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_ Her voice had gathered strength, and she looked him gravely in
the eyes as she continued. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance
to escape from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I
was a coward. Afterward I saw my mistake--I saw I could never be
happy with what had contented me before. But it was too late: you
had judged me--I understood. It was too late for happiness--but
not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed.
That is all I have lived on--don't take it from me now! Even in
my worst moments it has been like a little light in the darkness.
Some women are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I
needed the help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have
resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have
pulled me down. And then I remembered--I remembered your saying
that such a life could never satisfy me; and I was ashamed to
admit to myself that it could. That is what you did for me--that
is what I wanted to thank you for. I wanted to tell you that I
have always remembered; and that I have tried--tried hard . . ."
She broke off suddenly. Her tears had risen again, and in drawing
out her handkerchief her fingers touched the packet in the folds
of her dress. A wave of colour suffused her, and the words died
on her lips. Then she lifted her eyes to his and went on in an
altered voice.
"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very
useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent
existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine
I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was
of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds that one
only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be thrown out
into the rubbish heap--and you don't know what it's like in the
rubbish heap!"
Her lips wavered into a smile--she had been distracted by the
whimsical remembrance of the confidences she had made to him, two
years earlier, in that very room. Then she had been planning to
marry Percy Gryce--what was it she was planning now?
The blood had risen strongly under Selden's dark skin, but his
emotion showed itself only in an added seriousness of manner.
"You have something to tell me--do you mean to marry?" he said
abruptly.
Lily's eyes did not falter, but a look of wonder, of puzzled
self-interrogation, formed itself slowly in their depths. In the
light of his question, she had paused to ask herself if her
decision had really been taken when she entered the room.
"You always told me I should have to come to it sooner or later!"
she said with a faint smile.
"And you have come to it now?"
"I shall have to come to it--presently. But there is something
else I must come to first." She paused again, trying to transmit
to her voice the steadiness of her recovered smile. "There is
some one I must say goodbye to. Oh, not YOU--we are sure to see
each other again--but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her
with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have
brought her back to you--I am going to leave her here. When I go
out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that
she has stayed with you--and she'll be no trouble, she'll take up
no room."
She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will
you let her stay with you?" she asked.
He caught her hand, and she felt in his the vibration of feeling
that had not yet risen to his lips. "Lily--can't I help you?" he
exclaimed.
She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me
once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well--you did
love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always
helped me. But the moment is gone--it was I who let it go. And
one must go on living. Goodbye."
She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other
with a kind of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of
death. Something in truth lay dead between them--the love she had
killed in him and could no longer call to life. But something
lived between them also, and leaped up in her like an
imperishable flame: it was the love his love had kindled, the
passion of her soul for his.
In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self
with him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it
must still continue to be hers.
Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her
with a strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the
situation had vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt
it only as one of those rare moments which lift the veil from
their faces as they pass.
"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I
can't let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may
change--but they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."
She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see
that now. Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe,
whatever happens."
"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"
She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.
"Nothing at present--except that I am very cold, and that before
I go you must make up the fire for me."
She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.
Puzzled by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically
gathered a handful of wood from the basket and tossed it on the
fire. As he did so, he noticed how thin her hands looked against
the rising light of the flames. He saw too, under the loose lines
of her dress, how the curves of her figure had shrunk to
angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of the
flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified
the blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones
to her eyes. She knelt there for a few moments in
silence; a silence which he dared not break. When she rose he
fancied that he saw her draw something from her dress and drop it
into the fire; but he hardly noticed the gesture at the time. His
faculties seemed tranced, and he was still groping for the word
to break the spell. She went up to him and laid her hands on his
shoulders. "Goodbye," she said, and as he bent over her she
touched his forehead with her lips.
The street-lamps were lit, but the rain had ceased, and there was
a momentary revival of light in the upper sky. Lily walked on
unconscious of her surroundings. She was still treading the
buoyant ether which emanates from the high moments of life. But
gradually it shrank away from her and she felt the dull pavement
beneath her feet. The sense of weariness returned with
accumulated force, and for a moment she felt that she could walk
no farther. She had reached the corner of Forty-first Street and
Fifth Avenue, and she remembered that in Bryant Park there were
seats where she might rest.
That melancholy pleasure-ground was almost deserted when she
entered it, and she sank down on an empty bench in the glare of
an electric street-lamp. The warmth of the fire had passed out of
her veins, and she told herself that she must not sit long in the
penetrating dampness which struck up from the wet asphalt. But
her will-power seemed to have spent itself in a last great
effort, and she was lost in the blank reaction which follows on
an unwonted expenditure of energy. And besides, what was there to
go home to? Nothing but the silence of her cheerless room--that
silence of the night which may be more racking to tired nerves
than the most discordant noises: that, and the bottle of chloral
by her bed. The thought of the chloral was the only spot of light
in the dark prospect: she could feel its lulling influence
stealing over her already. But she was troubled by the thought
that it was losing its power--she dared not go back to it too
soon. Of late the sleep it had brought her had been more broken
and less profound; there had been nights when she was perpetually
floating up through it to consciousness. What if the effect of
the drug should gradually fail, as all narcotics were said to
fail? She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the
dose; and she had heard before of the capricious and incalculable
action of the drug. Her dread of returning to a sleepless night
was so great that she lingered on, hoping that excessive
weariness would reinforce the waning power of the chloral.
Night had now closed in, and the roar of traffic in Forty-second
Street was dying out. As complete darkness fell on the square the
lingering occupants of the benches rose and dispersed; but now
and then a stray figure, hurrying homeward, struck across the
path where Lily sat, looming black for a moment in the white
circle of electric light. One or two of these passers-by
slackened their pace to glance curiously at her lonely figure;
but she was hardly conscious of their scrutiny.
Suddenly, however, she became aware that one of the passing
shadows remained stationary between her line of vision and the
gleaming asphalt; and raising her eyes she saw a young woman
bending over her.
"Excuse me--are you sick?--Why, it's Miss Bart!" a half-familiar
voice exclaimed.
Lily looked up. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with
a bundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome
refinement which ill-health and over-work may produce, but its
common prettiness was redeemed by the strong and generous curve
of the lips.
"You don't remember me," she continued, brightening with the
pleasure of recognition, "but I'd know you anywhere, I've thought
of you such a lot. I guess my folks all know your name by heart.
I was one of the girls at Miss Farish's club--you helped me to go
to the country that time I had lung-trouble. My name's Nettie
Struther. It was Nettie Crane then--but I daresay you don't
remember that either."
Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie
Crane's timely rescue from disease had been one of the most
satisfying incidents of her connection with Gerty's charitable
work. She had furnished the girl with the means to go to a
sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with a peculiar
irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor's.
She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not
forgotten; but her voice failed in the effort, and she felt
herself sinking under a great wave of physical weakness. Nettie
Struther, with a startled exclamation, sat down and slipped a
shabbily-clad arm behind her back.
"Why, Miss Bart, you ARE sick. Just lean on me a little till you
feel better."
A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily from
the pressure of the supporting arm.
"I'm only tired--it is nothing," she found voice to say in a
moment; and then, as she met the timid appeal of her companion's
eyes, she added involuntarily: "I have been unhappy--in great
trouble."
"YOU in trouble? I've always thought of you as being so high up,
where everything was just grand. Sometimes, when I felt real
mean, and got to wondering why things were so queerly fixed in
the world, I used to remember that you were having a lovely time,
anyhow, and that seemed to show there was a kind of justice
somewhere. But you mustn't sit here too long--it's fearfully
damp. Don't you feel strong enough to walk on a little ways now?"
she broke off.
"Yes--yes; I must go home," Lily murmured, rising. _
Read next: BOOK II: WEB PAGE 25
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