As he came out into the lobby Archer ran across his friend Ned Winsett,
the only one among what Janey called his "clever people" with whom he
cared to probe into things a little deeper than the average level of
club and chop-house banter.

He had caught sight, across the house, of Winsett's shabby
round-shouldered back, and had once noticed his eyes turned toward the
Beaufort box.  The two men shook hands, and Winsett proposed a bock at
a little German restaurant around the corner.  Archer, who was not in
the mood for the kind of talk they were likely to get there, declined
on the plea that he had work to do at home; and Winsett said:  "Oh,
well so have I for that matter, and I'll be the Industrious Apprentice
too."

They strolled along together, and presently Winsett said:  "Look here,
what I'm really after is the name of the dark lady in that swell box of
yours--with the Beauforts, wasn't she?  The one your friend Lefferts
seems so smitten by."

Archer, he could not have said why, was slightly annoyed.  What the
devil did Ned Winsett want with Ellen Olenska's name?  And above all,
why did he couple it with Lefferts's?  It was unlike Winsett to
manifest such curiosity; but after all, Archer remembered, he was a
journalist.

"It's not for an interview, I hope?" he laughed.

"Well--not for the press; just for myself," Winsett rejoined.  "The
fact is she's a neighbour of mine--queer quarter for such a beauty to
settle in--and she's been awfully kind to my little boy, who fell down
her area chasing his kitten, and gave himself a nasty cut.  She rushed
in bareheaded, carrying him in her arms, with his knee all beautifully
bandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too
dazzled to ask her name."

A pleasant glow dilated Archer's heart.  There was nothing
extraordinary in the tale: any woman would have done as much for a
neighbour's child.  But it was just like Ellen, he felt, to have rushed
in bareheaded, carrying the boy in her arms, and to have dazzled poor
Mrs. Winsett into forgetting to ask who she was.

"That is the Countess Olenska--a granddaughter of old Mrs. Mingott's."

"Whew--a Countess!" whistled Ned Winsett.  "Well, I didn't know
Countesses were so neighbourly.  Mingotts ain't."

"They would be, if you'd let them."

"Ah, well--"  It was their old interminable argument as to the
obstinate unwillingness of the "clever people" to frequent the
fashionable, and both men knew that there was no use in prolonging it.

"I wonder," Winsett broke off, "how a Countess happens to live in our
slum?"

"Because she doesn't care a hang about where she lives--or about any of
our little social sign-posts," said Archer, with a secret pride in his
own picture of her.

"H'm--been in bigger places, I suppose," the other commented.  "Well,
here's my corner."

He slouched off across Broadway, and Archer stood looking after him and
musing on his last words.

Ned Winsett had those flashes of penetration; they were the most
interesting thing about him, and always made Archer wonder why they had
allowed him to accept failure so stolidly at an age when most men are
still struggling.

Archer had known that Winsett had a wife and child, but he had never
seen them.  The two men always met at the Century, or at some haunt of
journalists and theatrical people, such as the restaurant where Winsett
had proposed to go for a bock.  He had given Archer to understand that
his wife was an invalid; which might be true of the poor lady, or might
merely mean that she was lacking in social gifts or in evening clothes,
or in both.  Winsett himself had a savage abhorrence of social
observances: Archer, who dressed in the evening because he thought it
cleaner and more comfortable to do so, and who had never stopped to
consider that cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in
a modest budget, regarded Winsett's attitude as part of the boring
"Bohemian" pose that always made fashionable people, who changed their
clothes without talking about it, and were not forever harping on the
number of servants one kept, seem so much simpler and less
self-conscious than the others.  Nevertheless, he was always stimulated
by Winsett, and whenever he caught sight of the journalist's lean
bearded face and melancholy eyes he would rout him out of his corner
and carry him off for a long talk.

Winsett was not a journalist by choice.  He was a pure man of letters,
untimely born in a world that had no need of letters; but after
publishing one volume of brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of
which one hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away, and
the balance eventually destroyed by the publishers (as per contract) to
make room for more marketable material, he had abandoned his real
calling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where
fashion-plates and paper patterns alternated with New England
love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks.

On the subject of "Hearth-fires" (as the paper was called) he was
inexhaustibly entertaining; but beneath his fun lurked the sterile
bitterness of the still young man who has tried and given up.  His
conversation always made Archer take the measure of his own life, and
feel how little it contained; but Winsett's, after all, contained still
less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and
curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views
usually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism.

"The fact is, life isn't much a fit for either of us," Winsett had once
said.  "I'm down and out; nothing to be done about it.  I've got only
one ware to produce, and there's no market for it here, and won't be in
my time.  But you're free and you're well-off.  Why don't you get into
touch?  There's only one way to do it: to go into politics."

Archer threw his head back and laughed.  There one saw at a flash the
unbridgeable difference between men like Winsett and the
others--Archer's kind.  Every one in polite circles knew that, in
America, "a gentleman couldn't go into politics."  But, since he could
hardly put it in that way to Winsett, he answered evasively: "Look at
the career of the honest man in American politics!  They don't want us."

"Who's 'they'?  Why don't you all get together and be 'they'
yourselves?"

Archer's laugh lingered on his lips in a slightly condescending smile.
It was useless to prolong the discussion: everybody knew the melancholy
fate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen in municipal
or state politics in New York.  The day was past when that sort of
thing was possible: the country was in possession of the bosses and the
emigrant, and decent people had to fall back on sport or culture.

"Culture!  Yes--if we had it!  But there are just a few little local
patches, dying out here and there for lack of--well, hoeing and
cross-fertilising: the last remnants of the old European tradition that
your forebears brought with them.  But you're in a pitiful little
minority: you've got no centre, no competition, no audience.  You're
like the pictures on the walls of a deserted house:  'The Portrait of a
Gentleman.'  You'll never amount to anything, any of you, till you roll
up your sleeves and get right down into the muck.  That, or emigrate
... God!  If I could emigrate ..."

Archer mentally shrugged his shoulders and turned the conversation back
to books, where Winsett, if uncertain, was always interesting.
Emigrate!  As if a gentleman could abandon his own country!  One could
no more do that than one could roll up one's sleeves and go down into
the muck.  A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained.  But you
couldn't make a man like Winsett see that; and that was why the New
York of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake
made it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out, in the end, to be a
smaller box, with a more monotonous pattern, than the assembled atoms
of Fifth Avenue.

The next morning Archer scoured the town in vain for more yellow roses.
In consequence of this search he arrived late at the office, perceived
that his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was
filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life.
Why should he not be, at that moment, on the sands of St. Augustine
with May Welland?  No one was deceived by his pretense of professional
activity.  In old-fashioned legal firms like that of which Mr.
Letterblair was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the
management of large estates and "conservative" investments, there were
always two or three young men, fairly well-off, and without
professional ambition, who, for a certain number of hours of each day,
sat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks, or simply reading the
newspapers.  Though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an
occupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as
derogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more
gentlemanly pursuit than business.  But none of these young men had
much hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire
to do so; and over many of them the green mould of the perfunctory was
already perceptibly spreading.

It made Archer shiver to think that it might be spreading over him too.
He had, to be sure, other tastes and interests; he spent his vacations
in European travel, cultivated the "clever people" May spoke of, and
generally tried to "keep up," as he had somewhat wistfully put it to
Madame Olenska.  But once he was married, what would become of this
narrow margin of life in which his real experiences were lived?  He had
seen enough of other young men who had dreamed his dream, though
perhaps less ardently, and who had gradually sunk into the placid and
luxurious routine of their elders.

From the office he sent a note by messenger to Madame Olenska, asking
if he might call that afternoon, and begging her to let him find a
reply at his club; but at the club he found nothing, nor did he receive
any letter the following day.  This unexpected silence mortified him
beyond reason, and though the next morning he saw a glorious cluster of
yellow roses behind a florist's window-pane, he left it there.  It was
only on the third morning that he received a line by post from the
Countess Olenska.  To his surprise it was dated from Skuytercliff,
whither the van der Luydens had promptly retreated after putting the
Duke on board his steamer.

"I ran away," the writer began abruptly (without the usual
preliminaries), "the day after I saw you at the play, and these kind
friends have taken me in.  I wanted to be quiet, and think things over.
You were right in telling me how kind they were; I feel myself so safe
here.  I wish that you were with us."  She ended with a conventional
"Yours sincerely," and without any allusion to the date of her return.

The tone of the note surprised the young man.  What was Madame Olenska
running away from, and why did she feel the need to be safe?  His first
thought was of some dark menace from abroad; then he reflected that he
did not know her epistolary style, and that it might run to picturesque
exaggeration.  Women always exaggerated; and moreover she was not
wholly at her ease in English, which she often spoke as if she were
translating from the French.  "Je me suis evadee--" put in that way,
the opening sentence immediately suggested that she might merely have
wanted to escape from a boring round of engagements; which was very
likely true, for he judged her to be capricious, and easily wearied of
the pleasure of the moment.

It amused him to think of the van der Luydens' having carried her off
to Skuytercliff on a second visit, and this time for an indefinite
period.  The doors of Skuytercliff were rarely and grudgingly opened to
visitors, and a chilly week-end was the most ever offered to the few
thus privileged.  But Archer had seen, on his last visit to Paris, the
delicious play of Labiche, "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon," and he
remembered M.  Perrichon's dogged and undiscouraged attachment to the
young man whom he had pulled out of the glacier.  The van der Luydens
had rescued Madame Olenska from a doom almost as icy; and though there
were many other reasons for being attracted to her, Archer knew that
beneath them all lay the gentle and obstinate determination to go on
rescuing her.

He felt a distinct disappointment on learning that she was away; and
almost immediately remembered that, only the day before, he had refused
an invitation to spend the following Sunday with the Reggie Chiverses
at their house on the Hudson, a few miles below Skuytercliff.

He had had his fill long ago of the noisy friendly parties at Highbank,
with coasting, ice-boating, sleighing, long tramps in the snow, and a
general flavour of mild flirting and milder practical jokes.  He had
just received a box of new books from his London book-seller, and had
preferred the prospect of a quiet Sunday at home with his spoils.  But
he now went into the club writing-room, wrote a hurried telegram, and
told the servant to send it immediately.  He knew that Mrs. Reggie
didn't object to her visitors' suddenly changing their minds, and that
there was always a room to spare in her elastic house.

Newland Archer arrived at the Chiverses' on Friday evening, and on
Saturday went conscientiously through all the rites appertaining to a
week-end at Highbank.

In the morning he had a spin in the ice-boat with his hostess and a few
of the hardier guests; in the afternoon he "went over the farm" with
Reggie, and listened, in the elaborately appointed stables, to long and
impressive disquisitions on the horse; after tea he talked in a corner
of the firelit hall with a young lady who had professed herself
broken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to
tell him of her own matrimonial hopes; and finally, about midnight, he
assisted in putting a gold-fish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a
burglar in the bath-room of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours
by joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the
basement.  But on Sunday after luncheon he borrowed a cutter, and drove
over to Skuytercliff.

People had always been told that the house at Skuytercliff was an
Italian villa.  Those who had never been to Italy believed it; so did
some who had.  The house had been built by Mr. van der Luyden in his
youth, on his return from the "grand tour," and in anticipation of his
approaching marriage with Miss Louisa Dagonet.  It was a large square
wooden structure, with tongued and grooved walls painted pale green and
white, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows.
From the high ground on which it stood a series of terraces bordered by
balustrades and urns descended in the steel-engraving style to a small
irregular lake with an asphalt edge overhung by rare weeping conifers.
To the right and left, the famous weedless lawns studded with
"specimen" trees (each of a different variety) rolled away to long
ranges of grass crested with elaborate cast-iron ornaments; and below,
in a hollow, lay the four-roomed stone house which the first Patroon
had built on the land granted him in 1612.

Against the uniform sheet of snow and the greyish winter sky the
Italian villa loomed up rather grimly; even in summer it kept its
distance, and the boldest coleus bed had never ventured nearer than
thirty feet from its awful front.  Now, as Archer rang the bell, the
long tinkle seemed to echo through a mausoleum; and the surprise of the
butler who at length responded to the call was as great as though he
had been summoned from his final sleep.

Happily Archer was of the family, and therefore, irregular though his
arrival was, entitled to be informed that the Countess Olenska was out,
having driven to afternoon service with Mrs. van der Luyden exactly
three quarters of an hour earlier.

"Mr. van der Luyden," the butler continued, "is in, sir; but my
impression is that he is either finishing his nap or else reading
yesterday's Evening Post.  I heard him say, sir, on his return from
church this morning, that he intended to look through the Evening Post
after luncheon; if you like, sir, I might go to the library door and
listen--"

But Archer, thanking him, said that he would go and meet the ladies;
and the butler, obviously relieved, closed the door on him majestically.

A groom took the cutter to the stables, and Archer struck through the
park to the high-road.  The village of Skuytercliff was only a mile and
a half away, but he knew that Mrs. van der Luyden never walked, and
that he must keep to the road to meet the carriage.  Presently,
however, coming down a foot-path that crossed the highway, he caught
sight of a slight figure in a red cloak, with a big dog running ahead.
He hurried forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of
welcome.

"Ah, you've come!" she said, and drew her hand from her muff.

The red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Ellen Mingott of
old days; and he laughed as he took her hand, and answered:  "I came to
see what you were running away from."

Her face clouded over, but she answered:  "Ah, well--you will see,
presently."

The answer puzzled him.  "Why--do you mean that you've been overtaken?"

She shrugged her shoulders, with a little movement like Nastasia's, and
rejoined in a lighter tone:  "Shall we walk on?  I'm so cold after the
sermon.  And what does it matter, now you're here to protect me?"

The blood rose to his temples and he caught a fold of her cloak.
"Ellen--what is it?  You must tell me."

"Oh, presently--let's run a race first: my feet are freezing to the
ground," she cried; and gathering up the cloak she fled away across the
snow, the dog leaping about her with challenging barks.  For a moment
Archer stood watching, his gaze delighted by the flash of the red
meteor against the snow; then he started after her, and they met,
panting and laughing, at a wicket that led into the park.

She looked up at him and smiled.  "I knew you'd come!"

"That shows you wanted me to," he returned, with a disproportionate joy
in their nonsense.  The white glitter of the trees filled the air with
its own mysterious brightness, and as they walked on over the snow the
ground seemed to sing under their feet.

"Where did you come from?" Madame Olenska asked.

He told her, and added:  "It was because I got your note."

After a pause she said, with a just perceptible chill in her voice:
"May asked you to take care of me."

"I didn't need any asking."

"You mean--I'm so evidently helpless and defenceless?  What a poor
thing you must all think me!  But women here seem not--seem never to
feel the need: any more than the blessed in heaven."

He lowered his voice to ask:  "What sort of a need?"

"Ah, don't ask me!  I don't speak your language," she retorted
petulantly.

The answer smote him like a blow, and he stood still in the path,
looking down at her.

"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?"

"Oh, my friend--!"  She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and he
pleaded earnestly:  "Ellen--why won't you tell me what's happened?"

She shrugged again.  "Does anything ever happen in heaven?"

He was silent, and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a
word.  Finally she said:  "I will tell you--but where, where, where?
One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with
all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log
for the fire, or the newspaper!  Is there nowhere in an American house
where one may be by one's self?  You're so shy, and yet you're so
public.  I always feel as if I were in the convent again--or on the
stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds."

"Ah, you don't like us!" Archer exclaimed.

They were walking past the house of the old Patroon, with its squat
walls and small square windows compactly grouped about a central
chimney.  The shutters stood wide, and through one of the newly-washed
windows Archer caught the light of a fire.

"Why--the house is open!" he said.

She stood still.  "No; only for today, at least.  I wanted to see it,
and Mr. van der Luyden had the fire lit and the windows opened, so that
we might stop there on the way back from church this morning."  She ran
up the steps and tried the door.  "It's still unlocked--what luck!
Come in and we can have a quiet talk.  Mrs. van der Luyden has driven
over to see her old aunts at Rhinebeck and we shan't be missed at the
house for another hour."

He followed her into the narrow passage.  His spirits, which had
dropped at her last words, rose with an irrational leap.  The homely
little house stood there, its panels and brasses shining in the
firelight, as if magically created to receive them.  A big bed of
embers still gleamed in the kitchen chimney, under an iron pot hung
from an ancient crane.  Rush-bottomed arm-chairs faced each other
across the tiled hearth, and rows of Delft plates stood on shelves
against the walls.  Archer stooped over and threw a log upon the embers.

Madame Olenska, dropping her cloak, sat down in one of the chairs.
Archer leaned against the chimney and looked at her.

"You're laughing now; but when you wrote me you were unhappy," he said.

"Yes."  She paused.  "But I can't feel unhappy when you're here."

"I sha'n't be here long," he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the
effort to say just so much and no more.

"No; I know.  But I'm improvident: I live in the moment when I'm happy."

The words stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses
to it he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black
tree-boles against the snow.  But it was as if she too had shifted her
place, and he still saw her, between himself and the trees, drooping
over the fire with her indolent smile.  Archer's heart was beating
insubordinately.  What if it were from him that she had been running
away, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone
together in this secret room?

"Ellen, if I'm really a help to you--if you really wanted me to
come--tell me what's wrong, tell me what it is you're running away
from," he insisted.

He spoke without shifting his position, without even turning to look at
her: if the thing was to happen, it was to happen in this way, with the
whole width of the room between them, and his eyes still fixed on the
outer snow.

For a long moment she was silent; and in that moment Archer imagined
her, almost heard her, stealing up behind him to throw her light arms
about his neck.  While he waited, soul and body throbbing with the
miracle to come, his eyes mechanically received the image of a
heavily-coated man with his fur collar turned up who was advancing
along the path to the house.  The man was Julius Beaufort.

"Ah--!" Archer cried, bursting into a laugh.

Madame Olenska had sprung up and moved to his side, slipping her hand
into his; but after a glance through the window her face paled and she
shrank back.

"So that was it?" Archer said derisively.

"I didn't know he was here," Madame Olenska murmured.  Her hand still
clung to Archer's; but he drew away from her, and walking out into the
passage threw open the door of the house.

"Hallo, Beaufort--this way!  Madame Olenska was expecting you," he said.

During his journey back to New York the next morning, Archer relived
with a fatiguing vividness his last moments at Skuytercliff.

Beaufort, though clearly annoyed at finding him with Madame Olenska,
had, as usual, carried off the situation high-handedly.  His way of
ignoring people whose presence inconvenienced him actually gave them,
if they were sensitive to it, a feeling of invisibility, of
nonexistence.  Archer, as the three strolled back through the park, was
aware of this odd sense of disembodiment; and humbling as it was to his
vanity it gave him the ghostly advantage of observing unobserved.

Beaufort had entered the little house with his usual easy assurance;
but he could not smile away the vertical line between his eyes.  It was
fairly clear that Madame Olenska had not known that he was coming,
though her words to Archer had hinted at the possibility; at any rate,
she had evidently not told him where she was going when she left New
York, and her unexplained departure had exasperated him.  The
ostensible reason of his appearance was the discovery, the very night
before, of a "perfect little house," not in the market, which was
really just the thing for her, but would be snapped up instantly if she
didn't take it; and he was loud in mock-reproaches for the dance she
had led him in running away just as he had found it.

"If only this new dodge for talking along a wire had been a little bit
nearer perfection I might have told you all this from town, and been
toasting my toes before the club fire at this minute, instead of
tramping after you through the snow," he grumbled, disguising a real
irritation under the pretence of it; and at this opening Madame Olenska
twisted the talk away to the fantastic possibility that they might one
day actually converse with each other from street to street, or
even--incredible dream!--from one town to another.  This struck from
all three allusions to Edgar Poe and Jules Verne, and such platitudes
as naturally rise to the lips of the most intelligent when they are
talking against time, and dealing with a new invention in which it
would seem ingenuous to believe too soon; and the question of the
telephone carried them safely back to the big house.

Mrs. van der Luyden had not yet returned; and Archer took his leave and
walked off to fetch the cutter, while Beaufort followed the Countess
Olenska indoors.  It was probable that, little as the van der Luydens
encouraged unannounced visits, he could count on being asked to dine,
and sent back to the station to catch the nine o'clock train; but more
than that he would certainly not get, for it would be inconceivable to
his hosts that a gentleman travelling without luggage should wish to
spend the night, and distasteful to them to propose it to a person with
whom they were on terms of such limited cordiality as Beaufort.

Beaufort knew all this, and must have foreseen it; and his taking the
long journey for so small a reward gave the measure of his impatience.
He was undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Olenska; and Beaufort had
only one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women.  His dull and
childless home had long since palled on him; and in addition to more
permanent consolations he was always in quest of amorous adventures in
his own set.  This was the man from whom Madame Olenska was avowedly
flying: the question was whether she had fled because his importunities
displeased her, or because she did not wholly trust herself to resist
them; unless, indeed, all her talk of flight had been a blind, and her
departure no more than a manoeuvre.

Archer did not really believe this.  Little as he had actually seen of
Madame Olenska, he was beginning to think that he could read her face,
and if not her face, her voice; and both had betrayed annoyance, and
even dismay, at Beaufort's sudden appearance.  But, after all, if this
were the case, was it not worse than if she had left New York for the
express purpose of meeting him?  If she had done that, she ceased to be
an object of interest, she threw in her lot with the vulgarest of
dissemblers: a woman engaged in a love affair with Beaufort "classed"
herself irretrievably.

No, it was worse a thousand times if, judging Beaufort, and probably
despising him, she was yet drawn to him by all that gave him an
advantage over the other men about her: his habit of two continents and
two societies, his familiar association with artists and actors and
people generally in the world's eye, and his careless contempt for
local prejudices.  Beaufort was vulgar, he was uneducated, he was
purse-proud; but the circumstances of his life, and a certain native
shrewdness, made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and
socially his betters, whose horizon was bounded by the Battery and the
Central Park.  How should any one coming from a wider world not feel
the difference and be attracted by it?

Madame Olenska, in a burst of irritation, had said to Archer that he
and she did not talk the same language; and the young man knew that in
some respects this was true.  But Beaufort understood every turn of her
dialect, and spoke it fluently: his view of life, his tone, his
attitude, were merely a coarser reflection of those revealed in Count
Olenski's letter.  This might seem to be to his disadvantage with Count
Olenski's wife; but Archer was too intelligent to think that a young
woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that
reminded her of her past.  She might believe herself wholly in revolt
against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her, even
though it were against her will.

Thus, with a painful impartiality, did the young man make out the case
for Beaufort, and for Beaufort's victim.  A longing to enlighten her
was strong in him; and there were moments when he imagined that all she
asked was to be enlightened.

That evening he unpacked his books from London.  The box was full of
things he had been waiting for impatiently; a new volume of Herbert
Spencer, another collection of the prolific Alphonse Daudet's brilliant
tales, and a novel called "Middlemarch," as to which there had lately
been interesting things said in the reviews.  He had declined three
dinner invitations in favour of this feast; but though he turned the
pages with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he
was reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand.
Suddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had
ordered because the name had attracted him:  "The House of Life."  He
took it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he
had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably
tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary
of human passions.  All through the night he pursued through those
enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen
Olenska; but when he woke the next morning, and looked out at the
brownstone houses across the street, and thought of his desk in Mr.
Letterblair's office, and the family pew in Grace Church, his hour in
the park of Skuytercliff became as far outside the pale of probability
as the visions of the night.

"Mercy, how pale you look, Newland!" Janey commented over the
coffee-cups at breakfast; and his mother added:  "Newland, dear, I've
noticed lately that you've been coughing; I do hope you're not letting
yourself be overworked?"  For it was the conviction of both ladies
that, under the iron despotism of his senior partners, the young man's
life was spent in the most exhausting professional labours--and he had
never thought it necessary to undeceive them.

The next two or three days dragged by heavily.  The taste of the usual
was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as
if he were being buried alive under his future.  He heard nothing of
the Countess Olenska, or of the perfect little house, and though he met
Beaufort at the club they merely nodded at each other across the
whist-tables.  It was not till the fourth evening that he found a note
awaiting him on his return home.  "Come late tomorrow: I must explain
to you.  Ellen."  These were the only words it contained.

The young man, who was dining out, thrust the note into his pocket,
smiling a little at the Frenchness of the "to you."  After dinner he
went to a play; and it was not until his return home, after midnight,
that he drew Madame Olenska's missive out again and re-read it slowly a
number of times.  There were several ways of answering it, and he gave
considerable thought to each one during the watches of an agitated
night.  That on which, when morning came, he finally decided was to
pitch some clothes into a portmanteau and jump on board a boat that was
leaving that very afternoon for St. Augustine.

As Newland leaves the theatre he meets Ned Winsett, an acquaintance and writer. Winsett is bitter about working for a women's weekly to support his family while he struggles as a writer. He suggests that Newland consider politics, where he can "get down in the muck" and accomplish good. Newland is unhappy when this conversation ends because after he is married, these discussions will not occur. Three days later he receives a message from the Countess saying she is visiting the van der Luydens' country estate and wishes he were there also. He contacts the Reggie Chiverses, rescinding previous excuses to visit them and plans a country weekend near her. Newland seeks the Countess at Skuytercliff, but she is out and he sets off to meet her. They go together to the privacy of the Patroon's house, another van der Luyden property. During their visit, Newland's reaction to Ellen is becoming clearly sexual: his heart beats rapidly and he imagines her putting her arms around his neck. Their reverie is broken by the arrival of Julius Beaufort. Newland is annoyed by Beaufort's undeniable pursuit of the Countess. The next day Newland is back in his office, his reverie in the country a fading dream. Newland receives a note from the Countess asking to see him. Considering several possible replies, he gives up and flees for St. Augustine, where May is wintering with her parents.

Wharton emphasizes the totally separate worlds of the leisure class and the artisans through the conversation between Newland Archer and Ned Winsett. Newland has never been invited to Ned's home or met his family. Newland does not seem to realize that soap, cleanliness, and fashionable clothing cost precious money to those in the lower class. Ned must face realities totally unknown to Newland, such as putting food on the table and a roof over his family, and if that means writing for a women's weekly, that is what he must do. He suggests that Newland get into politics, saying that Newland's class is a leftover from Europe and will never cause social change until they "get down in the muck." While the rich worry about social change, they do not dirty their hands with politics. Newland tactfully sidesteps the subject, but continues to be unfulfilled by the "gentlemanly pursuit" of law, where he reads newspapers each day in his office. The unthinkable is becoming a conflict in Newland's mind and Wharton takes the opportunity to pursue this struggle. She spins a scene of pure romance and escape by placing Newland and the Countess together in the Patroon's cottage. Newland first sees the Countess in a red cloak against the snowy landscape, and he is enchanted by her exotic difference from the society ladies he knows. She appears to expect him when she says, "Ah, you've come." For the first time, he imagines her embrace and his total attraction to her is evident. When Beaufort arrives, Newland measures his chances with the Countess against Beaufort's and considers what might attract her to Beaufort. Even when he is back in New York, Newland cannot focus on his beloved new books, except for a book of poetry that raises his passionate longing. In considering a future without Ellen, Newland realizes, he is suffocating in the future planned for him by his upbringing and his promises. His decision to flee to Florida and May causes the reader to question whether he is trying to fight his temptation for the Countess -- a socially unthinkable attraction -- or his decision to pursue his social duty and stay with May. Glossary bock a dark beer traditionally drunk in the early spring. epistolary style of or suitable to letters or letter writing. Here, the distinct manner of the Countess' letter writing. grand tour a tour of continental Europe, formerly taken by young men of the British aristocracy to complete their education.


When Archer walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine to the
house which had been pointed out to him as Mr. Welland's, and saw May
Welland standing under a magnolia with the sun in her hair, he wondered
why he had waited so long to come.

Here was the truth, here was reality, here was the life that belonged
to him; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary
restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what
people might think of his stealing a holiday!

Her first exclamation was:  "Newland--has anything happened?" and it
occurred to him that it would have been more "feminine" if she had
instantly read in his eyes why he had come.  But when he answered:
"Yes--I found I had to see you," her happy blushes took the chill from
her surprise, and he saw how easily he would be forgiven, and how soon
even Mr. Letterblair's mild disapproval would be smiled away by a
tolerant family.

Early as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal
greetings, and Archer longed to be alone with May, and to pour out all
his tenderness and his impatience.  It still lacked an hour to the late
Welland breakfast-time, and instead of asking him to come in she
proposed that they should walk out to an old orange-garden beyond the
town.  She had just been for a row on the river, and the sun that
netted the little waves with gold seemed to have caught her in its
meshes.  Across the warm brown of her cheek her blown hair glittered
like silver wire; and her eyes too looked lighter, almost pale in their
youthful limpidity.  As she walked beside Archer with her long swinging
gait her face wore the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete.

To Archer's strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of
the blue sky and the lazy river.  They sat down on a bench under the
orange-trees and he put his arm about her and kissed her.  It was like
drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it; but his pressure may have
been more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face
and she drew back as if he had startled her.

"What is it?" he asked, smiling; and she looked at him with surprise,
and answered:  "Nothing."

A slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his.
It was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for
their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort conservatory, and he saw that
she was disturbed, and shaken out of her cool boyish composure.

"Tell me what you do all day," he said, crossing his arms under his
tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.
To let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way of
carrying on his own independent train of thought; and he sat listening
to her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing and riding, varied by an
occasional dance at the primitive inn when a man-of-war came in.  A few
pleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were picknicking at the
inn, and the Selfridge Merrys had come down for three weeks because
Kate Merry had had bronchitis.  They were planning to lay out a lawn
tennis court on the sands; but no one but Kate and May had racquets,
and most of the people had not even heard of the game.

All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than
look at the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before
(the "Sonnets from the Portuguese"); but she was learning by heart "How
they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," because it was one of
the first things he had ever read to her; and it amused her to be able
to tell him that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called
Robert Browning.

Presently she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for
breakfast; and they hurried back to the tumble-down house with its
pointless porch and unpruned hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums where
the Wellands were installed for the winter.  Mr. Welland's sensitive
domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel,
and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties,
Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise an
establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and
partly drawn from the local African supply.

"The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home;
otherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any
good," she explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising
Philadelphians and Baltimoreans; and Mr. Welland, beaming across a
breakfast table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies,
was presently saying to Archer: "You see, my dear fellow, we camp--we
literally camp.  I tell my wife and May that I want to teach them how
to rough it."

Mr. and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised as their daughter by
the young man's sudden arrival; but it had occurred to him to explain
that he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed
to Mr. Welland an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty.

"You can't be too careful, especially toward spring," he said, heaping
his plate with straw-coloured griddle-cakes and drowning them in golden
syrup.  "If I'd only been as prudent at your age May would have been
dancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a
wilderness with an old invalid."

"Oh, but I love it here, Papa; you know I do.  If only Newland could
stay I should like it a thousand times better than New York."

"Newland must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold," said Mrs.
Welland indulgently; and the young man laughed, and said he supposed
there was such a thing as one's profession.

He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to
make his cold last a week; and it shed an ironic light on the situation
to know that Mr. Letterblair's indulgence was partly due to the
satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had
settled the troublesome matter of the Olenski divorce.  Mr. Letterblair
had let Mrs. Welland know that Mr. Archer had "rendered an invaluable
service" to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingott had been
particularly pleased; and one day when May had gone for a drive with
her father in the only vehicle the place produced Mrs. Welland took
occasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter's
presence.

"I'm afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours.  She was barely
eighteen when Medora Manson took her back to Europe--you remember the
excitement when she appeared in black at her coming-out ball?  Another
of Medora's fads--really this time it was almost prophetic!  That must
have been at least twelve years ago; and since then Ellen has never
been to America.  No wonder she is completely Europeanised."

"But European society is not given to divorce: Countess Olenska thought
she would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom."
It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since
he had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek.

Mrs. Welland smiled compassionately.  "That is just like the
extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we
dine at two o'clock and countenance divorce!  That is why it seems to
me so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York.  They
accept our hospitality, and then they go home and repeat the same
stupid stories."

Archer made no comment on this, and Mrs. Welland continued:  "But we do
most thoroughly appreciate your persuading Ellen to give up the idea.
Her grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her; both of
them have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your
influence--in fact she said so to her grandmother.  She has an
unbounded admiration for you.  Poor Ellen--she was always a wayward
child.  I wonder what her fate will be?"

"What we've all contrived to make it," he felt like answering.  "If
you'd all of you rather she should be Beaufort's mistress than some
decent fellow's wife you've certainly gone the right way about it."

He wondered what Mrs. Welland would have said if he had uttered the
words instead of merely thinking them.  He could picture the sudden
decomposure of her firm placid features, to which a lifelong mastery
over trifles had given an air of factitious authority.  Traces still
lingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughter's; and he asked
himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged
image of invincible innocence.

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the
innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against
experience!

"I verily believe," Mrs. Welland continued, "that if the horrible
business had come out in the newspapers it would have been my husband's
death-blow.  I don't know any of the details; I only ask not to, as I
told poor Ellen when she tried to talk to me about it.  Having an
invalid to care for, I have to keep my mind bright and happy.  But Mr.
Welland was terribly upset; he had a slight temperature every morning
while we were waiting to hear what had been decided.  It was the horror
of his girl's learning that such things were possible--but of course,
dear Newland, you felt that too.  We all knew that you were thinking of
May."

"I'm always thinking of May," the young man rejoined, rising to cut
short the conversation.

He had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs.
Welland to urge her to advance the date of his marriage.  But he could
think of no arguments that would move her, and with a sense of relief
he saw Mr. Welland and May driving up to the door.

His only hope was to plead again with May, and on the day before his
departure he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish
Mission.  The background lent itself to allusions to European scenes;
and May, who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that
cast a shadow of mystery over her too-clear eyes, kindled into
eagerness as he spoke of Granada and the Alhambra.

"We might be seeing it all this spring--even the Easter ceremonies at
Seville," he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger
concession.

"Easter in Seville?  And it will be Lent next week!" she laughed.

"Why shouldn't we be married in Lent?" he rejoined; but she looked so
shocked that he saw his mistake.

"Of course I didn't mean that, dearest; but soon after Easter--so that
we could sail at the end of April.  I know I could arrange it at the
office."

She smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to
dream of it sufficed her.  It was like hearing him read aloud out of
his poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in
real life.

"Oh, do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions."

"But why should they be only descriptions?  Why shouldn't we make them
real?"

"We shall, dearest, of course; next year."  Her voice lingered over it.

"Don't you want them to be real sooner?  Can't I persuade you to break
away now?"

She bowed her head, vanishing from him under her conniving hat-brim.

"Why should we dream away another year?  Look at me, dear!  Don't you
understand how I want you for my wife?"

For a moment she remained motionless; then she raised on him eyes of
such despairing dearness that he half-released her waist from his hold.
But suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably.  "I'm not sure
if I DO understand," she said.  "Is it--is it because you're not
certain of continuing to care for me?"

Archer sprang up from his seat.  "My God--perhaps--I don't know," he
broke out angrily.

May Welland rose also; as they faced each other she seemed to grow in
womanly stature and dignity.  Both were silent for a moment, as if
dismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words: then she said in a low
voice: "If that is it--is there some one else?"

"Some one else--between you and me?"  He echoed her words slowly, as
though they were only half-intelligible and he wanted time to repeat
the question to himself.  She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his
voice, for she went on in a deepening tone:  "Let us talk frankly,
Newland.  Sometimes I've felt a difference in you; especially since our
engagement has been announced."

"Dear--what madness!" he recovered himself to exclaim.

She met his protest with a faint smile.  "If it is, it won't hurt us to
talk about it."  She paused, and added, lifting her head with one of
her noble movements:  "Or even if it's true: why shouldn't we speak of
it?  You might so easily have made a mistake."

He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern on the sunny
path at their feet.  "Mistakes are always easy to make; but if I had
made one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be
imploring you to hasten our marriage?"

She looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her
sunshade while she struggled for expression.  "Yes," she said at
length.  "You might want--once for all--to settle the question: it's
one way."

Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking
her insensible.  Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile,
and a slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips.

"Well--?" he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at
her with a frown that he tried to make playful.

She dropped back into her seat and went on:  "You mustn't think that a
girl knows as little as her parents imagine.  One hears and one
notices--one has one's feelings and ideas.  And of course, long before
you told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was some one
else you were interested in; every one was talking about it two years
ago at Newport.  And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at
a dance--and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I
felt sorry for her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged."

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and
unclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade.  The young man
laid his upon them with a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with an
inexpressible relief.

"My dear child--was THAT it?  If you only knew the truth!"

She raised her head quickly.  "Then there is a truth I don't know?"

He kept his hand over hers.  "I meant, the truth about the old story
you speak of."

"But that's what I want to know, Newland--what I ought to know.  I
couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong--an unfairness--to
somebody else.  And I want to believe that it would be the same with
you.  What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?"

Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like
bowing himself down at her feet.  "I've wanted to say this for a long
time," she went on.  "I've wanted to tell you that, when two people
really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which
make it right that they should--should go against public opinion.  And
if you feel yourself in any way pledged ... pledged to the person we've
spoken of ...  and if there is any way ... any way in which you can
fulfill your pledge ... even by her getting a divorce ...  Newland,
don't give her up because of me!"

His surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode
so remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs.
Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view.
There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox,
and if other problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in
wonder at the prodigy of the Wellands' daughter urging him to marry his
former mistress.  But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the
precipice they had skirted, and full of a new awe at the mystery of
young-girlhood.

For a moment he could not speak; then he said: "There is no pledge--no
obligation whatever--of the kind you think.  Such cases don't
always--present themselves quite as simply as ... But that's no matter
... I love your generosity, because I feel as you do about those things
... I feel that each case must be judged individually, on its own
merits ... irrespective of stupid conventionalities ... I mean, each
woman's right to her liberty--"  He pulled himself up, startled by the
turn his thoughts had taken, and went on, looking at her with a smile:
"Since you understand so many things, dearest, can't you go a little
farther, and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another
form of the same foolish conventionalities?  If there's no one and
nothing between us, isn't that an argument for marrying quickly, rather
than for more delay?"

She flushed with joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he
saw that her eyes were full of happy tears.  But in another moment she
seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and
timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative
were all for others, and that she had none for herself.  It was evident
that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied
composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had
dropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in
its mother's arms.

Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her; he was too much
disappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one
deep look at him from her transparent eyes.  May seemed to be aware of
his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and they
stood up and walked silently home.

"Your cousin the Countess called on mother while you were away," Janey
Archer announced to her brother on the evening of his return.

The young man, who was dining alone with his mother and sister, glanced
up in surprise and saw Mrs. Archer's gaze demurely bent on her plate.
Mrs. Archer did not regard her seclusion from the world as a reason for
being forgotten by it; and Newland guessed that she was slightly
annoyed that he should be surprised by Madame Olenska's visit.

"She had on a black velvet polonaise with jet buttons, and a tiny green
monkey muff; I never saw her so stylishly dressed," Janey continued.
"She came alone, early on Sunday afternoon; luckily the fire was lit in
the drawing-room.  She had one of those new card-cases.  She said she
wanted to know us because you'd been so good to her."

Newland laughed.  "Madame Olenska always takes that tone about her
friends.  She's very happy at being among her own people again."

"Yes, so she told us," said Mrs. Archer.  "I must say she seems
thankful to be here."

"I hope you liked her, mother."

Mrs. Archer drew her lips together.  "She certainly lays herself out to
please, even when she is calling on an old lady."

"Mother doesn't think her simple," Janey interjected, her eyes screwed
upon her brother's face.

"It's just my old-fashioned feeling; dear May is my ideal," said Mrs.
Archer.

"Ah," said her son, "they're not alike."

Archer had left St. Augustine charged with many messages for old Mrs.
Mingott; and a day or two after his return to town he called on her.

The old lady received him with unusual warmth; she was grateful to him
for persuading the Countess Olenska to give up the idea of a divorce;
and when he told her that he had deserted the office without leave, and
rushed down to St. Augustine simply because he wanted to see May, she
gave an adipose chuckle and patted his knee with her puff-ball hand.

"Ah, ah--so you kicked over the traces, did you?  And I suppose Augusta
and Welland pulled long faces, and behaved as if the end of the world
had come?  But little May--she knew better, I'll be bound?"

"I hoped she did; but after all she wouldn't agree to what I'd gone
down to ask for."

"Wouldn't she indeed?  And what was that?"

"I wanted to get her to promise that we should be married in April.
What's the use of our wasting another year?"

Mrs. Manson Mingott screwed up her little mouth into a grimace of mimic
prudery and twinkled at him through malicious lids.  "'Ask Mamma,' I
suppose--the usual story.  Ah, these Mingotts--all alike!  Born in a
rut, and you can't root 'em out of it.  When I built this house you'd
have thought I was moving to California!  Nobody ever HAD built above
Fortieth Street--no, says I, nor above the Battery either, before
Christopher Columbus discovered America.  No, no; not one of them wants
to be different; they're as scared of it as the small-pox.  Ah, my dear
Mr. Archer, I thank my stars I'm nothing but a vulgar Spicer; but
there's not one of my own children that takes after me but my little
Ellen."  She broke off, still twinkling at him, and asked, with the
casual irrelevance of old age:  "Now, why in the world didn't you marry
my little Ellen?"

Archer laughed.  "For one thing, she wasn't there to be married."

"No--to be sure; more's the pity.  And now it's too late; her life is
finished."  She spoke with the cold-blooded complacency of the aged
throwing earth into the grave of young hopes.  The young man's heart
grew chill, and he said hurriedly:  "Can't I persuade you to use your
influence with the Wellands, Mrs. Mingott?  I wasn't made for long
engagements."

Old Catherine beamed on him approvingly.  "No; I can see that.  You've
got a quick eye.  When you were a little boy I've no doubt you liked to
be helped first." She threw back her head with a laugh that made her
chins ripple like little waves.  "Ah, here's my Ellen now!" she
exclaimed, as the portieres parted behind her.

Madame Olenska came forward with a smile.  Her face looked vivid and
happy, and she held out her hand gaily to Archer while she stooped to
her grandmother's kiss.

"I was just saying to him, my dear:  'Now, why didn't you marry my
little Ellen?'"

Madame Olenska looked at Archer, still smiling.  "And what did he
answer?"

"Oh, my darling, I leave you to find that out!  He's been down to
Florida to see his sweetheart."

"Yes, I know."  She still looked at him.  "I went to see your mother,
to ask where you'd gone.  I sent a note that you never answered, and I
was afraid you were ill."

He muttered something about leaving unexpectedly, in a great hurry, and
having intended to write to her from St. Augustine.

"And of course once you were there you never thought of me again!"  She
continued to beam on him with a gaiety that might have been a studied
assumption of indifference.

"If she still needs me, she's determined not to let me see it," he
thought, stung by her manner.  He wanted to thank her for having been
to see his mother, but under the ancestress's malicious eye he felt
himself tongue-tied and constrained.

"Look at him--in such hot haste to get married that he took French
leave and rushed down to implore the silly girl on his knees!  That's
something like a lover--that's the way handsome Bob Spicer carried off
my poor mother; and then got tired of her before I was weaned--though
they only had to wait eight months for me!  But there--you're not a
Spicer, young man; luckily for you and for May.  It's only my poor
Ellen that has kept any of their wicked blood; the rest of them are all
model Mingotts," cried the old lady scornfully.

Archer was aware that Madame Olenska, who had seated herself at her
grandmother's side, was still thoughtfully scrutinising him.  The
gaiety had faded from her eyes, and she said with great gentleness:
"Surely, Granny, we can persuade them between us to do as he wishes."

Archer rose to go, and as his hand met Madame Olenska's he felt that
she was waiting for him to make some allusion to her unanswered letter.

"When can I see you?" he asked, as she walked with him to the door of
the room.

"Whenever you like; but it must be soon if you want to see the little
house again.  I am moving next week."

A pang shot through him at the memory of his lamplit hours in the
low-studded drawing-room.  Few as they had been, they were thick with
memories.

"Tomorrow evening?"

She nodded.  "Tomorrow; yes; but early.  I'm going out."

The next day was a Sunday, and if she were "going out" on a Sunday
evening it could, of course, be only to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's.  He
felt a slight movement of annoyance, not so much at her going there
(for he rather liked her going where she pleased in spite of the van
der Luydens), but because it was the kind of house at which she was
sure to meet Beaufort, where she must have known beforehand that she
would meet him--and where she was probably going for that purpose.

"Very well; tomorrow evening," he repeated, inwardly resolved that he
would not go early, and that by reaching her door late he would either
prevent her from going to Mrs. Struthers's, or else arrive after she
had started--which, all things considered, would no doubt be the
simplest solution.

It was only half-past eight, after all, when he rang the bell under the
wisteria; not as late as he had intended by half an hour--but a
singular restlessness had driven him to her door.  He reflected,
however, that Mrs. Struthers's Sunday evenings were not like a ball,
and that her guests, as if to minimise their delinquency, usually went
early.

The one thing he had not counted on, in entering Madame Olenska's hall,
was to find hats and overcoats there.  Why had she bidden him to come
early if she was having people to dine?  On a closer inspection of the
garments besides which Nastasia was laying his own, his resentment gave
way to curiosity.  The overcoats were in fact the very strangest he had
ever seen under a polite roof; and it took but a glance to assure
himself that neither of them belonged to Julius Beaufort.  One was a
shaggy yellow ulster of "reach-me-down" cut, the other a very old and
rusty cloak with a cape--something like what the French called a
"Macfarlane." This garment, which appeared to be made for a person of
prodigious size, had evidently seen long and hard wear, and its
greenish-black folds gave out a moist sawdusty smell suggestive of
prolonged sessions against bar-room walls.  On it lay a ragged grey
scarf and an odd felt hat of semiclerical shape.

Archer raised his eyebrows enquiringly at Nastasia, who raised hers in
return with a fatalistic "Gia!" as she threw open the drawing-room door.

The young man saw at once that his hostess was not in the room; then,
with surprise, he discovered another lady standing by the fire.  This
lady, who was long, lean and loosely put together, was clad in raiment
intricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of
plain colour disposed in a design to which the clue seemed missing.
Her hair, which had tried to turn white and only succeeded in fading,
was surmounted by a Spanish comb and black lace scarf, and silk
mittens, visibly darned, covered her rheumatic hands.

Beside her, in a cloud of cigar-smoke, stood the owners of the two
overcoats, both in morning clothes that they had evidently not taken
off since morning.  In one of the two, Archer, to his surprise,
recognised Ned Winsett; the other and older, who was unknown to him,
and whose gigantic frame declared him to be the wearer of the
"Macfarlane," had a feebly leonine head with crumpled grey hair, and
moved his arms with large pawing gestures, as though he were
distributing lay blessings to a kneeling multitude.

These three persons stood together on the hearth-rug, their eyes fixed
on an extraordinarily large bouquet of crimson roses, with a knot of
purple pansies at their base, that lay on the sofa where Madame Olenska
usually sat.

"What they must have cost at this season--though of course it's the
sentiment one cares about!" the lady was saying in a sighing staccato
as Archer came in.

The three turned with surprise at his appearance, and the lady,
advancing, held out her hand.

"Dear Mr. Archer--almost my cousin Newland!" she said.  "I am the
Marchioness Manson."

Archer bowed, and she continued:  "My Ellen has taken me in for a few
days.  I came from Cuba, where I have been spending the winter with
Spanish friends--such delightful distinguished people: the highest
nobility of old Castile--how I wish you could know them!  But I was
called away by our dear great friend here, Dr. Carver.  You don't know
Dr. Agathon Carver, founder of the Valley of Love Community?"

Dr. Carver inclined his leonine head, and the Marchioness continued:
"Ah, New York--New York--how little the life of the spirit has reached
it!  But I see you do know Mr. Winsett."

"Oh, yes--I reached him some time ago; but not by that route," Winsett
said with his dry smile.

The Marchioness shook her head reprovingly.  "How do you know, Mr.
Winsett?  The spirit bloweth where it listeth."

"List--oh, list!" interjected Dr. Carver in a stentorian murmur.

"But do sit down, Mr. Archer.  We four have been having a delightful
little dinner together, and my child has gone up to dress.  She expects
you; she will be down in a moment.  We were just admiring these
marvellous flowers, which will surprise her when she reappears."

Winsett remained on his feet.  "I'm afraid I must be off.  Please tell
Madame Olenska that we shall all feel lost when she abandons our
street.  This house has been an oasis."

"Ah, but she won't abandon YOU.  Poetry and art are the breath of life
to her.  It IS poetry you write, Mr. Winsett?"

"Well, no; but I sometimes read it," said Winsett, including the group
in a general nod and slipping out of the room.

"A caustic spirit--un peu sauvage.  But so witty; Dr. Carver, you DO
think him witty?"

"I never think of wit," said Dr. Carver severely.

"Ah--ah--you never think of wit!  How merciless he is to us weak
mortals, Mr. Archer!  But he lives only in the life of the spirit; and
tonight he is mentally preparing the lecture he is to deliver presently
at Mrs. Blenker's.  Dr. Carver, would there be time, before you start
for the Blenkers' to explain to Mr. Archer your illuminating discovery
of the Direct Contact?  But no; I see it is nearly nine o'clock, and we
have no right to detain you while so many are waiting for your message."

Dr. Carver looked slightly disappointed at this conclusion, but, having
compared his ponderous gold time-piece with Madame Olenska's little
travelling-clock, he reluctantly gathered up his mighty limbs for
departure.

"I shall see you later, dear friend?" he suggested to the Marchioness,
who replied with a smile:  "As soon as Ellen's carriage comes I will
join you; I do hope the lecture won't have begun."

Dr. Carver looked thoughtfully at Archer.  "Perhaps, if this young
gentleman is interested in my experiences, Mrs. Blenker might allow you
to bring him with you?"

"Oh, dear friend, if it were possible--I am sure she would be too
happy.  But I fear my Ellen counts on Mr. Archer herself."

"That," said Dr. Carver, "is unfortunate--but here is my card."  He
handed it to Archer, who read on it, in Gothic characters:

  +---------------------------+
  |      Agathon Carver       |
  |    The Valley of Love     |
  |   Kittasquattamy, N. Y.   |
  +---------------------------+

Dr. Carver bowed himself out, and Mrs. Manson, with a sigh that might
have been either of regret or relief, again waved Archer to a seat.

"Ellen will be down in a moment; and before she comes, I am so glad of
this quiet moment with you."

Archer murmured his pleasure at their meeting, and the Marchioness
continued, in her low sighing accents: "I know everything, dear Mr.
Archer--my child has told me all you have done for her.  Your wise
advice: your courageous firmness--thank heaven it was not too late!"

The young man listened with considerable embarrassment.  Was there any
one, he wondered, to whom Madame Olenska had not proclaimed his
intervention in her private affairs?

"Madame Olenska exaggerates; I simply gave her a legal opinion, as she
asked me to."

"Ah, but in doing it--in doing it you were the unconscious instrument
of--of--what word have we moderns for Providence, Mr. Archer?" cried
the lady, tilting her head on one side and drooping her lids
mysteriously.  "Little did you know that at that very moment I was
being appealed to: being approached, in fact--from the other side of
the Atlantic!"

She glanced over her shoulder, as though fearful of being overheard,
and then, drawing her chair nearer, and raising a tiny ivory fan to her
lips, breathed behind it:  "By the Count himself--my poor, mad, foolish
Olenski; who asks only to take her back on her own terms."

"Good God!" Archer exclaimed, springing up.

"You are horrified?  Yes, of course; I understand.  I don't defend poor
Stanislas, though he has always called me his best friend.  He does not
defend himself--he casts himself at her feet: in my person."  She
tapped her emaciated bosom.  "I have his letter here."

"A letter?--Has Madame Olenska seen it?" Archer stammered, his brain
whirling with the shock of the announcement.

The Marchioness Manson shook her head softly.  "Time--time; I must have
time.  I know my Ellen--haughty, intractable; shall I say, just a shade
unforgiving?"

"But, good heavens, to forgive is one thing; to go back into that
hell--"

"Ah, yes," the Marchioness acquiesced.  "So she describes it--my
sensitive child!  But on the material side, Mr. Archer, if one may
stoop to consider such things; do you know what she is giving up?
Those roses there on the sofa--acres like them, under glass and in the
open, in his matchless terraced gardens at Nice!  Jewels--historic
pearls: the Sobieski emeralds--sables,--but she cares nothing for all
these!  Art and beauty, those she does care for, she lives for, as I
always have; and those also surrounded her.  Pictures, priceless
furniture, music, brilliant conversation--ah, that, my dear young man,
if you'll excuse me, is what you've no conception of here!  And she had
it all; and the homage of the greatest.  She tells me she is not
thought handsome in New York--good heavens!  Her portrait has been
painted nine times; the greatest artists in Europe have begged for the
privilege.  Are these things nothing?  And the remorse of an adoring
husband?"

As the Marchioness Manson rose to her climax her face assumed an
expression of ecstatic retrospection which would have moved Archer's
mirth had he not been numb with amazement.

He would have laughed if any one had foretold to him that his first
sight of poor Medora Manson would have been in the guise of a messenger
of Satan; but he was in no mood for laughing now, and she seemed to him
to come straight out of the hell from which Ellen Olenska had just
escaped.

"She knows nothing yet--of all this?" he asked abruptly.

Mrs. Manson laid a purple finger on her lips.  "Nothing directly--but
does she suspect?  Who can tell?  The truth is, Mr. Archer, I have been
waiting to see you.  From the moment I heard of the firm stand you had
taken, and of your influence over her, I hoped it might be possible to
count on your support--to convince you ..."

"That she ought to go back?  I would rather see her dead!" cried the
young man violently.

"Ah," the Marchioness murmured, without visible resentment.  For a
while she sat in her arm-chair, opening and shutting the absurd ivory
fan between her mittened fingers; but suddenly she lifted her head and
listened.

"Here she comes," she said in a rapid whisper; and then, pointing to
the bouquet on the sofa:  "Am I to understand that you prefer THAT, Mr.
Archer?  After all, marriage is marriage ... and my niece is still a
wife..."

When Newland sees May in St. Augustine, he feels assured that their engagement is the right thing to do. He tries to think of an argument to persuade Mrs. Welland to agree to an earlier wedding date, but cannot. Nor can Newland persuade May, who fears that he has changed and innocently asks if he has "someone else" in his life. She says that Newland can end their engagement and she will understand. Newland is momentarily frightened, but then the veil of innocence again covers her eyes and he assures her there is no one else. Returning home, Newland has dinner with his mother and sister Janey, and he learns that the Countess visited them while he was away. He calls on old Mrs. Mingott to intercede on his behalf over the wedding date. During their conversation Ellen arrives, and, as he leaves, Newland quietly makes a time to see her the following evening. When he arrives the next night, the Marchioness Manson, Ned Winsett, and a Dr. Agathon Carver are in the Countess's drawing room. Crimson roses are evidence of Beaufort's continuing pursuit. When the gentlemen leave, Mrs. Manson thanks Newland for his concern over Ellen and begs him to send Ellen back to the Count because she is giving up a huge fortune for an inferior social position.

Newland views May and her mother as totally innocent, unimaginative women who stubbornly stick to "stupid conventionalities." Behind Mrs. Welland's concern for the future of her daughter, however, is an iron will that he somehow misses. Mrs. Welland has no compassion or sympathy for Ellen's predicament, strongly disapproves of "foreigners," totally rejects any discussion or approval of divorce, and consistently rejects arguments to change the wedding date because it might violate the dictates of the season. May is not as unimaginative as Newland thinks. Sensing something terribly wrong, she trammels on customary etiquette and speaks out about her fears. When she offers to sacrifice herself, Newland admires her generosity and selfless devotion to his happiness. No, nothing is wrong if they can push the wedding up before he is overcome by his growing attraction to the Countess. May has fought back in a way she knows will succeed: Newland is not going to defy convention and break off a well-advertised engagement to the perfect wife. Wharton is approaching the end of her first book and must increase the pressure on Newland Archer to act. She does so in three cryptic conversations that take place in Chapter 17. The first conversation is with Newland, Janey, and Mrs. Archer. When Newland expresses surprise that the Countess called, Mrs. Archer looks down at her plate and Newland thinks she is annoyed at his surprise. Perhaps, however, she is hiding her concern over Newland's friendship with the Countess. She certainly hints at that by comparing Ellen to "her ideal" -- May. The second conversation occurs with old Mrs. Mingott, who playfully asks why he did not marry Ellen, and then mentions that it is too late now. Under her watchful eye, Newland and Ellen exchange messages that are, as always, in code. When he hears she is going out the following evening, he is annoyed that it is probably with Beaufort, again conveying his attraction. The final conversation with Mrs. Manson reveals the irony of Newland's position. Mrs. Manson implores Newland to help Ellen have the best life. That life is married to the rich Count under their social rules. When Newland says he would rather see her in hell than back with the Count, Mrs. Manson asks him if he is being selfish and would an affair with a rich man be a better choice than being a rich, but legally married lady? Glossary polonaise an eighteenth-century dress with the skirt divided in front and worn looped back over an elaborate underskirt. French leave an unauthorized, unnoticed, or unceremonious departure; the act of leaving secretly or in haste.


"What are you two plotting together, aunt Medora?" Madame Olenska cried
as she came into the room.

She was dressed as if for a ball.  Everything about her shimmered and
glimmered softly, as if her dress had been woven out of candle-beams;
and she carried her head high, like a pretty woman challenging a
roomful of rivals.

"We were saying, my dear, that here was something beautiful to surprise
you with," Mrs. Manson rejoined, rising to her feet and pointing archly
to the flowers.

Madame Olenska stopped short and looked at the bouquet.  Her colour did
not change, but a sort of white radiance of anger ran over her like
summer lightning.  "Ah," she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that the
young man had never heard, "who is ridiculous enough to send me a
bouquet?  Why a bouquet?  And why tonight of all nights?  I am not
going to a ball; I am not a girl engaged to be married.  But some
people are always ridiculous."

She turned back to the door, opened it, and called out:  "Nastasia!"

The ubiquitous handmaiden promptly appeared, and Archer heard Madame
Olenska say, in an Italian that she seemed to pronounce with
intentional deliberateness in order that he might follow it:
"Here--throw this into the dustbin!" and then, as Nastasia stared
protestingly:  "But no--it's not the fault of the poor flowers.  Tell
the boy to carry them to the house three doors away, the house of Mr.
Winsett, the dark gentleman who dined here.  His wife is ill--they may
give her pleasure ... The boy is out, you say?  Then, my dear one, run
yourself; here, put my cloak over you and fly.  I want the thing out of
the house immediately!  And, as you live, don't say they come from me!"

She flung her velvet opera cloak over the maid's shoulders and turned
back into the drawing-room, shutting the door sharply.  Her bosom was
rising high under its lace, and for a moment Archer thought she was
about to cry; but she burst into a laugh instead, and looking from the
Marchioness to Archer, asked abruptly: "And you two--have you made
friends!"

"It's for Mr. Archer to say, darling; he has waited patiently while you
were dressing."

"Yes--I gave you time enough: my hair wouldn't go," Madame Olenska
said, raising her hand to the heaped-up curls of her chignon.  "But
that reminds me: I see Dr. Carver is gone, and you'll be late at the
Blenkers'.  Mr. Archer, will you put my aunt in the carriage?"

She followed the Marchioness into the hall, saw her fitted into a
miscellaneous heap of overshoes, shawls and tippets, and called from
the doorstep:  "Mind, the carriage is to be back for me at ten!"  Then
she returned to the drawing-room, where Archer, on re-entering it,
found her standing by the mantelpiece, examining herself in the mirror.
It was not usual, in New York society, for a lady to address her
parlour-maid as "my dear one," and send her out on an errand wrapped in
her own opera-cloak; and Archer, through all his deeper feelings,
tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action
followed on emotion with such Olympian speed.

Madame Olenska did not move when he came up behind her, and for a
second their eyes met in the mirror; then she turned, threw herself
into her sofa-corner, and sighed out:  "There's time for a cigarette."

He handed her the box and lit a spill for her; and as the flame flashed
up into her face she glanced at him with laughing eyes and said:  "What
do you think of me in a temper?"

Archer paused a moment; then he answered with sudden resolution:  "It
makes me understand what your aunt has been saying about you."

"I knew she'd been talking about me.  Well?"

"She said you were used to all kinds of things--splendours and
amusements and excitements--that we could never hope to give you here."

Madame Olenska smiled faintly into the circle of smoke about her lips.

"Medora is incorrigibly romantic.  It has made up to her for so many
things!"

Archer hesitated again, and again took his risk.  "Is your aunt's
romanticism always consistent with accuracy?"

"You mean: does she speak the truth?"  Her niece considered.  "Well,
I'll tell you: in almost everything she says, there's something true
and something untrue.  But why do you ask?  What has she been telling
you?"

He looked away into the fire, and then back at her shining presence.
His heart tightened with the thought that this was their last evening
by that fireside, and that in a moment the carriage would come to carry
her away.

"She says--she pretends that Count Olenski has asked her to persuade
you to go back to him."

Madame Olenska made no answer.  She sat motionless, holding her
cigarette in her half-lifted hand.  The expression of her face had not
changed; and Archer remembered that he had before noticed her apparent
incapacity for surprise.

"You knew, then?" he broke out.

She was silent for so long that the ash dropped from her cigarette.
She brushed it to the floor.  "She has hinted about a letter: poor
darling!  Medora's hints--"

"Is it at your husband's request that she has arrived here suddenly?"

Madame Olenska seemed to consider this question also.  "There again:
one can't tell.  She told me she had had a 'spiritual summons,'
whatever that is, from Dr. Carver.  I'm afraid she's going to marry Dr.
Carver ...  poor Medora, there's always some one she wants to marry.
But perhaps the people in Cuba just got tired of her!  I think she was
with them as a sort of paid companion.  Really, I don't know why she
came."

"But you do believe she has a letter from your husband?"

Again Madame Olenska brooded silently; then she said:  "After all, it
was to be expected."

The young man rose and went to lean against the fireplace.  A sudden
restlessness possessed him, and he was tongue-tied by the sense that
their minutes were numbered, and that at any moment he might hear the
wheels of the returning carriage.

"You know that your aunt believes you will go back?"

Madame Olenska raised her head quickly.  A deep blush rose to her face
and spread over her neck and shoulders.  She blushed seldom and
painfully, as if it hurt her like a burn.

"Many cruel things have been believed of me," she said.

"Oh, Ellen--forgive me; I'm a fool and a brute!"

She smiled a little.  "You are horribly nervous; you have your own
troubles.  I know you think the Wellands are unreasonable about your
marriage, and of course I agree with you.  In Europe people don't
understand our long American engagements; I suppose they are not as
calm as we are."  She pronounced the "we" with a faint emphasis that
gave it an ironic sound.

Archer felt the irony but did not dare to take it up.  After all, she
had perhaps purposely deflected the conversation from her own affairs,
and after the pain his last words had evidently caused her he felt that
all he could do was to follow her lead.  But the sense of the waning
hour made him desperate: he could not bear the thought that a barrier
of words should drop between them again.

"Yes," he said abruptly; "I went south to ask May to marry me after
Easter.  There's no reason why we shouldn't be married then."

"And May adores you--and yet you couldn't convince her?  I thought her
too intelligent to be the slave of such absurd superstitions."

"She IS too intelligent--she's not their slave."

Madame Olenska looked at him.  "Well, then--I don't understand."

Archer reddened, and hurried on with a rush.  "We had a frank
talk--almost the first.  She thinks my impatience a bad sign."

"Merciful heavens--a bad sign?"

"She thinks it means that I can't trust myself to go on caring for her.
She thinks, in short, I want to marry her at once to get away from some
one that I--care for more."

Madame Olenska examined this curiously.  "But if she thinks that--why
isn't she in a hurry too?"

"Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler.  She insists all
the more on the long engagement, to give me time--"

"Time to give her up for the other woman?"

"If I want to."

Madame Olenska leaned toward the fire and gazed into it with fixed
eyes.  Down the quiet street Archer heard the approaching trot of her
horses.

"That IS noble," she said, with a slight break in her voice.

"Yes.  But it's ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?  Because you don't care for any one else?"

"Because I don't mean to marry any one else."

"Ah."  There was another long interval.  At length she looked up at him
and asked:  "This other woman--does she love you?"

"Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that May was thinking
of is--was never--"

"Then, why, after all, are you in such haste?"

"There's your carriage," said Archer.

She half-rose and looked about her with absent eyes.  Her fan and
gloves lay on the sofa beside her and she picked them up mechanically.

"Yes; I suppose I must be going."

"You're going to Mrs. Struthers's?"

"Yes."  She smiled and added:  "I must go where I am invited, or I
should be too lonely.  Why not come with me?"

Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, must make her
give him the rest of her evening.  Ignoring her question, he continued
to lean against the chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in which
she held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had the power
to make her drop them.

"May guessed the truth," he said.  "There is another woman--but not the
one she thinks."

Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move.  After a moment he sat
down beside her, and, taking her hand, softly unclasped it, so that the
gloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.

She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other
side of the hearth.  "Ah, don't make love to me!  Too many people have
done that," she said, frowning.

Archer, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke she
could have given him.  "I have never made love to you," he said, "and I
never shall.  But you are the woman I would have married if it had been
possible for either of us."

"Possible for either of us?"  She looked at him with unfeigned
astonishment.  "And you say that--when it's you who've made it
impossible?"

He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow
of light tore its blinding way.

"I'VE made it impossible--?"

"You, you, YOU!" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on the
verge of tears.  "Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give it
up because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must
sacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and to
spare one's family the publicity, the scandal?  And because my family
was going to be your family--for May's sake and for yours--I did what
you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do.  Ah," she broke
out with a sudden laugh, "I've made no secret of having done it for
you!"

She sank down on the sofa again, crouching among the festive ripples of
her dress like a stricken masquerader; and the young man stood by the
fireplace and continued to gaze at her without moving.

"Good God," he groaned.  "When I thought--"

"You thought?"

"Ah, don't ask me what I thought!"

Still looking at her, he saw the same burning flush creep up her neck
to her face.  She sat upright, facing him with a rigid dignity.

"I do ask you."

"Well, then: there were things in that letter you asked me to read--"

"My husband's letter?"

"Yes."

"I had nothing to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing!  All I
feared was to bring notoriety, scandal, on the family--on you and May."

"Good God," he groaned again, bowing his face in his hands.

The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things final
and irrevocable.  It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his
own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever
lift that load from his heart.  He did not move from his place, or
raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into
utter darkness.

"At least I loved you--" he brought out.

On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposed
that she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like a
child's.  He started up and came to her side.

"Ellen!  What madness!  Why are you crying?  Nothing's done that can't
be undone.  I'm still free, and you're going to be."  He had her in his
arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain
terrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise.  The one thing that
astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes
arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her
made everything so simple.

She gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt her
stiffening in his arms, and she put him aside and stood up.

"Ah, my poor Newland--I suppose this had to be.  But it doesn't in the
least alter things," she said, looking down at him in her turn from the
hearth.

"It alters the whole of life for me."

"No, no--it mustn't, it can't.  You're engaged to May Welland; and I'm
married."

He stood up too, flushed and resolute.  "Nonsense!  It's too late for
that sort of thing.  We've no right to lie to other people or to
ourselves.  We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying
May after this?"

She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, her
profile reflected in the glass behind her.  One of the locks of her
chignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggard
and almost old.

"I don't see you," she said at length, "putting that question to May.
Do you?"

He gave a reckless shrug.  "It's too late to do anything else."

"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment--not
because it's true.  In reality it's too late to do anything but what
we'd both decided on."

"Ah, I don't understand you!"

She forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face instead of smoothing
it.  "You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you've
changed things for me: oh, from the first--long before I knew all you'd
done."

"All I'd done?"

"Yes.  I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shy
of me--that they thought I was a dreadful sort of person.  It seems
they had even refused to meet me at dinner.  I found that out
afterward; and how you'd made your mother go with you to the van der
Luydens'; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at the
Beaufort ball, so that I might have two families to stand by me instead
of one--"

At that he broke into a laugh.

"Just imagine," she said, "how stupid and unobservant I was!  I knew
nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day.  New York
simply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home.  And I was so
happy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind and
good, and glad to see me.  But from the very beginning," she continued,
"I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons
that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard
and--unnecessary.  The very good people didn't convince me; I felt
they'd never been tempted.  But you knew; you understood; you had felt
the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands--and yet you
hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by
disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.  That was what I'd never known
before--and it's better than anything I've known."

She spoke in a low even voice, without tears or visible agitation; and
each word, as it dropped from her, fell into his breast like burning
lead.  He sat bowed over, his head between his hands, staring at the
hearthrug, and at the tip of the satin shoe that showed under her
dress.  Suddenly he knelt down and kissed the shoe.

She bent over him, laying her hands on his shoulders, and looking at
him with eyes so deep that he remained motionless under her gaze.

"Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!" she cried.  "I can't go back
now to that other way of thinking.  I can't love you unless I give you
up."

His arms were yearning up to her; but she drew away, and they remained
facing each other, divided by the distance that her words had created.
Then, abruptly, his anger overflowed.

"And Beaufort?  Is he to replace me?"

As the words sprang out he was prepared for an answering flare of
anger; and he would have welcomed it as fuel for his own.  But Madame
Olenska only grew a shade paler, and stood with her arms hanging down
before her, and her head slightly bent, as her way was when she
pondered a question.

"He's waiting for you now at Mrs. Struthers's; why don't you go to
him?" Archer sneered.

She turned to ring the bell.  "I shall not go out this evening; tell
the carriage to go and fetch the Signora Marchesa," she said when the
maid came.

After the door had closed again Archer continued to look at her with
bitter eyes.  "Why this sacrifice?  Since you tell me that you're
lonely I've no right to keep you from your friends."

She smiled a little under her wet lashes.  "I shan't be lonely now.  I
WAS lonely; I WAS afraid.  But the emptiness and the darkness are gone;
when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a
room where there's always a light."

Her tone and her look still enveloped her in a soft inaccessibility,
and Archer groaned out again:  "I don't understand you!"

"Yet you understand May!"

He reddened under the retort, but kept his eyes on her.  "May is ready
to give me up."

"What!  Three days after you've entreated her on your knees to hasten
your marriage?"

"She's refused; that gives me the right--"

"Ah, you've taught me what an ugly word that is," she said.

He turned away with a sense of utter weariness.  He felt as though he
had been struggling for hours up the face of a steep precipice, and
now, just as he had fought his way to the top, his hold had given way
and he was pitching down headlong into darkness.

If he could have got her in his arms again he might have swept away her
arguments; but she still held him at a distance by something
inscrutably aloof in her look and attitude, and by his own awed sense
of her sincerity.  At length he began to plead again.

"If we do this now it will be worse afterward--worse for every one--"

"No--no--no!" she almost screamed, as if he frightened her.

At that moment the bell sent a long tinkle through the house.  They had
heard no carriage stopping at the door, and they stood motionless,
looking at each other with startled eyes.

Outside, Nastasia's step crossed the hall, the outer door opened, and a
moment later she came in carrying a telegram which she handed to the
Countess Olenska.

"The lady was very happy at the flowers," Nastasia said, smoothing her
apron.  "She thought it was her signor marito who had sent them, and
she cried a little and said it was a folly."

Her mistress smiled and took the yellow envelope.  She tore it open and
carried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, she
handed the telegram to Archer.

It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Olenska.
In it he read:  "Granny's telegram successful.  Papa and Mamma agree
marriage after Easter.  Am telegraphing Newland.  Am too happy for
words and love you dearly.  Your grateful May."

Half an hour later, when Archer unlocked his own front-door, he found a
similar envelope on the hall-table on top of his pile of notes and
letters.  The message inside the envelope was also from May Welland,
and ran as follows:  "Parents consent wedding Tuesday after Easter at
twelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids please see Rector so happy love
May."

Archer crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture could annihilate
the news it contained.  Then he pulled out a small pocket-diary and
turned over the pages with trembling fingers; but he did not find what
he wanted, and cramming the telegram into his pocket he mounted the
stairs.

A light was shining through the door of the little hall-room which
served Janey as a dressing-room and boudoir, and her brother rapped
impatiently on the panel.  The door opened, and his sister stood before
him in her immemorial purple flannel dressing-gown, with her hair "on
pins."  Her face looked pale and apprehensive.

"Newland!  I hope there's no bad news in that telegram?  I waited on
purpose, in case--"  (No item of his correspondence was safe from
Janey.)

He took no notice of her question.  "Look here--what day is Easter this
year?"

She looked shocked at such unchristian ignorance.  "Easter?  Newland!
Why, of course, the first week in April.  Why?"

"The first week?"  He turned again to the pages of his diary,
calculating rapidly under his breath.  "The first week, did you say?"
He threw back his head with a long laugh.

"For mercy's sake what's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter, except that I'm going to be married in a month."

Janey fell upon his neck and pressed him to her purple flannel breast.
"Oh Newland, how wonderful!  I'm so glad!  But, dearest, why do you
keep on laughing?  Do hush, or you'll wake Mamma."

Book II

The Countess finally comes into the drawing room and, seeing the crimson roses, becomes angry and asks her maid to take them to Ned Winsett's wife, who is ill. Her aunt is also sent on to Mrs. Struthers' salon and, finally, Newland and Madame Olenska are alone. He hurts the Countess' feelings by asserting that her aunt thinks she will go back to the Count. She cannot believe that Newland gives credence to this, and she turns the conversation to his wedding. Newland tells her that May thinks he wants to hurry the wedding in order to forget about someone he loves more. When Madame Olenska asks if he does indeed care more for someone else, he sidesteps the question, saying he will not marry anyone else. A long pause follows. The carriage comes and the Countess should be leaving, but Newland takes her hand and says there is another woman that he would have been with if it had been possible. This angers Madame Olenska because he was the one who made it impossible by talking her out of a divorce. Her words make him realize that the "scandal" she worried about was not her own; she was worried about the scandal of divorce for the Mingott family. Newland tells her that he loves her. She cries and he explains that they can still have each other because he is still free and she soon could be. Recklessly, he says he will not marry May. But Ellen Olenska, unable to hurt May, says, "I can't love you unless I give you up." Irrationally, Newland snaps that Beaufort will probably replace him. Nastasia, the maid, comes back with a telegram. It is for Ellen from May, who says that old Mrs. Mingott's arguments worked, and they will move the wedding to right after Easter. When Newland arrives at his home, a second telegram is waiting and Janey has stayed up to find out what it says. He asks her the date of Easter and when she replies, he laughs ironically, and realizes he will be married in a month.

This amazing chapter states the novel's dilemma the strongest thus far. Wharton's expert use of irony shows that Newland's arguments about suffering, endurance, and denial -- that social, religious, and class standards must be upheld or all is chaos -- have not been lost on the Countess. She has learned from him that one cannot win one's freedom by sacrificing the happiness of others. She reminds him that his own selfish interests have to be sacrificed for the good of honor, family, and principles. Ironically, these were his very thoughts earlier in the novel. In many ways, Ellen Olenska is an adult Edith Wharton, living a European life of intellect and the arts, outside the boundaries of New York society. Wharton came to realize in her own life that men such as Newland Archer do not understand women but need them to settle down and lead responsible lives. Men must support and protect women and not hurt them by having affairs or engaging in shady business ethics.  The ironic timing of May's telegram shows she has once again anticipated Newland's moves and robbed him of his chance. Despite thinking her dull and conventional, Newland does not realize how manipulative she is. Glossary ubiquitous present, or seeming to be present, everywhere at the same time; omnipresent. chignon a knot or coil of hair worn at the back of the neck. "Ah, don't make love to me!" in nineteenth-century attitudes, this remark of Ellen's means "do not flirt with me or pretend to pursue me romantically." inscrutably not easily understood; completely obscure or mysterious.