ankly at blankness? We might be much better off. We might be altogether together. We might travel.  That would be lovely, she owned. She would love to travel. But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things so differently. As if the mirror differently didn't account for it, the wooer insisted. Newland, you're so original! she exalted. His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young men in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making the answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make, even to the point of calling him original. Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls caught out of the same folded paper. We're like patterns stenciled on a wall. Can't you and I strike out for ourselves, may?  Mercy! Shall we elope? she laughed. If you would. Oh, you do love me, Newland. I'm so happy. But then why not be happier? We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we? Why not? Why not? Why not? She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew very well that they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason. I'm not clever enough to argue with you, but that kind of thing is rather... vulgar, isn't it? She suggested, relieved to have head on a word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject. Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar? She was evidently staggered by this. Of course!  So would you! she rejoined, a trifle irritably. He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top, and feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the discussion. She went on lightheartedly. Oh! Did I tell you that I showed Ellen my ring? She thinks at the most beautiful setting she ever saw. She said there's nothing like it in the Rudelape. I do love you, Newland, for being so artistic. The next afternoon, as Archer, before dinner, sat smoking sullenly in his study, Janie wandered in on him. He had failed to stop at his club on the way up from the office, where he exercised the profession of the law in the leisurely manner common to well to do New Yorkers of his class. He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his brain. Sameness. Sameness! he muttered, the word running through his head like a persecuting theme as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures lounging behind the plate glass, and because he usually dropped in at the club at that hour he had gone home instead. He knew not only what they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take in the discussion. The Duke, of course, would be their principal theme, though the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady in a small canary-coloured brome with a pair of black cobs, for which Beaufort was generally thought responsible, would also doubtless be thoroughly gone into. Such women, as they were called, were few in New York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour had profoundly agitated society. Only the day before her carriage had passed Mrs. Lovell-Mingott's, and the latter had instantly wrung the little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home. What! if it had happened to Mrs. van der Leiden! people asked each other with a shudder. Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts at that very hour holding forth on the disintegration of society. He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then quickly bent over his book. Swinburn's chastelard, just out, as if he had not seen her. She glanced at the writing-table heaped with books, opened a volume of the Conte de Roilatique, and made a rye face over the archaic French and side. What learned things, you read? Well, he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him. Mother's very angry. Angry? With whom? What about? Miss Sophie Jackson has just been here. She brought word that her brother would come in after dinner. She couldn't say very much because he forbade her to. He wishes to give all the details himself. He's with cousin Louise of Anderleid now. For heaven's sake, my dear girl, try a fresh start. It would take an omniscient deity to know what you're talking about. It's not a time to be profane, Newland. Mother feels badly enough about your not going to church. With a groan he plunged back into his book. Newland, do listen. Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs. Lemuel Struthers' party last night. She went there with the duke and Mr. Beaufort.  To smother it, he laughed. Well, what of it? I knew she meant to. Janie paled and her eyes began to project. You knew she meant to and you didn't try to stop her? To warn her? He laughed again. I'm not engaged to be married to the Countess Olenska. The words had a fantastic sound in his own ears. You're marrying into her family. Oh, family! Family! he jeered. Newland, don't you care about family? Not a brass farthing. Nor about what cousin Louise of Anderleid will think. Not the half of one, if she thinks such old maids rubbish. Mother is not an old maid, said his virgin sister with pinched lips. He felt like shouting back. Yes, she is, and so are the van der Leidens, and so we all are when it comes into being so much as brushed by the wing-tip of reality. But he saw her long gentle face puckering into tears and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting. Hang, Countess Olenska!  I'm not her keeper. No, but you did ask the wellens to announce your engagement sooner so that we all might back her up, and if it hadn't been for that, cousin Louise would never have invited her to dinner for the duke. Well, what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking woman in the room, and she made the dinner a little less funereal than the usual van der Leidens banquet. You know cousin Henry asked her to please you. He persuaded cousin Louise, and now they're so upset that they're going back to Skydercliffe to-morrow. I think, Newland, you'd better come down. You don't seem to understand how mother feels. In the drawing-room Newland found his mother. She raised a troubled brow from her needlework to ask, has Janie told you? Yes. He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own. But I can't take it very seriously.  The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess Olenska's going to the house of a woman they consider common—consider? Well, who is, but who has good music and amuses people on Sunday evenings when the whole of New York is dying of an enition? Good music! All I know is there was a woman who got up on a table and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris. There was smoking, and champagne. Well, that kind of thing happens in other places and the world still goes on. I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday. I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday when we've been in London. New York is neither Paris nor London. Oh, no, it's not—her son groaned.  You're right, I dare say. But we belong here, and people should respect our ways when they come among us. Olenska, especially, she came back to get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies. Newland made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured. I was going to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see Cousin Louisa for a moment before dinner. He frowned, and she continued. I thought you might explain to her what you've just said, that society abroad is different, that people are not as particular, and that Madame Olenska may not have realized how we feel about such things. It would be, you know, dear—she added with an innocent adroitness—in Madame Olenska's interest, if you did. Dearest mother, I really don't see how we're concerned in the matter. The Duke took Madame Olenska to Mrs. Struthers. In fact, he brought Mrs. Struthers to call on her. I was there when they came. If the Vanderleidens want to quarrel with anybody, the real culprit is under their own roof. Quarrel! Newland! Did you ever know of Cousin Henry's quarreling? Besides, the Duke is his guest, and a stranger, too. Strangers don't discriminate. How should they? Countess Olenska is a New Yorker, and should have respected the feelings of New York. Well, then, if they must have a victim, you may have my leave to throw Madame Olenska to them. Cried her son, exasperated. I don't see myself, or you either, offering ourselves up to exviate her crimes. Oh, of course, you only see the minget side, his mother answered, in the sensitive tone that was her nearest approach to anger. The sad butler drew back the drawing-room portiers and announced, Mr. Henry Vanderleiden. Mrs. Archer dropped her needle and pushed her chair back with an agitated hand. Another lamp, she cried to the retreating servant, while Janey bent over to straighten her mother's cap. Mr. Vanderleiden's figure loomed on the threshold, and Newland Archer went forward to greet his cousin. We were just talking about you, sir," he said. Mr. Vanderleiden seemed overwhelmed by the announcement. He drew off his glove to shake hands with the ladies, and smoothed his tall hat shyly, while Janey pushed an arm-chair forward, and Archer continued. And the Countess Olenska. Mrs. Archer paled. Ah! a charming woman! I have just been to see her," said Mr. Vanderleiden, complacency restored to his brow. He sank into the chair and laid his hat and gloves on the floor beside him in the old-fashioned way, and went on. She has a real gift for arranging flowers. I had sent her a few carnations from skiter-cliff, and I was astonished. Instead of massing them in big bunches, as our head gardener does, she had scattered them about loosely, here and there. I can't say how. The Duke had told me, he said, go and see how cleverly she's arranged the drawing-room. And she has. I should really like to take Louisa to see her, if the neighbourhood were not so—unpleasant. A dead silence greeted this unusual flow of words for Mr. Vanderleiden. Mrs. Archer drew her embroidery out of the basket into which she had nervously tumbled it, and Newland, leaning against the chimney-piece and twisting a hummingbird feather screen in his hand, saw Janie's gaping countenance lit up by the coming of the second lamp. The fact is—Mr. Vanderleiden continued, stroking his long grey leg with the bloodless hand weighed down by the patroon's great signet ring. The fact is, I dropped in to thank her for the very pretty note she wrote me about my flowers—and also—but this is between ourselves, of course. To give her a friendly warning about allowing the Duke to carry her off to parties with him—I don't know if you've heard. Mrs. Archer produced an indulgent smile. Has the Duke been carrying her off to parties? You know what these English grandees are. They're all alike. Louisa and I are very fond of our cousin. But it's hopeless to expect people who are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about our little Republican distinctions. The Duke goes where he's amused. Mr. Vanderleiden paused, but no one spoke. Yes, it seems he took her with him last night to Mrs. Lemuel's Struthers. Sillerton Jackson has just been to us with the foolish story, and Louisa was rather troubled. So I thought the shortest way was to go straight to Count Solenska and explain—by the nearest hint, you know—how we feel in New York about certain things. I felt I might without indelicacy, because the evening she dined with us she rather suggested—rather let me see that she would be grateful for guidance. And she was. Mr. Henry Vanderleiden looked about the room with what would have been self-satisfaction on features less purged of the vulgar passions. On his face it became a mild benevolence which Mrs. Archer's countenance dutifully reflected.  Newland will particularly appreciate what you have done because of dear May and his new relations. She shot an admonitory glance at her son, who said, immensely, sir, but I was sure you'd like Madame Olenska. Mr. Vanderleiden looked at him with extreme gentleness. I never asked to my house, my dear Newland, he said, any one whom I do not like, and so I have just told Sillerton Jackson. With a glance at the clock he rose and added, but Louisa will be waiting. We are dining early to take the duke to the opera. After the portiers had solemnly closed behind their visitor a silence fell upon the Archer family. Gracious! How romantic! at last broke explosively from Janie. No one knew exactly what inspired her elliptic comments and her relations had long since given up trying to interpret them. Mrs. Archer shook her head with a sigh. Provided it all turns out for the best, she said, in the tone of one who knows how surely it will not. Newland, you must stay and see Mr. Sillerton Jackson when he comes this evening. I really shan't know what to say to him. Poor mother! but he won't come!"  CHAPTER X Some two weeks later Newland Archer, sitting in abstracted idleness in his private compartment of the office of letter-blair, lampson and low, attorneys at law, was summoned by the head of the firm. Old Mr. Letter-blair, the accredited legal advisor of three generations of New York gentility, throned behind his mahogany desk in evident perplexity. As he stroked his close-clipped white whiskers and ran his hand through the rumpled gray locks above his jutting brows, his disrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the family physician annoyed with the patient whose symptoms refused to be classified. My dear sir! he always addressed Archer as sir. I have sent for you to go into a little matter, a matter which, for the moment, I prefer not to mention, either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood. The gentleman he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm, for as was always the case with legal associations of old standing in New York, all the partners named on the office letterhead were long since dead, and Mr. Letter-blair, for example, was, professionally speaking, his own grandson.  For family reasons, he continued, Archer looked up. The Mingid family, said Mr. Letter-blair with an explanatory smile and bow, Mrs. and Mingid sent for me yesterday. Her granddaughter, the Countess Olenska, wishes to sue her husband for divorce. Certain papers have been placed in my hands. He paused and drummed on his desk. In view of your prospective alliance with the family, I should like to consult you, to consider the case with you, before taking any farther steps. Archer felt the blood in his temples. He had seen the Countess Olenska only once since his visit to her, and then at the opera, in the Mingid box. During this interval she had become a less vivid and important image, receding from his foreground as May Welland resumed her rightful place in it. He had not heard her divorce spoken of since Janie's first random allusion to it, and had dismissed the tale as unfounded gossip. Theoretically the idea of divorce was almost as distasteful to him as to his mother, and he was annoyed that Mr. Letter-blair, no doubt prompted by old Catherine Mingid, should be so evidently planning to draw him into the affair. After all, there were plenty of Mingid men for such jobs, and as yet he was not even a Mingid by marriage. He waited for the senior partner to continue. Mr. Letter-blair unlocked a drawer and just drew out a packet. If you will run your eye over these papers. Archer frowned. I beg your pardon, sir, but just because of the prospective relationship I should prefer your consulting Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood. Mr. Letter-blair looked surprised and slightly offended. It was unusual for a junior to reject such an opening. He bowed. I respect your scruples, sir, but in this case I believe true delicacy requires you to do, as I ask. Indeed, the suggestion is not mine but Mrs. Manson Mingid's and her son's. I have seen Lovell Mingid, and also Mr. Welland. They all named you. Archer felt his temper rising. He had been somewhat languidly drifting with events for the last fortnight, and letting May's fair looks and radiant nature obliterate the rather importantate pressure of the Mingid claims. But this behest of old Mrs. Mingid's roused him to a sense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from a prospective son-in-law, and he chafed at the role. Her uncles ought to deal with this, he said. They have. The matter has been gone into by the family. They are opposed to the Countess's idea, but she is firm and insists on a legal opinion. The young man was silent. He had not opened the packet in his hand. Does she want to marry again? I believe it is suggested, but she denies it. Then will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking through these papers? Afterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you my opinion. Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome documents. Since their last meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with the vents and ridding himself of the burden of Mademolenska. His hour alone with her by the fire-light had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on which the Duchess and Austria's intrusion with Mrs. Lemuel's struthers, and the Countess's joyful greeting of them, had rather providentially broken. Two days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatement in the van der Leiden's favour, and had said to himself, with a touch of tartness, that a lady who knew how to thank all powerful elderly gentlemen to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not need either the private consolations or the public championship of a young man of his small compass. To look at the matter in this light simplified his own case, and surprisingly furbished up all the dim domestic virtues. He could not picture May Welland, in whatever conceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties and lavishing her confidences on strange men, and she had never seemed to him finer or fairer than in the week that followed. He had even yielded to her wish for a long engagement, since she had found the one disarming answer to his plea for haste. You know, when it comes to the point, your parents have always let you have your way ever since you were a little girl, he argued, and she had answered with her clearest look. Yes, and that's what makes it so hard to refuse the very last thing they'll ever ask of me as a little girl. That was the old New York note. That was the kind of answer he would always like to be sure of his wife's making. If one had habitually breathed the New York air there were times when anything less crystalline seemed stifling. The papers he had retired to read did not tell him much, in fact, but they plunged him into an atmosphere in which he choked and sputtered. They consisted mainly of an exchange of letters between Countess Olensky's solicitors and a French legal firm, to whom the Countess had applied for the settlement of her financial situation. There was also a short letter from the Count to his wife. After reading it, Newland Archer Rose jammed the papers back into their envelope and re-entered Mr. Letterblair's office. Here are the letters, sir. If you wish, I'll see Madame Olenska," he said, in a constrained voice. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Archer. Come and dine with me to-night if you're free, and we'll go into the matter afterward, in case you wish to call on our client to-morrow. Newland Archer walked straight home again that afternoon. It was a winter evening of transparent clearness, with an innocent young moon above the housetops, and he wanted to fill his soul's lungs with the pure radiance, and not exchange a word with any one till he and Mr. Letterblair were closeted together after dinner. It was impossible to decide otherwise than he had done. He must see Madame Olenska himself rather than let her secrets be bared to other eyes. A great wave of compassion had swept away his indifference and impatience. She stood before him as an exposed and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costs from farther wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate. He remembered what she had told him of Mrs. Wellen's request to be spared whatever was unpleasant in her history, and winced at the thought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New York air so pure.  For the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles had always been. He passed for a young man who had not been afraid of risks, and he knew that his secret love affair with poor, silly Mrs. Thorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with the becoming heir of adventure. But Mrs. Rushworth was that kind of woman, foolish, vain, clandestine by nature, and far more attracted by the secrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as he possessed. When the fact dawned on him it nearly broke his heart, but it now seemed the redeeming feature of the case. The affair, in short, had been of the kind that most of the young man of his age had been through, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected, and those one enjoyed and pitied. In this view they were sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts, and other elderly female relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when such things happened it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman. All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches. The only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to marry a nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him. In the complicated old European communities Archer began to guess love problems might be less simple and less easily classified. Rich and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such situations, and there might even be one in which a woman naturally sensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, from sheer defenselessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusable by conventional standards. Unreaching home he wrote a line to the Countess Olenska, asking at what hour of the next day she could receive him, and dispatched it by a messenger boy, who returned presently with a word to the effect that she was going to skiter-cliff the next morning to stay over Sunday with the Vanderleidens, but that he would find her alone that evening after dinner. The note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet, without date or address, but her hand was firm and free. He was amused at the idea of her weak ending and the stately solitude of skiter-cliff, but immediately afterward felt that there, of all places, she would most feel the chill of minds rigorously averted from the unpleasant. He was at Mr. Letterblair's punctually at seven, glad of the pretext for excusing himself soon after dinner. He had formed his own opinion from the papers entrusted to him, and did not especially want to go into the matter with his senior partner. Mr. Letterblair was a widower, and they dined alone, copiously and slowly, in a dark, shabby room hung with yellowing prints of the death of Chatham and the coronation of Napoleon. On the sideboard between fluted sherret and knife cases stood a decanter of opryon, and another of the old Lanning Port, the gift of a client, which the wasteral Tom Lanning had sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in San Francisco, an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than the sale of the cellar. After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young broiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with current jelly and a celery mayonnaise. Mr. Letterblair, who lunched on a sandwich and tea, dined deliberately and deeply, and insisted on his guests doing the same.  Archer instantly felt himself on the other side of the argument. But why, sir, if there ever was a case? Well, watch the use. She's here, he's there, the Atlantic's between them. She'll never get back a dollar more of her money than what he's voluntarily returned to her. Their damned, heathen marriage settlements take precious good care of that. As things go over there, Olenski's acted generously. He might have turned her out without a penny. The young man knew this, and was silent. I understand, though—Mr. Letterblair continued—that she attaches no importance to the money. Therefore, as the family say, why not let well enough alone? Archer had gone to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with Mr. Letterblair's view, but put into words by this selfish, well-fed, and supremely indifferent old man, it suddenly became the fariseic voice of a society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant. I think it's for her to decide. Hmm! Have you considered the consequences if she decides for divorce? You mean the threat in her husband's letter? What weight would that carry? It's no more than the vague charge of an angry blaggard. Yes, but it might make some unpleasant talk if he really defends the suit. Unpleasant! said Archer explosively. Mr. Letterblair looked at him from under inquiring eyebrows, and the young man, aware of the uselessness of trying to explain what was in his mind, bowed acquiescently, while his senior continued—Divorce is always unpleasant. You agree with me? Mr. Letterblair resumed, after awaiting silence. Naturally, said Archer. Well, then, I may count on you. The Mingates may count on you to use your influence against the idea. Archer hesitated. I can't pledge myself till I've seen the Countess Olenska. He said at length, Mr. Archer, I don't understand you. Do you want to marry into a family with a scandalous divorce suit hanging over it? I don't think that has anything to do with the case. Mr. Letterblair put down his glass of port, and fixed on his young partner a cautious and apprehensive gaze. Archer understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn, and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect. Now that the job had been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it, and to guard against the possibility he saw that he must reassure the unimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of the Mingates. You may be sure, sir, that I shan't commit myself till I've reported to you, what I meant was that I'd rather not give an opinion till I've heard what Madam Olenska has to say. Mr. Letterblair nodded approvingly at an excess of caution worthy of the best New York tradition, and the young man, glancing at his watch, pleaded an engagement, and took leave. CHAPTER XII. Old-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner calls, though derided in Archer's set, still generally prevailed. As the young man strolled up Fifth Avenue from Waverly Place, the long thoroughfare was deserted but for a group of carriages standing before the Reggie Chiverses, where there was a dinner for the Duke, and the occasional figure of an elderly gentleman in heavy overcoat and muffler ascending a brown stone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall. Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square, he remarked that old Mr. Dulak was calling on his cousins the Dagonets, and turning down the corner of West Tenth Street he saw Mr. Skipworth of his own firm obviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings. A little farther up Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected against a blaze of light, descended to his private brome, and rolled away to a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination. It was not an opera night, and no one was giving a party, so that Beaufort's outing was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature. Archer connected it in his mind with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue, in which baribund window-curtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and before whose newly painted door the canary-colored brome of Miss Fanny Ring was frequently seen to wait. Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs. Archer's world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians, and people who wrote. These scattered fragments of humanity had never shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure. In spite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite respectable, but they preferred to keep to themselves. Madora Manson, in her prosperous days, had inaugurated a literary salon, but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it. Others had made the same attempt, and there was a household of blankers, an intense and voluble mother, and three blowsy daughters who imitated her, where one met Edwin Booth and Patty and William Winter, and the new Shakespearean actor George Ringnold and some of the magazine editors and musical and literary critics. Mrs. Archer and her group felt a certain timidity concerning these persons. They were odd, they were uncertain, they had things one didn't know about in the background of their lives and minds. Literature and art were deeply respected in the Archer set, and Mrs. Archer was always at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable and cultivated society had been when it included such figures as Washington Irving, Fitzgreen Halleck, and the poet of The Culprit Fay. The most celebrated authors of that generation had been gentlemen. Perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had gentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair, their intimacy with the stage and the opera, made any old New York criterion inapplicable to them. When I was a girl, Mrs. Archer used to say, we knew everybody between the Battery and Canal Street, and only the people one knew had carriages. It was perfectly easy to place any one then. Now one can't tell, and I prefer not to try. Only old Catherine Mingot, with her absence of moral prejudices and almost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have bridged the abyss. But she had never opened a book or looked at a picture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of galonites at the Italien in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries. Possibly Beaufort, who was her match in Daring, would have succeeded in bringing about a fusion. But his grand house and silk-stalking footmen were an obstacle to informal sociability. Moreover he was as illiterate as old Mrs. Mingot, and considered fellows who wrote as the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures, and no one rich enough to influence his opinion had ever questioned it. Newland Archer had been aware of these things ever since he could remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his universe. He knew that there were societies where painters and poets and novelists and men of science and even great actors were as sought after as dukes. He had often pictured to himself what it would have been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of Maramae, whose letters on Anconieux was one of his inseparables, of Thackeray, Browning, or William Morris. But such things were inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think of. Archer knew most of the fellows who wrote the musicians and the painters. He met them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was bored with them at the blankers, where they were mingled with fervid and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities, and even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away with the feeling that if his world was small so was theirs, and that the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where they would naturally merge. He was reminded of this by trying to picture the society in which the Countess Olenska had lived and suffered, and also, perhaps, tasted mysterious joys. He remembered with what amusement she had told him that her grandmother Mingot and the Wellands objected to her living in a Bohemian quarter, given over to people who wrote. It was not the peril but the poverty that her family disliked, but that shade escaped her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising. She herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her drawing-room, a part of the house in which books were usually supposed to be out of place, though chiefly works of fiction had whetted Archer's interest with such new names as those of Paul Bourget, Huismin, and the Goncourt brothers. Ruminating on these things as he approached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in which she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into conditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be of use in her present difficulty. Nastasia opened the door, smiling mysteriously. On the bench in the hall lay a sable lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk with a gold J.B. on the lining, and a white silk muffler. There was no mistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of Julius Beaufort. Archer was angry, so angry that he came near scribbling a word on his card and going away. Then he remembered that in writing to Madame Olenska he had been kept by excessive discretion from saying that he wished to see her privately. He had therefore no one but himself to blame if she had opened her doors to other visitors, and he entered the drawing-room with the dogged determination to make Beaufort feel himself in the way and to outstay him. The banker stood leaning against the mantle-shelf, which was draped with an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church candles of yellowish wax. He had thrust his chest out, supporting his shoulders against the mantle and resting his weight on one large patent leather foot. As Archer entered he was smiling and looking down on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the chimney. A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and against the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognized as tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving the arm bare to the elbow. It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called simple dinner-dresses, a close-spitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show in a truskin-gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur. Archer remembered on his last visit to Paris seeing a portrait by the new painter, Carolou Durin, whose pictures were the sensation of the salon in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur. There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room and in the culmination of a muffled throat and bare arms, but the effect was undeniably pleasing. Lord, love us! Three whole days at Skytercliff! Beaufort was saying in his loud, sneering voice as Archer entered, you'd better take all your furs and a hot water-bottle. Why? Is the house so cold? she asked, holding out her left hand to Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss it. No, but the missus is, said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young man. But I thought her so kind. She came herself to invite me. Granny says I must certainly go. Granny Wood, of course, had I say it's a shame you're going to miss the little oyster-superide plan for you at Delmonico's next Sunday, with Campanini and Skalki and a lot of jolly people. She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer. Ah, that does tempt me. Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers I've not met a single artist since I've been here. What kind of artist? I know one or two painters, very good fellows, that I could bring you to see if you'd allow me," said Archer boldly. Painters? Are there painters in New York? asked Beaufort, in a tone implying that there could be none since he did not by their pictures, and Madame Olenska said to Archer with her grave smile, that would be charming, but I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers, actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them. She said the words, my husband, as if no sinister associations were connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the lost delights of her married life. Archer looked at her perplexedly, wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to touch so easily on the past, at the very moment when she was risking her reputation in order to break with it. I do think, she went on, addressing both men, that the imprévu adds to one's enjoyment. It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people every day. It's confoundedly dull, anyhow.  Come, think better of it. Sunday is your last chance, for Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia, and I have a private rom and a steinway, and they'll sing all night for me. How delicious! May I think it over, and write to you to-morrow morning?" She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice. Beaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood staring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes. Why not now? It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour. Do you call it late? She returned his glance coolly. Yes, because I have still to talk business with Mr. Archer for a little while. Ah! Beaufort snapped. There was no appeal from her tone, and with a slight shrug he recovered his composure, took her hand at which he kissed with a practised air, and calling out from the threshold. I say, Newland, if you could persuade the Countess to stop in town, of course you're included in the supper. Left the room with his heavy important step. For a moment Archer fancied that Mr. Letterblair must have told her of his coming, but the irrelevance of her next remark made him change his mind. You know painters, then.  Oh! not exactly. I don't know that the arts have a milieu here, any of them. They're more like a very thinly settled outskirt. But you care for such things. Immensely, when I'm in Paris or London I never miss an exhibition. I try to keep up. She looked down at the tip of the little satin boot that peeped from her long draperies. I used to care immensely too.  But now I want to try not to. You want to try not to? Yes. I want to cast off all my old life to become just like everybody else here. Archer reddened. You'll never be like everybody else, he said. She raised her straight eyebrows a little. Ah, don't say that. If you knew how I hate to be different. Her face had grown as sombre as a tragic mask. She leaned forward, clasping her knee in her thin hands, and looking away from him into remote dark distances. I want to get away from it all, she insisted. He waited a moment and cleared his throat. I know, Mr. Letterblair has told me. Ah? That's the reason I've come. He asked me to—you see, I'm in the firm.  You mean you can manage it for me. I can talk to you instead of Mr. Letterblair. Oh, that will be so much easier. Her tone touched him, and his confidence grew with his self-satisfaction. He perceived that she had spoken of business to Beaufort simply to get rid of him, and to have routed Beaufort with something of a triumph. I'm here to talk about it," he repeated.  Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed by the rich red of her dress.  Now were coming to hard facts, he thought, conscious in himself of the same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticised in his mother and her contemporaries. How little practice he had had in dealing with unusual situations. Their very vocabulary was unfamiliar to him, and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage. In face of what was coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy. After a pause Madame Olenska broke out with unexpected vehemence. I want to be free, I want to wipe out all the past. I understand that. Her face warmed. Then you'll help me. First he hesitated. Perhaps I ought to know a little more. She seemed surprised. You know about my husband, my life with him. He made a sign of ascent. Well, then what more is there? In this country are such things tolerated? I'm a Protestant, our church does not forbid divorce in such cases. Certainly not. They were both silent again, and Archer felt the spectre of Count Olenski's letter grimacing hideously between them. The letter filled only half a page, and was just what he had described it to be in speaking of Mr. Letterblair, the vague charge of an angry blaggard. But how much truth was behind it? Only Count Olenski's wife could tell. I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr. Letterblair, he said at length. Well, can there be anything more abominable? No. She changed her position slightly, screening her eyes with her lifted hand. Of course you know, Archer continued, that if your husband chooses to fight the case, as he threatens to—yes—he can say things, things that might be un—might be disagreeable to you. Say them publicly, so that they would get about, and harm you, even if—if? I mean, no matter how unfounded they were. She paused for a long interval, so long that, not wishing to keep his eyes on her shaded face, he had time to imprint on his mind the exact shape of her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the three rings on her fourth and fifth fingers, among which he noticed a wedding ring did not appear. What harm could such accusations, even if he made them publicly, do me here? It was on his lips to exclaim, my poor child, far more harm than anywhere else. Instead, he answered, in a voice that sounded in his ears like Mr. Letterblares,—New York society is a very small world compared with the one you've lived in, and it's ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with—well, rather old-fashioned ideas. She said nothing, and he continued,—our ideas about marriage and divorce are particularly old-fashioned, our legislation favors divorce, our social customs don't. Never? Well, not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any unconventional action to offensive insinuations. She drooped her head a little lower, and he waited again, intensely hoping for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial. None came. A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log broke in two and sent up a shower of sparks. The whole hushed and brooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Archer. Yes, she murmured at length. That's what my family tell me. He winced a little. It's not unnatural. Our family, she corrected herself, and Archer coloured. For you'll be my cousin soon, she continued gently. I hope so. And you take their view? He stood up at this, wandered across the room, stared with void eyes at one of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back irresolutely to her side. How could he say, yes, if what her husband hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it? Sincerely, she interjected as he was about to speak. He looked down into the fire. Sincerely, then, what should you gain that would compensate for the possibility, the certainty, of a lot of beastly talk? But my freedom! Is that nothing? It flashed across him at that instant that the charge and the letter was true, and that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt. How was he to tell her that, if she really cherished such a plan, the laws of the state were inexorably opposed to it? The mere suspicion that the thought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently toward her. But aren't you as free as air as it is? he returned. Who can touch you? Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been settled. Oh, yes, she said indifferently. Well, then, is it worthwhile to risk what may be infinitely disagreeable and painful? Think of the newspapers. They're vileness.  No, she acquiesced, and her tone was so faint and desolate that he felt a certain remorse for his own hard thoughts. The individual in such cases is nearly always sacrificed to what is supposed to be the collective interest. People cling to any convention that keeps the family together, makes the children if there are any.  Since she would not or could not say the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a wound he could not heal. It's my business, you know," he went on, to help you to see these things as the people who were fondest of you see them, the Mingitch, the Welland, the Vanderleidens, all your friends and relations. If I didn't show you how honestly they judge such questions it wouldn't be fair of me, would it?" He spoke insistently, almost pleading with her in his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence. She said slowly, No, it wouldn't be fair. The fire had crumbled down to greyness, and one of the lamps made a gurgling appeal for attention. Madame Olenska rose, wound it up, and returned to the fire, but without resuming her seat. Her remaining on her feet seemed to signify that there was nothing more for either of them to say, and Archer stood up also. Very well, I will do what you wish," she said abruptly. The blood rushed to his forehead, and taken aback by the suddenness of her surrender he caught her two hands awkwardly in his. I—I do want to help you, he said. You do help me. Good night, my cousin. He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate. CHAPTER XIII. It was a crowded night at Wallach's Theatre. The play was The Shogren, with Dion Buccio in the title role, and Harry Montague and Ada Diaz as the lovers. The popularity of the admirable English company was at its height, and The Shogren always packed the house. In the galleries the enthusiasm was unreserved. In the stalls and boxes people smiled a little at the hackneyed sentiments and claptrap situations, and enjoyed the play as much as the galleries did. There was one episode in particular that held the house from floor to ceiling. It was that in which Harry Montague, after a sad, almost monosyllabic scene of parting with Miss Diaz, bade her good-bye and turned to go. The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire, wore a grey cashmere dress without fashionable loopings or trimmings, molded to her tall figure and flowing in long lines about her feet. Around her neck was a narrow black velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back. When her wooer turned from her, she rested her arms against the mantelshelf and bowed her face in her hands. On the threshold he paused to look at her. Then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of velvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude. And on this silent parting the curtain fell. It was always for the sake of that particular scene that Newland Archer went to see the chagrin. He thought the adieu of Montague and Ada Diaz as fine as anything he had ever seen Quasette and Bresson do in Paris or Madge Robertson and Kendall in London. In its reticence, its dumb sorrow, it moved him more than the most famous histrionic outpourings. On the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancy by reminding him—he could not have said why—of his leave-taking from Madame Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days earlier. It would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between the two situations as between the appearance of the person's concerned. Newland Archer could not pretend to anything approaching the young English actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Diaz was a tall red-haired woman of monumental build whose pale and pleasantly ugly face was utterly unlike Ellen Olenska's vivid countenance. Nor were Archer and Madame Olenska two lovers parting in heartbroken silence. They were client and lawyer separating after a talk which had given the lawyer the worst possible impression of the client's case. Wherein, then, lay the resemblance that made the young man's heart beat with a kind of retrospective excitement. It seemed to be in Madame Olenska's mysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilities outside the daily run of experience. She had hardly ever said a word to him to produce this impression, but it was a part of her—either a projection of her mysterious and outlandish background, or of something inherently dramatic, passionate, and unusual in herself. Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them. This tendency he had felt from the first in Madame Olenska—the quiet, almost passive young woman struck him as exactly the kind of person to whom things were bound to happen, no matter how much she shrank from them, and went out of her way to avoid them. The exciting fact was her having lived in an atmosphere so thick with drama that her own tendency to provoke it had apparently passed unperceived. It was precisely the odd absence of surprise in her that gave him the sense of her having been plucked out of a very maelstrom the things she took for granted gave the measure of those she had rebelled against. Archer had left her with the conviction that Count Olenski's accusation was not unfounded. The mysterious person who figured in his wife's past as the secretary had probably not been unrewarded for his share in her escape. The conditions from which she had fled were intolerable, past speaking of, past believing. She was young, she was frightened, she was desperate. What more natural than that she should be grateful to her rescuer. The pity was that her gratitude put her, in the law's eyes and the world's, on a par with her abominable husband. Archer had made her understand this as he was bound to do. He had also made her understand that simple-hearted, kindly New York, on whose larger charity she had apparently counted, was precisely the place where she could least hope for indulgence. To have to make this fact plain to her, and to witness her resigned acceptance of it, had been intolerably painful to him. He felt himself drawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity, as if her dumbly confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearing her. He was glad it was to him she had revealed her secret, rather than to the cold scrutiny of Mr. Letterblair or the embarrassed gaze of her family. He immediately took it upon himself to assure them both that she had given up her idea of seeking a divorce, basing her decision on the fact that she had understood the uselessness of the proceeding, and with infinite relief they had all turned their eyes from the unpleasantness she had spared them. I was sure Newland would manage it, Mrs. Welland had said proudly of her future son-in-law, and old Mrs. Mingid, who had summoned him for a confidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, and added impatiently, Silly goose! I told her myself what nonsense it was, wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingid and an old maid when she has the good luck to be a married woman and a countess. These incidents had made the memory of his last talk with Madame Olenska so vivid to the young man, that as the curtain fell on the parting of the two actors, his eyes filled with tears, and he stood up to leave the theatre. In doing so he turned to the side of the house behind him, and saw the lady of whom he was thinking seated in the box with the Beauforts, Lawrence Lefferts, and one or two other men. He had not spoken with her alone since their evening together, and he had tried to avoid being with her in company. But now their eyes met, and as Mrs. Beaufort recognized him at the same time, and made her languid little gesture of invitation, it was impossible not to go into the box. Leffert and Lefferts made way for him, and after a few words with Mrs. Beaufort, who always preferred to look beautiful and not have to talk, Archer seated himself behind Madame Olenska. There was no one else in the box but Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who was telling Mrs. Beaufort in a confidential undertone about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers' last Sunday reception, where some people reported that there had been dancing. Under cover of this circumstantial narrative, to which Mrs. Beaufort listened with her perfect smile, and her head at just the right angle to be seen in profile from the stalls, Madame Olenska turned and spoke in a low voice. "'Do you think?' she asked, glancing towards the stage.  Archer reddened, and his heart gave a leap of surprise. He had called only twice on Madame Olenska, and each time he had sent her a box of yellow roses, and each time without a card. She had never before made any illusion to the flowers, and he supposed she had never thought of him as the sender. Now her sudden recognition of the gift, and her associating it with the tender leaf-taking on stage, filled him with an agitated pleasure. "'I was thinking of that, too. I was going to leave the theatre in order to take the picture away with me,' he said. To his surprise her colour rose reluctantly and duskily. She looked down at the mother of Pearl Opera-Glass and her smoothly-gloved hands, and said after a pause, "'What do you do while May is away?' "'I stick to my work,' he answered, faintly annoyed by the question. In obedience to a long-established habit, the Wellands had left the previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed susceptibility of Mr. Wellands' bronchial tubes, they always spent the latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, with no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might interfere, and one of them demanded that his wife and daughter should always go with him on his annual journey to the south. To preserve an unbroken domesticity was essential to his peace of mind. He would not have known where his hair-brutters were, or how to provide stamps for his letters, if Mrs. Welland had not been there to tell him. As all the members of the family adored each other, and as Mr. Welland was the central object of their idolatry, it never occurred to his wife and May to let him go to St. Augustine alone, and his sons, who were both in the law, could not leave New York during the winter, always joined for him for Easter, and travelled back with him. It was impossible for Archer to discuss the necessity of May's accompanying her father. The reputation of the Mingott's family physician was largely based on the attack of Pneumonia which Mr. Welland had never had, and his insistence on St. Augustine was therefore inflexible. Originally it had been intended that May's engagement should not be announced till her return from Florida, and the fact that it had been made known sooner could not be expected to alter Mr. Welland's plans. Archer would have liked to join the travellers and have a few weeks of sunshine and boating with his betrothed, but he too was bound by custom and conventions. Little arduous as his professional duties were, he would have been convicted of frivolity by the whole Mingott clan if he had suggested asking for a holiday in mid-winter, and he accepted May's departure with the resignation which he perceived would have to be one of the principal constituents of married life. He was conscious that Madame Olenska was looking at him under lowered lids. "'I have done what you wished—what you advised,' she said abruptly. "'Ah, I'm glad,' he returned, embarrassed by her broaching the subject at such a moment. "'I understand that you were right,' she went on a little breathlessly, but sometimes life is difficult, perplexing. "'I know. And I wanted to tell you that I do feel you were right, and that I'm grateful to you,' she ended, lifting her opera-glass quickly to her eyes as the door of the box opened and Beaufort's resonant voice broke in on them. Archer stood up and left the box and the theatre. Only the day before he had received a letter from May Welland, in which, with characteristic candour, she had asked him to be kind to Ellen in their absence.  I don't think Granny understands her, or Uncle Lovell Mingot either. They really think she's much worldlier and fonder of society than she is. And I can see that New York must seem dull to her, though the family won't admit it. I think she's been used to lots of things we haven't got—wonderful music and picture shows and celebrities, artists and authors and all the clever people you admire. Granny can't understand her wanting anything but lots of dinners and clothes. But I can see that you're almost the only person in New York who can talk to her about what she really cares for." His wise May. How he had loved her for that letter. But he had not meant to act on it. He was too busy to begin with, and he did not care as an engaged man to play too conspicuously the part of Madame Olenska's champion. He had an idea that she knew how to take care of herself a good deal better than the ingenuous May imagined. She had Beaufort at her feet, Mr. van der Leiden hovering about her like a protecting deity, and any number of candidates, Lawrence Leffert's among them, waiting their opportunity in the middle distance. Yet he never saw her or exchanged a word with her without feeling that, after all, May's ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination, Ellen Olenska was lonely, and she was unhappy. CHAPTER XIV As he came out into the lobby, Archer ran across his friend Ned Winsett, the only one among what Janie called his clever people, with whom he cared to probe into things a little deeper than the average level of club and chop-house banter. He had caught sight across the house of Winsett's shabby round-shouldered back, and had once noticed his eyes turned toward the Beaufort box. The two men shook hands, and Winsett proposed a box at a little German restaurant around the corner. Archer, who was not on the mood for the kind of talk they were likely to get there, declined on the plea that he had work to do at home, and Winsett said, oh well, so have I for that matter, and I'll be the industrious apprentice, too. They strode along together, and presently Winsett said, look here, what I'm really after is the name of the dark lady in that swell box of yours, with the Beauforts, wasn't she? The one your friend Lefferts seemed so smitten by. Archer he could not have said why was slightly annoyed. What the devil did Ned Winsett want with Ellen Olenska's name? And above all, why did he couple it with Lefferts? It was unlike Winsett to manifest such curiosity, but after all, Archer remembered, he was a journalist. It's not for an interview, I hope, he laughed. Well, not for the press, just for myself, Winsett rejoined.  She rushed in, bare-headed, carrying him in her arms with his knee all beautifully bandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too dazzled to ask her name. A pleasant glow, delighted Archer's heart. There was nothing extraordinary in the tale, any woman would have done as much for her neighbour's child. But it was just like Ellen, he felt, to have rushed in, bare-headed, carrying the boy in her arms, and to have dazzled poor Mrs. Winsett into forgetting to ask who she was. That is the Countess Olenska, a granddaughter of old Mrs. Mingatz. Phew! a Countess! whistled Ned Winsett. Well, I didn't know Countesses were so neighbourly, Mingatz ain't. They would be, if you'd let them. Ah, well. It was their old interminable argument as to the obstinate unwillingness of the clever people to frequent the fashionable, and both men knew that there was no use in prolonging it. I wonder, Winsett broke off, how a Countess happens to live in our slum. Because she doesn't care a hang about where she lives, or about any of our little social sign-posts, said Archer with a secret pride in his own picture of her. Hmm. Been in bigger places, I suppose, the other commented. Well, here's my corner. He slouched off across Broadway, and Archer stood looking after him and musing on his last words. Ned Winsett had those flashes of penetration. They were the most interesting thing about him, and always made Archer wonder why they had allowed him to accept failure so stolidly at an age when most men are still struggling. Archer had known that Winsett had a wife and child, but he had never seen them. The two men always met at the century, or at some haunt of journalists and theatrical people, such as the restaurant where Winsett had proposed to go for a balk. He had given Archer to understand that his wife was an invalid, which might be true of the poor lady, or might merely mean that she was lacking in social gifts, or in evening clothes, or in both. Winsett himself had a savage abhorrence of social observances. Archer, who dressed in the evening because he thought it cleaner and more comfortable to do so, and who had never stopped to consider that cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in a modest budget, regarded Winsett's attitude as part of the boring, bohemian pose that always made fashionable people, who changed their clothes without talking about it, and were not forever harping on the number of servants one kept, seemed so much simpler and less self-conscious than the others. Nevertheless he was always stimulated by Winsett, and whenever he caught sight of the journalist's lean-bearded face and melancholy eyes, he would route him out of his corner and carry him off for a long talk. Winsett was not a journalist by choice. He was a pure man of letters, untimely born in a world that had no need of letters, but after publishing one volume of brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of which one hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away, and the balance eventually destroyed by the publishers, as per contract, to make room for more marketable material, he had abandoned his real calling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where fashion plates and paper patterns alternated with New England love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks. On the subject of hearth-fires, as the paper was called, he was inexhaustibly entertaining, but beneath his fun lurked the sterile bitterness of the still young man who was tried and given up. His conversation always made Archer take the measure of his own life, and feel how little it contained. But Winsett's, after all, contained still less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views usually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism. The fact is, life isn't much a fit for either of us, Winsett had once said. I'm down and out, nothing to be done about it, I've got only one where to produce, and there's no market for it here and won't be in my time.  Why don't you get into touch? There's only one way to do it—go into politics. Archer threw back his head and laughed. There one saw, at a flash, the unbridgeable difference between men like Winsett and the others, Archer's kind. Every one in polite circles knew that, in America, a gentleman couldn't go into politics. But since he could hardly put it in that way to Winsett, he answered evasively, Look at the career of the honest man in American politics. They don't want us. Who's they? Why don't you all get together and be they yourselves? Archer's laugh lingered on his lips in a slightly condescending smile. It was useless to prolong the discussion. Everybody knew the melancholy fate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen and municipal or state politics in New York. The day was passed when that sort of thing was possible. The country was in possession of the bosses and the immigrant, and decent people had to fall back on spore to a culture. Culture? Yes, if we had it. But there are just a few little local patches, dying out here and there for lack of—well, owing and cross-fertilizing—the last remnants of the old European tradition that your forebears brought with them. But you're in a pitiful little minority. You've got no centre, no competition, no audience. It's like the pictures on the walls of a deserted house, the portrait of a gentleman.  That or emigrate? God, if I could emigrate. Archer mentally shrugged his shoulders and turned the conversation back to books, where Winsett, if uncertain, was always interesting. Emigrate, as if a gentleman could abandon his own country. One could no more do that than one could roll up one's sleeves to go down in the muck. A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained. But you couldn't make a man like Winsett see that, and that was why the New York of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake made it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out, in the end, to be a smaller box, with a more monotonous pattern, than the assembled atoms of Fifth Avenue. The next morning Archer scoured the town in vain for more yellow roses. In consequence of his search, he arrived late at the office, perceived that his doing so made no difference whatever to anyone, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life. Why should he not be, at that moment, on the sands of St. Augustine with May Welland? No one was deceived by his pretence of professional activity. In old-fashioned legal firms like that of which Mr. Letterblair was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the management of large estates and conservative investments, there were always two or three young men, fairly well off and without professional ambition, who, for a certain number of hours of each day, sat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks or simply reading the newspapers. Though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an occupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as derogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more gentlemanly pursuit than business. But none of these young men had much hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire to do so, and over many of them the green mould of the perfunctory was already perceptibly spreading. It made Archer shiver to think that it might be spreading over him, too. He had to be sure other tastes and interests. He spent his vacations in European travel, cultivated the clever people May spoke of, and generally tried to keep up, as he had somewhat wistfully put it to Madame Olenska. But once he was married, what would become of his narrow margin of life in which his real experiences were lived? He had seen enough of other young men who had dreamed his dream, though perhaps less ardently, and who had gradually sunk into the placid and luxurious routine of their elders. From the office he sent a note by messenger to Madame Olenska, asking if he might call that afternoon, and begging her to let him find a reply at his club, but at the club he found nothing, nor did he receive any letter the following day. This unexpected silence mortified him beyond reason, and though the next morning he saw a glorious cluster of yellow roses behind a florist's window-pane, he left it there. It was only on the third morning that he received a line by post from the Countess Olenska. To his surprise it was dated from Skyter Cliff, whither the van der Leidens had promptly retreated after putting the duke on board his steamer. I ran away. The writer began abruptly, without the usual preliminaries. The day after I saw you at the play, and these kind friends have taken me in, I wanted to be quiet and think things over. You were right in telling me how kind they were. I feel myself so safe here. I wish that you were with us. She ended with a conventional, yours sincerely, and without any illusion to the date of her return. The tone of the note surprised the young man. What was Madame Olenska running away from, and why did she feel the need to be safe? His first thought was of some dark menace from abroad. Then he reflected that he did not know her epistolary style, and that it might run to picturesque exaggeration. Women always exaggerated, and moreover she was not wholly at her ease in English, which she often spoke as if she were translating from the French. Je me suis évadée. Put in that way the opening sentence immediately suggested that she might merely have wanted to escape from a boring round of engagements which was very likely true, for he judged her to be capricious and easily wearied of the pleasure of the moment. It amused him to think of the van der Leiden's having carried her off to Skyter Cliff on a second visit, and this time for an indefinite period. The doors of Skyter Cliff were rarely and grudgingly opened to visitors, and a chilly weekend was the most ever offered to the few thus privileged. But Archer had seen, on his last visit to Paris, the delicious play of La Biche, Le Voyage de Monsieur Parischon. And he remembered Monsieur Parischon's dogged and undiscaraged attachment to the young man whom he had pulled out of the glacier. The van der Leiden's had rescued Madame Olenska from a doom almost as icy, and though there were many other reasons for being attached to her, Archer knew that beneath them all lay the gentle and obstinate determination to go on rescuing her. He felt a distinct disappointment on learning that she was away, and almost immediately remembered that, only the day before, he had refused an invitation to spend the following Sunday with the Reggie Chiverses at their house on the Hudson, a few miles below Skyter Cliff. He had had his fill long ago of the noisy friendly parties at High Bank with coasting, ice-boating, slaying, long tramps in the snow, and a general flavour of mild flirting and milder practical jokes. He had just received a box of new books from his London bookseller, and had preferred the prospect of a quiet Sunday at home with his spoils. But he now went into the club writing-room, wrote a hurried telegram, and told the servant to send it immediately. He knew that Mrs. Reggie didn't object to her visitors suddenly changing their minds, and that there was always a room to spare in her elastic house. CHIVERSES ON FRIDAY EVENING And on Saturday went conscientiously through all the rights appertaining to a weekend at High Bank. In the morning he had a spin in the ice-boat with his hostess and a few of the hardier guests. In the afternoon he went over the farm with Reggie, and listened in the elaborately appointed stables to long and impressive disquisitions on the horse. After tea he talked in a corner of the Firelit Hall to a young lady who had professed herself broken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to tell him of her own matrimonial hopes. And finally about midnight he assisted in putting a goldfish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a burglar in the bathroom of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours by joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the basement. But on Sunday after luncheon he borrowed a cutter and drove over to Skitercliffe. People had always been told that the house at Skitercliffe was an Italian villa. Those who had never been to Italy believed it, so did some who had. The house had been built by Mr. van der Leiden in his youth on his return from the Grand Tour, and in anticipation of his approaching marriage with Miss Louisa Dagonet. It was a large square wooden structure, with tongued and grooved walls painted pale green and white, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows. From the high ground on which it stood a series of terraces bordered by balustrades and urns descended in the steel-engraving style to a small irregular lake with an asphalt edge, overhung by rare weeping conifers. To the right and to the left the famous weedless lawns studied with specimen trees, each of a different variety, rolled away to long ranges of grass crested with elaborate cast-iron ornaments, and below, in a hollow, lay the four-roomed stone house in which the first patroon had built on the land granted him in 1612. Against the uniform sheet of snow and the grayish winter sky the Italian villa loomed up rather grimly. Even in summer it kept its distance, when the boldest coleus bed had never ventured nearer than thirty feet from its awful front. Now as Archer rang the bell, the long tinkle seemed to echo through a mausoleum, and the surprise of the butler, who at length responded to the call, was as great as though he had been summoned from his final sleep. Happily Archer was of the family, and therefore irregular though his arrival was, entitled to be informed that the Countess Olenska was out, having driven to afternoon service with Mrs. van der Leiden exactly three-quarters of an hour earlier. Mr. van der Leiden, the butler continued, is in, sir, but my impression is that he is either finishing his nap or else reading yesterday's evening post. I heard him say, sir, on his return from church this morning, that he intended to look through the evening post after luncheon. If you like, sir, I might go to the library door and listen. But Archer, thanking him, said that he would go and meet the ladies, and the butler, obviously relieved, closed the door on him majestically. A groom took the cutter to the stables, and Archer struck through the park to the high road. The village of Skytercliff was only a mile and a half away, but he knew that Mrs. van der Leiden never walked, and that he must keep to the road to meet the carriage. Presently, however, coming down a footpath that crossed the highway, he caught sight of a slight figure in a red cloak with a big dog running ahead. He hurried forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of welcome.  The red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Ellen Mingate of old days, and he laughed as he took her hand and answered, I came to see what you were running away from. Her face clouded over, but she answered, Ah, well, you will see presently. The answer puzzled him. Why? Do you mean that you've been overtaken? She shrugged her shoulders, with a little movement like Nastasya's, and rejoined in a lighter tone. Shall we walk on? I'm so cold after the sermon. And what does it matter, now you're here to protect me? The blood rose to his temples, and he caught a fold of her cloak. Ellen, what is it? You must tell me. Oh, presently, let's run a race first. My feet are freezing to the ground, she cried, and gathering up the cloak, she fled away across the snow, the dog leaping about her with challenging barks. For a moment Archer stood watching, his gaze delighted by the flash of the red meatier against the snow. Then he started after her, and they met, panting and laughing, at a wicket that led into the park. She looked up at him and smiled. I knew you'd come. That shows you wanted me to. He returned, with a disproportionate joy in their nonsense. The white glitter of the trees filled the air with its own mysterious brightness, and as they walked on over the snow the ground seemed to sing under their feet. Where did you come from? Madame Olenska asked. He told her and added, it was because I got your note. After a pause, she said, with a just perceptible chill in her voice, may ask you to take care of me. I didn't need any asking. You mean I'm so evidently helpless and defenceless. What a poor thing you must all think me. But women here seem not—seem never to feel the need, any more than the blessed in heaven. He lowered his voice to ask. What sort of a need? Ah, don't ask me. I don't speak your language. She retorted petulantly. The answer smote him like a blow, and he stood still in the path looking down at her. What did I come for, if I don't speak yours? Oh, my friend! She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and he pleaded earnestly. Ellen, why won't you tell me what's happened? She shrugged again. Does anything ever happen in heaven? He was silent, and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a word. Finally she said, I will tell you, but where? Where, where? One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea or a log for the fire or the newspaper. Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by oneself?  I always feel as if I were in the convent again, or on the stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds. Ah, you don't like us, Archer exclaimed. They were walking past the house of the old Patroon, with its squat walls and small square windows compactly grouped about a central chimney. The shutter stood wide, and through one of the newly washed windows Archer caught the light of a fire. Why, the house is open, he said. She stood still. No, only for to-day at least. I wanted to see it, and Mr. van der Leiden had the fire lit, and the windows opened, so that we might stop there on the way back from church this morning. She ran up the steps and tried the door. It's still unlocked, what luck! Come in and we can have a quiet talk. Mrs. van der Leiden has driven over to see her old aunts at Rheinbeck, and we shan't be missed at the house for another hour. He followed her into the narrow passage. His spirits, which had dropped at her last words, rose with an irrational leap. The homely little house stood there, its panels and brasses shining in the firelight, as if magically created to receive them. A big bed of embers still gleamed in the kitchen chimney under an iron pot hung from an ancient crane. Rush-bottomed arm-chairs spaced each other across the tiled hearth, and rows of delft plates stood on shelves against the walls. Archer stooped over and threw a log upon the embers. Madame Olenska, dropping her cloak, sat down in one of the chairs. Archer leaned against the chimney and looked at her.  Yes, she paused. But I can't feel unhappy when you are here. I shan't be here long, he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the effort to say just so much and no more. No, I know, but I am improvident, I live in the moment when I am happy. The words stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses to it he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black tree-balls against the snow. But it was as if she, too, had shifted her place, and he still saw her between himself and the trees, drooping over the fire with her indolent smile. Archer's heart was beating insubordinately. What if it were from him that she had been running away, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone together in this secret room? Ellen, if I'm really a help to you, if you really wanted me to come, tell me what's wrong, tell me what it is you're running away from? He insisted. He spoke without shifting his position, without even turning to look at her. If the thing was to happen it was to happen in this way, with the whole width of the room between them and his eyes still fixed on the outer snow. For a long moment she was silent, and in that moment Archer imagined her almost heard her stealing up behind him to throw her light arms about his neck. While he waited, soul and body throbbing with a miracle to come, his eyes mechanically received the image of a heavily coated man with his fur collar turned up who was advancing along the path to the house. The man was Julius Beaufort. Ah! Archer cried, bursting into a laugh. Madame Olenska had sprung up and moved to his side, slipping her hand into his, but after a glance through the window her face paled and she shrank back. So that was it, Archer said derisively. I didn't know he was here, Madame Olenska murmured. Her hand still clung to Archer's, but he drew away from her, and walking out into the passage through open the door of the house. Hello, Beaufort, this way, Madame Olenska was expecting you," he said. During his journey back to New York the next morning, Archer relived with a fatiguing vividness his last moments at Skydercliffe. Beaufort, though clearly annoyed at finding him with Madame Olenska, had as usual carried off the situation high-handedly. His way of ignoring people whose presence and convenience to him actually gave them, if they were sensitive to it, a feeling of invisibility, of non-existence. Archer, as the three strolled back through the park, was aware of this odd sense of disembodiment, and humbling as it was to his vanity, it gave him the ghostly advantage of observing unobserved. Beaufort had entered the little house with his usual easy assurance, but he could not smile away the vertical line between his eyes. It was fairly clear that Madame Olenska had not known that he was coming, though her words to Archer had hinted at the possibility. At any rate she had evidently not told him where she was going when she left New York, and her unexplained departure had exasperated him. The ostensible reason of his appearance was the discovery the very night before of a perfect little house, not on the market, which was really just the thing for her, but would be snapped up instantly if she didn't take it, and he was loud in mock reproaches for the dance she had led him in running away just as he had found it. If only this new dodge for talking along a wire had been a little bit nearer perfection, I might have told you all this from town, and been toasting my toes before the club fire at this minute, instead of tramping off to you through the snow! He grumbled, disguising a real irritation under the pretense of it, and at this opening Madame Olenska twisted the talk away to the fantastic possibility that they might one day actually converse with each other from street to street, or even, incredible dream, from one town to another. This struck from all three allusions to Edgar Poe and Jules Verne, and such platitudes as naturally rise to the lips of the most intelligent when they are talking against time, and dealing with a new invention in which it would seem ingenuous to believe too soon. And the question of the telephone carried them safely back to the big house. Mrs. van der Leiden had not yet returned, and Archer took his leave and walked off to fetch the cutter, while Beaufort followed the Countess Olenska indoors. It was probable that, little as the van der Leiden's encouraged unannounced visits, he could count on being asked to dine, and sent back to the station to catch the nine o'clock train. But more than that he would certainly not get, for it would be inconceivable to his hosts that a gentleman travelling without luggage should wish to spend the night, and distasteful to them to propose it to a person with whom they were on terms of such limited cordiality as Beaufort. Beaufort knew all this, and must have foreseen it, and his taking the long journey for so small a reward gave the measure of his impatience. He was undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Olenska, and Beaufort had only one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women. His dull and childless home had long since pawled on him, and in addition to more permanent consolations, he was always in quest of amorous adventures in his own set. This was the man from whom Madame Olenska was avowedly flying. The question was whether she had fled because his importunities displeased her, or because she did not wholly trust herself to resist them, unless indeed all her talk of flight had been a-blind, and her departure no more than a manoeuvre. Beaufort did not really believe this. Little as he had actually seen of Madame Olenska, he was beginning to think that he could read her face, and if not her face, her voice, and both had betrayed annoyance and even dismay at Beaufort's sudden appearance. But after all, if this were the case, was it not worse than if she had left New York for the express purpose of meeting him? If she had done that, she ceased to be an object of interest. She threw in her lot with the vulgarest of dissemblers. A woman engaged in a love affair with Beaufort classed herself irretrievably. No, it was worse a thousand times. If judging Beaufort and probably despising him, she was yet drawn to him by all that gave him an advantage over the other men about her. His habit of two continents and two societies. His familiar association with artists and actors, and people generally in the world's eye, and his careless contempt for local prejudices. Beaufort was vulgar. He was uneducated. He was purse-proud. But the circumstances of his life, and a certain native shrewdness, made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and socially his betters, whose horizon was bounded by the battery and the Central Park. How should anyone coming from a wider world not feel the difference and be attracted by it? Mademolenska, in a burst of irritation, had said to Archer that he and she did not talk the same language, and the young man knew that in some respects this was true. But Beaufort understood every turn of her dialect and spoke it fluently. His view of life, his tone, his attitude, were merely a course of reflection of those revealed in Count Olenski's letter. This might seem to be to his disadvantage with Count Olenski's wife, but Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it. But what had charmed her in it would still charm her, even though it were against her will. Thus, with a painful impartiality did the young man make out the case for Beaufort and for Beaufort's victim. A longing to enlighten her was strong in him, and there were moments when he imagined that all she asked was to be enlightened. That evening he unpacked his books from London. The box was full of things he had been waiting for impatiently. A new volume of Herbert Spencer, another collection of the prolific Alphonse Daudet's brilliant tales, and a novel called Middlemarch, as to which there had lately been interesting things set in the reviews. He had declined three dinner invitations in favour of this feast. But though he turned the books with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he was reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand. Suddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had ordered because the name had attracted him—the house of life. He took it up and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books—so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender—that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions. All through the night he pursued, through those enchanted pages, the vision of a woman who had the face of Eleanor Lanska. But when he woke the next morning and looked out at the brownstone houses across the street, and thought of his desk in Mr. Letterblair's office, and the family pew in Grace Church, his hour in the park of Skitercliffe became as far outside the pale of probability as the visions of the night. "'Mercy, how pale you look, Newland!' Janey commented over the coffee-cups at breakfast, and his mother added, "'Newland, dear, I've noticed lately that you've been coughing. I do hope you're not letting yourself be overworked.' For it was the conviction of both ladies that under the iron despotism of his senior partners the young man's life was spent in the most exhausting professional labours, and he had never thought it necessary to un-deceive them. The next two or three days dragged by heavily. The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future. He heard nothing of the Countess Olenska, or of the perfect little house, and though he met Beaufort at the club they merely nodded at each other across the wist-tables. It was not till the fourth evening that he found a note awaiting him on his return home. "'Come late to-morrow. I must explain to you.' Ellen. These were the only words it contained. The young man, who was dining out, thrust the note in his pocket, smiling a little at the Frenchness of the—to you. After dinner he went to a play, and it was not until his return home, after midnight, that he drew Madame Olenska's missive-out again and reread it slowly a number of times. There were several ways of answering it, and he gave considerable thought to each one during the watches of an agitated night. That on which, when morning came, he finally decided was to pitch some clothes into a portmanteau, and jump on board a boat that was leaving that very afternoon for St. Augustine. CHAPTER XVI. When Archer walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine to the house which had been pointed out to him as Mr. Wellens, and saw May Wellens standing under a magnolia with the sun in her hair, he wondered why he had waited so long to come. Here was the truth, here was reality, here was the life that belonged to him, and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what people might think of his stealing a holiday. Her first exclamation was, Newland, has anything happened? And it occurred to him that it would have been more feminine if she had instantly read in his eyes why he had come. But when he answered, Yes, I found I had to see you. Her happy blushes took the chill from her surprise, and he saw how easily he would be forgiven, and how soon Mr. Letterblair's mild disapproval would be smiled away by a tolerant family. Early as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal greetings, and Archer longed to be alone with May, and to pour out all his tenderness and his impatience. It still lacked an hour to the late well-and-breakfast time, and instead of asking him to come in, she proposed that they should walk out to an old orange garden beyond the town. She had just been for a row on the river, and the sun that netted the little waves with gold seemed to have caught her in its meshes. Across the warm brown of her cheek her blown hair glittered like silver wire, and her eyes too looked lighter, almost pale in their youthful impidity. As she walked beside Archer with her long-swinging gait, her face wore the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete. To Archer's strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of the blue sky and the lazy river. They sat down on a bench under the orange trees, and he put his arms about her and kissed her. It was like drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it, but his pressure may have been more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face and she drew back as if he had startled her. "'What is it?' he asked, smiling, and she looked at him with surprise, and answered, "'Nothing.'  It was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort Conservatory, and he saw that she was disturbed and shaken out of her cool boyish composure. "'Tell me what you do all day,' he said, crossing his arms under his tilted back head and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle. To let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way of carrying on his own independent train of thought, and he sat listening to her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing, and riding, buried by an occasional dance at the primitive inn when a man of war came in. A few pleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were picnicking at the inn, and the Selfridge Marys had come down for three weeks because Kate Mary had had bronchitis. They were planning to lay out a lawn tennis court on the sands, but no one but Kate and May had rackets, and most of the people had not even heard of the game. All this had kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than look at the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before—the sonnets from the Portuguese—but she was learning by heart how they brought the good news from Ghent to X because it was one of the first things he had ever read to her, and it amused her to be able to tell him that Kate Mary had never even heard of a poet called Robert Browning. Presently she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for breakfast, and they hurried back to the tumble-down house with its paintless porch and unpruned hedge of plumbago and plink geraniums where the wellans were installed for the winter. Mr. Welland's sensitive domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel, and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties, Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise an establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and partly drawn from the local African supply. The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home, otherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any good. She explained, winter after winter, to the sympathizing Philadelphians and Baltimoreans, and Mr. Welland, beaming across a breakfast-table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies, was presently saying to Archer, You see, my dear fellow, we camp! We literally camp! I tell my wife and may that I want to teach them how to rough it. Mr. and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised as their daughter by the young man's sudden arrival, but it had occurred to him to explain that he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed to Mr. Welland an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty. You can't be too careful, especially toward spring, he said, keeping his plate with straw-coloured griddle-cakes and drowning them in gold and syrup. If only I'd been as prudent at your age may would have been dancing at the assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a wilderness with an old invalid. Oh, but I love it here, papa! You know I do. If only Newland could stay I should like it a thousand times better than New York. Newland must stay till he is quite thrown off his cold, said Mrs. Welland indulgently, and the young man laughed, and said he supposed there was such a thing as one's profession. He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm to make his cold last a week, and it shat an ironic light on the situation to know that Mr. Letterblair's indulgence was partly due to the satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had settled the troublesome matter of the Olensky divorce. Mr. Letterblair had let Mrs. Welland know that Mr. Archer had rendered an invaluable service to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingid had been particularly pleased, and one day when May had gone for a drive with her father in the only vehicle the place produced, Mrs. Welland took occasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter's presence. I'm afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours. She was barely eighteen when Madora Manson took her back to Europe. You remember the excitement when she appeared in black at her coming out ball—another of Madora's fads—really this time it was almost prophetic. That must have been at least twelve years ago, and since then Ellen has never been to America. No wonder she is completely Europeanised. But European society is not given to divorce. Countess Olensky thought she would be conforming to American ideas and asking for her freedom. It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since he had left Skytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek. Mrs. Welland smiled compassionately. That is just like the extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we dine at two o'clock and countenance divorce. That is why it seems to me so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York.  Archer made no comment on this, and Mrs. Welland continued, What we do most thoroughly appreciate your persuading Ellen to give up the idea. Her grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her. Both of them have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your influence. In fact, she said so to her grandmother. She has an unbounded admiration for you. Poor Ellen, she was always a wayward child. I wonder what her fate will be. What we've all contrived to make it, he felt like answering. If you'd all of you rather she should be Beaufort's mistress and some decent fellow's wife, you've certainly gone the right way about it. He wondered what Mrs. Welland would have said if he had uttered the words instead of merely thinking them. He could picture the sudden decomposure of her firm placid features to which a lifelong mastery over trifles had given an air of factitious authority. Traces still lingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughters, and he asked himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence. Oh no! He did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience. I verily believe, Mrs. Welland continued, that if the horrible business had come out in the newspapers it would only have been my husband's death-blow. I don't know any of the details, I only ask not to, as I told poor Ellen when she tried to talk to me about it. Having an invalid to care for I have to keep my mind bright and happy. But Mr. Welland was terribly upset. He had a slight temperature every morning while we were waiting to hear what had been decided. It was the horror of his girl's learning that such things were possible.  We all knew that you were thinking of May. I'm always thinking of May. The young man rejoined, rising to cut short the conversation. He had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs. Welland to urge her to advance the date of his marriage. But he could think of no arguments that would move her, and with a sense of relief he saw Mr. Welland and May driving up to the door. His only hope was to plead again with May, and on the day before his departure he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish mission. The background lent itself to illusions to European scenes, and May, who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow of mystery over her two clear eyes, kindled into eagerness as he spoke of Granada and the Alhambra. We might be seeing it all this spring, even the Easter ceremonies at Seville, he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger concession. Easter in Seville! And it will be lent next week! she laughed. Why shouldn't we be married in Lent? he rejoined. But she looked so shocked that he saw his mistake. Of course I didn't mean that, dearest, but soon after Easter, so that we could sail at the end of April, I know I could arrange it at the office. She smiled dreamily upon the possibility, but he perceived that to dream of it sufficed her. It was like hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in real life. Oh, do go on, Newland! I do love your descriptions. But why should they be only descriptions? Why shouldn't we make them real? We shall, dearest, of course. Next year! her voice lingered over it.  Can't I persuade you to break away now? She bowed her head, vanishing from him under her conniving hat-brim. Why should we dream away another year? Look at me, dear! Don't you understand how I want you from my wife? For a moment she remained motionless. Then she raised on him eyes of such despairing clearness that he half released her waist from his hold. But suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably. I'm not sure if I do understand, she said. Is it—is it because you're not certain of continuing to care for me? Archer sprang up from his seat. My God! Perhaps—I don't know! he broke out angrily. May wellened Rose also, as they faced each other she seemed to grow in womanly stature and dignity. Both were silent for a moment, as if dismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words. Then she said in a low voice, If that is it, is there someone else? Someone else? Between you and me! He echoed her words slowly, as though they were only half intelligible, and he wanted time to repeat the question to himself. She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his voice, for she went on in a deepening tone. Let us talk frankly, Newland. Sometimes I've felt a difference in you, especially since our engagement has been announced. Dear! what madness! he recovered himself to exclaim. She met his protest with a faint smile. If it is, it won't hurt us to talk about it. She paused, and added, lifting her head with one of her noble movements. Or even if it's true, why shouldn't we speak of it? You might so easily have made a mistake. He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf pattern on the sunny path at their feet. Mistakes are always easy to make, but if I had made one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be imploring you to hasten our marriage? She looked downward, too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her sunshade while she struggled for expression. Yes! she said at length. You might want—once for all—to settle the question. It's one way. Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking her insensible. Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile, and a slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips. Well—he questioned, sitting down on the bench and looking up at her with a frown that he tried to make playful. She dropped back into her seat and went on. You mustn't think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears and one notices, one has one's feelings and ideas. And, of course, long before you told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was someone else you were interested in. Everyone was talking about it two years ago at Newport. And once I saw you sitting together on the veranda at a dance, and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her. I remembered it afterward when we were engaged. Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and unclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade. The young man laid his upon them with a gentle pressure, his heart dilated with an inexpressible relief. My dear child, was that it? If you only knew the truth. She raised her head quickly. Then there is a truth I don't know. He kept his hand over hers. I mean the truth about the old story you speak of. But that's what I want to know, Newland, what I ought to know. I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong and unfairness to anybody else. And I want to believe that it would be the same with you. What sort of a life could we build on such foundations? Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like bowing himself down at her feet. I've wanted to say this for a long time, she went on. I've wanted to tell you that when two people really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which make it right that they should go against public opinion. And if you feel yourself in any way pledged, pledged to the person we've spoken of, and if there is any way, any way in which you can fulfil your pledge, even by her getting a divorce, Newland don't give her up because of me. His surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode so remote and so completely of the past as his love affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view. There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox, and if other problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in wonder at the prodigy of the wellan's daughter urging him to marry his former mistress. But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the precipice they had skirted and full of a new awe at the mystery of young girlhood. For a moment he could not speak, then he said, There is no pledge, no obligation whatever of the kind you think. Such cases don't always present themselves quite as simply as—but that's no matter. I love your generosity because I feel as you do about those things. I feel that each case must be judged individually on its own merits, irrespective of stupid conventionalities. I mean, each woman's right to her liberty. He pulled himself up, startled by the turn his thoughts had taken, and went on, looking at her with a smile. Since you understand so many things, dearest, can't you go a little farther and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another form of the same foolish conventionalities? If there's nothing and no one between us, isn't that an argument for marrying quickly rather than for more delay? She flushed with joy and lifted her face to his. As he bent to it he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears. But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood, and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual as a too adventurous child takes refuge in its mother's arms. Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her. He was too much disappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one deep look at him from her transparent eyes. May seemed to be aware of his disappointment but without knowing how to alleviate it, and they stood up and walked silently home. CHAPTER XII Your cousin the Countess called on mother while you were away. Janie Archer announced to her brother on the evening of his return. The young man, who was dining alone with his mother and sister, glanced up in surprise and saw Mrs. Archer's gaze demurely bent on her plate. Mrs. Archer did not regard her seclusion from the world as a reason for being forgotten by it, and Newland guessed that she was slightly annoyed that he should be surprised by Madame Olenska's visit.  I never saw her so stylishly dressed. Janie continued. She came alone early on Sunday afternoon. Luckily the fire was lit in the drawing-room. She had one of those new card cases. She said she wanted to know us because you'd been so good to her. Newland laughed. Madame Olenska always takes that tone about her friends. She's very happy at being among her own people again. Yes. So she told us, said Mrs. Archer. I must say she seems thankful to be here. I hope you liked her, mother. Mrs. Archer drew her lips together. She certainly lays herself out to please, even when she is calling on an old lady. Mother doesn't think her simple. Janie interjected.  It's just my old-fashioned feeling. Dear May is my ideal, said Mrs. Archer. Ah! said her son. They're not alike. Archer had left St. Augustine charged with many messages for old Mrs. Vingett, and a day or two after his return to town he called on her. The old lady received him with unusual warmth. She was grateful to him for persuading the Countess Olenska to give up the idea of a divorce, and when he told her that he had deserted the office without leave, and rushed down to St. Augustine simply because he wanted to see May, she gave an adipose chuckle and patted his knee with her puff-ball hand. Ah! ah! so you kicked over the traces, did you? And I suppose Augusta and Welland pulled long faces and behaved as if the end of the world had come. But little May, she knew better I'll be bound. I hoped she did, but after all she wouldn't agree to what I'd gone down to ask for. Would she indeed, and what was that? I wanted to get her to promise that we should be married in April. What's the use of our wasting another year? Mrs.  Ask Mama, I suppose, the usual story. Ah! these Mingots all alike. Born in a rut, and you can't root him out of it. When I built this house you'd have thought I was moving to California, nobody ever had built above 40th Street. No, says I, nor above the battery, either, before Christopher Columbus discovered America. No, no, not one of them wants to be different. They're as scared of it as the smallpox. Ah, my dear Mr. Archer, I thank my stars.  But there's not one of my own children that takes after me but my little Ellen. She broke off, still twinkling at him, and asked with the casual irrelevance of old age. Now why in the world didn't you marry my little Ellen? Archer laughed. For one thing, she wasn't there to be married. No, to be sure, moors the pity. And now it's too late—her life is finished. She spoke with the cold-blooded complacency of the aged throwing earth into the grave of young hopes. The young man's heart grew chill, and he said hurriedly, Can't I persuade you to use your influence with the wellens, Mrs. Mingot? I wasn't made for long engagements. Old Catherine beamed on him approvingly. No, I can see that. You've got a quick eye. When you were a little boy, I've no doubt you liked to be helped first.  Ah, here's my Ellen now, she exclaimed, as the portiers parted behind her. Madam Olenska came forward with a smile. Her face looked vivid and happy, and she held at her hand gaily to Archer while she stooped to her grandmother's kiss. I was just saying to him, my dear, now why didn't you marry my little Ellen? Madam Olenska looked at Archer, still smiling. And what did he answer? Oh, my darling, I leave you to find that out. He's been down to Florida to see his sweetheart. Yes, I know. She still looked at him. I went to see her mother to ask where you'd gone. I sent a note that you never answered, and I was afraid you were ill. He muttered something about leaving unexpectedly in a great hurry and having intended to write to her from St. Augustine. And, of course, once you were there you never thought of me again. She continued to beam on him with a gaiety that might have been a studied assumption of indifference. If she still needs me she's determined not to let me see it, he thought, stung by her manner. He wanted to thank her for having been to see his mother, but under the Ancestris' malicious eye he felt himself tongue-tied and constrained. Look at him! In such hot haste to get married that he took French leave and rushed down to implore the silly girl in his knees. That's something like a lover. That's the way handsome Bob Spicer carried off my poor mother, and then got tired of her before I was weaned, though they only had to wait eight months for me. But there you're not a Spicer young man, luckily for you and May.  The rest of them are all model mingots, cried the old lady scornfully. Archer was aware that Madame Olenska, who had seated herself at her grandmother's side, was still thoughtfully scrutinizing him. The gaiety had faded from her eyes, and she said with great gentleness, Surely, Granny, we can persuade them between us to do as he wishes.  When can I see you? he asked, as she walked with him to the door of the room. Whenever you like, but it must be soon if you want to see the little house again. I am moving next week. A pang shot through him at the memory of his lamp-lit hours in the low-studded drawing-room, few as they had been they were thick with memories. Tomorrow evening. She nodded. Tomorrow, yes, but early. I'm going out. The next day was a Sunday, and if she were going out on a Sunday evening it could, of course, be only to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers. He felt a slight movement of annoyance not so much at her going there, for he rather liked her going where she pleased in spite of the van der Leidens, but because it was the kind of house at which she was sure to meet Beaufort, where she must have known beforehand that she would meet him, and where she was probably going for that purpose. Very well, tomorrow evening, he repeated, inwardly resolved that he would not go early, and that by reaching her door late he would either prevent her from going to Mrs. Struthers or else arrive after she had started, which, all things considered, would no doubt be the simplest solution. It was only half-past eight after all when he rang the bell under the wisteria, not as late as he had intended by half an hour, but a singular restlessness had driven him to her door. He reflected, however, that Mrs. Struthers' Sunday evenings were not like a ball, and that her guests, as if to minimize their delinquency, usually went early. The one thing he had not counted on in entering Madame Olenska's hall was to find hats and overcoats there. Why had she bidden him to come early if she was having people to dine? On a closer inspection of the garments besides which Nastasia was laying his own, his resentment gave way to curiosity. The overcoats were, in fact, the very strangest he had ever seen under a polite roof, and it took but a glance to assure himself that neither of them belonged to Julius Beaufort. One was a shaggy yellow ulster of reach-me-down cut, the other a very old and rusty cloak with a cape, something like what the French call a MacFarlane. This garment, which appeared to be made for a person of prodigious size, had evidently seen long and hard wear. And its greenish black folds gave out a moist, sawdusty smell suggestive of prolonged sessions against bar room walls. On it lay a ragged gray scarf and an odd felt hat of semi-clerical shape. Archer raised his eyebrows inquiringly at Nastasia, who raised hers in return with a fatalistic, Ja, as she threw open the drawing-room door. The young man sought once that his hostess was not in the room, then with surprise he discovered another lady standing by the fire, this lady, who was long, lean, and loosely put together, was clad in raiment intricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of plain color disposed in a design to which the clue seemed missing. Her hair, which had tried to turn white and only succeeded in fading, was surmounted by a Spanish comb and black lace scarf, and silk mittens visibly darned, covered her rheumatic hands. Beside her, in a cloud of cigar-smokes, stood the owners of the two overcoats, both in morning clothes that they had evidently not taken off since morning. In one of the two, Archer, to his surprise, recognized Ned Winsett, the other, and older, who was unknown to him, and whose gigantic frame declared him to be the wearer of the McFarlane, had a feebly Leonine head with crumpled gray hair, and moved his arms with large, pawing gestures, as though he were distributing lay blessings to a kneeling multitude. These three persons stood together on the hearth-rug, their eyes fixed on an extraordinarily large bouquet of crimson roses, with a knot of purple pansies at their base, that lay on the sofa where Madame Olenska usually sat. What they must have cost at this season, though, of course, it's the sentiment one cares about, the lady was saying in a sighing staccato as Archer came in. The three turned to surprise at his appearance, and the lady, advancing, held out her hand. Dear Mr. Archer, almost my cousin Newland, she said, I am the Martianess Manson. Archer bowed, and she continued, My Ellen has taken me in for a few days. I came from Cuba, where I've been spending the winter with my Spanish friends, such delightful distinguished people, the highest nobility of old Castile, how I wish you could know them. But I was called away by our dear great friend here, Dr. Carver. You don't know Dr. Agathon Carver, founder of the Valley of Love community. Dr. Carver inclined his Leonine head, and the Martianess continued, Ah, New York, New York, how little the life of the spirit has reached it. But I see you do know Mr. Winsett. Oh, yes, I reached him some time ago, but not by that route, Winsett said with his dry smile. The Martianess shook her head reprovingly. How do you know Mr. Winsett, the spirit bloweth where it listeth? List! Oh, list! interjected Dr. Carver in a stentorian murmur. But do sit down, Mr. Archer. We four have been having a delightful little dinner together, and my child has gone up to dress. She expects you. She'll be down in a moment. We were just admiring these marvellous flowers which will surprise her when she reappears. Winsett remained on his feet. I'm afraid I must be off. Please tell Madam Olenska that we shall all feel lost when she abandons our street. This house has been an oasis. Ah, but she won't abandon you, poetry and art of the breath of life to her. It is poetry, you write, Mr. Winsett? Well, no, but I sometimes read it, said Winsett, including the group and a general nod and slipping out of the room. Acoustic spirit! I'm pussovage, but so witty. Dr. Carver, you do think him witty? I never think of wit, said Dr. Carver severely. Ah, you never think of wit! How merciless he is to us weak mortals, Mr. Archer! But he lives only in the life of the spirit, and tonight he is mentally preparing the lecture he is to deliver presently at Mrs. Blanker's. Dr. Carver, would there be time before you start for the Blanker's to explain to Mr. Archer your illuminating discovery of the direct contact? But no, I see it is nearly nine o'clock, and we have no right to detain you while so many are waiting for your message. Dr. Carver looked slightly disappointed at this conclusion, but having compared his ponderous gold time-piece with Madame Olenska's little travelling-clock, he reluctantly gathered up his mighty limbs for departure. I shall see you later, dear friend! he suggested to the Marchioness, who replied with a smile. As soon as Ellen's carriage comes, I will join you. I do hope the lecture won't have begun. Dr. Carver looked thoughtfully at Archer. Perhaps, if this young gentleman is interested in my experiences, Mrs. Blanker might allow you to bring him with you. Oh, dear friend, if it were possible, I am sure she would be too happy, but I fear my Ellen counts on Mr. Archer herself. That, said Dr. Carver, is unfortunate, but here is my card. He handed it to Archer, who read on it in gothic characters. Agathon Carver. The Valley of Love. Kittisquatten Me. New York. Dr. Carver bowed himself out, and Mrs. Manson, with a sigh that might have been either a regret or relief, again waved Archer to a seat. Ellen will be down in a moment, and before she comes I am so glad of this quiet moment with you. Archer murmured his pleasure at their meeting, and the Marchioness continued in her low sighing accents. I know everything, dear Mr. Archer. My child has told me all you have done for her. Your wise advice, your courageous firmness, thank heaven it was not too late. The young man listened with considerable embarrassment. Was there anyone, he wondered, to whom Madame Olenska had not proclaimed his intervention in her private affairs? Madame Olenska exaggerates. I simply gave her a legal opinion, as she asked me to. Ah, but in doing it, in doing it you were the unconscious instrument of—of—what word have we moderns for providence, Mr. Archer? cried the lady, tilting her head on one side and drooping her lids mysteriously. Little did you know that at that very moment I was being appealed to, being approached in fact from the other side of the Atlantic. She glanced over her shoulder, as though fearful of being overheard, and then drawing her chair near and raising a tiny ivory fan to her lips, breathed behind it.  Good God! Archer exclaimed, springing up. You are horrified. Yes, of course, I understand. I don't defend poor Stanislaus, though he's always called me his best friend. He does not defend himself. He casts himself at her feet in my person. She tapped her emaciated bosom. I have his letter here. A letter? Has Madame Olenski seen it? Archer stammered, his brain whirling with the shock of the announcement. The Martianess Manton shook her head softly. Time! Time! I must have time. I know my Ellen, haughty, intractable. Shall I say just a shade unforgiving? But good heavens to forgive is one thing to go back into that hell! Oh, yes! The Martianess acquiesced. So she describes it, my sensitive child. But on the material side, Mr. Archer, if one may stoop to consider such things, do you know what she is giving up? Those roses there on the sofa, acres like them, under glass and in the open, in his matchless terraced gardens at Nice. Jewels, historic pearls, the Sobieski emeralds, sables. But she cares nothing for all these. Art and beauty, those she cares for, she lives for as I always have, and those also surrounded her. Pictures, priceless furniture, music, brilliant conversation. Ah, that, my dear young man, if you'll excuse me, is what you've no conception of here. And she had it all, and the homage of the greatest. She tells me she has not thought handsome in New York. Good heavens! Our portrait has been painted nine times. The greatest artists in Europe have begged for the privilege. Are these things nothing? And the remorse of an adoring husband? As the Martianess Manson rose to her climax, her face assumed an expression of ecstatic retrospection which would have moved Archer's mirth had he not been numb with amazement. He would have laughed if anyone had foretold to him that his first sight of poor Medora Manson would have been in the guise of a messenger of Satan, but he was in no mood for laughing now, and she seemed to him to come straight out of hell from which Ellen Olenska had just escaped. She knows nothing yet of all this, he asked abruptly. Mrs. Manson laid a purple finger on her lips. Nothing directly, but what does she suspect? Who can tell? The truth is, Mr. Archer, I have been waiting to see you. From the moment I heard of the firm stand you had taken, and of your influence over her, I had hoped it might be possible to counter your support, to convince you, that she ought to go back. I would rather see her dead, cried the young man violently. Ah! the Martianess murmured, without visible resentment. For a while she sat in her arm-chair, opening and shutting the absurd ivory fan between her mitten fingers, but suddenly she lifted her head and listened. Here she comes, she said in a rapid whisper, and then pointing to the bouquet on the sofa. Am I to understand that you prefer that, Mr. Archer? After all, marriage is marriage, and my niece is still a wife. END OF CHAPTER XVIII What are you two plotting together on to Madura? Madame Olenska cried as she came into the room. She was dressed as if for a ball, everything about her shimmered and glimmered softly as if her dress had been woven out of candle-beams, and she carried her head high, like a pretty woman challenging a roomful of rivals. We were saying, my dear, that here was something beautiful to surprise you with. Mrs. Manson rejoined, rising to her feet and pointing archly to the flowers. Madame Olenska stopped short and looked at the bouquet.  Ah! she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that the young man had never heard.  Why a bouquet? And why to night of all nights? I am not going to a ball, I am not a girl engaged to be married, but some people are always ridiculous. She turned back to the door, opened it, and called out, �Nostasia!� The ubiquitous handmaid promptly appeared, and archer heard Madame Olenska say, in an Italian that she seemed to pronounce with intentional deliberateness, in order that he might follow it. Here, throw this into the dustbin. And then, as Nostasia stared, protestingly, �But no, it's not the fault of the poor flowers. Tell the boy to carry them to the house three doors away, the house of Mr. Winsett, the dark gentleman who dined here. His wife is ill, they may give her pleasure. The boy's out, you say. Then, my dear one, run yourself. Here, put my cloak over you and fly. I want the thing out of the house immediately.  Her bosom was rising high under its lace, and for a moment archer thought she was about to cry, but she burst into a laugh instead, and looking from the Marchionesse to archer said abruptly, �And you two, have you made friends? It's for Mr. Archer to say, darling, he is waited patiently while you were dressing.� �Yes, I gave you time enough, my hair wouldn't go.� Madame Olenska said, raising her hand to the heaped-up curls of her chignon. �But that reminds me, I see Dr. Carver is gone, you'll be late at the blankers. Mr. Archer, will you put my aunt in the carriage?� She followed the Marchionesse into the hall, saw her fitted into a miscellaneous heap of overshoes, shawls, and tippets, and called from the doorstep. �Mind the carriage is to be back for me at ten.� Then she returned to the drawing-room, where Archer, on re-entering it, found her standing by the mantelpiece, examining herself in the mirror. It was not usual in New York society, for a lady to address her parlor maid as �my dear one�, and sent her out on an errand wrapped in her own opera-cloak, and Archer, through all his deeper feelings, tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action followed on emotion with such Olympian speed. Madame Olenska did not move when he came up behind her, and for a second their eyes met in the mirror, then she turned, threw herself into her sofa-corner and sighed out. �There's time for a cigarette.� He handed her the box and let a spill for her, and as the flame flashed up into her face she glanced at him with laughing eyes and said, �What do you think of me in a temper?� Archer paused a moment, then he answered with sudden resolution. �It makes me understand what your aunt has been saying about you.� �I knew she'd been talking about me. �Well� She said you were used to all kinds of things, splendours and amusements and excitements that we could never hope to give you here. Madame Olenska smiled faintly into the circle of smoke about her lips. �Madora is incorrigibly romantic. It is made up to her for so many things.� Archer hesitated again and again took his risk. �Is your aunt's romanticism always consistent with accuracy?� �You mean does she speak the truth?� her niece considered. �Well I'll tell you in almost everything she says there's something true and something untrue. But why do you ask? What has she been telling you?� He looked away into the fire and then back at her shining presence. His heart tightened with the thought that this was their last evening by that fireside and that in a moment the carriage would come to take her away. She says, she pretends that Count Olenski has asked her to persuade you to go back to him. Madame Olenska made no answer. She sat motionless holding her cigarette in her half-lifted hand. The expression of her face had not changed and Archer remembered that he had before noticed her apparent incapacity for surprise. �You knew then?� he broke out. She was silent for so long that the ash dropped from her cigarette. She brushed it to the floor. She has hinted about a letter. Poor darling! Madora's hints. Is it at your husband's request that she has arrived here suddenly? Madame Olenska seemed to consider this question also. There again one can't tell. She told me she had had a spiritual summons, whatever that is, from Dr. Carver. I'm afraid she's going to marry Dr. Carver. Poor Madora there's always someone she wants to marry. But perhaps the people in Cuba just got tired