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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She glanced down at him, faintly smiling.

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

"Of course I did."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice,
in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.

"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back,
sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while
she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case,
the erect exterior of the patient confronting her.

"If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but I'm sure
you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to
let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don't
suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine
your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And
I'm sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even
Bertha kept her hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and
you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to
retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known Lawrence
Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just discovered him?
If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it--you
could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you
Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but
Lawrence's turning up put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her
think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you
this trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!"

Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest
impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own
conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's reproachful accents.
But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence.
"I only took a day off--I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and
I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning."

Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its
weakness.

"He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's run away
from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him thoroughly."

Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake him!"

Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily, do
nothing!"

Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean, literally, to
take the next train. There are ways----" But she did not go on to specify
them.

Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty of
them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out.  But don't
deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to
his mother, and she'll protect him!"

"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.

"How you can LAUGH----" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha
really told him?"

"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything.  Oh, you
know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose
she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord Hubert--and there was some
story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"

"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.

"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their
tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity
comes they remember everything."

Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money
I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course."

"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man--she knew
just what to tell him!"

In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case.  Presented
in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was
certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's
words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the
char-woman. Mrs. Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the
situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her
friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals,
she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of
indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had
driven her out again on those dark seas?

If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was
the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive
her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of
occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in
which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long
hours of subjection.

She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm sorry to
have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have
some letters for me to answer--let me at least be useful."

She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption
of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had
proved herself unfit for higher uses.

The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney
and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony
that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady
Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to
lunch at a distant country-house.  At such moments of diminished interest
it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on
this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed
and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few of us are
left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish the men would
always stop away--it's really much nicer without them. Oh, you don't
count, George: one doesn't have to talk to one's husband. But I thought
Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?" she added enquiringly.
"Didn't he intend to, Judy?  He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove
him away? He is rather shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he
has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way.  Do you know, Lily, he
told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you
doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and
always has a lot left over to invest!"

Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some one's duty
to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to
realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to
study the laws of his country."

Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the divorce
laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a
petition against divorce."

Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing
glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to
tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard."

His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed
with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship that will do for
him, it's the crew."

"Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated a voyage
with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold."

Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate
expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at him; I think he's very
nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a girl who married him would
always have enough to be comfortable."

She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but
it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the
breast of one of her hearers.

Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than
any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the
heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her
mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to
her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut
deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no
one else--not even Judy Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly.

She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered
request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the
luncheon-table.

"Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher
that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at
four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I'm very
glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him
rather severely since she's been here, and she is so keen about going to
fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her
alimony is paid by other women's husbands!"

Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself.  Why should
she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
for a married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
could of course borrow from her women friends--a hundred here or there,
at the utmost--but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
to understand its necessities.  The result of her meditations was the
decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
next morning for Richfield.

At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't
often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
to do."

The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from
the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and
slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage.

The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not often I
have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with
me."

"The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won the race,
anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent you. Now didn't
she?"

He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could
not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth.

"You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with; and she's
quite right," she rejoined.

"Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste your time
on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can
get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who've kept a free foot. Let
me light a cigar, will you? I've had a beastly day of it."

He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to
her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand
cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with
a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him
handsome!

As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you have
such a lot of tiresome things to do?"

"I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by
his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a
confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow has to hustle to keep
this kind of thing going." He waved his whip in the direction of the
Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations.
"Judy has no idea of what she spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep
the thing going," he interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his
eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to
live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it
too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know where I
should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then.  The women all
think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but to go down town once a
month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of
hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain
to-day, though," he went on after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke
of business, thanks to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily,
I wish you'd try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she'd
only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him.
The man is mad to know the people who don't want to know him, and when a
fellow's in that state there is nothing he won't do for the first woman
who takes him up."

Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's discourse had
started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by
the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She uttered a faint protest.

"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible."

"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner!  Well,
all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him
now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he'll be in
it whether we want him or not, and then he won't be giving away a
half-a-million tip for a dinner."

Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale
to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first words. This vast
mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and "deals"--might she not find in
it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard
of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more
notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and
its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed,
imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a "tip" from Mr.
Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious
commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in
a relation of almost fraternal intimacy.

In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal
instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of
explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always
scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal
fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of
inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not
open.

As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile.
"The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me a little
farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day, and it's so restful to
be away from people, with some one who won't mind if I'm a little dull."

She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so
trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt
himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him--not
battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would
have given their boots to get such a look from.

"Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits?  Is your
last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of
everything at bridge last night?"

Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet; and
bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of the things
my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I
don't play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as
the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about
my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a
favour--the very greatest of favours."

Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of
apprehension that she read in them.

"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage----" He broke off, and she
guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs.
Fisher's methods.

"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is, Judy is
angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."

"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense----" his relief broke through in a
laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you."

"She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her.
But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her
heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great deal of money."

She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning
abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence.

"A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce?  What--you do?
Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust me to keep my mouth
shut--but Gryce--good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring
yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And
so you gave him the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the
first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther
across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own
discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I
could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!"

Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that men
understand a woman's motives better than other women do."

"Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he repeated,
exulting in the implied superiority over his wife.

"I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to you,"
Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage; it's impossible.
But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost
entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she
makes me no regular allowance, and lately I've lost money at cards, and I
don't dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but
there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with
my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income
of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in
less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know
if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a
moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all
this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can't, at
present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away
tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the
rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own
clothes."

At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was
heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of
indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his
wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart's future, he would
have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better
marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of
discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that
he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the
assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he
was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her
disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if
she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and
approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she
was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.

Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.

Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.



The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
degree to which it effaced her debts.

The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
orders without making the payment!

She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing
intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
kindness.

"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he is telling the same ones
still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she
hasn't the least moral sense.  She is always getting Gus to speculate for
her, and I'm sure she never pays when she loses."

Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
Rosedale's "tip," and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood therefore
that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
of the next "big rise."

The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on the
occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group.  The
truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.

The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple country wedding" to
which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.

A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
blunder and bring him once more to her feet.

The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
more than it was worth.

"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
delightful had just happened to you!"

The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities.  Miss
Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her wavered
between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty
Farish's gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to
let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have
taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was something
irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no higher pleasures,
and that one might get as much interest and excitement out of life in a
cramped flat as in the splendours of the Van Osburgh establishment.
Today, however, her chirping enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They
seemed only to throw her own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and
give a soaring vastness to her scheme of life.

"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else leaves
the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in her friend's.
It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental and unenvious interest
in all the details of a wedding: she was the kind of person who always
kept her handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a
box of wedding-cake.

"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered the
distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van Osburgh's bridal
spoils. "I always say no one does things better than cousin Grace! Did
you ever taste anything more delicious than that MOUSSE of lobster with
champagne sauce? I made up my mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this
wedding, and just fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence
Selden heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving
me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him
at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
myself!"

Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time in such
an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a vague pleasure.

"Do you see him often?" she asked.

"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and then we
do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of him. He doesn't
look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled.  The dear fellow! I do
wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so today, but he said he
didn't care for the really nice ones, and the other kind didn't care for
him--but that was just his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl
who WASN'T nice.  Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"

They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught the
refraction of light from their surfaces--the milky gleam of perfectly
matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet,
the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding
diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied
art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like
wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized
the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and
refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and
the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.

"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant--it's as big as a
dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent short-sightedly
over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE.  What, that horrid man?
Oh, yes--I remember he's a friend of Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace
had to ask him here today; but she must rather hate having to let Gwen
accept such a present from him."

Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of
Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the
persons least likely to be encumbered by them.

"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always exchange
it for something else," she remarked.

"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued.  "Do
look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person who chose it
must have taken particular pains. What is the name?  Percy Gryce? Ah,
then I'm not surprised!" She smiled significantly as she replaced the
card. "Of course you've heard that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van
Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about it--it's quite a romance! He
met her first at the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's
just the nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
money--of course she has plenty of her own--but she's such a quiet
stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so
they are exactly suited to each other."

Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed.
Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her
brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull
and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness,
had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence!  Ah, lucky girls
who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love--a mother who knows how to
contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage
of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned,
may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it
takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.

Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of failure.
Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy Gryce's millions be
joined to another great fortune, why should this clumsy girl be put in
possession of powers she would never know how to use?

She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her arm,
and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of vexation:
what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had wandered off to
the next table, and they were alone.

Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
undisguised approval.

"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly into
the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the right moment
to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and women called each
other by their Christian names; it was only on Trenor's lips that the
familiar address had an unpleasant significance.

"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance, "have
you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean to
duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for you in my pocket
that will go a long way in that line!"

Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual, and the
room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance assured her
that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of pleasure replaced her
apprehension.

"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the desire
not to be overheard.

"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off four thou'
for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you'll begin to think
you're a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you won't think poor old
Gus such an awful ass as some people do."

"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you properly now."

She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone--and how glad she
was that they were not! The news filled her with the glow produced by a
sudden cessation of physical pain. The world was not so stupid and
blundering after all: now and then a stroke of luck came to the
unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began to rise: it was
characteristic of her that one trifling piece of good fortune should give
wings to all her hopes. Instantly came the reflection that Percy Gryce
was not irretrievably lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of
recapturing him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping
to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an
air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence
was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of the room.

Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily quickly
transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of her gratitude
seemed not to have brought the complete gratification she had meant it to
give.

"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like the
chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I thought you
were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I've hardly laid eyes
on you for the last month. Why can't you come back to Bellomont this
evening? We're all alone, and Judy is as cross as two sticks. Do come and
cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you
can telephone your maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."

Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish I
could--but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and I
must be with her for the next few days."

"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be such pals
than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he continued with
unconscious penetration.

"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you say the
most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would tire of me
much sooner than Judy--but come and see me at my aunt's the next
afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet talk, and you
can tell me how I had better invest my fortune."

It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had absented
herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other visits to pay; but
she now began to feel that the reckoning she had thus contrived to evade
had rolled up interest in the interval.

The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing to
Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he said:
"Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a fresh tip every day. But
there's one thing you might do for me; and that is, just to be a little
civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to dine when we get to
town, but I can't induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would
let me bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can tell you
he's a chap it pays to be decent to."

Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words which
seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an unexpectedly easy
way of acquitting her debt; and had she not reasons of her own for
wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?

"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can get a tip
out of him on my own account."

Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with a look
which made her change colour.

"I say, you know--you'll please remember he's a blooming bounder," he
said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window near
which they had been standing.

The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for space and
fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where only a few men
were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while scattered couples
strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted borders of the
flower-garden.

As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and she
found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which his
nearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.
They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that
episode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to be
less conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than the
satisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in
masculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor,
and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant
to rest a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
Selden's manner always conveyed.

"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be able to
have a word with you before the special snatches us away.  I came with
Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train, but I am sure
she is still extracting sentimental solace from the wedding presents. She
appears to regard their number and value as evidence of the disinterested
affection of the contracting parties."

There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and as he
spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and letting his
eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace, she felt with a
faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the
footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her
vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to
him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her
reply.

"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with
romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my
self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions
were."

The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity.  It
seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.

"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had been the
means of proving they were more important to you than anything else."

It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden
obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly,
like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the
faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go
alone!

The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latent
chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that
his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood
to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in a world
apart with her.

"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she exclaimed
with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the flow of
comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the reappearance of Gus
Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his wake.

"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I have
been hunting all over for you!"

His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and the
idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.

She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful by
the sense of Selden's surprise that she should number Rosedale among her
acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued to
stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smile
at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the
privilege of being seen with her.

It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but
Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene,
and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to
exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any
need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial
phrases of politeness.  Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant
attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level
with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
silence implied.

He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered the
plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his moustache;
then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said, with a
side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a more ripping get-up.
Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go to see at the
Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don't go to her too!"

The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she saw in a
flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In ordinary talk
they might have passed unheeded; but following on her prolonged pause
they acquired a special meaning. She felt, without looking, that Selden
had immediately seized it, and would inevitably connect the allusion with
her visit to himself. The consciousness increased her irritation against
Rosedale, but also her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.

"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my friends!"

Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this privileged
circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification, and a knowing
smile drew up his moustache.

"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the whole
outfit and win at a canter!"

"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would carry
me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or some innocent
drink before we all have to rush for the train."

She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through the
gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her throbbed with
the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of the scene.

But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the light
surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted: she did not
mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth about Percy Gryce.
Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty
withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most
of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few
minutes--the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life
which she most wished him to ignore--increased her longing for shelter,
for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation
would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in
an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.

Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of an
audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal actors had
left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily could discover
neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh.  That both should be
missing struck her with foreboding; and she charmed Mr. Rosedale by
proposing that they should make their way to the conservatories at the
farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long
suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of
being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off
as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen
with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search.
The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and
Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for
a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came
upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the
consciousness of duty performed.

She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the tired
hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots in a
kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly fixed, and
she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture. "My dear Lily, I
haven't had time for a word with you, and now I suppose you are just off.
Have you seen Evie? She's been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to
tell you her little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already.
The engagement is not to be announced till next week--but you are such a
friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the first to know
of their happiness."



In Mrs. Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue
residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze
who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey of that
deserted thoroughfare.

The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the
domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She "went through" the linen
and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner
folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for
lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield
up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths
and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed
in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.

It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on the
afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The journey back to
town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves. Though Evie Van
Osburgh's engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which
the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed;
and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and
anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of
innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation
evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included
a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in
the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear
herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner
between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
by the bright indifference of her manner.  But she was beginning to feel
the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed
to a deeper self-disgust.


As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a physical
outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings.  She revolted from
the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston's black walnut, from the
slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the mingled odour of sapolio
and furniture-polish that met her at the door.

The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she was
arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds. Gathering up
her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture; and as she did so
she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same
situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was
again descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to
remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met
by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar
circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on
crimson elbows, examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the
same apparent reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss
Bart was on her own ground.

"Don't you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail," she said
sharply.

The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of excuse,
she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth across the
landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter swept by. It was
insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such creatures about the
house; and Lily entered her room resolved that the woman should be
dismissed that evening.

Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance:
since early morning she had been shut up with her maid, going over her
furs, a process which formed the culminating episode in the drama of
household renovation. In the evening also Lily found herself alone, for
her aunt, who rarely dined out, had responded to the summons of a Van
Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.

She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
as she had said to Selden--people were tired of her.  They would welcome
her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.  She
knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.  There were
moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
sheds perfume.

Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.

Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston
when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in
the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented
the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston's temperate career.

Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her
excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the
person who performs them. She greatly preferred the brilliant and
unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the
other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that
the drawing-room should be "done over." But when it came to hunting for
missing napkins, or helping to decide whether the backstairs needed
re-carpeting, Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to
mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean of
itself, without extraneous assistance.

Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier--Mrs.
Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was "company"--Lily seemed to
watch her own figure retreating down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to
a middle age like Grace Stepney's. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor
and her friends she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston;
whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims
of others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.

A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty house,
roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was as though all
the weariness of the past months had culminated in the vacuity of that
interminable evening. If only the ring meant a summons from the outer
world--a token that she was still remembered and wanted!

After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announcement
that there was a person outside who was asking to see Miss Bart; and on
Lily's pressing for a more specific description, she added:

"It's Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants."

Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman in
a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light.  The
glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face and
the reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.
Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise.

"Do you wish to see me?" she asked.

"I should like to say a word to you, Miss." The tone was neither
aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker's errand.
Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to withdraw beyond
ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.

She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and closed
the door when they had entered.

"What is it that you wish?" she enquired.

The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms folded
in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small parcel wrapped
in dirty newspaper.

"I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart." She spoke
the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a
part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like a
threat.

"You have found something belonging to me?" she asked, extending her hand.

Mrs. Haffen drew back. "Well, if it comes to that, I guess it's mine as
much as anybody's," she returned.

Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her visitor's
manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in certain directions,
there was nothing in her experience to prepare her for the exact
significance of the present scene. She felt, however, that it must be
ended as promptly as possible.

"I don't understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked for
me?"

The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared to
answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way back to make a
beginning, and it was only after a pause that she replied: "My husband
was janitor to the Benedick till the first of the month; since then he
can't get nothing to do."

Lily remained silent and she continued: "It wasn't no fault of our own,
neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for, and we was
put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy.  I had a long sickness
last winter, and an operation that ate up all we'd put by; and it's hard
for me and the children, Haffen being so long out of a job."

After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a place for
her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady's intervention
with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always getting what she
wanted that she was used to being appealed to as an intermediary, and,
relieved of her vague apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional
formula.

"I am sorry you have been in trouble," she said.

"Oh, that we have, Miss, and it's on'y just beginning. If on'y we'd 'a
got another situation--but the agent, he's dead against us. It ain't no
fault of ours, neither, but----"

At this point Lily's impatience overcame her. "If you have anything to
say to me----" she interposed.

The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.

"Yes, Miss; I'm coming to that," she said. She paused again, with her
eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When
we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms;
leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays.  Some of the gentlemen got the
greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper
baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers falling over on the floor.
Maybe havin' so many is how they get so careless. Some of 'em is worse
than others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore 'em in little bits in
summer. But sometimes he'd have so many he'd just bunch 'em together, the
way the others did, and tear the lot through once--like this."

While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her hand,
and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table between Miss
Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn in two; but with a
rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together and smoothed out the page.

A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the presence
of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured--the kind of vileness of
which people whispered, but which she had never thought of as touching
her own life. She drew back with a motion of disgust, but her withdrawal
was checked by a sudden discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston's
chandelier she had recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a
large disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly
disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily's ear as though she had heard them
spoken.

At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha Dorset,
and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was no date, but the
blackness of the ink proved the writing to be comparatively recent.  The
packet in Mrs. Haffen's hand doubtless contained more letters of the same
kind--a dozen, Lily conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her
was short, but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she
was conscious of reading them, told a long history--a history over which,
for the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless "good situations"
of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the
volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo
glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek.
Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given
its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for
having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender
who is found out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The
code of Lily's world decreed that a woman's husband should be the only
judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while she had
the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man
of George Dorset's temper there could be no thought of condonation--the
possessor of his wife's letters could overthrow with a touch the whole
structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha Dorset's secret
had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged
Lily's disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust
prevailed--all her instinctive resistances, of taste, of training, of
blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest
sense was one of personal contamination.

She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible between
herself and her visitor. "I know nothing of these letters," she said; "I
have no idea why you have brought them here."

Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. "I'll tell you why, Miss.  I brought 'em
to you to sell, because I ain't got no other way of raising money, and if
we don't pay our rent by tomorrow night we'll be put out. I never done
anythin' of the kind before, and if you'd speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr.
Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on again at the Benedick--I seen you
talking to Mr. Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr.
Selden's rooms----"

The blood rushed to Lily's forehead. She understood now--Mrs. Haffen
supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap of her
anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but an obscure
impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden's name had started a new
train of thought. Bertha Dorset's letters were nothing to her--they might
go where the current of chance carried them! But Selden was inextricably
involved in their fate.  Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such
exposure; and in this instance the flash of divination which had carried
the meaning of the letters to Lily's brain had revealed also that they
were appeals--repeated and therefore probably unanswered--for the renewal
of a tie which time had evidently relaxed.  Nevertheless, the fact that
the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands would
convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world holds it least
pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider where a man of
Dorset's ticklish balance was concerned.

If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was aware only
of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued, and that therefore
she must obtain possession of them. Beyond that her mind did not travel.
She had, indeed, a quick vision of returning the packet to Bertha Dorset,
and of the opportunities the restitution offered; but this thought lit up
abysses from which she shrank back ashamed.

Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had already
opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table.  All the letters
had been pieced together with strips of thin paper. Some were in small
fragments, the others merely torn in half. Though there were not many,
thus spread out they nearly covered the table. Lily's glance fell on a
word here and there--then she said in a low voice: "What do you wish me
to pay you?"

Mrs. Haffen's face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that the
young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman to make
the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than she had
foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.

But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price named,
and after a moment's hesitation, met it by a counter-offer of half the
amount.

Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to restore
them to their wrapping.

"I guess they're worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor has got
to live as well as the rich," she observed sententiously.


Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
resistance.

"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have offered all I am
willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
them."

Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
a word of this commanding young lady's might set in motion.

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
letters mustn't go any farther.

Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones.  The
idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
original demand.

She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.

She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's
dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
keep them--to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
lamps, was never lit except when there was company.

Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.

She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.
"I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it's
extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly."

Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the
glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in
it.

Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. "My dear, you look tired; I
suppose it's the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full
of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us
about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the CONSOMME: a
wedding breakfast should always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn't care
for the bridesmaids' dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste's, but she says they
didn't look it. I'm glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade
of salmon-pink wouldn't have suited you." Mrs. Peniston delighted in
discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue
of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in
the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably
careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed
to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh's gown, and could not even say
whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table:
Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener
than as a narrator.

"Really, Lily, I don't see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding,
if you don't remember what happened or whom you saw there.  When I was a
girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went to, and write the
names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion
favours till after your uncle's death, when it seemed unsuitable to have
so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I
remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van
Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it's wonderful how she
notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress
was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must
have come from Paquin."

Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece
between two malachite vases, passed her lace handkerchief between the
helmet and its visor.

"I knew it--the parlour-maid never dusts there!" she exclaimed,
triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
reseating herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID cost more
than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea--a combination of
sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who
won't take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa
at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject's home life--a most
peculiar arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things and she
was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better;
she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in that
silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has
been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really
engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it
all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven--she had almost
despaired of marrying Evie."

Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed itself,
not to the furniture, but to her niece.

"Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you were to
marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they had stopped
with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite sure there was an
engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left unexpectedly one morning,
they all thought he had rushed to town for the ring."

Lily rose and moved toward the door.

"I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed," she said; and Mrs.
Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel sustaining
the late Mr. Peniston's crayon-portrait was not exactly in line with the
sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded brow to her kiss.

In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the grate.
It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at least she
could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her aunt's
disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however, but dropping
into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was large and
comfortably-furnished--it was the envy and admiration of poor Grace
Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious
appointments of the guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily's existence
were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston's bedroom, and
the magenta "flock" wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early 'sixties,
was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had
tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches,
in the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as
she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the
setting she had pictured for herself--an apartment which should surpass
the complicated luxury of her friends' surroundings by the whole extent
of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior;
in which every tint and line should combine to enhance her beauty and
give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical
ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle.

Her aunt's words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding her up
to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of their little
group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than any other
sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon which could flay
its victims without the shedding of blood. Her cheek burned at the
recollection, and she rose and caught up the letters. She no longer meant
to destroy them: that intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion
of Mrs. Peniston's words.

Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed
the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and
deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a
flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of
buying them.



The autumn dragged on monotonously. Miss Bart had received one or two
notes from Judy Trenor, reproaching her for not returning to Bellomont;
but she replied evasively, alleging the obligation to remain with her
aunt. In truth, however, she was fast wearying of her solitary existence
with Mrs. Peniston, and only the excitement of spending her
newly-acquired money lightened the dulness of the days.

All her life Lily had seen money go out as quickly as it came in, and
whatever theories she cultivated as to the prudence of setting aside a
part of her gains, she had unhappily no saving vision of the risks of the
opposite course. It was a keen satisfaction to feel that, for a few
months at least, she would be independent of her friends' bounty, that
she could show herself abroad without wondering whether some penetrating
eye would detect in her dress the traces of Judy Trenor's refurbished
splendour. The fact that the money freed her temporarily from all minor
obligations obscured her sense of the greater one it represented, and
having never before known what it was to command so large a sum, she
lingered delectably over the amusement of spending it.

It was on one of these occasions that, leaving a shop where she had spent
an hour of deliberation over a dressing-case of the most complicated
elegance, she ran across Miss Farish, who had entered the same
establishment with the modest object of having her watch repaired.  Lily
was feeling unusually virtuous. She had decided to defer the purchase of
the dressing-case till she should receive the bill for her new
opera-cloak, and the resolve made her feel much richer than when she had
entered the shop. In this mood of self-approval she had a sympathetic eye
for others, and she was struck by her friend's air of dejection.

Miss Farish, it appeared, had just left the committee-meeting of a
struggling charity in which she was interested. The object of the
association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a reading-room and
other modest distractions, where young women of the class employed in
down town offices might find a home when out of work, or in need of rest,
and the first year's financial report showed so deplorably small a
balance that Miss Farish, who was convinced of the urgency of the work,
felt proportionately discouraged by the small amount of interest it
aroused. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily,
and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's philanthropic
efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast
between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty's
"cases." These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps pretty, some
not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself
leading such a life as theirs--a life in which achievement seemed as
squalid as failure--and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing out her
little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the amount into Miss
Farish's hand.

The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent
moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a
person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing
good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her
horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy.  Moreover,
by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of
generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in
which she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish's surprise and
gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense
of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.

About this time she was farther cheered by an invitation to spend the
Thanksgiving week at a camp in the Adirondacks. The invitation was one
which, a year earlier, would have provoked a less ready response, for the
party, though organized by Mrs. Fisher, was ostensibly given by a lady of
obscure origin and indomitable social ambitions, whose acquaintance Lily
had hitherto avoided. Now, however, she was disposed to coincide with
Mrs. Fisher's view, that it didn't matter who gave the party, as long as
things were well done; and doing things well (under competent direction)
was Mrs. Wellington Bry's strong point. The lady (whose consort was known
as "Welly" Bry on the Stock Exchange and in sporting circles) had already
sacrificed one husband, and sundry minor considerations, to her
determination to get on; and, having obtained a hold on Carry Fisher, she
was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of committing herself entirely
to that lady's guidance. Everything, accordingly, was well done, for
there was no limit to Mrs. Fisher's prodigality when she was not spending
her own money, and as she remarked to her pupil, a good cook was the best
introduction to society. If the company was not as select as the CUISINE,
the Welly Brys at least had the satisfaction of figuring for the first
time in the society columns in company with one or two noticeable names;
and foremost among these was of course Miss Bart's. The young lady was
treated by her hosts with corresponding deference; and she was in the
mood when such attentions are acceptable, whatever their source. Mrs.
Bry's admiration was a mirror in which Lily's self-complacency recovered
its lost outline. No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those
which will sustain the weight of human vanity; and the sense of being of
importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the
gratifying consciousness of power. If these people paid court to her it
proved that she was still conspicuous in the world to which they aspired;
and she was not above a certain enjoyment in dazzling them by her
fineness, in developing their puzzled perception of her superiorities.

Perhaps, however, her enjoyment proceeded more than she was aware from
the physical stimulus of the excursion, the challenge of crisp cold and
hard exercise, the responsive thrill of her body to the influences of the
winter woods. She returned to town in a glow of rejuvenation, conscious
of a clearer colour in her cheeks, a fresh elasticity in her muscles. The
future seemed full of a vague promise, and all her apprehensions were
swept out of sight on the buoyant current of her mood.

A few days after her return to town she had the unpleasant surprise of a
visit from Mr. Rosedale. He came late, at the confidential hour when the
tea-table still lingers by the fire in friendly expectancy; and his
manner showed a readiness to adapt itself to the intimacy of the occasion.

Lily, who had a vague sense of his being somehow connected with her lucky
speculations, tried to give him the welcome he expected; but there was
something in the quality of his geniality which chilled her own, and she
was conscious of marking each step in their acquaintance by a fresh
blunder.

Mr. Rosedale--making himself promptly at home in an adjoining easy-chair,
and sipping his tea critically, with the comment: "You ought to go to my
man for something really good"--appeared totally unconscious of the
repugnance which kept her in frozen erectness behind the urn. It was
perhaps her very manner of holding herself aloof that appealed to his
collector's passion for the rare and unattainable. He gave, at any rate,
no sign of resenting it and seemed prepared to supply in his own manner
all the ease that was lacking in hers.

His object in calling was to ask her to go to the opera in his box on the
opening night, and seeing her hesitate he said persuasively: "Mrs. Fisher
is coming, and I've secured a tremendous admirer of yours, who'll never
forgive me if you don't accept."

As Lily's silence left him with this allusion on his hands, he added with
a confidential smile: "Gus Trenor has promised to come to town on
purpose. I fancy he'd go a good deal farther for the pleasure of seeing
you."

Miss Bart felt an inward motion of annoyance: it was distasteful enough
to hear her name coupled with Trenor's, and on Rosedale's lips the
allusion was peculiarly unpleasant.

"The Trenors are my best friends--I think we should all go a long way to
see each other," she said, absorbing herself in the preparation of fresh
tea.

Her visitor's smile grew increasingly intimate. "Well, I wasn't thinking
of Mrs. Trenor at the moment--they say Gus doesn't always, you know."
Then, dimly conscious that he had not struck the right note, he added,
with a well-meant effort at diversion: "How's your luck been going in
Wall Street, by the way? I hear Gus pulled off a nice little pile for you
last month."

Lily put down the tea-caddy with an abrupt gesture. She felt that her
hands were trembling, and clasped them on her knee to steady them; but
her lip trembled too, and for a moment she was afraid the tremor might
communicate itself to her voice. When she spoke, however, it was in a
tone of perfect lightness.

"Ah, yes--I had a little bit of money to invest, and Mr. Trenor, who
helps me about such matters, advised my putting it in stocks instead of a
mortgage, as my aunt's agent wanted me to do; and as it happened, I made
a lucky 'turn'--is that what you call it? For you make a great many
yourself, I believe."

She was smiling back at him now, relaxing the tension of her attitude,
and admitting him, by imperceptible gradations of glance and manner, a
step farther toward intimacy. The protective instinct always nerved her
to successful dissimulation, and it was not the first time she had used
her beauty to divert attention from an inconvenient topic.

When Mr. Rosedale took leave, he carried with him, not only her
acceptance of his invitation, but a general sense of having comported
himself in a way calculated to advance his cause. He had always believed
he had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt manner
in which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had "come into line,"
confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Her
way of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a
tribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The
girl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of
advancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage of
her nervousness.

He left Lily to a passion of disgust and fear. It seemed incredible that
Gus Trenor should have spoken of her to Rosedale.  With all his faults,
Trenor had the safeguard of his traditions, and was the less likely to
overstep them because they were so purely instinctive. But Lily recalled
with a pang that there were convivial moments when, as Judy had confided
to her, Gus "talked foolishly": in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word
had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first
shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn.  Though usually adroit
enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not
uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of
supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general
dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane,
the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial
conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions
with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr.
Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him
with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little
flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice
to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt of the
expediency of showing herself in his box on the opening night of the
opera; and after all, since Judy Trenor had promised to take him up that
winter, it was as well to reap the advantage of being first in the field.

For a day or two after Rosedale's visit, Lily's thoughts were dogged by
the consciousness of Trenor's shadowy claim, and she wished she had a
clearer notion of the exact nature of the transaction which seemed to
have put her in his power; but her mind shrank from any unusual
application, and she was always helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover
she had not seen Trenor since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in
his continued absence the trace of Rosedale's words was soon effaced by
other impressions.

When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
completely vanished that the sight of Trenor's ruddy countenance in the
back of Mr. Rosedale's box filled her with a sense of pleasant
reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity of
appearing as Rosedale's guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and it was a
relief to find herself supported by any one of her own set--for Mrs.
Fisher's social habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify
Miss Bart's.

To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty in
public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of dress, the
insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the general stream of
admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to
be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength
and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one's self
lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
counterpart of genius!

All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happy
shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, the
cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. But
brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt
to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still
performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If
Lily's poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought
that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor,
the latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight of
these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily look
smarter in her life, that there wasn't a woman in the house who showed
off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the
opportunity of making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of
gazing at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.

It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the back of
the box, where they found themselves alone between two acts, Trenor said,
without preamble, and in a tone of sulky authority: "Look here, Lily, how
is a fellow ever to see anything of you? I'm in town three or four days
in the week, and you know a line to the club will always find me, but you
don't seem to remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip
out of me."

The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any
easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment
for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows
by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.

"I'm very much flattered by your wanting to see me," she returned,
essaying lightness instead, "but, unless you have mislaid my address, it
would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt's--in fact, I
rather expected you to look me up there."

If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a
failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows
that made him look his dullest when he was angry: "Hang going to your
aunt's, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps
talking to you! You know I'm not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw--I'd
always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on.  But why
can't we go off somewhere on a little lark together--a nice quiet little
expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the
station?"

He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she
fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on
his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.

The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: "I
don't see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not
always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what
afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice
quiet talk."

"Hang talking! That's what you always say," returned Trenor, whose
expletives lacked variety. "You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh
wedding--but the plain English of it is that, now you've got what you
wanted out of me, you'd rather have any other fellow about."

His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with
annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive
hand on his arm.

"Don't be foolish, Gus; I can't let you talk to me in that ridiculous
way. If you really want to see me, why shouldn't we take a walk in the
Park some afternoon? I agree with you that it's amusing to be rustic in
town, and if you like I'll meet you there, and we'll go and feed the
squirrels, and you shall take me out on the lake in the steam-gondola."

She smiled as she spoke, letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took
the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable to her will.

"All right, then: that's a go. Will you come tomorrow? Tomorrow at three
o'clock, at the end of the Mall. I'll be there sharp, remember; you won't
go back on me, Lily?"

But to Miss Bart's relief the repetition of her promise was cut short by
the opening of the box door to admit George Dorset.

Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on
the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at
Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled
the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom
the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and
distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions.
But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily's intuitions sent out
thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she
was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the
trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to
him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of
kindness.

"Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling," he began
complainingly. "Not a shade of difference between this year and last,
except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven't got
new voices. My wife's musical, you know--puts me through a course of this
every winter. It isn't so bad on Italian nights--then she comes late, and
there's time to digest.  But when they give Wagner we have to rush
dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable--asphyxia in
front and pleurisy in the back. There's Trenor leaving the box without
drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don't make any
difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you'd wonder why
he's alive; I suppose he's leather inside too.--But I came to say that my
wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven's
sake say yes. She's got a lot of bores coming--intellectual ones, I mean;
that's her new line, you know, and I'm not sure it ain't worse than the
music. Some of 'em have long hair, and they start an argument with the
soup, and don't notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is
the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton
brings them to the house--he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he
are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of 'em if
she chose, and I don't blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I
say is: 'Don't let me see 'em eat!'"

The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of
pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing
surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont
episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a
start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died
out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST
INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the
apothegm.  If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset's letters, she might have
continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession
had fed her resentment to satiety.

She uttered a smiling acceptance, hailing in the renewal of the tie an
escape from Trenor's importunities.

 Book I, Chapter 6 Lily and Selden are on a walk together, Lily having broken her second planned meeting with Percy Gryce in order to see Selden. The excuse she gave Gryce was that she had a headache that first prevented her from going to church and second from going on a walk with him. She instead convinces him to join the other guests and go to the Van Osburgh home in Peekskill. Selden tells Lily that he views everything she does as having been premeditated. She disagrees, saying she is impulsive, but Selden argues that her genius is being able to convert impulse into intentions. They discuss the freedom that Selden enjoys, and he admits that he is able to be "amphibious" and live in both the wealthy elite society as well as the working society in New York where he is a lawyer. Selden and Lily continue conversing, discussing her ambitions in the society while Selden chooses to belittle them. She finally asks him if he would marry her, and he responds that maybe he would if she wanted to marry him. They both get caught up in the moment, but it is destroyed by the sound of a motorcar that reminds Lily that she is pretending to be sick back at the house. Selden and Lily share a cigarette at the end, but Selden is no longer as friendly to her, telling her that he took no risks in offering to marry her if she wanted him.

