Chapter: Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys' entertainment, woke
from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were less vivid in hue, more
subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they
were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such
flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was
accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through
the cracks of other people's lives.

Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but
unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to
herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If
these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine
psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite
in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to
look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends. Now that
she was enjoying a little private feast of her own, it would have seemed
incredibly selfish not to lay a plate for a friend; and there was no one
with whom she would rather have shared her enjoyment than Miss Bart.

As to the nature of Selden's growing kindness, Gerty would no more have
dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a butterfly's
colours by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize on the wonder would
be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it fade and stiffen in her
hand: better the sense of beauty palpitating out of reach, while she held
her breath and watched where it would alight. Yet Selden's manner at the
Brys' had brought the flutter of wings so close that they seemed to be
beating in her own heart. She had never seen him so alert, so responsive,
so attentive to what she had to say. His habitual manner had an
absent-minded kindliness which she accepted, and was grateful for, as the
liveliest sentiment her presence was likely to inspire; but she was quick
to feel in him a change implying that for once she could give pleasure as
well as receive it.

And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should be
reached through their interest in Lily Bart!

Gerty's affection for her friend--a sentiment that had learned to keep
itself alive on the scantiest diet--had grown to active adoration since
Lily's restless curiosity had drawn her into the circle of Miss Farish's
work. Lily's taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite
for well-doing. Her visit to the Girls' Club had first brought her in
contact with the dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with
philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled
on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay all
around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life reached
its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter night enclose
a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this was in the natural
order of things, and the orchid basking in its artificially created
atmosphere could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by
the ice on the panes.

But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of
poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments.
Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the
mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable
separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure,
her own fierce revulsions from pain--that some of these bundles of
feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to
look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love--this discovery gave
Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a
life. Lily's nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other
demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which did not
press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was drawn out of
herself by the interest of her direct relation with a world so unlike her
own. She had supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or
two of Miss Farish's most appealing subjects, and the admiration and
interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club
ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.

Gerty Farish was not a close enough reader of character to disentangle
the mixed threads of which Lily's philanthropy was woven. She supposed
her beautiful friend to be actuated by the same motive as herself--that
sharpening of the moral vision which makes all human suffering so near
and insistent that the other aspects of life fade into remoteness.  Gerty
lived by such simple formulas that she did not hesitate to class her
friend's state with the emotional "change of heart" to which her dealings
with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that
she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer
to all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real
Lily," and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her
placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities--a
sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the receipt of
a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine with her that evening.

While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which this announcement produced
in her small household, Selden was at one with her in thinking with
intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him to Albany was not
complicated enough to absorb all his attention, and he had the
professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind free when its services
were not needed. This part--which at the moment seemed dangerously like
the whole--was filled to the brim with the sensations of the previous
evening.  Selden understood the symptoms: he recognized the fact that he
was paying up, as there had always been a chance of his having to pay up,
for the voluntary exclusions of his past. He had meant to keep free from
permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a
different way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment.
There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he
had never wanted to marry a "nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his
cousin's vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to
preclude the luxury of charm.  Now it had been Selden's fate to have a
charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still
emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind
of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her,
and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for
money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little
more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely
kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes
on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an
understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and
discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the
bills mounted up.

Though many of Selden's friends would have called his parents poor, he
had grown up in an atmosphere where restricted means were felt only as a
check on aimless profusion: where the few possessions were so good that
their rarity gave them a merited relief, and abstinence was combined with
elegance in a way exemplified by Mrs. Selden's knack of wearing her old
velvet as if it were new. A man has the advantage of being delivered
early from the home point of view, and before Selden left college he had
learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as
of spending it. Unfortunately, he found no way as agreeable as that
practised at home; and his views of womankind in especial were tinged by
the remembrance of the one woman who had given him his sense of "values."
It was from her that he inherited his detachment from the sumptuary side
of life: the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the
Epicurean's pleasure in them. Life shorn of either feeling appeared to
him a diminished thing; and nowhere was the blending of the two
ingredients so essential as in the character of a pretty woman.

It had always seemed to Selden that experience offered a great deal
besides the sentimental adventure, yet he could vividly conceive of a
love which should broaden and deepen till it became the central fact of
life. What he could not accept, in his own case, was the makeshift
alternative of a relation that should be less than this: that should
leave some portions of his nature unsatisfied, while it put an undue
strain on others. He would not, in other words, yield to the growth of an
affection which might appeal to pity yet leave the understanding
untouched: sympathy should no more delude him than a trick of the eyes,
the grace of helplessness than a curve of the cheek.

But now--that little BUT passed like a sponge over all his vows.  His
reasoned-out resistances seemed for the moment so much less important
than the question as to when Lily would receive his note! He yielded
himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations, wondering at what hour
her reply would be sent, with what words it would begin. As to its import
he had no doubt--he was as sure of her surrender as of his own.  And so
he had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on
a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel
gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind
him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation
to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before of what was
said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he knew from the
vulgar estimate of her.  His mind turned to Gerty Farish's words, and the
wisdom of the world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of
innocence.  BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD--even
the hidden god in their neighbour's breast! Selden was in the state of
impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces.
His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should
justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth
to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday
recess, but seized a moment's leisure in court to scribble his telegram
to Gerty Farish.

Reaching town, he was driven direct to his club, where he hoped a note
from Miss Bart might await him. But his box contained only a line of
rapturous assent from Gerty, and he was turning away disappointed when he
was hailed by a voice from the smoking room.

"Hallo, Lawrence! Dining here? Take a bite with me--I've ordered a
canvas-back."

He discovered Trenor, in his day clothes, sitting, with a tall glass at
his elbow, behind the folds of a sporting journal.

Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.

"Hang it, I believe every man in town has an engagement tonight.  I shall
have the club to myself. You know how I'm living this winter, rattling
round in that empty house. My wife meant to come to town today, but she's
put it off again, and how is a fellow to dine alone in a room with the
looking-glasses covered, and nothing but a bottle of Harvey sauce on the
side-board? I say, Lawrence, chuck your engagement and take pity on
me--it gives me the blue devils to dine alone, and there's nobody but
that canting ass Wetherall in the club."

"Sorry, Gus--I can't do it."

As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor's face, the
unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead, the way his jewelled
rings were wedged in the creases of his fat red fingers.  Certainly the
beast was predominating--the beast at the bottom of the glass. And he had
heard this man's name coupled with Lily's! Bah--the thought sickened him;
all the way back to his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor's fat
creased hands----

On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew what
was in it before he broke the seal--a grey seal with BEYOND!  beneath a
flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond--beyond the ugliness, the
pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the soul----



Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden entered it.
Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and ingenuity, spoke to him
in the language just then sweetest to his ear. It is surprising how
little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul
has suddenly been raised. Gerty sparkled too; or at least shone with a
tempered radiance. He had never before noticed that she had
"points"--really, some good fellow might do worse . . . Over the little
dinner (and here, again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she
ought to marry--he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had
made the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep such
gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that Lily could trim
her own hats--she had told him so the day of their walk at Bellomont.

He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little repast he
kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being the centre of
observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she had manufactured for
the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household
arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had
utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in
a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a
large establishment.

When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as snugly as
bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and poured it into her
grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he leaned back, basking in the
warm fragrance, lighted on a recent photograph of Miss Bart, and the
desired transition was effected without an effort. The photograph was
well enough--but to catch her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed
with him--never had she been so radiant. But could photography capture
that light? There had been a new look in her face--something different;
yes, Selden agreed there had been something different.  The coffee was so
exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to the watery
stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare,
alternating with the equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A
man who lived in lodgings missed the best part of life--he pictured the
flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's compassion
for the man . . . But to return to Lily--and again and again he returned,
questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on, draining her inmost thoughts
of their stored tenderness for her friend.

At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this perfect
communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily helped to
confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt together on the fact
that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced her generous impulses--her
restlessness and discontent. The fact that her life had never satisfied
her proved that she was made for better things. She might have married
more than once--the conventional rich marriage which she had been taught
to consider the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she
had always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love
with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her
dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This view of the Gryce
incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not to be instantly adopted
by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once seemed
the obvious solution. If rejection there had been--and he wondered now
that he had ever doubted it!--then he held the key to the secret, and the
hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with dawn. It
was he who had wavered and disowned the face of opportunity--and the joy
now warming his breast might have been a familiar inmate if he had
captured it in its first flight.

It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings in
Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing Selden,
repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been understood----" and all
the while she herself seemed to be sitting in the centre of a great glare
of comprehension. The little confidential room, where a moment ago their
thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly
vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length of her new vision
of the future--and that future stretched out interminably, with her
lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.

"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them," she
heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't you?" and:
"She has it in her to become whatever she is believed to be--you'll help
her by believing the best of her?"

The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language which has
seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is found to be
unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of Lily--that was all! There
had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had
taken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to
her own part in the talk--but it was all as meaningless as the boom of
waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.

Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she could
yield to the blessed waves.

"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music afterward; I
believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the foolish pink-faced
clock that was drumming out this hideous hour. "A quarter past ten? I
might look in there now; the Fisher evenings are amusing. I haven't kept
you up too late, Gerty? You look tired--I've rambled on and bored you."
And in the unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss
upon her cheek.



At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen voices
greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he dropped into a
seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search of Miss Bart. But she
was not there, and the discovery gave him a pang out of all proportion to
its seriousness; since the note in his breast-pocket assured him that at
four the next day they would meet. To his impatience it seemed
immeasurably long to wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to
Mrs. Fisher to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with
her.

"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where.  Wasn't she
wonderful last night?"

"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a neighbouring
arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when it comes to a girl
standing there as if she was up at auction--I thought seriously of
speaking to cousin Julia."

"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher said to
Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the general derision:
"But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's married--TOWN TALK was
full of her this morning."

"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne, stroking his
moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the dirty sheet? No, of
course not; some fellow showed it to me--but I'd heard the stories
before. When a girl's as good-looking as that she'd better marry; then no
questions are asked. In our imperfectly organized society there is no
provision as yet for the young woman who claims the privileges of
marriage without assuming its obligations."

"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of Mr.
Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.

"Rosedale--good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his eye-glass.
"Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on us."

"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our family,"
Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who sat in oppressive bridal
finery at the other side of the room, quelled him with the judicial
reflection: "In Lily's circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a
standard."

"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs. Fisher
rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off his head. What do
you think he said to me after her TABLEAU?  'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I
could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that, the picture'd appreciate a
hundred per cent in ten years.'"

"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.

"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs.  Where
was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't heard of anything."

"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish who had
arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she gave the
driver the Trenors' address."

"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."

"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come now,
Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no head for
numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining foot, and
the smile that circled the room.

In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with his
hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why he had
stayed in it so long.

On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's: "It seems
to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you disapprove of."

Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond!  That
BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's
task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are
numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with
dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had
strength for both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him.
It was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a
clogging morass of old associations and habits, and for the moment its
vapours were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in
her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar
which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor
with which he was trying to build up a defence against the influences of
the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so swayed by
them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view
of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?

The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he
strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of
company.

"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now that
women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.  It would be a
curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the
sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to
obscure the moral issue."

Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van
Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined
himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control. Happily
Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of social aspects, and with
Selden for audience was eager to show the sureness of his touch.  Mrs.
Fisher lived in an East side street near the Park, and as the two men
walked down Fifth Avenue the new architectural developments of that
versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne's comment.

"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder!  The man
who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table
at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a
style his friends might have thought the money had given out.  Not a bad
purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western
sight-seer. By and bye he'll get out of that phase, and want something
that the crowd will pass and the few pause before.  Especially if he
marries my clever cousin----"

Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'?  Rather
clever of its kind, don't you think?"

They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich restraint of
line, which suggested the clever corseting of a redundant figure.

"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to Europe,
and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a copy of the
TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt furniture is thought to
be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever chap that architect is,
though--how he takes his client's measure! He has put the whole of Mrs.
Bry in his use of the composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember,
he chose the Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
Trenor house is one of his best things--doesn't look like a
banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out
a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at
Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys' ball-room must rankle: you may be
sure she knows 'em as well as if she'd been there last night with a
yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way?  That Farish boy? She
isn't, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I
suppose Gus lives in the back."

He had halted opposite the Trenors' corner, and Selden perforce stayed
his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited; only an oblong
gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.

"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred and fifty
feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's to be, with a
gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on above. I suggested
changing the entrance, and carrying the drawing-room across the whole
Fifth Avenue front; you see the front door corresponds with the
windows----"

The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration dropped to a
startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures were seen
silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment a hansom halted at
the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it in a haze of
evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky, remained
persistently projected against the light.

For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident were
silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off, and the whole
scene slipped by as if with the turn of a stereopticon.

Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.

"A--hem--nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I know I may
count on you--appearances are deceptive--and Fifth Avenue is so
imperfectly lighted----"

"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street without
seeing the other's extended hand.



Alone with her cousin's kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He had
kissed her before--but not with another woman on his lips. If he had
spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming the dark flood
as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot through with glory, and
it was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness. Gerty hid her face
from the light, but it pierced to the crannies of her soul. She had been
so contented, life had seemed so simple and sufficient--why had he come
to trouble her with new hopes? And Lily--Lily, her best friend!
Woman-like, she accused the woman.  Perhaps, had it not been for Lily,
her fond imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
her--had understood and sympathized with the modest independence of her
life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice
balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his
view of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt
at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door barred
against her by Lily's hand! Lily, for whose admission there she herself
had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She
knew Selden--she saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped
to dispel his hesitations.  She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
him--she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known to each
other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient;
he had never guessed her foolish secret; but Lily--Lily must have known!
When, in such matters, are a woman's perceptions at fault? And if she
knew, then she had deliberately despoiled her friend, and in mere
wantonness of power, since, even to Gerty's suddenly flaming jealousy, it
seemed incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden's wife. Lily might
be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of
living without it, and Selden's eager investigations into the small
economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as tragically duped
as herself.

She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were crumbling to
cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade.  Just beneath it stood
the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out imperially on the cheap
gimcracks, the cramped furniture of the little room. Could Selden picture
her in such an interior? Gerty felt the poverty, the insignificance of
her surroundings: she beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the
cruelty of Lily's judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily ever
really felt, or pitied, or understood?  All she wanted was the taste of
new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature experimenting in a
laboratory.

The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose with a
start. She had an appointment early the next morning with a district
visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp, covered the fire, and
went into her bedroom to undress. In the little glass above her
dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the shadows of the
room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right had she to dream the
dreams of loveliness?  A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly
as she undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life must be
taken up as though there had been no break in its routine.  Her servant
did not come till eight o'clock, and she prepared her own tea-tray and
placed it beside the bed. Then she locked the door of the flat,
extinguished her light and lay down.  But on her bed sleep would not
come, and she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It
closed with her in the darkness like some formless evil to be blindly
grappled with.  Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight
forces, were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
wanted happiness--wanted it as fiercely and unscrupulously as Lily did,
but without Lily's power of obtaining it.  And in her conscious impotence
she lay shivering, and hated her friend----

A ring at the door-bell caught her to her feet. She struck a light and
stood startled, listening. For a moment her heart beat incoherently, then
she felt the sobering touch of fact, and remembered that such calls were
not unknown in her charitable work. She flung on her dressing-gown to
answer the summons, and unlocking her door, confronted the shining vision
of Lily Bart.

Gerty's first movement was one of revulsion. She shrank back as though
Lily's presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then she
heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend's face, and felt
herself caught and clung to.

"Lily--what is it?" she exclaimed.

Miss Bart released her, and stood breathing brokenly, like one who has
gained shelter after a long flight.

"I was so cold--I couldn't go home. Have you a fire?"

Gerty's compassionate instincts, responding to the swift call of habit,
swept aside all her reluctances. Lily was simply some one who needed
help--for what reason, there was no time to pause and conjecture:
disciplined sympathy checked the wonder on Gerty's lips, and made her
draw her friend silently into the sitting-room and seat her by the
darkened hearth.

"There is kindling wood here: the fire will burn in a minute."

She knelt down, and the flame leapt under her rapid hands. It flashed
strangely through the tears which still blurred her eyes, and smote on
the white ruin of Lily's face. The girls looked at each other in silence;
then Lily repeated: "I couldn't go home."

"No--no--you came here, dear! You're cold and tired--sit quiet, and I'll
make you some tea."

Gerty had unconsciously adopted the soothing note of her trade: all
personal feeling was merged in the sense of ministry, and experience had
taught her that the bleeding must be stayed before the wound is probed.

Lily sat quiet, leaning to the fire: the clatter of cups behind her
soothed her as familiar noises hush a child whom silence has kept
wakeful. But when Gerty stood at her side with the tea she pushed it
away, and turned an estranged eye on the familiar room.

"I came here because I couldn't bear to be alone," she said.

Gerty set down the cup and knelt beside her.

"Lily! Something has happened--can't you tell me?"

"I couldn't bear to lie awake in my room till morning. I hate my room at
Aunt Julia's--so I came here----"

She stirred suddenly, broke from her apathy, and clung to Gerty in a
fresh burst of fear.

"Oh, Gerty, the furies . . . you know the noise of their wings--alone, at
night, in the dark? But you don't know--there is nothing to make the dark
dreadful to you----"

The words, flashing back on Gerty's last hours, struck from her a faint
derisive murmur; but Lily, in the blaze of her own misery, was blinded to
everything outside it.

"You'll let me stay? I shan't mind when daylight comes--Is it late? Is
the night nearly over? It must be awful to be sleepless--everything
stands by the bed and stares----"

Miss Farish caught her straying hands. "Lily, look at me!  Something has
happened--an accident? You have been frightened--what has frightened you?
Tell me if you can--a word or two--so that I can help you."

Lily shook her head.

"I am not frightened: that's not the word. Can you imagine looking into
your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement--some hideous change
that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that--I
can't bear to see myself in my own thoughts--I hate ugliness, you
know--I've always turned from it--but I can't explain to you--you
wouldn't understand."

She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the clock.

"How long the night is! And I know I shan't sleep tomorrow. Some one told
me my father used to lie sleepless and think of horrors.  And he was not
wicked, only unfortunate--and I see now how he must have suffered, lying
alone with his thoughts! But I am bad--a bad girl--all my thoughts are
bad--I have always had bad people about me. Is that any excuse? I thought
I could manage my own life--I was proud--proud! but now I'm on their
level----"

Sobs shook her, and she bowed to them like a tree in a dry storm.

Gerty knelt beside her, waiting, with the patience born of experience,
till this gust of misery should loosen fresh speech.  She had first
imagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, since
Lily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher's; but she now saw
that other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back from
conjecture.

Lily's sobs ceased, and she lifted her head.

"There are bad girls in your slums. Tell me--do they ever pick themselves
up? Ever forget, and feel as they did before?"

"Lily! you mustn't speak so--you're dreaming."

"Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your
old self rejects you, and shuts you out."

She rose, stretching her arms as if in utter physical weariness.  "Go to
bed, dear! You work hard and get up early. I'll watch here by the fire,
and you'll leave the light, and your door open. All I want is to feel
that you are near me." She laid both hands on Gerty's shoulders, with a
smile that was like sunrise on a sea strewn with wreckage.

"I can't leave you, Lily. Come and lie on my bed. Your hands are
frozen--you must undress and be made warm." Gerty paused with sudden
compunction. "But Mrs. Peniston--it's past midnight! What will she think?"

"She goes to bed. I have a latch-key. It doesn't matter--I can't go back
there."

"There's no need to: you shall stay here. But you must tell me where you
have been. Listen, Lily--it will help you to speak!" She regained Miss
Bart's hands, and pressed them against her.  "Try to tell me--it will
clear your poor head. Listen--you were dining at Carry Fisher's." Gerty
paused and added with a flash of heroism: "Lawrence Selden went from here
to find you."

At the word, Lily's face melted from locked anguish to the open misery of
a child. Her lips trembled and her gaze widened with tears.

"He went to find me? And I missed him! Oh, Gerty, he tried to help me.
He told me--he warned me long ago--he foresaw that I should grow hateful
to myself!"

The name, as Gerty saw with a clutch at the heart, had loosened the
springs of self-pity in her friend's dry breast, and tear by tear Lily
poured out the measure of her anguish. She had dropped sideways in
Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden's had leaned,
in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty's aching senses the
inevitableness of her own defeat.  Ah, it needed no deliberate purpose on
Lily's part to rob her of her dream! To look on that prone loveliness was
to see in it a natural force, to recognize that love and power belong to
such as Lily, as renunciation and service are the lot of those they
despoil. But if Selden's infatuation seemed a fatal necessity, the effect
that his name produced shook Gerty's steadfastness with a last pang. Men
pass through such superhuman loves and outlive them: they are the
probation subduing the heart to human joys. How gladly Gerty would have
welcomed the ministry of healing: how willingly have soothed the sufferer
back to tolerance of life! But Lily's self-betrayal took this last hope
from her. The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who
loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.

Lily sprang up and caught her with strong hands. "Gerty, you know
him--you understand him--tell me; if I went to him, if I told him
everything--if I said: 'I am bad through and through--I want admiration,
I want excitement, I want money--' yes, MONEY!  That's my shame,
Gerty--and it's known, it's said of me--it's what men think of me--If I
said it all to him--told him the whole story--said plainly: 'I've sunk
lower than the lowest, for I've taken what they take, and not paid as
they pay'--oh, Gerty, you know him, you can speak for him: if I told him
everything would he loathe me? Or would he pity me, and understand me,
and save me from loathing myself?"

Gerty stood cold and passive. She knew the hour of her probation had
come, and her poor heart beat wildly against its destiny. As a dark river
sweeps by under a lightning flash, she saw her chance of happiness surge
past under a flash of temptation. What prevented her from saying: "He is
like other men?" She was not so sure of him, after all! But to do so
would have been like blaspheming her love. She could not put him before
herself in any light but the noblest: she must trust him to the height of
her own passion.

"Yes: I know him; he will help you," she said; and in a moment Lily's
passion was weeping itself out against her breast.

There was but one bed in the little flat, and the two girls lay down on
it side by side when Gerty had unlaced Lily's dress and persuaded her to
put her lips to the warm tea. The light extinguished, they lay still in
the darkness, Gerty shrinking to the outer edge of the narrow couch to
avoid contact with her bed-fellow. Knowing that Lily disliked to be
caressed, she had long ago learned to check her demonstrative impulses
toward her friend. But tonight every fibre in her body shrank from Lily's
nearness: it was torture to listen to her breathing, and feel the sheet
stir with it. As Lily turned, and settled to completer rest, a strand of
her hair swept Gerty's cheek with its fragrance. Everything about her was
warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as
rain-drops do the beaten rose. But as Gerty lay with arms drawn down her
side, in the motionless narrowness of an effigy, she felt a stir of sobs
from the breathing warmth beside her, and Lily flung out her hand, groped
for her friend's, and held it fast.

"Hold me, Gerty, hold me, or I shall think of things," she moaned; and
Gerty silently slipped an arm under her, pillowing her head in its hollow
as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child. In the warm hollow Lily lay
still and her breathing grew low and regular. Her hand still clung to
Gerty's as if to ward off evil dreams, but the hold of her fingers
relaxed, her head sank deeper into its shelter, and Gerty felt that she
slept.

 The chapter begins in Gerty's apartment where Gerty has spent the night dreaming after realizing that she has fallen in love with Selden. The narrator explains Selden's upbringing. His parents' lack of wealth was balanced by their happiness with each other. Consequently, Selden has learned to appreciate a simple lifestyle and to disdain the accumulation of material possessions as "aimless profusion." After his encounter with Lily the previous evening, Selden is certain that he is in love with her and that she wishes him to propose. Selden returns from Albany to New York City, where he goes to his club. There, Trenor entreats Selden to eat supper with him, which. Selden refuses. He receives Lily's note regarding the following day's meeting and is invigorated, assuming that Lily will accept his proposal. Selden visits Gerty for dinner. The two discuss Lily until Gerty surmises that Selden is in love with Lily. Although heartbroken, Gerty does not reveal her feelings. She tells Seldon that Lily was to dine at Carry's home, and Selden excuses himself to see Lily there. When he arrives at Carry's house, Selden is told that Lily has already left. A guest says that he heard Lily tell the hansom driver to take her to the Trenor residence, even though it is well known that Judy is away and Trenor is alone at their town house. Selden leaves Carry's party and is joined by Ned Van Alstyne in his walk down the street. As they near the Trenor residence, the pair observes Lily leaving the house and Trenor standing in the open doorway. Van Alstyne swears Selden to secrecy, explaining that "appearances are deceptive." Gerty blames Lily for stealing Selden's affections from her, and for possibly the first time in her life, she allows herself to feel hate. Following her confrontation with Trenor, Lily arrives unannounced at Gerty's apartment. Although Gerty's first inclination is revulsion toward Lily, she receives her tenderly when she realizes that Lily is terribly upset. Lily is hysterical, proclaiming herself to be bad. Gerty tries to reconstruct Lily's evening to discover what is troubling her. She recounts that she knows Lily had dinner at Carry's home and that Selden went there to find her. The mention of Selden's name prompts Lily to ask Gerty if she thinks her cousin can ever again think highly enough of Lily to help her. Gerty struggles with the question but responds that she is certain Selden will help Lily.

