The House of Mirth (Romance Classic). Edith Wharton

She had excused herself from the walk on the plea of a headache: the horrid headache which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to church. Her appearance at luncheon justified the excuse. She looked languid, full of a suffering sweetness; she carried a scent-bottle in her hand. Mr. Gryce was new to such manifestations; he wondered rather nervously if she were delicate, having far-reaching fears about the future of his progeny. But sympathy won the day, and he besought her not to expose herself: he always connected the outer air with ideas of exposure.

      Lily had received his sympathy with languid gratitude, urging him, since she should be such poor company, to join the rest of the party who, after luncheon, were starting in automobiles on a visit to the Van Osburghs at Peekskill. Mr. Gryce was touched by her disinterestedness, and, to escape from the threatened vacuity of the afternoon, had taken her advice and departed mournfully, in a dust-hood and goggles: as the motor-car plunged down the avenue she smiled at his resemblance to a baffled beetle. Selden had watched her manoeuvres with lazy amusement. She had made no reply to his suggestion that they should spend the afternoon together, but as her plan unfolded itself he felt fairly confident of being included in it. The house was empty when at length he heard her step on the stair and strolled out of the billiard-room to join her.

      She had on a hat and walking-dress, and the dogs were bounding at her feet.

      “I thought, after all, the air might do me good,” she explained; and he agreed that so simple a remedy was worth trying.

      The excursionists would be gone at least four hours; Lily and Selden had the whole afternoon before them, and the sense of leisure and safety gave the last touch of lightness to her spirit. With so much time to talk, and no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy.

      She felt so free from ulterior motives that she took up his charge with a touch of resentment.

      “I don’t know,” she said, “why you are always accusing me of premeditation.”

      “I thought you confessed to it: you told me the other day that you had to follow a certain line—and if one does a thing at all it is a merit to do it thoroughly.”

      “If you mean that a girl who has no one to think for her is obliged to think for herself, I am quite willing to accept the imputation. But you must find me a dismal kind of person if you suppose that I never yield to an impulse.”

      “Ah, but I don’t suppose that: haven’t I told you that your genius lies in converting impulses into intentions?”

      “My genius?” she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. “Is there any final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven’t succeeded.”

      Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her. “Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your definition.”

      “Success?” She hesitated. “Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I suppose. It’s a relative quality, after all. Isn’t that your idea of it?”

      “My idea of it? God forbid!” He sat up with sudden energy, resting his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. “My idea of success,” he said, “is personal freedom.”

      “Freedom? Freedom from worries?”

      “From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that’s what I call success.”

      She leaned forward with a responsive flash. “I know—I know—it’s strange; but that’s just what I’ve been feeling today.”

      He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. “Is the feeling so rare with you?” he said.

      She blushed a little under his gaze. “You think me horribly sordid, don’t you? But perhaps it’s rather that I never had any choice. There was no one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit.”

      “There never is—it’s a country one has to find the way to one’s self.”

      “But I should never have found my way there if you hadn’t told me.”

      “Ah, there are sign-posts—but one has to know how to read them.”

      “Well, I have known, I have known!” she cried with a glow of eagerness. “Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign—and yesterday—last evening at dinner—I suddenly saw a little way into your republic.”

      Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women. His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating even to a man who had renounced sentimental experiments.

      “Well,” he said, “did it make you want to see more? Are you going to become one of us?”

      He had drawn out his cigarettes as he spoke, and she reached her hand toward the case.

      “Oh, do give me one—I haven’t smoked for days!”

      “Why such unnatural abstinence? Everybody smokes at Bellomont.”

      “Yes—but it is not considered becoming in a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER; and at the present moment I am a JEUNE FILLE A MARIER.”

      “Ah, then I’m afraid we can’t let you into the republic.”

      “Why not? Is it a celibate order?”

      “Not in the least, though I’m bound to say there are not many married people in it. But you will marry some one very rich, and it’s as hard for rich people to get into as the kingdom of heaven.”

      “That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”

      “You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich people—they may not be thinking of money, but they’re breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!”

      Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.

      “It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal of your time in the element you disapprove of.”

      Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that’s the secret that most of your friends have lost.”

      Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?”

      “That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It’s just the other