Book 1. The Flower.

1.

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

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

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct

81.

had done wisely in absenting herself, since the disappointment he so
candidly betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the afternoon
walk. That walk she had no intention of missing; one glance at the
bills on her writing-table was enough to remind her of its necessity.
But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could muse pleas-
antly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough with
the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free
field until luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor
girls and Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor
was sure to be having her hair shampoed; Carry Fisher had doubtless
carried off her host for a drive; and Kate Corby was certain to be
playing tennis with Jack Stepney and Miss Van Osburgh. Of the
ladies, this left only Mrs. Dorset unaccounted for, and Mrs. Dorset
never came down till luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had for-
bidden her to expose herself to the crude air of the morning.

To the remaining members of the party Lily gave no special
thought; wherever they were, they were not likely to interfere with
her plans. These, for the moment, took the shape of assuming a
dress somewhat more rustic and summerlike in style than the garment
she had first selected, and rustling downstairs, sunshade in hand,
with the disengaged air of a lady in quest of exercise. The great
hall was empty but for the knot of dogs by the fire, who, taking in
at a glance the out-door aspect of Miss Bart's costume, were upon
her at once with lavish offers of companionship. She put aside the
ramping paws by means of which these offers were conveyed, and as-
suring the joyous volunteers that she might presently have a use for
their services, sauntered on through the empty drawing-room to the

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away at the call of an acquaintance, and his companion stood before Miss Bart, glossy and receptive, his lips parted in a smile at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the privilege of being seen in her company.

It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene, and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to exert her usual arts. Why should she put herself out to propitiate this vulgar and offensive man? She was ashamed to have Selden suspect that there was any necessity for her to motivate such a man as Rosedale doing so, and the apprehension checked the trivial phrases of politeness on her lips. Rosedale continued to stand before her in an expectant attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, with a glance just level with his glossy red-fringed baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her silence implied.

182.

same.

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

"Wasn't it dear of Lily to get me an invitation? Of course
it would never have occurred to Carry Fisher to put me on the list,
and I should have been so sorry to miss seeing it all — and es-
pecially. Lily herself. Some one told me the ceiling was by Veronese
— you would know, of course, Lawrence. I suppose it's very beau-
tiful, but his women are so dreadfully fat. Goddesses? Well, I
can only say that if they'd been mortals and had to wear corsets, it
would have been better for them. I think our women are much hand-
somer. And this room is wonderfully becoming — every one looks
so well! Did you ever see such jewels? Do look at Mrs. George Dor-
set's pearls — I suppose the smallest of them would pay the rent
of our Girls' Club for a year. Not that I ought to complain about
the club; every one has been so wonderfully kind. Did I tell you

that Lily had been given $200 three hundred
dollars? Wasn't it splendid of her? And
when she collected a lot of money from her
friends — Mrs. Bry &c. gave us five hundred,
& Mr. Riedale a husband. I wish Lily were set to
nice to Mr. Riedale, but the says it's so use
being rude to them, because he doesn't see the

difference. She really can't bear to hurt
people's feeling... it makes me so angry when
I hear her called cold & constricted! The
 girls at the Club don't call her that. Do
you know she has been there with me twice?
yes, Miss. And I think she have less than
one! One of them said that it was as
bad as a day in the country fuelled to death
at her. And the rest of them, I coupled
with them — not a bit — as if the
were being charitable, you know, but as if
she liked it as much as deep did. Hey, me
been asking ever since when this coming
bad? She's promised me ... Sh!!

Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of
the curtain on the first tableau — a group of nymphs dancing
across flower-strewn sward in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's
Spring.

Tableaux vivants depend for their effect not only on the

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revised
accustomed her; and she triumphed in the thought that she had been
the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer to
all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew" the
real Lily", and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised
her placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibili-
ties — a sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon,
by the receipt of a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine
with her that evening.

While Gerty was lost in the happy bustle which such an announcement
produced in her small household, Selden was at one with her in think-
ing with intensity of Lily Bart. The case which had called him to
Albany was not complicated enough to absorb all his attention, and
he had the professional faculty of keeping a part of his mind free
when its services were not needed. This part — which at times
seemed dangerously like the whole — was filled to the brim with
the sensations of the previous evening. Selden understood the symp-
toms: he recognized the fact that he was paying up, as there had
always been a chance of his having to pay up, for the voluntary ex-
clusions of his past.

He had meant to keep free from permanent ties, not from
any poverty of feeling, but because the imaginative quality of his
emotions made them difficult to satisfy. It had always seemed to
Selden that life offered a great deal besides the sentimental adventure,
yet he could vividly conceive of a love which should broaden and
deepen till it became the central fact of existence. What he could
not accept, in his own case, was the makeshift alternative of a rela-
tion that should be less than this: that should leave some portions

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I've rambled on and bored you." And in the ~~sudden and~~ unwonted overflow of his feelings left her with a cousinly kiss upon her cheek.

Alone with the kiss, Gerty stared upon her thoughts. He had kissed her before — but not with another woman on his lips. If he had spared her that she could have drowned quietly, welcoming the dark flood as it submerged her. But now the flood was shot through with glory, and it was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness. Gerty hid her face from the light, but it pierced to the crannies of her soul. She had been so contented, life had seemed so simple and sufficient — why had he come to trouble her with new hopes? And Lily — Lily, her best friend! Woman-like, she accused the woman. Perhaps, had it not been for Lily, her fond imagining might have become truth. Selden had always liked her — had understood and sympathized with the modest independence of her life. He, who had the reputation of weighing all things in the nice balance of fastidious perceptions, had been uncritical and simple in his view of her: his cleverness had never overawed her because she had felt at home in his heart. And now she was thrust out, and the door barred against her by Lily's hand! Lily, for whose admission there she herself had pleaded! The situation was lighted up by a dreary flash of irony. She knew Selden — she saw how the force of her faith in Lily must have helped to dispel his hesitations. She remembered, too, how Lily had talked of him — she saw herself bringing the two together, making them known to each other. On Selden's part, no doubt, the wound inflicted was inconscient; he had

287.

train and drove home." she exclaimed.

Mrs. Dorset examined her between lowered lids. "Who told you that?" she enquired.

"George — I saw him just now in the gardens."

"Ah, you saw George in the gardens? Poor George — he was
in no state to remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he found him?" She still held the same easy tone, under which, now and then, there glimmered an edge of malice.

"No — I don't know," Lily answered.

Mrs. Dorset settled herself indolently in her seat. "He'll wait to see him; he was horribly frightened about himself. It's very bad for him to be worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings on an attack."

This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was put forth with such portentous suddenness, and with so brazen an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out in a disquieted voice: "Anything upsetting?"

"Yes — such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big responsibility in such a wicked place after midnight."

At that — at the overwhelming unexpectedness and the inconceivable audacity of it — Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished laugh.

"Well, really — considering it was you who burdened him with the responsibility!"

Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. "By

332.

as you can."

Lily uttered a faint laugh — for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. "Do you mean, like Gerty 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? Are there actually two?"

"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: who is he?" she asked.

"Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons — George Dorset."

"Oh —" Lily murmured in distress; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on unrebuffed: "Well, why not? They had a few needs honey now when they 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: a ghastly party — no one else but poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a galley-slave — 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 get him back when she wants to."

Continued to observe Lientativeness by Mrs. Fisher fixed her with keen reconnaitring eyes. "Not if he has any one else to turn to! Yes — that's just what it comes

346.

But to the direct appeal it was impossible to reply assentingly; and
she said with friendly firmness: "I'm sorry — but you must see
why I can't."

He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
in inarticulate misery.

"I can see how you might — if you would," he stammered.
"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 said,
trying, by her sharp explicitness, to build a barrier between her-
self and her peril, ~~and~~ as he turned away, groaning out: "You
sacrifice us both," she continued to repeat, "Nothing — nothing —
nothing — absolutely nothing."

356.

stirred a vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the sense of distance she could convey without disdain, that made it most difficult for him to give her up.

"Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain't we going to be good friends any longer?" he asked, 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?"

Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease. "Well, that's about 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."

"Miss Lily —" he began impulsively; but she walked on without seeming to hear him.

He overtook her in a few quick strides, and laid an entreat-
ing 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 paused a moment with raised brows, drawing away in-
stinctively from his touch, but making 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, then? We're

358.

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 that 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 the people who cold-shouldered me a few years ago — 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 go slow."

Miss Bart continued to stand before him in a silence that might have
expressed either mockery or a half-reluctant respect for his ~~frankly~~
~~mis~~, 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 encumbrance; and I like
you for telling me so quite frankly." She held out her hand with a
smile.

405.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He continued to stare. "But I understood --- I thought
you were with Norma Hatch."

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

when she was perpetually floating up through it to consciousness.
What if its effect should gradually fail Mr, as all narcotics were
said to fail? She knew that this one was said to fail. She re-
membered the chemist's warning against increasing the dose; and she
had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the
drug. Her dread of returning to a sleepless night was so great
that she lingered on, hoping that excessive weariness would reinforce
the power of the chloral.

Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-
second Street was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the dis-

444.

mother's arms.

"Oh, she mustn't do that — I should be afraid to come and see her too often!" she said with a smile; and then, resisting Mrs. Struther's anxious offer of companionship, and reiterating the promise that of course she would come back very soon, and make George's acquaintance, and see the baby in her bath, she passed out of the kitchen and went alone down the tenement stairs.