 Book II CHAPTER XIII of THE HOUSE OF MERTH by Edith Wharton. The street lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was a momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on unconscious of her surroundings. She was still treading the buoyant ether which emanates from the high moments of life, but gradually it shrank away from her, and she felt the dull pavement beneath her feet. The sense of weariness returned with accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that she could walk no farther. She had reached the corner of 41st Street and 5th Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there were seats where she might rest. That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she entered it, and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of an electric street lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of her veins, and she told herself that she must not sit long in the penetrating dampness which struck up from the wet asphalt, but her will-power seemed to have spent itself in a last great effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction which follows on an unwanted expenditure of energy. And besides what was there to go home to, nothing but the silence of her chairless room, that silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves than the most discordant noises, that and the bottle of Chloral by her bed. The thought of the Chloral was the only spot of light in the dark prospect. She could feel its lulling influence stealing over her already, but she was troubled by the thought that it was losing its power. She dared not go back to it too soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been more broken and less profound. There had been nights when she was perpetually floating up through it to consciousness. What at the effect of the drug should gradually fail as all narcotics were said to fail. She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the dose, and she had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug. Her dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great that she lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce the waning power of the Chloral. Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in 42nd Street was dying out. His complete darkness fell on the square, the lingering occupants of the benches rose and dispersed, but now and then a stray figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the path where Lily sat, looming black for a moment in the white circle of electric light. One or two of these passers-by slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely figure, but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny. Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing shadows remained stationary between her line of vision and the gleaming asphalt, and, raising her eyes, she saw a young woman bending over her. "'Excuse me, are you sick?' "'Why, it's Miss Bart!' a half-familiar voice exclaimed. Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly dressed young woman, with a bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome refinement, which ill-health and overwork may produce, but its common prettiness was redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips. "'You don't remember me?' she continued, brightening with the pleasure of recognition. But I'd know you anywhere. I've thought of you a lot. I guess my folks all know your name by heart. I was one of the girls at Miss Farish's club. You helped me to go to the country that time. I had lung trouble. My name's Nettie Strother. It was Nettie Crane, then. But I daresay you don't remember that, either. Yes, Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane's timely rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her connection with Gertie's charitable work. She had furnished the girl with the means to go to an sanatorium in the mountains. It struck her now with a peculiar irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trainers. She tried to reply to assure the speaker that she had not forgotten, but her voice felled in the effort, and she felt herself sinking under a great wave of physical weakness. Nettie Strother, with a startled exclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily clad arm behind her back. "'Why, Miss Bart, you are sick. Just lean on me a little till you feel better.' A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from the pressure of the supporting arm. "'I'm only tired. It is nothing,' she found voice to say in a moment, and then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion's eyes, she added involuntarily, "'I have been unhappy and great trouble.' "'You? In trouble? I have always thought of you as being so high up, where everything was just grand. It's when I felt real mean, and got to wondering why things were so quirely fixed in the world I used to remember that you were having a lovely time, anyhow, and that seemed to show there was a kind of justice somewhere. But you mustn't sit here too long. It's fearfully damp. Don't you feel strong enough to walk on a little ways now?' She broke off. "'Yes. Yes. I must go home,' Lily murmured, rising. Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin, shabby figure at her side. She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of overwork and anemic parentage. One of the superfluous fragments of life destined to be swept prematurely into that social refuse heap of which Lily had so lately expressed her dread. But Nettie Struthers' frail envelope was now alive with hope and energy. Before fate the future reserved for her she would not be cast into the refuse heap without a struggle. "'I am very glad to have seen you,' Lily continued, summoning a smile to her unsteady lips. It'll be my turn to think of you as happy, and the world will seem a less unjust place to me too.' "'Oh, but I can't leave you like this. You're not fit to go home alone. And I can't go with you either,' Nettie Struthers wailed with the start of recollection. "'You see, it's my husband's night shift. He's a motorman. And the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to get her husband's supper at seven. I didn't tell you I had a baby, did I? She'll be four months old, day after tomorrow, and to look at her you wouldn't think I'd ever had a sick day. I'd give anything to show you the baby, Miss Port, and we'd live right down the street here. It's only three blocks off.' She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily's face, and then added with a burst of courage. "'Why, won't you get right into the cars and come home with me while I get baby's supper? It's real warm in our kitchen, and you can rest there, and I'll take you home as soon as ever she drops off to sleep.' It was warm in the kitchen, which, when Nellie Struthers' match had made a flame leap from the gas jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which a baby was setting upright with incipient anxiety struggling for expression on a countenance still placid with sleep. Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring and excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return, Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the rocking chair near the stove. "'We've got a parlor, too,' she explained with a pardonable pride. "'But I guess it's warmer in here, and I don't want to leave you alone while I'm getting baby's supper.' On receiving Lily's assurance that she much preferred the friendly proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struthers proceeded to prepare a bottle of infantile food which she tenderly applied to the baby's impatient lips, and while the ensuing degustation went on she seated herself with the beaming countenance beside her visitor. "'You're sure you won't let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss Bart? There's some of baby's fresh milk left over. Well, maybe you'd rather just sit quiet and rest a little. It's too lovely having you here. I thought of it so often that I can't believe it's really come true. Sent to George again and again I just wish Miss Bart could see me now. And I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we'd talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I haven't seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I'd get sick myself, fretting about it. Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile. Well, I can't afford to be sick again. That's a fact. The last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I'd come back alive, and I didn't much care if I did. You see, I didn't know about George and the baby then. She paused to readjust the bottle to the child's bubbling mouth. "'You precious, don't you be in too much of a hurry? Was it mad with Mama for getting it supper so late?' Mary Antoinette. That's what we call her. After the French Queen and that play at the garden, I told George the actress reminded me of you, and that made me fancy the name. I never thought I'd get married, you know, and I'd never have the heart to go on working just for myself.' She broke off again, and meeting the encouragement in Lily's eyes went on, with a flush rising under her anemic skin. "'You see, I wasn't only just sick that time you sent me off. I was dreadfully unhappy, too. I'd known a gentleman where I was employed. I don't know as you remember I did typewriting and a big importing firm, and, well, I thought we were to be married. He'd gone steady with me six months and given me his mother's wedding-ring, but I presume he was too stylish for me.' He travelled for the firm, and had seen a great deal of society. Work-girls aren't looked after the way you are, and they don't always know how to look after themselves. I didn't. And it pretty near killed me, when he went away and left off riding. It was then I came down sick. I thought it was the end of everything. I guess it would have been if you hadn't sent me off. But when I found I was getting well, I began to take heart in spite of myself, and then, when I got back home, George came round and asked me to marry him. At first I thought I couldn't, because we'd been brought up together. And I knew he knew about me. But after a while I began to see that that made it easier. I never could have told another man, and I'd never have married without telling, but if George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I didn't see why I should begin over again. And I did. The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted her irradiated face from the child on her knees. But mercy! I didn't mean to go on like this about myself, with you sitting there looking so fact out, only it's so lovely having you here, and letting you see just how you've helped me. The baby had sunk back blissfully, replete, and Mrs. Struthers softly rose to lay the bottle aside. Then she paused before Miss Bord. I only wish I could help you, but I suppose there's nothing on earth I could do," she murmured wistfully. Lily, instead of answering, rose with a smile and held out her arms, and the mother, understanding the gesture, laid her child in them. The baby, feeling herself detached from her habitual anchorage, made an instinctive motion of resistance, but the soothing influences of digestion prevailed, and Lily felt the soft weight sink trustfully against her breast. The child's confidence and its safety thrilled her with a sense of warmth and returning life, and she bent over, wondering at the rosy blur of the little face, the empty clearness of the eyes, the vague tendril emotions of the folding and unfolding fingers. At first the burden in her arms seemed as light as a pink cloud, or a heap of down, but as she continued to hold it, the weight increased, sinking deeper and penetrating her with a strange sense of weakness as though the child entered into her and became a part of herself. She looked up and saw Nettie's eyes resting on her, with tenderness and exultation. Wouldn't it be lovely for anything if she could grow up to be just like you? Of course I know she never could, but mothers are always dreaming the craziest things for their children. Lily clasped the child close for a moment, and laid her back in her mother's arms. Oh, she must not do that. I should be afraid to come and see her too often," she said with a smile, and then resisting Mrs. Struthers' anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the promise that, of course, she would come back soon and make George's acquaintance and see the baby in her bath. She passed out of the kitchen and went alone down the tenement stairs. As she reached this street she realized that she felt stronger and happier. The little episode had done her good. It was the first time she had ever come across the results of her spasmodic benevolence, and the surprised sense of human fellowship took the mortal chill from her heart. It was not till she entered her own door that she felt the reaction of a deeper loneliness. It was long after seven o'clock, and the light and odors proceeding from the basement made it manifest that the boarding-house dinner had begun. She hastened up to her room, lit the gas, and began to dress. She did not mean to pamper herself any longer to go without food because her surroundings made it unpalatable. Since it was her fate to live in a boarding-house she must learn to fall in with the conditions of the life. Nevertheless she was glad that, when she descended to the heat and glare of the dining-room, the repast was nearly over. In her own room again she was seized with a sudden fever of activity. For weeks passed she had been too listless and indifferent to set her possessions in order, but now she began to examine systematically the contents of her drawers and cupboard. She had a few handsome dresses left, survivals of her last phase of splendor, on the Sabrina and in London. But when she had been obliged a part with her maid, she had given the woman a generous share of her cast-off apparel. The remaining dresses, though they had lost the freshness, still kept the long unerring lines, the sweep and amplitude of the great artist's stroke, and as she spread them out on the bed, the scenes in which they had been worn rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold. Each fall of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her past. She was startled to find out how the atmosphere of her old life enveloped her. But after all, it was the life she had been made for. Every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it. All her interests and activities had been talked to center around it. She was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty. Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress she had worn in the bright tableau. It had been impossible for her to give it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long, flexible folds as she shook them out gave forth an odor of violence which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she had stood with Laurence Salden and disowned her fate. She put back the dresses, one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was still in a state of highly wrought impressionability, and every hint of the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves. She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dress when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irish maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, lily red with surprise, the address stamped on the upper corner of the envelope. It was a business communication from the office of her aunts, and she wondered what unexpected development had caused them to break silence before the appointed time. She opened the envelope and a check fluttered to the floor, and she stooped to pick it up, the blood rushed to her face. The check represented the full amount of Mrs. Peniston's legacy, and the letter accompanying it explained that the executors, having adjusted the businesses of the estate with less delay than they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date, fixed for the payment of the bequests. Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and, spreading out the check, read over and over the $10,000 written across in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had represented the depths of Penury, but her standard of values had changed in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the visions mounting to her brain, and after a while she lifted the lid of the desk and slipped the magic formula out of sight. It was easier to think without those five figures dancing before her eyes, and she had a great deal of thinking to do before she slept. She opened her checkbook, and plunged into such anxious calculations as as prolonged her vigil at Belamond on the night when she had decided to marry Percy Grace. Poverty simplifies bookkeeping, and her financial situation was easier to ascertain than it had been, but she had not yet learned the control of money, and during her transient phase of luxury at the Emporium she had slipped back into habits of extravagance which still impaired her slender balance. A careful examination of her checkbook and at the unpaid bills in her desk showed that when the latter had been settled she would have barely enough to live on for the next three or four months, and even after that, if she were to continue her present way of living without earning any additional money, all incidental expenses must be reduced to the vanishing point. She hid her eyes with a shutter, beholding herself at the entrance of that ever-narrowing perspective down which she had seen Miss Silverton's dowdy figure take its despondent way. It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper impoverishment, of an inner destitution compared to which outward conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be poor to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more miserable still. It was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the years. That was the feeling which possessed her now, the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin drift of the whirling surface of existence without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back, she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real relation to life. Her parents, too, had been rootless, blown hither and thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another. There was no center of early pieties of grave-enduring traditions to which her heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly accumulated past lives in the blood, whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories or in the conception of the house not built with hands, but made up of inherited passions and loyalties, it has the same power of broadening and depending and deepening the individual existence of attaching it by mysterious lengths of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving. Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to Lily. She had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her mating instinct, but they had been checked by the disintegrating influences of the life about her. All the men and women she knew were like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild, centrifugal dance. Her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening in Netty Struthers' kitchen. The poor little working girl, who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meager enough life on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mishance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff, a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss. Yes, but it had taken two to build the nest, the man's faith as well as the woman's courage. Lily remembered Netty's words. I knew he knew about me. Her husband's faith in her had made her renewal possible. It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be. Well Seldon had twice been ready to stake his faith on Lily Bart, but the third trial had been too severe for his endurance. The very quality of his love had made it the more impossible to recall to life. If it had been a simple instinct of the blood, the power of her beauty might have revived it, but the fact that it struck deeper, that it was inextricably wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as impossible to restore to growth as a deep rooted plant torn from its bed. Seldon had given her of his best, but he was incapable as herself of an uncritical return to former states of feeling. There remained to her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his faith in her, but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on her memories. As she held Nettie Struthers' child in her arms, the frozen currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins. The old life hunger possessed her, and all her being clamored for its share of personal happiness. Yes, it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation. It was growing late, and an immense weariness once more possessed her. It was not the stealing sense of sleep, but a vivid, wakeful fatigue, a one lucidity of mind against which all the possibilities of the future were shouted forth gigantically. She was appalled by the intense cleanness of the vision. She seemed to have broken through the merciful veil which intervenes between intention and action, and to see exactly what she would do in all the long days to come. There was the check in her desk. For instance, she meant to use it in paying her debt to Trenor, but she foresaw that when the morning came she would put off doing so, would slip into gradual tolerance of the debt. The thought terrified her. She dreaded to fall from the height of her last moment with Laurence Salden. But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the strength of the opposing impulses. She could feel the countless hands of habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. She felt an intense longing to prolong, to perpetuate the momentary exultation of her spirit, if only life could end now, end on this tragic yet sweet vision of lost possibilities which gave her a sense of kinship with all the loving and foregoing in the world. She reached out suddenly, and, drawing the check from her writing desk, enclosed it in an envelope which she addressed to her bank. Then she wrote out a check for Trenor, and placing it without accompanying word in an envelope inscribed with his name, laid the two letters side by side on her desk. After that she continued to sit at the table, sorting her papers and writing till the intense silence of the house reminded her of the lateness of the hour. In the street the noise of wheels had ceased, and the rumble of the elevated came only at long intervals through the deep, unnatural hush. In the mysterious nocturnal separation from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more strangely confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain real, and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands against her eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her nature. She felt as though the house, the street, the world were all empty, and she alone felt sentient in a lifeless universe. But this was the verge of delirium. She had never hung so near the dizzy brink of the unreal. Sleep was what she wanted. She remembered that she had not closed her eyes for two nights. The little bottle was at her bedside, waiting to lay its spell upon her. She rose and undressed hastily, hungering now for the touch of her pillow. She felt so profoundly tired that she thought she must fall asleep at once, but as soon as she had lain down every nerve started once more into separate wakefulness. It was as though a great blaze of electric light had been turned on in her head, and her poor little anguished soul shrank and cowered in it without knowing where to take refuge. She had not imagined that such a multiplication of wakefulness was possible. Her whole past was re-enacting itself at a hundred different points of consciousness. Where was the drug that could still this legion of insurgent nerves? The sense of exhaustion would have been sweet compared to this shrill beat of activities, but weariness had dropped from her as though some cruel stimulant had been forced into her veins. She could bear it. Yes, she could bear it, but what strength would be left her the next day? Perspective had disappeared. The next day pressed close upon her, and on its heels came the days that were to follow. They swarmed about her like a shrieking mob. She must shut them out for a few hours. She must take a brief bath of oblivion. She put out her hand and measured the soothing drops into a glass. But as she did so, she knew they would be powerless against the supernatural lucidity of her brain. She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit. But tonight she felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing so. She remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might be a sleep without waking. But after all, that was but one chance in a hundred. The action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for her the rest she so desperately needed. She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely. The physical craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation. Her mind shrank from the glare of thought as instinctively as eyes contract in a blaze of light. Darkness, darkness, was what she must have at any cost. She raised herself in bed and swallowed the contents of the glass. Then she blew out her candle and lay down. She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would take, the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in the darkness. Very slowness and hesitancy of the effect increased its fascination. It was delicious to lean over and look down into the dim abyss of unconsciousness. Tonight the drug seemed to work more slowly than usual. Each passionate pulse had to be stilled in turn, and it was long before she felt them dropping into abeyance, like sentinels falling asleep at their posts. But gradually the sense of complete subjugation came over her, and she wondered, languidly, what had made her feel so uneasy and excited. She saw now that there was nothing to be excited about. She had returned to her normal view of life. Tomorrow would not be so difficult after all. She felt sure that she would have the strength to meet it. She did not quite remember what it was that she had been afraid to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her. She had been unhappy, and now she was happy. She had felt herself alone, and now the sense of loneliness had vanished. She stirred once, and turned on her side. And as she did so, she suddenly understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was odd, but Nettie Struthers' child was lying on her arm. She felt the pressure of its little head against her shoulder. She did not know how it had come there, but she felt no great surprise at the fact. Only a gentle, penetrating thrill of warmth and pleasure she settled herself into an easier position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round, downy head, and holding her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child. As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must tell Saldon. Some word she had found that should make life clear between them. She tried to repeat the word, which lingered vague and luminous on the far edge of thought. She was afraid of not remembering it when she woke, and if she could only remember it and say it to him, she felt that everything would be well. Slowly the thought of the word faded, and sleep began to enfold her. She struggled faintly against it, feeling that she ought to keep awake on account of the baby, but even this feeling was gradually lost in an indistinct sense of drowsy peace, through which, of a sudden, a dark flash of loneliness and terror tore its way. She started up again, cold and trembling with the shock. For a moment she seemed to have lost her hold of the child, but no, she was mistaken. The tender pressure of its body was still close to hers. The recovered warmth fled through her once more. She yielded to it, sank into it, and slept. CHAPTER XIV The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the painless railings of the doorstep, and struck prismatic glories from the pains of her darkened window. When such a day coincides with the inner mood, there is intoxication in his breath, and seldom, hastening along the street through the squalor of his mourning, confidences, felt himself thrilling with a youthful sense of adventure. He had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion. All the old tests and measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars. That, of course, for the moment led merely to Miss Bart's boarding-house, but its jabby doorstep had suddenly become the threshold of the untried. As he approached he looked up at the triple row of windows, wondering boyishly which one of them was hers. It was nine o'clock, and the house, being tentated by workers, already showed an awakened front to the street. He remembered afterward, having noticed that only one blind was down. He noticed, too, that there was a pot of pansies on one of the windowsills, and it once concluded that the window must be hers. It was inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the dengy scene. Nine o'clock was an early hour for an visit, but Seldin had passed beyond all such conventional observances. He only knew that he must see Lily Bart at once. He had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could not wait another moment to be said. It was strange that it had not come to his lips sooner that he had let her pass from him the evening before, without being able to speak it. But what did that matter, now that a new day had come? It was not a word for twilight, but for the morning. Seldin ran eagerly up the steps and pulled the bell, and even in his state of self-absorption it came as a sharp surprise to him that the door should open so promptly. It was still more of a surprise to see, as he entered that it had been opened by Gertie Farish, and that behind her, in an agitated blur, several other figures ominously loomed. Lawrence! Gertie cried in a strange voice, how could you get here so quickly? In the trembling hand she laid on him seemed instantly to close about his heart. He noticed the other faces, vague with fear and conjecture. He saw the landlady's imposing bulk swayed professionally toward him, but he shrank back, putting up his hand, while his eyes mechanically mounted the steep black walnut stairs, up which he was immediately aware that his cousin was about to lead him. A voice in the background said that the doctor might be back at any minute, and that nothing upstairs was to be disturbed. Someone else exclaimed it was the greatest mercy. Then Seldin felt that Gertie had taken him gently by the hand, and that they were to be suffered to go up alone. In silence they mounted the three flights, and walked along the passage to a closed door. Gertie opened the door, and Seldin went in after her. Though the blind was down, the irresistible sunlight poured a temperate golden flood into the room, and in its light Seldin saw a narrow bed along the wall, and on the bed with motionless hands and calm unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart. That it was her real self, every pulse in him ardently denied, her real self had lain warm on his heart but a few hours earlier. What had he to do with this estranged and tranquil face which, for the first time, neither paled nor brightened at his coming? Gertie strangely tranquil, too, with the conscious self-control of one who was ministered to much pain, stood by the bed, speaking gently, as if transmitting a final message. The doctor found a bottle of chloral. She had been sleeping badly for a long time, and she must have taken an overdose by mistake. There is no doubt of that. No doubt. There will be no question. He has been very kind. I told him that you and I would like to be left alone with her. To go over her things before anyone else comes. I know it is what she would have wished. Seldin was hardly conscious of what she said. He stood looking down on the sleeping face which seemed to lie like a delicate, impalpable mask of the living liniments he had known. He felt that the real Lily was still there, close to him, yet invisible and inaccessible, and the tenuity of the barrier between them mocked him with a sense of helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier between them, and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart. And now, though it seems slater and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it in vain. He had dropped on his knees beside the bed, but a touch from Gertie aroused him. He stood up, and as their eyes met he was struck by the extraordinary light in his cousin's face. You understand what the doctor has gone for. He has promised that there shall be no trouble, but of course the formalities must be gone through, and I asked him to give us time to look through her things first. He nodded, and she glanced about the small bare room. It won't take long, she concluded. No, it won't take long, he agreed. She held his hand in hers a moment longer, and then, with a last look at the bed, moved silently toward the door. On the threshold she paused to add, You will find me downstairs if you want me. Seldon browsed himself to detain her. But why are you going? She would have wished. Gertie shook her head with a smile. No, this is what she would have wished. And as she spoke, a light broke through Seldon's stony misery, and he saw deep into the hidden things of love. The door closed on Gertie, and he stood alone with the motionless sleeper on the bed. His impulse was to return to her side, to fall on his knees and rest his throbbing head against the peaceful cheek on the pillow. They had never been at peace together, they too, and now he felt himself drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquility. But he remembered Gertie's warning words. He knew that, though time had ceased in this room, its feet were hastening relentlessly toward the door. Gertie had given him the supreme half-hour, and he must use it as she willed. He turned and looked about him, sternly compelling himself to regain his consciousness of outward things. There was very little furniture in the room. The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover and set out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured pen-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hairpins. They shrank from the poignant intimacy of these trifles and from the blanked surface of the toilet-mirror above them. These were the only traces of luxury, of that clinging to the minute observance of personal seamliness which showed what her other renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the scant articles of furniture, a washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the empty bottle and glass, and from these also he averted his eyes. The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he took up, one bore the address of a bank, and as it was stamped and sealed, seldom, after a moment's hesitation, let it aside. On the other letter he read Gus Traynor's name, and the flap of the envelope was still ungummed. Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife. He staggered under it, steadying himself against the desk. Why had she been writing to Trenor, writing presumably just after their parting of the previous evening? The thought unhallowed the memory of that last hour, made a mock of the word he had come to speak, and defiled even the reconciling silence upon which it felt. He felt himself flung back on all the ugly uncertainties from which he had thought he had cast loose forever. After all, what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him, and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was. By what right, the letter in his hand seemed to ask, by what right was it he who now passed into her confidence, through the gate which death had left unbarred? His heart cried out that it was by right of their last hour together, the hour when she herself had placed the key in his hand. Yes, but what if the letter to Trenor had been written afterward? He put it from him with sudden loathing, and setting his lips. Addressed himself resolutely to what remained of his task. After all, that task would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was annulled. He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a checkbook and a few packets of bills and letters, arranged with an orderly precision which characterized all her personal habits. He looked through the letters first, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved to be few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotion of the heart, the note he had written her the day, after the prize entertainment. When may I come to you? His words overwhelmed him with the realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of attainment. Yes, he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to disown his cowardice now, for had not all his old doubts started to life again at the mere sight of Trenor's name, he laid the note in his card case, folding it away carefully, as something made precious by the fact that she had held it so. Then, growing once more aware of the lapse of time, he continued his examination of the papers. To his surprise he found that all the bills were receded. There was not an unpaid account among them. He opened the checkbook, and saw that, the very night before, a check of ten thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston's executors had been entered in it. The legacy then had been paid sooner than Gertie had led him to expect. But turning another page or two, he discovered with astonishment that, in spite of this recent accession of funds, the balance had already declined to a few dollars. A rapid glance at the stubs of the last checks, all of which bore the date of the previous day, showed that between four and five hundred dollars of the legacy had been spent in the settlement of bills, while the remaining thousands were comprehended in one check, made out, at the same time, to Charles Augustus Trenner. Selden laid the book aside, and sank into the chair beside the desk. He leaned his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands. The bitter waters of life surged high about him. Their sterile taste was on his lips. Did the check to Trenner explain the mystery, or deepen it? At first his mind refused to act. He felt only the taint of such a transaction between a man, like Trenner, and a girl like Lily Bard. Then gradually his troubled vision cleared, old hints and rumors came back to him, and out of the very insinuations he had feared to probe, he constructed an explanation of the mystery. It was true, then, that she had taken money from Trenner, but true also, as the contents of the little desk declared that the obligation had been intolerable to her, and that at the first opportunity she had freed herself from it, though the act left her face to face with bare, unmitigated poverty. That was all he knew. All he could hope to unravel of the story. The mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this, unless indeed they had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes, he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find there. He could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the height of his opportunity. He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart, since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. But at least he had loved her, had been willing to stake his future on his faith in her, and if the moment had been faded to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved whole, out of the ruin of their lives. It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which had kept them from atrophy and extinction, which in her had reached out to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and in him had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and reconciled to her side. He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lease, and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.