Archer had been stunned by old Catherine's news.  It was only natural
that Madame Olenska should have hastened from Washington in response to
her grandmother's summons; but that she should have decided to remain
under her roof--especially now that Mrs. Mingott had almost regained
her health--was less easy to explain.

Archer was sure that Madame Olenska's decision had not been influenced
by the change in her financial situation.  He knew the exact figure of
the small income which her husband had allowed her at their separation.
Without the addition of her grandmother's allowance it was hardly
enough to live on, in any sense known to the Mingott vocabulary; and
now that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a
pittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed.  Yet Archer
was convinced that Madame Olenska had not accepted her grandmother's
offer from interested motives.

She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of
persons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could
go without many things which her relations considered indispensable,
and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard to
deplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count
Olenski's establishments should care so little about "how things were
done."  Moreover, as Archer knew, several months had passed since her
allowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effort
to regain her grandmother's favour.  Therefore if she had changed her
course it must be for a different reason.

He did not have far to seek for that reason.  On the way from the ferry
she had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said it
with her head on his breast.  He knew that there was no calculated
coquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his,
and clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not break
faith with the people who trusted them.  But during the ten days which
had elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed from
his silence, and from the fact of his making no attempt to see her,
that he was meditating a decisive step, a step from which there was no
turning back.  At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness might
have seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was better
to accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line of
least resistance.

An hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Mingott's bell, Archer had
fancied that his path was clear before him.  He had meant to have a
word alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from her
grandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to
Washington.  In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her
to Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go.  His own
fancy inclined to Japan.  At any rate she would understand at once
that, wherever she went, he was going.  He meant to leave a note for
May that should cut off any other alternative.

He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to
take it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was
changed had been one of relief.  Now, however, as he walked home from
Mrs. Mingott's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what lay
before him.  There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he was
presumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as a free
man, who was accountable to no one for his actions, and could lend
himself with an amused detachment to the game of precautions and
prevarications, concealments and compliances, that the part required.
This procedure was called "protecting a woman's honour"; and the best
fiction, combined with the after-dinner talk of his elders, had long
since initiated him into every detail of its code.

Now he saw the matter in a new light, and his part in it seemed
singularly diminished.  It was, in fact, that which, with a secret
fatuity, he had watched Mrs. Thorley Rushworth play toward a fond and
unperceiving husband: a smiling, bantering, humouring, watchful and
incessant lie.  A lie by day, a lie by night, a lie in every touch and
every look; a lie in every caress and every quarrel; a lie in every
word and in every silence.

It was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play such
a part toward her husband.  A woman's standard of truthfulness was
tacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in
the arts of the enslaved.  Then she could always plead moods and
nerves, and the right not to be held too strictly to account; and even
in the most strait-laced societies the laugh was always against the
husband.

But in Archer's little world no one laughed at a wife deceived, and a
certain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their
philandering after marriage.  In the rotation of crops there was a
recognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than
once.

Archer had always shared this view: in his heart he thought Lefferts
despicable.  But to love Ellen Olenska was not to become a man like
Lefferts: for the first time Archer found himself face to face with the
dread argument of the individual case.  Ellen Olenska was like no other
woman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembled
no one else's, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that of
their own judgment.

Yes, but in ten minutes more he would be mounting his own doorstep; and
there were May, and habit, and honour, and all the old decencies that
he and his people had always believed in ...

At his corner he hesitated, and then walked on down Fifth Avenue.

Ahead of him, in the winter night, loomed a big unlit house.  As he
drew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, its
steps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line to
draw up at the curbstone.  It was in the conservatory that stretched
its dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his first
kiss from May; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that he
had seen her appear, tall and silver-shining as a young Diana.

Now the house was as dark as the grave, except for a faint flare of gas
in the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind had
not been lowered.  As Archer reached the corner he saw that the
carriage standing at the door was Mrs. Manson Mingott's.  What an
opportunity for Sillerton Jackson, if he should chance to pass!  Archer
had been greatly moved by old Catherine's account of Madame Olenska's
attitude toward Mrs. Beaufort; it made the righteous reprobation of New
York seem like a passing by on the other side.  But he knew well enough
what construction the clubs and drawing-rooms would put on Ellen
Olenska's visits to her cousin.

He paused and looked up at the lighted window.  No doubt the two women
were sitting together in that room: Beaufort had probably sought
consolation elsewhere.  There were even rumours that he had left New
York with Fanny Ring; but Mrs. Beaufort's attitude made the report seem
improbable.

Archer had the nocturnal perspective of Fifth Avenue almost to himself.
At that hour most people were indoors, dressing for dinner; and he was
secretly glad that Ellen's exit was likely to be unobserved.  As the
thought passed through his mind the door opened, and she came out.
Behind her was a faint light, such as might have been carried down the
stairs to show her the way.  She turned to say a word to some one; then
the door closed, and she came down the steps.

"Ellen," he said in a low voice, as she reached the pavement.

She stopped with a slight start, and just then he saw two young men of
fashionable cut approaching.  There was a familiar air about their
overcoats and the way their smart silk mufflers were folded over their
white ties; and he wondered how youths of their quality happened to be
dining out so early.  Then he remembered that the Reggie Chiverses,
whose house was a few doors above, were taking a large party that
evening to see Adelaide Neilson in Romeo and Juliet, and guessed that
the two were of the number.  They passed under a lamp, and he
recognised Lawrence Lefferts and a young Chivers.

A mean desire not to have Madame Olenska seen at the Beauforts' door
vanished as he felt the penetrating warmth of her hand.

"I shall see you now--we shall be together," he broke out, hardly
knowing what he said.

"Ah," she answered, "Granny has told you?"

While he watched her he was aware that Lefferts and Chivers, on
reaching the farther side of the street corner, had discreetly struck
away across Fifth Avenue.  It was the kind of masculine solidarity that
he himself often practised; now he sickened at their connivance.  Did
she really imagine that he and she could live like this?  And if not,
what else did she imagine?

"Tomorrow I must see you--somewhere where we can be alone," he said, in
a voice that sounded almost angry to his own ears.

She wavered, and moved toward the carriage.

"But I shall be at Granny's--for the present that is," she added, as if
conscious that her change of plans required some explanation.

"Somewhere where we can be alone," he insisted.

She gave a faint laugh that grated on him.

"In New York?  But there are no churches ... no monuments."

"There's the Art Museum--in the Park," he explained, as she looked
puzzled.  "At half-past two.  I shall be at the door ..."

She turned away without answering and got quickly into the carriage.
As it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her hand
in the obscurity.  He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictory
feelings.  It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the woman
he loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasures
already wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of this
hackneyed vocabulary.

"She'll come!" he said to himself, almost contemptuously.

Avoiding the popular "Wolfe collection," whose anecdotic canvases
filled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-iron
and encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandered
down a passage to the room where the "Cesnola antiquities" mouldered in
unvisited loneliness.

They had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divan
enclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at the
glass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered
fragments of Ilium.

"It's odd," Madame Olenska said, "I never came here before."

"Ah, well--.  Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum."

"Yes," she assented absently.

She stood up and wandered across the room.  Archer, remaining seated,
watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its
heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way
a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the
ear.  His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in
the delicious details that made her herself and no other.  Presently he
rose and approached the case before which she stood.  Its glass shelves
were crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic
utensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of
discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.

"It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters ... any
more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important
to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying
glass and labelled:  'Use unknown.'"

"Yes; but meanwhile--"

"Ah, meanwhile--"

As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a
small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the
tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring
with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure
harmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change.

"Meanwhile everything matters--that concerns you," he said.

She looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to the divan.  He sat
down beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far
off down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.

"What is it you wanted to tell me?" she asked, as if she had received
the same warning.

"What I wanted to tell you?" he rejoined.  "Why, that I believe you
came to New York because you were afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Of my coming to Washington."

She looked down at her muff, and he saw her hands stir in it uneasily.

"Well--?"

"Well--yes," she said.

"You WERE afraid?  You knew--?"

"Yes: I knew ..."

"Well, then?" he insisted.

"Well, then: this is better, isn't it?" she returned with a long
questioning sigh.

"Better--?"

"We shall hurt others less.  Isn't it, after all, what you always
wanted?"

"To have you here, you mean--in reach and yet out of reach?  To meet
you in this way, on the sly?  It's the very reverse of what I want.  I
told you the other day what I wanted."

She hesitated.  "And you still think this--worse?"

"A thousand times!"  He paused.  "It would be easy to lie to you; but
the truth is I think it detestable."

"Oh, so do I!" she cried with a deep breath of relief.

He sprang up impatiently.  "Well, then--it's my turn to ask: what is
it, in God's name, that you think better?"

She hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp her hands in her
muff.  The step drew nearer, and a guardian in a braided cap walked
listlessly through the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.
They fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite them, and
when the official figure had vanished down a vista of mummies and
sarcophagi Archer spoke again.

"What do you think better?"

Instead of answering she murmured:  "I promised Granny to stay with her
because it seemed to me that here I should be safer."

"From me?"

She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.

"Safer from loving me?"

Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow on her lashes and
hang in a mesh of her veil.

"Safer from doing irreparable harm.  Don't let us be like all the
others!" she protested.

"What others?  I don't profess to be different from my kind.  I'm
consumed by the same wants and the same longings."

She glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw a faint colour
steal into her cheeks.

"Shall I--once come to you; and then go home?" she suddenly hazarded in
a low clear voice.

The blood rushed to the young man's forehead.  "Dearest!" he said,
without moving.  It seemed as if he held his heart in his hands, like a
full cup that the least motion might overbrim.

Then her last phrase struck his ear and his face clouded.  "Go home?
What do you mean by going home?"

"Home to my husband."

"And you expect me to say yes to that?"

She raised her troubled eyes to his.  "What else is there?  I can't
stay here and lie to the people who've been good to me."

"But that's the very reason why I ask you to come away!"

"And destroy their lives, when they've helped me to remake mine?"

Archer sprang to his feet and stood looking down on her in inarticulate
despair.  It would have been easy to say:  "Yes, come; come once."  He
knew the power she would put in his hands if she consented; there would
be no difficulty then in persuading her not to go back to her husband.

But something silenced the word on his lips.  A sort of passionate
honesty in her made it inconceivable that he should try to draw her
into that familiar trap.  "If I were to let her come," he said to
himself, "I should have to let her go again."  And that was not to be
imagined.

But he saw the shadow of the lashes on her wet cheek, and wavered.

"After all," he began again, "we have lives of our own....  There's no
use attempting the impossible.  You're so unprejudiced about some
things, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't
know why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really
is--unless you think the sacrifice is not worth making."

She stood up also, her lips tightening under a rapid frown.

"Call it that, then--I must go," she said, drawing her little watch
from her bosom.

She turned away, and he followed and caught her by the wrist.  "Well,
then: come to me once," he said, his head turning suddenly at the
thought of losing her; and for a second or two they looked at each
other almost like enemies.

"When?" he insisted.  "Tomorrow?"

She hesitated.  "The day after."

"Dearest--!" he said again.

She had disengaged her wrist; but for a moment they continued to hold
each other's eyes, and he saw that her face, which had grown very pale,
was flooded with a deep inner radiance.  His heart beat with awe: he
felt that he had never before beheld love visible.

"Oh, I shall be late--good-bye.  No, don't come any farther than this,"
she cried, walking hurriedly away down the long room, as if the
reflected radiance in his eyes had frightened her.  When she reached
the door she turned for a moment to wave a quick farewell.

Archer walked home alone.  Darkness was falling when he let himself
into his house, and he looked about at the familiar objects in the hall
as if he viewed them from the other side of the grave.

The parlour-maid, hearing his step, ran up the stairs to light the gas
on the upper landing.

"Is Mrs. Archer in?"

"No, sir; Mrs. Archer went out in the carriage after luncheon, and
hasn't come back."

With a sense of relief he entered the library and flung himself down in
his armchair.  The parlour-maid followed, bringing the student lamp and
shaking some coals onto the dying fire.  When she left he continued to
sit motionless, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands,
his eyes fixed on the red grate.

He sat there without conscious thoughts, without sense of the lapse of
time, in a deep and grave amazement that seemed to suspend life rather
than quicken it.  "This was what had to be, then ... this was what had
to be," he kept repeating to himself, as if he hung in the clutch of
doom.  What he had dreamed of had been so different that there was a
mortal chill in his rapture.

The door opened and May came in.

"I'm dreadfully late--you weren't worried, were you?" she asked, laying
her hand on his shoulder with one of her rare caresses.

He looked up astonished.  "Is it late?"

"After seven.  I believe you've been asleep!"  She laughed, and drawing
out her hat pins tossed her velvet hat on the sofa.  She looked paler
than usual, but sparkling with an unwonted animation.

"I went to see Granny, and just as I was going away Ellen came in from
a walk; so I stayed and had a long talk with her.  It was ages since
we'd had a real talk...." She had dropped into her usual armchair,
facing his, and was running her fingers through her rumpled hair.  He
fancied she expected him to speak.

"A really good talk," she went on, smiling with what seemed to Archer
an unnatural vividness.  "She was so dear--just like the old Ellen.
I'm afraid I haven't been fair to her lately.  I've sometimes thought--"

Archer stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece, out of the radius
of the lamp.

"Yes, you've thought--?" he echoed as she paused.

"Well, perhaps I haven't judged her fairly.  She's so different--at
least on the surface.  She takes up such odd people--she seems to like
to make herself conspicuous.  I suppose it's the life she's led in that
fast European society; no doubt we seem dreadfully dull to her.  But I
don't want to judge her unfairly."

She paused again, a little breathless with the unwonted length of her
speech, and sat with her lips slightly parted and a deep blush on her
cheeks.

Archer, as he looked at her, was reminded of the glow which had
suffused her face in the Mission Garden at St. Augustine.  He became
aware of the same obscure effort in her, the same reaching out toward
something beyond the usual range of her vision.

"She hates Ellen," he thought, "and she's trying to overcome the
feeling, and to get me to help her to overcome it."

The thought moved him, and for a moment he was on the point of breaking
the silence between them, and throwing himself on her mercy.

"You understand, don't you," she went on, "why the family have
sometimes been annoyed?  We all did what we could for her at first; but
she never seemed to understand.  And now this idea of going to see Mrs.
Beaufort, of going there in Granny's carriage!  I'm afraid she's quite
alienated the van der Luydens ..."

"Ah," said Archer with an impatient laugh.  The open door had closed
between them again.

"It's time to dress; we're dining out, aren't we?" he asked, moving
from the fire.

She rose also, but lingered near the hearth.  As he walked past her she
moved forward impulsively, as though to detain him: their eyes met, and
he saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had left her
to drive to Jersey City.

She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his.

"You haven't kissed me today," she said in a whisper; and he felt her
tremble in his arms.

Newland begins walking home from Catherine1s. In his mind, he wrestles with the plausibility of really having an affair with Ellen. He goes to the Beaufort1s home, since Catherine informed him that Ellen is there. He meets Ellen there and they decide to meet the next day at the Art Museum. At the museum, they look at relics. Elen says, "it seems cruel that after a while nothing matters any more than these little things, that used to necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled: Use Unknown. 1 Ellen realizes that her presence so near to Newland will endanger his marriage; she is deeply afraid of having a tawdry affair and becoming "just like the others". So, she and Newland decide that they will "come to each other" once and then she will return to Europe. Then Ellen exclaims that she is late and leaves Newland in the museum. Newland returns home and May is out; she returns and says that she just came back from a long talk with Ellen. May seems happy and sad; she suddenly has a better esteem for Ellen. At the same time, she flings her arms around Newland in a tearful embrace exclaiming, "You haven1t kissed me today.

It1s fascinating that Newland and Ellen arrange their meeting in the museum. Here we see an inversion of public and private spaces: the museum, a very public location is now a "private" romantic trysting place. This sort of inversion is apparent in other interesting interactions between Ellen and Newland throughout the book. Ellen1s and Newland1s reaction to the artifacts explains one of the ironies of the book. While this entire novel is about the forbidding conventions of society that interfere with the machinations of a love-affair, those conventions, like the relics, are soon to become obsolete with "Use Unknown. The conventions of New York society are symbolized by the relics sitting in the case; yet ironically, Ellen and Newland still feel confined by the conventions even though they realize the conventions are soon to become archaic. May1s meeting with Ellen is very suspicious; we will find out in later chapters why this meeting will be important

On his way home, Archer decides to make a stop by the Beauforts's house to see if he can catch Madame Olenska. He watches Madame Olenska leave the Beauforts's house, then walks up to her and asks her to meet him at the Museum the next day. They meet at the Metropolitan Museum the next day at 2:30 in the afternoon and wander over to the Cesnola antiquities. There, once again, Archer tries to convince Ellen to run away with him. She refuses and then suggests that she come to meet him once alone, presumably for love-making, before she returns to her Count. Otherwise, she couldn't bear to stay and hurt everybody with their affair. Archer agrees, and they agree to meet the day after tomorrow. When Archer arrives home, May isn't there, so he sits in the library to think things over. When May enters, she tells Archer that she had a long talk with Ellen and decided that Ellen isn't such an awful person after all. They get up to get ready for a dinner date. May embraces Archer and reminds him that he hasn't kissed her yet today.


"At the court of the Tuileries," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson with his
reminiscent smile, "such things were pretty openly tolerated."

The scene was the van der Luydens' black walnut dining-room in Madison
Avenue, and the time the evening after Newland Archer's visit to the
Museum of Art.  Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had come to town for a few
days from Skuytercliff, whither they had precipitately fled at the
announcement of Beaufort's failure.  It had been represented to them
that the disarray into which society had been thrown by this deplorable
affair made their presence in town more necessary than ever.  It was
one of the occasions when, as Mrs. Archer put it, they "owed it to
society" to show themselves at the Opera, and even to open their own
doors.

"It will never do, my dear Louisa, to let people like Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers think they can step into Regina's shoes.  It is just at such
times that new people push in and get a footing.  It was owing to the
epidemic of chicken-pox in New York the winter Mrs. Struthers first
appeared that the married men slipped away to her house while their
wives were in the nursery.  You and dear Henry, Louisa, must stand in
the breach as you always have."

Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden could not remain deaf to such a call, and
reluctantly but heroically they had come to town, unmuffled the house,
and sent out invitations for two dinners and an evening reception.

On this particular evening they had invited Sillerton Jackson, Mrs.
Archer and Newland and his wife to go with them to the Opera, where
Faust was being sung for the first time that winter.  Nothing was done
without ceremony under the van der Luyden roof, and though there were
but four guests the repast had begun at seven punctually, so that the
proper sequence of courses might be served without haste before the
gentlemen settled down to their cigars.

Archer had not seen his wife since the evening before.  He had left
early for the office, where he had plunged into an accumulation of
unimportant business.  In the afternoon one of the senior partners had
made an unexpected call on his time; and he had reached home so late
that May had preceded him to the van der Luydens', and sent back the
carriage.

Now, across the Skuytercliff carnations and the massive plate, she
struck him as pale and languid; but her eyes shone, and she talked with
exaggerated animation.

The subject which had called forth Mr. Sillerton Jackson's favourite
allusion had been brought up (Archer fancied not without intention) by
their hostess.  The Beaufort failure, or rather the Beaufort attitude
since the failure, was still a fruitful theme for the drawing-room
moralist; and after it had been thoroughly examined and condemned Mrs.
van der Luyden had turned her scrupulous eyes on May Archer.

"Is it possible, dear, that what I hear is true?  I was told your
grandmother Mingott's carriage was seen standing at Mrs. Beaufort's
door."  It was noticeable that she no longer called the offending lady
by her Christian name.

May's colour rose, and Mrs. Archer put in hastily: "If it was, I'm
convinced it was there without Mrs. Mingott's knowledge."

"Ah, you think--?"  Mrs. van der Luyden paused, sighed, and glanced at
her husband.

"I'm afraid," Mr. van der Luyden said, "that Madame Olenska's kind
heart may have led her into the imprudence of calling on Mrs. Beaufort."

"Or her taste for peculiar people," put in Mrs. Archer in a dry tone,
while her eyes dwelt innocently on her son's.

"I'm sorry to think it of Madame Olenska," said Mrs. van der Luyden;
and Mrs. Archer murmured: "Ah, my dear--and after you'd had her twice
at Skuytercliff!"

It was at this point that Mr. Jackson seized the chance to place his
favourite allusion.

"At the Tuileries," he repeated, seeing the eyes of the company
expectantly turned on him, "the standard was excessively lax in some
respects; and if you'd asked where Morny's money came from--!  Or who
paid the debts of some of the Court beauties ..."

"I hope, dear Sillerton," said Mrs. Archer, "you are not suggesting
that we should adopt such standards?"

"I never suggest," returned Mr. Jackson imperturbably.  "But Madame
Olenska's foreign bringing-up may make her less particular--"

"Ah," the two elder ladies sighed.

"Still, to have kept her grandmother's carriage at a defaulter's door!"
Mr. van der Luyden protested; and Archer guessed that he was
remembering, and resenting, the hampers of carnations he had sent to
the little house in Twenty-third Street.

"Of course I've always said that she looks at things quite
differently," Mrs. Archer summed up.

A flush rose to May's forehead.  She looked across the table at her
husband, and said precipitately:  "I'm sure Ellen meant it kindly."

"Imprudent people are often kind," said Mrs. Archer, as if the fact
were scarcely an extenuation; and Mrs. van der Luyden murmured:  "If
only she had consulted some one--"

"Ah, that she never did!" Mrs. Archer rejoined.

At this point Mr. van der Luyden glanced at his wife, who bent her head
slightly in the direction of Mrs. Archer; and the glimmering trains of
the three ladies swept out of the door while the gentlemen settled down
to their cigars.  Mr. van der Luyden supplied short ones on Opera
nights; but they were so good that they made his guests deplore his
inexorable punctuality.

Archer, after the first act, had detached himself from the party and
made his way to the back of the club box.  From there he watched, over
various Chivers, Mingott and Rushworth shoulders, the same scene that
he had looked at, two years previously, on the night of his first
meeting with Ellen Olenska.  He had half-expected her to appear again
in old Mrs. Mingott's box, but it remained empty; and he sat
motionless, his eyes fastened on it, till suddenly Madame Nilsson's
pure soprano broke out into "M'ama, non m'ama ..."

Archer turned to the stage, where, in the familiar setting of giant
roses and pen-wiper pansies, the same large blonde victim was
succumbing to the same small brown seducer.

From the stage his eyes wandered to the point of the horseshoe where
May sat between two older ladies, just as, on that former evening, she
had sat between Mrs. Lovell Mingott and her newly-arrived "foreign"
cousin.  As on that evening, she was all in white; and Archer, who had
not noticed what she wore, recognised the blue-white satin and old lace
of her wedding dress.

It was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly
garment during the first year or two of marriage: his mother, he knew,
kept hers in tissue paper in the hope that Janey might some day wear
it, though poor Janey was reaching the age when pearl grey poplin and
no bridesmaids would be thought more "appropriate."

It struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom
worn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him
compare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with
such blissful anticipations two years earlier.

Though May's outline was slightly heavier, as her goddesslike build had
foretold, her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish
transparency of her expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight
languor that Archer had lately noticed in her she would have been the
exact image of the girl playing with the bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal evening.  The fact seemed an
additional appeal to his pity: such innocence was as moving as the
trustful clasp of a child.  Then he remembered the passionate
generosity latent under that incurious calm.  He recalled her glance of
understanding when he had urged that their engagement should be
announced at the Beaufort ball; he heard the voice in which she had
said, in the Mission garden:  "I couldn't have my happiness made out of
a wrong--a wrong to some one else;" and an uncontrollable longing
seized him to tell her the truth, to throw himself on her generosity,
and ask for the freedom he had once refused.

Newland Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man.  Conformity
to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second
nature.  It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic
and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and
the club box condemned as bad form.  But he had become suddenly
unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so
long enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit.  He walked along the
semi-circular passage at the back of the house, and opened the door of
Mrs. van der Luyden's box as if it had been a gate into the unknown.

"M'ama!" thrilled out the triumphant Marguerite; and the occupants of
the box looked up in surprise at Archer's entrance.  He had already
broken one of the rules of his world, which forbade the entering of a
box during a solo.

Slipping between Mr. van der Luyden and Sillerton Jackson, he leaned
over his wife.

"I've got a beastly headache; don't tell any one, but come home, won't
you?" he whispered.

May gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his
mother, who nodded sympathetically; then she murmured an excuse to Mrs.
van der Luyden, and rose from her seat just as Marguerite fell into
Faust's arms.  Archer, while he helped her on with her Opera cloak,
noticed the exchange of a significant smile between the older ladies.

As they drove away May laid her hand shyly on his.  "I'm so sorry you
don't feel well.  I'm afraid they've been overworking you again at the
office."

"No--it's not that: do you mind if I open the window?" he returned
confusedly, letting down the pane on his side.  He sat staring out into
the street, feeling his wife beside him as a silent watchful
interrogation, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the passing
houses.  At their door she caught her skirt in the step of the
carriage, and fell against him.

"Did you hurt yourself?" he asked, steadying her with his arm.

"No; but my poor dress--see how I've torn it!" she exclaimed.  She bent
to gather up a mud-stained breadth, and followed him up the steps into
the hall.  The servants had not expected them so early, and there was
only a glimmer of gas on the upper landing.

Archer mounted the stairs, turned up the light, and put a match to the
brackets on each side of the library mantelpiece.  The curtains were
drawn, and the warm friendly aspect of the room smote him like that of
a familiar face met during an unavowable errand.

He noticed that his wife was very pale, and asked if he should get her
some brandy.

"Oh, no," she exclaimed with a momentary flush, as she took off her
cloak.  "But hadn't you better go to bed at once?" she added, as he
opened a silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.

Archer threw down the cigarette and walked to his usual place by the
fire.

"No; my head is not as bad as that."  He paused.  "And there's
something I want to say; something important--that I must tell you at
once."

She had dropped into an armchair, and raised her head as he spoke.
"Yes, dear?" she rejoined, so gently that he wondered at the lack of
wonder with which she received this preamble.

"May--" he began, standing a few feet from her chair, and looking over
at her as if the slight distance between them were an unbridgeable
abyss.  The sound of his voice echoed uncannily through the homelike
hush, and he repeated:  "There is something I've got to tell you ...
about myself ..."

She sat silent, without a movement or a tremor of her lashes.  She was
still extremely pale, but her face had a curious tranquillity of
expression that seemed drawn from some secret inner source.

Archer checked the conventional phrases of self-accusal that were
crowding to his lips.  He was determined to put the case baldly,
without vain recrimination or excuse.

"Madame Olenska--" he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as
if to silence him.  As she did so the gaslight struck on the gold of
her wedding-ring.

"Oh, why should we talk about Ellen tonight?" she asked, with a slight
pout of impatience.

"Because I ought to have spoken before."

Her face remained calm.  "Is it really worth while, dear?  I know I've
been unfair to her at times--perhaps we all have.  You've understood
her, no doubt, better than we did: you've always been kind to her.  But
what does it matter, now it's all over?"

Archer looked at her blankly.  Could it be possible that the sense of
unreality in which he felt himself imprisoned had communicated itself
to his wife?

"All over--what do you mean?" he asked in an indistinct stammer.

May still looked at him with transparent eyes.  "Why--since she's going
back to Europe so soon; since Granny approves and understands, and has
arranged to make her independent of her husband--"

She broke off, and Archer, grasping the corner of the mantelpiece in
one convulsed hand, and steadying himself against it, made a vain
effort to extend the same control to his reeling thoughts.

"I supposed," he heard his wife's even voice go on, "that you had been
kept at the office this evening about the business arrangements.  It
was settled this morning, I believe."  She lowered her eyes under his
unseeing stare, and another fugitive flush passed over her face.

He understood that his own eyes must be unbearable, and turning away,
rested his elbows on the mantel-shelf and covered his face.  Something
drummed and clanged furiously in his ears; he could not tell if it were
the blood in his veins, or the tick of the clock on the mantel.

May sat without moving or speaking while the clock slowly measured out
five minutes.  A lump of coal fell forward in the grate, and hearing
her rise to push it back, Archer at length turned and faced her.

"It's impossible," he exclaimed.

"Impossible--?"

"How do you know--what you've just told me?"

"I saw Ellen yesterday--I told you I'd seen her at Granny's."

"It wasn't then that she told you?"

"No; I had a note from her this afternoon.--Do you want to see it?"

He could not find his voice, and she went out of the room, and came
back almost immediately.

"I thought you knew," she said simply.

She laid a sheet of paper on the table, and Archer put out his hand and
took it up.  The letter contained only a few lines.

"May dear, I have at last made Granny understand that my visit to her
could be no more than a visit; and she has been as kind and generous as
ever.  She sees now that if I return to Europe I must live by myself,
or rather with poor Aunt Medora, who is coming with me. I am hurrying
back to Washington to pack up, and we sail next week.  You must be very
good to Granny when I'm gone--as good as you've always been to me.
Ellen.

"If any of my friends wish to urge me to change my mind, please tell
them it would be utterly useless."

Archer read the letter over two or three times; then he flung it down
and burst out laughing.

The sound of his laugh startled him.  It recalled Janey's midnight
fright when she had caught him rocking with incomprehensible mirth over
May's telegram announcing that the date of their marriage had been
advanced.

"Why did she write this?" he asked, checking his laugh with a supreme
effort.

May met the question with her unshaken candour.  "I suppose because we
talked things over yesterday--"

"What things?"

"I told her I was afraid I hadn't been fair to her--hadn't always
understood how hard it must have been for her here, alone among so many
people who were relations and yet strangers; who felt the right to
criticise, and yet didn't always know the circumstances." She paused.
"I knew you'd been the one friend she could always count on; and I
wanted her to know that you and I were the same--in all our feelings."

She hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak, and then added slowly:
"She understood my wishing to tell her this.  I think she understands
everything."

She went up to Archer, and taking one of his cold hands pressed it
quickly against her cheek.

"My head aches too; good-night, dear," she said, and turned to the
door, her torn and muddy wedding-dress dragging after her across the
room.

Newland and his wife and mother go to the Opera. He goes to watch the performance of _Faust_. Mrs. van der Luyden comments that she saw Catherine1s carriage parked outside of the Beaufort1s home. May quickly lies for Catherine saying that she is certain that the carriage was there without Catherine knowing. The van der Luydens realize that Ellen had taken the carriage to the Beauforts. Mrs. Archer tries to make excuses: "Imprudent people are often kind. Newland watches the Opera with some disgust thinking, "the same large blonde victim is succumbing to the same small brown seducer. May is wearing her wedding dress for the first time in two years. Wharton explains that "it was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly garment during the first year or two of marriage. Newland decides that he absolutely must leave and whispers to May that he has a beastly headache and wants to go home. In the carriage, Newland opens the window, needing air. Stepping out of the carriage, May tears her wedding dress. Newland asks if she1d like some brandy "because she looks very pale" but May blushes and says no. Newland tries to talk to May about Ellen; but May cleverly guides the conversation to explain that Ellen will be returning to Europe soon. Newland is obviously shaken by the news and May leaves the room quietly saying "my head aches too.

At this point in the novel, it has been exactly two years since the start of the novel. Newland1s impression of the Opera has radically changed. He no longer feels that the Opera is beautiful and romantic; rather, the Opera is boring and predictable with the "same blonde victim" and the "same small brown seducer. Romance entirely has become a farce to Newland who watches with much skepticism. May wears her wedding dress on this evening. This symbol has a lot of significances. Perhaps May is just wearing the dress because she remembers that she was engaged exactly two years prior. But she may also be wearing it because she realizes that she is about to lose her husband to Ellen and wants to remind her husband of his marital vows. She also may be wearing it because her discussion with Ellen the day before had been "successful;" perhaps she had been able to convince Ellen to leave her husband alone and return to Europe. In this case, her wearing of the wedding dress signifies that she believes her wedding is beginning again, anew. In any case, her wedding dress tears while she exits the cab symbolically signifying that some part of her marriage is scarred, torn. Also, something may be wrong with May; she no longer drinks and blushes when Newland asks. She has headaches and looks very pale. All these clues foreshadow the momentous next chapter

Archer spends all the next day at the office, so he doesn't see May until they leave for a dinner given by the van der Luydens. After discussing the Beauforts's ruin and Ellen's questionable visit to Regina Beaufort, the dinner party goes off to see Faust at the opera. At the opera house, Archer notices that his wife is wearing her bridal satin, which many brides wear for the first year or two of marriage in New York. Archer goes to his wife's box and tells her that he has a headache and would like to return home. When they return home, his wife tears her dress on the carriage step as she is stepping out. Once inside, Archer begins to confess to his wife about his feelings for Madame Olenska, but he only gets as far as saying Madame Olenska's name when May announces that Madame Olenska has already left town, that she's gone to Washington, D.C., to pack up and move to Paris, with Mrs. Manson Mingott's approval. Archer is astonished. May shows Archer a letter Ellen wrote to her, and Archer breaks out laughing. May announces that she has a headache too and goes to bed.


It was, as Mrs. Archer smilingly said to Mrs. Welland, a great event
for a young couple to give their first big dinner.

The Newland Archers, since they had set up their household, had
received a good deal of company in an informal way.  Archer was fond of
having three or four friends to dine, and May welcomed them with the
beaming readiness of which her mother had set her the example in
conjugal affairs.  Her husband questioned whether, if left to herself,
she would ever have asked any one to the house; but he had long given
up trying to disengage her real self from the shape into which
tradition and training had moulded her.  It was expected that well-off
young couples in New York should do a good deal of informal
entertaining, and a Welland married to an Archer was doubly pledged to
the tradition.

But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with
Roman punch, roses from Henderson's, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was
a different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken.  As Mrs. Archer
remarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by
its manifold implications--since it signified either canvas-backs or
terrapin, two soups, a hot and a cold sweet, full decolletage with
short sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance.

It was always an interesting occasion when a young pair launched their
first invitations in the third person, and their summons was seldom
refused even by the seasoned and sought-after.  Still, it was
admittedly a triumph that the van der Luydens, at May's request, should
have stayed over in order to be present at her farewell dinner for the
Countess Olenska.

The two mothers-in-law sat in May's drawing-room on the afternoon of
the great day, Mrs. Archer writing out the menus on Tiffany's thickest
gilt-edged bristol, while Mrs. Welland superintended the placing of the
palms and standard lamps.

Archer, arriving late from his office, found them still there.  Mrs.
Archer had turned her attention to the name-cards for the table, and
Mrs. Welland was considering the effect of bringing forward the large
gilt sofa, so that another "corner" might be created between the piano
and the window.

May, they told him, was in the dining-room inspecting the mound of
Jacqueminot roses and maidenhair in the centre of the long table, and
the placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver baskets between
the candelabra.  On the piano stood a large basket of orchids which Mr.
van der Luyden had had sent from Skuytercliff.  Everything was, in
short, as it should be on the approach of so considerable an event.

Mrs. Archer ran thoughtfully over the list, checking off each name with
her sharp gold pen.

"Henry van der Luyden--Louisa--the Lovell Mingotts--the Reggie
Chiverses--Lawrence Lefferts and Gertrude--(yes, I suppose May was
right to have them)--the Selfridge Merrys, Sillerton Jackson, Van
Newland and his wife. (How time passes!  It seems only yesterday that
he was your best man, Newland)--and Countess Olenska--yes, I think
that's all...."

Mrs. Welland surveyed her son-in-law affectionately.  "No one can say,
Newland, that you and May are not giving Ellen a handsome send-off."

"Ah, well," said Mrs. Archer, "I understand May's wanting her cousin to
tell people abroad that we're not quite barbarians."

"I'm sure Ellen will appreciate it.  She was to arrive this morning, I
believe.  It will make a most charming last impression.  The evening
before sailing is usually so dreary," Mrs. Welland cheerfully continued.

Archer turned toward the door, and his mother-in-law called to him:
"Do go in and have a peep at the table.  And don't let May tire herself
too much."  But he affected not to hear, and sprang up the stairs to
his library.  The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed
into a polite grimace; and he perceived that it had been ruthlessly
"tidied," and prepared, by a judicious distribution of ash-trays and
cedar-wood boxes, for the gentlemen to smoke in.

"Ah, well," he thought, "it's not for long--" and he went on to his
dressing-room.

Ten days had passed since Madame Olenska's departure from New York.
During those ten days Archer had had no sign from her but that conveyed
by the return of a key wrapped in tissue paper, and sent to his office
in a sealed envelope addressed in her hand.  This retort to his last
appeal might have been interpreted as a classic move in a familiar
game; but the young man chose to give it a different meaning.  She was
still fighting against her fate; but she was going to Europe, and she
was not returning to her husband.  Nothing, therefore, was to prevent
his following her; and once he had taken the irrevocable step, and had
proved to her that it was irrevocable, he believed she would not send
him away.

This confidence in the future had steadied him to play his part in the
present.  It had kept him from writing to her, or betraying, by any
sign or act, his misery and mortification.  It seemed to him that in
the deadly silent game between them the trumps were still in his hands;
and he waited.

There had been, nevertheless, moments sufficiently difficult to pass;
as when Mr. Letterblair, the day after Madame Olenska's departure, had
sent for him to go over the details of the trust which Mrs. Manson
Mingott wished to create for her granddaughter.  For a couple of hours
Archer had examined the terms of the deed with his senior, all the
while obscurely feeling that if he had been consulted it was for some
reason other than the obvious one of his cousinship; and that the close
of the conference would reveal it.

"Well, the lady can't deny that it's a handsome arrangement," Mr.
Letterblair had summed up, after mumbling over a summary of the
settlement.  "In fact I'm bound to say she's been treated pretty
handsomely all round."

"All round?" Archer echoed with a touch of derision.  "Do you refer to
her husband's proposal to give her back her own money?"

Mr. Letterblair's bushy eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch.  "My
dear sir, the law's the law; and your wife's cousin was married under
the French law.  It's to be presumed she knew what that meant."

"Even if she did, what happened subsequently--."  But Archer paused.
Mr. Letterblair had laid his pen-handle against his big corrugated
nose, and was looking down it with the expression assumed by virtuous
elderly gentlemen when they wish their youngers to understand that
virtue is not synonymous with ignorance.

"My dear sir, I've no wish to extenuate the Count's transgressions;
but--but on the other side ... I wouldn't put my hand in the fire ...
well, that there hadn't been tit for tat ... with the young
champion...."  Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded
paper toward Archer.  "This report, the result of discreet enquiries
..."  And then, as Archer made no effort to glance at the paper or to
repudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued:  "I
don't say it's conclusive, you observe; far from it.  But straws show
... and on the whole it's eminently satisfactory for all parties that
this dignified solution has been reached."

"Oh, eminently," Archer assented, pushing back the paper.

A day or two later, on responding to a summons from Mrs. Manson
Mingott, his soul had been more deeply tried.

He had found the old lady depressed and querulous.

"You know she's deserted me?" she began at once; and without waiting
for his reply:  "Oh, don't ask me why!  She gave so many reasons that
I've forgotten them all.  My private belief is that she couldn't face
the boredom.  At any rate that's what Augusta and my daughters-in-law
think.  And I don't know that I altogether blame her.  Olenski's a
finished scoundrel; but life with him must have been a good deal gayer
than it is in Fifth Avenue.  Not that the family would admit that: they
think Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the rue de la Paix thrown in.  And
poor Ellen, of course, has no idea of going back to her husband.  She
held out as firmly as ever against that.  So she's to settle down in
Paris with that fool Medora....  Well, Paris is Paris; and you can keep
a carriage there on next to nothing.  But she was as gay as a bird, and
I shall miss her." Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down
her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.

"All I ask is," she concluded, "that they shouldn't bother me any more.
I must really be allowed to digest my gruel...."  And she twinkled a
little wistfully at Archer.

It was that evening, on his return home, that May announced her
intention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousin.  Madame Olenska's
name had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight
to Washington; and Archer looked at his wife with surprise.

"A dinner--why?" he interrogated.

Her colour rose.  "But you like Ellen--I thought you'd be pleased."

"It's awfully nice--your putting it in that way.  But I really don't
see--"

"I mean to do it, Newland," she said, quietly rising and going to her
desk.  "Here are the invitations all written.  Mother helped me--she
agrees that we ought to."  She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and
Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.

"Oh, all right," he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of
guests that she had put in his hand.

When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over
the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed
setting of immaculate tiles.

The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden's orchids had been
conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and
knobby silver.  Mrs. Newland Archer's drawing-room was generally
thought a great success.  A gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the
primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to
the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze
reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale
brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered
with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames;
and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the
palms.

"I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up," said May,
rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of
pardonable pride.  The brass tongs which she had propped against the
side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's
answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden
were announced.

The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der
Luydens liked to dine punctually.  The room was nearly full, and Archer
was engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly-varnished
Verbeckhoven "Study of Sheep," which Mr. Welland had given May for
Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side.

She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser
and heavier than ever.  Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound
several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of
the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children's parties, when
Medora Manson had first brought her to New York.

The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps
unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had
never loved it as he did at that minute.  Their hands met, and he
thought he heard her say:  "Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the
Russia--"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and
after an interval May's voice:  "Newland!  Dinner's been announced.
Won't you please take Ellen in?"

Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand
was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the
evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street
drawing-room.  All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have
taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on
his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand
again I  should  have  to follow her--."

It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a "foreign
visitor" that Mrs. van der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being
placed on her host's left.  The fact of Madame Olenska's "foreignness"
could hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell
tribute; and Mrs. van der Luyden accepted her displacement with an
affability which left no doubt as to her approval.  There were certain
things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and
thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal
rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.  There
was nothing on earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done
to proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now
that her passage for Europe was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his
table, sat marvelling at the silent untiring activity with which her
popularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her
past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approval.
Mrs. van der Luyden shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her
nearest approach to cordiality, and Mr. van der Luyden, from his seat
at May's right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify
all the carnations he had sent from Skuytercliff.

Archer, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a state of odd
imponderability, as if he floated somewhere between chandelier and
ceiling, wondered at nothing so much as his own share in the
proceedings.  As his glance travelled from one placid well-fed face to
another he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon May's
canvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators, and himself and the pale
woman on his right as the centre of their conspiracy.  And then it came
over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of
them he and Madame Olenska were lovers, lovers in the extreme sense
peculiar to "foreign" vocabularies.  He guessed himself to have been,
for months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and
patiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown
to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had
been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife
on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined
anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May
Archer's natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and
cousin.

It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood":
the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed
decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more
ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to
them.

As these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Archer felt like a
prisoner in the centre of an armed camp.  He looked about the table,
and guessed at the inexorableness of his captors from the tone in
which, over the asparagus from Florida, they were dealing with Beaufort
and his wife.  "It's to show me," he thought, "what would happen to
ME--" and a deathly sense of the superiority of implication and analogy
over direct action, and of silence over rash words, closed in on him
like the doors of the family vault.

He laughed, and met Mrs. van der Luyden's startled eyes.

"You think it laughable?" she said with a pinched smile.  "Of course
poor Regina's idea of remaining in New York has its ridiculous side, I
suppose;" and Archer muttered:  "Of course."

At this point, he became conscious that Madame Olenska's other
neighbour had been engaged for some time with the lady on his right.
At the same moment he saw that May, serenely enthroned between Mr. van
der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, had cast a quick glance down the
table.  It was evident that the host and the lady on his right could
not sit through the whole meal in silence.  He turned to Madame
Olenska, and her pale smile met him.  "Oh, do let's see it through," it
seemed to say.

"Did you find the journey tiring?" he asked in a voice that surprised
him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had
seldom travelled with fewer discomforts.

"Except, you know, the dreadful heat in the train," she added; and he
remarked that she would not suffer from that particular hardship in the
country she was going to.

"I never," he declared with intensity, "was more nearly frozen than
once, in April, in the train between Calais and Paris."

She said she did not wonder, but remarked that, after all, one could
always carry an extra rug, and that every form of travel had its
hardships; to which he abruptly returned that he thought them all of no
account compared with the blessedness of getting away.  She changed
colour, and he added, his voice suddenly rising in pitch:  "I mean to
do a lot of travelling myself before long."  A tremor crossed her face,
and leaning over to Reggie Chivers, he cried out:  "I say, Reggie, what
do you say to a trip round the world: now, next month, I mean?  I'm
game if you are--" at which Mrs. Reggie piped up that she could not
think of letting Reggie go till after the Martha Washington Ball she
was getting up for the Blind Asylum in Easter week; and her husband
placidly observed that by that time he would have to be practising for
the International Polo match.

But Mr. Selfridge Merry had caught the phrase "round the world," and
having once circled the globe in his steam-yacht, he seized the
opportunity to send down the table several striking items concerning
the shallowness of the Mediterranean ports.  Though, after all, he
added, it didn't matter; for when you'd seen Athens and Smyrna and
Constantinople, what else was there?  And Mrs. Merry said she could
never be too grateful to Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not
to go to Naples on account of the fever.

"But you must have three weeks to do India properly," her husband
conceded, anxious to have it understood that he was no frivolous
globe-trotter.

And at this point the ladies went up to the drawing-room.

In the library, in spite of weightier presences, Lawrence Lefferts
predominated.

The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts, and even Mr.
van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary
arm-chairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger
man's philippic.

Never had Lefferts so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian
manhood and exalt the sanctity of the home.  Indignation lent him a
scathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his
example, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak
enough to receive a foreign upstart like Beaufort--no, sir, not even if
he'd married a van der Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas.  And
what chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully questioned, of
his marrying into such a family as the Dallases, if he had not already
wormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers had managed to worm theirs in his wake?  If society chose to
open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain
was doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure
origin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration--and at no
distant date.

"If things go on at this pace," Lefferts thundered, looking like a
young prophet dressed by Poole, and who had not yet been stoned, "we
shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers' houses,
and marrying Beaufort's bastards."

"Oh, I say--draw it mild!" Reggie Chivers and young Newland protested,
while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression
of pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Luyden's sensitive face.

"Has he got any?" cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson, pricking up his ears;
and while Lefferts tried to turn the question with a laugh, the old
gentleman twittered into Archer's ear:  "Queer, those fellows who are
always wanting to set things right.  The people who have the worst
cooks are always telling you they're poisoned when they dine out.  But
I hear there are pressing reasons for our friend Lawrence's
diatribe:--typewriter this time, I understand...."

The talk swept past Archer like some senseless river running and
running because it did not know enough to stop.  He saw, on the faces
about him, expressions of interest, amusement and even mirth.  He
listened to the younger men's laughter, and to the praise of the Archer
Madeira, which Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Merry were thoughtfully
celebrating.  Through it all he was dimly aware of a general attitude
of friendliness toward himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt
himself to be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception
increased his passionate determination to be free.

In the drawing-room, where they presently joined the ladies, he met
May's triumphant eyes, and read in them the conviction that everything
had "gone off" beautifully.  She rose from Madame Olenska's side, and
immediately Mrs. van der Luyden beckoned the latter to a seat on the
gilt sofa where she throned.  Mrs. Selfridge Merry bore across the room
to join them, and it became clear to Archer that here also a conspiracy
of rehabilitation and obliteration was going on.  The silent
organisation which held his little world together was determined to put
itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety
of Madame Olenska's conduct, or the completeness of Archer's domestic
felicity.  All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely
engaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of,
suspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary;
and from this tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation Archer once more
disengaged the fact that New York believed him to be Madame Olenska's
lover.  He caught the glitter of victory in his wife's eyes, and for
the first time understood that she shared the belief.  The discovery
roused a laughter of inner devils that reverberated through all his
efforts to discuss the Martha Washington ball with Mrs. Reggie Chivers
and little Mrs. Newland; and so the evening swept on, running and
running like a senseless river that did not know how to stop.

At length he saw that Madame Olenska had risen and was saying good-bye.
He understood that in a moment she would be gone, and tried to remember
what he had said to her at dinner; but he could not recall a single
word they had exchanged.

She went up to May, the rest of the company making a circle about her
as she advanced.  The two young women clasped hands; then May bent
forward and kissed her cousin.

"Certainly our hostess is much the handsomer of the two," Archer heard
Reggie Chivers say in an undertone to young Mrs. Newland; and he
remembered Beaufort's coarse sneer at May's ineffectual beauty.

A moment later he was in the hall, putting Madame Olenska's cloak about
her shoulders.

Through all his confusion of mind he had held fast to the resolve to
say nothing that might startle or disturb her.  Convinced that no power
could now turn him from his purpose he had found strength to let events
shape themselves as they would.  But as he followed Madame Olenska into
the hall he thought with a sudden hunger of being for a moment alone
with her at the door of her carriage.

"Is your carriage here?" he asked; and at that moment Mrs. van der
Luyden, who was being majestically inserted into her sables, said
gently:  "We are driving dear Ellen home."

Archer's heart gave a jerk, and Madame Olenska, clasping her cloak and
fan with one hand, held out the other to him.  "Good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye--but I shall see you soon in Paris," he answered aloud--it
seemed to him that he had shouted it.

"Oh," she murmured, "if you and May could come--!"

Mr. van der Luyden advanced to give her his arm, and Archer turned to
Mrs. van der Luyden.  For a moment, in the billowy darkness inside the
big landau, he caught the dim oval of a face, eyes shining
steadily--and she was gone.

As he went up the steps he crossed Lawrence Lefferts coming down with
his wife.  Lefferts caught his host by the sleeve, drawing back to let
Gertrude pass.

"I say, old chap: do you mind just letting it be understood that I'm
dining with you at the club tomorrow night?  Thanks so much, you old
brick!  Good-night."

"It DID go off beautifully, didn't it?" May questioned from the
threshold of the library.

Archer roused himself with a start.  As soon as the last carriage had
driven away, he had come up to the library and shut himself in, with
the hope that his wife, who still lingered below, would go straight to
her room.  But there she stood, pale and drawn, yet radiating the
factitious energy of one who has passed beyond fatigue.

"May I come and talk it over?" she asked.

"Of course, if you like.  But you must be awfully sleepy--"

"No, I'm not sleepy.  I should like to sit with you a little."

"Very well," he said, pushing her chair near the fire.

She sat down and he resumed his seat; but neither spoke for a long
time.  At length Archer began abruptly: "Since you're not tired, and
want to talk, there's something I must tell you.  I tried to the other
night--."

She looked at him quickly.  "Yes, dear.  Something about yourself?"

"About myself.  You say you're not tired: well, I am.  Horribly tired
..."

In an instant she was all tender anxiety.  "Oh, I've seen it coming on,
Newland!  You've been so wickedly overworked--"

"Perhaps it's that.  Anyhow, I want to make a break--"

"A break?  To give up the law?"

"To go away, at any rate--at once.  On a long trip, ever so far
off--away from everything--"

He paused, conscious that he had failed in his attempt to speak with
the indifference of a man who longs for a change, and is yet too weary
to welcome it.  Do what he would, the chord of eagerness vibrated.
"Away from everything--" he repeated.

"Ever so far?  Where, for instance?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know.  India--or Japan."

She stood up, and as he sat with bent head, his chin propped on his
hands, he felt her warmly and fragrantly hovering over him.

"As far as that?  But I'm afraid you can't, dear ..." she said in an
unsteady voice.  "Not unless you'll take me with you."  And then, as he
was silent, she went on, in tones so clear and evenly-pitched that each
separate syllable tapped like a little hammer on his brain:  "That is,
if the doctors will let me go ... but I'm afraid they won't.  For you
see, Newland, I've been sure since this morning of something I've been
so longing and hoping for--"

He looked up at her with a sick stare, and she sank down, all dew and
roses, and hid her face against his knee.

"Oh, my dear," he said, holding her to him while his cold hand stroked
her hair.

There was a long pause, which the inner devils filled with strident
laughter; then May freed herself from his arms and stood up.

"You didn't guess--?"

"Yes--I; no.  That is, of course I hoped--"

They looked at each other for an instant and again fell silent; then,
turning his eyes from hers, he asked abruptly:  "Have you told any one
else?"

"Only Mamma and your mother."  She paused, and then added hurriedly,
the blood flushing up to her forehead:  "That is--and Ellen.  You know
I told you we'd had a long talk one afternoon--and how dear she was to
me."

"Ah--" said Archer, his heart stopping.

He felt that his wife was watching him intently.  "Did you MIND my
telling her first, Newland?"

"Mind?  Why should I?"  He made a last effort to collect himself.  "But
that was a fortnight ago, wasn't it?  I thought you said you weren't
sure till today."

Her colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze.  "No; I wasn't sure
then--but I told her I was.  And you see I was right!" she exclaimed,
her blue eyes wet with victory.

The Archers begin setting up for their first dinner party, "a big event" for a young couple. The party will be in honor of Ellen Olenska leaving New York and returning to Europe. Although Ellen had not spoken to Newland in ten days, he returned a key that he had given her earlier in a blank envelope. Newland is assigned the job of evaluating Ellen1s trust. All the while that he is taking care of her finances, he think that there will be an affair between the two in the future. His belief in the future keeps him from writing her. The night of the dinner party Ellen looks pale, "lusterless and almost ugly. But still, Newland had never loved her face as much as he did at that moment. Newland notices that Ellen1s hand is ungloved. Newland thinks, "If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her " Normally only "foreign visitors" would be important enough to sit at the hosts left and take the place of Mrs. van der Luyden. But, they make an exception and let Ellen sit to the host1s left because, "There were certain things that had to be done, and If done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. Newland realizes that everyone thinks that a true "affair" had been going on between Newland and Ellen; the celebration is really because the "separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved. It was the New York way to take a life without any traces of blood. Everyone sits at the table discussing travel in a dispassionate way. Newland looks at Ellen; he imagines she is thinking, "Let1s see it through," which means, let1s have our affair as planned. All the men retire to the library after dinner, and discuss how their society is changing. Larry Lefferts says, "If things go on at this pace we shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers1 houses and marrying Beaufort1s bastards. Later that evening, May asks if it is alright if they have a talk. Newland tries to tell her that he is tired of life and wants to go on a long trip; May says, that he can1t go because she found out today that she is pregnant. Newland has a "sick stare" and asks who she has told. She says that she1s told Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Welland and. Ellen. She had told Ellen about it two weeks ago. Newland asks her why she would tell Ellen about her pregnancy if she was not sure about it until today. She says, "I wasn1t sure then, but I told her I was.

This chapter is one of the most important chapters in the book because it is the end of the affair between Newland and Ellen. In this chapter we come to understand through May1s circumlocutions that May lied to Ellen when they had talked together. May told her that she was pregnant although she wasn1t sure that she was. Clearly, May was uncomfortable that Ellen had come back to New York; she wanted to make very clear to Ellen that she should stay away from her husband. Telling Ellen that she was pregnant made Ellen decide that she shouldn1t sleep with Archer after all. Ellen would not want to give Newland any reasons to leave his pregnant wife. The key is a symbol the beginning of their affair and the power of "opening" new doors and beginnings. Newland interprets the return of the key as being "another step in the game. It isn1t until May reveals that she is pregnant, does Newland understand what the return of the key meant. Ellen was ending their affair, before May1s heart could get broken. This chapter is a stunning example of May1s manipulativeness. She is able to end the affair by lying to Ellen and then hold a dinner party in her honor

About ten days after Ellen's departure for Washington, DC, May decides to hold a farewell dinner for Ellen. A day after Ellen had departed, Mr. Letterblair had discussed with Archer some arrangements Mrs. Manson Mingott had made to set up a trust for Ellen with sufficient funds so that she could live independently in Paris. Ellen will live with Marchioness Manson. On the evening of the dinner party, everyone arrives, including the van der Luydens, the Lefferts, the Selfridge Merrys, etc. Finally, Madame Olenska arrives but she and Archer don't have much of a chance to talk alone. Archer has a few polite words with Madame Olenska at dinner, and then he asks Reggie Chivers very loudly whether Chivers would like to travel the world with him. Chivers isn't into the idea, but Mr. Selfridge Merry uses this comment as an opportunity to talk about his adventures traveling the world. Later, in the library, Lefferts goes on about how vulgar the Beauforts are. Then the gentlemen join the women in the drawing room, where Archer is struck by how impossible the women have made it for him to talk with Madame Olenska. As Madame Olenska exits, Archer helps her on with her cloak and thinks he might have a few words alone with her. But Mrs. van der Luyden swoops in and says that Madame Olenska is going home with them. As the guests leave, Lefferts asks Archer to cover for him the next time, presumably so that Lefferts can have an affair with a typist. Later, Archer sits alone in the library when May comes in, wanting to talk about how wonderful the dinner party was. Archer tells May that he would like to travel, preferably someplace distant such as India or Japan. May says that would be quite impossible since she is pregnant. She doesn't say so explicitly, but it is understood between them. Archer is unpleasantly surprised. May says she knew she was pregnant since that morning, when she had told both her mother and his. She also tells Archer that she told Ellen when they had their conversation a couple weeks ago. Archer asks her how she could have, if she had only been certain of her pregnancy that morning. May admits that she wasn't sure, but she told Ellen anyway. It turns out she was right.