throne."

"Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the
threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions--you
think them unworthy of me!"

Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I think
them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."

She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible that, if I
had the opportunities of these people, I might make a better use of them?
Money stands for all kinds of things--its purchasing quality isn't
limited to diamonds and motor-cars."


"Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by founding a
hospital."

"But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must think my
ambitions are good enough for me."

Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am not
divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you are trying
to get!"

"Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to get them I
probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath.  "What a miserable
future you foresee for me!"

"Well--have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour rose to
her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the deep wells of
feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had produced it.

"Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when you show
it to me!"

He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat silent,
while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet of the air.

But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do you do
this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have chosen seem
hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me instead?"

The words roused Selden from the musing fit into which he had fallen.  He
himself did not know why he had led their talk along such lines; it was
the last use he would have imagined himself making of an afternoon's
solitude with Miss Bart. But it was one of those moments when neither
seemed to speak deliberately, when an indwelling voice in each called to
the other across unsounded depths of feeling.

"No, I have nothing to give you instead," he said, sitting up and turning
so that he faced her. "If I had, it should be yours, you know."

She received this abrupt declaration in a way even stranger than the
manner of its making: she dropped her face on her hands and he saw that
for a moment she wept.

It was for a moment only, however; for when he leaned nearer and drew
down her hands with a gesture less passionate than grave, she turned on
him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he said to
himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art.

The reflection steadied his voice as he asked, between pity and irony:
"Isn't it natural that I should try to belittle all the things I can't
offer you?"

Her face brightened at this, but she drew her hand away, not with a
gesture of coquetry, but as though renouncing something to which she had
no claim.

"But you belittle ME, don't you," she returned gently, "in being so sure
they are the only things I care for?"

Selden felt an inner start; but it was only the last quiver of his
egoism. Almost at once he answered quite simply: "But you do care for
them, don't you? And no wishing of mine can alter that."

He had so completely ceased to consider how far this might carry him,
that he had a distinct sense of disappointment when she turned on him a
face sparkling with derision.

"Ah," she cried, "for all your fine phrases you're really as great a
coward as I am, for you wouldn't have made one of them if you hadn't been
so sure of my answer."

The shock of this retort had the effect of crystallizing Selden's
wavering intentions.

"I am not so sure of your answer," he said quietly. "And I do you the
justice to believe that you are not either."

It was her turn to look at him with surprise; and after a moment--"Do you
want to marry me?" she asked.

He broke into a laugh. "No, I don't want to--but perhaps I should if you
did!"

"That's what I told you--you're so sure of me that you can amuse yourself
with experiments." She drew back the hand he had regained, and sat
looking down on him sadly.

"I am not making experiments," he returned. "Or if I am, it is not on you
but on myself. I don't know what effect they are going to have on me--but
if marrying you is one of them, I will take the risk."

She smiled faintly. "It would be a great risk, certainly--I have never
concealed from you how great."

"Ah, it's you who are the coward!" he exclaimed.

She had risen, and he stood facing her with his eyes on hers. The soft
isolation of the falling day enveloped them: they seemed lifted into a
finer air. All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their
veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to
the earth.

"It's you who are the coward," he repeated, catching her hands in his.

She leaned on him for a moment, as if with a drop of tired wings: he felt
as though her heart were beating rather with the stress of a long flight
than the thrill of new distances. Then, drawing back with a little smile
of warning--"I shall look hideous in dowdy clothes; but I can trim my own
hats," she declared.

They stood silent for a while after this, smiling at each other like
adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which
they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling
itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser
blue.

Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect, and
following the high-road, which wound whiter through the surrounding
twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.

Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and she
began to move toward the lane.

"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after dark," she
said, almost impatiently.

Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to regain
his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable note of
dryness: "That was not one of our party; the motor was going the other
way."

"I know--I know----" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
twilight. "But I told them I was not well--that I should not go out.  Let
us go down!" she murmured.

Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his
pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that
moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered
hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion
see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.

She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held
out the cigarettes to her.

She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned
forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red
gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble
into a smile.

"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she
might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without
having time to select the just note.  Selden's voice was under better
control. "Why not?" he returned.  "You see I took no risks in being so."
And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort,
he added quickly: "Let us go down."

 Lily, having spent the night at the Bellomont, is asked to join Mrs. Trenor in the morning to help her write some correspondence. Although Lily would rather not, she remembers that she is dependent on Mrs. Trenor for social standing and does not want to upset her. The two gossip extensively while they write dinner cards, providing the reader with information about the politics and current events of the social group. In particular, we learn that Gwen Van Osburgh was not entertained by the party, Alice Wetherall and her husband were invited by mistake, and that Maria Van Osburgh was infuriated because Mrs. Trenor's party "stole" guests from a party that she herself was throwing that week, including Lady Cressida Raith, an enormous bore and hypocrite whom Mrs. Trenor now dislikes. Bertha Dorset is also upset with Mrs. Trenor because she came to the party under the assumption that Selden would be present, and when he failed to attend, Bertha suspected that Mrs. Trenor had lied to her and not even invited Selden. Lily confesses to Mrs. Trenor that she is interested in a marriage to Percy Gryce, largely because of his finances and good societal standing. We learn later that Lily believes that she will almost inevitably marry Gryce, thinking she has him under her control. Later, Selden joins the party at the Bellomont, and after Lily goes to the library and finds Selden and Mrs. Dorset alone together, she suspects that Selden has really come to the Bellomont just to see Mrs. Dorset. Selden later confesses that he came solely because he wanted to see Lily. In the presence of Selden, Lily begins to examine her own social world and wishes that like Selden, she were detached from it. The end of Chapter Five and all of Chapter Six focus on a walk that Lily and Selden take together after church ends on Sunday. They discuss a number of details about their lives and also share some of their philosophies on money, success and society. Selden says that he believes Lily is interested in Gryce, who left the Bellomont after Lily canceled their plans to go on a walk together . We learn also that Lily has once before been in love several years before the action of the novel to a man named Herbert Melson, who ended up marrying the oldest Van Osburgh daughter. Lily confesses to Selden that she knows her quest for better social status will not necessarily bring her true happiness. However, she and Selden agree that they will not marry one another. However, just as they are drifting towards what could be a confession of love for one another, they hear a car start its engine nearby, which reminds Lily that she must return to the Bellomont before people question her whereabouts.

