Chapter: When Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium
Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The
force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more
in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at a
breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection
might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the
excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture.
The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense
mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest
note of criticism.

When, the afternoon before, she had presented herself to the lady to whom
Carry Fisher had directed her, she had been conscious of entering a new
world. Carry's vague presentment of Mrs. Norma Hatch (whose reversion to
her Christian name was explained as the result of her latest divorce),
left her under the implication of coming "from the West," with the not
unusual extenuation of having brought a great deal of money with her. She
was, in short, rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily's
hand. Mrs. Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she
owned herself unacquainted with Mrs. Hatch, whom she "knew about" through
Melville Stancy, a lawyer in his leisure moments, and the Falstaff of a
certain section of festive club life.  Socially, Mr. Stancy might have
been said to form a connecting link between the Gormer world and the more
dimly-lit region on which Miss Bart now found herself entering. It was,
however, only figuratively that the illumination of Mrs. Hatch's world
could be described as dim: in actual fact, Lily found her seated in a
blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornamental
excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which
she rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the
appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity of
something impaled and shown under glass. This did not preclude the
immediate discovery that she was some years younger than her visitor, and
that under her showiness, her ease, the aggression of her dress and
voice, there persisted that ineradicable innocence which, in ladies of
her nationality, so curiously coexists with startling extremes of
experience.

The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her as its
inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New
York hotel--a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with
mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements,
while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a
desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as
richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from
restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from "art
exhibit" to dress-maker's opening.  High-stepping horses or elaborately
equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into vague metropolitan
distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the weight of their
sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of the hotel routine.
Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was
doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves
were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies,
diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had
no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.

Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering that Mrs.
Hatch was its most substantial figure. That lady, though still floating
in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing an outline; and in this
endeavour she was actively seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy.  It was Mr.
Stancy, a man of large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial
occasions and of a chivalry finding expression in "first-night" boxes and
thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the
scene of her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the
metropolis. It was he who had selected the horses with which she had
taken the blue ribbon at the Show, had introduced her to the photographer
whose portraits of her formed the recurring ornament of "Sunday
Supplements," and had got together the group which constituted her social
world. It was a small group still, with heterogeneous figures suspended
in large unpeopled spaces; but Lily did not take long to learn that its
regulation was no longer in Mr. Stancy's hands. As often happens, the
pupil had outstripped the teacher, and Mrs. Hatch was already aware of
heights of elegance as well as depths of luxury beyond the world of the
Emporium.  This discovery at once produced in her a craving for higher
guidance, for the adroit feminine hand which should give the right turn
to her correspondence, the right "look" to her hats, the right succession
to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the regulator of a
germinating social life that Miss Bart's guidance was required; her
ostensible duties as secretary being restricted by the fact that Mrs.
Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one to write to.

The daily details of Mrs. Hatch's existence were as strange to Lily as
its general tenor. The lady's habits were marked by an Oriental indolence
and disorder peculiarly trying to her companion. Mrs. Hatch and her
friends seemed to float together outside the bounds of time and space. No
definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day
flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements,
so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner
was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs.
Hatch's vigil till daylight.

Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange throng
of hangers-on--manicures, beauty-doctors, hair-dressers, teachers of
bridge, of French, of "physical development": figures sometimes
indistinguishable, by their appearance, or by Mrs. Hatch's relation to
them, from the visitors constituting her recognized society. But
strangest of all to Lily was the encounter, in this latter group, of
several of her acquaintances.  She had supposed, and not without relief,
that she was passing, for the moment, completely out of her own circle;
but she found that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence
overlapped the edge of Mrs. Fisher's world, had drawn several of its
brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned
Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room was
one of Lily's first astonishments; but she soon discovered that he was
not Mr. Stancy's most important recruit. It was on little Freddy Van
Osburgh, the small slim heir of the Van Osburgh millions, that the
attention of Mrs. Hatch's group was centred. Freddy, barely out of
college, had risen above the horizon since Lily's eclipse, and she now
saw with surprise what an effulgence he shed on the outer twilight of
Mrs. Hatch's existence. This, then, was one of the things that young men
"went in" for when released from the official social routine; this was
the kind of "previous engagement" that so frequently caused them to
disappoint the hopes of anxious hostesses. Lily had an odd sense of being
behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted
and the loose ends hung. For a moment she found a certain amusement in
the show, and in her own share of it: the situation had an ease and
unconventionality distinctly refreshing after her experience of the irony
of conventions. But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions
from the long disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of
Mrs. Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed packed
with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible pretty woman of her
acquaintance had her inherited obligations, her conventional
benevolences, her share in the working of the great civic machine; and
all hung together in the solidarity of these traditional functions. The
performance of specific duties would have simplified Miss Bart's
position; but the vague attendance on Mrs. Hatch was not without its
perplexities.

It was not her employer who created these perplexities. Mrs. Hatch showed
from the first an almost touching desire for Lily's approval.  Far from
asserting the superiority of wealth, her beautiful eyes seemed to urge
the plea of inexperience: she wanted to do what was "nice," to be taught
how to be "lovely." The difficulty was to find any point of contact
between her ideals and Lily's.

Mrs. Hatch swam in a haze of indeterminate enthusiasms, of aspirations
culled from the stage, the newspapers, the fashion journals, and a gaudy
world of sport still more completely beyond her companion's ken.  To
separate from these confused conceptions those most likely to advance the
lady on her way, was Lily's obvious duty; but its performance was
hampered by rapidly-growing doubts. Lily was in fact becoming more and
more aware of a certain ambiguity in her situation.  It was not that she
had, in the conventional sense, any doubt of Mrs. Hatch's
irreproachableness. The lady's offences were always against taste rather
than conduct; her divorce record seemed due to geographical rather than
ethical conditions; and her worst laxities were likely to proceed from a
wandering and extravagant good-nature.  But if Lily did not mind her
detaining her manicure for luncheon, or offering the "Beauty-Doctor" a
seat in Freddy Van Osburgh's box at the play, she was not equally at ease
in regard to some less apparent lapses from convention. Ned Silverton's
relation to Stancy seemed, for instance, closer and less clear than any
natural affinities would warrant; and both appeared united in the effort
to cultivate Freddy Van Osburgh's growing taste for Mrs. Hatch. There was
as yet nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve
itself into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a
vague sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich
and too credulous.  Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that
Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the social
development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his part, a
permanent interest in the lady's future. There were moments when Lily
found an ironic amusement in this aspect of the case. The thought of
launching such a missile as Mrs. Hatch at the perfidious bosom of society
was not without its charm: Miss Bart had even beguiled her leisure with
visions of the fair Norma introduced for the first time to a family
banquet at the Van Osburghs'. But the thought of being personally
connected with the transaction was less agreeable; and her momentary
flashes of amusement were followed by increasing periods of doubt.

The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon, she was
surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her alone in the
wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch's world the tea-hour was not
dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in the hands of her masseuse.

Selden's entrance had caused Lily an inward start of embarrassment; but
his air of constraint had the effect of restoring her self-possession,
and she took at once the tone of surprise and pleasure, wondering frankly
that he should have traced her to so unlikely a place, and asking what
had inspired him to make the search.

Selden met this with an unusual seriousness: she had never seen him so
little master of the situation, so plainly at the mercy of any
obstructions she might put in his way. "I wanted to see you," he said;
and she could not resist observing in reply that he had kept his wishes
under remarkable control. She had in truth felt his long absence as one
of the chief bitternesses of the last months: his desertion had wounded
sensibilities far below the surface of her pride.

Selden met the challenge with directness. "Why should I have come, unless
I thought I could be of use to you? It is my only excuse for imagining
you could want me."

This struck her as a clumsy evasion, and the thought gave a flash of
keenness to her answer. "Then you have come now because you think you can
be of use to me?"

He hesitated again. "Yes: in the modest capacity of a person to talk
things over with."

For a clever man it was certainly a stupid beginning; and the idea that
his awkwardness was due to the fear of her attaching a personal
significance to his visit, chilled her pleasure in seeing him. Even under
the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always made itself felt: she
might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room.
She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the
light fell on his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his
clothes--she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven
with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her,
and the turmoil of her spirit ceased; but an impulse of resistance to
this stealing influence now prompted her to say: "It's very good of you
to present yourself in that capacity; but what makes you think I have
anything particular to talk about?"

Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was
framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and
for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one
which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling;
and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of
such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into
resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they
faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's
elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its
monstrous mates, served at length to suggest the turn of Selden's reply.

"Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch's secretary; and I knew
she was anxious to hear how you were getting on."

Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. "Why
didn't she look me up herself, then?" she asked.

"Because, as you didn't send her your address, she was afraid of being
importunate." Selden continued with a smile: "You see no such scruples
restrained me; but then I haven't as much to risk if I incur your
displeasure."

Lily answered his smile. "You haven't incurred it as yet; but I have an
idea that you are going to."

"That rests with you, doesn't it? You see my initiative doesn't go beyond
putting myself at your disposal."

"But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?" she asked in the same
light tone.

Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room; then he said, with
a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection:
"You are to let me take you away from here."

Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it
and said coldly: "And may I ask where you mean me to go?"

"Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is
that it should be away from here."

The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words
cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own
were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at
a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and
unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of
authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.

"I am very much obliged to you," she said, "for taking such an interest
in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention
of leaving."

Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
uncontrollable expectancy.

"That simply means that you don't know where you are!" he exclaimed.

Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. "If you have come here to
say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch----"

"It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned."

"My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of.  She
has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to
seeing me starve."

"Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can
always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again."

"You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose
you mean--till my aunt's legacy is paid?"

"I do mean that; Gerty told me of it," Selden acknowledged without
embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false
constraint in speaking his mind.

"But Gerty does not happen to know," Miss Bart rejoined, "that I owe
every penny of that legacy."

"Good God!" Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the
abruptness of the statement.

"Every penny of it, and more too," Lily repeated; "and you now perhaps
see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of
Gerty's kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I
must earn something more to keep myself alive."

Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone: "But with
your income and Gerty's--since you allow me to go so far into the details
of the situation--you and she could surely contrive a life together which
would put you beyond the need of having to support yourself. Gerty, I
know, is eager to make such an arrangement, and would be quite happy in
it----"

"But I should not," Miss Bart interposed. "There are many reasons why it
would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself." She paused a moment,
and as he seemed to await a farther explanation, added with a quick lift
of her head: "You will perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons."

"I have no claim to know them," Selden answered, ignoring her tone; "no
claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have already
made. And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to
enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false
position."

Lily smiled. "I suppose," she rejoined, "that by a false position you
mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember that I
had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before I met Mrs.
Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real difference in being
inside or out, and I remember your once telling me that it was only those
inside who took the difference seriously."

She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their
memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of the
nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of the
experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion to
deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer fulness of
emphasis: "The question of being inside or out is, as you say, a small
one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the case, except in so far
as Mrs. Hatch's desire to be inside may put you in the position I call
false."

In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect
of confirming Lily's resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused
hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of
personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his
attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her
appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference.
The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits
he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her
aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth farther
into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be,
she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.

"I don't know," she said, when he had ceased to speak, "why you imagine
me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always told me that
the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to teach a girl to get
what she wants, why not assume that that is precisely what I am doing?"

The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier
raised against farther confidences: its brightness held him at such a
distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing as he
rejoined: "I am not sure that I have ever called you a successful example
of that kind of bringing-up."

Her colour rose a little at the implication, but she steeled herself with
a light laugh. "Ah, wait a little longer--give me a little more time
before you decide!" And as he wavered before her, still watching for a
break in the impenetrable front she presented: "Don't give me up; I may
still do credit to my training!" she affirmed.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Altogether--yes," she calmly agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

 Lily is now working as secretary to the multiply divorced and wealthy socialite Mrs. Hatch at the Emporium Hotel. Hatch is the head of her social group, which includes Mr. Melville Stancy, Silverton, and Freddy Van Osburgh. Selden visits Lily at the Emporium; he is uneasy and makes inappropriately defensive comments. He stridently offers to take Lily away from Mrs. Hatch and the Emporium. He tells her to room with Gerty until Lily's inheritance is paid. Lily tells Selden that she owes every penny of her inheritance. Selden is firm in recommending that Lily depart Mrs. Hatch's employ, but this firmness stiffens Lily's determination to stay. In Chapter X, Gerty recommends millinery work to Lily -- a position for which she seems suited as she has remarked that she can trim hats. Also, wanting to help Lily, Carry approaches Judy. Judy reacts violently, which baffles Carry. Carry gets Lily work at Mme. Regina millinery shop, but Lily refuses to work on the sale floor modeling hats for fear of being seen by her former social circle; she instead goes to work constructing the hats. She is chastised by the forewoman, Miss Haines, for crookedly sewing spangles on a hat, but is comforted by the kindliness of Miss Kilroy, a co-worker. Lily has begun to use Mrs. Hatch's prescription for chloral in order to sleep. The pharmacist warns her not to increase the dosage. While filling the prescription, she encounters Rosedale. Rosedale and Lily go for tea, and Lily tells Rosedale her reasons for leaving the employ of Mrs. Hatch: She did not want to be perceived as assisting Mrs. Hatch's romantic designs on the wealthy Van Osburgh. Because Rosedale admits he has heard rumors of Lily's involvement, Lily expresses that she might as well have stayed employed with Mrs. Hatch. Lily tells Rosedale that she is working for Mme. Regina, a revelation that shocks the wealthy financier. She also tells him that she owes her entire legacy to Trenor and others. Before he can offer to help her, Lily excuses herself from the table. Rosedale walks her back to her boarding room and asks to see her again. Lily graciously agrees. Alone in her room, Lily contemplates using her inheritance from Mrs. Peniston to set up her own millinery establishment. From the proceeds, she reasons, she can pay back Trenor. Such a plan, however, she knows will take years. She blames Bertha for her misfortune, and wonders how long she can continue to resist the temptation to use the letters against her. She drugs herself and falls into a deep sleep.

