 Book 2 Chapter 5 of THE HOUSE OF MERTH by Edith Wharton. It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her, dull and bare, as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities showed as meagerly as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a handsome which pulled up at sight of her. From beneath its luggage-laden top she caught the wave of a signalling hand, and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace. "'My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town? When I saw you the other day at Sherry's, I didn't have time to ask.' She broke off, and added with a burst of fringness. The truth is, I was horrid, Lily, and I've wanted to tell you so ever since.' "'Oh!' Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp. But Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness. "'Look here, Lily, don't let's beat about the bush. Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any. That's not my way, and I can only say I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself for a following the other women's lead. But we'll talk of that by and by. Call me now, where you're staying, and what your plans are. I don't suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace Stepnie, eh? And it struck me you might be rather at loose ends. In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile. I am loose ends for the moment, but Gertie Farish is still in town, and she's good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the time.' Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "'Hm. That's a temperate joy. Oh, I know. Gertie's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together. But al along, you're used to a little higher seasoning, aren't you, dear? And besides, I suppose she'll be off herself before long. The first of August, you say. Well, look here. You can't spend your summer in town. We'll talk of that later, too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers tonight? And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she continued with her easy laugh. "'You don't know them, and they don't know you. But that don't make a rapid difference. They've taken the Van Allstein place at Roslyn, and I've got carte blanche to bring my friends down there, the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and there's to be rather a jolly party there this week." She broke off, checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bort's expression. "'Oh, I don't mean your particular set, you know. Rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own. What they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They gave the other thing a few months' trial under my distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely well. Getting on a good deal faster than the Bries, just because they didn't care as much. But suddenly they decided that the whole business bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at home with. Rather original of them, don't you think so? Maddie Gormer has got aspirations still. Everyone always have, but she's awfully easygoing, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be the most important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social coney island, where everybody is welcome, who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs. I think it's awfully good fun myself, some of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstle, who made such a hit last spring in The Winning of Winnie, and Paul Morpeth, he's painting Maddie Gormer, and the Dick Ballingers, and Kate Corby. Well, everyone you can think of who's jolly and makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my dear. It will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and you'll find clever people as well as noisy ones. Morpeth, who admires Maddie enormously, always brings one or two of his set. Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the handsome, with friendly authority. Jump in now, there's a deer, and we'll drive round to your hotel and have your things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at the train. It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town. Of that, no doubt remained to Lily, as, reclining in the shade of a leafy veranda, she looked seaword across a stretch of rainsward, picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace remnant, and men in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstein house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity, with the Gormer's weakened guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded. Ranging from tennis courts to shooting galleries, from bridge and whisky, with indoors, to motors and steam-lunches, without. Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly, as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carrie Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed. Life whizzed on, with a deafening rattle and roar, in which one traveller, at least, found a welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts. The Gormer milieu represented a social outskirt which Lily had always fastidiously avoided, but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the society play, approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her were doing the same things as the trainers, the Van Osbergs, and the Dorsets. The difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner, from the pattern of the men's waist-cuts to the inflection of the women's voices. Everything was pitched, and a higher key, and there was more of each thing, more noise, more color, more champagne, more familiarity, but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment. Miss Bart's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness that first irritated her pride, and then brought her to a sharp sense of her own situation, of the place in life which, for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people knew her story. Of that, her first long talk with Carrie Fisher had left no doubt, she was publicly branded as the heroine of a queer episode, but instead of shrinking from her, as her own friends had done, they received her without question, and to the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss Anstell's, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size of the mouthful. All they asked was that she should, in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of gifts, contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be stuck up, to mark a sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her contingents, in the gormor set. To be taken in on such terms, and into such a world, was hard enough to the lingering pride in her, but she realized, with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after all, be harder still. Or almost at once she had felt the insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was smoothed her way. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty, deserted city, to the space and luxury of a great country house, fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude, agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved. After that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was growing less sensitive on such points. A hard glaze of indifference was fast-forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more. On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious edus, the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence in a different setting. Some at Newport, some at Bar Harbor, some in the elaborate rusticity of a Dierndack camp. Even Gertie Farish, who welcomed Lily's return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George. Only Lily herself remained, without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the great current of pleasure. But Carrie Fisher, who had insisted on transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a day or two on the way to the Brice camp, came to the rescue with a new suggestion. Look here, Lily, I'll tell you what it is. I want you to take my place with Maddie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out to Alaska next month, in their private car, and Maddie, who is the laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging things. But the Brice want me too. Oh yes, we've made it up, didn't I tell you? And to put it frankly, though I like the Gormer's best, there's more profit for me in the Brice. The fact is, they want to try Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them, they, well, they'll make it a success for me. Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands enthusiastically. Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea, the better I like it, quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormer's have both taken it tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska is, well, the very thing I should want for you just at present. Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. To take me out of my friend's way, you mean," she said quietly, and Mrs. Fisher responded with a deprecating kiss. To keep you out of their sight, till they realize how much they miss you. Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska, and the expedition, if it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the negative advantage of removing her from the fiery center of criticism and discussion. Gertie Farage had opposed the plan with all the energy of her somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would renounce her journey. But Lily could disguise her real distaste for this plan under a sufficiently valid reason. "'You dear innocent, don't you see,' she protested, that Carrie is quite right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people as much as possible. As my old friends choose to believe lies about me, I shall have to make new ones. That's all. And you know beggars mustn't be choosers. Not that I don't like Maddie Gormer. I do like her. She's kind, and honest, and unaffected. And don't you suppose I feel grateful to her for making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own family have unanimously washed their hands of me?' Gertie shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from it. Gertie had but an obscure conception of what Lily's actual experience had been. But its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity since the memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to her friend's extremity. To characters like Gertie's such a sacrifice constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her, and helping her must believe in her, because faith is the mainspring of such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York August, mitigated only by poor Gertie's presence, her worldly wisdom would have counseled her against such an active abnegation. She knew that Carrie Fisher was right, that an opportune absence might be the first step toward rehabilitation, and that at any rate to linger on in town out of season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers tumultuous progress across their native continent she returned with an altered view of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury, the daily waking to an assured absence of care and presence of material ease, gradually blunted her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void they could not fill. Maddie Gormers, undiscriminating good nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as they treated each other, all these characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her endurance, and the more she saw to criticize in her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them. The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed idea. But with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her pride. These for the moment took the unpleasant form of continuing to cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in the key of their milieu, her immense social facility, her long habit of adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy elegance more valuable to Maddie Gormer than the louder passages of the band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of her, but Maddie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity, had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man could either break his engagements or keep them in a painting jacket and slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his appreciation of graces he had no time to cultivate. During the preparations for the brise tableaux, he had been immensely struck of Lily's plastic possibilities. Not the face, too self-controlled for expression, but the rest of her. Gad! What a model she'd make! And though his avarance of the world in which he had seen her was too great for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the privilege of having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in Maddie Gormer's disheveled drawing-room. Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course in lingering with the Gormers after the return, nor was she without pale glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking up of the Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island. Kate Corby, whose taste made her as promiscuous as Carrie Fisher, was rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers where, after a first-stare surprise, she took Lily's presence almost too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in the neighborhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily what she called the latest report from the Weather Bureau, and the letter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk with her more freely than with Gertie Farish, in whose presence it was impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher conveniently took for granted. Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to view it from the outside and draw her conclusions accordingly. And these conclusions, at the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the succinct remark, You must marry as soon as you can. Lily uttered a faint laugh. For once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. Do you mean, like Gertie Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of a good man's love? No. I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that description, said Mrs. Fisher, after a pause of reflection. Either. Either actually, too. Well, perhaps I ought to say one-and-a-half for the moment. Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. Other things being equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband. Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons. George dorset. Oh, Lily murmured reproachfully. But Mrs. Fisher pressed on, unrebuffed. Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when they first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and George's powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They're at their place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly party. No one else but poor Nettie Silverton, who looks like a galley-slave. They used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy. And after luncheon, George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end would have to come soon. Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. As far as that goes, the end will never come. Bertha will always know how to get him back when she wants him. Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. Not if he has anyone else to turn to. Yes, that's just what it comes to. The poor creature can't stand alone, and I remember him such a good fellow, full of life and enthusiasm. She paused and went on, dropping her glance from Lily's. He wouldn't stay with her ten minutes if he knew. New, Miss Bart repeated. What you must, for instance, with the opportunities you've had, if he had positive proof, I mean. Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. Please, let us drop the subject, Carrie. It's too odious to me. And to divert her companion's attention, she added, with an attempt at lightness. And your second candidate? We must not forget him. Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. I wonder if you'll cry out just as loud if I say, SIM ROSEDALE Miss Bart did not cry out. She sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a possibility which, in the last few weeks, had more than once recurred to her. But after a moment, she said carelessly, Mr. Rosedale wants a wife who can establish him in the bosom of the Van Osbergs and Trenners. Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. And so you could, with his money, don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you both? I don't see any way of making him see it, Lily returned, with a laugh intended to dismiss the subject. But in reality it lingered with her, long after Mrs. Fisher had taken leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her annexation by the Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner paradise from which she was now excluded. But once or twice, when nothing better offered. He had turned up for a Sunday, and on the occasions he had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation. But he still admired her, was, more than ever, offensively evident. For in the Gormers' circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known Miss Lily. She was Miss Lily to him now. Before they had had the faintest social existence. He enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social current. The kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease. The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of meeting it in the key of pleasantry, prevalent among her new friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection wrankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basis construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet, at Carrie Fisher's suggestion, a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she liked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was gradually attaining his object in life, and that to Lily was always less despicable than to miss it. With the slow, unalterable persistency which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth and the masterly use he had made of it were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure on municipal committees and charitable boards. He appeared at banquets to distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right note of disdain of the big Ben Osberg crushes, and all he now needed was a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his assent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his affections on Miss Bart, but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the goal while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her. She could distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure, and the twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosdale's wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination. She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he dared to admire her. What then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him. He had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he had no other reason for marrying her? End of Chapter 6 of the House of Merth by Edith Wharton. As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were engaged in building a country house on Long Island, and it was a part of Miss Bart's duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits of inspection to the newest state. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged in problems of lighting and sanitation, Lily had leisure to wander in the bright autumn air along the tree-fringed bay to which the land declined. Little as she was addicted to solitude there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being swept passively along, a current of pleasure and business in which she had no share, weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and squander money, while she felt herself of no more account among them than an expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child. It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon the figure of George Dorsett. The Dorsett place was in the immediate neighborhood of the Gormers newly acquired a state, and in her motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer Lily had caught one or two passing glimpses of the couple, but they moved in so different an orbit that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter. Dorsett, swinging along with bent head in moody abstraction, did not see Miss Bart till he was close upon her, but the sight instead of bringing him to a halt, as she had half expected, sent him toward her with an eagerness which found expression in his opening words. Miss Bart, you'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to meet you. I should have written to you if I dared. His face, with its tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven, uneasy look, as though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts at his heels. The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed on, as if encouraged by her tone. I wanted to apologize, to ask you to forgive me for the miserable part I played. She checked him with a quick gesture. Don't let us speak of it. I was very sorry for you, she said, with a tinge of disdain, which, as she instantly perceived, was not lost on him. She flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the thrust. You might well be, you don't know, you must let me explain. I was deceived, abominably deceived. I am still more sorry for you, then, she interposed, without irony, but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject can be discussed. We met this with a look of genuine wonder. Why not? Isn't it to you, of all people, that I owe an explanation? No explanation is necessary. The situation was perfectly clear to me. Ah! His head drooping again, and his irresolute hand switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence. Miss Bart, for God's sake, don't turn for me. We used to be good friends. You were always kind to me, and you don't know how I need a friend now. The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily's breast. She too needed friends. She had tasted the pang of loneliness, and her resentment of Bertha Dorsett's cruelty softened her heart to the poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha's victims. I still wish to be kind. I feel no ill will toward you, she said, but you must understand that after what has happened we can't be friends again. We can't see each other. Ah! You are kind. You're merciful. You always were. He fixed his miserable gaze on her. But why can't we be friends? Why not, when I've repented in dust and ashes? Isn't it hard that you should condemn me to suffer from the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough at the time. Is there to be no respite for me? I should have thought you had found complete respite in the reconciliation which was affected at my expense. Lily began, with renewed impatience, but he broke in imploringly. Don't put it in that way. When that's been the worst of my punishment, my God, what could I do? Wasn't I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice. Any word I might have said would have been turned against you. I have told you, I don't blame you. All I ask you to understand is that after the use Bertha chose to make of me, after all that her behavior has since implied, it's impossible that you and I should meet. He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. Was it, need it be, might in there be circumstances? He checked himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again. Miss Bart, listen, give me a minute. If we're not to meet again, at least let me have a hearing now. You say we can't be friends after what has happened. But can't I at least appeal to your pity? Can't I move you if I ask you to think of me as a prisoner? A prisoner, you alone, can set free. Lillies and words start, betrayed itself, and a quick blush. Was it possible that this was really the sense of Carrie Fisher's adumbrations? I can't see how I can possibly be of any help to you," she murmured, drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look. Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an abrupt drop to desolity, you would see, if you'd be as merciful as you used to be, and heaven knows I've never needed it more. She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her influence over him. Her fibers had been softened by suffering, and the sudden glimpse and his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for his weakness. I am very sorry for you. I would help you willingly, but you must have other friends, other advisors. I never had a friend like you," he answered simply, and besides, can't you see, you're the only person? His voice dropped to a whisper, the only person who knows. Again she felt her color change, again her heart rose and precipitant throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her entreatingly. You do see, don't you? You understand. I'm desperate. I'm at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know you can. You don't want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind. Your eyes are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to show it, and Heaven knows there's nothing to keep you back. You understand, of course, there wouldn't be a hint of publicity, not a sound or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that, you know. All I need is to be able to say, definitely, I know this, and this, and this, and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second. He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion between his words, and through the breaks she caught, as through the shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal. She could have filled up blanks without the help of Mrs. Fishers and Senuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his loneliness and his humiliation. If she came to him at such a moment he would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith, and the power to make him so lay in her hand, lay there in a completeness he could not even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a stroke. There was something dazzling in the completeness of the opportunity. She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the deserted lane, and suddenly fear possessed her, fear of herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had already smoothed. She turned quickly and held out her hand to dorset. Good-bye. I'm sorry. There's nothing in the world that I can do." Nothing? Ah, don't say that, he cried. Say what's true. That you abandoned me, like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved me. Good-bye. Good-bye," she repeated hurriedly, and as she moved away she heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty. At least you'll let me see you once more." Suddenly on regaining the Gormer grounds struck rapidly across the lawn toward the unfinished house where she fancied that her hostess might be speculating, not too resonantly, on the cause of her delay. For like many unpunctual persons Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting. As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart faton with a high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the gate, and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh, "'Did you see my visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George Dorsett.' She said she dropped in to make a neighborly call. Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience of birth's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the neighborly instinct among them, and Mrs. Gormer relieved to see that she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh. Of course what really brought her was curiosity. She made me take her all over the house, but no one could have been nicer. No heirs, you know, and so good-natured. I can quite see why people think her so fascinating." This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with Dorsett to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha's habits to be neighborly, much less to make advances to anyone outside the immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only when prompted by motives of self-interest, and the very capriciousness of her condescension had, as Lily was aware, given them special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable complacency, and in the happy irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted Bertha's opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown, all the secret ambitions which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence and the attitude of her companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating afresh in the glow of Bertha's advances, and whatever the cause of the latter, Lily saw that, if they were followed up, they were likely to have a disturbing effect upon her own future. She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new friends by one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent, and on her return from this somewhat depressing excursion she was immediately conscious that Mrs. Dorsett's influence was still in the air. There had been another exchange of visits, a tea at a country club, an encounter at a hunt-ball. There was even a rumour of an approaching dinner which Maddie Gormer, with an unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it. The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell Sunday with her friends, and, with Gordy Farrish's aid, had discovered a small private hotel where she might establish herself for the winter, the hotel being on the edge of a fashionable neighbourhood. The price of the few square feet she was to occupy was considerably in excess of her means, but she found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters and the argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality it was impossible for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead to lapse into a form of existence like Gordy Farrish's. She had never been so near the brink of insolvency, but she could at least manage to meet her weekly hotel-bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity. Her rooms with her cramped outlook, down a shallow vista of brick walls and fire escapes, her lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged ceiling and haunting smell of coffee, all these material discomforts which were yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be withdrawn, kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state, and her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels. Bet about the question, as she would, she knew the outcome of it was that she must try to marry Rosedale, and in this conviction she was fortified by an unexpected visit from George Dorsett. She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances. But the sight of her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn't come to bother her, that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject, himself and his wretchedness, and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn him back. But he began with a pretense of questioning her about herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn't more than enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The fibers of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might mean, and as she perceived an almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might serve him, when at length she dismissed him on the pretext that she must dress for dinner, he lingered intriguingly on the threshold to blurt out, It's been such a comfort to say you'll let me see you again. But to this direct appeal it was impossible to give an ascent, and she said with friendly decisiveness, I'm sorry, but you know why I can't. He colored to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her embarrassed but insistent, I know how you might, if you would, if things were different, and it lies with you to make them so, it's just a word to say, and you put me out of my misery. Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of the temptation. You're mistaken, I know nothing, I saw nothing. She exclaimed, striving by sheer force of reiteration to build a barrier between herself and her peril, and as he turned away, groaning out, you sacrifice us both. She continued to repeat, as if it were a charm. I know nothing, absolutely nothing. Lily had seen little of Rosdale since her illuminating talk with Mrs. Fisher, but on the two or three occasions, when they had met, she was conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favor. There could be no doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one, but neither was it easy in her long sleepless nights to face the thought of what George Dorsett was so clearly ready to offer. Baseless for baseless, she hated the other least. There were even moments when a marriage with Rosdale seemed the only honorable solution of her difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day of plating. After that everything faded into a haze of material well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at any cost be exercised, and one of these was the image of herself as Rosdale's wife. Carrie Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brise Newport success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo, and thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorsett's visit. Though it was nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was still out, and the fire-lit quiet of the small silent house descended on her spirit with a sense of peace and familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had ever before been evoked by Carrie Fisher's surroundings, but, contrasted to the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of repose and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in the quiet competence of the parlor maid who led her up to her room. Mrs. Fisher's unconventionality was, after all, a merely superficial divergence from an inherited social creed, while the manners of the Gormer circle represented their first attempt to formulate such a creed for themselves. It was the first time since a return from Europe that Lily had found herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of familiar associations had almost prepared her, as she descended the stairs before dinner, to enter upon a group of her old acquaintances. But this expectation was instantly checked by the reflection that the friends who remained loyal were precisely those who would be at least willing to expose her to such encounters, and it was hardly with surprise that she found, instead, Mr. Rosdell kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth before his hostess's little girl. Rosdell, in the paternal role, was hardly a figure to soften Lily, yet she could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to the child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctory endearments of the guest under his hostess's eye, for he and the little girl had the room to themselves, and something in his attitude made him seem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creature who endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind. Lily, from the threshold, had time to feel, kind in his gross unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way of the predatory creature with his mate. She had but a moment in which to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form. For at sight of her he was immediately on his feet again the florid and dominant Rosdell of Maddie Gormer's drawing-room. It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her only fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter's tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness which enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay as safe and pleasant course through a world of antagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of her friends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carrie that, while she actively gleaned her own stories from the fields of affluence, her real sympathies were on the other side, with the unlucky, the unpopular, the unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of success. Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of exposing Lily for the first evening to the unmitigated impression of Rosdell's personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped in to dinner, and Lily, alive to every detail of her friend's method, saw that such opportunities as had been contrived for her were to be deferred till she had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer resigned to the surgeon's touch, and this feeling of almost lethargic helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs. Fisher followed her upstairs. May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in my room, we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about her with the eye of the solicitous hostess. I hope you have managed to make yourself comfortable, dear. Isn't it a jolly little house? It's such a blessing to have a few quiet weeks with the baby. Carrie, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expensively maternal that Ms. Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time and money enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter. It's a well-earned rest. I'll say that for myself, she continued, sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillage lounged near the fire. Louisa Brie is a stern task-master. I often used to wish myself back with the gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious, it's nothing to social ambition. Louisa used to lie awake at night, wondering whether the women called on us, called on me, because I was with her, or on her, because she was with me, and she was always laying traps to find out what I thought. Of course, I had to disown my oldest friends. Rather than let her suspect, she owed me the chance of making a single acquaintance, when, all the while, that was what she had me there for, and what she wrote me a handsome check for when the season was over. Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause, and the practice of direct speech, far from concluding in her an occasional resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial moments, the purpose of the juggler's chatter while he shifts the contents of his sleeves. To the haze of her cigarette smoke, she continued to gaze meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the toilet-table, shaking out over her shoulders the loosened undulations of her hair. Your hair is wonderful, Lily, thinner. What does that matter, when it's so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go straight to their hair. But yours looks as if there had never been an anxious thought under it. I never saw you look better than you did this evening. Maddie Gormer told me that Morpeth wanted to page you. Why don't you let him? Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to the reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she said, with a slight touch of irritation, I don't care to accept a portrait from Paul Morpeth. Mrs. Fisher mused, no, and just now, especially, well, he can do you after you're married. She waited a moment, and then went on. By the way, I had a visit from Maddie the other day. She turned up here last Sunday, and with birth adorset of all people in the world. She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained its unwavering stroke from brow to nape. I never was more astonished, Mrs. Fisher pursued. I don't know two women less predestined to intimacy, from Bertha's standpoint, that is. For, of course, poor Maddie thinks it natural enough that she should be singled out. I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating via anaconda. Well, you know, I've always told you that Maddie secretly longed to bore herself with the really fashionable, and now that the chances come, I see that she's capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it. Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her friend. Including me, she suggested. Ah, my dear, murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from the hearth. That's what Bertha means, isn't it? Miss Bart went on steadily. For, of course, she always means something. And before I left Long Island, I saw that she was beginning to lay her toils for Maddie. Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. She has her fast now, at any rate, to think of that loud independence of Maddie's being only a subtler form of snobbishness. Bertha can already make her believe anything she pleases, and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor child, by insinuating horrors about you. Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. The world is too vile, she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's anxious scrutiny. It's not a pretty place, and the only way to keep a footing in it is to fight it on its own terms, and above all, my dear, not alone. Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp. You've told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening, but in the rush we all live in there's no time to keep on hating anyone without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure you with other people, it must be because she's still afraid of you. From her standpoint there's only one reason for being afraid of you, and my own idea is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your hand. I believe you can marry George Dorsett to-morrow, but if you don't care for that particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you from Bertha is to marry somebody else. CHAPTER VI The light projected on the situation by Mrs. Fisher had the cheerless distinctness of a widher dawn. It outlined the facts with a cold precision unmodified by shade or color, and refracted, as it were, from the blank walls of the surrounding limitations. She had opened windows from which no sky was ever visible, but the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop, and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with it, however, she went the full length of its consequences, and these had never been more clearly present to her than when the next afternoon she sat out for a walk with Rosedale. It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the light of summer, and something in the lines of the landscape and in the golden haze which bathed them recalled Miss Bart this September afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellamont with Seldon. The important memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her present situation, since her walk with Seldon had represented an irresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion was designed to bring about. But other memories importuned her also, the recollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now. She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorsett should succeed in breaking up her friendship with the Gormers, and her longing for shelter and security was intensified by the passionate desire to triumph over Bertha as only wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of Rosedale, the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create, she would at least present an invulnerable front to her enemy. She had to draw upon this thought as upon some fiery stimulant to keep up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending. As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which his look and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this momentary endurance of his mood was the price she must pay for her ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which concession must turn to resistance, and the price he would have to pay be made equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed impenetrable to such hints, that she had a sense of something hard and self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner. They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above the lake when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her gaze. "'I do believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale,' she said quietly, and I am ready to marry you whenever you wish.' Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted before her in an attitude of almost comic discomforture. "'For I suppose that is what you do wish,' she continued, in the same quiet tone, and though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust my happiness to your hands.' She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such occasions, and which was like a large, steady light thrown across the tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient brightness Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious that every avenue of escape was unpleasantly illuminated. Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold-cigarette case, in which, with plump, jeweled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped cigarette. Selecting one he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying, "'My dear Miss Lily, I'm sorry if there's been any little misapprehension between us, but you made me feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really no intention of renewing it.' Lily's blood tangled with the grossness of the rebuff, but she checked the first leap of her anger, and sat in a tone of gentle dignity. I have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my decision was final. Her word play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in puzzled silence while she extended her hand, and added with the faintest inflection of sadness in her voice. Before we bid each other good-bye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did. The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a vulnerable fiber in Rosdell. It was her exquisite inaccessibility, the sense of distance she could convey without a hint of disdain that made it most difficult for him to give her up. What do you talk of saying good-bye? Ain't we going to be good friends all the same? he urged, without releasing her hand. She drew it away quietly. What is your idea of being good friends? She returned with a slight smile, making love to me without asking me to marry you. Rosdell laughed with a recovered sense of ease. Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose. I can't help making love to you. I don't see how any man could, but I don't mean to ask you to marry me as long as I can keep out of it. She continued to smile. I like your frankness, but I am afraid our friendship can hardly continue on those terms. She turned away, as though to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and he followed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having, after all, kept the game in her own hands. Miss Lily, he began, impossibly, but she walked on without seeming to hear him. He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an intriguing hand on her arm. Miss Lily, don't hurry away like that. You're beastly hard on a fellow, but if you don't mind speaking the truth, I don't see why you shouldn't allow me to do the same. She had paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away instinctively from his touch, though she made no effort to evade his words. I was under the impression, she rejoined, that you had done so without waiting for my permission. Well, why shouldn't you hear my reasons for doing it, then? Were neither of us such new hands that a little plain speaking is going to hurt us? I'm all broken up on you. There's nothing new in that. I'm more in love with you than I was this time last year, but I've got to face the fact that the situation has changed. She continued to confront him with the same air of ironic composure. You mean to say that I'm not as desirable a match as you thought me? Yes, that's what I do mean, he answered resolutely. I won't go into what's happened. I don't believe the stories about you. I don't want to believe them, but they're there, and might not believing them ain't going to alter the situation. She flushed to her temples, but the extremity of her need checked the retort on her lip, and she continued to face him compositely. If they are not true, she said, doesn't that alter the situation? He met this with a steady gaze of his small, stock-taking eyes, which made her feel herself no more than some superfined human merchandise. I believe it does in novels, but I'm certain it don't in real life. You know that as well as I do. If we're speaking the truth, let's speak the whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at me this year. Well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in the interval? Your situation, that's all. Then you thought you could do better. Now, you think you can? You broke from her, ironically? Well, yes, I do, in one way, that is. He stood before her, his hands in his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid waistcoat. It's this way, you see. I've had a pretty steady grind of it these last years, working up my social position. Think it's funny I should say that? Why should I mind saying I want to get into society? A man ain't ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery. Well, a taste for society's just another kind of hobby. Perhaps I want to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year. Put it that way, if it sounds better. Anyhow, I want to have the run of the best houses, and I'm getting it too, little by little. But I know the quickest way to queer yourself with the right people is to be seen with the wrong ones, and that's the reason I want to avoid mistakes. Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have expressed either mockery or a half-relectant respect for his candor. And after a moment's pause, he went on, there it is, you see, I'm more in love with you than ever. But if I married you now, I'd queer myself for good and all, and everything I've worked for all these years would be wasted. She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long moved, it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed expediency. I understand you, she said. A year ago I should have been of use to you, and now I should be an incumbrance, and I'd like you for telling me so quite honestly. She extended her hand with a smile. Again the gesture had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Rosdell's self-command. By George, you're a dead game-sport you are, he exclaimed, and as she began once more to move away, he broke out suddenly. Miss Lily, stop. You know I don't believe those stories. I believe they were all got up by a woman who didn't hesitate to sacrifice you to her own convenience. Lily drew away with a movement of quick disdain. It was easier to endure his insolence than his commiseration. You are very kind, but I don't think we need to discuss the matter farther. But Rosdell's natural imperviousness to hence made it easy for him to brush such resistance aside. I don't want to discuss anything, I just want to put a plain case before you, he persisted. She paused, in spite of herself, held by the note of a new purpose in his look and tone, and he went on, keeping his eyes firmly upon her. The wonder to me is that you waited so long to get square with that woman, when you've had the power in your hands. She continued, silent, under the rush of astonishment, that his words produced, and he moved a step closer to ask with low- tone directness. Why don't you use those letters of hers you bought last year? Lily stood speechless, under the shock of the interrogation. In the words preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an illusion to her supposed influence over George Dorsett, nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the reference diminish the likelihood of Rosdell's resorting to it. But now she saw how far short of the mark she had fallen, and the surprise of learning that he had discovered the secret of the letters left her, for the moment, unconscious of the special use to which he was in the act of putting his knowledge. Her temporary loss of self-possession gave him time to press his point, and he went on quickly, as though to secure complete control of the situation. You see, I know where you stand. I know how completely she's in your power. That sounds like stage-talk, don't it? But there's a lot of truth in some of those old gags, and I don't suppose you bought those letters simply because you're collecting autographs. She continued to look at him with a deepening bewilderment. Her only clear impression resolved itself into a scared sense of his power. You're wondering how I found out about him. He went on, answering her luck with a note of conscious pride. Perhaps you've forgotten that I'm the owner of the Benedict, but never mind about that now. Getting onto things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I've simply extended it to my private affairs. For this is partly my affair, you see. At least it depends on you to make it so. Let's look the situation straight in the eye. Mrs. Dorsett, for reasons we needn't go into, did you a beastly bad turn last spring? Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorsett is, and her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath, where their own interests were concerned. But as long as they're out of the row, it's much easier to follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness. Isn't that a pretty fair statement of the case? Well, some people say you've got the neatest kind of answer in your hands that George Dorsett would marry you tomorrow if you'd tell him all you know, and give him the chance to show the lady the door. I daresay he would, but you don't seem to care for that particular form of getting even, and taking a purely business view of the question, I think you're right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for you to start fresh is to get Bertha, Dorsett, to back you up, instead of trying to fight her. He paused long enough to draw breath, but not to give her time for the expression of her gathering resistance, and as he pressed on, expounding and elucidating his idea with the directness of the man who has no doubts of his cause, she found the indignation gradually freezing on her lip, found herself held fast in the grasp of his argument by the mere cold strength of its presentation. There's no time now to wonder how he had heard of her obtaining the letters. All her world was dark outside the monstrous glare of his scheme for using them, and it was not, after the first moment, the horror of the idea that held her spellbound, subdued to his will. It was rather its subtle affinity to her own inmost cravings. He would marry her to-morrow, if she could regain Bertha Dorsett's friendship, and to induce the open resumption of that friendship, and the tacit retraction of all that had caused his withdrawal, she had only to put to the lady the latent menace contained in the packet so miraculously delivered into her hands. Lily saw in a flash the advantage of this course over that which poor Dorsett had pressed upon her. The other plan depended for its success on the infliction of an open injury, while this reduced the transaction to a private understanding of which no third person need have the remotest hint. Put by Rosedale in terms of business-like give-and-take, this understanding took on the harmless error of a mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property or a revision of boundary lines. It certainly simplified life to view it as a perpetual adjustment, a play of party politics in which every concession had its recognized equivalent. Lily's tired mind was fascinated by this escape from fluctuating ethical estimates into a region of concrete weights and measures. Rosedale, as she listened, seemed to read in her silence not only a gradual acquiescence in his plan, but a dangerously far-reaching perception of the chances it offered. For as she continued to stand before him without speaking, he broke out with a quick return upon himself. You see how simple it is, don't you? Well, don't be carried away by the idea that it's too simple. It isn't exactly as if you'd started in with a clean bill of health. Now we're talking. Let's call things by their right names and clear the whole business up. You know well enough that Bertha Dorsett couldn't have touched you if there hadn't been well. Questions asked before. Little points of interrogation, eh? Bound to happen to a good-looking girl with stingy relatives, I suppose. Anyhow, they did happen, and she found the ground prepared for her. Do you see where I'm coming out? You don't want these little questions cropping up again. It's one thing to get Bertha Dorsett into line, but what you want is to keep her there. You can frighten her fast enough, but how are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you're as powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won't do that for you, as you are now, but with a big backing behind you, you'll keep her just where you want her to be. That's my share in the business. That's what I'm offering you. You can't put the thing through without me. Don't run away with any idea that you can. In six months, you'd be back again among your old worries or worse ones. And here I am, ready to lift you out of them tomorrow. If you say so. Do you say so, Miss Lily? He added, moving suddenly nearer. The words and the movement, which accompanied them, combined to start a lily out of a state of tranced subservience into which she had insensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the groping consciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perception that her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter, of course, the likelihood of her distrusting him, and perhaps trying to cheat him of his share of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present the whole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essential baseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk. She drew back with a quick gesture of rejection, saying in a voice that was a surprise to her own ears, you are mistaken, quite mistaken, both in the facts and in what you infer from them. Rosdell stared a moment, puzzled by her sudden dash and a direction so different from that toward which she had appeared to be letting him guide her. Now, what on earth does that mean? I thought we understood each other, he exclaimed, and to her murmur of, ah, we do now. He retorted with a sudden burst of violence. I suppose it's because the letters are to him then. Well, I'll be damned if I see what thanks you've got from him. End of Book 2 Chapter 7 Book 2 Chapter 8 of The House of Merth by Edith Wharton The autumn days declined to winter. Once more the leisure world was in transition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted at the weekend, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream of carriages between house fronts gradually restored to consciousness. The horse show, some two weeks earlier, had produced a passing semblance of reanimation, filling the theaters and restaurants with a human display of the same costly and high-stepping kind as circled daily about its ring. In Miss Bart's world, the horse show and the public it attracted had ostensibly come to be classed among the spectacles disdained of the elect. But as the feudal lord might sally forth to join in the dance of his village green, so society, unofficially, and incidentally, still consented to look in upon the scene. Mrs. Gormer, among the rest, was not above seizing such an occasion for the display of herself and her horses, and Lily was given one or two opportunities of appearing at her friend's side in the most conspicuous box the house afforded. But this lingering semblance of intimacy made her only the more conscious of the change in the relation between Matty and herself. Of a dawning discrimination, a gradually formed social standard emerging from Mrs. Gormer's chaotic view of life. It was inevitable that Lily herself should constitute the first sacrifice to this new ideal, and she knew that, once the Gormers were established in town, the whole drift of fashionable life would facilitate Matty's detachment from her. She had, in short, failed to make herself indispensable, or rather her attempt to do so had been thwarted by an influence stronger than any she could exert. That influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money. Bertha Dorsett's social credit was based on an impregnable bank account. Lily knew that Rosdale had overstated neither the difficulty of her own position nor the completeness of the vindication he offered. Once Bertha's match in material resources, her superior gifts would make it easy for her to dominate her adversary. An understanding of what such domination would mean, and of the disadvantages accruing from her rejection of it, was brought home to Lily with increasing clearness during the early weeks of the winter. Hitherto, she had kept up a semblance of movement outside the main flow of the social current, but with the return to town and the concentrating of scattered activities, the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life marked her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a part of the season's fixed routine, one swung unspared and a void of social non-existence, Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different center. It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her, and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her former life. Its varied dredgeries had a charm now that she was involuntarily released from them. Card-leaving, note-writing enforced civilities to the dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious dinners, how pleasantly such obligations would have filled the emptiness of her days. She did indeed leave cards in plenty. She kept herself with a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world. Nor did she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes produced a wholesome reaction of contempt in their victim. Society did not turn away from her. It simply drifted by, preoccupied, and inattentive, letting her feel to the full measure of her humbled pride how completely she had been the creature of its favor. She had rejected Rosdell's suggestion with a promptness of scorn, almost surprising to herself. She had not lost her capacity for high flashes of indignation. But she could not breathe long on the heights. There had been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength. What she craved and really felt herself entitled to was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto, her intermittent impulses of resistance had suffice to maintain her self-respect. If she slipped, she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosdell's offer without conscious effort. Her whole being had risen against it, and she did not yet perceive that, by the mere act of listening to him, she had learned to live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her. To Gertie Farish, keeping watch over her with a tenderer, if less discerning eye than Mrs. Fisher's, the results of the struggle were already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what hostages Lily had already given to expediency, but she saw her passionately and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of keeping up. Gertie could smile now at her own early dream of her friend's renovation through adversity. She understood clearly enough that Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost. But this very fact, to Gertie, made her friend the more piteously and want of aid. The more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little conscious of needing. Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish's stairs. There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation of Gertie's sympathy. She felt the real difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to any one whose theory of values was so different from her own. And the restrictions of Gertie's life, which had once had the charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which her own existence was shrinking. When at length, one afternoon, she put into execution the belated resolve to visit her friend, the sense of shrunken opportunities possessed her with unusual intensity. The walk up Fifth Avenue, unfolding before her, in the brilliance of the hard winter sunlight, an interminable procession of fastidiously equipped carriages, giving her, through the little squares of brawn windows, peeps of familiar profiles bent above visiting lists of hurried hands dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen, this glimpse of the ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than ever conscious, of the steepness and narrowness of Gertie's stairs, and of the cramped, blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people. How many thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very moment! Figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged lady in limp black who descended Gertie's flight as Lily climbed to it. That was poor Miss Jane Silverton. She came to talk things over with me. She and her sister wanted to do something to support themselves. Gertie explained, as Lily followed her into the sitting-room. To support themselves, are they so hard up? Miss Bart asked, with a touch of irritation, she had not come to listen to the woes of other people. I'm afraid they have nothing left. Ned's debts have swallowed up everything. They had such hopes, you know, when he broke away from Carrie Fisher. They thought Bertha Dorsett would be such a good influence, because she doesn't care for cards, and, well, she talked quite beautifully to poor Miss Jane about feeling as if Ned were her younger brother, and wanting to carry him off on the yacht, so that he might have a chance to drop cards, and racing, and take up his literary work again. Miss Farish paused with a sigh which reflected the perplexity of her departing visitor. But that isn't all. It isn't even the worst. It seems that Ned has quarreled with the Dorsets, or at least Bertha won't allow him to see her. And he is so unhappy about it that he is taken to gambling again, and going about with all sorts of queer people. And cousin Grace Ben Osberg accuses him of having had a very bad influence on Freddie, who left Harvard last spring, and has been a great deal with Ned ever since. She sent for Miss Jane, and made a dreadful scene, and Jack Stupney and Herbert Melson, who were there too, told Miss Jane that Freddie was threatening to marry some dreadful woman to whom Ned had introduced him, and that they could do nothing with him, because now he's of age he has his own money. You can fancy how poor Miss Jane felt. She came to me at once, and seemed to think that if I could get her something to do, she could earn enough to pay Ned's debts and send him away. I'm afraid she has no idea how long it would take her to pay for one of his evenings at Bridge, and he was horribly in debt when he came back from the cruise. I can't see why he should have spent so much more money under Bertha's influence than Carys, can you? Lily met this quarry with an impatient gesture. My dear Gertie, I always understand how people can spend much more money, never how they can spend any less. She listened to her furs, and settled herself in Gertie's easy chair, while her friend busied herself with the tea-cups. But what can they do, the Miss Silvertons? How did they mean to support themselves, she asked. Conscious that the note of irritation still persisted in her voice. Because the very last topic she had meant to discuss, it really did not interest her in the least. But she was seized by a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colorless, shrinking victims of young Silvertons' sentimental experiments meant to cope with a grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold. I don't know. I am trying to find something for them. Miss Jane reads aloud very nicely, but it's so hard to find anyone who is willing to be read to, and Miss Annie paints a little. Oh, I know, apple blossoms on blutting paper, just the kind of thing I shall be doing myself before long, exclaimed Lily, starting up with a vehemence of movement that threatened destruction to misferesh's fragile tea-table. Lily bent over to steady the cups, then she sank back into her seat. I'd forgotten there was no room to dash about in. How beautifully one does have to behave in a small flat. Oh, Gertie, I wasn't meant to be good. She sighed out incoherently. Gertie lifted an apprehensive look to her pale face, in which the eyes shone with a peculiar, sleepless luster. You look horribly tired, Lily. Take your tea, and let me give you this cushion to lean against. Miss Bart accepted the cup of tea, but put back the cushion with an impatient hand. Don't give me that. I don't want to lean back. I shall go to sleep if I do. Well, why not, dear? I'll be as quiet as a mouse, Gertie urged, affectionately. No, no, don't be quiet. Talk to me. Keep me awake. I don't sleep at night, and in the afternoon a dreadful drowsiness creeps over me. You don't sleep at night? Since when? I don't know. I can't remember. She rose and put the empty cup on the tea tray. Another and stronger, please. If I don't keep awake now, I shall see horrors tonight. Perfect horrors. But they'll be worse if you drink too much tea. No, no, give it to me, and don't preach, please. Lily returned imperiously. Her voice had a dangerous edge, and Gertie noticed that her hand shook as she held it out to receive the second cup. But you look so tired. I'm sure you must be ill. Miss Bart set down her cup with a start. Do I look ill? Does my face show it? She rose and walked quickly toward the little mirror above the writing-table. What a horrid-looking glass! It's all blotched and discoloured. Anyone would look ghastly in it. She turned back, fixing her plaintive eyes on Gertie. You stupid deer! Why do you say such odious things to me? Is it enough to make one ill to be told one looks so? And looking ill means looking ugly. She caught Gertie's wrists, and drew her close to the window. After all, I'd rather know the truth. Look me straight in the face, Gertie, and tell me, am I perfectly frightful? You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily. Your eyes are shining, and your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden. Ah, they were pale then, ghastly pale. When I came in, why don't you tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright now, because I'm so nervous, but in the mornings they look like lead. And I can see the lines coming in my face, the lines of worry and disappointment, and failure. Every sleepless night leaves a new one. And how can I sleep when I have such dreadful things to think about? Dreadful things? What things? Ask Gertie, gently detaching her wrists, from her friend's feverish fingers. What things? Well, poverty for one. I don't know any that's more dreadful. Lily turned away and sank with sudden wariness into the easy-chair near the tea-table. You asked me just now if I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I can understand. He spends it on living with the rich. You think we live on the rich, rather than with them, and so we do, in a sense, but it's a privilege we have to pay for. We eat their dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages, and their opera-boxes, and their private cars, yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents, and lots of other things that cost. The girl pays it by tips and cards too. Oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge again, and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing. She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her fagged, brilliant gaze. Gertie had a startle perception of the change in her face, of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished. It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't. I'm sick to death of it, and yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills me. It's what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for your strong tea. For I can't go on in this way much longer, you know. I'm nearly at the end of my tether. And then what can I do? How on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton woman, slinking about to employment agencies and trying to sell painted blotting-pads to women's exchanges. And there are thousands and thousands of women trying to do the same thing already, and not one of the number who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I have. She rose again with a hurried glance at the clock. It's late, and I must be off. I have an appointment with Carrie Fisher. Don't look so worried, you dear thing. Don't think too much about the nonsense I've been talking. She was before the mirror again, adjusting her hair with a light hand, drawing down her veil, and giving a dexterous touch to her furs. Of course, you know, it hasn't come to the employment agencies and the painted blotting-pads yet, but I'm rather hard up just for the moment, and if I could find something to do, notes to write, and visiting lists to make up, or that kind of thing, it would tide me over till the legacy is paid. And Carrie has promised to find somebody who wants a kind of social secretary. You know she makes a specialty of the helpless rich. Miss Bart had not revealed to Gertie the full extent of her anxiety. She was, in fact, in urgent and immediate need of money. Many to meet the vulgar weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor evaded. To give up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of a bed in Gertie Farrish's sitting-room, was an expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her. And it seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was, and find some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do this was one which she had never before seriously considered, and the discovery that, as a breadwinner, she was likely to prove as helpless and ineffectual as poor Miss Silverton was a severe shock to herself confident. Having been accustomed to take herself at the popular valuation, as a person of energy and resource, naturally fitted to dominate any situation in which she found herself, she vaguely imagined that such gifts would be of value to seekers after social guidance. But there was, unfortunately, no specific head under which the art of saying and doing the right thing could be offered in the market. And even Mrs. Fisher's resourcefulness failed before the difficulty of discovering a workable vein in the vague wealth of Lily's graces. Mrs. Fisher was full of indirect expedience for enabling her friends to earn a living, and could conscientiously assert that she had put several opportunities of this kind before Lily. But more legitimate methods of breadwining were as much out of her line as they were begun the capacity of the sufferers she was generally called upon to assist. Lily's failure to profit by the chances already offered her might moreover have justified the abandonment of farther effort on her behalf, but Mrs. Fisher's inexhaustible good nature made her an adept at creating artificial demands in response to an actual supply. In the pursuance of this end she had once stated on a voyage of discovery in Miss Bart's behalf, and as the result of her explorations she now summoned the latter with the announcement that she had found something. Up to herself, Gertie mused distressfully upon her friend's plight and her own inability to relieve it. It was clear to her that Lily, for the present, had no wish for the kind of help she could give. Miss Farish could see no hope for her friend but in a life completely reorganized and detached from its old associations, whereas all Lily's energies were centered in the determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to keep herself visibly identified with them. As long as the illusion could be maintained, pitiable as such an attitude seemed to Gertie, she could not judge it as harshly as Seldon, for instance, might have done. She had not forgotten the night of emotion when she and Lily had lain in each other's arms, and she had seemed to feel her very heart's blood passing into her friend. The sacrifice she had made had seemed unavailing enough. No trace remained in Lily of the subduing influences of that hour. But Gertie's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with obscure and inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with a silent forbearance which took no account of time. She could not, however, deny herself the solace of taking anxious counsel with Laurence Seldon, with whom, since his return from Europe, she had renewed her old relation of cousinly confidence. Seldon himself had never been aware of any change in their relation. He found Gertie as he had left her, simple, undemanding, and devoted, but with a quickened intelligence of the heart which he recognized without seeking to explain it. To Gertie herself it would once have seemed impossible that she should ever again talk freely with him of Lily Bart, but what had passed in the secrecy of her own breast seemed to resolve itself when the mist of the struggle cleared into a breaking down of the bounds of self, a deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general current of human understanding. It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gertie had the opportunity of communicating her fears to Seldon. The latter, having presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through the dowdy animation of his cousin's tea-hour, conscious of something in her voice and eye which solicited a word apart, and as soon as the last visitor was gone, Gertie opened her case by asking how lately he had seen Miss Bart. Seldon's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of surprise. I haven't seen her at all. I've perpetually missed seeing her since she came back. This unexpected admission made Gertie pause too, and she was still hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by adding, I've wanted to see her, but she seems to have been absorbed by the Gormerset since her return from Europe. That's all the more reason she's been very unhappy. Unhappy at being with the Gormers? Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers, but that too is at an end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha Dorset quarreled with her. Ah! Seldon exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin continued to explain. Judy Trenner and her own family have deserted her too, and all because Bertha Dorset had said such horrible things. And she is very poor. You know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy? After giving her to understand that she was to have everything? Yes, I know, Seldon ascended, currently, turning back into the room, but only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between door and window. Yes, she's been abominably treated, but it's unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy can't say to her. His words cause Gertie a slight chill of disappointment. There would be other ways of showing your sympathy, she suggested. Seldon, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which projected from the hearth. What are you thinking of, you incorrigible missionary? He asked. Gertie's color rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer. Then she made it more explicit by saying, I am thinking of the fact that you and she used to be great friends, that she used to care immensely for what you thought of her, and that, if she takes your staying away as a sign of what you think now, I can imagine it's adding a great deal to her unhappiness. My dear child, don't add to it still more, at least to your conception of it, by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own. Seldon, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice. But he met Gertie's look, of perplexity, by saying more mildly. But though you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do from his part, you can't exaggerate my readiness to do it, if you ask me to. He laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which filled the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gertie had the feeling that he measured the cost of her quest, as plainly as she read the significance of his reply, and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them made her next words easier to find. I do ask you, then. I ask you because she once told me that you had been a help to her, and because she needs help now as she has never needed it before. You know how dependent she has always been on ease and worry, how she has hated what was shabby and ugly and uncomfortable. She can't help it. She was brought up with those ideas, and has never been able to find her way out of them, but now all the things she cared for have been taken from her. And the people who taught her to care for them have abandoned her, too, and it seems to me that if someone could reach out a hand and show her the other side, show her how much is left in life and in herself. Carrie broke off, abashed at the sound of her own eloquence, and impeded by the difficulty of giving precise expression to her vague yearning for her friend's retrieval. I can't help her myself. She's passed out of my reach, she continued. I think she's afraid of being a burden to me. When she was last here, two weeks ago, she seemed dreadfully worried about her future. She said Carrie Fisher was trying to find something for her to do. A few days later she wrote me that she had taken a position as private secretary, and that I was not to be anxious, for everything was all right, and she would come in and tell me about it when she had time. But she has never come, and I don't like to go to her, because I am afraid of forcing myself on her when I'm not wanted. Once when we were children, and I had rushed up after a long separation and thrown my arms about her, she said, Please don't kiss me unless I ask you to, Gertie. And she did ask me a minute later, but since then I've always waited to be asked. Selden had listened in silence, with a concentrated look which his thin, dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against any involuntary change of expression. When his cousin ended, he said, with a slight smile. Since you've learned the wisdom of waiting I don't see why you urge me to rush in. But the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add as he rose to take leave. Still, I'll do what you wish, and not hold you responsible for my failure. Selden's avoidance of Miss Bart had not been as unintentional as he had allowed his cousin to think. At first, indeed, while the memory of their last hour at Monte Carlo still held the full heat of his indignation, he had anxiously watched for her return, but he had disappointed him by lingering in England, and when she finally reappeared it happened that business had called him to the West, whence he came back only to learn that she was starting for Alaska with the Garmers. The revelation of this suddenly established intimacy effectually chilled his desire to see her. If at a moment when her whole life seemed to be breaking up, she could cheerfully commit its reconstruction to the Garmers, there was no reason why such accidents should ever strike her as irreparable. Every step she took seemed, in fact, to carry her farther from the region where, once or twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment, and the recognition of this fact, when his first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way. And every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her. But Gertie Farish's words had suffice to make him see how little this view was really his, and how impossible it was for him to live quietly with the thought of Lily Bart. To hear that she was in need of help, even such vague help as he could offer, was to be at once repossessed by that thought, and by the time he reached the street he had sufficiently convinced himself of the urgency of his cousin's appeal to turn his steps directly toward Lily's hotel. There his zeal met a chuck in the unforeseen news that Miss Bart had moved away, but on his pressing, his inquiries, the clerk remembered that she had left an address for which he presently began to search through his books. It was certainly strange that she should have taken the step without letting Gertie Farish know of her decision, and Seldon waited with a vague sense of uneasiness while the address was sought for. The process lasted long enough for uneasiness to turn to apprehension. But when at length a slip of paper was handed to him, and he read on it, care of Mrs. Norma Hatch, Emporium, Hotel, his apprehension passed into an incredulous stare, and this into the gesture of disgust with which he tore the paper in two, and turned to walk quickly homeward. End of Book 2, Chapter 8