House of Mirth
by
Edith Wharton

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."

"Sorry, Gus--I can't do it."

As Selden turned away, he noticed the dark flush on Trenor's
face, the unpleasant moisture of his intensely white forehead,
the way his jewelled rings were wedged in the creases of his fat
red fingers. Certainly the beast was predominating--the beast at
the bottom of the glass. And he had heard this man's name coupled
with Lily's! Bah--the thought sickened him; all the way back to
his rooms he was haunted by the sight of Trenor's fat creased
hands---

On his table lay the note: Lily had sent it to his rooms. He knew
what was in it before he broke the seal--a grey seal with BEYOND!
beneath a flying ship. Ah, he would take her beyond--beyond the
ugliness, the pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of the
soul---



Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden
entered it. Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and
ingenuity, spoke to him in the language just then sweetest to his
ear. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling
matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. Gerty
sparkled too; or at least shone with a tempered radiance. He had
never before noticed that she had "points"--really, some good
fellow might do worse . . . Over the little dinner (and here,
again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she ought to
marry--he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had made
the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep
such gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that
Lily could trim her own hats--she had told him so the day of
their walk at Bellomont.

He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little
repast he kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being
the centre of observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she
had manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an
extraordinary interest in her household arrangements:
complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized
every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise
delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful
generalizations on the burden of a large establishment.

When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as
snugly as bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and
poured it into her grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he
leaned back, basking in the warm fragrance, lighted on a recent
photograph of Miss Bart, and the desired transition was effected
without an effort. The photograph was well enough--but to catch
her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed with him--never
had she been so radiant. But could photography capture that
light? There had been a new look in her face--something
different; yes, Selden agreed there had been something different.
The coffee was so exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such
a contrast to the watery stuff at the club! Ah, your poor
bachelor with his impersonal club fare, alternating with the
equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A man who lived
in lodgings missed the best part of life--he pictured the
flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's
compassion for the man . . . But to return to Lily--and again and
again he returned, questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on,
draining her inmost thoughts of their stored tenderness for her
friend.

At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this
perfect communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily
helped to confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt
together on the fact that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced
her generous impulses--her restlessness and discontent. The fact
that her life had never satisfied her proved that she was made
for better things. She might have married more than once--the
conventional rich marriage which she had been taught to consider
the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she had
always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in
love with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be
engaged, and her dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This
view of the Gryce incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not
to be instantly adopted by him, with a flash of retrospective
contempt for what had once seemed the obvious solution. If
rejection there had been--and he wondered now that he had
ever doubted it!--then he held the key to the secret, and the
hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with
dawn. It was he who had wavered and disowned the face of
opportunity--and the joy now warming his breast might have been a
familiar inmate if he had captured it in its first flight.

It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings
in Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing
Selden, repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been
understood---" and all the while she herself seemed to be sitting
in the centre of a great glare of comprehension. The little
confidential room, where a moment ago their thoughts had touched
elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly vastness, separating
her from Selden by all the length of her new vision of the
future--and that future stretched out interminably, with her
lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.

"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them,"
she heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't
you?" and: "She has it in her to become whatever she is believed
to be--you'll help her by believing the best of her?"

The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language
which has seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is
found to be unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of
Lily--that was all! There had been a third at the feast she had
spread for him, and that third had taken her own place. She tried
to follow what he was saying, to cling to her own part in the
talk--but it was all as meaningless as the boom of waves in a
drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.

Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she
could yield to the blessed waves.

"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music
afterward; I believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the
foolish pink-faced clock that was drumming out this hideous
hour. "A quarter past ten? I might look in there now; the Fisher
evenings are amusing. I haven't kept you up too late, Gerty? You
look tired--I've rambled on and bored you." And in the
unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss upon
her cheek.



At Mrs. Fisher's, through the cigar-smoke of the studio, a dozen
voices greeted Selden. A song was pending as he entered, and he
dropped into a seat near his hostess, his eyes roaming in search
of Miss Bart. But she was not there, and the discovery gave him a
pang out of all proportion to its seriousness; since the note in
his breast-pocket assured him that at four the next day they
would meet. To his impatience it seemed immeasurably long to
wait, and half-ashamed of the impulse, he leaned to Mrs. Fisher
to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with her.

"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where.
Wasn't she wonderful last night?"

"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a
neighbouring arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when
it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction--I
thought seriously of speaking to cousin Julia."

"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher
said to Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the
general derision: "But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's
married--TOWN TALK was full of her this morning."

"Yes: lively reading that was," said Mr. Ned Van Alstyne,
stroking his moustache to hide the smile behind it. "Buy the
dirty sheet? No, of course not; some fellow showed it to me--but
I'd heard the stories before. When a girl's as good-looking as
that she'd better marry; then no questions are asked. In our
imperfectly organized society there is no provision as yet for
the young woman who claims the privileges of marriage without
assuming its obligations."

"Well, I understand Lily is about to assume them in the shape of
Mr. Rosedale," Mrs. Fisher said with a laugh.

"Rosedale--good heavens!" exclaimed Van Alstyne, dropping his
eye-glass. "Stepney, that's your fault for foisting the brute on
us."

"Oh, confound it, you know, we don't MARRY Rosedale in our
family," Stepney languidly protested; but his wife, who
sat in oppressive bridal finery at the other side of the room,
quelled him with the judicial reflection: "In Lily's
circumstances it's a mistake to have too high a standard."

"I hear even Rosedale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs.
Fisher rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off
his head. What do you think he said to me after her TABLEAU?
'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I could get Paul Morpeth to paint her
like that, the picture'd appreciate a hundred per cent in ten
years.'"

"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.

"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs.
Where was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't
heard of anything."

"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish
who had arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in,
and she gave the driver the Trenors' address."

"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."

"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come
now, Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no
head for numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an
adjoining foot, and the smile that circled the room.

In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands
with his hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he
wondered why he had stayed in it so long.

On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's:
"It seems to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you
disapprove of."

Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her
beyond! That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He
knew that Perseus's task is not done when he has loosed
Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she
cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he
beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had strength for
both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him. It
was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win
through, but a clogging morass of old associations and habits,
and for the moment its vapours were in his throat. But he would
see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the
dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to
safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor with which he was
trying to build up a defence against the influences of the last
hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so
swayed by them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life,
if his own view of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he
saw her reflected?

The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and
he strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of
the night. At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him
with an offer of company.

"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now
that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.
It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on
the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as
divorce: both tend to obscure the moral issue."

Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than
Van Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter
confined himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in
control. Happily Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of
social aspects, and with Selden for audience was eager to show
the sureness of his touch. Mrs. Fisher lived in an East side
street near the Park, and as the two men walked down Fifth Avenue
the new architectural developments of that versatile thoroughfare
invited Van Alstyne's comment.

"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder!
The man who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are
put on the table at once. His facade is a complete architectural
meal; if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought
the money had given out. Not a bad purchase for Rosedale, though:
attracts attention, and awes the Western sight-seer. By and bye
he'll get out of that phase, and want something that the crowd
will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he marries my
clever cousin---"

Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'?
Rather clever of its kind, don't you think?"

They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich
restraint of line, which suggested the clever corseting of a
redundant figure.

"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to
Europe, and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a
copy of the TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt
furniture is thought to be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever
chap that architect is, though--how he takes his client's
measure! He has put the whole of Mrs. Bry in his use of the
composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember, he chose the
Corinthian: exuberant, but based on the best precedent. The
Trenor house is one of his best things--doesn't look like a
banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to
build out a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that
point keeps her at Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys'
ball-room must rankle: you may be sure she knows 'em as well as
if she'd been there last night with a yard-measure. Who said she
was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She isn't, I know; Mrs.
Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I suppose Gus
lives in the back."

He had halted opposite the Trenors' comer, and Selden perforce
stayed his steps also. The house loomed obscure and uninhabited;
only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional
occupancy.

"They've bought the house at the back: it gives them a hundred
and fifty feet in the side street. There's where the ball-room's
to be, with a gallery connecting it: billiard-room and so on
above. I suggested changing the entrance, and carrying the
drawing-room across the whole Fifth Avenue front; you see the
front door corresponds with the windows---"

The walking-stick which Van Alstyne swung in demonstration
dropped to a startled "Hallo!" as the door opened and two figures
were seen silhouetted against the hall-light. At the same moment
a hansom halted at the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated
down to it in a haze of evening draperies; while the other, black
and bulky, remained persistently projected against the light.

For an immeasurable second the two spectators of the incident
were silent; then the house-door closed, the hansom rolled off,
and the whole scene slipped by as if with the turn of a
stereopticon.

Van Alstyne dropped his eye-glass with a low whistle.

"A--hem--nothing of this, eh, Selden? As one of the family, I
know I may count on you--appearances are deceptive--and Fifth
Avenue is so imperfectly lighted---"

"Goodnight," said Selden, turning sharply down the side street
without seeing the other's extended hand.



Alone with her cousin's kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He
had kissed her before--but not with another woman on his lips. If
he had spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming
the dark flood as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot
through with glory, and it was harder to drown at sunrise than in
darkness. Gerty hid her face from the light, but it pierced to
the crannies of her soul. She had been so contented, life had
seemed so simple and sufficient--why had he come to trouble her
with new hopes? And Lily--Lily, her best friend! Woman-like, she
accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily, her fond
imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked
her--had understood and sympathized with the modest independence
of her life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in
the nice balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical
and simple in his view of her: his cleverness had never overawed
her because she had felt at home in his heart. And now she was
thrust out, and the door barred against her by Lily's hand! Lily,
for whose admission there she herself had pleaded! The situation
was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She knew Selden--she
saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped to dispel
his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of
him-she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known
to each other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted
was inconscient; he had never guessed her foolish secret; but
Lily--Lily must have known! When, in such matters, are a woman's
perceptions at fault? And if she knew, then she had deliberately
despoiled her friend, and in mere wantonness of power,
since, even to Gerty's suddenly flaming jealousy, it seemed
incredible that Lily should wish to be Selden's wife. Lily might
be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable
of living without it, and Selden's eager investigations into the
small economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as
tragically duped as herself.

She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were
crumbling to cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade.
Just beneath it stood the photograph of Lily Bart, looking out
imperially on the cheap gim-cracks, the cramped furniture of the
little room. Could Selden picture her in such an interior? Gerty
felt the poverty, the insignificance of her surroundings: she
beheld her life as it must appear to Lily. And the cruelty of
Lily's judgments smote upon her memory. She saw that she had
dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily
ever really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was
the taste of new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature
experimenting in a laboratory.

The pink-faced clock drummed out another hour, and Gerty rose
with a start. She had an appointment early the next morning with
a district visitor on the East side. She put out her lamp,
covered the fire, and went into her bedroom to undress. In the
little glass above her dressing-table she saw her face reflected
against the shadows of the room, and tears blotted the
reflection. What right had she to dream the dreams of loveliness?
A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly as she
undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision,
setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life
must be taken up as though there had been no break in its
routine. Her servant did not come till eight o'clock, and she
prepared her own tea-tray and placed it beside the bed. Then she
locked the door of the flat, extinguished her light and lay down.
But on her bed sleep would not come, and she lay face to face
with the fact that she hated Lily Bart. It closed with her in the
darkness like some formless evil to be blindly grappled with.
Reason, judgment, renunciation, all the sane daylight forces,
were beaten back in the sharp struggle for self-preservation. She
wanted happiness---