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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



THE END




Notes:

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

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

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

Linda Ruoff

 The following morning, Selden decides to visit Lily. He has found the one word that he wishes to say to her. He arrives at her boardinghouse to find Gerty, who tells him that Lily is dead. Cognizant of Selden's true feelings for Lily, Gerty leaves him alone with Lily's body. He finds the check written to Trenor, which confuses him. Selden also finds the letter he had written her expressing his desire to see her two years earlier. He recognizes his subsequent inability to maintain his love for Lily as an act of cowardice. He knows that he once loved Lily and that she once loved him, but that her background and his negative judgments of her lifestyle had conspired to keep them apart. He kneels by her bed in penance and to feel one last loving moment between them.

