Chapter: The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps made
tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire flickered
on the hearth, and Selden's easy-chair, which stood near it, had been
pushed aside when he rose to admit her.

He had checked his first movement of surprise, and stood silent, waiting
for her to speak, while she paused a moment on the threshold, assailed by
a rush of memories.

The scene was unchanged. She recognized the row of shelves from which he
had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the chair he had
leaned against while she examined the precious volume. But then the wide
September light had filled the room, making it seem a part of the outer
world: now the shaded lamps and the warm hearth, detaching it from the
gathering darkness of the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy.

Becoming gradually aware of the surprise under Selden's silence, Lily
turned to him and said simply: "I came to tell you that I was sorry for
the way we parted--for what I said to you that day at Mrs. Hatch's."

The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs,
she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now
felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung
between them.

Selden returned her look with a smile. "I was sorry too that we should
have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn't bring it on myself.
Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking----"

"So that you really didn't care----?" broke from her with a flash of her
old irony.

"So that I was prepared for the consequences," he corrected
good-humouredly. "But we'll talk of all this later. Do come and sit by
the fire. I can recommend that arm-chair, if you'll let me put a cushion
behind you."

While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and paused
near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward, cast exaggerated
shadows on the pallour of her delicately-hollowed face.

"You look tired--do sit down," he repeated gently.

She did not seem to hear the request. "I wanted you to know that I left
Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you," she said, as though continuing
her confession.

"Yes--yes; I know," he assented, with a rising tinge of embarrassment.

"And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had already
begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with her--for the
reasons you gave me; but I wouldn't admit it--I wouldn't let you see that
I understood what you meant."

"Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out--don't overwhelm
me with the sense of my officiousness!"

His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have
recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on
her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of
extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of
the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it
necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and
evasion.

"It was not that--I was not ungrateful," she insisted. But the power of
expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat, and two
tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.

Selden moved forward and took her hand. "You are very tired. Why won't
you sit down and let me make you comfortable?"

He drew her to the arm-chair near the fire, and placed a cushion behind
her shoulders.

"And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have that
amount of hospitality at my command."

She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not weep
easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself, though she
was still too tremulous to speak.

"You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes," Selden
continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.

His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they had sat
together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her future. There
were moments when that day seemed more remote than any other event in her
life; and yet she could always relive it in its minutest detail.

She made a gesture of refusal. "No: I drink too much tea. I would rather
sit quiet--I must go in a moment," she added confusedly.

Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece.  The
tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under
the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her
to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more
putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming
an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an
immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining
impulse was still lacking.

The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done.  She had
passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every
demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it
elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned.
But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw
herself forever shut out from Selden's inmost self. She had come to him
with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her;
but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in
its death-pang.

"I must go," she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. "But I
may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I
have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that
sometimes--sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them--they
have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming
what many people have thought me."

Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would
not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without
trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the
seeming ruin of her life.

A change had come over Selden's face as she spoke. Its guarded look had
yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion, but full of
a gentle understanding.

"I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really
made the difference. The difference is in yourself--it will always be
there. And since it IS there, it can't really matter to you what people
think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you."

"Ah, don't say that--don't say that what you have told me has made no
difference. It seems to shut me out--to leave me all alone with the other
people." She had risen and stood before him, once more completely
mastered by the inner urgency of the moment.  The consciousness of his
half-divined reluctance had vanished.  Whether he wished it or not, he
must see her wholly for once before they parted.

Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in the eyes
as she continued. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my
life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I
saw my mistake--I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me
before. But it was too late: you had judged me--I understood. It was too
late for happiness--but not too late to be helped by the thought of what
I had missed.  That is all I have lived on--don't take it from me now!
Even in my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the
help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great
temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I
remembered--I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy
me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could.  That is what you
did for me--that is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you
that I have always remembered; and that I have tried--tried hard . . ."

She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing out her
handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds of her dress. A
wave of colour suffused her, and the words died on her lips.  Then she
lifted her eyes to his and went on in an altered voice.

"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless
person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just
a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped
out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one
finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be
thrown out into the rubbish heap--and you don't know what it's like in
the rubbish heap!"

Her lips wavered into a smile--she had been distracted by the whimsical
remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two years earlier, in
that very room. Then she had been planning to marry Percy Gryce--what was
it she was planning now?

The blood had risen strongly under Selden's dark skin, but his emotion
showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.

"You have something to tell me--do you mean to marry?" he said abruptly.

Lily's eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the light of
his question, she had paused to ask herself if her decision had really
been taken when she entered the room.

"You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!" she
said with a faint smile.

"And you have come to it now?"

"I shall have to come to it--presently. But there is something else I
must come to first." She paused again, trying to transmit to her voice
the steadiness of her recovered smile. "There is some one I must say
goodbye to. Oh, not YOU--we are sure to see each other again--but the
Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are
going to part, and I have brought her back to you--I am going to leave
her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like
to think that she has stayed with you--and she'll be no trouble, she'll
take up no room."

She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will you let
her stay with you?" she asked.

He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling that had
not yet risen to his lips. "Lily--can't I help you?" he exclaimed.

She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me once?
That you could help me only by loving me? Well--you did love me for a
moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the moment is
gone--it was I who let it go. And one must go on living. Goodbye."

She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind
of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death.  Something
in truth lay dead between them--the love she had killed in him and could
no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped
up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had
kindled, the passion of her soul for his.

In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self with
him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must still
continue to be hers.

Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with a
strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation had
vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as one of
those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as they pass.

"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I can't
let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may change--but
they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."

She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see that now.
Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe, whatever happens."

"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"

She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.

"Nothing at present--except that I am very cold, and that before I go you
must make up the fire for me."

She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.  Puzzled
by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered a handful of
wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he did so, he noticed
how thin her hands looked against the rising light of the flames. He saw
too, under the loose lines of her dress, how the curves of her figure had
shrunk to angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of
the flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the
blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes.
She knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dared
not break. When she rose he fancied that he saw her draw something from
her dress and drop it into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at
the time. His faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the
word to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
shoulders.  "Goodbye," she said, and as he bent over her she touched his
forehead with her lips.

 Lily arrives in Selden's apartment and apologizes for the circumstances of their last meeting. Regardless, there is a distance between the two of them, a distance that Lily realizes is permanent. She admits her cowardice in turning down his offers of marriage, a cowardice borne out of her fear of living a less affluent life. She confesses to having made a mistake, a mistake she feels has caused Selden to judge her negatively ever since. Lily asks Selden to remember her, and he responds by offering to help her. She asks Selden to remain her friend, and secretly deposits Bertha's letters into the open flames of Selden's fireplace. She says goodbye to Selden with an air of finality.

