Wall Street, the next day, had more reassuring reports of Beaufort's
situation.  They were not definite, but they were hopeful.  It was
generally understood that he could call on powerful influences in case
of emergency, and that he had done so with success; and that evening,
when Mrs. Beaufort appeared at the Opera wearing her old smile and a
new emerald necklace, society drew a breath of relief.

New York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities.
So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who
broke the law of probity must pay; and every one was aware that even
Beaufort and Beaufort's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this
principle.  But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only
painful but inconvenient.  The disappearance of the Beauforts would
leave a considerable void in their compact little circle; and those who
were too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe
bewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York.

Archer had definitely made up his mind to go to Washington.  He was
waiting only for the opening of the law-suit of which he had spoken to
May, so that its date might coincide with that of his visit; but on the
following Tuesday he learned from Mr. Letterblair that the case might
be postponed for several weeks.  Nevertheless, he went home that
afternoon determined in any event to leave the next evening.  The
chances were that May, who knew nothing of his professional life, and
had never shown any interest in it, would not learn of the
postponement, should it take place, nor remember the names of the
litigants if they were mentioned before her; and at any rate he could
no longer put off seeing Madame Olenska.  There were too many things
that he must say to her.

On the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Letterblair
met him with a troubled face.  Beaufort, after all, had not managed to
"tide over"; but by setting afloat the rumour that he had done so he
had reassured his depositors, and heavy payments had poured into the
bank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to
predominate.  In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its
doors were likely to close before the day was over.  The ugliest things
were being said of Beaufort's dastardly manoeuvre, and his failure
promised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall
Street.

The extent of the calamity left Mr. Letterblair white and
incapacitated.  "I've seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad as
this.  Everybody we know will be hit, one way or another.  And what
will be done about Mrs. Beaufort?  What CAN be done about her?  I pity
Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at her age, there's no
knowing what effect this affair may have on her.  She always believed
in Beaufort--she made a friend of him!  And there's the whole Dallas
connection: poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you.  Her
only chance would be to leave her husband--yet how can any one tell her
so?  Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been
blind to his private weaknesses."

There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply.  "What
is it?  I can't be disturbed."

A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew.  Recognising his
wife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read:  "Won't you
please come up town as early as you can?  Granny had a slight stroke
last night.  In some mysterious way she found out before any one else
this awful news about the bank.  Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the
idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a
temperature and can't leave his room.  Mamma needs you dreadfully, and
I do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's."

Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later
was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at
Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth
Avenue line.  It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle
dropped him at old Catherine's.  The sitting-room window on the ground
floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure
of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she
caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May.  The hall
wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly
invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a
doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters
and cards had already piled up unheeded.

May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the
second time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless
determination to live and get well was already having an effect on her
family.  May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room, where the
sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and the
heavy yellow damask portieres dropped over them; and here Mrs. Welland
communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the
catastrophe.  It appeared that the evening before something dreadful
and mysterious had happened.  At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.
Mingott had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after
dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the
servants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.

The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room
door, announcing:  "Mrs. Julius Beaufort"--and had then closed it again
on the two ladies.  They must have been together, he thought, about an
hour.  When Mrs. Mingott's bell rang Mrs. Beaufort had already slipped
away unseen, and the old lady, white and vast and terrible, sat alone
in her great chair, and signed to the butler to help her into her room.
She seemed, at that time, though obviously distressed, in complete
control of her body and brain.  The mulatto maid put her to bed,
brought her a cup of tea as usual, laid everything straight in the
room, and went away; but at three in the morning the bell rang again,
and the two servants, hastening in at this unwonted summons (for old
Catherine usually slept like a baby), had found their mistress sitting
up against her pillows with a crooked smile on her face and one little
hand hanging limp from its huge arm.

The stroke had clearly been a slight one, for she was able to
articulate and to make her wishes known; and soon after the doctor's
first visit she had begun to regain control of her facial muscles.  But
the alarm had been great; and proportionately great was the indignation
when it was gathered from Mrs. Mingott's fragmentary phrases that
Regina Beaufort had come to ask her--incredible effrontery!--to back up
her husband, see them through--not to "desert" them, as she called
it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their
monstrous dishonour.

"I said to her:  'Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in
Manson Mingott's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet
first,'" the old woman had stammered into her daughter's ear, in the
thick voice of the partly paralysed.  "And when she said:  'But my
name, Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said:  'It was Beaufort when
he covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's
covered you with shame.'"

So much, with tears and gasps of horror, Mrs. Welland imparted,
blanched and demolished by the unwonted obligation of having at last to
fix her eyes on the unpleasant and the discreditable.  "If only I could
keep it from your father-in-law: he always says: 'Augusta, for pity's
sake, don't destroy my last illusions'--and how am I to prevent his
knowing these horrors?" the poor lady wailed.

"After all, Mamma, he won't have SEEN them," her daughter suggested;
and Mrs. Welland sighed:  "Ah, no; thank heaven he's safe in bed.  And
Dr. Bencomb has promised to keep him there till poor Mamma is better,
and Regina has been got away somewhere."

Archer had seated himself near the window and was gazing out blankly at
the deserted thoroughfare.  It was evident that he had been summoned
rather for the moral support of the stricken ladies than because of any
specific aid that he could render.  Mr. Lovell Mingott had been
telegraphed for, and messages were being despatched by hand to the
members of the family living in New York; and meanwhile there was
nothing to do but to discuss in hushed tones the consequences of
Beaufort's dishonour and of his wife's unjustifiable action.

Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who had been in another room writing notes,
presently reappeared, and added her voice to the discussion.  In THEIR
day, the elder ladies agreed, the wife of a man who had done anything
disgraceful in business had only one idea: to efface herself, to
disappear with him.  "There was the case of poor Grandmamma Spicer;
your great-grandmother, May.  Of course," Mrs. Welland hastened to add,
"your great-grandfather's money difficulties were private--losses at
cards, or signing a note for somebody--I never quite knew, because
Mamma would never speak of it.  But she was brought up in the country
because her mother had to leave New York after the disgrace, whatever
it was: they lived up the Hudson alone, winter and summer, till Mamma
was sixteen.  It would never have occurred to Grandmamma Spicer to ask
the family to 'countenance' her, as I understand Regina calls it;
though a private disgrace is nothing compared to the scandal of ruining
hundreds of innocent people."

"Yes, it would be more becoming in Regina to hide her own countenance
than to talk about other people's," Mrs. Lovell Mingott agreed.  "I
understand that the emerald necklace she wore at the Opera last Friday
had been sent on approval from Ball and Black's in the afternoon.  I
wonder if they'll ever get it back?"

Archer listened unmoved to the relentless chorus.  The idea of absolute
financial probity as the first law of a gentleman's code was too deeply
ingrained in him for sentimental considerations to weaken it.  An
adventurer like Lemuel Struthers might build up the millions of his
Shoe Polish on any number of shady dealings; but unblemished honesty
was the noblesse oblige of old financial New York.  Nor did Mrs.
Beaufort's fate greatly move Archer.  He felt, no doubt, more sorry for
her than her indignant relatives; but it seemed to him that the tie
between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be
indissoluble in misfortune.  As Mr. Letterblair had said, a wife's
place was at her husband's side when he was in trouble; but society's
place was not at his side, and Mrs. Beaufort's cool assumption that it
was seemed almost to make her his accomplice.  The mere idea of a
woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business
dishonour was inadmissible, since it was the one thing that the Family,
as an institution, could not do.

The mulatto maid called Mrs. Lovell Mingott into the hall, and the
latter came back in a moment with a frowning brow.

"She wants me to telegraph for Ellen Olenska.  I had written to Ellen,
of course, and to Medora; but now it seems that's not enough.  I'm to
telegraph to her immediately, and to tell her that she's to come alone."

The announcement was received in silence.  Mrs. Welland sighed
resignedly, and May rose from her seat and went to gather up some
newspapers that had been scattered on the floor.

"I suppose it must be done," Mrs. Lovell Mingott continued, as if
hoping to be contradicted; and May turned back toward the middle of the
room.

"Of course it must be done," she said.  "Granny knows what she wants,
and we must carry out all her wishes.  Shall I write the telegram for
you, Auntie?  If it goes at once Ellen can probably catch tomorrow
morning's train."  She pronounced the syllables of the name with a
peculiar clearness, as if she had tapped on two silver bells.

"Well, it can't go at once.  Jasper and the pantry-boy are both out
with notes and telegrams."

May turned to her husband with a smile.  "But here's Newland, ready to
do anything.  Will you take the telegram, Newland?  There'll be just
time before luncheon."

Archer rose with a murmur of readiness, and she seated herself at old
Catherine's rosewood "Bonheur du Jour," and wrote out the message in
her large immature hand.  When it was written she blotted it neatly and
handed it to Archer.

"What a pity," she said, "that you and Ellen will cross each other on
the way!--Newland," she added, turning to her mother and aunt, "is
obliged to go to Washington about a patent law-suit that is coming up
before the Supreme Court.  I suppose Uncle Lovell will be back by
tomorrow night, and with Granny improving so much it doesn't seem right
to ask Newland to give up an important engagement for the firm--does
it?"

She paused, as if for an answer, and Mrs. Welland hastily declared:
"Oh, of course not, darling.  Your Granny would be the last person to
wish it."  As Archer left the room with the telegram, he heard his
mother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Mingott:  "But why on
earth she should make you telegraph for Ellen Olenska--" and May's
clear voice rejoin:  "Perhaps it's to urge on her again that after all
her duty is with her husband."

The outer door closed on Archer and he walked hastily away toward the
telegraph office.

"Ol-ol--howjer spell it, anyhow?" asked the tart young lady to whom
Archer had pushed his wife's telegram across the brass ledge of the
Western Union office.

"Olenska--O-len-ska," he repeated, drawing back the message in order to
print out the foreign syllables above May's rambling script.

"It's an unlikely name for a New York telegraph office; at least in
this quarter," an unexpected voice observed; and turning around Archer
saw Lawrence Lefferts at his elbow, pulling an imperturbable moustache
and affecting not to glance at the message.

"Hallo, Newland: thought I'd catch you here.  I've just heard of old
Mrs. Mingott's stroke; and as I was on my way to the house I saw you
turning down this street and nipped after you.  I suppose you've come
from there?"

Archer nodded, and pushed his telegram under the lattice.

"Very bad, eh?" Lefferts continued.  "Wiring to the family, I suppose.
I gather it IS bad, if you're including Countess Olenska."

Archer's lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to dash his fist into
the long vain handsome face at his side.

"Why?" he questioned.

Lefferts, who was known to shrink from discussion, raised his eye-brows
with an ironic grimace that warned the other of the watching damsel
behind the lattice.  Nothing could be worse "form" the look reminded
Archer, than any display of temper in a public place.

Archer had never been more indifferent to the requirements of form; but
his impulse to do Lawrence Lefferts a physical injury was only
momentary.  The idea of bandying Ellen Olenska's name with him at such
a time, and on whatsoever provocation, was unthinkable.  He paid for
his telegram, and the two young men went out together into the street.
There Archer, having regained his self-control, went on:  "Mrs. Mingott
is much better: the doctor feels no anxiety whatever"; and Lefferts,
with profuse expressions of relief, asked him if he had heard that
there were beastly bad rumours again about Beaufort....

That afternoon the announcement of the Beaufort failure was in all the
papers.  It overshadowed the report of Mrs. Manson Mingott's stroke,
and only the few who had heard of the mysterious connection between the
two events thought of ascribing old Catherine's illness to anything but
the accumulation of flesh and years.

The whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Beaufort's dishonour.
There had never, as Mr. Letterblair said, been a worse case in his
memory, nor, for that matter, in the memory of the far-off Letterblair
who had given his name to the firm.  The bank had continued to take in
money for a whole day after its failure was inevitable; and as many of
its clients belonged to one or another of the ruling clans, Beaufort's
duplicity seemed doubly cynical.  If Mrs. Beaufort had not taken the
tone that such misfortunes (the word was her own) were "the test of
friendship," compassion for her might have tempered the general
indignation against her husband.  As it was--and especially after the
object of her nocturnal visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott had become
known--her cynicism was held to exceed his; and she had not the
excuse--nor her detractors the satisfaction--of pleading that she was
"a foreigner."  It was some comfort (to those whose securities were not
in jeopardy) to be able to remind themselves that Beaufort WAS; but,
after all, if a Dallas of South Carolina took his view of the case, and
glibly talked of his soon being "on his feet again," the argument lost
its edge, and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence
of the indissolubility of marriage.  Society must manage to get on
without the Beauforts, and there was an end of it--except indeed for
such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old
Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who,
if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van der Luyden ...

"The best thing the Beauforts can do," said Mrs. Archer, summing it up
as if she were pronouncing a diagnosis and prescribing a course of
treatment, "is to go and live at Regina's little place in North
Carolina.  Beaufort has always kept a racing stable, and he had better
breed trotting horses.  I should say he had all the qualities of a
successful horsedealer."  Every one agreed with her, but no one
condescended to enquire what the Beauforts really meant to do.

The next day Mrs. Manson Mingott was much better: she recovered her
voice sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the
Beauforts to her again, and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what in
the world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health.

"If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the evening what are
they to expect?" she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely
modified her dietary, the stroke was transformed into an attack of
indigestion.  But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not
wholly recover her former attitude toward life.  The growing remoteness
of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her
neighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their
troubles; and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort
disaster out of her mind.  But for the first time she became absorbed
in her own symptoms, and began to take a sentimental interest in
certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been
contemptuously indifferent.

Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice.
Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored;
and all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful
character and marked intellectual ability (if he had only "chosen") had
been met with a derisive chuckle.  But his eminence as a valetudinarian
now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued
an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his
temperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise
that one could not be too careful about temperatures.

Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska's summons a telegram announced
that she would arrive from Washington on the evening of the following
day.  At the Wellands', where the Newland Archers chanced to be
lunching, the question as to who should meet her at Jersey City was
immediately raised; and the material difficulties amid which the
Welland household struggled as if it had been a frontier outpost, lent
animation to the debate.  It was agreed that Mrs. Welland could not
possibly go to Jersey City because she was to accompany her husband to
old Catherine's that afternoon, and the brougham could not be spared,
since, if Mr. Welland were "upset" by seeing his mother-in-law for the
first time after her attack, he might have to be taken home at a
moment's notice.  The Welland sons would of course be "down town," Mr.
Lovell Mingott would be just hurrying back from his shooting, and the
Mingott carriage engaged in meeting him; and one could not ask May, at
the close of a winter afternoon, to go alone across the ferry to Jersey
City, even in her own carriage.  Nevertheless, it might appear
inhospitable--and contrary to old Catherine's express wishes--if Madame
Olenska were allowed to arrive without any of the family being at the
station to receive her.  It was just like Ellen, Mrs. Welland's tired
voice implied, to place the family in such a dilemma.  "It's always one
thing after another," the poor lady grieved, in one of her rare revolts
against fate; "the only thing that makes me think Mamma must be less
well than Dr. Bencomb will admit is this morbid desire to have Ellen
come at once, however inconvenient it is to meet her."

The words had been thoughtless, as the utterances of impatience often
are; and Mr. Welland was upon them with a pounce.

"Augusta," he said, turning pale and laying down his fork, "have you
any other reason for thinking that Bencomb is less to be relied on than
he was?  Have you noticed that he has been less conscientious than
usual in following up my case or your mother's?"

It was Mrs. Welland's turn to grow pale as the endless consequences of
her blunder unrolled themselves before her; but she managed to laugh,
and take a second helping of scalloped oysters, before she said,
struggling back into her old armour of cheerfulness: "My dear, how
could you imagine such a thing?  I only meant that, after the decided
stand Mamma took about its being Ellen's duty to go back to her
husband, it seems strange that she should be seized with this sudden
whim to see her, when there are half a dozen other grandchildren that
she might have asked for.  But we must never forget that Mamma, in
spite of her wonderful vitality, is a very old woman."

Mr. Welland's brow remained clouded, and it was evident that his
perturbed imagination had fastened at once on this last remark.  "Yes:
your mother's a very old woman; and for all we know Bencomb may not be
as successful with very old people.  As you say, my dear, it's always
one thing after another; and in another ten or fifteen years I suppose
I shall have the pleasing duty of looking about for a new doctor.  It's
always better to make such a change before it's absolutely necessary."
And having arrived at this Spartan decision Mr. Welland firmly took up
his fork.

"But all the while," Mrs. Welland began again, as she rose from the
luncheon-table, and led the way into the wilderness of purple satin and
malachite known as the back drawing-room, "I don't see how Ellen's to
be got here tomorrow evening; and I do like to have things settled for
at least twenty-four hours ahead."

Archer turned from the fascinated contemplation of a small painting
representing two Cardinals carousing, in an octagonal ebony frame set
with medallions of onyx.

"Shall I fetch her?" he proposed.  "I can easily get away from the
office in time to meet the brougham at the ferry, if May will send it
there."  His heart was beating excitedly as he spoke.

Mrs. Welland heaved a sigh of gratitude, and May, who had moved away to
the window, turned to shed on him a beam of approval.  "So you see,
Mamma, everything WILL be settled twenty-four hours in advance," she
said, stooping over to kiss her mother's troubled forehead.

May's brougham awaited her at the door, and she was to drive Archer to
Union Square, where he could pick up a Broadway car to carry him to the
office.  As she settled herself in her corner she said:  "I didn't want
to worry Mamma by raising fresh obstacles; but how can you meet Ellen
tomorrow, and bring her back to New York, when you're going to
Washington?"

"Oh, I'm not going," Archer answered.

"Not going?  Why, what's happened?"  Her voice was as clear as a bell,
and full of wifely solicitude.

"The case is off--postponed."

"Postponed?  How odd!  I saw a note this morning from Mr. Letterblair
to Mamma saying that he was going to Washington tomorrow for the big
patent case that he was to argue before the Supreme Court.  You said it
was a patent case, didn't you?"

"Well--that's it: the whole office can't go.  Letterblair decided to go
this morning."

"Then it's NOT postponed?" she continued, with an insistence so unlike
her that he felt the blood rising to his face, as if he were blushing
for her unwonted lapse from all the traditional delicacies.

"No: but my going is," he answered, cursing the unnecessary
explanations that he had given when he had announced his intention of
going to Washington, and wondering where he had read that clever liars
give details, but that the cleverest do not.  It did not hurt him half
as much to tell May an untruth as to see her trying to pretend that she
had not detected him.

"I'm not going till later on: luckily for the convenience of your
family," he continued, taking base refuge in sarcasm.  As he spoke he
felt that she was looking at him, and he turned his eyes to hers in
order not to appear to be avoiding them.  Their glances met for a
second, and perhaps let them into each other's meanings more deeply
than either cared to go.

"Yes; it IS awfully convenient," May brightly agreed, "that you should
be able to meet Ellen after all; you saw how much Mamma appreciated
your offering to do it."

"Oh, I'm delighted to do it."  The carriage stopped, and as he jumped
out she leaned to him and laid her hand on his.  "Good-bye, dearest,"
she said, her eyes so blue that he wondered afterward if they had shone
on him through tears.

He turned away and hurried across Union Square, repeating to himself,
in a sort of inward chant:  "It's all of two hours from Jersey City to
old Catherine's.  It's all of two hours--and it may be more."

His wife's dark blue brougham (with the wedding varnish still on it)
met Archer at the ferry, and conveyed him luxuriously to the
Pennsylvania terminus in Jersey City.

It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big
reverberating station.  As he paced the platform, waiting for the
Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought
there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the
trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York.
They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the
building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the
invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic
communication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.

"I don't care which of their visions comes true," Archer mused, "as
long as the tunnel isn't built yet."  In his senseless school-boy
happiness he pictured Madame Olenska's descent from the train, his
discovery of her a long way off, among the throngs of meaningless
faces, her clinging to his arm as he guided her to the carriage, their
slow approach to the wharf among slipping horses, laden carts,
vociferating teamsters, and then the startling quiet of the ferry-boat,
where they would sit side by side under the snow, in the motionless
carriage, while the earth seemed to glide away under them, rolling to
the other side of the sun.  It was incredible, the number of things he
had to say to her, and in what eloquent order they were forming
themselves on his lips ...

The clanging and groaning of the train came nearer, and it staggered
slowly into the station like a prey-laden monster into its lair.
Archer pushed forward, elbowing through the crowd, and staring blindly
into window after window of the high-hung carriages.  And then,
suddenly, he saw Madame Olenska's pale and surprised face close at
hand, and had again the mortified sensation of having forgotten what
she looked like.

They reached each other, their hands met, and he drew her arm through
his.  "This way--I have the carriage," he said.

After that it all happened as he had dreamed.  He helped her into the
brougham with her bags, and had afterward the vague recollection of
having properly reassured her about her grandmother and given her a
summary of the Beaufort situation (he was struck by the softness of
her:  "Poor Regina!").  Meanwhile the carriage had worked its way out
of the coil about the station, and they were crawling down the slippery
incline to the wharf, menaced by swaying coal-carts, bewildered horses,
dishevelled express-wagons, and an empty hearse--ah, that hearse!  She
shut her eyes as it passed, and clutched at Archer's hand.

"If only it doesn't mean--poor Granny!"

"Oh, no, no--she's much better--she's all right, really.  There--we've
passed it!" he exclaimed, as if that made all the difference.  Her hand
remained in his, and as the carriage lurched across the gang-plank onto
the ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissed
her palm as if he had kissed a relic.  She disengaged herself with a
faint smile, and he said: "You didn't expect me today?"

"Oh, no."

"I meant to go to Washington to see you.  I'd made all my
arrangements--I very nearly crossed you in the train."

"Oh--" she exclaimed, as if terrified by the narrowness of their escape.

"Do you know--I hardly remembered you?"

"Hardly remembered me?"

"I mean: how shall I explain?  I--it's always so.  EACH TIME YOU HAPPEN
TO ME ALL OVER AGAIN."

"Oh, yes: I know!  I know!"

"Does it--do I too: to you?" he insisted.

She nodded, looking out of the window.

"Ellen--Ellen--Ellen!"

She made no answer, and he sat in silence, watching her profile grow
indistinct against the snow-streaked dusk beyond the window.  What had
she been doing in all those four long months, he wondered?  How little
they knew of each other, after all!  The precious moments were slipping
away, but he had forgotten everything that he had meant to say to her
and could only helplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness and
their proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by the fact of their
sitting so close to each other, and yet being unable to see each
other's faces.

"What a pretty carriage!  Is it May's?" she asked, suddenly turning her
face from the window.

"Yes."

"It was May who sent you to fetch me, then?  How kind of her!"

He made no answer for a moment; then he said explosively:  "Your
husband's secretary came to see me the day after we met in Boston."

In his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to M. Riviere's
visit, and his intention had been to bury the incident in his bosom.
But her reminder that they were in his wife's carriage provoked him to
an impulse of retaliation.  He would see if she liked his reference to
Riviere any better than he liked hers to May!  As on certain other
occasions when he had expected to shake her out of her usual composure,
she betrayed no sign of surprise: and at once he concluded:  "He writes
to her, then."

"M. Riviere went to see you?"

"Yes: didn't you know?"

"No," she answered simply.

"And you're not surprised?"

She hesitated.  "Why should I be?  He told me in Boston that he knew
you; that he'd met you in England I think."

"Ellen--I must ask you one thing."

"Yes."

"I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn't put it in a letter.
It was Riviere who helped you to get away--when you left your husband?"

His heart was beating suffocatingly.  Would she meet this question with
the same composure?

"Yes: I owe him a great debt," she answered, without the least tremor
in her quiet voice.

Her tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that Archer's turmoil
subsided.  Once more she had managed, by her sheer simplicity, to make
him feel stupidly conventional just when he thought he was flinging
convention to the winds.

"I think you're the most honest woman I ever met!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, no--but probably one of the least fussy," she answered, a smile in
her voice.

"Call it what you like: you look at things as they are."

"Ah--I've had to.  I've had to look at the Gorgon."

"Well--it hasn't blinded you!  You've seen that she's just an old bogey
like all the others."

"She doesn't blind one; but she dries up one's tears."

The answer checked the pleading on Archer's lips: it seemed to come
from depths of experience beyond his reach.  The slow advance of the
ferry-boat had ceased, and her bows bumped against the piles of the
slip with a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung Archer
and Madame Olenska against each other.  The young man, trembling, felt
the pressure of her shoulder, and passed his arm about her.

"If you're not blind, then, you must see that this can't last."

"What can't?"

"Our being together--and not together."

"No.  You ought not to have come today," she said in an altered voice;
and suddenly she turned, flung her arms about him and pressed her lips
to his.  At the same moment the carriage began to move, and a gas-lamp
at the head of the slip flashed its light into the window.  She drew
away, and they sat silent and motionless while the brougham struggled
through the congestion of carriages about the ferry-landing.  As they
gained the street Archer began to speak hurriedly.

"Don't be afraid of me: you needn't squeeze yourself back into your
corner like that.  A stolen kiss isn't what I want.  Look: I'm not even
trying to touch the sleeve of your jacket.  Don't suppose that I don't
understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us
dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair.  I couldn't have
spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm
looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great
flame.  But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered,
and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now
and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit
perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my
mind, just quietly trusting to it to come true."

For a moment she made no reply; then she asked, hardly above a whisper:
"What do you mean by trusting to it to come true?"

"Why--you know it will, don't you?"

"Your vision of you and me together?"  She burst into a sudden hard
laugh.  "You choose your place well to put it to me!"

"Do you mean because we're in my wife's brougham?  Shall we get out and
walk, then?  I don't suppose you mind a little snow?"

She laughed again, more gently.  "No; I shan't get out and walk,
because my business is to get to Granny's as quickly as I can.  And
you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities."

"I don't know what you mean by realities.  The only reality to me is
this."

She met the words with a long silence, during which the carriage rolled
down an obscure side-street and then turned into the searching
illumination of Fifth Avenue.

"Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your
mistress--since I can't be your wife?" she asked.

The crudeness of the question startled him: the word was one that women
of his class fought shy of, even when their talk flitted closest about
the topic.  He noticed that Madame Olenska pronounced it as if it had a
recognised place in her vocabulary, and he wondered if it had been used
familiarly in her presence in the horrible life she had fled from.  Her
question pulled him up with a jerk, and he floundered.

"I want--I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words
like that--categories like that--won't exist.  Where we shall be simply
two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each
other; and nothing else on earth will matter."

She drew a deep sigh that ended in another laugh.  "Oh, my dear--where
is that country?  Have you ever been there?" she asked; and as he
remained sullenly dumb she went on:  "I know so many who've tried to
find it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside
stations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo--and it
wasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather
smaller and dingier and more promiscuous."

He had never heard her speak in such a tone, and he remembered the
phrase she had used a little while before.

"Yes, the Gorgon HAS dried your tears," he said.

"Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds
people.  What she does is just the contrary--she fastens their eyelids
open, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness.  Isn't there
a Chinese torture like that?  There ought to be.  Ah, believe me, it's
a miserable little country!"

The carriage had crossed Forty-second Street: May's sturdy
brougham-horse was carrying them northward as if he had been a Kentucky
trotter.  Archer choked with the sense of wasted minutes and vain words.

"Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?" he asked.

"For US?  But there's no US in that sense!  We're near each other only
if we stay far from each other.  Then we can be ourselves.  Otherwise
we're only Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska's cousin, and
Ellen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer's wife, trying to be happy
behind the backs of the people who trust them."

"Ah, I'm beyond that," he groaned.

"No, you're not!  You've never been beyond.  And I have," she said, in
a strange voice, "and I know what it looks like there."

He sat silent, dazed with inarticulate pain.  Then he groped in the
darkness of the carriage for the little bell that signalled orders to
the coachman.  He remembered that May rang twice when she wished to
stop.  He pressed the bell, and the carriage drew up beside the
curbstone.

"Why are we stopping?  This is not Granny's," Madame Olenska exclaimed.

"No: I shall get out here," he stammered, opening the door and jumping
to the pavement.  By the light of a street-lamp he saw her startled
face, and the instinctive motion she made to detain him.  He closed the
door, and leaned for a moment in the window.

"You're right: I ought not to have come today," he said, lowering his
voice so that the coachman should not hear.  She bent forward, and
seemed about to speak; but he had already called out the order to drive
on, and the carriage rolled away while he stood on the corner.  The
snow was over, and a tingling wind had sprung up, that lashed his face
as he stood gazing.  Suddenly he felt something stiff and cold on his
lashes, and perceived that he had been crying, and that the wind had
frozen his tears.

He thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked at a sharp pace down
Fifth Avenue to his own house.

That evening when Archer came down before dinner he found the
drawing-room empty.

He and May were dining alone, all the family engagements having been
postponed since Mrs. Manson Mingott's illness; and as May was the more
punctual of the two he was surprised that she had not preceded him.  He
knew that she was at home, for while he dressed he had heard her moving
about in her room; and he wondered what had delayed her.

He had fallen into the way of dwelling on such conjectures as a means
of tying his thoughts fast to reality.  Sometimes he felt as if he had
found the clue to his father-in-law's absorption in trifles; perhaps
even Mr. Welland, long ago, had had escapes and visions, and had
conjured up all the hosts of domesticity to defend himself against them.

When May appeared he thought she looked tired.  She had put on the
low-necked and tightly-laced dinner-dress which the Mingott ceremonial
exacted on the most informal occasions, and had built her fair hair
into its usual accumulated coils; and her face, in contrast, was wan
and almost faded.  But she shone on him with her usual tenderness, and
her eyes had kept the blue dazzle of the day before.

"What became of you, dear?" she asked.  "I was waiting at Granny's, and
Ellen came alone, and said she had dropped you on the way because you
had to rush off on business.  There's nothing wrong?"

"Only some letters I'd forgotten, and wanted to get off before dinner."

"Ah--" she said; and a moment afterward:  "I'm sorry you didn't come to
Granny's--unless the letters were urgent."

"They were," he rejoined, surprised at her insistence.  "Besides, I
don't see why I should have gone to your grandmother's.  I didn't know
you were there."

She turned and moved to the looking-glass above the mantel-piece.  As
she stood there, lifting her long arm to fasten a puff that had slipped
from its place in her intricate hair, Archer was struck by something
languid and inelastic in her attitude, and wondered if the deadly
monotony of their lives had laid its weight on her also.  Then he
remembered that, as he had left the house that morning, she had called
over the stairs that she would meet him at her grandmother's so that
they might drive home together.  He had called back a cheery "Yes!" and
then, absorbed in other visions, had forgotten his promise.  Now he was
smitten with compunction, yet irritated that so trifling an omission
should be stored up against him after nearly two years of marriage.  He
was weary of living in a perpetual tepid honeymoon, without the
temperature of passion yet with all its exactions.  If May had spoken
out her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed
them away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a
Spartan smile.

To disguise his own annoyance he asked how her grandmother was, and she
answered that Mrs. Mingott was still improving, but had been rather
disturbed by the last news about the Beauforts.

"What news?"

"It seems they're going to stay in New York.  I believe he's going into
an insurance business, or something.  They're looking about for a small
house."

The preposterousness of the case was beyond discussion, and they went
in to dinner.  During dinner their talk moved in its usual limited
circle; but Archer noticed that his wife made no allusion to Madame
Olenska, nor to old Catherine's reception of her.  He was thankful for
the fact, yet felt it to be vaguely ominous.

They went up to the library for coffee, and Archer lit a cigar and took
down a volume of Michelet.  He had taken to history in the evenings
since May had shown a tendency to ask him to read aloud whenever she
saw him with a volume of poetry: not that he disliked the sound of his
own voice, but because he could always foresee her comments on what he
read.  In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now
perceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide
her with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results
destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.

Seeing that he had chosen history she fetched her workbasket, drew up
an arm-chair to the green-shaded student lamp, and uncovered a cushion
she was embroidering for his sofa.  She was not a clever needle-woman;
her large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and open-air
activities; but since other wives embroidered cushions for their
husbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.

She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes, could see
her bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back
from her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left
hand above her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and
laboriously stabbing the canvas.  As she sat thus, the lamplight full
on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he
would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years
to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a
weakness, a cruelty or an emotion.  She had spent her poetry and
romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the
need was past.  Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother,
and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr.
Welland.  He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and at once
she raised her head.

"What's the matter?"

"The room is stifling: I want a little air."

He had insisted that the library curtains should draw backward and
forward on a rod, so that they might be closed in the evening, instead
of remaining nailed to a gilt cornice, and immovably looped up over
layers of lace, as in the drawing-room; and he pulled them back and
pushed up the sash, leaning out into the icy night.  The mere fact of
not looking at May, seated beside his table, under his lamp, the fact
of seeing other houses, roofs, chimneys, of getting the sense of other
lives outside his own, other cities beyond New York, and a whole world
beyond his world, cleared his brain and made it easier to breathe.

After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard
her say:  "Newland!  Do shut the window.  You'll catch your death."

He pulled the sash down and turned back.  "Catch my death!" he echoed;
and he felt like adding:  "But I've caught it already.  I AM dead--I've
been dead for months and months."

And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion.  What
if it were SHE who was dead!  If she were going to die--to die
soon--and leave him free!  The sensation of standing there, in that
warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so
strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not
immediately strike him.  He simply felt that chance had given him a new
possibility to which his sick soul might cling.  Yes, May might
die--people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might
die, and set him suddenly free.

She glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that there must be
something strange in his own.

"Newland!  Are you ill?"

He shook his head and turned toward his arm-chair.  She bent over her
work-frame, and as he passed he laid his hand on her hair.  "Poor May!"
he said.

"Poor?  Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh.

"Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,"
he rejoined, laughing also.

For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed
over her work:  "I shall never worry if you're happy."

"Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!"

"In THIS weather?" she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head
in his book.

Six or seven days passed.  Archer heard nothing from Madame Olenska,
and became aware that her name would not be mentioned in his presence
by any member of the family.  He did not try to see her; to do so while
she was at old Catherine's guarded bedside would have been almost
impossible.  In the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift,
conscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts, of a resolve
which had come to him when he had leaned out from his library window
into the icy night.  The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait
and make no sign.

Then one day May told him that Mrs. Manson Mingott had asked to see
him.  There was nothing surprising in the request, for the old lady was
steadily recovering, and she had always openly declared that she
preferred Archer to any of her other grandsons-in-law.  May gave the
message with evident pleasure: she was proud of old Catherine's
appreciation of her husband.

There was a moment's pause, and then Archer felt it incumbent on him to
say:  "All right.  Shall we go together this afternoon?"

His wife's face brightened, but she instantly answered: "Oh, you'd much
better go alone.  It bores Granny to see the same people too often."

Archer's heart was beating violently when he rang old Mrs. Mingott's
bell.  He had wanted above all things to go alone, for he felt sure the
visit would give him the chance of saying a word in private to the
Countess Olenska.  He had determined to wait till the chance presented
itself naturally; and here it was, and here he was on the doorstep.
Behind the door, behind the curtains of the yellow damask room next to
the hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see
her, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sick-room.

He wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be
clear.  What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to
Washington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.

But in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited.  Her
white teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors
and ushered him into old Catherine's presence.

The old woman sat in a vast throne-like arm-chair near her bed.  Beside
her was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved
globe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced.  There was not
a book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine
employment: conversation had always been Mrs. Mingott's sole pursuit,
and she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.

Archer saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke.  She
merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of
her obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between
her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing
purple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress
of her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the
table.

She held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her
huge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid:  "Don't let in any
one else.  If my daughters call, say I'm asleep."

The maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.

"My dear, am I perfectly hideous?" she asked gaily, launching out one
hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom.  "My
daughters tell me it doesn't matter at my age--as if hideousness didn't
matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!"

"My dear, you're handsomer than ever!" Archer rejoined in the same
tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.

"Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen!" she jerked out, twinkling at him
maliciously; and before he could answer she added:  "Was she so awfully
handsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?"

He laughed, and she continued:  "Was it because you told her so that
she had to put you out on the way?  In my youth young men didn't desert
pretty women unless they were made to!"  She gave another chuckle, and
interrupted it to say almost querulously:  "It's a pity she didn't
marry you; I always told her so.  It would have spared me all this
worry.  But who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?"

Archer wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly
she broke out:  "Well, it's settled, anyhow: she's going to stay with
me, whatever the rest of the family say!  She hadn't been here five
minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her--if only, for
the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!"

Archer listened in silence, and she went on:  "They'd talked me over,
as no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and
Augusta Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut
off her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go
back to Olenski.  They thought they'd convinced me when the secretary,
or whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome
proposals I confess they were.  After all, marriage is marriage, and
money's money--both useful things in their way ... and I didn't know
what to answer--"  She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking
had become an effort.  "But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said:
'You sweet bird, you!  Shut you up in that cage again?  Never!'  And
now it's settled that she's to stay here and nurse her Granny as long
as there's a Granny to nurse.  It's not a gay prospect, but she doesn't
mind; and of course I've told Letterblair that she's to be given her
proper allowance."

The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind
he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain.  He had so
definitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment
he could not readjust his thoughts.  But gradually there stole over him
the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities
miraculously provided.  If Ellen had consented to come and live with
her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the
impossibility of giving him up.  This was her answer to his final
appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had
urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures.  He sank back into the
thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk
everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.

"She couldn't have gone back--it was impossible!" he exclaimed.

"Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that's why I sent
for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to
come with you: 'No, my dear, I'm pining to see Newland, and I don't
want anybody to share our transports.'  For you see, my dear--" she
drew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked
him full in the eyes--"you see, we shall have a fight yet.  The family
don't want her here, and they'll say it's because I've been ill,
because I'm a weak old woman, that she's persuaded me.  I'm not well
enough yet to fight them one by one, and you've got to do it for me."

"I?" he stammered.

"You.  Why not?" she jerked back at him, her round eyes suddenly as
sharp as pen-knives.  Her hand fluttered from its chair-arm and lit on
his with a clutch of little pale nails like bird-claws.  "Why not?" she
searchingly repeated.

Archer, under the exposure of her gaze, had recovered his
self-possession.

"Oh, I don't count--I'm too insignificant."

"Well, you're Letterblair's partner, ain't you?  You've got to get at
them through Letterblair.  Unless you've got a reason," she insisted.

"Oh, my dear, I back you to hold your own against them all without my
help; but you shall have it if you need it," he reassured her.

"Then we're safe!" she sighed; and smiling on him with all her ancient
cunning she added, as she settled her head among the cushions:  "I
always knew you'd back us up, because they never quote you when they
talk about its being her duty to go home."

He winced a little at her terrifying perspicacity, and longed to ask:
"And May--do they quote her?"  But he judged it safer to turn the
question.

"And Madame Olenska?  When am I to see her?" he said.

The old lady chuckled, crumpled her lids, and went through the
pantomime of archness.  "Not today.  One at a time, please.  Madame
Olenska's gone out."

He flushed with disappointment, and she went on: "She's gone out, my
child: gone in my carriage to see Regina Beaufort."

She paused for this announcement to produce its effect.  "That's what
she's reduced me to already.  The day after she got here she put on her
best bonnet, and told me, as cool as a cucumber, that she was going to
call on Regina Beaufort.  'I don't know her; who is she?' says I.
'She's your grand-niece, and a most unhappy woman,' she says.  'She's
the wife of a scoundrel,' I answered.  'Well,' she says, 'and so am I,
and yet all my family want me to go back to him.'  Well, that floored
me, and I let her go; and finally one day she said it was raining too
hard to go out on foot, and she wanted me to lend her my carriage.
'What for?' I asked her; and she said: 'To go and see cousin
Regina'--COUSIN!  Now, my dear, I looked out of the window, and saw it
wasn't raining a drop; but I understood her, and I let her have the
carriage....  After all, Regina's a brave woman, and so is she; and
I've always liked courage above everything."

Archer bent down and pressed his lips on the little hand that still lay
on his.

"Eh--eh--eh!  Whose hand did you think you were kissing, young
man--your wife's, I hope?" the old lady snapped out with her mocking
cackle; and as he rose to go she called out after him:  "Give her her
Granny's love; but you'd better not say anything about our talk."

The following Wednesday, Newland's plans to go to Washington are postponed by a crisis in Beaufort's business affairs. Scandal has caused a run on the bank and Julius Beaufort is anathema. Much talk is heard about "poor Regina" and how "her duty is at his side." In the midst of all this, Newland receives a message from May to come to old Catherine Mingott's because Catherine has had a slight stroke. Upon arriving he discovers that Regina Beaufort visited Mrs. Mingott the night before, appealing to her to stand by the Beauforts with family loyalty. Humorously, Newland's father-in-law is in bed and will probably stay there, allowing the ladies to handle this problem. Newland listens to the family discussion and agrees with them that "in the old days," husband and wife shared the same disgrace. Mrs. Mingott has requested Ellen's presence and Newland must arrange a telegram. May and her mother hastily agree that it is too bad Newland's and Ellen's trains will probably pass each other. As Newland leaves, he hears May pointedly exclaim that Granny probably wants to convince Ellen to rejoin her husband, the Count. The next day Catherine is slightly better and decides she will announce her stroke as indigestion. The Countess' reply announces that she will be arriving the next day by train in Jersey City. Newland suggests he meet her train and Mrs. Welland agrees. May finds it odd that Newland can do this when he has led her to believe he must be in Washington for a patent case. He says it has been postponed and she finds that odd also because Newland's boss is going to Washington on a huge patent case. May's insistence on catching Newland in his lie is very uncharacteristic of May. They both know he is lying. But, forgetting this, he thinks of the luxurious two hours he will have with Ellen on the carriage ride back. As Newland he waits for Ellen's train, he thinks about the predictions of experts about a future where there will be no need for a ferry because a tunnel will take trains under the Hudson. There will be ships that will cross the Atlantic in five days, flying machines, electrical lights, and communication without telegraph wires. In his mind Newland concocts a romantic dream of what he wants to say while he and Ellen ride together. When she arrives, he unbuttons her glove and kisses the palm of her hand. She pulls away. Forgetting all he meant to say, he tells her of M. Riviere's visit and asks if he helped her leave her husband. When she says "yes" a remarkable conversation follows with Newland dreaming dreams that cannot come true and the Countess speaking with frank realism. He says that their "being together and not together" cannot last. Suddenly, Ellen says he should not have come, and kisses him on the lips, showing her love for him. In considering their options, he suggests that she could be his mistress and run away with him. Ellen invalidates the option, asking what country they will run to where they can live in honor. She implies that she has had an affair and says, "I know what it looks like there." Seeing no way to have the woman he loves, Newland painfully leaves the carriage in the falling snow and walks home. The carriage rolls away and he realizes his tears have frozen to his eyelashes. That evening the air is stifling in the Archer household. Newland notices that May looks tired and pale. They are dining in and he lies once again about why he left the carriage ride early. May does not refer to Ellen once during dinner, an "ominous sign." Afterward they go to the library. As he considers the rest of his life with this unimaginative wife who is fast becoming her mother, he feels closed in and opens the library window to the icy night. When May protests, saying that he will catch his death of cold, he thinks that he has already been dead for months. Guiltily, he conjectures how his life would be different if May would die young and set him free. She has no clue that he is unhappy and when he declares that he should never be happy unless he can open windows, the thought goes right over her unimaginative head. This is the moment when he realizes he can never have Ellen and he will be May's husband forever. Six or seven days pass and May suggests that Archer go alone to Granny Mingott's home. He is hoping he will see Ellen and be able to ask her the date of her departure for Washington. He goes to Mrs. Mingott's and during their conversation Catherine makes a strange statement when she says it is a pity that Ellen did not marry him. He discovers from Catherine what the family has not told him. The Count's proposals were very lucrative and the family wanted Catherine to cut Ellen's allowance so that she would be forced to return to her husband. But Catherine says she will not allow Ellen to be shut in a cage again. Instead, Ellen will stay and nurse her. Newland interprets this to mean that Ellen wants to be close to him. Mrs. Mingott asks Newland to announce her decision to the family and defend it. Meanwhile, Ellen has gone to see Regina Beaufort and Catherine believes them both to be courageous women. She tells Newland to give her love to May but not tell her about their conversation.

Husbands and wives, scandals and lies. These chapters are quickly bringing the novel to its conclusion by highlighting the morality of the 1870s and the dilemmas it creates. First is the problem of the Beauforts: Family loyalty versus dishonor is the conflict that must be resolved. "The whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Beaufort's dishonour." After Regina's visit to old Mrs. Mingott and her subsequent stroke, little sympathy exists for Regina's role. The polite and correct thing would be to retire to North Carolina where they have a racing stable and Julius can be a "horse dealer" in truth. Newland and May's opinion is the same: in sickness, health, and scandal, the husband and wife share equally. Ellen, however, sympathizes with Regina saying, "She's the wife of a scoundrel . . . and so am I, and yet all my family wants me to go back to him." When others will not visit the fallen Regina, Ellen will. Second, Newland is caught in a web of lies. May's insistence that he explain himself over the change in litigation and trip to Washington, reveals that she knows he is lying. Her sadness at his actions reveals a major theme of Wharton's novel: They are products of the culture and code in which they live. Honor demands they stay husband and wife, and even if May cannot discuss his love for Ellen aloud, she certainly is aware of his unhappiness and her failure to keep his affection. Ellen is the realist in this entire situation. She realizes that the societal principles and habits are what they would lose if they stooped to an affair. Newland made her see this when he defended her right to leave her husband and live a lonely life, but an honorable one. A clandestine affair would mean an end to the principles decent people hold to be true. He is the romantic, wanting to have Ellen near him, but not considering the price she would pay in her loneliness. He romantically says, "Each time you happen to me all over again." When Ellen kisses Archer and he realizes how much she loves him, he envisions a life where he can be married to May but have Ellen too. A product of his time, male gratification is the driving force behind his decision. When she says the word "mistress," he thinks it crude, coming from a woman. He is not a man to break social conventions, while she looks at life more realistically. He exclaims, "I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that -- categories like that -- won't exist . . . ." The realist, Ellen, knows that even if they ran away together, their love would become a shabby parody of life where they would end up in a smaller, dingier world. She asks, "Oh, my dear -- where is that country? Have you ever been there?" She has lived outside the world of genteel New Yorkers and she knows Newland is inherently bound to that life and would be unhappy and not himself without it. When he is with May in the privacy of their library, all of Newland's longing is revealed when he looks at her head bent over her embroidery and realizes this is the life he will have to live. Ellen is right: They cannot hurt those to whom they are bound. He will live a death in life, bound to this unimaginative woman forever. Glossary probity uprightness in one's dealings; integrity. litigants parties to a lawsuit. valetudinarian one who thinks constantly and anxiously about one's own health. Gorgon in Greek mythology, any of three sisters with snakes for hair, so horrible that the beholder is turned to stone. Spartan like or characteristic of the Spartans, who were famous for being warlike, brave, stoical, severe, frugal, and highly disciplined.