Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in his library in East
Thirty-ninth Street.

He had just got back from a big official reception for the inauguration
of the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and the spectacle of
those great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the
throng of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically
catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted spring of memory.

"Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms," he heard some one
say; and instantly everything about him vanished, and he was sitting
alone on a hard leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure
in a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely-fitted vista of
the old Museum.

The vision had roused a host of other associations, and he sat looking
with new eyes at the library which, for over thirty years, had been the
scene of his solitary musings and of all the family confabulations.

It was the room in which most of the real things of his life had
happened.  There his wife, nearly twenty-six years ago, had broken to
him, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the young
women of the new generation to smile, the news that she was to have a
child; and there their eldest boy, Dallas, too delicate to be taken to
church in midwinter, had been christened by their old friend the Bishop
of New York, the ample magnificent irreplaceable Bishop, so long the
pride and ornament of his diocese.  There Dallas had first staggered
across the floor shouting "Dad," while May and the nurse laughed behind
the door; there their second child, Mary (who was so like her mother),
had announced her engagement to the dullest and most reliable of Reggie
Chivers's many sons; and there Archer had kissed her through her
wedding veil before they went down to the motor which was to carry them
to Grace Church--for in a world where all else had reeled on its
foundations the "Grace Church wedding" remained an unchanged
institution.

It was in the library that he and May had always discussed the future
of the children: the studies of Dallas and his young brother Bill,
Mary's incurable indifference to "accomplishments," and passion for
sport and philanthropy, and the vague leanings toward "art" which had
finally landed the restless and curious Dallas in the office of a
rising New York architect.

The young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law and
business and taking up all sorts of new things.  If they were not
absorbed in state politics or municipal reform, the chances were that
they were going in for Central American archaeology, for architecture
or landscape-engineering; taking a keen and learned interest in the
prerevolutionary buildings of their own country, studying and adapting
Georgian types, and protesting at the meaningless use of the word
"Colonial."  Nobody nowadays had "Colonial" houses except the
millionaire grocers of the suburbs.

But above all--sometimes Archer put it above all--it was in that
library that the Governor of New York, coming down from Albany one
evening to dine and spend the night, had turned to his host, and said,
banging his clenched fist on the table and gnashing his eye-glasses:
"Hang the professional politician!  You're the kind of man the country
wants, Archer.  If the stable's ever to be cleaned out, men like you
have got to lend a hand in the cleaning."

"Men like you--" how Archer had glowed at the phrase!  How eagerly he
had risen up at the call!  It was an echo of Ned Winsett's old appeal
to roll his sleeves up and get down into the muck; but spoken by a man
who set the example of the gesture, and whose summons to follow him was
irresistible.

Archer, as he looked back, was not sure that men like himself WERE what
his country needed, at least in the active service to which Theodore
Roosevelt had pointed; in fact, there was reason to think it did not,
for after a year in the State Assembly he had not been re-elected, and
had dropped back thankfully into obscure if useful municipal work, and
from that again to the writing of occasional articles in one of the
reforming weeklies that were trying to shake the country out of its
apathy.  It was little enough to look back on; but when he remembered
to what the young men of his generation and his set had looked
forward--the narrow groove of money-making, sport and society to which
their vision had been limited--even his small contribution to the new
state of things seemed to count, as each brick counts in a well-built
wall.  He had done little in public life; he would always be by nature
a contemplative and a dilettante; but he had had high things to
contemplate, great things to delight in; and one great man's friendship
to be his strength and pride.

He had been, in short, what people were beginning to call "a good
citizen."  In New York, for many years past, every new movement,
philanthropic, municipal or artistic, had taken account of his opinion
and wanted his name.  People said:  "Ask Archer" when there was a
question of starting the first school for crippled children,
reorganising the Museum of Art, founding the Grolier Club, inaugurating
the new Library, or getting up a new society of chamber music.  His
days were full, and they were filled decently.  He supposed it was all
a man ought to ask.

Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.  But he thought of
it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined
would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first
prize in a lottery.  There were a hundred million tickets in HIS
lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too
decidedly against him.  When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was
abstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a
book or a picture: she had become the composite vision of all that he
had missed.  That vision, faint and tenuous as it was, had kept him
from thinking of other women.  He had been what was called a faithful
husband; and when May had suddenly died--carried off by the infectious
pneumonia through which she had nursed their youngest child--he had
honestly mourned her.  Their long years together had shown him that it
did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept
the dignity of a duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of
ugly appetites.  Looking about him, he honoured his own past, and
mourned for it.  After all, there was good in the old ways.

His eyes, making the round of the room--done over by Dallas with
English mezzotints, Chippendale cabinets, bits of chosen blue-and-white
and pleasantly shaded electric lamps--came back to the old Eastlake
writing-table that he had never been willing to banish, and to his
first photograph of May, which still kept its place beside his inkstand.

There she was, tall, round-bosomed and willowy, in her starched muslin
and flapping Leghorn, as he had seen her under the orange-trees in the
Mission garden.  And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained;
never quite at the same height, yet never far below it: generous,
faithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, so incapable of
growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt
itself without her ever being conscious of the change.  This hard
bright blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently unaltered.
Her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their
views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from the first,
a joint pretence of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in
which father and children had unconsciously collaborated.  And she had
died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious
households like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was
convinced that, whatever happened, Newland would continue to inculcate
in Dallas the same principles and prejudices which had shaped his
parents' lives, and that Dallas in turn (when Newland followed her)
would transmit the sacred trust to little Bill.  And of Mary she was
sure as of her own self.  So, having snatched little Bill from the
grave, and given her life in the effort, she went contentedly to her
place in the Archer vault in St.  Mark's, where Mrs. Archer already lay
safe from the terrifying "trend" which her daughter-in-law had never
even become aware of.

Opposite May's portrait stood one of her daughter.  Mary Chivers was as
tall and fair as her mother, but large-waisted, flat-chested and
slightly slouching, as the altered fashion required.  Mary Chivers's
mighty feats of athleticism could not have been performed with the
twenty-inch waist that May Archer's azure sash so easily spanned.  And
the difference seemed symbolic; the mother's life had been as closely
girt as her figure.  Mary, who was no less conventional, and no more
intelligent, yet led a larger life and held more tolerant views.  There
was good in the new order too.

The telephone clicked, and Archer, turning from the photographs,
unhooked the transmitter at his elbow.  How far they were from the days
when the legs of the brass-buttoned messenger boy had been New York's
only means of quick communication!

"Chicago wants you."

Ah--it must be a long-distance from Dallas, who had been sent to
Chicago by his firm to talk over the plan of the Lakeside palace they
were to build for a young millionaire with ideas.  The firm always sent
Dallas on such errands.

"Hallo, Dad--Yes: Dallas.  I say--how do you feel about sailing on
Wednesday?  Mauretania: Yes, next Wednesday as ever is.  Our client
wants me to look at some Italian gardens before we settle anything, and
has asked me to nip over on the next boat.  I've got to be back on the
first of June--" the voice broke into a joyful conscious laugh--"so we
must look alive.  I say, Dad, I want your help: do come."

Dallas seemed to be speaking in the room: the voice was as near by and
natural as if he had been lounging in his favourite arm-chair by the
fire.  The fact would not ordinarily have surprised Archer, for
long-distance telephoning had become as much a matter of course as
electric lighting and five-day Atlantic voyages.  But the laugh did
startle him; it still seemed wonderful that across all those miles and
miles of country--forest, river, mountain, prairie, roaring cities and
busy indifferent millions--Dallas's laugh should be able to say: "Of
course, whatever happens, I must get back on the first, because Fanny
Beaufort and I are to be married on the fifth."

The voice began again:  "Think it over?  No, sir: not a minute.  You've
got to say yes now.  Why not, I'd like to know?  If you can allege a
single reason--No; I knew it.  Then it's a go, eh?  Because I count on
you to ring up the Cunard office first thing tomorrow; and you'd better
book a return on a boat from Marseilles.  I say, Dad; it'll be our last
time together, in this kind of way--.  Oh, good!  I knew you would."

Chicago rang off, and Archer rose and began to pace up and down the
room.

It would be their last time together in this kind of way: the boy was
right.  They would have lots of other "times" after Dallas's marriage,
his father was sure; for the two were born comrades, and Fanny
Beaufort, whatever one might think of her, did not seem likely to
interfere with their intimacy.  On the contrary, from what he had seen
of her, he thought she would be naturally included in it.  Still,
change was change, and differences were differences, and much as he
felt himself drawn toward his future daughter-in-law, it was tempting
to seize this last chance of being alone with his boy.

There was no reason why he should not seize it, except the profound one
that he had lost the habit of travel.  May had disliked to move except
for valid reasons, such as taking the children to the sea or in the
mountains: she could imagine no other motive for leaving the house in
Thirty-ninth Street or their comfortable quarters at the Wellands' in
Newport.  After Dallas had taken his degree she had thought it her duty
to travel for six months; and the whole family had made the
old-fashioned tour through England, Switzerland and Italy.  Their time
being limited (no one knew why) they had omitted France.  Archer
remembered Dallas's wrath at being asked to contemplate Mont Blanc
instead of Rheims and Chartres.  But Mary and Bill wanted
mountain-climbing, and had already yawned their way in Dallas's wake
through the English cathedrals; and May, always fair to her children,
had insisted on holding the balance evenly between their athletic and
artistic proclivities.  She had indeed proposed that her husband should
go to Paris for a fortnight, and join them on the Italian lakes after
they had "done" Switzerland; but Archer had declined.  "We'll stick
together," he said; and May's face had brightened at his setting such a
good example to Dallas.

Since her death, nearly two years before, there had been no reason for
his continuing in the same routine.  His children had urged him to
travel: Mary Chivers had felt sure it would do him good to go abroad
and "see the galleries."  The very mysteriousness of such a cure made
her the more confident of its efficacy.  But Archer had found himself
held fast by habit, by memories, by a sudden startled shrinking from
new things.

Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk.
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for
doing anything else.  At least that was the view that the men of his
generation had taken.  The trenchant divisions between right and wrong,
honest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so little
scope for the unforeseen.  There are moments when a man's imagination,
so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily
level, and surveys the long windings of destiny.  Archer hung there and
wondered....

What was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose
standards had bent and bound him?  He remembered a sneering prophecy of
poor Lawrence Lefferts's, uttered years ago in that very room:  "If
things go on at this rate, our children will be marrying Beaufort's
bastards."

It was just what Archer's eldest son, the pride of his life, was doing;
and nobody wondered or reproved.  Even the boy's Aunt Janey, who still
looked so exactly as she used to in her elderly youth, had taken her
mother's emeralds and seed-pearls out of their pink cotton-wool, and
carried them with her own twitching hands to the future bride; and
Fanny Beaufort, instead of looking disappointed at not receiving a
"set" from a Paris jeweller, had exclaimed at their old-fashioned
beauty, and declared that when she wore them she should feel like an
Isabey miniature.

Fanny Beaufort, who had appeared in New York at eighteen, after the
death of her parents, had won its heart much as Madame Olenska had won
it thirty years earlier; only instead of being distrustful and afraid
of her, society took her joyfully for granted.  She was pretty, amusing
and accomplished: what more did any one want?  Nobody was narrow-minded
enough to rake up against her the half-forgotten facts of her father's
past and her own origin.  Only the older people remembered so obscure
an incident in the business life of New York as Beaufort's failure, or
the fact that after his wife's death he had been quietly married to the
notorious Fanny Ring, and had left the country with his new wife, and a
little girl who inherited her beauty.  He was subsequently heard of in
Constantinople, then in Russia; and a dozen years later American
travellers were handsomely entertained by him in Buenos Ayres, where he
represented a large insurance agency.  He and his wife died there in
the odour of prosperity; and one day their orphaned daughter had
appeared in New York in charge of May Archer's sister-in-law, Mrs. Jack
Welland, whose husband had been appointed the girl's guardian.  The
fact threw her into almost cousinly relationship with Newland Archer's
children, and nobody was surprised when Dallas's engagement was
announced.

Nothing could more dearly give the measure of the distance that the
world had travelled.  People nowadays were too busy--busy with reforms
and "movements," with fads and fetishes and frivolities--to bother much
about their neighbours.  And of what account was anybody's past, in the
huge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same
plane?

Newland Archer, looking out of his hotel window at the stately gaiety
of the Paris streets, felt his heart beating with the confusion and
eagerness of youth.

It was long since it had thus plunged and reared under his widening
waistcoat, leaving him, the next minute, with an empty breast and hot
temples.  He wondered if it was thus that his son's conducted itself in
the presence of Miss Fanny Beaufort--and decided that it was not.  "It
functions as actively, no doubt, but the rhythm is different," he
reflected, recalling the cool composure with which the young man had
announced his engagement, and taken for granted that his family would
approve.

"The difference is that these young people take it for granted that
they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took
it for granted that we shouldn't.  Only, I wonder--the thing one's so
certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?"

It was the day after their arrival in Paris, and the spring sunshine
held Archer in his open window, above the wide silvery prospect of the
Place Vendome.  One of the things he had stipulated--almost the only
one--when he had agreed to come abroad with Dallas, was that, in Paris,
he shouldn't be made to go to one of the newfangled "palaces."

"Oh, all right--of course," Dallas good-naturedly agreed.  "I'll take
you to some jolly old-fashioned place--the Bristol say--" leaving his
father speechless at hearing that the century-long home of kings and
emperors was now spoken of as an old-fashioned inn, where one went for
its quaint inconveniences and lingering local colour.

Archer had pictured often enough, in the first impatient years, the
scene of his return to Paris; then the personal vision had faded, and
he had simply tried to see the city as the setting of Madame Olenska's
life.  Sitting alone at night in his library, after the household had
gone to bed, he had evoked the radiant outbreak of spring down the
avenues of horse-chestnuts, the flowers and statues in the public
gardens, the whiff of lilacs from the flower-carts, the majestic roll
of the river under the great bridges, and the life of art and study and
pleasure that filled each mighty artery to bursting.  Now the spectacle
was before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy,
old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with the
ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being....

Dallas's hand came down cheerily on his shoulder.  "Hullo, father: this
is something like, isn't it?"  They stood for a while looking out in
silence, and then the young man continued:  "By the way, I've got a
message for you: the Countess Olenska expects us both at half-past
five."

He said it lightly, carelessly, as he might have imparted any casual
item of information, such as the hour at which their train was to leave
for Florence the next evening.  Archer looked at him, and thought he
saw in his gay young eyes a gleam of his great-grandmother Mingott's
malice.

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Dallas pursued.  "Fanny made me swear to do
three things while I was in Paris: get her the score of the last
Debussy songs, go to the Grand-Guignol and see Madame Olenska.  You
know she was awfully good to Fanny when Mr. Beaufort sent her over from
Buenos Ayres to the Assomption.  Fanny hadn't any friends in Paris, and
Madame Olenska used to be kind to her and trot her about on holidays.
I believe she was a great friend of the first Mrs. Beaufort's.  And
she's our cousin, of course.  So I rang her up this morning, before I
went out, and told her you and I were here for two days and wanted to
see her."

Archer continued to stare at him.  "You told her I was here?"

"Of course--why not?"  Dallas's eye brows went up whimsically.  Then,
getting no answer, he slipped his arm through his father's with a
confidential pressure.

"I say, father: what was she like?"

Archer felt his colour rise under his son's unabashed gaze.  "Come, own
up: you and she were great pals, weren't you?  Wasn't she most awfully
lovely?"

"Lovely?  I don't know.  She was different."

"Ah--there you have it!  That's what it always comes to, doesn't it?
When she comes, SHE'S DIFFERENT--and one doesn't know why.  It's
exactly what I feel about Fanny."

His father drew back a step, releasing his arm.  "About Fanny?  But, my
dear fellow--I should hope so!  Only I don't see--"

"Dash it, Dad, don't be prehistoric!  Wasn't she--once--your Fanny?"

Dallas belonged body and soul to the new generation.  He was the
first-born of Newland and May Archer, yet it had never been possible to
inculcate in him even the rudiments of reserve.  "What's the use of
making mysteries?  It only makes people want to nose 'em out," he
always objected when enjoined to discretion.  But Archer, meeting his
eyes, saw the filial light under their banter.

"My Fanny?"

"Well, the woman you'd have chucked everything for: only you didn't,"
continued his surprising son.

"I didn't," echoed Archer with a kind of solemnity.

"No: you date, you see, dear old boy.  But mother said--"

"Your mother?"

"Yes: the day before she died.  It was when she sent for me alone--you
remember?  She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would
be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you
most wanted."

Archer received this strange communication in silence.  His eyes
remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the
window.  At length he said in a low voice:  "She never asked me."

"No.  I forgot.  You never did ask each other anything, did you?  And
you never told each other anything.  You just sat and watched each
other, and guessed at what was going on underneath.  A deaf-and-dumb
asylum, in fact!  Well, I back your generation for knowing more about
each other's private thoughts than we ever have time to find out about
our own.--I say, Dad," Dallas broke off, "you're not angry with me?  If
you are, let's make it up and go and lunch at Henri's.  I've got to
rush out to Versailles afterward."

Archer did not accompany his son to Versailles.  He preferred to spend
the afternoon in solitary roamings through Paris.  He had to deal all
at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate
lifetime.

After a little while he did not regret Dallas's indiscretion.  It
seemed to take an iron band from his heart to know that, after all,
some one had guessed and pitied....  And that it should have been his
wife moved him indescribably.  Dallas, for all his affectionate
insight, would not have understood that.  To the boy, no doubt, the
episode was only a pathetic instance of vain frustration, of wasted
forces.  But was it really no more?  For a long time Archer sat on a
bench in the Champs Elysees and wondered, while the stream of life
rolled by....

A few streets away, a few hours away, Ellen Olenska waited.  She had
never gone back to her husband, and when he had died, some years
before, she had made no change in her way of living.  There was nothing
now to keep her and Archer apart--and that afternoon he was to see her.

He got up and walked across the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries
gardens to the Louvre.  She had once told him that she often went
there, and he had a fancy to spend the intervening time in a place
where he could think of her as perhaps having lately been.  For an hour
or more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle of
afternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in their
half-forgotten splendour, filling his soul with the long echoes of
beauty.  After all, his life had been too starved....

Suddenly, before an effulgent Titian, he found himself saying:  "But
I'm only fifty-seven--" and then he turned away.  For such summer
dreams it was too late; but surely not for a quiet harvest of
friendship, of comradeship, in the blessed hush of her nearness.

He went back to the hotel, where he and Dallas were to meet; and
together they walked again across the Place de la Concorde and over the
bridge that leads to the Chamber of Deputies.

Dallas, unconscious of what was going on in his father's mind, was
talking excitedly and abundantly of Versailles.  He had had but one
previous glimpse of it, during a holiday trip in which he had tried to
pack all the sights he had been deprived of when he had had to go with
the family to Switzerland; and tumultuous enthusiasm and cock-sure
criticism tripped each other up on his lips.

As Archer listened, his sense of inadequacy and inexpressiveness
increased.  The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the
facility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a
master but as an equal.  "That's it: they feel equal to things--they
know their way about," he mused, thinking of his son as the spokesman
of the new generation which had swept away all the old landmarks, and
with them the sign-posts and the danger-signal.

Suddenly Dallas stopped short, grasping his father's arm.  "Oh, by
Jove," he exclaimed.

They had come out into the great tree-planted space before the
Invalides.  The dome of Mansart floated ethereally above the budding
trees and the long grey front of the building: drawing up into itself
all the rays of afternoon light, it hung there like the visible symbol
of the race's glory.

Archer knew that Madame Olenska lived in a square near one of the
avenues radiating from the Invalides; and he had pictured the quarter
as quiet and almost obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit
it up.  Now, by some queer process of association, that golden light
became for him the pervading illumination in which she lived.  For
nearly thirty years, her life--of which he knew so strangely
little--had been spent in this rich atmosphere that he already felt to
be too dense and yet too stimulating for his lungs.  He thought of the
theatres she must have been to, the pictures she must have looked at,
the sober and splendid old houses she must have frequented, the people
she must have talked with, the incessant stir of ideas, curiosities,
images and associations thrown out by an intensely social race in a
setting of immemorial manners; and suddenly he remembered the young
Frenchman who had once said to him:  "Ah, good conversation--there is
nothing like it, is there?"

Archer had not seen M. Riviere, or heard of him, for nearly thirty
years; and that fact gave the measure of his ignorance of Madame
Olenska's existence.  More than half a lifetime divided them, and she
had spent the long interval among people he did not know, in a society
he but faintly guessed at, in conditions he would never wholly
understand.  During that time he had been living with his youthful
memory of her; but she had doubtless had other and more tangible
companionship.  Perhaps she too had kept her memory of him as something
apart; but if she had, it must have been like a relic in a small dim
chapel, where there was not time to pray every day....

They had crossed the Place des Invalides, and were walking down one of
the thoroughfares flanking the building.  It was a quiet quarter, after
all, in spite of its splendour and its history; and the fact gave one
an idea of the riches Paris had to draw on, since such scenes as this
were left to the few and the indifferent.

The day was fading into a soft sun-shot haze, pricked here and there by
a yellow electric light, and passers were rare in the little square
into which they had turned.  Dallas stopped again, and looked up.

"It must be here," he said, slipping his arm through his father's with
a movement from which Archer's shyness did not shrink; and they stood
together looking up at the house.

It was a modern building, without distinctive character, but
many-windowed, and pleasantly balconied up its wide cream-coloured
front.  On one of the upper balconies, which hung well above the
rounded tops of the horse-chestnuts in the square, the awnings were
still lowered, as though the sun had just left it.

"I wonder which floor--?" Dallas conjectured; and moving toward the
porte-cochere he put his head into the porter's lodge, and came back to
say:  "The fifth.  It must be the one with the awnings."

Archer remained motionless, gazing at the upper windows as if the end
of their pilgrimage had been attained.

"I say, you know, it's nearly six," his son at length reminded him.

The father glanced away at an empty bench under the trees.

"I believe I'll sit there a moment," he said.

"Why--aren't you well?" his son exclaimed.

"Oh, perfectly.  But I should like you, please, to go up without me."

Dallas paused before him, visibly bewildered.  "But, I say, Dad: do you
mean you won't come up at all?"

"I don't know," said Archer slowly.

"If you don't she won't understand."

"Go, my boy; perhaps I shall follow you."

Dallas gave him a long look through the twilight.

"But what on earth shall I say?"

"My dear fellow, don't you always know what to say?" his father
rejoined with a smile.

"Very well.  I shall say you're old-fashioned, and prefer walking up
the five flights because you don't like lifts."

His father smiled again.  "Say I'm old-fashioned: that's enough."

Dallas looked at him again, and then, with an incredulous gesture,
passed out of sight under the vaulted doorway.

Archer sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at the awninged
balcony.  He calculated the time it would take his son to be carried up
in the lift to the fifth floor, to ring the bell, and be admitted to
the hall, and then ushered into the drawing-room.  He pictured Dallas
entering that room with his quick assured step and his delightful
smile, and wondered if the people were right who said that his boy
"took after him."

Then he tried to see the persons already in the room--for probably at
that sociable hour there would be more than one--and among them a dark
lady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out
a long thin hand with three rings on it....  He thought she would be
sitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked behind her
on a table.

"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard
himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose
its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each
other.

He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyes
never turning from the balcony.  At length a light shone through the
windows, and a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony, drew
up the awnings, and closed the shutters.

At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got
up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.

A Note on the Text

The Age of Innocence first appeared in four large installments in The
Pictorial Review, from July to October 1920.  It was published that
same year in book form by D. Appleton and Company in New York and in
London.  Wharton made extensive stylistic, punctuation, and spelling
changes and revisions between the serial and book publication, and more
than thirty subsequent changes were made after the second impression of
the book edition had been run off.  This authoritative text is
reprinted from the Library of America edition of Novels by Edith
Wharton, and is based on the sixth impression of the first edition,
which incorporates the last set of extensive revisions that are
obviously authorial.

Twenty-six years later in a new century, Newland Archer, age 57, is sitting in his library on East 39th Street, having just returned from a ceremony for new galleries in the Metropolitan Museum. He is in a reflective mood, brought about by his memories of meeting the Countess there years ago. In his library he remembers May announcing her pregnancy; their delicate son, Dallas, being christened and later taking his first steps; their daughter, Mary, becoming engaged to one of Reggie Chivers' dull sons and her radiant face as Newland kissed her here on her wedding day; and his conversations with Theodore Roosevelt, a family friend, who stayed overnight. Roosevelt talked Newland into running for public office, as Ned Winsett had often urged him to do. Spending only one term in the State Assembly, Newland has settled into the role of elder statesman, consulted on projects for the city and become involved in philanthropic work. His marriage to May was dull but dignified, and he mourns her sincerely; she had died two years before of the infectious pneumonia through which she had nursed their third child, Bill, back to health. Newland looks at May's first picture, still in its place near the inkstand, and muses that she remained unchanged -- like her photo -- until her death. Even the children hesitated to take away her ingenuous thoughts with their cold, new-century realities. The telephone rings and Newland speaks with Dallas, his architect son who is calling long distance from Chicago. Dallas' voice sounds so close it is amazing, and Newland listens as Dallas asks him to go to Europe with him on a job. Newland's son is to be married on June 5 to Fanny Beaufort, daughter of Julius and Fanny Ring, who married years ago following the death of Regina Beaufort. Times have changed and no one criticizes this union. Newland accompanies his son to Paris. All those years ago, he told Ellen he would see her in Paris, but he never kept that promise. Although he thought of himself as a dashing and romantic figure then, he now realizes he is a middle-aged relic. Ellen never went back to her husband and never married either. The Count died, leaving her a widow, living in Paris. Dallas' fiancee, Fanny, asked him to do several things, one of which was to see the Countess Olenska who had befriended her when she was in school in Europe. So Dallas tells his father he has accepted an invitation for them to call on the countess. He reveals to Newland that he knows the countess was once "your Fanny." Shocked, Newland asks him why he thinks that. Dallas simply states that his dying mother told him that Newland had "given up the thing most wanted" and revealed her knowledge of his love for the countess. Newland is stunned to realize that his dutiful and unimaginative wife had known all along, and he is touched that she pitied him for his sacrifice. Dallas leaves to visit Versailles and Newland roams Paris, thinking of the amazing life Ellen must have had there with museums, art galleries, glittering acquaintances, and a freer world than New York City. He visits the Louvre because she probably haunted that art gallery and he thinks of himself at age 57; the sweet love of springtime is no longer possible, but perhaps they could have the mature companionship of autumn. Later that day, Newland and Dallas walk to the Invalides and pause outside Ellen's apartment. The day is fading and the view is peaceful and pleasant. Newland sits down on a bench and convinces Dallas to go up to Ellen's apartment without him, as he wants to sit a few minutes and collect his thoughts. Dallas is more like the young Newland that Ellen will remember from thirty years ago. After his son leaves, Newland imagines what that meeting will be like and realizes, "It's more real to me here than if I went up." The sun slowly goes down and he stands up and walks back to his hotel.

Chapter 34 is especially important because it brings Wharton's story full circle and reveals the results of decisions made and promises kept. The new century is a world where both lifestyles and social values have changed considerably and Wharton knows that soon World War I will alter everything forever. She looks back on the values of her childhood New York with mixed feelings. She sees the van der Luydens' world as a place where sacrifice was necessary to promulgate the social order, but she also sees the new century where individuals have more freedom as represented by Newland and May's children. Everything about the new century is scientific and technological. The old Metropolitan Museum is now cataloguing items in a "scientific" way. Newland clings to his Eastlake desk despite Dallas' addition of electric lamps and more "modern" furniture. Traditional, colonial architecture is no longer a sign of status and wealth; it has made way for English mezzotints and Chippendale cabinets. Telephones connect people across continents and electricity lights even the night. A voyage across the Atlantic now takes only five days, and there are new-fangled hotels, motor cars, and aeroplanes. Everywhere modern products are changing the lifestyles of Americans, but these products are part of the mass-produced modern world with no deeper meaning. In many ways Wharton reveals that twentieth-century lifestyles are filled with superficial products at the expense of lives with deeper sensitivities and reserves. Even the social attitudes are changing. May would not recognize this world, nor would she feel comfortable in it. Some things are the same, like Mary's wedding at Grace Church. However, men are now able, like Dallas, to turn interests into occupations. While he inherited his father's love of art, he changed it into architecture where he could use it in a socially acceptable way. Law is no longer the only male job choice. Even Mary is not like her mother in some ways. While she has some of May's traditional values, she is a new woman in that she is more athletic and more tolerant in many areas of her life. Where May could shoot arrows, Mary can climb mountains. Dallas also represents the new generation. His class and age group is more sure, confident, and free. Newland mentions his "assured step and delightful smile," useful to seal contracts with rich, new millionaires. Dallas sees Newland and May's sacrifice as prehistoric. While Newland has tried to teach his son to be more reserved, Dallas revels in a world where husbands and wives can tell each other what they think. His marriage to Fanny Beaufort, sanctioned by Janey's gift of their mother's jewelry, is a symbol of the new society's ability to find a place for those ostracized in the old order. No one remembers the Beaufort scandal anymore, and what was not acceptable in Newland's close and structured world is now permissible. Wharton brings home, with May's deathbed confession, the idea that the lives of the old wealthy in 1870s New York were totally shaped and conditioned by a context no longer as strong in the new century. Where Newland felt that leaving May for Ellen would mean the loss of "habit, and honour, and all the old decencies," Dallas finds that sacrifice prehistoric. May understood that Newland could have lived no other way. The announcement of her pregnancy sealed forever his choice to leave because he was powerfully locked into a world where that would have been unthinkable. In Newland's young world, May would never have asked him to make such a sacrifice because it was understood that he would. The passions of individuals were surrendered to perpetuate the social order. Now, after World War I, Wharton looks back on that idea with mixed emotions. The New York of the 1870s did not have the social upheaval brought about by the war in Europe, and its traditional outlook from father to son, and mother to daughter, provided a stability that could be treasured, despite its cost to the individual. In many ways, this last chapter is about the passing of the torch from one generation to another amidst a realization that the old world is over. The day Newland and Ellen met at the museum among the crumbling relics and uncertain antiquities, he realized that time took away identities, cares, and concerns. Then it was just an abstract idea; now, in twentieth-century Paris, it is a reality. Children are born, christened, grow up, and leave, and parents settle into new roles and eventually die. The photo of Newland's young wife, May, is frozen in time, just as his image of Ellen will remain forever in the 1870s. Seeing himself as a "grey relic of a man," Newland realizes that he holds fast to habit and prefers the world of his youth. The new world belongs to his son and those like him, less sensitive than their parents, but infinitely more free to follow their passions. Deciding to remember the exotic Ellen as a memory from his past and a symbol of his freedom from social restraints, Newland walks into the dusk in the lingering last words of the novel. Wharton suggests that only his memories of their love in that earlier time have any meaning. That love belonged to a different, more ordered time and if left alone, its memory can be cherished. Glossary confabulations informal conversations; chats. mezzotints engravings or prints produced on copper or steel plates by scraping or polishing parts of roughened surfaces to produce impressions of light and shade. Mauretania a fashionable British Cunard Line ship which made its maiden voyage in 1907. A sister to the Lusitania which was torpedoed during World War I, the Mauretania was known for its fast ocean crossings. Here, Dallas suggests he and Newland take the Mauretania. proclivities natural or habitual tendencies or inclinations, especially toward something discreditable. trenchant keen; penetrating; incisive. ethereally in a way that is not of the earth; heavenly.


On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was
singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan
distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should
compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European
capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every
winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.
Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus
keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and
yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic
associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so
problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.

It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the
daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally
brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the
slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family
landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe." To come to
the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving
as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the
immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to
democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in
the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of
one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy.  It was
one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have
discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more
quickly than they want to get to it.

When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the
curtain had just gone up on the garden scene.  There was no reason why
the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven,
alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a
cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and
finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs.
Archer allowed smoking.  But, in the first place, New York was a
metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was "not the
thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not "the
thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the
inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his
forefathers thousands of years ago.

The second reason for his delay was a personal one.  He had dawdled
over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over
a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its
realisation.  This was especially the case when the pleasure was a
delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the
moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality
that--well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima
donna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more
significant moment than just as she was singing:  "He loves me--he
loves me not--HE LOVES ME!--" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals
with notes as clear as dew.

She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an
unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the
German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be
translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of
English-speaking audiences.  This seemed as natural to Newland Archer
as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as the
duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue
enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a
flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.

"M'ama ... non m'ama ..." the prima donna sang, and "M'ama!", with a
final burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to
her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of
the little brown Faust-Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple
velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless
victim.

Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box,
turned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the
house.  Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs. Manson Mingott,
whose monstrous obesity had long since made it impossible for her to
attend the Opera, but who was always represented on fashionable nights
by some of the younger members of the family.  On this occasion, the
front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs. Welland; and slightly withdrawn behind
these brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically
fixed on the stagelovers.  As Madame Nilsson's "M'ama!" thrilled out
above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the
Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow
to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her
breast to the line where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a
single gardenia.  She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her
white-gloved finger-tips touch the flowers softly.  He drew a breath of
satisfied vanity and his eyes returned to the stage.

No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be
very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the
Opera houses of Paris and Vienna.  The foreground, to the footlights,
was covered with emerald green cloth.  In the middle distance
symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed
the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink
and red roses.  Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses,
and closely resembling the floral pen-wipers made by female
parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath
the rose-trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch
flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off
prodigies.

In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white
cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue
girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her
muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's
impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his
designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the
ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from
the right wing.

"The darling!" thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the
young girl with the lilies-of-the-valley.  "She doesn't even guess what
it's all about." And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a
thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation
was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity.  "We'll
read Faust together ... by the Italian lakes ..." he thought, somewhat
hazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the
masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to
reveal to his bride.  It was only that afternoon that May Welland had
let him guess that she "cared" (New York's consecrated phrase of maiden
avowal), and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement
ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at
his side in some scene of old European witchery.

He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a
simpleton.  He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to
develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own
with the most popular married women of the "younger set," in which it
was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully
discouraging it.  If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he
sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife
should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady
whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years;
without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred
that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a
whole winter.

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain
itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but
he was content to hold his view without analysing it, since he knew it
was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated,
button-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club
box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their
opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product
of the system.  In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer
felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old
New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even
seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number.
Singly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they
represented "New York," and the habit of masculine solidarity made him
accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral.  He instinctively
felt that in this respect it would be troublesome--and also rather bad
form--to strike out for himself.

"Well--upon my soul!" exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning his
opera-glass abruptly away from the stage.  Lawrence Lefferts was, on
the whole, the foremost authority on "form" in New York.  He had
probably devoted more time than any one else to the study of this
intricate and fascinating question; but study alone could not account
for his complete and easy competence.  One had only to look at him,
from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair
moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean
and elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of "form" must be
congenital in any one who knew how to wear such good clothes so
carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace.  As a
young admirer had once said of him:  "If anybody can tell a fellow just
when to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's
Larry Lefferts."  And on the question of pumps versus patent-leather
"Oxfords" his authority had never been disputed.

"My God!" he said; and silently handed his glass to old Sillerton
Jackson.

Newland Archer, following Lefferts's glance, saw with surprise that his
exclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old
Mrs. Mingott's box.  It was that of a slim young woman, a little less
tall than May Welland, with brown hair growing in close curls about her
temples and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds.  The suggestion
of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a "Josephine
look," was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather
theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large
old-fashioned clasp.  The wearer of this unusual dress, who seemed
quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in
the centre of the box, discussing with Mrs. Welland the propriety of
taking the latter's place in the front right-hand corner; then she
yielded with a slight smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs.
Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who was installed in the
opposite corner.

Mr. Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera-glass to Lawrence
Lefferts.  The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear
what the old man had to say; for old Mr. Jackson was as great an
authority on "family" as Lawrence Lefferts was on "form."  He knew all
the ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only
elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between
the Mingotts (through the Thorleys) with the Dallases of South
Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of
Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be
confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place), but could also
enumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance,
the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long
Island ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish
matches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the
Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused
to intermarry--with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson,
who, as everybody knew ... but then her mother was a Rushworth.

In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton Jackson
carried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of
silver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had
smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the
last fifty years.  So far indeed did his information extend, and so
acutely retentive was his memory, that he was supposed to be the only
man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really
was, and what had become of handsome Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson
Mingott's father, who had disappeared so mysteriously (with a large sum
of trust money) less than a year after his marriage, on the very day
that a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been delighting thronged
audiences in the old Opera-house on the Battery had taken ship for
Cuba.  But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr.
Jackson's breast; for not only did his keen sense of honour forbid his
repeating anything privately imparted, but he was fully aware that his
reputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out
what he wanted to know.

The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Sillerton
Jackson handed back Lawrence Lefferts's opera-glass.  For a moment he
silently scrutinised the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes
overhung by old veined lids; then he gave his moustache a thoughtful
twist, and said simply:  "I didn't think the Mingotts would have tried
it on."

Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a
strange state of embarrassment.

It was annoying that the box which was thus attracting the undivided
attention of masculine New York should be that in which his betrothed
was seated between her mother and aunt; and for a moment he could not
identify the lady in the Empire dress, nor imagine why her presence
created such excitement among the initiated.  Then light dawned on him,
and with it came a momentary rush of indignation.  No, indeed; no one
would have thought the Mingotts would have tried it on!

But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind
him left no doubt in Archer's mind that the young woman was May
Welland's cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as "poor
Ellen Olenska."  Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe
a day or two previously; he had even heard from Miss Welland (not
disapprovingly) that she had been to see poor Ellen, who was staying
with old Mrs. Mingott.  Archer entirely approved of family solidarity,
and one of the qualities he most admired in the Mingotts was their
resolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock
had produced.  There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man's
heart, and he was glad that his future wife should not be restrained by
false prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but
to receive Countess Olenska in the family circle was a different thing
from producing her in public, at the Opera of all places, and in the
very box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Newland Archer,
was to be announced within a few weeks.  No, he felt as old Sillerton
Jackson felt; he did not think the Mingotts would have tried it on!

He knew, of course, that whatever man dared (within Fifth Avenue's
limits) that old Mrs. Manson Mingott, the Matriarch of the line, would
dare.  He had always admired the high and mighty old lady, who, in
spite of having been only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island, with a
father mysteriously discredited, and neither money nor position enough
to make people forget it, had allied herself with the head of the
wealthy Mingott line, married two of her daughters to "foreigners" (an
Italian marquis and an English banker), and put the crowning touch to
her audacities by building a large house of pale cream-coloured stone
(when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frock-coat in
the afternoon) in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park.

Old Mrs. Mingott's foreign daughters had become a legend.  They never
came back to see their mother, and the latter being, like many persons
of active mind and dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her
habit, had philosophically remained at home.  But the cream-coloured
house (supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian
aristocracy) was there as a visible proof of her moral courage; and she
throned in it, among pre-Revolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the
Tuileries of Louis Napoleon (where she had shone in her middle age), as
placidly as if there were nothing peculiar in living above
Thirty-fourth Street, or in having French windows that opened like
doors instead of sashes that pushed up.

Every one (including Mr. Sillerton Jackson) was agreed that old
Catherine had never had beauty--a gift which, in the eyes of New York,
justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.
Unkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, she had won her
way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of
haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency
and dignity of her private life.  Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she
was only twenty-eight, and had "tied up" the money with an additional
caution born of the general distrust of the Spicers; but his bold young
widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society,
married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable
circles, hobnobbed with Dukes and Ambassadors, associated familiarly
with Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of
Mme. Taglioni; and all the while (as Sillerton Jackson was the first to
proclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation; the only
respect, he always added, in which she differed from the earlier
Catherine.

Mrs. Manson Mingott had long since succeeded in untying her husband's
fortune, and had lived in affluence for half a century; but memories of
her early straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though, when
she bought a dress or a piece of furniture, she took care that it
should be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the
transient pleasures of the table.  Therefore, for totally different
reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did
nothing to redeem it.  Her relatives considered that the penury of her
table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated
with good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the
"made dishes" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of
her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family credit by having the
best chef in New York) she used to say laughingly:  "What's the use of
two good cooks in one family, now that I've married the girls and can't
eat sauces?"

Newland Archer, as he mused on these things, had once more turned his
eyes toward the Mingott box.  He saw that Mrs. Welland and her
sister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the
Mingottian APLOMB which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe,
and that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened colour (perhaps due
to the knowledge that he was watching her) a sense of the gravity of
the situation.  As for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully
in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing,
as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York
was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for
wishing to pass unnoticed.

Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offence against
"Taste," that far-off divinity of whom "Form" was the mere visible
representative and vicegerent.  Madame Olenska's pale and serious face
appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy
situation; but the way her dress (which had no tucker) sloped away from
her thin shoulders shocked and troubled him.  He hated to think of May
Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless
of the dictates of Taste.

"After all," he heard one of the younger men begin behind him
(everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes), "after
all, just WHAT happened?"

"Well--she left him; nobody attempts to deny that."

"He's an awful brute, isn't he?" continued the young enquirer, a candid
Thorley, who was evidently preparing to enter the lists as the lady's
champion.

"The very worst; I knew him at Nice," said Lawrence Lefferts with
authority.  "A half-paralysed white sneering fellow--rather handsome
head, but eyes with a lot of lashes.  Well, I'll tell you the sort:
when he wasn't with women he was collecting china.  Paying any price
for both, I understand."

There was a general laugh, and the young champion said:  "Well,
then----?"

"Well, then; she bolted with his secretary."

"Oh, I see."  The champion's face fell.

"It didn't last long, though: I heard of her a few months later living
alone in Venice.  I believe Lovell Mingott went out to get her.  He
said she was desperately unhappy.  That's all right--but this parading
her at the Opera's another thing."

"Perhaps," young Thorley hazarded, "she's too unhappy to be left at
home."

This was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed
deeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing
people called a "double entendre."

"Well--it's queer to have brought Miss Welland, anyhow," some one said
in a low tone, with a side-glance at Archer.

"Oh, that's part of the campaign: Granny's orders, no doubt," Lefferts
laughed.  "When the old lady does a thing she does it thoroughly."

The act was ending, and there was a general stir in the box.  Suddenly
Newland Archer felt himself impelled to decisive action.  The desire to
be the first man to enter Mrs. Mingott's box, to proclaim to the
waiting world his engagement to May Welland, and to see her through
whatever difficulties her cousin's anomalous situation might involve
her in; this impulse had abruptly overruled all scruples and
hesitations, and sent him hurrying through the red corridors to the
farther side of the house.

As he entered the box his eyes met Miss Welland's, and he saw that she
had instantly understood his motive, though the family dignity which
both considered so high a virtue would not permit her to tell him so.
The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications
and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other
without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any
explanation would have done.  Her eyes said:  "You see why Mamma
brought me," and his answered:  "I would not for the world have had you
stay away."

"You know my niece Countess Olenska?" Mrs. Welland enquired as she
shook hands with her future son-in-law.  Archer bowed without extending
his hand, as was the custom on being introduced to a lady; and Ellen
Olenska bent her head slightly, keeping her own pale-gloved hands
clasped on her huge fan of eagle feathers.  Having greeted Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, a large blonde lady in creaking satin, he sat down beside his
betrothed, and said in a low tone:  "I hope you've told Madame Olenska
that we're engaged?  I want everybody to know--I want you to let me
announce it this evening at the ball."

Miss Welland's face grew rosy as the dawn, and she looked at him with
radiant eyes.  "If you can persuade Mamma," she said; "but why should
we change what is already settled?"  He made no answer but that which
his eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling:
"Tell my cousin yourself: I give you leave.  She says she used to play
with you when you were children."

She made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a
little ostentatiously, with the desire that the whole house should see
what he was doing, Archer seated himself at the Countess Olenska's side.

"We DID use to play together, didn't we?" she asked, turning her grave
eyes to his.  "You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a door;
but it was your cousin Vandie Newland, who never looked at me, that I
was in love with."  Her glance swept the horse-shoe curve of boxes.
"Ah, how this brings it all back to me--I see everybody here in
knickerbockers and pantalettes," she said, with her trailing slightly
foreign accent, her eyes returning to his face.

Agreeable as their expression was, the young man was shocked that they
should reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before
which, at that very moment, her case was being tried.  Nothing could be
in worse taste than misplaced flippancy; and he answered somewhat
stiffly:  "Yes, you have been away a very long time."

"Oh, centuries and centuries; so long," she said, "that I'm sure I'm
dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven;" which, for reasons
he could not define, struck Newland Archer as an even more
disrespectful way of describing New York society.

It invariably happened in the same way.

Mrs. Julius Beaufort, on the night of her annual ball, never failed to
appear at the Opera; indeed, she always gave her ball on an Opera night
in order to emphasise her complete superiority to household cares, and
her possession of a staff of servants competent to organise every
detail of the entertainment in her absence.

The Beauforts' house was one of the few in New York that possessed a
ball-room (it antedated even Mrs. Manson Mingott's and the Headly
Chiverses'); and at a time when it was beginning to be thought
"provincial" to put a "crash" over the drawing-room floor and move the
furniture upstairs, the possession of a ball-room that was used for no
other purpose, and left for three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the
year to shuttered darkness, with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner
and its chandelier in a bag; this undoubted superiority was felt to
compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past.

Mrs. Archer, who was fond of coining her social philosophy into axioms,
had once said:  "We all have our pet common people--" and though the
phrase was a daring one, its truth was secretly admitted in many an
exclusive bosom.  But the Beauforts were not exactly common; some
people said they were even worse.  Mrs. Beaufort belonged indeed to one
of America's most honoured families; she had been the lovely Regina
Dallas (of the South Carolina branch), a penniless beauty introduced to
New York society by her cousin, the imprudent Medora Manson, who was
always doing the wrong thing from the right motive.  When one was
related to the Mansons and the Rushworths one had a "droit de cite" (as
Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who had frequented the Tuileries, called it) in
New York society; but did one not forfeit it in marrying Julius
Beaufort?

The question was: who was Beaufort?  He passed for an Englishman, was
agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable and witty.  He had come
to America with letters of recommendation from old Mrs. Manson
Mingott's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily made himself
an important position in the world of affairs; but his habits were
dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious; and
when Medora Manson announced her cousin's engagement to him it was felt
to be one more act of folly in poor Medora's long record of imprudences.

But folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two
years after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had
the most distinguished house in New York.  No one knew exactly how the
miracle was accomplished.  She was indolent, passive, the caustic even
called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing
younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr.
Beaufort's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there
without lifting her jewelled little finger.  The knowing people said it
was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new
dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the
dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the
after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her
friends.  If he did, these domestic activities were privately
performed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless
and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the
detachment of an invited guest, and saying:  "My wife's gloxinias are a
marvel, aren't they?  I believe she gets them out from Kew."

Mr. Beaufort's secret, people were agreed, was the way he carried
things off.  It was all very well to whisper that he had been "helped"
to leave England by the international banking-house in which he had
been employed; he carried off that rumour as easily as the rest--though
New York's business conscience was no less sensitive than its moral
standard--he carried everything before him, and all New York into his
drawing-rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said they were
"going to the Beauforts'" with the same tone of security as if they had
said they were going to Mrs. Manson Mingott's, and with the added
satisfaction of knowing they would get hot canvas-back ducks and
vintage wines, instead of tepid Veuve Clicquot without a year and
warmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.

Mrs. Beaufort, then, had as usual appeared in her box just before the
Jewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third
act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared,
New York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin.

The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to
foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ball.  The Beauforts
had been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet
carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under
their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the
ball-room chairs.  They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the
ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to
the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the
gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all
his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly
coiffees when they left home.

Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that,
instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the
Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed
drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing
from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry,
and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and
tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold
bamboo.

Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in
somewhat late.  He had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged
footmen (the stockings were one of Beaufort's few fatuities), had
dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished
with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on
their dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom
Mrs. Beaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson
drawing-room.

Archer was distinctly nervous.  He had not gone back to his club after
the Opera (as the young bloods usually did), but, the night being fine,
had walked for some distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the
direction of the Beauforts' house.  He was definitely afraid that the
Mingotts might be going too far; that, in fact, they might have Granny
Mingott's orders to bring the Countess Olenska to the ball.

From the tone of the club box he had perceived how grave a mistake that
would be; and, though he was more than ever determined to "see the
thing through," he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his
betrothed's cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera.

Wandering on to the bouton d'or drawing-room (where Beaufort had had
the audacity to hang "Love Victorious," the much-discussed nude of
Bouguereau) Archer found Mrs. Welland and her daughter standing near
the ball-room door.  Couples were already gliding over the floor
beyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on
girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes
and ornaments of the young married women's coiffures, and on the
glitter of highly glazed shirt-fronts and fresh glace gloves.

Miss Welland, evidently about to join the dancers, hung on the
threshold, her lilies-of-the-valley in her hand (she carried no other
bouquet), her face a little pale, her eyes burning with a candid
excitement.  A group of young men and girls were gathered about her,
and there was much hand-clasping, laughing and pleasantry on which Mrs.
Welland, standing slightly apart, shed the beam of a qualified
approval.  It was evident that Miss Welland was in the act of
announcing her engagement, while her mother affected the air of
parental reluctance considered suitable to the occasion.

Archer paused a moment.  It was at his express wish that the
announcement had been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have
wished to have his happiness known.  To proclaim it in the heat and
noise of a crowded ball-room was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy
which should belong to things nearest the heart.  His joy was so deep
that this blurring of the surface left its essence untouched; but he
would have liked to keep the surface pure too.  It was something of a
satisfaction to find that May Welland shared this feeling.  Her eyes
fled to his beseechingly, and their look said:  "Remember, we're doing
this because it's right."

No appeal could have found a more immediate response in Archer's
breast; but he wished that the necessity of their action had been
represented by some ideal reason, and not simply by poor Ellen Olenska.
The group about Miss Welland made way for him with significant smiles,
and after taking his share of the felicitations he drew his betrothed
into the middle of the ball-room floor and put his arm about her waist.

"Now we shan't have to talk," he said, smiling into her candid eyes, as
they floated away on the soft waves of the Blue Danube.

She made no answer.  Her lips trembled into a smile, but the eyes
remained distant and serious, as if bent on some ineffable vision.
"Dear," Archer whispered, pressing her to him: it was borne in on him
that the first hours of being engaged, even if spent in a ball-room,
had in them something grave and sacramental.  What a new life it was
going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side!

The dance over, the two, as became an affianced couple, wandered into
the conservatory; and sitting behind a tall screen of tree-ferns and
camellias Newland pressed her gloved hand to his lips.

"You see I did as you asked me to," she said.

"Yes: I couldn't wait," he answered smiling.  After a moment he added:
"Only I wish it hadn't had to be at a ball."

"Yes, I know."  She met his glance comprehendingly.  "But after
all--even here we're alone together, aren't we?"

"Oh, dearest--always!" Archer cried.

Evidently she was always going to understand; she was always going to
say the right thing.  The discovery made the cup of his bliss overflow,
and he went on gaily:  "The worst of it is that I want to kiss you and
I can't."  As he spoke he took a swift glance about the conservatory,
assured himself of their momentary privacy, and catching her to him
laid a fugitive pressure on her lips.  To counteract the audacity of
this proceeding he led her to a bamboo sofa in a less secluded part of
the conservatory, and sitting down beside her broke a
lily-of-the-valley from her bouquet.  She sat silent, and the world lay
like a sunlit valley at their feet.

"Did you tell my cousin Ellen?" she asked presently, as if she spoke
through a dream.

He roused himself, and remembered that he had not done so.  Some
invincible repugnance to speak of such things to the strange foreign
woman had checked the words on his lips.

"No--I hadn't the chance after all," he said, fibbing hastily.

"Ah."  She looked disappointed, but gently resolved on gaining her
point.  "You must, then, for I didn't either; and I shouldn't like her
to think--"

"Of course not.  But aren't you, after all, the person to do it?"

She pondered on this.  "If I'd done it at the right time, yes: but now
that there's been a delay I think you must explain that I'd asked you
to tell her at the Opera, before our speaking about it to everybody
here.  Otherwise she might think I had forgotten her.  You see, she's
one of the family, and she's been away so long that she's
rather--sensitive."

Archer looked at her glowingly.  "Dear and great angel!  Of course I'll
tell her."  He glanced a trifle apprehensively toward the crowded
ball-room.  "But I haven't seen her yet.  Has she come?"

"No; at the last minute she decided not to."

"At the last minute?" he echoed, betraying his surprise that she should
ever have considered the alternative possible.

"Yes.  She's awfully fond of dancing," the young girl answered simply.
"But suddenly she made up her mind that her dress wasn't smart enough
for a ball, though we thought it so lovely; and so my aunt had to take
her home."

"Oh, well--" said Archer with happy indifference.  Nothing about his
betrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to
its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the "unpleasant" in which they
had both been brought up.

"She knows as well as I do," he reflected, "the real reason of her
cousin's staying away; but I shall never let her see by the least sign
that I am conscious of there being a shadow of a shade on poor Ellen
Olenska's reputation."

The novel opens in the new opera house, where all of New York's high society has assembled in its expensive box seats to see and to be seen. Newland Archer, the protagonist, has just arrived fashionably late and joins his friends in time for the climax of the opera. As he glances across the filled theater, he spots May Welland, his new fiancee, seated in the box of her aristocratic old grandmother, Mrs. Manson Mingott. Archer, struck anew by her pure and innocent beauty, dreams of blissful married life with May. His reverie is abruptly interrupted by his acquaintance Larry Lefferts, who notices a stranger entering the Mingott box. A slim young woman wearing a theatrical and low-cut dress takes a seat in the box, seemingly unconscious of all the attention she attracts. With shock, Archer realizes that this woman is no other than the Countess Ellen Olenska, cousin to May Welland, who has returned to New York after having lived abroad for many years. Lefferts, considered to be the authority on "form," or style and fashion, and Sillerton Jackson, the unofficial archivist of all family histories and scandals within the upper class, are both shocked that the Countess would appear in good society with the rest of her family. We learn through their gossip that it is rumored that she had left her unfaithful husband, a Polish count. Newland admires the fiery and somewhat unorthodox determination of Mrs. Manson Mingott to support this 'black sheep' of her family by not only hosting her indefinitely in her home, but also by allowing her to appear publicly in the family box at the Opera. Yet at the same time he is bothered that all of New York society will see such a scandalous figure sitting next to his innocent young fiancee. As the men continue to gossip, Archer feel compelled to take decisive action. As the fiance of May Welland, he decides that he has the responsibility to defend the Mingott clan. During intermission, he hurries over to the Mingott box. Although no words are exchanged between May and himself as to the reason for his sudden appearance, she shows her understanding of the situation and her gratitude to Archer with her smile. Both she and Archer are aware that by appearing in the Mingott box with the Countess Olenska, Archer is demonstrating his connection to that family and his support of their decision to include the Countess in their social activities. Archer is introduced to Olenska, who was one of his childhood playmates. He is struck by her flippant, friendly manners and finds her descriptions of New York society rather disrespectful. After the opera, many of the wealthy New York families attend the annual ball at the Beaufort residence. Julius Beaufort, we learn, is a handsome, charming, and disreputable Englishman with a shady financial history and a strong tendency toward infidelity; his wife Regina is a pretty but dull woman of reputable family background. Although many consider the Beauforts to be "common," no one would ever pass their elaborate and ostentatious balls, which provide a cornerstone for New York social activities. At the ball, Archer and May officially announce their engagement. In a moment alone together in the conservatory, they express their happiness. May suddenly asks Archer to announce their engagement to her cousin Ellen Olenska. Ellen, to the relief of her family, did not attend the Beauforts' ball.

In the opening chapter of The Age of Innocence, Wharton immediately evokes a specific time, a place, and a society. Her panoramic description of the opera is highly effective as an introductory setting, for it not only acclimates the reader to the fashions and entertainment preferences of Old New York, but it also presents the members of this society as if they were an assembly, a closely-knit collection of individuals and families. The fact that everyone in good society attends the opera demonstrates immediately their similar tastes in art and entertainment. Yet the opera does not serve merely as a bonding activity for the very rich. Indeed, the members of the audience scrutinize each other far more than the opera itself, singling out in particular the fashions and manners of their peers. One goes to the opera to see and to be seen, to judge and to be judged. This may explain why Wharton is quick to introduce two characters who are otherwise minor to the plot. She singles Larry Lefferts out of the crowd as "the foremost authority on form." Form, or a code that indicates the acceptable tastes in fashion and manners, is extremely important to this society, which is so concerned with appearances. And an unusual dress or a flippant attitude may, in fact, signify more than just a lack of taste but also a lack of proper moral values. Such a potential wantonness threatens to destabilize the delicate existing code and is therefore judged harshly. In addition to Lefferts, Wharton pauses over the character of Sillerton Jackson, the unofficial archivist of family histories. Not only does Jackson know every blood and marital relationship within the tight clan of Old New York, he also knows each family's scandals, whether real or rumored. Thanks to Jackson, one's private history does not remain a secret for long. Here and throughout the novel, Wharton employs certain imagery by which to portray Old New York society. She describes the evening at the opera as an extremely predictable event: one arrives there fashionably late, every family has a carriage waiting for them at the entrance, and even the ball at Beauforts' that follows is an annual tradition. On a basic level, Wharton's language indicates how boring such a world can be; no one acts differently from anyone else and there is no variation in the course of events from year to year. In the following chapters, Archer will become more and more frustrated with the monotony of this stultifying environment. On a more symbolic level, Wharton ironically compares the traditional behaviors and codes of cultured Old New York with those of primitive or ancient cultures. Both are obsessed with ritual events and behaviors, she indicates, and Archer's concern with acceptable behavior is no different from the "totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. " It is, of course, the arrival of Countess Ellen Olenska that brings tension to this perfectly ordered scene. Thanks to the good memory and loose tongue of Sillerton Jackson, Ellen's appearance is preceded by her reputation. It is important to note Jackson's exclamation upon seeing Ellen in her family's opera box: "I didn't think the Mingott's would have tried it on. " With this statement is the implication that the actions of an individual reflect upon the family. Jackson is shocked not only because a woman of somewhat ill repute is seen amongst good society, but also because her family is choosing to support such a black sheep. Newland Archer is aware of the crucial importance of the Mingott family's sense of solidarity. When he sees how his friends negatively respond to the appearance of Ellen, he rushes over to the Mingott family box. Since May is a member of this family and Archer soon will be, it is his duty to defend their decision to include Ellen. Simply by appearing in the Mingott box, Archer is sending a clear non-verbal signal to the rest of the New York clan. This gesture, just like May's grateful glance at Archer, is a subtle but unequivocal form of communication. Throughout the novel, Wharton must interpret these actions for her readers, for often the spoken words of her characters do not contain as much meaning as  the gesture. In the third chapter, the character of Julius Beaufort provides a clear example of the discrepancy of appearance versus reality. His personal history is spotty at best, and he is notorious for his womanizing. But because of his immaculate dress and public display of manners and hospitality, he is accepted by the New York clan. As long as Beaufort--or anyone, for that matter--can hide the unpleasantness of his past, he will be welcomed into good society.