Chapter: "Look at those spangles, Miss Bart--every one of 'em sewed on crooked."

The tall forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned
structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side, and passed on to
the next figure in the line.

There were twenty of them in the work-room, their fagged profiles, under
exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of
their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this
creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood.
Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and
sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were
employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well
clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and
colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only one
skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned
with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman's comment,
began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles.

To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached
when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.  Instances of
young lady-milliners establishing themselves under fashionable patronage,
and imparting to their "creations" that indefinable touch which the
professional hand can never give, had flattered Gerty's visions of the
future, and convinced even Lily that her separation from Mrs. Norma Hatch
need not reduce her to dependence on her friends.

The parting had occurred a few weeks after Selden's visit, and would have
taken place sooner had it not been for the resistance set up in Lily by
his ill-starred offer of advice. The sense of being involved in a
transaction she would not have cared to examine too closely had soon
afterward defined itself in the light of a hint from Mr. Stancy that, if
she "saw them through," she would have no reason to be sorry. The
implication that such loyalty would meet with a direct reward had
hastened her flight, and flung her back, ashamed and penitent, on the
broad bosom of Gerty's sympathy. She did not, however, propose to lie
there prone, and Gerty's inspiration about the hats at once revived her
hopes of profitable activity. Here was, after all, something that her
charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their
capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of
course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate
fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes
and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front
shop--a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings--where
her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on
their stands like birds just poising for flight.

But at the very outset of Gerty's campaign this vision of the
green-and-white shop had been dispelled. Other young ladies of fashion
had been thus "set-up," selling their hats by the mere attraction of a
name and the reputed knack of tying a bow; but these privileged beings
could command a faith in their powers materially expressed by the
readiness to pay their shop-rent and advance a handsome sum for current
expenses. Where was Lily to find such support? And even could it have
been found, how were the ladies on whose approval she depended to be
induced to give her their patronage? Gerty learned that whatever sympathy
her friend's case might have excited a few months since had been
imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again,
Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her
self-respect, but too late for public vindication.  Freddy Van Osburgh
was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh
hour--some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale--and despatched
to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always
be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a
summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her. It was
a relief to those who had hung back from her to find themselves thus
justified, and they were inclined to insist a little on her connection
with the Hatch case in order to show that they had been right.

Gerty's quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of
resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her
share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish's, they met
with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender
ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely
to her friend.

"I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the
others, and besides she's always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you
done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she
flamed out about some money you'd got from Gus; I never knew her so hot
before. You know she'll let him do anything but spend money on his
friends: the only reason she's decent to me now is that she knows I'm not
hard up.--He speculated for you, you say? Well, what's the harm? He had
no business to lose. He DIDN'T lose? Then what on earth--but I never
COULD understand you, Lily!"

The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs.
Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their
friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina's renowned
millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without
considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against
untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she
owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher's
influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the
show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a
valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which
Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced,
but resigned to this latest proof of Lily's unreason, agreed that perhaps
in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To
Regina's work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there
Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty's watchfulness
continued to hover over her at a distance.

Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later,
and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a
hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the
tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the
other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history--the exact
situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all
the others--but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense
of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were
still blundering over the rudiments of the trade.  Lily had no desire
that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had
hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show
herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was
humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still
betrayed her lack of early training.  Remote was the day when she might
aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only
experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and
trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the
routine of preparatory work.

She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the
buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss
Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss
Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during
the noon recess; and Lily's head was so heavy with the weight of a
sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of
a dream.

"I TOLD her he'd never look at her again; and he didn't. I wouldn't have,
either--I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion
Ball, and had a hack for her both ways....  She's taken ten bottles, and
her headaches don't seem no better--but she's written a testimonial to
say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture
in the paper.... Mrs. Trenor's hat? The one with the green Paradise?
Here, Miss Haines--it'll be ready right off.... That was one of the
Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset.  How'd I know? Why,
Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat--the blue tulle:
she's tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out--a good deal like Mamie
Leach, on'y thinner...."

On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which,
startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
It was the strangest part of Lily's strange experience, the hearing of
these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world
she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls' minds. She
had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and
contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this
underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
Every girl in Mme. Regina's work-room knew to whom the headgear in her
hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer, and a
definite knowledge of the latter's place in the social system. That Lily
was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of
curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had
fallen, she had "gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they
were awed only by success--by the gross tangible image of material
achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
whom it was an effort to talk.

"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I guess you'd
better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."

Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
took it with a suppressed smile.

"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.

Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.

"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily slipped out
last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they
now seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish, she
had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
point of view was less interesting.

She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
"Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair to you."

Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.

"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
AM clumsy."

"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy paused
irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down.  Ever try
orangeine?"

"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I mean to go
home."

She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say.
Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home
with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent--even kindness, the sort
of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just
then.

"Thank you," she repeated as she turned away.

She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street
where her boarding-house stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty's offer
of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce shrinking from
observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the
promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole,
less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she
could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had
been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now,
perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about
by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the
ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day's task done, she
dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wallpaper and
shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the
degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from
fashion to commerce.

But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's at the
corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had
usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn
toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower
crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the
street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.

Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her
before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no
question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch's,
obligingly furnished by that lady's chemist.  Lily was confident that the
clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a
refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her
restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked
on the glass case before her.

The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of
handing out the bottle he paused.

"You don't want to increase the dose, you know," he remarked.  Lily's
heart contracted.

What did he mean by looking at her in that way?

"Of course not," she murmured, holding out her hand.

"That's all right: it's a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off
you go--the doctors don't know why."

The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked
the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged
safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her
relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the
delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her
momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already
stealing over her.

In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the
last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name
uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and
prosperous--but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through
a mist of splintered crystals?  Before she could account for the
phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with
scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions
seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused
wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.

"Why, what's the matter, Miss Lily? You're not well!" he exclaimed; and
she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.

"I'm a little tired--it's nothing. Stay with me a moment, please," she
faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!

He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with
the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons
contending hideously in their ears.

"We can't stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea.  The
LONGWORTH is only a few yards off, and there'll be no one there at this
hour."

A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed
for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to
the ladies' door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was
seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between
them.

"Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss
Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for
the lady's back."

Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It was the
temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen
stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep--the
midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But
today, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong: she counted on it
to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.

As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude,
though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning
life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty.
The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined
pallour of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips,
as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there.  Against the dull
chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head
stood out as it had never done in the most brightly-lit ball-room. He
looked at her with a startled uncomfortable feeling, as though her beauty
were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him
unawares.

To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. "Why, Miss Lily,
I haven't seen you for an age. I didn't know what had become of you."

As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications
to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her he had heard of her;
he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch, and of the talk resulting from
it. Mrs. Hatch's MILIEU was one which he had once assiduously frequented,
and now as devoutly shunned.

Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what
was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: "You would not be
likely to know about me. I have joined the working classes."

He stared in genuine wonder. "You don't mean--? Why, what on earth are
you doing?"

"Learning to be a milliner--at least TRYING to learn," she hastily
qualified the statement.

Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. "Come off--you ain't
serious, are you?"

"Perfectly serious. I'm obliged to work for my living."

"But I understood--I thought you were with Norma Hatch."

"You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?"

"Something of the kind, I believe." He leaned forward to refill her cup.

Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for
him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: "I left her two
months ago."

Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt
sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
Rosedale did not hear?

"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.

"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm on the
edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
herself.

"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
might make things too easy for one."

Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
lost on him.

"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.

"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least too good for
her--and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
have stayed where I was."

"Oh, Freddy----" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed up in that.
It ain't your style."

Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale.  But the old habit of
observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.

Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a minute--don't go
yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
And you haven't told me----" He broke off, conscious of going farther
than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
face, he began again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just
now that you were learning to be a milliner?"

"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."

"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs.
Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her----"

"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next
summer."

"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted."

She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."

"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"

"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on
his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some
money for me in stocks."

She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he
remembered something of the kind.

"He made about nine thousand dollars," Lily pursued, in the same tone of
eager communicativeness. "At the time, I understood that he was
speculating with my own money: it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew
nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had NOT used my
money--that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It
was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation
one could remain under.  Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back.
That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade."

She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the
sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer's
mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth
about this transaction, and also that the rumour of her intention to
repay the money should reach Judy Trenor's ears. And it had suddenly
occurred to her that Rosedale, who had surprised Trenor's confidence, was
the fitting person to receive and transmit her version of the facts. She
had even felt a momentary exhilaration at the thought of thus relieving
herself of her detested secret; but the sensation gradually faded in the
telling, and as she ended her pallour was suffused with a deep blush of
misery.

Rosedale continued to stare at her in wonder; but the wonder took the
turn she had least expected.

"But see here--if that's the case, it cleans you out altogether?"

He put it to her as if she had not grasped the consequences of her act;
as if her incorrigible ignorance of business were about to precipitate
her into a fresh act of folly.

"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.

He sat silent, his thick hands clasped on the table, his little puzzled
eyes exploring the recesses of the deserted restaurant.

"See here--that's fine," he exclaimed abruptly.

Lily rose from her seat with a deprecating laugh. "Oh, no--it's merely a
bore," she asserted, gathering together the ends of her feather scarf.

Rosedale remained seated, too intent on his thoughts to notice her
movement. "Miss Lily, if you want any backing--I like pluck----" broke
from him disconnectedly.

"Thank you." She held out her hand. "Your tea has given me a tremendous
backing. I feel equal to anything now."

Her gesture seemed to show a definite intention of dismissal, but her
companion had tossed a bill to the waiter, and was slipping his short
arms into his expensive overcoat.

"Wait a minute--you've got to let me walk home with you," he said.

Lily uttered no protest, and when he had paused to make sure of his
change they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she
led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the
distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the
DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking
contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which
she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.

"This isn't the place? Some one told me you were living with Miss Farish."

"No: I am boarding here. I have lived too long on my friends."

He continued to scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped
with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy
vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible
effort: "You'll let me come and see you some day?"

She smiled, recognizing the heroism of the offer to the point of being
frankly touched by it. "Thank you--I shall be very glad," she made
answer, in the first sincere words she had ever spoken to him.



That evening in her own room Miss Bart--who had fled early from the heavy
fumes of the basement dinner-table--sat musing upon the impulse which had
led her to unbosom herself to Rosedale. Beneath it she discovered an
increasing sense of loneliness--a dread of returning to the solitude of
her room, while she could be anywhere else, or in any company but her
own. Circumstances, of late, had combined to cut her off more and more
from her few remaining friends. On Carry Fisher's part the withdrawal was
perhaps not quite involuntary. Having made her final effort on Lily's
behalf, and landed her safely in Mme. Regina's work-room, Mrs. Fisher
seemed disposed to rest from her labours; and Lily, understanding the
reason, could not condemn her. Carry had in fact come dangerously near to
being involved in the episode of Mrs. Norma Hatch, and it had taken some
verbal ingenuity to extricate herself. She frankly owned to having
brought Lily and Mrs. Hatch together, but then she did not know Mrs.
Hatch--she had expressly warned Lily that she did not know Mrs.
Hatch--and besides, she was not Lily's keeper, and really the girl was
old enough to take care of herself. Carry did not put her own case so
brutally, but she allowed it to be thus put for her by her latest bosom
friend, Mrs. Jack Stepney: Mrs. Stepney, trembling over the narrowness of
her only brother's escape, but eager to vindicate Mrs. Fisher, at whose
house she could count on the "jolly parties" which had become a necessity
to her since marriage had emancipated her from the Van Osburgh point of
view.

Lily understood the situation and could make allowances for it.  Carry
had been a good friend to her in difficult days, and perhaps only a
friendship like Gerty's could be proof against such an increasing strain.
Gerty's friendship did indeed hold fast; yet Lily was beginning to avoid
her also. For she could not go to Gerty's without risk of meeting Selden;
and to meet him now would be pure pain. It was pain enough even to think
of him, whether she considered him in the distinctness of her waking
thoughts, or felt the obsession of his presence through the blur of her
tormented nights. That was one of the reasons why she had turned again to
Mrs. Hatch's prescription. In the uneasy snatches of her natural dreams
he came to her sometimes in the old guise of fellowship and tenderness;
and she would rise from the sweet delusion mocked and emptied of her
courage. But in the sleep which the phial procured she sank far below
such half-waking visitations, sank into depths of dreamless annihilation
from which she woke each morning with an obliterated past.

Gradually, to be sure, the stress of the old thoughts would return; but
at least they did not importune her waking hour. The drug gave her a
momentary illusion of complete renewal, from which she drew strength to
take up her daily work. The strength was more and more needed as the
perplexities of her future increased. She knew that to Gerty and Mrs.
Fisher she was only passing through a temporary period of probation,
since they believed that the apprenticeship she was serving at Mme.
Regina's would enable her, when Mrs. Peniston's legacy was paid, to
realize the vision of the green-and-white shop with the fuller competence
acquired by her preliminary training. But to Lily herself, aware that the
legacy could not be put to such a use, the preliminary training seemed a
wasted effort. She understood clearly enough that, even if she could ever
learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their special work,
the small pay she received would not be a sufficient addition to her
income to compensate her for such drudgery. And the realization of this
fact brought her recurringly face to face with the temptation to use the
legacy in establishing her business. Once installed, and in command of
her own work-women, she believed she had sufficient tact and ability to
attract a fashionable CLIENTELE; and if the business succeeded she could
gradually lay aside money enough to discharge her debt to Trenor. But the
task might take years to accomplish, even if she continued to stint
herself to the utmost; and meanwhile her pride would be crushed under the
weight of an intolerable obligation.

These were her superficial considerations; but under them lurked the
secret dread that the obligation might not always remain intolerable.
She knew she could not count on her continuity of purpose, and what
really frightened her was the thought that she might gradually
accommodate herself to remaining indefinitely in Trenor's debt, as she
had accommodated herself to the part allotted her on the Sabrina, and as
she had so nearly drifted into acquiescing with Stancy's scheme for the
advancement of Mrs. Hatch. Her danger lay, as she knew, in her old
incurable dread of discomfort and poverty; in the fear of that mounting
tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned
her. And now a new vista of peril opened before her. She understood that
Rosedale was ready to lend her money; and the longing to take advantage
of his offer began to haunt her insidiously. It was of course impossible
to accept a loan from Rosedale; but proximate possibilities hovered
temptingly before her. She was quite sure that he would come and see her
again, and almost sure that, if he did, she could bring him to the point
of offering to marry her on the terms she had previously rejected.  Would
she still reject them if they were offered? More and more, with every
fresh mischance befalling her, did the pursuing furies seem to take the
shape of Bertha Dorset; and close at hand, safely locked among her
papers, lay the means of ending their pursuit. The temptation, which her
scorn of Rosedale had once enabled her to reject, now insistently
returned upon her; and how much strength was left her to oppose it?

What little there was must at any rate be husbanded to the utmost; she
could not trust herself again to the perils of a sleepless night.
Through the long hours of silence the dark spirit of fatigue and
loneliness crouched upon her breast, leaving her so drained of bodily
strength that her morning thoughts swam in a haze of weakness. The only
hope of renewal lay in the little bottle at her bed-side; and how much
longer that hope would last she dared not conjecture.



Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the afternoon
spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April, and the sweetness
of spring was in the air. It mitigated the ugliness of the long crowded
thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the
discouraging perspective of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry
to the delicate haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.

As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the passing
carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had disbanded; but
a few still lingered, delaying their departure for Europe, or passing
through town on their return from the South.  Among them was Mrs. Van
Osburgh, swaying majestically in her C-spring barouche, with Mrs. Percy
Gryce at her side, and the new heir to the Gryce millions enthroned
before them on his nurse's knees. They were succeeded by Mrs. Hatch's
electric victoria, in which that lady reclined in the lonely splendour of
a spring toilet obviously designed for company; and a moment or two later
came Judy Trenor, accompanied by Lady Skiddaw, who had come over for her
annual tarpon fishing and a dip into "the street."

This fleeting glimpse of her past served to emphasize the sense of
aimlessness with which Lily at length turned toward home. She had nothing
to do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to come; for the season
was over in millinery as well as in society, and a week earlier Mme.
Regina had notified her that her services were no longer required. Mme.
Regina always reduced her staff on the first of May, and Miss Bart's
attendance had of late been so irregular--she had so often been unwell,
and had done so little work when she came--that it was only as a favour
that her dismissal had hitherto been deferred.

Lily did not question the justice of the decision. She was conscious of
having been forgetful, awkward and slow to learn. It was bitter to
acknowledge her inferiority even to herself, but the fact had been
brought home to her that as a bread-winner she could never compete with
professional ability.  Since she had been brought up to be ornamental,
she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical
purpose; but the discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal
efficiency.

As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the fact
that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning. The luxury of
lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the life of ease; it had no
part in the utilitarian existence of the boarding-house. She liked to
leave her room early, and to return to it as late as possible; and she
was walking slowly now in order to postpone the detested approach to her
doorstep.

But the doorstep, as she drew near it, acquired a sudden interest from
the fact that it was occupied--and indeed filled--by the conspicuous
figure of Mr. Rosedale, whose presence seemed to take on an added
amplitude from the meanness of his surroundings.

The sight stirred Lily with an irresistible sense of triumph.  Rosedale,
a day or two after their chance meeting, had called to enquire if she had
recovered from her indisposition; but since then she had not seen or
heard from him, and his absence seemed to betoken a struggle to keep
away, to let her pass once more out of his life. If this were the case,
his return showed that the struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew
he was not the man to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental
dalliance. He was too busy, too practical, and above all too much
preoccupied with his own advancement, to indulge in such unprofitable
asides.

In the peacock-blue parlour, with its bunches of dried pampas grass, and
discoloured steel engravings of sentimental episodes, he looked about him
with unconcealed disgust, laying his hat distrustfully on the dusty
console adorned with a Rogers statuette.

Lily sat down on one of the plush and rosewood sofas, and he deposited
himself in a rocking-chair draped with a starched antimacassar which
scraped unpleasantly against the pink fold of skin above his collar.

"My goodness--you can't go on living here!" he exclaimed.

Lily smiled at his tone. "I am not sure that I can; but I have gone over
my expenses very carefully, and I rather think I shall be able to manage
it."

"Be able to manage it? That's not what I mean--it's no place for you!"

"It's what I mean; for I have been out of work for the last week."

"Out of work--out of work! What a way for you to talk! The idea of your
having to work--it's preposterous." He brought out his sentences in short
violent jerks, as though they were forced up from a deep inner crater of
indignation. "It's a farce--a crazy farce," he repeated, his eyes fixed
on the long vista of the room reflected in the blotched glass between the
windows.

Lily continued to meet his expostulations with a smile. "I don't know why
I should regard myself as an exception----" she began.

"Because you ARE; that's why; and your being in a place like this is a
damnable outrage. I can't talk of it calmly."

She had in truth never seen him so shaken out of his usual glibness; and
there was something almost moving to her in his inarticulate struggle
with his emotions.

He rose with a start which left the rocking-chair quivering on its beam
ends, and placed himself squarely before her.

"Look here, Miss Lily, I'm going to Europe next week: going over to Paris
and London for a couple of months--and I can't leave you like this. I
can't do it. I know it's none of my business--you've let me understand
that often enough; but things are worse with you now than they have been
before, and you must see that you've got to accept help from somebody.
You spoke to me the other day about some debt to Trenor.  I know what you
mean--and I respect you for feeling as you do about it."

A blush of surprise rose to Lily's pale face, but before she could
interrupt him he had continued eagerly: "Well, I'll lend you the money to
pay Trenor; and I won't--I--see here, don't take me up till I've
finished. What I mean is, it'll be a plain business arrangement, such as
one man would make with another.  Now, what have you got to say against
that?"

Lily's blush deepened to a glow in which humiliation and gratitude were
mingled; and both sentiments revealed themselves in the unexpected
gentleness of her reply.

"Only this: that it is exactly what Gus Trenor proposed; and that I can
never again be sure of understanding the plainest business arrangement."
Then, realizing that this answer contained a germ of injustice, she
added, even more kindly: "Not that I don't appreciate your kindness--that
I'm not grateful for it. But a business arrangement between us would in
any case be impossible, because I shall have no security to give when my
debt to Gus Trenor has been paid."

Rosedale received this statement in silence: he seemed to feel the note
of finality in her voice, yet to be unable to accept it as closing the
question between them.

In the silence Lily had a clear perception of what was passing through
his mind. Whatever perplexity he felt as to the inexorableness of her
course--however little he penetrated its motive--she saw that it
unmistakably tended to strengthen her hold over him. It was as though the
sense in her of unexplained scruples and resistances had the same
attraction as the delicacy of feature, the fastidiousness of manner,
which gave her an external rarity, an air of being impossible to match.
As he advanced in social experience this uniqueness had acquired a
greater value for him, as though he were a collector who had learned to
distinguish minor differences of design and quality in some long-coveted
object.

Lily, perceiving all this, understood that he would marry her at once, on
the sole condition of a reconciliation with Mrs. Dorset; and the
temptation was the less easy to put aside because, little by little,
circumstances were breaking down her dislike for Rosedale. The dislike,
indeed, still subsisted; but it was penetrated here and there by the
perception of mitigating qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness,
a rather helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling
through the hard surface of his material ambitions.

Reading his dismissal in her eyes, he held out his hand with a gesture
which conveyed something of this inarticulate conflict.

"If you'd only let me, I'd set you up over them all--I'd put you where
you could wipe your feet on 'em!" he declared; and it touched her oddly
to see that his new passion had not altered his old standard of values.



Lily took no sleeping-drops that night. She lay awake viewing her
situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on it. In
fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had she not
sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour that might be
called the conventionalities of the moral life?  What debt did she owe to
a social order which had condemned and banished her without trial?  She
had never been heard in her own defence; she was innocent of the charge
on which she had been found guilty; and the irregularity of her
conviction might seem to justify the use of methods as irregular in
recovering her lost rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not
scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to
make private use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all,
half the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it.  Call
it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no
one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he
must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defence.

The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of
the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the
passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of
society. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude
nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a
worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by
her unregarded. She could not hold herself much to blame for this
ineffectiveness, and she was perhaps less to blame than she believed.
Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the
highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its
narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been
fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the
rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast?  And was it her fault that
the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled
among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be
hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?

These last were the two antagonistic forces which fought out their battle
in her breast during the long watches of the night; and when she rose the
next morning she hardly knew where the victory lay. She was exhausted by
the reaction of a night without sleep, coming after many nights of rest
artificially obtained; and in the distorting light of fatigue the future
stretched out before her grey, interminable and desolate.

She lay late in bed, refusing the coffee and fried eggs which the
friendly Irish servant thrust through her door, and hating the intimate
domestic noises of the house and the cries and rumblings of the street.
Her week of idleness had brought home to her with exaggerated force these
small aggravations of the boarding-house world, and she yearned for that
other luxurious world, whose machinery is so carefully concealed that one
scene flows into another without perceptible agency.

At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's she had
spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial
promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical
fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not
decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from
the milliner's, and she was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.

The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey sky
threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals up and
down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Park, hoping to
find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the wind chilled her, and
after an hour's wandering under the tossing boughs she yielded to her
increasing weariness, and took refuge in a little restaurant in
Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and had meant to go without
luncheon; but she was too tired to return home, and the long perspective
of white tables showed alluringly through the windows.

The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the rapid
absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of shrill voices
reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little
circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had
lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken
to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a
responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the
sallow preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who sat by
themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring magazines
between their hurried gulps of tea.  Lily alone was stranded in a great
waste of disoccupation.

She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion of
stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when she emerged
once more into the street. She realized now that, as she sat in the
restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The
discovery gave her an immediate illusion of activity: it was exhilarating
to think that she had actually a reason for hurrying home.  To prolong
her enjoyment of the sensation she decided to walk; but the distance was
so great that she found herself glancing nervously at the clocks on the
way. One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that
time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it,
cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace.  Usually it loiters;
but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly
break into a wild irrational gallop.

She found, however, on reaching home, that the hour was still early
enough for her to sit down and rest a few minutes before putting her plan
into execution. The delay did not perceptibly weaken her resolve.  She
was frightened and yet stimulated by the reserved force of resolution
which she felt within herself: she saw it was going to be easier, a great
deal easier, than she had imagined.

At five o'clock she rose, unlocked her trunk, and took out a sealed
packet which she slipped into the bosom of her dress. Even the contact
with the packet did not shake her nerves as she had half-expected it
would. She seemed encased in a strong armour of indifference, as though
the vigorous exertion of her will had finally benumbed her finer
sensibilities.

She dressed herself once more for the street, locked her door and went
out. When she emerged on the pavement, the day was still high, but a
threat of rain darkened the sky and cold gusts shook the signs projecting
from the basement shops along the street. She reached Fifth Avenue and
began to walk slowly northward. She was sufficiently familiar with Mrs.
Dorset's habits to know that she could always be found at home after
five.  She might not, indeed, be accessible to visitors, especially to a
visitor so unwelcome, and against whom it was quite possible that she had
guarded herself by special orders; but Lily had written a note which she
meant to send up with her name, and which she thought would secure her
admission.

She had allowed herself time to walk to Mrs. Dorset's, thinking that the
quick movement through the cold evening air would help to steady her
nerves; but she really felt no need of being tranquillized. Her survey of
the situation remained calm and unwavering.

As she reached Fiftieth Street the clouds broke abruptly, and a rush of
cold rain slanted into her face. She had no umbrella and the moisture
quickly penetrated her thin spring dress. She was still half a mile from
her destination, and she decided to walk across to Madison Avenue and
take the electric car. As she turned into the side street, a vague memory
stirred in her. The row of budding trees, the new brick and limestone
house-fronts, the Georgian flat-house with flowerboxes on its balconies,
were merged together into the setting of a familiar scene.  It was down
this street that she had walked with Selden, that September day two years
ago; a few yards ahead was the doorway they had entered together. The
recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations--longings, regrets,
imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever
known. It was strange to find herself passing his house on such an
errand. She seemed suddenly to see her action as he would see it--and the
fact of his own connection with it, the fact that, to attain her end, she
must trade on his name, and profit by a secret of his past, chilled her
blood with shame. What a long way she had travelled since the day of
their first talk together!  Even then her feet had been set in the path
she was now following--even then she had resisted the hand he had held
out.

All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this
overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to help
her--to help her by loving her, as he had said--and if, the third time,
he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse? . . .
Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts
still clung to it. But the sudden longing to see him remained; it grew to
hunger as she paused on the pavement opposite his door. The street was
dark and empty, swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of
the bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a
light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the house.



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, after deciding to leave Mrs. Hatch, moves into a boarding house by herself, and takes a job as a milliner . She now finds herself officially divorced from society and a regular member of the working class. Lily, however, has trouble at work when her co-workers ostracize her as a member of the upper-class who has fallen from her high position. Lily is so worried about her situation that she begins taking sleeping medication  to help her rest at night, although the medicine she buys is particularly strong and should not be consumed in large doses. On her way home one day, she falls into a complete daze, in which she meets Rosedale once again. He walks her home, and after a pleasant conversation together, she tells him that she'd be glad if he were to visit often. Her relationship with Rosedale has finally become friendly. However, all is not well. In April, Lily is fired from her job for poor performance and attendance. Rosedale visits her again, and she admits to him that she has joined the working class with little hope of social uplift. Rosedale desperately wants to help her, but she refuses his offer of money. Wandering aimlessly around town, Lily feels totally hopeless, until she formulates a plan. She goes home to get the collection of letters from her desk, then goes to visit Selden. She apologizes to him for her rude behavior at Mrs. Hatch's house, then tells him that she has left the Emporium. Although she tries to control herself, Lily breaks down into tears in front of Selden, who comforts her. She cryptically tells him that they will not see each other for a long time, and she thanks him for always supporting her in her times of trouble. She confesses that she has passed up too many opportunities in life, and she professes that "life is difficult." Selden tells her she must tell him what her plans are, but Lily says nothing. They know that they love one another, and Lily tells Selden that the "old Lily" will forever be with him. She then subtly drops the package of Bertha's letters into Selden's fire and bids him goodbye.

