_ Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging
him, since she should be such poor company, to join the rest of
the party who, after luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a
visit to the Van Osburghs at Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by
her disinterestedness, and, to escape from the threatened vacuity
of the afternoon, had taken her advice and departed mournfully,
in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged down the
avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden
had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no
reply to his suggestion that they should spend the
afternoon together, but as her plan unfolded itself he felt
fairly confident of being included in it. The house was empty
when at length he heard her step on the stair and strolled out of
the billiard-room to join her.
She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at
her feet.
"I thought, after all, the air might do me good," she explained;
and he agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.
The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and
Selden had the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of
leisure and safety gave the last touch of lightness to her
spirit. With so much time to talk, and no definite object to be
led up to, she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy.
She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his
charge with a touch of resentment.
"I don't know," she said, "why you are always accusing me of
premeditation."
"I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that
you had to follow a certain line--and if one does a thing at all
it is a merit to do it thoroughly."
"If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is
obliged to think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the
imputation. But you must find me a dismal kind of person if you
suppose that I never yield to an impulse."
"Ah, but I don't suppose that: haven't I told you that your
genius lies in converting impulses into intentions?"
"My genius?" she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. "Is
there any final test of genius but success? And I certainly
haven't succeeded."
Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her.
"Success--what is success? I shall be interested to have your
definition."
"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of
life, I suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that
your idea of it?"
"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy,
resting his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow
fields. "My idea of success," he said, "is personal freedom."
"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and
anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of
republic of the spirit--that's what I call success."
She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know--I know--it's
strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."
He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling
so rare with you?" he said.
She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly
sordid, don't you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any
choice. There was no one, I mean, to tell me about the republic
of the spirit."
"There never is--it's a country one has to find the way to one's
self."
"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told
me."
"Ah, there are sign-posts--but one has to know how to read them."
"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of
eagerness. "Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a
letter of the sign--and yesterday--last evening at dinner--I
suddenly saw a little way into your republic."
Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto
he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic
amusement which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory
intercourse with pretty women. His attitude had been one of
admiring spectatorship, and he would have been almost sorry to
detect in her any emotional weakness which should interfere with
the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this weakness had
become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on her
that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant
charm. THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his
first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which
his coming produced. It was the danger-point of their intercourse
that he could not doubt the spontaneity of her liking. From
whatever angle he viewed their dawning intimacy, he could not see
it as part of her scheme of life; and to be the unforeseen
element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.
"Well," he said, "did it make you want to see more? Are you going
to become one of us?"
He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her
hand toward the case.
"Oh, do give me one--I haven't smoked for days!"
"Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont."
"Yes--but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A
MARIER; and at the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER.
"Ah, then I'm afraid we can't let you into the republic."
"Why not? Is it a celibate order?"
"Not in the least, though I'm bound to say there are not many
married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and
it's as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of
heaven."
"That's unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the
conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money,
and the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal
of it."
"You might as well say that the only way not to think about air
is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but
your lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it
is with your rich people--they may not be thinking of money, but
they're breathing it all the while; take them into another
element and see how they squirm and gasp!"
Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her
cigarette-smoke.
"It seems to me," she said at length, "that you spend a good deal
of your time in the element you disapprove of."
Selden received this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I
have tried to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's
lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being
able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the
secret that most of your friends have lost."
Lily mused. "Don't you think," she rejoined after a moment, "that
the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it
as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise
money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and
gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as
opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?"
"That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about
society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who
are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It's just the other
way with most shows--the audience may be under the illusion, but
the actors know that real life is on the other side of the
footlights. The people who take society as an escape from work
are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing
worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden raised
himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense
of splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The
worst of it is that so much human nature is used up in the
process. If we're all the raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one
would rather be the fire that tempers a sword than the fish that
dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours wastes such good
material in producing its little patch of purple! Look at a boy
like Ned Silverton--he's really too good to be used to refurbish
anybody's social shabbiness. There's a lad just setting out to
discover the universe: isn't it a pity he should end by finding
it in Mrs. Fisher's drawing-room?"
"Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long
enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it
is only in society that he is likely to lose them?"
Selden answered her with a shrug. "Why do we call all our
generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn't it a
sufficient condemnation of society to find one's self accepting
such phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at
Silverton's age, and I know how names can alter the colour of
beliefs."
She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation.
His habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns
over and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into
the laboratory where his faiths were formed.
"Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians," she exclaimed;
"why do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation,
and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out."
"It is not MY republic; if it were, I should have a COUP D'ETAT
and seat you on the throne."
"Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot
across the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise
my ambitions--you think them unworthy of me!"
Selden smiled, but not ironically. "Well, isn't that a tribute? I
think them quite worthy of most of the people who live by them."
She had turned to gaze on him gravely. "But isn't it possible
that, if I had the opportunities of these people, I might make a
better use of them? Money stands for all kinds of things--its
purchasing quality isn't limited to diamonds and motor-cars."
"Not in the least: you might expiate your enjoyment of them by
founding a hospital."
"But if you think they are what I should really enjoy, you must
think my ambitions are good enough for me."
Selden met this appeal with a laugh. "Ah, my dear Miss Bart, I am
not divine Providence, to guarantee your enjoying the things you
are trying to get!"
"Then the best you can say for me is, that after struggling to
get them I probably shan't like them?" She drew a deep breath.
"What a miserable future you foresee for me!"
"Well--have you never foreseen it for yourself?" The slow colour
rose to her cheek, not a blush of excitement but drawn from the
deep wells of feeling; it was as if the effort of her spirit had
produced it.
"Often and often," she said. "But it looks so much darker when
you show it to me!"
He made no answer to this exclamation, and for a while they sat
silent, while something throbbed between them in the wide quiet
of the air.
But suddenly she turned on him with a kind of vehemence. "Why do
you do this to me?" she cried. "Why do you make the things I have
chosen seem hateful to me, if you have nothing to give me
instead?" _