House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

BOOK I

Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand
Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss
Lily Bart.

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his
work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart
doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching
a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the
act of transition between one and another of the country-houses
which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport
season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from
the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street,
and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once
that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the
idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he
could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was
characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that
her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to
the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish
to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to
think of putting her skill to the test.

"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"

She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to
intercept him. One or two persons, in brushing past them,
lingered to look; for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the
suburban traveller rushing to his last train.

Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved
against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous
than in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained
the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was
beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and
indefatigable dancing. Was it really eleven years, Selden found
himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the
nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?

"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my
rescue!"

He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and
asked what form the rescue was to take.

"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me.
One sits out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit
hotter here than in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of
the women are not a bit uglier."  She broke off, laughing, to
explain that she had come up to town from Tuxedo, on her way to
the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had missed the three-fifteen
train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another till half-past
five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her laces.
"Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was
to go on to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is
closed, and I don't know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively
about the station. "It IS hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after
all. If you can spare the time, do take me somewhere for a breath
of air."

He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure
struck him as diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed
Lily Bart; and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it
amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy
which her proposal implied.

"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"

She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.

"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet
a lot of bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought
not to make any difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not,"
she objected gaily. "I'm dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter
place?"

He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her
discretions interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he
was so sure that both were part of the same carefully-elaborated
plan. In judging Miss Bart, he had always made use of the
"argument from design."

"The resources of New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll
find a hansom first, and then we'll invent something."He led her
through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced
girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling
with paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she
belonged to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this
average section of womanhood made him feel how highly
specialized she was.

A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung
refreshingly over the moist street.

"How delicious! Let us walk a little," she said as they emerged
from the station.

They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As
she moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was
conscious of taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the
modelling of her little ear, the crisp upward wave of her
hair--was it ever so slightly brightened by art?--and the thick
planting of her straight black lashes. Everything about her was
at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a
confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that
a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way,
have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the
qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were
chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and
fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay. Yet the analogy
left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture will not take a high
finish; and was it not possible that the material was fine, but
that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?

As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out,
and her lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two
later she paused with a sigh.

"Oh, dear, I'm so hot and thirsty--and what a hideous place New
York is!" She looked despairingly up and down the dreary
thoroughfare. "Other cities put on their best clothes in summer,
but New York seems to sit in its shirtsleeves." Her eyes wandered
down one of the side-streets. "Someone has had the humanity to
plant a few trees over there. Let us go into the shade."

"I am glad my street meets with your approval," said Selden as
they turned the corner.

"Your street? Do you live here?"

She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone
house-fronts, fantastically varied in obedience to the American
craving for novelty, but fresh and inviting with their awnings
and flower-boxes.

"Ah, yes--to be sure: THE BENEDICK. What a nice-looking building!
I don't think I've ever seen it before." She looked across at the
flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian facade.
"Which are your windows? Those with the awnings down?"

"On the top floor--yes."

"And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up
there!"

He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give
you a cup of tea in no time--and you won't meet any bores."

Her colour deepened--she still had the art of blushing at the
right time--but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was
made.

"Why not? It's too tempting--I'll take the risk," she declared.

"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key. In truth, he
had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had
accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her
calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in
the spontaneity of her consent.

On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.

"There's no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to
come in the mornings, and it's just possible he may have put out
the tea-things and provided some cake."

He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She
noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his
gloves and sticks; then she found herself in a small library,
dark but cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded
Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray
on a low table near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying
inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of
mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.

Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.

"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What
a miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a
luxury of discontent.

Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.

"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges
of a flat."

"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable,
marriageable girls!"

"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."

She sat up in surprise. "You do?"

"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the
sought-for cake.

"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little
unkindly. "But I said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid
little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook
does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that,
you know."

"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting
the cake.

They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp
under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little
tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit
of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire
bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony of
suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish had
chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which
had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like
manacles chaining her to her fate.

She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that
of Gerty," she said with charming compunction. "I forgot she was
your cousin. But we're so different, you know: she likes being
good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am
not. If I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her
flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one
likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only
do over my aunt's drawing-room I know I should be a better
woman."

"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.

She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to
be filled.

"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come
oftener?"

"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."

"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on
so well when we meet."

"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I
haven't any cream, you know--shall you mind a slice of lemon
instead?"

"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and
dropped a thin disk into her cup. "But that is not the reason,"
she insisted.

"The reason for what?"

"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of
perplexity in her charming eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could
make you out. Of course I know there are men who don't like
me--one can tell that at a glance. And there are others who are
afraid of me: they think I want to marry them." She smiled up at
him frankly.

"But I don't think you dislike me--and you can't possibly think I
want to marry you."

"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.

"Well, then---?"

He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning
against the chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of
indolent amusement. The provocation in her eyes increased his
amusement--he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such
small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or
perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the
personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had
asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.

"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."

"What?"

"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard
it as such a strong inducement to go and see you." He felt
a slight shiver down his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh
reassured him.

"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you
to make love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." She
leaned back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial
that, if they had been in her aunt's drawing-room, he might
almost have tried to disprove her deduction.

"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say
pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't
be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I
have fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except
that you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't
have to pretend with you or be on my guard against you." Her
voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up
at him with the troubled gravity of a child.

"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My
aunt is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to
apply to conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that to live
up to them would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves.
And the other women--my best friends--well, they use me or abuse
me; but they don't care a straw what happens to me. I've been
about too long--people are getting tired of me; they are
beginning to say I ought to marry."

There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or
two replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation;
but he rejected them in favour of the simple question: "Well, why
don't you?"

She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all,
and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."

"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably.
"Isn't marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought
up for?"

She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"

"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the
first man who came along."

"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as
that. But there must be some one with the requisite
qualifications."

She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances
when I first came out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I
am horribly poor--and very expensive. I must have a great deal of
money."

Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the
mantelpiece.

"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.

"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all
the family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I
wouldn't do over the drawing-room."

"The very thing you are marrying for!"

"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."

"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."

He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes,
putting one between her lips and slipping the others into a
little gold case attached to her long pearl chain.

"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding
the tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a
purely impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set
in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them
melted into the pure pallour of the cheek.

She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves
between the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had
the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes
lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the
expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures
that was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her
expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture,
and she turned to Selden with a question.

"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and
things?"

"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I
pick up something in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at
the big sales."

She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now
swept them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied
with a new idea.

"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"

Selden stared and laughed.

"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector,
you see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am
fond of."

She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I
suppose?"

"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real
collector values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the
buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson
Gryce certainly didn't."

She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch
fabulous prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot
for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read!
And I suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians
either?"

"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have
to use those in the public libraries or in private collections.
It seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average
collector."

He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was
standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were
the rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was
really considered the finest in the world, and what was the
largest price ever fetched by a single volume.

It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her, as she lifted
now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the
pages between her fingers, while her drooping profile was
outlined against the warm background of old bindings, that he
talked on without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so
unsuggestive a subject. But he could never be long with her
without trying to find a reason for what she was doing, and as
she replaced his first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from
the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving
at. Her next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She
paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to
admit him to her familiarity, and to remind him of the
restrictions it imposed.

"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough
to buy all the books you want?"

He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture
and shabby walls.

"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"

"And having to work--do you mind that?"

"Oh, the work itself is not so bad--I'm rather fond of the law."

"No; but the being tied down: the routine--don't you ever want to
get away, to see new places and people?"

"Horribly--especially when I see all my friends rushing to the
steamer."

She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough--to marry
to get out of it?"

Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.

She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.

"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must, a man may if he
chooses." She surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little
shabby--but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to
dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out
as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the
background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but
they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected
to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and if we can't keep
it up alone, we have to go into partnership."

Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even
with her lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of
her case.

"Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for
such an investment. Perhaps you'll meet your fate tonight at the
Trenors'."

She returned his look interrogatively.

"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity!
But there are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the
Wetheralls, Lady Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."

She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query
through her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.

"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the
week; and those big parties bore me."

"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.

"Then why go?"

"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't,
I should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."

"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they
both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

She glanced at the clock.

"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."

She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror
while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope
of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her
outline--as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the
conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was
the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such
savour to her artificiality.

He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the
threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.

"It's been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit."

"But don't you want me to see you to the station?"

"No; good bye here, please."

She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.

"Good bye, then--and good luck at Bellomont!" he said, opening
the door for her.

On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a
thousand chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one
could never tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions
by a violent reaction of prudence. There was no one in sight,
however, but a char-woman who was scrubbing the stairs. Her own
stout person and its surrounding implements took up so much room
that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts and brush
against the wall. As she did so, the woman paused in her work and
looked up curiously, resting her clenched red fists on the
wet cloth she had just drawn from her pail. She had a broad
sallow face, slightly pitted with small-pox, and thin
straw-coloured hair through which her scalp shone unpleasantly.

"I beg your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to
convey a criticism of the other's manner.

The woman, without answering, pushed her pail aside, and
continued to stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken
linings. Lily felt herself flushing under the look. What did the
creature suppose? Could one never do the simplest, the most
harmless thing, without subjecting one's self to some odious
conjecture? Half way down the next flight, she smiled to think
that a char-woman's stare should so perturb her. The poor thing
was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But WERE
such apparitions unwonted on Selden's stairs? Miss Bart was not
familiar with the moral code of bachelors' flat-houses, and her
colour rose again as it occurred to her that the woman's
persistent gaze implied a groping among past associations. But
she put aside the thought with a smile at her own fears, and
hastened downward, wondering if she should find a cab short of
Fifth Avenue.

Under the Georgian porch she paused again, scanning the street
for a hansom. None was in sight, but as she reached the sidewalk
she ran against a small glossy-looking man with a gardenia in his
coat, who raised his hat with a surprised exclamation.

"Miss Bart? Well--of all people! This IS luck," he declared; and
she caught a twinkle of amused curiosity between his screwed-up
lids.

"Oh, Mr. Rosedale--how are you?" she said, perceiving that the
irrepressible annoyance on her face was reflected in the sudden
intimacy of his smile.

Mr. Rosedale stood scanning her with interest and approval. He
was a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London
clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes
which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were
bric-a-brac. He glanced up interrogatively at the porch of the
Benedick.

"Been up to town for a little shopping, I suppose?" he said, in a
tone which had the familiarity of a touch.

Miss Bart shrank from it slightly, and then flung herself into
precipitate explanations.

"Yes--I came up to see my dress-maker. I am just on my way to
catch the train to the Trenors'."

"Ah--your dress-maker; just so," he said blandly. "I didn't know
there were any dress-makers in the Benedick."

"The Benedick?" She looked gently puzzled. "Is that the name of
this building?"

"Yes, that's the name: I believe it's an old word for bachelor,
isn't it? I happen to own the building--that's the way I know."
His smile deepened as he added with increasing assurance: "But
you must let me take you to the station. The Trenors are at
Bellomont, of course? You've barely time to catch the five-forty.
The dress-maker kept you waiting, I suppose."

Lily stiffened under the pleasantry.

"Oh, thanks," she stammered; and at that moment her eye caught a
hansom drifting down Madison Avenue, and she hailed it with a
desperate gesture.

"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you," she
said, extending her hand to Mr. Rosedale; and heedless of his
protestations, she sprang into the rescuing vehicle, and called
out a breathless order to the driver.

In the hansom she leaned back with a sigh. Why must a girl pay so
dearly for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do
a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of
artifice? She had yielded to a passing impulse in going to
Lawrence Selden's rooms, and it was so seldom that she could
allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This one, at any rate,
was going to cost her rather more than she could afford. She was
vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of vigilance, she
had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story about
her dress-maker was bad enough--it would have been so simple to
tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere
statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But,
after having let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was
doubly stupid to snub the witness of her discomfiture. If she had
had the presence of mind to let Rosedale drive her to the
station, the concession might have purchased his silence. He had
his race's accuracy in the appraisal of values, and to be seen
walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the
company of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as
he might himself have phrased it. He knew, of course, that there
would be a large house-party at Bellomont, and the possibility of
being taken for one of Mrs. Trenor's guests was doubtless
included in his calculations. Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage
in his social ascent when it was of importance to produce such
impressions.

The provoking part was that Lily knew all this--knew how easy it
would have been to silence him on the spot, and how difficult it
might be to do so afterward. Mr. Simon Rosedale was a man who
made it his business to know everything about every one, whose
idea of showing himself to be at home in society was to display
an inconvenient familiarity with the habits of those with whom he
wished to be thought intimate. Lily was sure that within
twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker at
the Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's
acquaintances. The worst of it was that she had always snubbed
and ignored him. On his first appearance--when her
improvident cousin, Jack Stepney, had obtained for him (in return
for favours too easily guessed) a card to one of the vast
impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"--Rosedale, with that mixture of
artistic sensibility and business astuteness which characterizes
his race, had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She
understood his motives, for her own course was guided by as nice
calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be
hospitable to newcomers, since the most unpromising might be
useful later on, and there were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to
swallow them if they were not. But some intuitive repugnance,
getting the better of years of social discipline, had made her
push Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a trial. He had left
behind only the ripple of amusement which his speedy despatch had
caused among her friends; and though later (to shift the
metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in
fleeting glimpses, with long submergences between.

Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set
Mr. Rosedale had been pronounced "impossible," and Jack Stepney
roundly snubbed for his attempt to pay his debts in dinner
invitations. Even Mrs. Trenor, whose taste for variety had led
her into some hazardous experiments, resisted Jack's attempts to
disguise Mr. Rosedale as a novelty, and declared that he was the
same little Jew who had been served up and rejected at the social
board a dozen times within her memory; and while Judy Trenor was
obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale's penetrating
beyond the outer limbo of the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave up
the contest with a laughing "You'll see," and, sticking manfully
to his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable
restaurants, in company with the personally vivid if socially
obscure ladies who are available for such purposes. But the
attempt had hitherto been vain, and as Rosedale undoubtedly paid
for the dinners, the laugh remained with his debtor.

Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be
feared--unless one put one's self in his power. And this was
precisely what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see
that she had something to conceal; and she was sure he had a
score to settle with her. Something in his smile told her
he had not forgotten. She turned from the thought with a little
shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the station, and dogged
her down the platform with the persistency of Mr. Rosedale
himself.

She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but
having arranged herself in her corner with the instinctive
feeling for effect which never forsook her, she glanced about in
the hope of seeing some other member of the Trenors' party. She
wanted to get away from herself, and conversation was the only
means of escape that she knew.

Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young
man with a soft reddish beard, who, at the other end of the
carriage, appeared to be dissembling himself behind an unfolded
newspaper. Lily's eye brightened, and a faint smile relaxed the
drawn lines of her mouth. She had known that Mr. Percy Gryce was
to be at Bellomont, but she had not counted on the luck of having
him to herself in the train; and the fact banished all perturbing
thoughts of Mr. Rosedale. Perhaps, after all, the day was to end
more favourably than it had begun.

She began to cut the pages of a novel, tranquilly studying her
prey through downcast lashes while she organized a method of
attack. Something in his attitude of conscious absorption told
her that he was aware of her presence: no one had ever been quite
so engrossed in an evening paper! She guessed that he was too shy
to come up to her, and that she would have to devise some means
of approach which should not appear to be an advance on her part.
It amused her to think that any one as rich as Mr. Percy Gryce
should be shy; but she was gifted with treasures of indulgence
for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his timidity might serve
her purpose better than too much assurance. She had the art of
giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not
equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.

She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was
racing between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as
it lowered its speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and
drifted slowly down the carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the
train gave a lurch, and he was aware of a slender hand gripping
the back of his chair. He rose with a start, his ingenuous
face looking as though it had been dipped in crimson: even the
reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen. The train swayed
again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms.

She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was
enveloped in the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt
her fugitive touch.

"Oh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I'm so sorry--I was trying to find the
porter and get some tea."

She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and
they stood exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes--he was going
to Bellomont. He had heard she was to be of the party--he blushed
again as he admitted it. And was he to be there for a whole week?
How delightful!

But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last
station forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to
retreat to her seat.

"The chair next to mine is empty--do take it," she said over her
shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment,
succeeded in effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport
himself and his bags to her side.

"Ah--and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea."

She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease
that seemed to attend the fulfilment of all her wishes, a little
table had been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr.
Gryce to bestow his encumbering properties beneath it.

When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her
hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and
slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It
seemed wonderful to him that any one should perform with such
careless ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a
lurching train. He would never have dared to order it for
himself, lest he should attract the notice of his
fellow-passengers; but, secure in the shelter of her
conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with a delicious
sense of exhilaration.

Lily, with the flavour of Selden's caravan tea on her lips, had
no great fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such
nectar to her companion; but, rightly judging that one of
the charms of tea is the fact of drinking it together, she
proceeded to give the last touch to Mr. Gryce's enjoyment by
smiling at him across her lifted cup.

"Is it quite right--I haven't made it too strong?" she asked
solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never
tasted better tea.

"I daresay it is true," she reflected; and her imagination was
fired by the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the
depths of the most complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually
taking his first journey alone with a pretty woman.

It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument
of his initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage
him. They would have over-emphasized the novelty of the
adventure, trying to make him feel in it the zest of an escapade.
But Lily's methods were more delicate. She remembered that her
cousin Jack Stepney had once defined Mr. Gryce as the young man
who had promised his mother never to go out in the rain without
his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to impart a
gently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her companion,
instead of feeling that he was doing something reckless or
unusual, would merely be led to dwell on the advantage of always
having a companion to make one's tea in the train.

But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray
had been removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement
of Mr. Gryce's limitations. It was not, after all, opportunity
but imagination that he lacked: he had a mental palate which
would never learn to distinguish between railway tea and nectar.
There was, however, one topic she could rely on: one spring that
she had only to touch to set his simple machinery in motion. She
had refrained from touching it because it was a last resource,
and she had relied on other arts to stimulate other sensations;
but as a settled look of dulness began to creep over his candid
features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary.

"And how," she said, leaning forward, "are you getting on with
your Americana?"

His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an
incipient film had been removed from it, and she felt the pride
of a skilful operator.

"I've got a few new things," he said, suffused with pleasure, but
lowering his voice as though he feared his fellow-passengers
might be in league to despoil him.

She returned a sympathetic enquiry, and gradually he was drawn on
to talk of his latest purchases. It was the one subject which
enabled him to forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to
remember himself without constraint, because he was at home in
it, and could assert a superiority that there were few to
dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared for Americana, or
knew anything about them; and the consciousness of this ignorance
threw Mr. Gryce's knowledge into agreeable relief. The only
difficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the
front; most people showed no desire to have their ignorance
dispelled, and Mr. Gryce was like a merchant whose warehouses are
crammed with an unmarketable commodity.

But Miss Bart, it appeared, really did want to know about
Americana; and moreover, she was already sufficiently informed to
make the task of farther instruction as easy as it was agreeable.
She questioned him intelligently, she heard him submissively;
and, prepared for the look of lassitude which usually crept over
his listeners' faces, he grew eloquent under her receptive gaze.
The "points" she had had the presence of mind to glean from
Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were serving
her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him
had been the luckiest incident of the day. She had once more
shown her talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous
theories as to the advisability of yielding to impulse were
germinating under the surface of smiling attention which she
continued to present to her companion.

Mr. Gryce's sensations, if less definite, were equally agreeable.
He felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms
welcome the gratification of their needs, and all his senses
floundered in a vague well-being, through which Miss Bart's
personality was dimly but pleasantly perceptible.

Mr. Gryce's interest in Americana had not originated with
himself: it was impossible to think of him as evolving any taste
of his own. An uncle had left him a collection already noted
among bibliophiles; the existence of the collection was
the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of Gryce, and
the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it had
been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as
such, and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced
on any reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to
avoid personal notice, he took, in the printed mention of his
name, a pleasure so exquisite and excessive that it seemed a
compensation for his shrinking from publicity.

To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all
the reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American
history in particular, and as allusions to his library abounded
in the pages of these journals, which formed his only reading, he
came to regard himself as figuring prominently in the public eye,
and to enjoy the thought of the interest which would be excited
if the persons he met in the street, or sat among in travelling,
were suddenly to be told that he was the possessor of the Gryce
Americana.

Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident
person she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or
to show such exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly
guessed that Mr. Gryce's egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring
constant nurture from without. Miss Bart had the gift of
following an undercurrent of thought while she appeared to be
sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case her
mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy
Gryce's future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from
Albany, and but lately introduced to the metropolis, where the
mother and son had come, after old Jefferson Gryce's death, to
take possession of his house in Madison Avenue--an appalling
house, all brown stone without and black walnut within, with the
Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked like a mausoleum.
Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce's arrival had
fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl has
no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself
in the young man's way, but had made the acquaintance of
Mrs. Gryce, a monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator
and a mind preoccupied with the iniquities of her servants, who
came sometimes to sit with Mrs. Peniston and learn from that lady
how she managed to prevent the kitchen-maid's smuggling groceries
out of the house. Mrs. Gryce had a kind of impersonal
benevolence: cases of individual need she regarded with
suspicion, but she subscribed to Institutions when their annual
reports showed an impressive surplus. Her domestic duties were
manifold, for they extended from furtive inspections of the
servants' bedrooms to unannounced descents to the cellar; but she
had never allowed herself many pleasures. Once, however, she had
had a special edition of the Sarum Rule printed in rubric and
presented to every clergyman in the diocese; and the gilt album
in which their letters of thanks were pasted formed the chief
ornament of her drawing-room table.

Percy had been brought up in the principles which so excellent a
woman was sure to inculcate. Every form of prudence and suspicion
had been grafted on a nature originally reluctant and cautious,
with the result that it would have seemed hardly needful for Mrs.
Gryce to extract his promise about the overshoes, so little
likely was he to hazard himself abroad in the rain. After
attaining his majority, and coming into the fortune which the
late Mr. Gryce had made out of a patent device for excluding
fresh air from hotels, the young man continued to live with his
mother in Albany; but on Jefferson Gryce's death, when another
large property passed into her son's hands, Mrs. Gryce thought
that what she called his "interests" demanded his presence in New
York. She accordingly installed herself in the Madison Avenue
house, and Percy, whose sense of duty was not inferior to his
mother's, spent all his week days in the handsome Broad Street
office where a batch of pale men on small salaries had grown grey
in the management of the Gryce estate, and where he was initiated
with becoming reverence into every detail of the art of
accumulation.

As far as Lily could learn, this had hitherto been Mr. Gryce's
only occupation, and she might have been pardoned for thinking it
not too hard a task to interest a young man who had been kept on
such low diet. At any rate, she felt herself so completely
in command of the situation that she yielded to a sense of
security in which all fear of Mr. Rosedale, and of the
difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
the edge of thought.

The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted
her from these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of
distress in her companion's eye. His seat faced toward the door,
and she guessed that he had been perturbed by the approach of an
acquaintance; a fact confirmed by the turning of heads and
general sense of commotion which her own entrance into a
railway-carriage was apt to produce.

She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed
by the high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train
accompanied by a maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering
under a load of bags and dressing-cases.

"Oh, Lily--are you going to Bellomont? Then you can't let me have
your seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this
carriage--porter, you must find me a place at once. Can't some
one be put somewhere else? I want to be with my friends. Oh, how
do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make him understand that I must
have a seat next to you and Lily."

Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller
with a carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by
getting out of the train, stood in the middle of the aisle,
diffusing about her that general sense of exasperation which a
pretty woman on her travels not infrequently creates.

She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless
pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run
through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected. Her
small pale face seemed the mere setting of a pair of dark
exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze contrasted
curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that, as
one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit
who took up a great deal of room.

Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart's was
at her disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther
displacement of her surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she
had come across from Mount Kisco in her motor-car that morning,
and had been kicking her heels for an hour at Garrisons, without
even the alleviation of a cigarette, her brute of a
husband having neglected to replenish her case before they parted
that morning.

"And at this hour of the day I don't suppose you've a single one
left, have you, Lily?" she plaintively concluded.

Miss Bart caught the startled glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose
own lips were never defiled by tobacco.

"What an absurd question, Bertha!" she exclaimed, blushing at the
thought of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden's.

"Why, don't you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What--you
never---And you don't either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course--how
stupid of me--I understand."

And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with
a smile which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside
her own.

Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when
Lily went to bed that night she had played too long for her own
good.

Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her
room, she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the
hall below, where the last card-players were grouped about the
tray of tall glasses and silver-collared decanters which the
butler had just placed on a low table near the fire.

The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale
yellow marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped
against a background of dark foliage in the angles of the walls.
On the crimson carpet a deer-hound and two or three spaniels
dozed luxuriously before the fire, and the light from the great
central lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women's hair
and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.

There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they
gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external
finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge
to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the
moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned
away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine
spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a confidential nook
beneath the gallery.

It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired
hold over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but
she had neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture.
She was too self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his
shyness, and besides, why should she care to give herself the
trouble? At most it might amuse her to make sport of his
simplicity for an evening--after that he would be merely a burden
to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who
could take a man up and toss him aside as she willed, without
having to regard him as a possible factor in her plans, filled
Lily Bart with envy. She had been bored all the afternoon
by Percy Gryce--the mere thought seemed to waken an echo of his
droning voice--but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she
must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be
ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the
bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour
of boring her for life.

It was a hateful fate--but how escape from it? What choice had
she? To be herself, or a Gerty Farish. As she entered her
bedroom, with its softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown
lying across the silken bedspread, her little embroidered
slippers before the fire, a vase of carnations filling the air
with perfume, and the last novels and magazines lying uncut on a
table beside the reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish's
cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and hideous
wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby
surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole
being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background
she required, the only climate she could breathe in. But the
luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years ago it had
sufficed her: she had taken her daily meed of pleasure without
caring who provided it. Now she was beginning to chafe at the
obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere pensioner on the
splendour which had once seemed to belong to her. There were even
moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way.

For a long time she had refused to play bridge. She knew she
could not afford it, and she was afraid of acquiring so expensive
a taste. She had seen the danger exemplified in more than one of
her associates--in young Ned Silverton, for instance, the
charming fair boy now seated in abject rapture at the elbow of
Mrs. Fisher, a striking divorcee with eyes and gowns as emphatic
as the head-lines of her "case." Lily could remember when young
Silverton had stumbled into their circle, with the air of a
strayed Arcadian who has published chamung sonnets in his college
journal. Since then he had developed a taste for Mrs. Fisher and
bridge, and the latter at least had involved him in expenses from
which he had been more than once rescued by harassed maiden
sisters, who treasured the sonnets, and went without sugar in
their tea to keep their darling afloat. Ned's case was
familiar to Lily: she had seen his charming eyes--which had a
good deal more poetry in them than the sonnets--change from
surprise to amusement, and from amusement to anxiety, as he
passed under the spell of the terrible god of chance; and she was
afraid of discovering the same symptoms in her own case.

For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected
her to take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes
she had to pay for their prolonged hospitality, and for the
dresses and trinkets which occasionally replenished her
insufficient wardrobe. And since she had played regularly the
passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she had won a
large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had
spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this
imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the
game, drove her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She
tried to excuse herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if
one played at all one must either play high or be set down as
priggish or stingy; but she knew that the gambling passion was
upon her, and that in her present surroundings there was small
hope of resisting it.

Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold
purse which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she
returned to her room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out
her jewel-case, looked under the tray for the roll of bills from
which she had replenished the purse before going down to dinner.
Only twenty dollars were left: the discovery was so startling
that for a moment she fancied she must have been robbed. Then she
took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the writing-table,
tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her head
was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures
again and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had
lost three hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book
to see if her balance was larger than she remembered, but found
she had erred in the other direction. Then she returned to her
calculations; but figure as she would, she could not conjure back
the vanished three hundred dollars. It was the sum she had set
aside to pacify her dress-maker--unless she should decide to use
it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so many
uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play
high in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost--she
who needed every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband
showered money on her, must have pocketed at least five hundred,
and Judy Trenor, who could have afforded to lose a thousand a
night, had left the table clutching such a heap of bills that she
had been unable to shake hands with her guests when they bade her
good night.

A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to
Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the
laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its
calculations.

She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had
sent to bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other
people's pleasure to be considerate of those who depended on
hers, and in her bitter moods it sometimes struck her that she
and her maid were in the same position, except that the latter
received her wages more regularly.

As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked
hollow and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near
her mouth, faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.

"Oh, I must stop worrying!" she exclaimed. "Unless it's the
electric light---" she reflected, springing up from her seat and
lighting the candles on the dressing-table.

She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly
from a background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it
like a haze; but the two lines about the mouth remained.

Lily rose and undressed in haste.

"It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to
think about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added
injustice that petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty
which was her only defence against them.

But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She
returned wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer
picks up a heavy load and toils on after a brief rest. She was
almost sure she had "landed" him: a few days' work and she would
win her reward. But the reward itself seemed upalatable
just then: she could get no zest from the thought of victory. It
would be a rest from worry, no more--and how little that would
have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions had shrunk
gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?

She remembered how her mother, after they had lost their money,
used to say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But
you'll get it all back--you'll get it all back, with your face."
. . . The remembrance roused a whole train of association, and
she lay in the darkness reconstructing the past out of which her
present had grown.

A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was
"company"; a door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered
with square envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong
envelopes which were allowed to gather dust in the depths of a
bronze jar; a series of French and English maids giving warning
amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked wardrobes and dress-closets;
an equally changing dynasty of nurses and footmen; quarrels in
the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room; precipitate trips
to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the
summer should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant
reactions of expense--such was the setting of Lily Bart's first
memories.

Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and
determined figure of a mother still young enough to dance her
ball-dresses to rags, while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted
father filled an intermediate space between the butler and the
man who came to wind the clocks. Even to the eyes of infancy,
Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could not recall
the time when her father had not been bald and slightly stooping,
with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older
than her mother.

Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down
town"; and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard
his fagged step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room
door. He would kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions
of the nurse or the governess; then Mrs. Bart's maid would
come to remind him that he was dining out, and he would hurry
away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and
silent than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he
would sit for hours staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner
of the verandah, while the clatter of his wife's existence went
on unheeded a few feet off. Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and
Lily went to Europe for the summer, and before the steamer was
half way over Mr. Bart had dipped below the horizon. Sometimes
his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected to forward
Mrs. Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never
mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure
presented itself on the New York dock as a buffer between the
magnitude of his wife's luggage and the restrictions of the
American custom-house.

In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through
Lily's teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft
glided on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the
underflow of a perpetual need--the need of more money. Lily could
not recall the time when there had been money enough, and in some
vague way her father seemed always to blame for the deficiency.
It could certainly not be the fault of Mrs. Bart, who was spoken
of by her friends as a "wonderful manager." Mrs. Bart was famous
for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means; and to
the lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in
living as though one were much richer than one's bank-book
denoted.

Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line:
she had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one
must have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently
dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst reproach to her husband was to ask
him if he expected her to "live like a pig"; and his replying in
the negative was always regarded as a justification for cabling
to Paris for an extra dress or two, and telephoning to the
jeweller that he might, after all, send home the turquoise
bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.

Lily knew people who "lived like pigs," and their appearance and
surroundings justified her mother's repugnance to that
form of existence. They were mostly cousins, who inhabited dingy
houses with engravings from Cole's Voyage of Life on the
drawing-room walls, and slatternly parlour-maids who said "I'll
go and see" to visitors calling at an hour when all right-minded
persons are conventionally if not actually out. The disgusting
part of it was that many of these cousins were rich, so that Lily
imbibed the idea that if people lived like pigs it was from
choice, and through the lack of any proper standard of conduct.
This gave her a sense of reflected superiority, and she did not
need Mrs. Bart's comments on the family frumps and misers to
foster her naturally lively taste for splendour.

Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her
view of the universe.

The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a
heavy thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still
lingered on the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and
suddenly it broke. The suddenness added to the horror; and there
were still times when Lily relived with painful vividness every
detail of the day on which the blow fell. She and her mother had
been seated at the luncheon-table, over the CHAUFROIX and cold
salmon of the previous night's dinner: it was one of Mrs. Bart's
few economies to consume in private the expensive remnants of her
hospitality. Lily was feeling the pleasant languor which is
youth's penalty for dancing till dawn; but her mother, in spite
of a few lines about the mouth, and under the yellow waves on her
temples, was as alert, determined and high in colour as if she
had risen from an untroubled sleep.

In the centre of the table, between the melting MARRONS GLACES
and candied cherries, a pyramid of American Beauties lifted their
vigorous stems; they held their heads as high as Mrs. Bart, but
their rose-colour had turned to a dissipated purple, and Lily's
sense of fitness was disturbed by their reappearance on the
luncheon-table.

"I really think, mother," she said reproachfully, "we might
afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or
lilies-of-the-valley---"

Mrs. Bart stared. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the
world, and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked
when there was no one present at it but the family. But she
smiled at her daughter's innocence.

"Lilies-of-the-valley," she said calmly, "cost two dollars a
dozen at this season."

Lily was not impressed. She knew very little of the value of
money.

"It would not take more than six dozen to fill that bowl," she
argued.

"Six dozen what?" asked her father's voice in the doorway.

The two women looked up in surprise; though it was a Saturday,
the sight of Mr. Bart at luncheon was an unwonted one. But
neither his wife nor his daughter was sufficiently interested to
ask an explanation.

Mr. Bart dropped into a chair, and sat gazing absently at the
fragment of jellied salmon which the butler had placed before
him.

"I was only saying," Lily began, "that I hate to see faded
flowers at luncheon; and mother says a bunch of lilies-of-the-
valley would not cost more than twelve dollars. Mayn't I tell the
florist to send a few every day?"

She leaned confidently toward her father: he seldom refused her
anything, and Mrs. Bart had taught her to plead with him when her
own entreaties failed.

Mr. Bart sat motionless, his gaze still fixed on the salmon, and
his lower jaw dropped; he looked even paler than usual, and his
thin hair lay in untidy streaks on his forehead. Suddenly he
looked at his daughter and laughed. The laugh was so strange that
Lily coloured under it: she disliked being ridiculed, and her
father seemed to see something ridiculous in the request. Perhaps
he thought it foolish that she should trouble him about such a
trifle.

"Twelve dollars--twelve dollars a day for flowers? Oh, certainly,
my dear--give him an order for twelve hundred." He continued to
laugh.

Mrs. Bart gave him a quick glance.

"You needn't wait, Poleworth--I will ring for you," she said to
the butler.

The butler withdrew with an air of silent disapproval, leaving
the remains of the CHAUFROIX on the sideboard.

"What is the matter, Hudson? Are you ill?" said Mrs. Bart
severely.

She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making,
and it was odious to her that her husband should make a show of
himself before the servants.

"Are you ill?" she repeated.

"Ill?---No, I'm ruined," he said.

Lily made a frightened sound, and Mrs. Bart rose to her
feet.

"Ruined---?" she cried; but controlling herself instantly, she
turned a calm face to Lily.

"Shut the pantry door," she said.

Lily obeyed, and when she turned back into the room her father
was sitting with both elbows on the table, the plate of salmon
between them, and his head bowed on his hands.

Mrs. Bart stood over him with a white face which made her hair
unnaturally yellow. She looked at Lily as the latter approached:
her look was terrible, but her voice was modulated to a ghastly
cheerfulness.

"Your father is not well--he doesn't know what he is saying. It
is nothing--but you had better go upstairs; and don't talk to the
servants," she added.

Lily obeyed; she always obeyed when her mother spoke in that
voice. She had not been deceived by Mrs. Bart's words: she knew
at once that they were ruined. In the dark hours which followed,
that awful fact overshadowed even her father's slow and difficult
dying. To his wife he no longer counted: he had become extinct
when he ceased to fulfil his purpose, and she sat at his side
with the provisional air of a traveller who waits for a belated
train to start. Lily's feelings were softer: she pitied him in a
frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for the most
part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into the
room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of
a stranger than in the nursery days when he had never come home
till after dark. She seemed always to have seen him through a
blur--first of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference--
and now the fog had thickened till he was almost
indistinguishable. If she could have performed any little
services for him, or have exchanged with him a few of those
affecting words which an extensive perusal of fiction had
led her to connect with such occasions, the filial instinct might
have stirred in her; but her pity, finding no active expression,
remained in a state of spectatorship, overshadowed by her
mother's grim unflagging resentment. Every look and act of Mrs.
Bart's seemed to say: "You are sorry for him now--but you will
feel differently when you see what he has done to us."

It was a relief to Lily when her father died.

Then a long winter set in. There was a little money left, but to
Mrs. Bart it seemed worse than nothing--the mere mockery of what
she was entitled to. What was the use of living if one had to
live like a pig? She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state
of inert anger against fate. Her faculty for "managing" deserted
her, or she no longer took sufficient pride in it to exert it. It
was well enough to "manage" when by so doing one could keep one's
own carriage; but when one's best contrivance did not conceal the
fact that one had to go on foot, the effort was no longer worth
making.

Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long
visits to relations whose house-keeping Mrs. Bart criticized, and
who deplored the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the
girl had no prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap
continental refuges, where Mrs. Bart held herself fiercely aloof
from the frugal tea-tables of her companions in misfortune. She
was especially careful to avoid her old friends and the scenes of
her former successes. To be poor seemed to her such a confession
of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she detected a note
of condescension in the friendliest advances.

Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of
Lily's beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though
it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance.
It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which
their life was to be rebuilt. She watched it jealously, as though
it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she
tried to instil into the latter a sense of the responsibility
that such a charge involved. She followed in imagination the
career of other beauties, pointing out to her daughter what might
be achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful
warning of those who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they
wanted: to Mrs. Bart, only stupidity could explain the lamentable
denouement of some of her examples. She was not above the
inconsistency of charging fate, rather than herself, with her own
misfortunes; but she inveighed so acrimoniously against
love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own marriage had
been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured her
that she had been "talked into it"--by whom, she never made
clear.

Lily was duly impressed by the magnitude of her opportunities.
The dinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief
the existence to which she felt herself entitled. To a less
illuminated intelligence Mrs. Bart's counsels might have been
dangerous; but Lily understood that beauty is only the raw
material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other
arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of
superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother
denounced, and it did not take her long to learn that a beauty
needs more tact than the possessor of an average set of features.

Her ambitions were not as crude as Mrs. Bart's. It had been among
that lady's grievances that her husband--in the early days,
before he was too tired--had wasted his evenings in what she
vaguely described as "reading poetry"; and among the effects
packed off to auction after his death were a score or two of
dingy volumes which had struggled for existence among the boots
and medicine bottles of his dressing-room shelves. There was in
Lily a vein of sentiment, perhaps transmitted from this source,
which gave an idealizing touch to her most prosaic purposes. She
liked to think of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her
the opportunity to attain a position where she should make her
influence felt in the vague diffusion of refinement and good
taste. She was fond of pictures and flowers, and of sentimental
fiction, and she could not help thinking that the possession of
such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages. She would
not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she
was secretly ashamed of her mother's crude passion for money.
Lily's preference would have been for an English nobleman with
political ambitions and vast estates; or, for second
choice, an Italian prince with a castle in the Apennines and an
hereditary office in the Vatican. Lost causes had a romantic
charm for her, and she liked to picture herself as standing aloof
from the vulgar press of the Quirinal, and sacrificing her
pleasure to the claims of an immemorial tradition. . . .

How long ago and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were
hardly more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had
centred about the possession of a French jointed doll with real
hair. Was it only ten years since she had wavered in imagination
between the English earl and the Italian prince? Relentlessly her
mind travelled on over the dreary interval. . . .

After two years of hungry roaming Mrs. Bart had died---died of a
deep disgust. She had hated dinginess, and it was her fate to be
dingy. Her visions of a brilliant marriage for Lily had faded
after the first year.

"People can't marry you if they don't see you--and how can they
see you in these holes where we're stuck?" That was the burden of
her lament; and her last adjuration to her daughter was to escape
from dinginess if she could.

"Don't let it creep up on you and drag you down. Fight your way
out of it somehow--you're young and can do it," she insisted.

She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and
there Lily at once became the centre of a family council composed
of the wealthy relatives whom she had been taught to despise for
living like pigs. It may be that they had an inkling of the
sentiments in which she had been brought up, for none of them
manifested a very lively desire for her company; indeed, the
question threatened to remain unsolved till Mrs. Peniston with a
sigh announced: "I'll try her for a year."

Every one was surprised, but one and all concealed their
surprise, lest Mrs. Peniston should be alarmed by it into
reconsidering her decision.

Mrs. Peniston was Mr. Bart's widowed sister, and if she was by no
means the richest of the family group, its other members
nevertheless abounded in reasons why she was clearly destined by
Providence to assume the charge of Lily. In the first place she
was alone, and it would be charming for her to have a
young companion. Then she sometimes travelled, and Lily's
familiarity with foreign customs--deplored as a misfortune by her
more conservative relatives--would at least enable her to act as
a kind of courier. But as a matter of fact Mrs. Peniston had not
been affected by these considerations. She had taken the girl
simply because no one else would have her, and because she had
the kind of moral MAUVAISE HONTE which makes the public display
of selfishness difficult, though it does not interfere with its
private indulgence. It would have been impossible for Mrs.
Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but with the eyes of
her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in her act.

She reaped the reward to which disinterestedness is entitled, and
found an agreeable companion in her niece. She had expected to
find Lily headstrong, critical and "foreign"--for even Mrs.
Peniston, though she occasionally went abroad, had the family
dread of foreignness--but the girl showed a pliancy, which, to a
more penetrating mind than her aunt's, might have been less
reassuring than the open selfishness of youth. Misfortune had
made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable
substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

Mrs. Peniston, however, did not suffer from her niece's
adaptability. Lily had no intention of taking advantage of her
aunt's good nature. She was in truth grateful for the refuge
offered her: Mrs. Peniston's opulent interior was at least not
externally dingy. But dinginess is a quality which assumes all
manner of disguises; and Lily soon found that it was as latent in
the expensive routine of her aunt's life as in the makeshift
existence of a continental pension.

Mrs. Peniston was one of the episodical persons who form the
padding of life. It was impossible to believe that she had
herself ever been a focus of activities. The most vivid thing
about her was the fact that her grandmother had been a Van
Alstyne. This connection with the well-fed and industrious stock
of early New York revealed itself in the glacial neatness of Mrs.
Peniston's drawing-room and in the excellence of her cuisine. She
belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always lived
well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these
inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faitfully conformed.
She had always been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled
one of those little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were
accustomed to affix to their upper windows, so that from the
depths of an impenetrable domesticity they might see what was
happening in the street.

Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but
she had never lived there since her husband's death--a remote
event, which appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a
dividing point in the personal reminiscences that formed the
staple of her conversation. She was a woman who remembered dates
with intensity, and could tell at a moment's notice whether the
drawing-room curtains had been renewed before or after Mr.
Peniston's last illness.

Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and
cherished a vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such
contingencies she frequented the more populous watering-places,
where she installed herself impersonally in a hired house and
looked on at life through the matting screen of her verandah. In
the care of such a guardian, it soon became clear to Lily that
she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good food and
expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught
her to regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her
mother's fierce energies would have accomplished, had they been
coupled with Mrs. Peniston's resources. Lily had abundant energy
of her own, but it was restricted by the necessity of adapting
herself to her aunt's habits. She saw that at all costs she must
keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs. Bart would have phrased
it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no mind for the
vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to Mrs.
Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive
attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw
her aunt into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a
static force in Mrs. Peniston against which her niece's efforts
spent themselves in vain. To attempt to bring her into active
relation with life was like tugging at a piece of furniture which
has been screwed to the floor. She did not, indeed, expect Lily
to remain equally immovable: she had all the American guardian's
indulgence for the volatility of youth.

She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece's.
It seemed to her natural that Lily should spend all her money on
dress, and she supplemented the girl's scanty income by
occasional "handsome presents" meant to be applied to the same
purpose. Lily, who was intensely practical, would have preferred
a fixed allowance; but Mrs. Peniston liked the periodical
recurrence of gratitude evoked by unexpected cheques, and was
perhaps shrewd enough to perceive that such a method of giving
kept alive in her niece a salutary sense of dependence.

Beyond this, Mrs. Peniston had not felt called upon to do
anything for her charge: she had simply stood aside and let her
take the field. Lily had taken it, at first with the confidence
of assured possessorship, then with gradually narrowing demands,
till now she found herself actually struggling for a foothold on
the broad space which had once seemed her own for the asking. How
it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she thought it was
because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she feared
it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she
shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience,
pliancy and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these
faults or absolved herself from them, made no difference in the
sum-total of her failure. Younger and plainer girls had been
married off by dozens, and she was nine-and-twenty, and still
Miss Bart.

She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate,
when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent
life for herself. But what manner of life would it be? She had
barely enough money to pay her dress-makers' bills and her
gambling debts; and none of the desultory interests which she
dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced enough to enable
her to live contentedly in obscurity. Ah, no--she was too
intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she
hated dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her
last breath she meant to fight against it, dragging herself up
again and again above its flood till she gained the bright
pinnacles of success which presented such a slippery surface to
her clutch.

The next morning, on her breakfast tray, Miss Bart found a note
from her hostess.

"Dearest Lily," it ran, "if it is not too much of a bore to be
down by ten, will you come to my sitting-room to help me with
some tiresome things?"

Lily tossed aside the note and subsided on her pillows with a
sigh. It WAS a bore to be down by ten--an hour regarded at
Bellomont as vaguely synchronous with sunrise--and she knew too
well the nature of the tiresome things in question. Miss Pragg,
the secretary, had been called away, and there would be notes and
dinner-cards to write, lost addresses to hunt up, and other
social drudgery to perform. It was understood that Miss Bart
should fill the gap in such emergencies, and she usually
recognized the obligation without a murmur.

Today, however, it renewed the sense of servitude which the
previous night's review of her cheque-book had produced.
Everything in her surroundings ministered to feelings of ease and
amenity. The windows stood open to the sparkling freshness of the
September morning, and between the yellow boughs she caught a
perspective of hedges and parterres leading by degrees of
lessening formality to the free undulations of the park. Her maid
had kindled a little fire on the hearth, and it contended
cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted across the moss-green
carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old marquetry desk.
Near the bed stood a table holding her breakfast tray, with its
harmonious porcelain and silver, a handful of violets in a
slender glass, and the morning paper folded beneath her letters.
There was nothing new to Lily in these tokens of a studied
luxury; but, though they formed a part of her atmosphere, she
never lost her sensitiveness to their charm. Mere display left
her with a sense of superior distinction; but she felt an
affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth.

Mrs. Trenor's summons, however, suddenly recalled her state of
dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability
that she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such
emotions leave lines on the face as well as in the
character, and she had meant to take warning by the little
creases which her midnight survey had revealed.

The matter-of-course tone of Mrs. Trenor's greeting deepened her
irritation. If one did drag one's self out of bed at such an
hour, and come down fresh and radiant to the monotony of
note-writing, some special recognition of the sacrifice seemed
fitting. But Mrs. Trenor's tone showed no consciousness of the
fact.

"Oh, Lily, that's nice of you," she merely sighed across the
chaos of letters, bills and other domestic documents which gave
an incongruously commercial touch to the slender elegance of her
writing-table.

"There are such lots of horrors this morning," she added,
clearing a space in the centre of the confusion and rising to
yield her seat to Miss Bart.

Mrs. Trenor was a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her
from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years
of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except
in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her
beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so
much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she
could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature
of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her
sex, and she knew no more personal emotion than that of hatred
for the woman who presumed to give bigger dinners or have more
amusing house-parties than herself. As her social talents, backed
by Mr. Trenor's bank-account, almost always assured her ultimate
triumph in such competitions, success had developed in her an
unscrupulous good nature toward the rest of her sex, and in Miss
Bart's utilitarian classification of her friends, Mrs. Trenor
ranked as the woman who was least likely to "go back" on her.

"It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor
declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk. "She says her
sister is going to have a baby--as if that were anything to
having a house-party! I'm sure I shall get most horribly mixed up
and there will be some awful rows. When I was down at Tuxedo I
asked a lot of people for next week, and I've mislaid the list
and can't remember who is coming. And this week is going to be a
horrid failure too--and Gwen Van Osburgh will go back and
tell her mother how bored people were. I did mean to ask the
Wetheralls--that was a blunder of Gus's. They disapprove of Carry
Fisher, you know. As if one could help having Carry Fisher! It
WAS foolish of her to get that second divorce--Carry always
overdoes things--but she said the only way to get a penny out of
Fisher was to divorce him and make him pay alimony. And poor
Carry has to consider every dollar. It's really absurd of Alice
Wetherall to make such a fuss about meeting her, when one thinks
of what society is coming to. Some one said the other day that
there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family
one knows. Besides, Carry is the only person who can keep Gus in
a good humour when we have bores in the house. Have you noticed
that ALL the husbands like her? All, I mean, except her own. It's
rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting herself
to dull people--the field is such a large one, and she has it
practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt--I know
she borrows money of Gus--but then I'd PAY her to keep him in a
good humour, so I can't complain, after all.

"Mrs. Trenor paused to enjoy the spectacle of Miss Bart's efforts
to unravel her tangled correspondence.

"But it is only the Wetheralls and Carry," she resumed, with a
fresh note of lament. "The truth is, I'm awfully disappointed in
Lady Cressida Raith."

"Disappointed? Had you known her before?"

"Mercy, no--never saw her till yesterday. Lady Skiddaw sent her
over with letters to the Van Osburghs, and I heard that Maria Van
Osburgh was asking a big party to meet her this week, so I
thought it would be fun to get her away, and Jack Stepney, who
knew her in India, managed it for me. Maria was furious, and
actually had the impudence to make Gwen invite herself here, so
that they shouldn't be QUITE out of it--if I'd known what Lady
Cressida was like, they could have had her and welcome! But I
thought any friend of the Skiddaws' was sure to be amusing. You
remember what fun Lady Skiddaw was? There were times when I
simply had to send the girls out of the room. Besides, Lady
Cressida is the Duchess of Beltshire's sister, and I naturally
supposed she was the same sort; but you never can tell in those
English families. They are so big that there's room for
all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the moral
one--married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East
End. Think of my taking such a lot of trouble about a clergyman's
wife, who wears Indian jewelry and botanizes! She made Gus take
her all through the glass-houses yesterday, and bothered him to
death by asking him the names of the plants. Fancy treating Gus
as if he were the gardener!

"Mrs. Trenor brought this out in a CRESCENDO of indignation.

"Oh, well, perhaps Lady Cressida will reconcile the Wetheralls to
meeting Carry Fisher," said Miss Bart pacifically.

"I'm sure I hope so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and
if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will
be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so
useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop
once a year, and she would have given just the right tone to
things. I always have horrid luck about the Bishop's visits,"
added Mrs. Trenor, whose present misery was being fed by a
rapidly rising tide of reminiscence; "last year, when he came,
Gus forgot all about his being here, and brought home the Ned
Wintons and the Farleys--five divorces and six sets of children
between them!"

"When is Lady Cressida going?" Lily enquired.

Mrs. Trenor cast up her eyes in despair. "My dear, if one only
knew! I was in such a hurry to get her away from Maria that I
actually forgot to name a date, and Gus says she told some one
she meant to stop here all winter."

"To stop here? In this house?"

"Don't be silly--in America. But if no one else asks her--you
know they NEVER go to hotels."

"Perhaps Gus only said it to frighten you."

"No--I heard her tell Bertha Dorset that she had six months to
put in while her husband was taking the cure in the Engadine. You
should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you
know--if she stays here all the autumn she'll spoil everything,
and Maria Van Osburgh will simply exult.

"At this affecting vision Mrs. Trenor's voice trembled with
self-pity."Oh, Judy--as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!"
Miss Bart tactfully protested. "You know perfectly well that,
if Mrs. Van Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you
with all the wrong ones, you'd manage to make things go off,
and she wouldn't."

Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs. Trenor's complacency;
but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.

"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented. "Everything has gone
wrong this week. I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with
me."

"Furious with you? Why?"

"Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he
wouldn't, after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think
it's my fault."

Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note
she had begun.

"I thought that was all over," she said.

"So it is, on his side. And of course Bertha has been idle since.
But I fancy she's out of a job just at present--and some one gave
me a hint that I had better ask Lawrence. Well, I DID ask
him--but I couldn't make him come; and now I suppose she'll take
it out of me by being perfectly nasty to every one else."

"Oh, she may take it out of HIM by being perfectly charming--to
some one else.

"Mrs. Trenor shook her head dolefully. "She knows he wouldn't
mind. And who else is there? Alice Wetherall won't let Lucius out
of her sight. Ned Silverton can't take his eyes off Carry
Fisher--poor boy! Gus is bored by Bertha, Jack Stepney knows her
too well--and--well, to be sure, there's Percy Gryce!"

She sat up smiling at the thought.

Miss Bart's countenance did not reflect the smile.

"Oh, she and Mr. Gryce would not be likely to hit it off."

"You mean that she'd shock him and he'd bore her? Well, that's
not such a bad beginning, you know. But I hope she won't take it
into her head to be nice to him, for I asked him here on purpose
for you."

Lily laughed. "MERCI DU COMPLIMENT! I should certainly have no
show against Bertha."

"Do you think I am uncomplimentary? I'm not really, you know.
Every one knows you're a thousand times handsomer and cleverer
than Bertha; but then you're not nasty. And for always getting
what she wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman."

Miss Bart stared in affected reproval. "I thought you were so
fond of Bertha."

"Oh, I am--it's much safer to be fond of dangerous people. But
she IS dangerous--and if I ever saw her up to mischief it's now.
I can tell by poor George's manner. That man is a perfect
barometer--he always knows when Bertha is going to---"

"To fall?" Miss Bart suggested.

"Don't be shocking! You know he believes in her still. And of
course I don't say there's any real harm in Bertha. Only she
delights in making people miserable, and especially poor George."

"Well, he seems cut out for the part--I don't wonder she likes
more cheerful companionship."

"Oh, George is not as dismal as you think. If Bertha did worry
him he would be quite different. Or if she'd leave him alone, and
let him arrange his life as he pleases. But she doesn't dare lose
her hold of him on account of the money, and so when HE isn't
jealous she pretends to be."

Miss Bart went on writing in silence, and her hostess sat
following her train of thought with frowning intensity.

"Do you know," she exclaimed after a long pause, "I believe I'll
call up Lawrence on the telephone and tell him he simply MUST
come?"

"Oh, don't," said Lily, with a quick suffusion of colour. The
blush surprised her almost as much as it did her hostess, who,
though not commonly observant of facial changes, sat staring at
her with puzzled eyes.

"Good gracious, Lily, how handsome you are! Why? Do you dislike
him so much?"

"Not at all; I like him. But if you are actuated by the
benevolent intention of protecting me from Bertha--I don't think
I need your protection.

"Mrs. Trenor sat up with an exclamation. "Lily!---PERCY? Do you
mean to say you've actually done it?"

Miss Bart smiled. "I only mean to say that Mr. Gryce and I are
getting to be very good friends."

"H'm--I see." Mrs. Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know
they say he has eight hundred thousand a year--and spends
nothing, except on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has
heart-disease and will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO
SLOWLY," her friend adjured her.

Miss Bart continued to smile without annoyance. "I shouldn't, for
instance," she remarked, "be in any haste to tell him that he had
a lot of rubbishy old books."

"No, of course not; I know you're wonderful about getting up
people's subjects. But he's horribly shy, and easily shocked,
and--and---"

"Why don't you say it, Judy? I have the reputation of being on
the hunt for a rich husband?"

"Oh, I don't mean that; he wouldn't believe it of you--at first,"
said Mrs. Trenor, with candid shrewdness. "But you know things
are rather lively here at times--I must give Jack and Gus a
hint--and if he thought you were what his mother would call
fast--oh, well, you know what I mean. Don't wear your scarlet
CREPE-DE-CHINE for dinner, and don't smoke if you can help it,
Lily dear!"

Lily pushed aside her finished work with a dry smile."You're very
kind, Judy: I'll lock up my cigarettes and wear that last year's
dress you sent me this morning. And if you are really interested
in my career, perhaps you'll be kind enough not to ask me to play
bridge again this evening."

"Bridge? Does he mind bridge, too? Oh, Lily, what an awful life
you'll lead! But of course I won't--why didn't you give me a hint
last night? There's nothing I wouldn't do, you poor duck, to see
you happy!"

And Mrs. Trenor, glowing with her sex's eagerness to smooth the
course of true love, enveloped Lily in a long embrace.

"You're quite sure," she added solicitously, as the latter
extricated herself, "that you wouldn't like me to telephone for
Lawrence Selden?"

"Quite sure," said Lily.

The next three days demonstrated to her own complete satifaction
Miss Bart's ability to manage her affairs without extraneous aid.

As she sat, on the Saturday afternoon, on the terrace at
Bellomont, she smiled at Mrs. Trenor's fear that she might go too
fast. If such a warning had ever been needful, the years had
taught her a salutary lesson, and she flattered herself that she
now knew how to adapt her pace to the object of pursuit. In the
case of Mr. Gryce she had found it well to flutter ahead, losing
herself elusively and luring him on from depth to depth of
unconscious intimacy. The surrounding atmosphere was propitious
to this scheme of courtship. Mrs. Trenor, true to her word, had
shown no signs of expecting Lily at the bridge-table, and had
even hinted to the other card-players that they were to betray no
surprise at her unwonted defection. In consequence of this hint,
Lily found herself the centre of that feminine solicitude which
envelops a young woman in the mating season. A solitude was
tacitly created for her in the crowded existence of Bellomont,
and her friends could not have shown a greater readiness for
self-effacement had her wooing been adorned with all the
attributes of romance. In Lily's set this conduct implied a
sympathetic comprehension of her motives, and Mr. Gryce rose in
her esteem as she saw the consideration he inspired.

The terrace at Bellomont on a September afternoon was a spot
propitious to sentimental musings, and as Miss Bart stood leaning
against the balustrade above the sunken garden, at a little
distance from the animated group about the tea-table, she might
have been lost in the mazes of an inarticulate happiness. In
reality, her thoughts were finding definite utterance in the
tranquil recapitulation of the blessings in store for her. From
where she stood she could see them embodied in the form of Mr.
Gryce, who, in a light overcoat and muffler, sat somewhat
nervously on the edge of his chair, while Carry Fisher, with all
the energy of eye and gesture with which nature and art had
combined to endow her, pressed on him the duty of taking part in
the task of municipal reform.

Mrs. Fisher's latest hobby was municipal reform. It had been
preceded by an equal zeal for socialism, which had in turn
replaced an energetic advocacy of Christian Science. Mrs. Fisher
was small, fiery and dramatic; and her hands and eyes were
admirable instruments in the service of whatever causes he
happened to espouse. She had, however, the fault common to
enthusiasts of ignoring any slackness of response on the part of
her hearers, and Lily was amused by her unconsciousness of the
resistance displayed in every angle of Mr. Gryce's attitude. Lily
herself knew that his mind was divided between the dread of
catching cold if he remained out of doors too long at that hour,
and the fear that, if he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher
might follow him up with a paper to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a
constitutional dislike to what he called "committing himself,"
and tenderly as he cherished his health, he evidently concluded
that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink till chance
released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast agonized
glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was to
sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had
learned the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief,
and was fully aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's
volubility was enhancing her own repose.

She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin
Jack Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning
across the garden from the tennis court.

The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance
in which Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in
contemplating what seemed to her a caricature of her own
situation. Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces
and no high lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she
was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of
less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any
fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
been reduced to a crust.

Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the
girl's turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up
to be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed
the encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin
veneer of his smile.

"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to
get everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry
him; whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and
advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance,
where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time."

As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of
family likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There
was no resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic
way--he looked like a clever pupil's drawing from a
plaster-cast--while Gwen's countenance had no more modelling than
a face painted on a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was
unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices and ideals, and the
same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring
them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a
force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own
range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short,
made for each other by every law of moral and physical
correspondence---"Yet they wouldn't look at each other," Lily
mused, "they never do. Each of them wants a creature of a
different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all sorts of
intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even guess
the existence of. And they always get what they want."

She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a
slight cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly
amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of
the necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of
her career, dropped aside while the happy couple proceeded toward
the tea-table.

Seating herself on the upper step of the terrace, Lily leaned her
head against the honeysuckles wreathing the balustrade. The
fragrance of the late blossoms seemed an emanation of the
tranquil scene, a landscape tutored to the last degree of rural
elegance. In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens.
Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety
firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long
glade the river widened like a lake under the silver light of
September. Lily did not want to join the circle about the
tea-table. They represented the future she had chosen, and she
was content with it, but in no haste to anticipate its joys. The
certainty that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had
lifted a heavy load from her mind, and her money troubles were
too recent for their removal not to leave a sense of
relief which a less discerning intelligence might have taken for
happiness. Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be able to
arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of
security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter
gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha
Dorset. She would be free forever from the shifts, the
expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor. Instead of
having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of being
grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores she
could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And she
had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr.
Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible to impulses
and emotions. He had the kind of character in which prudence is a
vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. But Lily
had known the species before: she was aware that such a guarded
nature must find one huge outlet of egoism, and she determined to
be to him what his Americana had hitherto been: the one
possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on
it. She knew that this generosity to self is one of the forms of
meanness, and she resolved so to identify herself with her
husband's vanity that to gratify her wishes would be to him the
most exquisite form of self-indulgence. The system might at first
necessitate a resort to some of the very shifts and expedients
from which she intended it should free her; but she felt sure
that in a short time she would be able to play the game in her
own way. How should she have distrusted her powers? Her beauty
itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have been
in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care
she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind
of permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through
to the end.

And the end, on the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the
mockery she had thought it three days ago. There was room for
her, after all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence,
so short a time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her.
These people whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to
make a place for her in the charmed circle about which all her
desires revolved. They were not as brutal and self-engrossed as
she had fancied--or rather, since it would no longer be
necessary to flatter and humour them, that side of their nature
became less conspicuous. Society is a revolving body which is apt
to be judged according to its place in each man's heaven; and at
present it was turning its illuminated face to Lily.

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of
amiable qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness,
their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times
was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social
ascendency. They were lords of the only world she cared for, and
they were ready to admit her to their ranks and let her lord it
with them. Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to
their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief
in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for
the people who were not able to live as they lived.

The early sunset was slanting across the park. Through the boughs
of the long avenue beyond the gardens she caught the flash of
wheels, and divined that more visitors were approaching. There
was a movement behind her, a scattering of steps and voices: it
was evident that the party about the tea-table was breaking up.
Presently she heard a tread behind her on the terrace. She
supposed that Mr. Gryce had at last found means to escape from
his predicament, and she smiled at the significance of his coming
to join her instead of beating an instant retreat to the
fire-side.

She turned to give him the welcome which such gallantry deserved;
but her greeting wavered into a blush of wonder, for the man who
had approached her was Lawrence Selden.

"You see I came after all," he said; but before she had time to
answer, Mrs. Dorset, breaking away from a lifeless colloquy with
her host, had stepped between them with a little gesture of
appropriation.

The observance of Sunday at Bellomont was chiefly marked by the
punctual appearance of the smart omnibus destined to convey the
household to the little church at the gates. Whether any one got
into the omnibus or not was a matter of secondary importance,
since by standing there it not only bore witness to the orthodox
intentions of the family, but made Mrs. Trenor feel, when she
finally heard it drive away, that she had somehow vicariously
made use of it.

It was Mrs. Trenor's theory that her daughters actually did go to
church every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions
calling her to the rival fane, and the fatigues of the week
keeping their mother in her room till luncheon, there was seldom
any one present to verify the fact. Now and then, in a spasmodic
burst of virtue--when the house had been too uproarious over
night--Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight frock-coat
and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually, as
Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten
till the church bells were ringing across the park, and the
omnibus had driven away empty.

Lily had hinted to Mr. Gryce that this neglect of religious
observances was repugnant to her early traditions, and that
during her visits to Bellomont she regularly accompanied Muriel
and Hilda to church. This tallied with the assurance, also
confidentially imparted, that, never having played bridge
before, she had been "dragged into it" on the night of her
arrival, and had lost an appalling amount of money in
consequence of her ignorance of the game and of the rules of
betting. Mr. Gryce was undoubtedly enjoying Bellomont. He liked
the ease and glitter of the life, and the lustre conferred on him
by being a member of this group of rich and conspicuous people.
But he thought it a very materialistic society; there were times
when he was frightened by the talk of the men and the looks of
the ladies, and he was glad to find that Miss Bart, for all her
ease and self-possession, was not at home in so ambiguous an
atmosphere. For this reason he had been especially pleased to
learn that she would, as usual, attend the young Trenors
to church on Sunday morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep
before the door, his light overcoat on his arm and his
prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he reflected agreeably
on the strength of character which kept her true to her early
training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles.

For a long time Mr. Gryce and the omnibus had the gravel sweep to
themselves; but, far from regretting this deplorable indifference
on the part of the other guests, he found himself nourishing the
hope that Miss Bart might be unaccompanied. The precious minutes
were flying, however; the big chestnuts pawed the ground and
flecked their impatient sides with foam; the coachman seemed to
be slowly petrifying on the box, and the groom on the doorstep;
and still the lady did not come. Suddenly, however, there was a
sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the doorway, and Mr.
Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a nervous
start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall
into the carriage.

The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast
group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to
perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding
puppets. It is true that the Bellomont puppets did not go to
church; but others equally important did--and Mr. and Mrs.
Wetherall's circle was so large that God was included in their
visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and resigned,
with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after them
Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's
veils and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to
church with her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck
that they didn't mind doing it to please her, though they
couldn't fancy what had put the idea in her head, and though for
their own part they would much rather have played lawn tennis
with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she was coming. The
Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets,
who, on seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were
not to walk across the park; but at Mrs. Wetherall's horrified
protest that the church was a mile away, her ladyship,
after a glance at the height of the other's heels, acquiesced in
the necessity of driving, and poor Mr. Gryce found himself
rolling off between four ladies for whose spiritual welfare he
felt not the least concern.

It might have afforded him some consolation could he have known
that Miss Bart had really meant to go to church. She had even
risen earlier than usual in the execution of her purpose. She had
an idea that the sight of her in a grey gown of devotional cut,
with her famous lashes drooped above a prayer-book, would put the
finishing touch to Mr. Gryce's subjugation, and render inevitable
a certain incident which she had resolved should form a part of
the walk they were to take together after luncheon. Her
intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor Lily,
for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable
as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other
people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small
contingencies, hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She
was like a water-plant in the flux of the tides, and today the
whole current of her mood was carrying her toward Lawrence
Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see herself or Bertha Dorset?
It was the last question which, at that moment, should have
engaged her. She might better have contented herself with
thinking that he had simply responded to the despairing summons
of his hostess, anxious to interpose him between herself and the
ill-humour of Mrs. Dorset. But Lily had not rested till she
learned from Mrs. Trenor that Selden had come of his own accord.
"He didn't even wire me--he just happened to find the trap at the
station. Perhaps it's not over with Bertha after all," Mrs.
Trenor musingly concluded; and went away to arrange her
dinner-cards accordingly.

Perhaps it was not, Lily reflected; but it should be soon, unless
she had lost her cunning. If Selden had come at Mrs. Dorset's
call, it was at her own that he would stay. So much the previous
evening had told her. Mrs. Trenor, true to her simple principle
of making her married friends happy, had placed Selden and Mrs.
Dorset next to each other at dinner; but, in obedience to the
time-honoured traditions of the match-maker, she had separated
Lily and Mr. Gryce, sending in the former with George
Dorset, while Mr. Gryce was coupled with Gwen Van Osburgh.

George Dorset's talk did not interfere with the range of his
neighbour's thoughts. He was a mournful dyspeptic, intent on
finding out the deleterious ingredients of every dish and
diverted from this care only by the sound of his wife's voice. On
this occasion, however, Mrs. Dorset took no part in the general
conversation. She sat talking in low murmurs with Selden, and
turning a contemptuous and denuded shoulder toward her host, who,
far from resenting his exclusion, plunged into the excesses of
the MENU with the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr.
Dorset, however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such
evident concern that, when he was not scraping the sauce from his
fish, or scooping the moist bread-crumbs from the interior of his
roll, he sat straining his thin neck for a glimpse of her between
the lights.

Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on
opposite sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to
observe Mrs. Dorset also, and by carrying her glance a few feet
farther, to set up a rapid comparison between Lawrence Selden and
Mr. Gryce. It was that comparison which was her undoing. Why else
had she suddenly grown interested in Selden? She had known him
for eight years or more: ever since her return to America he had
formed a part of her background. She had always been glad to sit
next to him at dinner, had found him more agreeable than most
men, and had vaguely wished that he possessed the other qualities
needful to fix her attention; but till now she had been too busy
with her own affairs to regard him as more than one of the
pleasant accessories of life. Miss Bart was a keen reader of her
own heart, and she saw that her sudden preoccupation with Selden
was due to the fact that his presence shed a new light on her
surroundings. Not that he was notably brilliant or exceptional;
in his own profession he was surpassed by more than one man who
had bored Lily through many a weary dinner. It was rather that he
had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing
the show objectively, of having points of contact outside the
great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to
gape at. How alluring the world outside the cage appeared
to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In reality, as she
knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open; but most of
the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown
in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's distinction
that he had never forgotten the way out.

That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily,
turning her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little
world through his retina: it was as though the pink lamps had
been shut off and the dusty daylight let in. She looked down the
long table, studying its occupants one by one, from Gus Trenor,
with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between his shoulders, as he
preyed on a jellied plover, to his wife, at the opposite end of
the long bank of orchids, suggestive, with her glaring
good-looks, of a jeweller's window lit by electricity. And
between the two, what a long stretch of vacuity! How dreary and
trivial these people were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful
impatience: Carry Fisher, with her shoulders, her eyes, her
divorces, her general air of embodying a "spicy paragraph"; young
Silverton, who had meant to live on proof-reading and write an
epic, and who now lived on his friends and had become critical of
truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list, whose most
fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and the
engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous
nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he
knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident
smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an
heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a
young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer
than her father.

Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different
they had seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized
what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up.
That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities;
now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the
glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their
achievement. It was not that she wanted them to be more
disinterested; but she would have liked them to be more
picturesque. And she had a shamed recollection of the way
in which, a few hours since, she had felt the centripetal force
of their standards. She closed her eyes an instant, and the
vacuous routine of the life she had chosen stretched before her
like a long white road without dip or turning: it was true she
was to roll over it in a carriage instead of trudging it on foot,
but sometimes the pedestrian enjoys the diversion of a short cut
which is denied to those on wheels.

She was roused by a chuckle which Mr. Dorset seemed to eject from
the depths of his lean throat.

"I say, do look at her," he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with
lugubrious merriment--"I beg your pardon, but do just look at my
wife making a fool of that poor devil over there! One would
really suppose she was gone on him--and it's all the other way
round, I assure you."

Thus adjured, Lily turned her eyes on the spectacle which was
affording Mr. Dorset such legitimate mirth. It certainly
appeared, as he said, that Mrs. Dorset was the more active
participant in the scene: her neighbour seemed to receive her
advances with a temperate zest which did not distract him from
his dinner. The sight restored Lily's good humour, and knowing
the peculiar disguise which Mr. Dorset's marital fears assumed,
she asked gaily: "Aren't you horribly jealous of her?"

Dorset greeted the sally with delight. "Oh, abominably--you've
just hit it--keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's
what has knocked my digestion out--being so infernally jealous of
her.--I can't eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added
suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance; and
Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention to
his prolonged denunciation of other people's cooks, with a
supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of melted butter.

It was not often that he found so ready an ear; and, being a man
as well as a dyspeptic, it may be that as he poured his
grievances into it he was not insensible to its rosy symmetry. At
any rate he engaged Lily so long that the sweets were being
handed when she caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss
Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney
on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was
jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a
handspring.

"And of course you'll have Sim Rosedale as best man!" Lily heard
her fling out as the climax of her prognostications; and Stepney
responded, as if struck: "Jove, that's an idea. What a thumping
present I'd get out of him!"

SIM ROSEDALE! The name, made more odious by its diminutive,
obtruded itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one
of the many hated possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If
she did not marry Percy Gryce, the day might come when she would
have to be civil to such men as Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY
HIM? But she meant to marry him--she was sure of him and sure of
herself. She drew back with a shiver from the pleasant paths in
which her thoughts had been straying, and set her feet once more
in the middle of the long white road.... When she went upstairs
that night she found that the late post had brought her a fresh
batch of bills. Mrs. Peniston, who was a conscientious woman, had
forwarded them all to Bellomont.

Miss Bart, accordingly, rose the next morning with the most
earnest conviction that it was her duty to go to church. She tore
herself betimes from the lingering enjoyment of her
breakfast-tray, rang to have her grey gown laid out, and
despatched her maid to borrow a prayer-book from Mrs. Trenor.

But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs
of rebellion. No sooner were her preparations made than they
roused a smothered sense of resistance. A small spark was enough
to kindle Lily's imagination, and the sight of the grey dress and
the borrowed prayer-book flashed a long light down the years. She
would have to go to church with Percy Gryce every Sunday. They
would have a front pew in the most expensive church in New York,
and his name would figure handsomely in the list of parish
charities. In a few years, when he grew stouter, he would be made
a warden. Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and
her husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no
DIVORCEES were included, except those who had showed signs of
penitence by being re-married to the very wealthy. There was
nothing especially arduous in this round of relgious
obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that great bulk of
boredom which loomed across her path. And who could consent to be
bored on such a morning? Lily had slept well, and her bath had
filled her with a pleasant glow, which was becomingly reflected
in the clear curve of her cheek. No lines were visible this
morning, or else the glass was at a happier angle.

And the day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for
impulse and truancy. The light air seemed full of powdered gold;
below the dewy bloom of the lawns the woodlands blushed and
smouldered, and the hills across the river swam in molten blue.
Every drop of blood in Lily's veins invited her to happiness.

The sound of wheels roused her from these musings, and leaning
behind her shutters she saw the omnibus take up its freight. She
was too late, then--but the fact did not alarm her. A glimpse of
Mr. Gryce's crestfallen face even suggested that she had done
wisely in absenting herself, since the disappointment he so
candidly betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the
afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to miss; one glance at
the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall its
necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and
could muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was
familiar enough with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was
likely to have a free field till luncheon. She had seen the
Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and Lady Cressida packed safely into
the omnibus; Judy Trenor was sure to be having her hair
shampooed; Carry Fisher had doubtless carried off her host for a
drive; Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of young
despair in his bedroom; and Kate Corby was certain to be playing
tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the ladies,
this left only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset never
came down till luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden
her to expose herself to the crude air of the morning.

To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special
thought; wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere
with her plans. These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming
a dress somewhat more rustic and summerlike in style than the
garment she had first selected, and rustling downstairs,
sunshade in hand, with the disengaged air of a lady in quest of
exercise. The great hall was empty but for the knot of dogs by
the fire, who, taking in at a glance the outdoor aspect of Miss
Bart, were upon her at once with lavish offers of companionship.
She put aside the ramming paws which conveyed these offers, and
assuring the joyous volunteers that she might presently have a
use for their company, sauntered on through the empty
drawing-room to the library at the end of the house. The library
was almost the only surviving portion of the old manor-house of
Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions of the
mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of
the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass
urns. A few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in
tie-wigs, and ladies with large head-dresses and small bodies,
hung between the shelves lined with pleasantly-shabby books:
books mostly contemporaneous with the ancestors in question, and
to which the subsequent Trenors had made no perceptible
additions. The library at Bellomont was in fact never used for
reading, though it had a certain popularity as a smoking-room or
a quiet retreat for flirtation. It had occurred to Lily, however,
that it might on this occasion have been resorted to by the only
member of the party in the least likely to put it to its original
use. She advanced noiselessly over the dense old rug scattered
with easy-chairs, and before she reached the middle of the room
she saw that she had not been mistaken. Lawrence Selden was in
fact seated at its farther end; but though a book lay on his
knee, his attention was not engaged with it, but directed to a
lady whose lace-dad figure, as she leaned back in an adjoining
chair, detached itself with exaggerated slimness against the
dusky leather upholstery.

Lily paused as she caught sight of the group; for a moment she
seemed about to withdraw, but thinking better of this, she
announced her approach by a slight shake of her skirts which made
the couple raise their heads, Mrs. Dorset with a look of frank
displeasure, and Selden with his usual quiet smile. The sight of
his composure had a disturbing effect on Lily; but to be
disturbed was in her case to make a more brilliant effort at
self-possession.

"Dear me, am I late?" she asked, putting a hand in his as he
advanced to greet her.

"Late for what?" enquired Mrs. Dorset tartly. "Not for luncheon,
certainly--but perhaps you had an earlier engagement?"

"Yes, I had," said Lily confidingly.

"Really? Perhaps I am in the way, then? But Mr. Selden is
entirely at your disposal." Mrs. Dorset was pale with temper, and
her antagonist felt a certain pleasure in prolonging her
distress.

"Oh, dear, no--do stay," she said good-humouredly. "I don't in
the least want to drive you away."

"You're awfully good, dear, but I never interfere with Mr.
Selden's engagements."

The remark was uttered with a little air of proprietorship not
lost on its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by
stooping to pick up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach.
The latter's eyes widened charmingly and she broke into a light
laugh.

"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to
go to church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me.
HAS it started, do you know?"

She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away
some time since.

"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go
to church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well,
I shall have the credit of trying, at any rate--and the advantage
of escaping part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself,
after all!"

And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded,
Miss Bart strolled through the glass doors and carried her
rustling grace down the long perspective of the garden walk.

She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a
fact not lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway
looking after her with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is
that she was conscious of a somewhat keen shock of
disappointment. All her plans for the day had been built on the
assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come to
Bellomont. She had expected, when she came down

stairs, to
find him on the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in
a situation which might well denote that he had been on the watch
for another lady. Was it possible, after all, that he had come
for Bertha Dorset? The latter had acted on the assumption to the
extent of appearing at an hour when she never showed herself to
ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw no way of putting
her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden might have
been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of town:
women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in
their judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted;
competition put her on her mettle, and she reflected that
Selden's coming, if it did not declare him to be still in Mrs.
Dorset's toils, showed him to be so completely free from them
that he was not afraid of her proximity.

These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly
likely to carry her to church before the sermon, and at length,
having passed from the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far
forgot her intention as to sink into a rustic seat at a bend of
the walk. The spot was charming, and Lily was not insensible to
the charm, or to the fact that her presence enhanced it; but she
was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in
company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a romantic
scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however,
appeared to profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of
fruitless waiting she rose and wandered on. She felt a stealing
sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her,
and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what
she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so
blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague
sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the
loneliness about her.

Her footsteps flagged, and she stood gazing listlessly ahead,
digging the ferny edge of the path with the tip of her sunshade.
As she did so a step sounded behind her, and she saw Selden at
her side.

"How fast you walk!" he remarked. "I thought I should never catch
up with you."

She answered gaily: "You must be quite breathless! I've been
sitting under that tree for an hour."

"Waiting for me, I hope?" he rejoined; and she said with a vague
laugh:

"Well--waiting to see if you would come."

"I seize the distinction, but I don't mind it, since doing the
one involved doing the other. But weren't you sure that I should
come?"

"If I waited long enough--but you see I had only a limited time
to give to the experiment."

"Why limited? Limited by luncheon?"

"No; by my other engagement."

"Your engagement to go to church with Muriel and Hilda?"

"No; but to come home from church with another person."

"Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with
alternatives. And is the other person coming home this way?"

Lily laughed again. "That's just what I don't know; and to find
out, it is my business to get to church before the service is
over."

"Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in
which case the other person, piqued by your absence, will form
the desperate resolve of driving back in the omnibus."

Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like
the bubbling of her inner mood. "Is that what you would do in
such an emergency?" she enquired.

Selden looked at her with solemnity. "I am here to prove to you,"
he cried, "what I am capable of doing in an emergency!"

"Walking a mile in an hour--you must own that the omnibus would
be quicker!"

"Ah--but will he find you in the end? That's the only test of
success."

They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that
they had felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but
suddenly Lily's face changed, and she said: "Well, if it is, he
has succeeded."

Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people
advancing toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady
Cressida had evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of
the church-goers had thought it their duty to accompany
her. Lily's companion looked rapidly from one to the other of the
two men of the party; Wetherall walking respectfully at Lady
Cressida's side with his little sidelong look of nervous
attention, and Percy Gryce bringing up the rear with Mrs.
Wetherall and the Trenors.

"Ah--now I see why you were getting up your Americana!" Selden
exclaimed with a note of the freest admiration but the blush with
which the sally was received checked whatever amplifications he
had meant to give it.

That Lily Bart should object to being bantered about her suitors,
or even about her means of attracting them, was so new to Selden
that he had a momentary flash of surprise, which lit up a number
of possibilities; but she rose gallantly to the defence of her
confusion, by saying, as its object approached: "That was why I
was waiting for you--to thank you for having given me so many
points!"

"Ah, you can hardly do justice to the subject in such a short
time," said Selden, as the Trenor girls caught sight of Miss
Bart; and while she signalled a response to their boisterous
greeting, he added quickly: "Won't you devote your afternoon to
it? You know I must be off tomorrow morning. We'll take a walk,
and you can thank me at your leisure."

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. ALI 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 dis

cussion 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- 97>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 con

spicuous, 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 note

paper, 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 tom 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 pre 111>cipitate 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 con

nected
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 im

plies 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.

Meanwhile the holidays had gone by and the season was beginning.
Fifth Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging
upward to the fashionable quarters about the Park, where
illuminated windows and outspread awnings betokened the usual
routine of hospitality. Other tributary currents crossed the
mainstream, bearing their freight to the theatres, restaurants or
opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded watch-tower of her
upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the chronic volume
of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward a Van
Osburgh ball, or when the multiplication of wheels meant merely
that the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at
Sherry's.

Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culmination of the season as
keenly as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a
looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and
generalization such as those who take part must proverbially
forego. No one could have kept a more accurate record of social
fluctuations, or have put a more unerring finger on the
distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its
extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a
special memory for the vicissitudes of the "new people" who rose
to the surface with each recurring tide, and were either
submerged beneath its rush or landed triumphantly beyond the
reach of envious breakers; and she was apt to display a
remarkable retrospective insight into their ultimate fate, so
that, when they had fulfilled their destiny, she was almost
always able to say to Grace Stepney--the recipient of her
prophecies--that she had known exactly what would happen.

This particular season Mrs. Peniston would have characterized as
that in which everybody "felt poor" except the Welly Brys and Mr.
Simon Rosedale. It had been a bad autumn in Wall Street, where
prices fell in accordance with that peculiar law which proves
railway stocks and bales of cotton to be more sensitive to the
allotment of executive power than many estimable citizens trained
to all the advantages of self-government. Even fortunes supposed
to be independent of the market either betrayed a secret
dependence on it, or suffered from a sympathetic affection:
fashion sulked in its country houses, or came to town incognito,
general entertainments were discountenanced, and informality and
short dinners became the fashion.

But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon
wearied of the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother
in the shape of any magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken
pumpkin back again into the golden coach. The mere fact of
growing richer at a time when most people's investments are
shrinking, is calculated to attract envious attention; and
according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale had
found the secret of performing this miracle.

Rosedale, in particular, was said to have doubled his fortune,
and there was talk of his buying the newly-finished house of one
of the victims of the crash, who, in the space of twelve short
months, had made the same number of millions, built a house in
Fifth Avenue, filled a picture-gallery with old masters,
entertained all New York in it, and been smuggled out of the
country between a trained nurse and a doctor, while his creditors
mounted guard over the old masters, and his guests explained to
each other that they had dined with him only because they wanted
to see the pictures. Mr. Rosedale meant to have a less meteoric
career. He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of
his race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays. But
he was prompt to perceive that the general dulness of the season
afforded him an unusual opportunity to shine, and he set about
with patient industry to form a background for his growing glory.
Mrs. Fisher was of immense service to him at this period. She had
set off so many newcomers on the social stage that she was like
one of those pieces of stock scenery which tell the experienced
spectator exactly what is going to take place. But Mr. Rosedale
wanted, in the long run, a more individual environment. He was
sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never
have credited him with perceiving, because he had no
corresponding variations of manner; and it was becoming more and
more clear to him that Miss Bart herself possessed precisely the
complementary qualities needed to round off his social
personality.

Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston's
vision. Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to
overlook the MINUTIAE of the foreground, and she was much more
likely to know where Carry Fisher had found the Welly Brys' CHEF
for them, than what was happening to her own niece. She was not,
however, without purveyors of information ready to supplement her
deficiencies. Grace Stepney's mind was like a kind of moral
fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn by a
fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an
inexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how
many trivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss
Stepney's head. She was quite aware that she was of interest to
dingy people, but she assumed that there is only one form of
dinginess, and that admiration for brilliancy is the natural
expression of its inferior state. She knew that Gerty Farish
admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she inspired the
same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a Gerty
Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.

In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they
differed from the object of their mutual contemplation. Miss
Farish's heart was a fountain of tender illusions, Miss Stepney's
a precise register of facts as manifested in their relation to
herself. She had sensibilities which, to Lily, would have seemed
comic in a person with a freckled nose and red eyelids, who lived
in a boarding-house and admired Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room; but
poor Grace's limitations gave them a more concentrated inner
life, as poor soil starves certain plants into intenser
efflorescence. She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice:
she did not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and
predominant, but because she thought that Lily disliked her. It
is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than
insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is
a latent form of unfriendliness. Even such scant civilities as
Lily accorded to Mr. Rosedale would have made Miss Stepney her
friend for life; but how could she foresee that such a friend was
worth cultivating? How, moreover, can a young woman who has never
been ignored measure the pang which this injury inflicts? And,
lastly, how could Lily, accustomed to choose between a
pressure of engagements, guess that she had mortally offended
Miss Stepney by causing her to be excluded from one of Mrs.
Peniston's infrequent dinner-parties?

Mrs. Peniston disliked giving dinners, but she had a high sense
of family obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their
honeymoon she felt it incumbent upon her to light the
drawing-room lamps and extract her best silver from the Safe
Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston's rare entertainments were preceded
by days of heart-rending vacillation as to every detail of the
feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern of the
table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary
discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace
that, as the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in
it. For a week the prospect had lighted up Miss Stepney's
colourless existence; then she had been given to understand that
it would be more convenient to have her another day. Miss Stepney
knew exactly what had happened. Lily, to whom family reunions
were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her aunt that
a dinner of "smart" people would be much more to the taste of the
young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her
niece in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce
Grace's exile. After all, Grace could come any other day; why
should she mind being put off?

It was precisely because Miss Stepney could come any other
day--and because she knew her relations were in the secret of her
unoccupied evenings--that this incident loomed gigantically on
her horizon. She was aware that she had Lily to thank for it; and
dull resentment was turned to active animosity.

Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the
dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her
oblique survey of Fifth Avenue.

"Gus Trenor?--Lily and Gus Trenor?" she said, growing so suddenly
pale that her visitor was almost alarmed.

"Oh, cousin Julia . . . of course I don't mean . . ."

"I don't know what you DO mean," said Mrs. Peniston, with a
frightened quiver in her small fretful voice. "Such things were
never heard of in my day. And my own niece! I'm not sure I
understand you. Do people say he's in love with her?"

Mrs. Peniston's horror was genuine. Though she boasted an
unequalled familiarity with the secret chronicles of society, she
had the innocence of the school-girl who regards wickedness as a
part of "history," and to whom it never occurs that the scandals
she reads of in lesson-hours may be repeating themselves in the
next street. Mrs. Peniston had kept her imagination shrouded,
like the drawing-room furniture. She knew, of course, that
society was "very much changed," and that many women her mother
would have thought "peculiar" were now in a position to be
critical about their visiting-lists; she had discussed the perils
of divorce with her rector, and had felt thankful at times that
Lily was still unmarried; but the idea that any scandal could
attach to a young girl's name, above all that it could be lightly
coupled with that of a married man, was so new to her that she
was as much aghast as if she had been accused of leaving her
carpets down all summer, or of violating any of the other
cardinal laws of housekeeping.

Miss Stepney, when her first fright had subsided, began to feel
the superiority that greater breadth of mind confers. It was
really pitiable to be as ignorant of the world as Mrs. Peniston!
She smiled at the latter's question. "People always say
unpleasant things--and certainly they're a great deal together. A
friend of mine met them the other afternoon in the Park-quite
late, after the lamps were lit. It s a pity Lily makes herself so
conspicuous."

"CONSPICUOUS!" gasped Mrs. Peniston. She bent forward, lowering
her voice to mitigate the horror. "What sort of things do they
say? That he means to get a divorce and marry her?"

Grace Stepney laughed outright. "Dear me, no! He would hardly do
that. It--it's a flirtation--nothing more."

"A flirtation? Between my niece and a married man? Do you mean to
tell me that, with Lily's looks and advantages, she could find no
better use for her time than to waste it on a fat stupid man
almost old enough to be her father?" This argument had such a
convincing ring that it gave Mrs. Peniston sufficient reassurance
to pick up her work, while she waited for Grace Stepney to rally
her scattered forces.

But Miss Stepney was on the spot in an instant. "That's the worst
of it--people say she isn't wasting her time! Every one knows, as
you say, that Lily is too handsome and-and charming--to devote
herself to a man like Gus Trenor unless--"

"Unless?" echoed Mrs. Peniston. Her visitor drew breath
nervously. It was agreeable to shock Mrs. Peniston, but not to
shock her to the verge of anger. Miss Stepney was not
sufficiently familiar with the classic drama to have recalled in
advance how bearers of bad tidings are proverbially received, but
she now had a rapid vision of forfeited dinners and a reduced
wardrobe as the possible consequence of her disinterestedness. To
the honour of her sex, however, hatred of Lily prevailed over
more personal considerations. Mrs. Peniston had chosen the wrong
moment to boast of her niece's charms.

"Unless," said Grace, leaning forward to speak with low-toned
emphasis, "unless there are material advantages to be gained by
making herself agreeable to him."

She felt that the moment was tremendous, and remembered suddenly
that Mrs. Peniston's black brocade, with the cut jet fringe,
would have been hers at the end of the season.

Mrs. Peniston put down her work again. Another aspect of the same
idea had presented itself to her, and she felt that it was
beneath her dignity to have her nerves racked by a dependent
relative who wore her old clothes.

"If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,"
she said coldly, "you might at least have chosen a more suitable
time than just as I am recovering from the strain of giving a
large dinner."

The mention of the dinner dispelled Miss Stepney's last scruples.
"I don't know why I should be accused of taking pleasure in
telling you about Lily. I was sure I shouldn't get any thanks for
it," she returned with a flare of temper. "But I have some family
feeling left, and as you are the only person who has any
authority over Lily, I thought you ought to know what is being
said of her."

"Well," said Mrs. Peniston, "what I complain of is that you
haven't told me yet what IS being said."

"I didn't suppose I should have to put it so plainly. People say
that Gus Trenor pays her bills."

"Pays her bills--her bills?" Mrs. Peniston broke into a laugh. "I
can't imagine where you can have picked up such rubbish. Lily has
her own income--and I provide for her very handsomely--"

"Oh, we all know that," interposed Miss Stepney drily. "But Lily
wears a great many smart gowns--"

"I like her to be well-dressed--it's only suitable!"

"Certainly; but then there are her gambling debts besides."

Miss Stepney, in the beginning, had not meant to bring up this
point; but Mrs. Peniston had only her own incredulity to blame.
She was like the stiff-necked unbelievers of Scripture, who must
be annihilated to be convinced.

"Gambling debts? Lily?" Mrs. Peniston's voice shook with anger
and bewilderment. She wondered whether Grace Stepney had gone out
of her mind. "What do you mean by her gambling debts?"

"Simply that if one plays bridge for money in Lily's set one is
liable to lose a great deal--and I don't suppose Lily always
wins."

"Who told you that my niece played cards for money?"

"Mercy, cousin Julia, don't look at me as if I were trying to
turn you against Lily! Everybody knows she is crazy about bridge.
Mrs. Gryce told me herself that it was her gambling that
frightened Percy Gryce--it seems he was really taken with her at
first. But, of course, among Lily's friends it's quite the custom
for girls to play for money. In fact, people are inclined to
excuse her on that account---"

"To excuse her for what?"

"For being hard up--and accepting attentions from men like Gus
Trenor--and George Dorset---"

Mrs. Peniston gave another cry. "George Dorset? Is there any one
else? I should like to know the worst, if you please."

"Don't put it in that way, cousin Julia. Lately Lily has been a
good deal with the Dorsets, and he seems to admire her--but of
course that's only natural. And I'm sure there is no truth in the
horrid things people say; but she HAS been spending a great deal
of money this winter. Evie Van Osburgh was at Celeste's
ordering her trousseau the other day--yes, the marriage takes
place next month--and she told me that Celeste showed her the
most exquisite things she was just sending home to Lily. And
people say that Judy Trenor has quarrelled with her on account of
Gus; but I'm sure I'm sorry I spoke, though I only meant it as a
kindness."

Mrs. Peniston's genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss
Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect
of succeeding to the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to
reason have generally some crack through which suspicion filters,
and her visitor's insinuations did not glide off as easily as she
had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked scenes, and her
determination to avoid them had always led her to hold herself
aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls had
not been supposed to require close supervision. They were
generally assumed to be taken up with the legitimate business of
courtship and marriage, and interference in such affairs on the
part of their natural guardians was considered as unwarrantable
as a spectator's suddenly joining in a game. There had of course
been "fast" girls even in Mrs. Peniston's early experience; but
their fastness, at worst, was understood to be a mere excess of
animal spirits, against which there could be no graver charge
than that of being "unladylike." The modern fastness appeared
synonymous with immorality, and the mere idea of immorality was
as offensive to Mrs. Peniston as a smell of cooking in the
drawing-room: it was one of the conceptions her mind refused to
admit.

She had no immediate intention of repeating to Lily what she had
heard, or even of trying to ascertain its truth by means of
discreet interrogation. To do so might be to provoke a scene; and
a scene, in the shaken state of Mrs. Peniston's nerves, with the
effects of her dinner not worn off, and her mind still tremulous
with new impressions, was a risk she deemed it her duty to avoid.
But there remained in her thoughts a settled deposit of
resentment against her niece, all the denser because it was not
to be cleared by explanation or discussion. It was horrible of a
young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the
charges against her, she must be to blame for their
having been made. Mrs. Peniston felt as if there had been a
contagious illness in the house, and she was doomed to sit
shivering among her contaminated furniture.

Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of
her critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself;
but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong
turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road till
it was too late to take it.

Lily, who considered herself above narrow prejudices, had not
imagined that the fact of letting Gus Trenor make a little money
for her would ever disturb her self-complacency. And the fact in
itself still seemed harmless enough; only it was a fertile source
of harmful complications. As she exhausted the amusement of
spending the money these complications be came more pressing, and
Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in tracing the causes
of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the thought that
she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset. This
enmity, however, had apparently expired in a renewal of
friendliness between the two women. Lily's visit to the Dorsets
had resulted, for both, in the discovery that they could be of
use to each other; and the civilized instinct finds a subtler
pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him.
Mrs. Dorset was, in fact, engaged in a new sentimental
experiment, of which Mrs. Fisher's late property, Ned Silverton,
was the rosy victim; and at such moments, as Judy Trenor had once
remarked, she felt a peculiar need of distracting her husband's
attention. Dorset was as difficult to amuse as a savage; but even
his self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather
these were especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her
experience with Percy Gryce stood her in good stead in
ministering to Dorset's humours, and if the incentive to please
was less urgent, the difficulties of her situation were teaching
her to make much of minor opportunities.

Intimacy with the Dorsets was not likely to lessen such
difficulties on the material side. Mrs. Dorset had none of Judy
Trenor's lavish impulses, and Dorset's admiration was not likely
to express itself in financial "tips," even had Lily cared to
renew her experiences in that line. What she required, for the
moment, of the Dorsets' friendship, was simply its social
sanction. She knew that people were beginning to talk of her; but
this fact did not alarm her as it had alarmed Mrs. Peniston. In
her set such gossip was not unusual, and a handsome girl who
flirted with a married man was merely assumed to be pressing to
the limit of her opportunities. It was Trenor himself who
frightened her. Their walk in the Park had not been a success.
Trenor had married young, and since his marriage his intercourse
with women had not taken the form of the sentimental small-talk
which doubles upon itself like the paths in a maze. He was first
puzzled and then irritated to find himself always led back to the
same starting-point, and Lily felt that she was gradually losing
control of the situation. Trenor was in truth in an unmanageable
mood. In spite of his understanding with Rosedale he had been
somewhat heavily "touched" by the fall in stocks; his household
expenses weighed on him, and he seemed to be meeting, on all
sides, a sullen opposition to his wishes, instead of the easy
good luck he had hitherto encountered.

Mrs. Trenor was still at Bellomont, keeping the town-house open,
and descending on it now and then for a taste of the world, but
preferring the recurrent excitement of week-end parties to the
restrictions of a dull season. Since the holidays she had not
urged Lily to return to Bellomont, and the first time they met in
town Lily fancied there was a shade of coldness in her manner.
Was it merely the expression of her displeasure at Miss Bart's
neglect, or had disquieting rumours reached her? The latter
contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a sense
of uneasiness. If her roaming sympathies had struck root
anywhere, it was in her friendship with Judy Trenor. She believed
in the sincerity of her friend's affection, though it sometimes
showed itself in self-interested ways, and she shrank with
peculiar reluctance from any risk of estranging it. But, aside
from this, she was keenly conscious of the way in which such an
estrangement would react on herself. The fact that Gus Trenor was
Judy's husband was at times Lily's strongest reason for disliking
him, and for resenting the obligation under which he had placed
her. To set her doubts at rest, Miss Bart, soon after the New
Year, "proposed" herself for a week-end at Bellomont. She had
learned in advance that the presence of a large party
would protect her from too great assiduity on Trenor's part, and
his wife's telegraphic "come by all means" seemed to as sure her
of her usual welcome.

Judy received her amicably. The cares of a large party always
prevailed over personal feelings, and Lily saw no change in her
hostess's manner. Nevertheless, she was soon aware that the
experiment of coming to Bellomont was destined not to be
successful. The party was made up of what Mrs. Trenor called
"poky people"--her generic name for persons who did not play
bridge--and, it being her habit to group all such obstructionists
in one class, she usually invited them together, regardless of
their other characteristics. The result was apt to be an
irreducible combination of persons having no other quality in
common than their abstinence from bridge, and the antagonisms
developed in a group lacking the one taste which might have
amalgamated them, were in this case aggravated by bad weather,
and by the ill-concealed boredom of their host and hostess. In
such emergencies, Judy would usually have turned to Lily to fuse
the discordant elements; and Miss Bart, assuming that such a
service was expected of her, threw herself into it with her
accustomed zeal. But at the outset she perceived a subtle
resistance to her efforts. If Mrs. Trenor's manner toward her was
unchanged, there was certainly a faint coldness in that of the
other ladies. An occasional caustic allusion to "your friends the
Wellington Brys," or to "the little Jew who has bought the
Greiner house--some one told us you knew him, Miss Bart,"--showed
Lily that she was in disfavour with that portion of society
which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the
right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. The
indication was a slight one, and a year ago Lily would have
smiled at it, trusting to the charm of her personality to dispel
any prejudice against her. But now she had grown more sensitive
to criticism and less confident in her power of disarming it. She
knew, moreover, that if the ladies at Bellomont permitted
themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that
they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment
behind her back. The nervous dread lest anything in Trenor's
manner should seem to justify their disapproval made her seek
every pretext for avoiding him, and she left Bellomont con 137>scious of having failed in every purpose which had taken her
there.

In town she returned to preoccupations which, for the moment, had
the happy effect of banishing troublesome thoughts. The Welly
Brys, after much debate, and anxious counsel with their newly
acquired friends, had decided on the bold move of giving a
general entertainment. To attack society collectively, when one's
means of approach are limited to a few acquaintances, is like
advancing into a strange country with an insufficient number of
scouts; but such rash tactics have sometimes led to brilliant
victories, and the Brys had determined to put their fate to the
touch. Mrs. Fisher, to whom they had entrusted the conduct of the
affair, had decided that TABLEAUX VIVANTS and expensive music
were the two baits most likely to attract the desired prey, and
after prolonged negotiations, and the kind of wire-pulling in
which she was known to excel, she had induced a dozen fashionable
women to exhibit themselves in a series of pictures which, by a
farther miracle of persuasion, the distinguished portrait
painter, Paul Morpeth, had been prevailed upon to organize.

Lily was in her element on such occasions. Under Morpeth's
guidance her vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher
food than dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in
the disposal of draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting
of lights and shadows. Her dramatic instinct was roused by the
choice of subjects, and the gorgeous reproductions of historic
dress stirred an imagination which only visual impressions could
reach. But keenest of all was the exhilaration of displaying her
own beauty under a new aspect: of showing that her loveliness was
no mere fixed quality, but an element shaping all emotions to
fresh forms of grace.

Mrs. Fisher's measures had been well-taken, and society,
surprised in a dull moment, succumbed to the temptation of Mrs.
Bry's hospitality. The protesting minority were forgotten in the
throng which abjured and came; and the audience was almost as
brilliant as the show.

Lawrence Selden was among those who had yielded to the proffered
inducements. If he did not often act on the accepted social axiom
that a man may go where he pleases, it was because he had
long since learned that his pleasures were mainly to be found in
a small group of the like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular
effects, and was not insensible to the part money plays in their
production: all he asked was that the very rich should live up to
their calling as stage-managers, and not spend their money in a
dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be charged with
doing. Their recently built house, whatever it might lack as a
frame for domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the
display of a festal assemblage as one of those airy
pleasure-halls which the Italian architects improvised to set off
the hospitality of princes. The air of improvisation was in fact
strikingly present: so recent, so rapidly-evoked was the whole
MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the marble columns to learn
they were not of cardboard, to seat one's self in one of the
damask-and-gold arm-chairs to be sure it was not painted against
the wall.

Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found
himself, from an angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with
frank enjoyment. The company, in obedience to the decorative
instinct which calls for fine clothes in fine surroundings, had
dressed rather with an eye to Mrs. Bry's background than to
herself. The seated throng, filling the immense room without
undue crowding, presented a surface of rich tissues and jewelled
shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls, and the
flushed splendours of the Venetian ceiling. At the farther end of
the room a stage had been constructed behind a proscenium arch
curtained with folds of old damask; but in the pause before the
parting of the folds there was little thought of what they might
reveal, for every woman who had accepted Mrs. Bry's invitation
was engaged in trying to find out how many of her friends had
done the same.

Gerty Farish, seated next to Selden, was lost in that
indiscriminate and uncritical enjoyment so irritating to Miss
Bart's finer perceptions. It may be that Selden's nearness had
something to do with the quality of his cousin's pleasure; but
Miss Farish was so little accustomed to refer her enjoyment of
such scenes to her own share in them, that she was merely
conscious of a deeper sense of contentment.

"Wasn't it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course
it would never have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on
the list, and I should have been so sorry to miss seeing it
all-and especially Lily herself. Some one told me the ceiling was
by Veronese--you would know, of course, Lawrence. I suppose it's
very beautiful, but his women are so dreadfully fat. Goddesses?
Well, I can only say that if they'd been mortals and had to wear
corsets, it would have been better for them. I think our women
are much handsomer. And this room is wonderfully becoming--every
one looks so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs.
George Dorset's pearls--I suppose the smallest of them would pay
the rent of our Girls' Club for a year. Not that I ought to
complain about the dub; every one has been so wonderfully kind.
Did I tell you that Lily had given us three hundred dollars?
Wasn't it splendid of her? And then she collected a lot of money
from her friends--Mrs. Bry gave us five hundred, and Mr. Rosedale
a thousand. I wish Lily were not so nice to Mr. Rosedale, but she
says it's no use being rude to him, because he doesn't see the
difference. She really can't bear to hurt people's feelings--it
makes me so angry when I hear her called cold and conceited! The
girls at the dub don't call her that. Do you know she has been
there with me twice?--yes, Lily! And you should have seen their
eyes! One of them said it was as good as a day in the country
just to look at her. And she sat there, and laughed and talked
with them--not a bit as if she were being CHARITABLE, you know,
but as if she liked it as much as they did. They've been asking
ever since when she's coming back; and she's promised me---oh!"

Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of the
curtain on the first TABLEAU--a group of nymphs dancing across
flower-strewn sward in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's
Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend for their effect not only on the
happy disposal of lights and the delusive-interposition of layers
of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision.
To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement
of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive
fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between
fact and imagination. Selden's mind was of this order: he could
yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
spell of a fairy-tale. Mrs. Bry's TABLEAUX wanted none of
the qualities which go to the producing of such illusions, and
under Morpeth's organizing hand the pictures succeeded each other
with the rhythmic march of some splendid frieze, in which the
fugitive curves of living flesh and the wandering light of young
eyes have been subdued to plastic harmony without losing the
charm of life.

The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators
had been cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types.
No one, for instance, could have made a more typical Goya than
Carry Fisher, with her short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated
glow of her eyes, the provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A
brilliant Miss Smedden from Brooklyn showed to perfection the
sumptuous curves of Titian's Daughter, lifting her gold salver
laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of rippled hair and
rich brocade, and a young Mrs. Van Alstyne, who showed the
frailer Dutch type, with high blue-veined forehead and pale eyes
and lashes, made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin,
against a curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs
garlanding the altar of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny
textures, pearl-woven heads and marble architecture; and a
Watteau group of lute-playing comedians, lounging by a fountain
in a sunlit glade.

Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in
Selden, leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even
Gerty Farish's running commentary--"Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson
looks!" or: "That must be Kate Corby, to the right there, in
purple"--did not break the spell of the illusion. Indeed, so
skilfully had the personality of the actors been subdued to the
scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of the
audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly
the portrait of Miss Bart.

Here there could be no mistaking the predominance of
personality--the unanimous "Oh!" of the spectators was a tribute,
not to the brush-work of Reynolds's "Mrs. Lloyd" but to the flesh
and blood loveliness of Lily Bart. She had shown her artistic
intelligence in selecting a type so like her own that she could
embody the person represented without ceasing to be
herself. It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into,
Reynolds's canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by
the beams of her living grace. The impulse to show herself in a
splendid setting--she had thought for a moment of representing
Tiepolo's Cleopatra--had yielded to the truer instinct of
trusting to her unassisted beauty, and she had purposely chosen a
picture without distracting accessories of dress or surroundings.
Her pale draperies, and the background of foliage against which
she stood, served only to relieve the long dryad-like curves that
swept upward from her poised foot to her lifted arm. The noble
buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace,
revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always
felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he
seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the
trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a
note of that eternal harmony of which her beauty was a part.

"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad,
there isn't a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she
wanted us to know it!"

These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden's
shoulder whenever the parting of the curtains presented any
exceptional opportunity for the study of the female outline,
affected their hearer in an unexpected way. It was not the first
time that Selden had heard Lily's beauty lightly remarked on, and
hitherto the tone of the comments had imperceptibly coloured his
view of her. But now it woke only a motion of indignant contempt.
This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by
which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban for a
judgment on Miranda?

In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel
the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus
detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out
suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had
once met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing
to be with her again.

He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. "Wasn't she
too beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple dress?
It makes her look like the real Lily--the Lily I know."

He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he
corrected; and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding,
exclaimed joyfully: "I'll tell her that! She always says you
dislike her."

The performance over, Selden's first impulse was to seek Miss
Bart. During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX,
the actors had seated themselves here and there in the audience,
diversifying its conventional appearance by the varied
picturesqueness of their dress. Lily, however, was not among
them, and her absence served to protract the effect she had
produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see her too
soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh
wedding, and on his side the avoidance had been intentional.
Tonight, however, he knew that, sooner or later, he should find
himself at her side; and though he let the dispersing crowd drift
him whither it would, without making an immediate effort to reach
her, his procrastination was not due to any lingering resistance,
but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in the sense of complete
surrender.

Lily had not an instant's doubt as to the meaning of the murmur
greeting her appearance. No other tableau had been received with
that precise note of approval: it had obviously been called forth
by herself, and not by the picture she impersonated. She had
feared at the last moment that she was risking too much in
dispensing with the advantages of a more sumptuous setting, and
the completeness of her triumph gave her an intoxicating sense of
recovered power. Not caring to diminish the impression she had
produced, she held herself aloof from the audience till the
movement of dispersal before supper, and thus had a second
opportunity of showing herself to advantage, as the throng poured
slowly into the empty drawing-room where she was standing.

She was soon the centre of a group which increased and renewed
itself as the circulation became general, and the individual
comments on her success were a delightful prolon

gation of
the collective applause. At such moments she lost something of
her natural fastidiousness, and cared less for the quality of the
admiration received than for its quantity. Differences of
personality were merged in a warm atmosphere of praise, in which
her beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight; and if Selden had
approached a moment or two sooner he would have seen her turning
on Ned Van Alstyne and George Dorset the look he had dreamed of
capturing for himself.

Fortune willed, however, that the hurried approach of Mrs.
Fisher, as whose aide-de-camp Van Alstyne was acting, should
break up the group before Selden reached the threshold of the
room. One or two of the men wandered off in search of their
partners for supper, and the others, noticing Selden's approach,
gave way to him in accordance with the tacit freemasonry of the
ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he reached her;
and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the satisfaction
of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen as it
rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced.
She read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation
of her triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was
for him only she cared to be beautiful.

Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in
silence, and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but
against the tide which was setting thither. The faces about her
flowed by like the streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed
where Selden was leading her, till they passed through a glass
doorway at the end of the long suite of rooms and stood suddenly
in the fragrant hush of a garden. Gravel grated beneath their
feet, and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer
night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the depths of
foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the
splash of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of
music that might have been blown across a sleeping lake.

Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene
as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have
surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or
to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a
starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than
the sweetness of being alone in it together. At length Lily
withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so that her white-robed
slimness was outlined against the dusk of the branches. Selden
followed her, and still without speaking they seated themselves
on a bench beside the fountain.

Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a
child. "You never speak to me--you think hard things of me," she
murmured.

"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.

"Then why do we never see each other? Why can't we be friends?
You promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as
though the words were drawn from her unwillingly.

"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a
low voice.

She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft
motion of a flower. His own met it slowly, and their lips
touched. She drew back and rose from her seat. Selden rose too,
and they stood facing each other. Suddenly she caught his hand
and pressed it a moment against her cheek.

"Ah, love me, love me--but don't tell me so!" she sighed with her
eyes in his; and before he could speak she had turned and slipped
through the arch of boughs, disappearing in the brightness of the
room beyond.

Selden stood where she had left him. He knew too well the
transiency of exquisite moments to attempt to follow her; but
presently he reentered the house and made his way through the
deserted rooms to the door. A few sumptuously-cloaked ladies were
already gathered in the marble vestibule, and in the coat-room he
found Van Alstyne and Gus Trenor.

The former, at Selden's approach, paused in the careful selection
of a cigar from one of the silver boxes invitingly set out near
the door.

"Hallo, Selden, going too? You're an Epicurean like myself, I
see: you don't want to see all those goddesses gobbling terrapin.
Gad, what a show of good-looking women; but not one of
'em could touch that little cousin of mine. Talk of
jewels--what's a woman want with jewels when she's got herself to
show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they wear cover up
their figures when they've got 'em. I never knew till tonight
what an outline Lily has."

"It's not her fault if everybody don't know it now," growled
Trenor, flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined
coat. "Damned bad taste, I call it--no, no cigar for me. You
can't tell what you're smoking in one of these new houses--likely
as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay for supper? Not if I know
it! When people crowd their rooms so that you can't get near any
one you want to speak to, I'd as soon sup in the elevated at the
rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says life's
too short to spend it in breaking in new people."

Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bedside.

One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to
town that afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would
be able to dine with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote
briefly that an important case called him to Albany, whence he
would be unable to return till the evening, and asked Lily to let
him know at what hour on the following day she would see him.

Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his
letter. The scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part
of her dreams; she had not expected to wake to such evidence of
its reality. Her first movement was one of annoyance: this
unforeseen act of Selden's added another complication to life. It
was so unlike him to yield to such an irrational impulse! Did he
really mean to ask her to marry him? She had once shown him the
impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent behaviour seemed
to prove that he had accepted the situation with a reasonableness
somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more agreeable
to find that this reason ableness was maintained only at the cost
of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as
the sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing
the episode of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she
could not marry him, it would be kinder to him, as well as easier
for herself, to write a line amicably evading his request to see
her: he was not the man to mistake such a hint, and when next
they met it would be on their usual friendly footing.

Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk. She wanted
to write at once, while she could trust to the strength of her
resolve. She was still languid from her brief sleep and the
exhilaration of the evening, and the sight of Selden's writing
brought back the culminating moment of her triumph: the moment
when she had read in his eyes that no philosophy was proof
against her power. It would be pleasant to have that sensation
again . . . no one else could give it to her in its fulness; and
she could not bear to mar her mood of luxu

rious
retrospection by an act of definite refusal. She took up her pen
and wrote hastily: "TOMORROW AT FOUR;" murmuring to herself, as
she slipped the sheet into its envelope: "I can easily put him
off when tomorrow comes."

Judy Trenor's summons was very welcome to Lily. It was the first
time she had received a direct communication from Bellomont since
the close of her last visit there, and she was still visited by
the dread of having incurred Judy's displeasure. But this
characteristic command seemed to reestablish their former
relations; and Lily smiled at the thought that her friend had
probably summoned her in order to hear about the Brys'
entertainment. Mrs. Trenor had absented herself from the feast,
perhaps for the reason so frankly enunciated by her husband,
perhaps because, as Mrs. Fisher somewhat differently put it, she
"couldn't bear new people when she hadn't discovered them
herself." At any rate, though she remained haughtily at
Bellomont, Lily suspected in her a devouring eagerness to hear of
what she had missed, and to learn exactly in what measure Mrs.
Wellington Bry had surpassed all previous competitors for social
recognition. Lily was quite ready to gratify this curiosity, but
it happened that she was dining out. She determined, however, to
see Mrs. Trenor for a few moments, and ringing for her maid she
despatched a telegram to say that she would be with her friend
that evening at ten.

She was dining with Mrs. Fisher, who had gathered at an informal
feast a few of the performers of the previous evening. There was
to be plantation music in the studio after dinner-for Mrs.
Fisher, despairing of the republic, had taken up modelling, and
annexed to her small crowded house a spacious apartment, which,
whatever its uses in her hours of plastic inspiration, served at
other times for the exercise of an indefatigable hospitality.
Lily was reluctant to leave, for the dinner was amusing, and she
would have liked to lounge over a cigarette and hear a few songs;
but she could not break her engagement with Judy, and shortly
after ten she asked her hostess to ring for a hansom, and drove
up Fifth Avenue to the Trenors'.

She waited long enough on the doorstep to wonder that
Judy's presence in town was not signalized by a greater
promptness in admitting her; and her surprise was increased when,
instead of the expected footman, pushing his shoulders into a
tardy coat, a shabby care-taking person in calico let her into
the shrouded hall. Trenor, however, appeared at once on the
threshold of the drawing-room, welcoming her with unusual
volubility while he relieved her of her cloak and drew her into
the room.

"Come along to the den; it's the only comfortable place in the
house. Doesn't this room look as if it was waiting for the body
to be brought down? Can't see why Judy keeps the house wrapped up
in this awful slippery white stuff--it's enough to give a fellow
pneumonia to walk through these rooms on a cold day. You look a
little pinched yourself, by the way: it's rather a sharp night
out. I noticed it walking up from the club. Come along, and I'll
give you a nip of brandy, and you can toast yourself over the
fire and try some of my new Egyptians--that little Turkish chap
at the Embassy put me on to a brand that I want you to try, and
if you like 'em I'll get out a lot for you: they don't have 'em
here yet, but I'll cable."

He led her through the house to the large room at the back, where
Mrs. Trenor usually sat, and where, even in her absence, there
was an air of occupancy. Here, as usual, were flowers,
newspapers, a littered writing-table, and a general aspect of
lamp-lit familiarity, so that it was a surprise not to see Judy's
energetic figure start up from the arm-chair near the fire.

It was apparently Trenor himself who had been occupying the seat
in question, for it was overhung by a cloud of cigar smoke, and
near it stood one of those intricate folding tables which British
ingenuity has devised to facilitate the circulation of tobacco
and spirits. The sight of such appliances in a drawing-room was
not unusual in Lily's set, where smoking and drinking were
unrestricted by considerations of time and place, and her first
movement was to help herself to one of the cigarettes recommended
by Trenor, while she checked his loquacity by asking, with a
surprised glance: "Where's Judy?"

Trenor, a little heated by his unusual flow of words, and
perhaps by prolonged propinquity with the decanters, was bending
over the latter to decipher their silver labels.

"Here, now, Lily, just a drop of cognac in a little fizzy
water--you do look pinched, you know: I swear the end of your
nose is red. I'll take another glass to keep you
company--Judy?--Why, you see, Judy's got a devil of a head
ache--quite knocked out with it, poor thing--she asked me to
explain--make it all right, you know--Do come up to the fire,
though; you look dead-beat, really. Now do let me make you
comfortable, there's a good girl."

He had taken her hand, half-banteringly, and was drawing her
toward a low seat by the hearth; but she stopped and freed
herself quietly.

"Do you mean to say that Judy's not well enough to see me?
Doesn't she want me to go upstairs?"

Trenor drained the glass he had filled for himself, and paused to
set it down before he answered.

"Why, no--the fact is, she's not up to seeing anybody. It came on
suddenly, you know, and she asked me to tell you how awfully
sorry she was--if she'd known where you were dining she'd have
sent you word."

"She did know where I was dining; I mentioned it in my telegram.
But it doesn't matter, of course. I suppose if she's so poorly
she won't go back to Bellomont in the morning, and I can come and
see her then."

"Yes: exactly--that's capital. I'll tell her you'll pop in to
morrow morning. And now do sit down a minute, there's a dear, and
let's have a nice quiet jaw together. You won't take a drop, just
for sociability? Tell me what you think of that cigarette. Why,
don't you like it? What are you chucking it away for?"

"I am chucking it away because I must go, if you'll have the
goodness to call a cab for me," Lily returned with a smile.

She did not like Trenor's unusual excitability, with its too
evident explanation, and the thought of being alone with him,
with her friend out of reach upstairs, at the other end of the
great empty house, did not conduce to a desire to prolong their
TETE-A-TETE.

But Trenor, with a promptness which did not escape her, had moved
between herself and the door.

"Why must you go, I should like to know? If Judy'd been here
you'd have sat gossiping till all hours--and you can't even give
me five minutes! It's always the same story. Last night I
couldn't get near you--I went to that damned vulgar party just to
see you, and there was everybody talking about you, and asking me
if I'd ever seen anything so stunning, and when I tried to come
up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just went on
laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be
able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when you were
mentioned."

He paused, flushed by his diatribe, and fixing on her a look in
which resentment was the ingredient she least disliked. But she
had regained her presence of mind, and stood composedly in the
middle of the room, while her slight smile seemed to put an ever
increasing distance between herself and Trenor.

Across it she said: "Don't be absurd, Gus. It's past eleven, and
I must really ask you to ring for a cab."

He remained immovable, with the lowering forehead she had grown
to detest.

"And supposing I won't ring for one--what'll you do then?"

"I shall go upstairs to Judy if you force me to disturb her."

Trenor drew a step nearer and laid his hand on her arm. "Look
here, Lily: won't you give me five minutes of your own accord?"

"Not tonight, Gus: you---"

"Very good, then: I'll take 'em. And as many more as I want." He
had squared himself on the threshold, his hands thrust deep in
his pockets. He nodded toward the chair on the hearth.

"Go and sit down there, please: I've got a word to say to you."

Lily's quick temper was getting the better of her fears. She drew
herself up and moved toward the door.

"If you have anything to say to me, you must say it another time.
I shall go up to Judy unless you call a cab for me at once."

He burst into a laugh. "Go upstairs and welcome, my dear; but you
won't find Judy. She ain't there."

Lily cast a startled look upon him. "Do you mean that Judy is not
in the house--not in town?" she exclaimed.

"That's just what I do mean," returned Trenor, his bluster
sinking to sullenness under her look.

"Nonsense--I don't believe you. I am going upstairs," she said
impatiently.

He drew unexpectedly aside, letting her reach the threshold
unimpeded.

"Go up and welcome; but my wife is at Bellomont."

But Lily had a flash of reassurance. "If she hadn't come she
would have sent me word---"

"She did; she telephoned me this afternoon to let you know."

"I received no message."

"I didn't send any."

The two measured each other for a moment, but Lily still saw her
opponent through a blur of scorn that made all other
considerations indistinct.

"I can't imagine your object in playing such a stupid trick on
me; but if you have fully gratified your peculiar sense of humour
I must again ask you to send for a cab."

It was the wrong note, and she knew it as she spoke. To be stung
by irony it is not necessary to understand it, and the angry
streaks on Trenor's face might have been raised by an actual
lash.

"Look here, Lily, don't take that high and mighty tone with me."
He had again moved toward the door, and in her instinctive
shrinking from him she let him regain command of the threshold.
"I DID play a trick on you; I own up to it; but if you think I'm
ashamed you're mistaken. Lord knows I've been patient
enough--I've hung round and looked like an ass. And all the while
you were letting a lot of other fellows make up to you . . .
letting 'em make fun of me, I daresay . . . I'm not sharp, and
can't dress my friends up to look funny, as you do . . . but I
can tell when it's being done to me . . . I can tell fast enough
when I'm made a fool of . . ."

"Ah, I shouldn't have thought that!" flashed from Lily; but her
laugh dropped to silence under his look.

"No; you wouldn't have thought it; but you'll know better
now. That's what you're here for tonight. I've been waiting for a
quiet time to talk things over, and now I've got it I mean to
make you hear me out."

His first rush of inarticulate resentment had been followed by a
steadiness and concentration of tone more disconcerting to Lily
than the excitement preceding it. For a moment her presence of
mind forsook her. She had more than once been in situations where
a quick sword-play of wit had been needful to cover her retreat;
but her frightened heart-throbs told her that here such skill
would not avail.

To gain time she repeated: "I don't understand what you want."

Trenor had pushed a chair between herself and the door. He threw
himself in it, and leaned back, looking up at her.

"I'll tell you what I want: I want to know just where you and I
stand. Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally
allowed to have a seat at table."

She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of
having to conciliate where she longed to humble.

"I don't know what you mean--but you must see, Gus, that I can't
stay here talking to you at this hour---"

"Gad, you go to men's houses fast enough in broad day
light--strikes me you're not always so deuced careful of
appearances."

The brutality of the thrust gave her the sense of dizziness that
follows on a physical blow. Rosedale had spoken then--this was
the way men talked of her--She felt suddenly weak and
defenceless: there was a throb of self-pity in her throat. But
all the while another self was sharpening her to vigilance,
whispering the terrified warning that every word and gesture must
be measured.

"If you have brought me here to say insulting things---" she
began.

Trenor laughed. "Don't talk stage-rot. I don't want to insult
you. But a man's got his feelings--and you've played with mine
too long. I didn't begin this business--kept out of the way, and
left the track clear for the other chaps, till you rummaged me
out and set to work to make an ass of me--and an easy job you had
of it, too. That's the trouble--it was too easy for
you--you got reckless--thought you could turn me inside out, and
chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse. But, by gad, that
ain't playing fair: that's dodging the rules of the game. Of
course I know now what you wanted--it wasn't my beautiful eyes
you were after--but I tell you what, Miss Lily, you've got to pay
up for making me think so---"

He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward
her with a reddening brow; but she held her footing, though every
nerve tore at her to retreat as he advanced.

"Pay up?" she faltered. "Do you mean that I owe you money?"

He laughed again. "Oh, I'm not asking for payment in kind. But
there's such a thing as fair play--and interest on one's
money--and hang me if I've had as much as a look from you---"

"Your money? What have I to do with your money? You advised me
how to invest mine . . . you must have seen I knew nothing of
business . . . you told me it was all right---"

"It WAS all right--it is, Lily: you're welcome to all of it, and
ten times more. I'm only asking for a word of thanks from you."
He was closer still, with a hand that grew formidable; and the
frightened self in her was dragging the other down.

"I HAVE thanked you; I've shown I was grateful. What more have
you done than any friend might do, or any one accept from a
friend?"

Trenor caught her up with a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted
as much before--and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to
chuck me. I don't care how you settled your score with them--if
you fooled 'em I'm that much to the good. Don't stare at me like
that--I know I'm not talking the way a man is supposed to talk to
a girl--but, hang it, if you don't like it you can stop me quick
enough--you know I'm mad about you--damn the money, there's
plenty more of it--if THAT bothers you . . . I was a brute,
Lily--Lily!--just look at me---"

Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke--wave crashing on
wave so close that the moral shame was one with the physical
dread. It seemed to her that self-esteem would have made
her invulnerable--that it was her own dishonour which put a
fearful solitude about her.

His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew
back from him with a desperate assumption of scorn.

"I've told you I don't understand--but if I owe you money you
shall be paid---"

Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had
called out the primitive man.

"Ah--you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale--and take your chances
of fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless--unless you've
settled your other scores already--and I'm the only one left out
in the cold!"

She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words--the words were
worse than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body--in
her throat, her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes
travelled despairingly about the room--they lit on the bell, and
she remembered that help was in call. Yes, but scandal with it--a
hideous mustering of tongues. No, she must fight her way out
alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to be in the
house with Trenor--there must be nothing to excite conjecture in
her way of leaving it.

She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.

"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to
say?"

To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless
stare. With his last gust of words the flame had died out,
leaving him chill and humbled. It was as though a cold air had
dispersed the fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed
before him black and naked as the ruins of a fire. Old habits,
old restraints, the hand of inherited order, plucked back the
bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts. Trenor's
eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
ledge.

"Go home! Go away from here"---he stammered, and turning his back
on her walked toward the hearth.

The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate
lucidity. The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and
she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside
herself, bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the
order for a hansom, directing him to put her in it when
it came. Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but an
insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly,
and nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to
exchange light words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual
messages for Judy, while all the while she shook with inward
loathing. On the doorstep, with the street before her, she felt a
mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as the prisoner's first
draught of free air; but the clearness of brain continued, and
she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the
lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there
something half-familiar in its outline?--which, as she entered
the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the
obscurity of the side street.

But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering
darkness closed on her. "I can't think--I can't think," she
moaned, and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab.
She seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves
in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being
to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a
house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and
her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene
where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable
huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies
might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the
dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their
wings was in her brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the
streets passing--the familiar alien streets. All she looked on
was the same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed
between today and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed
simple, natural, full of daylight--and she was alone in a place
of darkness and pollution.--Alone! It was the loneliness that
frightened her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street
corner, and she saw that the hands marked the half hour after
eleven. Only half-past eleven--there were hours and hours left of
the night! And she must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on
her bed. Her soft nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had
none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the
slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed--and the darkness
would frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary
details of the room would brand themselves forever on her brain.
She had always hated her room at Mrs. Peniston's--its ugliness,
its impersonality, the fact that nothing in it was really hers.
To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room may open
almost human arms, and the being to whom no four walls mean more
than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.

Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But
even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to
think of Mrs. Peniston's mind as offering shelter or
comprehension to such misery as Lily's. As the pain that can be
told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little
healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by
enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion
holding its breath.

She started up and looked forth on the passing streets.
Gerty!--they were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach
there before this labouring anguish burst from her breast to her
lips--if only she could feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she
shook in the ague-fit of fear that was coming upon her! She
pushed up the door in the roof and called the address to the
driver. It was not so late--Gerty might still be waking. And even
if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate every
recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her
friend's call.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selden thanked him, but pleaded an engagement.

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