_ Gerty's little sitting-room sparkled with welcome when Selden
entered it. Its modest "effects," compact of enamel paint and
ingenuity, spoke to him in the language just then sweetest to his
ear. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling
matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. Gerty
sparkled too; or at least shone with a tempered radiance. He had
never before noticed that she had "points"--really, some good
fellow might do worse . . . Over the little dinner (and here,
again, the effects were wonderful) he told her she ought to
marry--he was in a mood to pair off the whole world. She had made
the caramel custard with her own hands? It was sinful to keep
such gifts to herself. He reflected with a throb of pride that
Lily could trim her own hats--she had told him so the day of
their walk at Bellomont.
He did not speak of Lily till after dinner. During the little
repast he kept the talk on his hostess, who, fluttered at being
the centre of observation, shone as rosy as the candle-shades she
had manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an
extraordinary interest in her household arrangements:
complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized
every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed
about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise
delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful
generalizations on the burden of a large establishment.
When they were in the sitting-room again, where they fitted as
snugly as bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and
poured it into her grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he
leaned back, basking in the warm fragrance, lighted on a recent
photograph of Miss Bart, and the desired transition was effected
without an effort. The photograph was well enough--but to catch
her as she had looked last night! Gerty agreed with him--never
had she been so radiant. But could photography capture that
light? There had been a new look in her face--something
different; yes, Selden agreed there had been something different.
The coffee was so exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such
a contrast to the watery stuff at the club! Ah, your poor
bachelor with his impersonal club fare, alternating with the
equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A man who lived
in lodgings missed the best part of life--he pictured the
flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's
compassion for the man . . . But to return to Lily--and again and
again he returned, questioning, conjecturing, leading Gerty on,
draining her inmost thoughts of their stored tenderness for her
friend.
At first she poured herself out unstintingly, happy in this
perfect communion of their sympathies. His understanding of Lily
helped to confirm her own belief in her friend. They dwelt
together on the fact that Lily had had no chance. Gerty instanced
her generous impulses--her restlessness and discontent. The fact
that her life had never satisfied her proved that she was made
for better things. She might have married more than once--the
conventional rich marriage which she had been taught to consider
the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she had
always shrunk from it. Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in
love with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be
engaged, and her dismissal of him was thought inexplicable. This
view of the Gryce incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not
to be instantly adopted by him, with a flash of retrospective
contempt for what had once seemed the obvious solution. If
rejection there had been--and he wondered now that he had
ever doubted it!--then he held the key to the secret, and the
hillsides of Bellomont were lit up, not with sunset, but with
dawn. It was he who had wavered and disowned the face of
opportunity--and the joy now warming his breast might have been a
familiar inmate if he had captured it in its first flight.
It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings
in Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still. She sat facing
Selden, repeating mechanically: "No, she has never been
understood---" and all the while she herself seemed to be sitting
in the centre of a great glare of comprehension. The little
confidential room, where a moment ago their thoughts had touched
elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly vastness, separating
her from Selden by all the length of her new vision of the
future--and that future stretched out interminably, with her
lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.
"She is herself with a few people only; and you are one of them,"
she heard Selden saying. And again: "Be good to her, Gerty, won't
you?" and: "She has it in her to become whatever she is believed
to be--you'll help her by believing the best of her?"
The words beat on Gerty's brain like the sound of a language
which has seemed familiar at a distance, but on approaching is
found to be unintelligible. He had come to talk to her of
Lily--that was all! There had been a third at the feast she had
spread for him, and that third had taken her own place. She tried
to follow what he was saying, to cling to her own part in the
talk--but it was all as meaningless as the boom of waves in a
drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to
sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
Selden rose, and she drew a deep breath, feeling that soon she
could yield to the blessed waves.
"Mrs. Fisher's? You say she was dining there? There's music
afterward; I believe I had a card from her." He glanced at the
foolish pink-faced clock that was drumming out this hideous
hour. "A quarter past ten? I might look in there now; the Fisher
evenings are amusing. I haven't kept you up too late, Gerty? You
look tired--I've rambled on and bored you." And in the
unwonted overflow of his feelings, he left a cousinly kiss upon
her cheek. _