The next day he persuaded May to escape for a walk in the Park after
luncheon.  As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York,
she usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons; but
Mrs. Welland condoned her truancy, having that very morning won her
over to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a
hand-embroidered trousseau containing the proper number of dozens.

The day was delectable.  The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall was
ceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like
splintered crystals.  It was the weather to call out May's radiance,
and she burned like a young maple in the frost.  Archer was proud of
the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared
away his underlying perplexities.

"It's so delicious--waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley
in one's room!" she said.

"Yesterday they came late.  I hadn't time in the morning--"

"But your remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much
more than if you'd given a standing order, and they came every morning
on the minute, like one's music-teacher--as I know Gertrude Lefferts's
did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged."

"Ah--they would!" laughed Archer, amused at her keenness.  He looked
sideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to
add:  "When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather
gorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Olenska.  Was that
right?"

"How dear of you!  Anything of that kind delights her.  It's odd she
didn't mention it: she lunched with us today, and spoke of Mr.
Beaufort's having sent her wonderful orchids, and cousin Henry van der
Luyden a whole hamper of carnations from Skuytercliff.  She seems so
surprised to receive flowers.  Don't people send them in Europe?  She
thinks it such a pretty custom."

"Oh, well, no wonder mine were overshadowed by Beaufort's," said Archer
irritably.  Then he remembered that he had not put a card with the
roses, and was vexed at having spoken of them.  He wanted to say:  "I
called on your cousin yesterday," but hesitated.  If Madame Olenska had
not spoken of his visit it might seem awkward that he should.  Yet not
to do so gave the affair an air of mystery that he disliked.  To shake
off the question he began to talk of their own plans, their future, and
Mrs. Welland's insistence on a long engagement.

"If you call it long!  Isabel Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two
years: Grace and Thorley for nearly a year and a half.  Why aren't we
very well off as we are?"

It was the traditional maidenly interrogation, and he felt ashamed of
himself for finding it singularly childish.  No doubt she simply echoed
what was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday,
and he wondered at what age "nice" women began to speak for themselves.

"Never, if we won't let them, I suppose," he mused, and recalled his
mad outburst to Mr. Sillerton Jackson: "Women ought to be as free as we
are--"

It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young
woman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world.  But how many
generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended
bandaged to the family vault?  He shivered a little, remembering some
of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance
of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because
they had no use for them.  What if, when he had bidden May Welland to
open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?

"We might be much better off.  We might be altogether together--we
might travel."

Her face lit up.  "That would be lovely," she owned: she would love to
travel.  But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things
so differently.

"As if the mere 'differently' didn't account for it!" the wooer
insisted.

"Newland!  You're so original!" she exulted.

His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young
men in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making
the answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make--even to the
point of calling him original.

"Original!  We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the
same folded paper.  We're like patterns stencilled on a wall.  Can't
you and I strike out for ourselves, May?"

He had stopped and faced her in the excitement of their discussion, and
her eyes rested on him with a bright unclouded admiration.

"Mercy--shall we elope?" she laughed.

"If you would--"

"You DO love me, Newland!  I'm so happy."

"But then--why not be happier?"

"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"

"Why not--why not--why not?"

She looked a little bored by his insistence.  She knew very well that
they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason.
"I'm not clever enough to argue with you.  But that kind of thing is
rather--vulgar, isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a
word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.

"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"

She was evidently staggered by this.  "Of course I should hate it--so
would you," she rejoined, a trifle irritably.

He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top; and
feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the
discussion, she went on light-heartedly: "Oh, did I tell you that I
showed Ellen my ring?  She thinks it the most beautiful setting she
ever saw.  There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said.  I
do love you, Newland, for being so artistic!"

The next afternoon, as Archer, before dinner, sat smoking sullenly in
his study, Janey wandered in on him.  He had failed to stop at his club
on the way up from the office where he exercised the profession of the
law in the leisurely manner common to well-to-do New Yorkers of his
class.  He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a
haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour
besieged his brain.

"Sameness--sameness!" he muttered, the word running through his head
like a persecuting tune as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures
lounging behind the plate-glass; and because he usually dropped in at
the club at that hour he had gone home instead.  He knew not only what
they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take
in the discussion.  The Duke of course would be their principal theme;
though the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady in a
small canary-coloured brougham with a pair of black cobs (for which
Beaufort was generally thought responsible) would also doubtless be
thoroughly gone into.  Such "women" (as they were called) were few in
New York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the
appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour
had profoundly agitated society.  Only the day before, her carriage had
passed Mrs. Lovell Mingott's, and the latter had instantly rung the
little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home.
"What if it had happened to Mrs. van der Luyden?" people asked each
other with a shudder.  Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that
very hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society.

He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then
quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as if
he had not seen her.  She glanced at the writing-table heaped with
books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," made a wry face
over the archaic French, and sighed:  "What learned things you read!"

"Well--?" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him.

"Mother's very angry."

"Angry?  With whom?  About what?"

"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here.  She brought word that her
brother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very much, because
he forbade her to: he wishes to give all the details himself.  He's
with cousin Louisa van der Luyden now."

"For heaven's sake, my dear girl, try a fresh start.  It would take an
omniscient Deity to know what you're talking about."

"It's not a time to be profane, Newland....  Mother feels badly enough
about your not going to church ..."

With a groan he plunged back into his book.

"NEWLAND!  Do listen.  Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers's party last night: she went there with the Duke and Mr.
Beaufort."

At the last clause of this announcement a senseless anger swelled the
young man's breast.  To smother it he laughed.  "Well, what of it?  I
knew she meant to."

Janey paled and her eyes began to project.  "You knew she meant to--and
you didn't try to stop her?  To warn her?"

"Stop her?  Warn her?"  He laughed again.  "I'm not engaged to be
married to the Countess Olenska!"  The words had a fantastic sound in
his own ears.

"You're marrying into her family."

"Oh, family--family!" he jeered.

"Newland--don't you care about Family?"

"Not a brass farthing."

"Nor about what cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?"

"Not the half of one--if she thinks such old maid's rubbish."

"Mother is not an old maid," said his virgin sister with pinched lips.

He felt like shouting back:  "Yes, she is, and so are the van der
Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed
by the wing-tip of Reality." But he saw her long gentle face puckering
into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.

"Hang Countess Olenska!  Don't be a goose, Janey--I'm not her keeper."

"No; but you DID ask the Wellands to announce your engagement sooner so
that we might all back her up; and if it hadn't been for that cousin
Louisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Duke."

"Well--what harm was there in inviting her?  She was the best-looking
woman in the room; she made the dinner a little less funereal than the
usual van der Luyden banquet."

"You know cousin Henry asked her to please you: he persuaded cousin
Louisa.  And now they're so upset that they're going back to
Skuytercliff tomorrow.  I think, Newland, you'd better come down.  You
don't seem to understand how mother feels."

In the drawing-room Newland found his mother.  She raised a troubled
brow from her needlework to ask: "Has Janey told you?"

"Yes."  He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own.  "But I can't
take it very seriously."

"Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Henry?"

"The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess
Olenska's going to the house of a woman they consider common."

"Consider--!"

"Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday
evenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition."

"Good music?  All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table
and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris.  There
was smoking and champagne."

"Well--that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still
goes on."

"I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?"

"I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday
when we've been in London."

"New York is neither Paris nor London."

"Oh, no, it's not!" her son groaned.

"You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant?  You're
right, I daresay; but we belong here, and people should respect our
ways when they come among us.  Ellen Olenska especially: she came back
to get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies."

Newland made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured:  "I was
going to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa
for a moment before dinner."  He frowned, and she continued: "I thought
you might explain to her what you've just said: that society abroad is
different ... that people are not as particular, and that Madame
Olenska may not have realised how we feel about such things.  It would
be, you know, dear," she added with an innocent adroitness, "in Madame
Olenska's interest if you did."

"Dearest mother, I really don't see how we're concerned in the matter.
The Duke took Madame Olenska to Mrs. Struthers's--in fact he brought
Mrs. Struthers to call on her.  I was there when they came.  If the van
der Luydens want to quarrel with anybody, the real culprit is under
their own roof."

"Quarrel?  Newland, did you ever know of cousin Henry's quarrelling?
Besides, the Duke's his guest; and a stranger too.  Strangers don't
discriminate: how should they?  Countess Olenska is a New Yorker, and
should have respected the feelings of New York."

"Well, then, if they must have a victim, you have my leave to throw
Madame Olenska to them," cried her son, exasperated.  "I don't see
myself--or you either--offering ourselves up to expiate her crimes."

"Oh, of course you see only the Mingott side," his mother answered, in
the sensitive tone that was her nearest approach to anger.

The sad butler drew back the drawing-room portieres and announced:
"Mr. Henry van der Luyden."

Mrs. Archer dropped her needle and pushed her chair back with an
agitated hand.

"Another lamp," she cried to the retreating servant, while Janey bent
over to straighten her mother's cap.

Mr. van der Luyden's figure loomed on the threshold, and Newland Archer
went forward to greet his cousin.

"We were just talking about you, sir," he said.

Mr. van der Luyden seemed overwhelmed by the announcement.  He drew off
his glove to shake hands with the ladies, and smoothed his tall hat
shyly, while Janey pushed an arm-chair forward, and Archer continued:
"And the Countess Olenska."

Mrs. Archer paled.

"Ah--a charming woman.  I have just been to see her," said Mr. van der
Luyden, complacency restored to his brow.  He sank into the chair, laid
his hat and gloves on the floor beside him in the old-fashioned way,
and went on:  "She has a real gift for arranging flowers.  I had sent
her a few carnations from Skuytercliff, and I was astonished.  Instead
of massing them in big bunches as our head-gardener does, she had
scattered them about loosely, here and there ... I can't say how.  The
Duke had told me: he said:  'Go and see how cleverly she's arranged her
drawing-room.'  And she has.  I should really like to take Louisa to
see her, if the neighbourhood were not so--unpleasant."

A dead silence greeted this unusual flow of words from Mr. van der
Luyden.  Mrs. Archer drew her embroidery out of the basket into which
she had nervously tumbled it, and Newland, leaning against the
chimney-place and twisting a humming-bird-feather screen in his hand,
saw Janey's gaping countenance lit up by the coming of the second lamp.

"The fact is," Mr. van der Luyden continued, stroking his long grey leg
with a bloodless hand weighed down by the Patroon's great signet-ring,
"the fact is, I dropped in to thank her for the very pretty note she
wrote me about my flowers; and also--but this is between ourselves, of
course--to give her a friendly warning about allowing the Duke to carry
her off to parties with him.  I don't know if you've heard--"

Mrs. Archer produced an indulgent smile.  "Has the Duke been carrying
her off to parties?"

"You know what these English grandees are.  They're all alike.  Louisa
and I are very fond of our cousin--but it's hopeless to expect people
who are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about
our little republican distinctions.  The Duke goes where he's amused."
Mr. van der Luyden paused, but no one spoke.  "Yes--it seems he took
her with him last night to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's.  Sillerton Jackson
has just been to us with the foolish story, and Louisa was rather
troubled.  So I thought the shortest way was to go straight to Countess
Olenska and explain--by the merest hint, you know--how we feel in New
York about certain things.  I felt I might, without indelicacy, because
the evening she dined with us she rather suggested ... rather let me
see that she would be grateful for guidance.  And she WAS."

Mr. van der Luyden looked about the room with what would have been
self-satisfaction on features less purged of the vulgar passions.  On
his face it became a mild benevolence which Mrs. Archer's countenance
dutifully reflected.

"How kind you both are, dear Henry--always!  Newland will particularly
appreciate what you have done because of dear May and his new
relations."

She shot an admonitory glance at her son, who said: "Immensely, sir.
But I was sure you'd like Madame Olenska."

Mr. van der Luyden looked at him with extreme gentleness.  "I never ask
to my house, my dear Newland," he said, "any one whom I do not like.
And so I have just told Sillerton Jackson."  With a glance at the clock
he rose and added:  "But Louisa will be waiting.  We are dining early,
to take the Duke to the Opera."

After the portieres had solemnly closed behind their visitor a silence
fell upon the Archer family.

"Gracious--how romantic!" at last broke explosively from Janey.  No one
knew exactly what inspired her elliptic comments, and her relations had
long since given up trying to interpret them.

Mrs. Archer shook her head with a sigh.  "Provided it all turns out for
the best," she said, in the tone of one who knows how surely it will
not.  "Newland, you must stay and see Sillerton Jackson when he comes
this evening: I really shan't know what to say to him."

"Poor mother!  But he won't come--" her son laughed, stooping to kiss
away her frown.

Some two weeks later, Newland Archer, sitting in abstracted idleness in
his private compartment of the office of Letterblair, Lamson and Low,
attorneys at law, was summoned by the head of the firm.

Old Mr. Letterblair, the accredited legal adviser of three generations
of New York gentility, throned behind his mahogany desk in evident
perplexity.  As he stroked his closeclipped white whiskers and ran his
hand through the rumpled grey locks above his jutting brows, his
disrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the Family
Physician annoyed with a patient whose symptoms refuse to be classified.

"My dear sir--" he always addressed Archer as "sir"--"I have sent for
you to go into a little matter; a matter which, for the moment, I
prefer not to mention either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood."  The
gentlemen he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm; for,
as was always the case with legal associations of old standing in New
York, all the partners named on the office letter-head were long since
dead; and Mr. Letterblair, for example, was, professionally speaking,
his own grandson.

He leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow.  "For family
reasons--" he continued.

Archer looked up.

"The Mingott family," said Mr. Letterblair with an explanatory smile
and bow.  "Mrs. Manson Mingott sent for me yesterday.  Her
grand-daughter the Countess Olenska wishes to sue her husband for
divorce.  Certain papers have been placed in my hands."  He paused and
drummed on his desk.  "In view of your prospective alliance with the
family I should like to consult you--to consider the case with
you--before taking any farther steps."

Archer felt the blood in his temples.  He had seen the Countess Olenska
only once since his visit to her, and then at the Opera, in the Mingott
box.  During this interval she had become a less vivid and importunate
image, receding from his foreground as May Welland resumed her rightful
place in it.  He had not heard her divorce spoken of since Janey's
first random allusion to it, and had dismissed the tale as unfounded
gossip.  Theoretically, the idea of divorce was almost as distasteful
to him as to his mother; and he was annoyed that Mr. Letterblair (no
doubt prompted by old Catherine Mingott) should be so evidently
planning to draw him into the affair.  After all, there were plenty of
Mingott men for such jobs, and as yet he was not even a Mingott by
marriage.

He waited for the senior partner to continue.  Mr. Letterblair unlocked
a drawer and drew out a packet.  "If you will run your eye over these
papers--"

Archer frowned.  "I beg your pardon, sir; but just because of the
prospective relationship, I should prefer your consulting Mr. Skipworth
or Mr. Redwood."

Mr. Letterblair looked surprised and slightly offended.  It was unusual
for a junior to reject such an opening.

He bowed.  "I respect your scruple, sir; but in this case I believe
true delicacy requires you to do as I ask.  Indeed, the suggestion is
not mine but Mrs. Manson Mingott's and her son's.  I have seen Lovell
Mingott; and also Mr. Welland.  They all named you."

Archer felt his temper rising.  He had been somewhat languidly drifting
with events for the last fortnight, and letting May's fair looks and
radiant nature obliterate the rather importunate pressure of the
Mingott claims.  But this behest of old Mrs. Mingott's roused him to a
sense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from a
prospective son-in-law; and he chafed at the role.

"Her uncles ought to deal with this," he said.

"They have.  The matter has been gone into by the family.  They are
opposed to the Countess's idea; but she is firm, and insists on a legal
opinion."

The young man was silent: he had not opened the packet in his hand.

"Does she want to marry again?"

"I believe it is suggested; but she denies it."

"Then--"

"Will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking through these papers?
Afterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you my
opinion."

Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome documents.  Since their
last meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with events in
ridding himself of the burden of Madame Olenska.  His hour alone with
her by the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on which
the Duke of St. Austrey's intrusion with Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the
Countess's joyous greeting of them, had rather providentially broken.
Two days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatement
in the van der Luydens' favour, and had said to himself, with a touch
of tartness, that a lady who knew how to thank all-powerful elderly
gentlemen to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not need
either the private consolations or the public championship of a young
man of his small compass.  To look at the matter in this light
simplified his own case and surprisingly furbished up all the dim
domestic virtues.  He could not picture May Welland, in whatever
conceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties and
lavishing her confidences on strange men; and she had never seemed to
him finer or fairer than in the week that followed.  He had even
yielded to her wish for a long engagement, since she had found the one
disarming answer to his plea for haste.

"You know, when it comes to the point, your parents have always let you
have your way ever since you were a little girl," he argued; and she
had answered, with her clearest look:  "Yes; and that's what makes it
so hard to refuse the very last thing they'll ever ask of me as a
little girl."

That was the old New York note; that was the kind of answer he would
like always to be sure of his wife's making.  If one had habitually
breathed the New York air there were times when anything less
crystalline seemed stifling.

The papers he had retired to read did not tell him much in fact; but
they plunged him into an atmosphere in which he choked and spluttered.
They consisted mainly of an exchange of letters between Count Olenski's
solicitors and a French legal firm to whom the Countess had applied for
the settlement of her financial situation.  There was also a short
letter from the Count to his wife: after reading it, Newland Archer
rose, jammed the papers back into their envelope, and reentered Mr.
Letterblair's office.

"Here are the letters, sir.  If you wish, I'll see Madame Olenska," he
said in a constrained voice.

"Thank you--thank you, Mr. Archer.  Come and dine with me tonight if
you're free, and we'll go into the matter afterward: in case you wish
to call on our client tomorrow."

Newland Archer walked straight home again that afternoon.  It was a
winter evening of transparent clearness, with an innocent young moon
above the house-tops; and he wanted to fill his soul's lungs with the
pure radiance, and not exchange a word with any one till he and Mr.
Letterblair were closeted together after dinner.  It was impossible to
decide otherwise than he had done: he must see Madame Olenska himself
rather than let her secrets be bared to other eyes.  A great wave of
compassion had swept away his indifference and impatience: she stood
before him as an exposed and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costs
from farther wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate.

He remembered what she had told him of Mrs. Welland's request to be
spared whatever was "unpleasant" in her history, and winced at the
thought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New
York air so pure.  "Are we only Pharisees after all?" he wondered,
puzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive disgust at human
vileness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty.

For the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles had
always been.  He passed for a young man who had not been afraid of
risks, and he knew that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs.
Thorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with a becoming
air of adventure.  But Mrs. Rushworth was "that kind of woman";
foolish, vain, clandestine by nature, and far more attracted by the
secrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as he
possessed.  When the fact dawned on him it nearly broke his heart, but
now it seemed the redeeming feature of the case.  The affair, in short,
had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been
through, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed
belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and
respected and those one enjoyed--and pitied.  In this view they were
sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female
relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when "such things
happened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always
criminal of the woman.  All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew
regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous
and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches.
The only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to
marry a nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him.

In the complicated old European communities, Archer began to guess,
love-problems might be less simple and less easily classified.  Rich
and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such
situations; and there might even be one in which a woman naturally
sensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, from
sheer defencelessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusable
by conventional standards.

On reaching home he wrote a line to the Countess Olenska, asking at
what hour of the next day she could receive him, and despatched it by a
messenger-boy, who returned presently with a word to the effect that
she was going to Skuytercliff the next morning to stay over Sunday with
the van der Luydens, but that he would find her alone that evening
after dinner.  The note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet,
without date or address, but her hand was firm and free.  He was amused
at the idea of her week-ending in the stately solitude of Skuytercliff,
but immediately afterward felt that there, of all places, she would
most feel the chill of minds rigorously averted from the "unpleasant."

He was at Mr. Letterblair's punctually at seven, glad of the pretext
for excusing himself soon after dinner.  He had formed his own opinion
from the papers entrusted to him, and did not especially want to go
into the matter with his senior partner.  Mr. Letterblair was a
widower, and they dined alone, copiously and slowly, in a dark shabby
room hung with yellowing prints of "The Death of Chatham" and "The
Coronation of Napoleon."  On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton
knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old
Lanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had
sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in
San Francisco--an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than
the sale of the cellar.

After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young
broiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with
currant jelly and a celery mayonnaise.  Mr. Letterblair, who lunched on
a sandwich and tea, dined deliberately and deeply, and insisted on his
guest's doing the same.  Finally, when the closing rites had been
accomplished, the cloth was removed, cigars were lit, and Mr.
Letterblair, leaning back in his chair and pushing the port westward,
said, spreading his back agreeably to the coal fire behind him:  "The
whole family are against a divorce.  And I think rightly."

Archer instantly felt himself on the other side of the argument.  "But
why, sir?  If there ever was a case--"

"Well--what's the use?  SHE'S here--he's there; the Atlantic's between
them.  She'll never get back a dollar more of her money than what he's
voluntarily returned to her: their damned heathen marriage settlements
take precious good care of that.  As things go over there, Olenski's
acted generously: he might have turned her out without a penny."

The young man knew this and was silent.

"I understand, though," Mr. Letterblair continued, "that she attaches
no importance to the money.  Therefore, as the family say, why not let
well enough alone?"

Archer had gone to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with Mr.
Letterblair's view; but put into words by this selfish, well-fed and
supremely indifferent old man it suddenly became the Pharisaic voice of
a society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant.

"I think that's for her to decide."

"H'm--have you considered the consequences if she decides for divorce?"

"You mean the threat in her husband's letter?  What weight would that
carry?  It's no more than the vague charge of an angry blackguard."

"Yes; but it might make some unpleasant talk if he really defends the
suit."

"Unpleasant--!" said Archer explosively.

Mr. Letterblair looked at him from under enquiring eyebrows, and the
young man, aware of the uselessness of trying to explain what was in
his mind, bowed acquiescently while his senior continued:  "Divorce is
always unpleasant."

"You agree with me?" Mr. Letterblair resumed, after a waiting silence.

"Naturally," said Archer.

"Well, then, I may count on you; the Mingotts may count on you; to use
your influence against the idea?"

Archer hesitated.  "I can't pledge myself till I've seen the Countess
Olenska," he said at length.

"Mr. Archer, I don't understand you.  Do you want to marry into a
family with a scandalous divorce-suit hanging over it?"

"I don't think that has anything to do with the case."

Mr. Letterblair put down his glass of port and fixed on his young
partner a cautious and apprehensive gaze.

Archer understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn,
and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect.  Now that the job
had been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and, to
guard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure the
unimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of the Mingotts.

"You may be sure, sir, that I shan't commit myself till I've reported
to you; what I meant was that I'd rather not give an opinion till I've
heard what Madame Olenska has to say."

Mr. Letterblair nodded approvingly at an excess of caution worthy of
the best New York tradition, and the young man, glancing at his watch,
pleaded an engagement and took leave.

Old-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner
calls, though derided in Archer's set, still generally prevailed.  As
the young man strolled up Fifth Avenue from Waverley Place, the long
thoroughfare was deserted but for a group of carriages standing before
the Reggie Chiverses' (where there was a dinner for the Duke), and the
occasional figure of an elderly gentleman in heavy overcoat and muffler
ascending a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall.
Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square, he remarked that old Mr. du
Lac was calling on his cousins the Dagonets, and turning down the
corner of West Tenth Street he saw Mr. Skipworth, of his own firm,
obviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings.  A little farther up
Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected
against a blaze of light, descended to his private brougham, and rolled
away to a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination.  It was
not an Opera night, and no one was giving a party, so that Beaufort's
outing was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature.  Archer connected it in
his mind with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue in which
beribboned window curtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and
before whose newly painted door the canary-coloured brougham of Miss
Fanny Ring was frequently seen to wait.

Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs. Archer's
world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians
and "people who wrote."  These scattered fragments of humanity had
never shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure.  In
spite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite
respectable; but they preferred to keep to themselves.  Medora Manson,
in her prosperous days, had inaugurated a "literary salon"; but it had
soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it.

Others had made the same attempt, and there was a household of
Blenkers--an intense and voluble mother, and three blowsy daughters who
imitated her--where one met Edwin Booth and Patti and William Winter,
and the new Shakespearian actor George Rignold, and some of the
magazine editors and musical and literary critics.

Mrs. Archer and her group felt a certain timidity concerning these
persons.  They were odd, they were uncertain, they had things one
didn't know about in the background of their lives and minds.
Literature and art were deeply respected in the Archer set, and Mrs.
Archer was always at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable
and cultivated society had been when it included such figures as
Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and the poet of "The Culprit
Fay." The most celebrated authors of that generation had been
"gentlemen"; perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had
gentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair,
their intimacy with the stage and the Opera, made any old New York
criterion inapplicable to them.

"When I was a girl," Mrs. Archer used to say, "we knew everybody
between the Battery and Canal Street; and only the people one knew had
carriages.  It was perfectly easy to place any one then; now one can't
tell, and I prefer not to try."

Only old Catherine Mingott, with her absence of moral prejudices and
almost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have
bridged the abyss; but she had never opened a book or looked at a
picture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of gala
nights at the Italiens, in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries.
Possibly Beaufort, who was her match in daring, would have succeeded in
bringing about a fusion; but his grand house and silk-stockinged
footmen were an obstacle to informal sociability.  Moreover, he was as
illiterate as old Mrs. Mingott, and considered "fellows who wrote" as
the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures; and no one rich enough
to influence his opinion had ever questioned it.

Newland Archer had been aware of these things ever since he could
remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his
universe.  He knew that there were societies where painters and poets
and novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought
after as Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have
been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of
Merimee (whose "Lettres a une Inconnue" was one of his inseparables),
of Thackeray, Browning or William Morris.  But such things were
inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think of.  Archer knew
most of the "fellows who wrote," the musicians and the painters: he met
them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that
were beginning to come into existence.  He enjoyed them there, and was
bored with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid
and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and
even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away
with the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that
the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where
they would naturally merge.

He was reminded of this by trying to picture the society in which the
Countess Olenska had lived and suffered, and also--perhaps--tasted
mysterious joys.  He remembered with what amusement she had told him
that her grandmother Mingott and the Wellands objected to her living in
a "Bohemian" quarter given over to "people who wrote."  It was not the
peril but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade escaped
her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising.

She herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her
drawing-room (a part of the house in which books were usually supposed
to be "out of place"), though chiefly works of fiction, had whetted
Archer's interest with such new names as those of Paul Bourget,
Huysmans, and the Goncourt brothers.  Ruminating on these things as he
approached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in
which she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into
conditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be
of use in her present difficulty.

Nastasia opened the door, smiling mysteriously.  On the bench in the
hall lay a sable-lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk with a
gold J. B. on the lining, and a white silk muffler: there was no
mistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of
Julius Beaufort.

Archer was angry: so angry that he came near scribbling a word on his
card and going away; then he remembered that in writing to Madame
Olenska he had been kept by excess of discretion from saying that he
wished to see her privately.  He had therefore no one but himself to
blame if she had opened her doors to other visitors; and he entered the
drawing-room with the dogged determination to make Beaufort feel
himself in the way, and to outstay him.

The banker stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with
an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church
candles of yellowish wax.  He had thrust his chest out, supporting his
shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large
patent-leather foot.  As Archer entered he was smiling and looking down
on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the
chimney.  A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and
against the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognised as
tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat
half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving
the arm bare to the elbow.

It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were
called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned
silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the
crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to
show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band.  But Madame Olenska,
heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet
bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur.
Archer remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the
new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the
Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with
her chin nestling in fur.  There was something perverse and provocative
in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and
in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect
was undeniably pleasing.

"Lord love us--three whole days at Skuytercliff!" Beaufort was saying
in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered.  "You'd better take all
your furs, and a hot-water-bottle."

"Why?  Is the house so cold?" she asked, holding out her left hand to
Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss
it.

"No; but the missus is," said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young
man.

"But I thought her so kind.  She came herself to invite me. Granny says
I must certainly go."

"Granny would, of course.  And I say it's a shame you're going to miss
the little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next
Sunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people."

She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer.

"Ah--that does tempt me!  Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers's
I've not met a single artist since I've been here."

"What kind of artists?  I know one or two painters, very good fellows,
that I could bring to see you if you'd allow me," said Archer boldly.

"Painters?  Are there painters in New York?" asked Beaufort, in a tone
implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures;
and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile:  "That would
be charming.  But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers,
actors, musicians.  My husband's house was always full of them."

She said the words "my husband" as if no sinister associations were
connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the
lost delights of her married life.  Archer looked at her perplexedly,
wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to
touch so easily on the past at the very moment when she was risking her
reputation in order to break with it.

"I do think," she went on, addressing both men, "that the imprevu adds
to one's enjoyment.  It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people
every day."

"It's confoundedly dull, anyhow; New York is dying of dullness,"
Beaufort grumbled.  "And when I try to liven it up for you, you go back
on me.  Come--think better of it!  Sunday is your last chance, for
Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia; and I've a
private room, and a Steinway, and they'll sing all night for me."

"How delicious!  May I think it over, and write to you tomorrow
morning?"

She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice.
Beaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood
staring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes.

"Why not now?"

"It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour."

"Do you call it late?"

She returned his glance coolly.  "Yes; because I have still to talk
business with Mr. Archer for a little while."

"Ah," Beaufort snapped.  There was no appeal from her tone, and with a
slight shrug he recovered his composure, took her hand, which he kissed
with a practised air, and calling out from the threshold:  "I say,
Newland, if you can persuade the Countess to stop in town of course
you're included in the supper," left the room with his heavy important
step.

For a moment Archer fancied that Mr. Letterblair must have told her of
his coming; but the irrelevance of her next remark made him change his
mind.

"You know painters, then?  You live in their milieu?" she asked, her
eyes full of interest.

"Oh, not exactly.  I don't know that the arts have a milieu here, any
of them; they're more like a very thinly settled outskirt."

"But you care for such things?"

"Immensely.  When I'm in Paris or London I never miss an exhibition.  I
try to keep up."

She looked down at the tip of the little satin boot that peeped from
her long draperies.

"I used to care immensely too: my life was full of such things.  But
now I want to try not to."

"You want to try not to?"

"Yes: I want to cast off all my old life, to become just like everybody
else here."

Archer reddened.  "You'll never be like everybody else," he said.

She raised her straight eyebrows a little.  "Ah, don't say that.  If
you knew how I hate to be different!"

Her face had grown as sombre as a tragic mask.  She leaned forward,
clasping her knee in her thin hands, and looking away from him into
remote dark distances.

"I want to get away from it all," she insisted.

He waited a moment and cleared his throat.  "I know.  Mr. Letterblair
has told me."

"Ah?"

"That's the reason I've come.  He asked me to--you see I'm in the firm."

She looked slightly surprised, and then her eyes brightened.  "You mean
you can manage it for me?  I can talk to you instead of Mr.
Letterblair?  Oh, that will be so much easier!"

Her tone touched him, and his confidence grew with his
self-satisfaction.  He perceived that she had spoken of business to
Beaufort simply to get rid of him; and to have routed Beaufort was
something of a triumph.

"I am here to talk about it," he repeated.

She sat silent, her head still propped by the arm that rested on the
back of the sofa.  Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed
by the rich red of her dress.  She struck Archer, of a sudden, as a
pathetic and even pitiful figure.

"Now we're coming to hard facts," he thought, conscious in himself of
the same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticised in his
mother and her contemporaries.  How little practice he had had in
dealing with unusual situations!  Their very vocabulary was unfamiliar
to him, and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage.  In face of what
was coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy.

After a pause Madame Olenska broke out with unexpected vehemence:  "I
want to be free; I want to wipe out all the past."

"I understand that."

Her face warmed.  "Then you'll help me?"

"First--" he hesitated--"perhaps I ought to know a little more."

She seemed surprised.  "You know about my husband--my life with him?"

He made a sign of assent.

"Well--then--what more is there?  In this country are such things
tolerated?  I'm a Protestant--our church does not forbid divorce in
such cases."

"Certainly not."

They were both silent again, and Archer felt the spectre of Count
Olenski's letter grimacing hideously between them.  The letter filled
only half a page, and was just what he had described it to be in
speaking of it to Mr. Letterblair: the vague charge of an angry
blackguard.  But how much truth was behind it?  Only Count Olenski's
wife could tell.

"I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr. Letterblair," he said
at length.

"Well--can there be anything more abominable?"

"No."

She changed her position slightly, screening her eyes with her lifted
hand.

"Of course you know," Archer continued, "that if your husband chooses
to fight the case--as he threatens to--"

"Yes--?"

"He can say things--things that might be unpl--might be disagreeable to
you: say them publicly, so that they would get about, and harm you even
if--"

"If--?"

"I mean: no matter how unfounded they were."

She paused for a long interval; so long that, not wishing to keep his
eyes on her shaded face, he had time to imprint on his mind the exact
shape of her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the
three rings on her fourth and fifth fingers; among which, he noticed, a
wedding ring did not appear.

"What harm could such accusations, even if he made them publicly, do me
here?"

It was on his lips to exclaim:  "My poor child--far more harm than
anywhere else!"  Instead, he answered, in a voice that sounded in his
ears like Mr. Letterblair's: "New York society is a very small world
compared with the one you've lived in.  And it's ruled, in spite of
appearances, by a few people with--well, rather old-fashioned ideas."

She said nothing, and he continued:  "Our ideas about marriage and
divorce are particularly old-fashioned.  Our legislation favours
divorce--our social customs don't."

"Never?"

"Well--not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has
appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any
unconventional action to--to offensive insinuations--"

She drooped her head a little lower, and he waited again, intensely
hoping for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial.
None came.

A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log
broke in two and sent up a shower of sparks.  The whole hushed and
brooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Archer.

"Yes," she murmured at length, "that's what my family tell me."

He winced a little.  "It's not unnatural--"

"OUR family," she corrected herself; and Archer coloured.  "For you'll
be my cousin soon," she continued gently.

"I hope so."

"And you take their view?"

He stood up at this, wandered across the room, stared with void eyes at
one of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back
irresolutely to her side.  How could he say:  "Yes, if what your
husband hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it?"

"Sincerely--" she interjected, as he was about to speak.

He looked down into the fire.  "Sincerely, then--what should you gain
that would compensate for the possibility--the certainty--of a lot of
beastly talk?"

"But my freedom--is that nothing?"

It flashed across him at that instant that the charge in the letter was
true, and that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt.  How was he
to tell her that, if she really cherished such a plan, the laws of the
State were inexorably opposed to it?  The mere suspicion that the
thought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently toward
her.  "But aren't you as free as air as it is?" he returned.  "Who can
touch you?  Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been
settled--"

"Oh, yes," she said indifferently.

"Well, then: is it worth while to risk what may be infinitely
disagreeable and painful?  Think of the newspapers--their vileness!
It's all stupid and narrow and unjust--but one can't make over society."

"No," she acquiesced; and her tone was so faint and desolate that he
felt a sudden remorse for his own hard thoughts.

"The individual, in such cases, is nearly always sacrificed to what is
supposed to be the collective interest: people cling to any convention
that keeps the family together--protects the children, if there are
any," he rambled on, pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his
lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her
silence seemed to have laid bare.  Since she would not or could not say
the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let
her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret.  Better keep on
the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a
wound he could not heal.

"It's my business, you know," he went on, "to help you to see these
things as the people who are fondest of you see them.  The Mingotts,
the Wellands, the van der Luydens, all your friends and relations: if I
didn't show you honestly how they judge such questions, it wouldn't be
fair of me, would it?"  He spoke insistently, almost pleading with her
in his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence.

She said slowly:  "No; it wouldn't be fair."

The fire had crumbled down to greyness, and one of the lamps made a
gurgling appeal for attention.  Madame Olenska rose, wound it up and
returned to the fire, but without resuming her seat.

Her remaining on her feet seemed to signify that there was nothing more
for either of them to say, and Archer stood up also.

"Very well; I will do what you wish," she said abruptly.  The blood
rushed to his forehead; and, taken aback by the suddenness of her
surrender, he caught her two hands awkwardly in his.

"I--I do want to help you," he said.

"You do help me.  Good night, my cousin."

He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless.
She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat
under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter
night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.

The next day, while walking with May in the Park, Archer tries to persuade May to shorten their engagement. As he listens to her protests, he thinks to himself that she is merely repeating what has always been told to her; that she has not begun to think and act for herself. He suggests that they elope, an idea that to May can only seem ridiculously funny. Archer begins to suspect that May will never be able to think for herself, that she has been so thoroughly conditioned by her elders that if she were given freedom she would still be unable to act on her own. Back in his study the next afternoon, Archer finds himself out of spirits. He feels discontent with the routine of his life. He is tired of going to the gentleman's club to which he belongs, for the conversations there are repetitious and predictable. While he is musing, his sister Janey bursts into the study to inform him of the latest scandal. It appears that the Countess Olenska was seen along with the Duke at the house of Mrs. Lemuel Struthers the previous night. Mrs. Struthers, as the widow of a wealthy shoe polish magnate, is seen as a slightly vulgar social climber, and her parties are reputed to be bohemian. As Archer argues with his family as to the impropriety of Olenska's actions, Mr. Henry van der Luyden is announced. He has just called on Countess Olenska to tactfully warn her about following the Duke to certain common parties. A few weeks later, Archer is confronted at his law office by the head of the firm, Mr. Letterblair. The older man informs Archer that the Mingott family wished to consult with Mr. Letterblair regarding the Countess Olenska's interest in suing her husband for divorce. The lawyer wishes to hear Archer's opinion, as he is closely connected with the family. Archer is uneasy with this proposition, but agrees to look over the papers concerning the settlement. In reading the letters, Archer comes across a letter written by Count Olenski that he feels would be damaging to the Countess's reputation were it exposed. Wharton implies indirectly that this letter indicates that the Countess has had an illicit affair. He now feels pity for Ellen Olenska and decides that it is necessary for him to protect her from further damaging her own reputation, which would be devastated if it were revealed that she had been unfaithful to her husband. That evening, Archer meets with Letterblair, who asks him to advise the Countess not to sue for divorce, as it would generate a lot of unpleasant talk for the family. Archer hesitates, responding that he won't commit until he speaks with her. After dinner he pays a call on Countess Olenska and is irritated to find Beaufort already at her flat, engaged with Ellen in a discussion over the role of artists in the high society of New York. As Europeans, both the Countess and Beaufort find artistic life in New York to be virtually nonexistent. Ellen ends the discussion, however, by declaring that despite her interest in the arts, she is now willing to cast aside her old life in order to fully belong to New York life. After Beaufort leaves, Ellen and Archer discuss the divorce settlement. She wants to erase the past, to finally free herself from her husband's control. Archer warns her about the unpleasant accusations contained in the letter from her husband. Ellen dismisses these, but Archer cautions her that New York is a very old-fashioned city, and any hint of scandal could affect her entire family. Olenska then tells Archer that she will do as he sees best.

The opening scene of Chapter 10, in which Archer tries to persuade May to marry him early, reveals some of the faults in May's character as Archer sees them. As Archer ponders May's innocent nature and her inability to speak for herself, he decides that it is up to him as her husband to take the bandages from her eyes and let her see the world as it is. Yet upon reflection, Archer begins to wonder if May will ever be truly able to think for herself, even once the bandages are lifted. He then proceeds to compare her to a species of cave-fish. After living in darkness for so many generations, this fish has lost the use of its eyes, which would be useless to it in the darkness. Such a metaphor is not unusual for Wharton's era, for Darwinian notions of evolution and natural selection were very much the rage. With this metaphor, Wharton both puts humans on the same plane as the rest of the animal kingdom and also confounds the popular notion of evolution as progress. ld New York society, rather than advancing, produces individuals who are in fact primitive. In this same chapter, we also see a few more contradictions in Archer's own character. While he does want May to think for herself, he also feels a certain sense of possessorship over May. He sees her, at best, as his pupil; he feels that it is his duty to educate May and to make her a truly enlightened individual. We also get a sense of Archer's impulsive nature. Eager to be different from the rest of high society, he wants May to elope with him. Yet Archer's attempts to break the mold are not practical. And in fact, it is May who reasons with him, who explains that given their circumstances, they "can't just run away." A more complex portrait of Ellen also emerges in Chapters 11 and 12. She proves to Archer that she can navigate the strict code of manners with her charms. Although she scandalizes the van der Luydens by appearing at the home of the common Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, Ellen amends the situation by impressing Mr. van der Luyden with her graciousness. However, Ellen has not completely adapted to all of the aspects of American life. She still naively believes that in New York she can cast off her old life and "become just like everybody else here. " She fails to realize that high society is highly judgmental and that it never forgets the personal pasts of its members or look kindly upon any violation of its code of manners. It is important to note, however, that Archer himself forms a fairly judgmental view of Ellen. After reading the letter of Count Olenski, which accuses Ellen of adultery, all of Archer's admiration for Ellen's independence turns to condescension. She suddenly appears to him as an "exposed and pitiful figure" whom he must protect and defend. In this newly formed opinion of Ellen, he actually oversteps his mark. He presumes from the Count's letter and from his conversation with Ellen that she had committed adultery. He assumes that Ellen's quick dismissal of the accusation indicates her guilt. In Book Two of the novel, Archer will come to question whether Ellen's silence was an admission of guilt or just an unwillingness to discuss a false rumor. Wharton also adds nuances to her depiction of Old New York by describing exactly what this society is not. Above all, New York fears anything that it considers unusual or unpleasant, anything that could upset its careful balance of rules and morals. On a general level, two of its chief bogies are Europeans and artists. To Old New York, Europeans do not have many moral scruples. They have relaxed manners, daring fashions, and attend parties where there is singing and dancing and drinking. Artists, often called "bohemians" by Wharton's characters, are similarly unscrupulous. But unlike the Europeans, the bohemians do not have aristocratic blood; they are common. In Chapter 10, Archer's mother disapproves of Mrs. Struthers's party because it was an informal party that included artists.