The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton (phonics reader .txt) 📗

of the surprise under Selden’s silence, Lily turned to him and said simply: “I came to tell you that I was sorry for the way we parted⁠—for what I said to you that day at Mrs. Hatch’s.”

The words rose to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs, she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung between them.

Selden returned her look with a smile. “I was sorry too that we should have parted in that way; but I am not sure I didn’t bring it on myself. Luckily I had foreseen the risk I was taking⁠—”

“So that you really didn’t care⁠—?” broke from her with a flash of her old irony.

“So that I was prepared for the consequences,” he corrected good-humouredly. “But we’ll talk of all this later. Do come and sit by the fire. I can recommend that armchair, if you’ll let me put a cushion behind you.”

While he spoke she had moved slowly to the middle of the room, and paused near his writing-table, where the lamp, striking upward, cast exaggerated shadows on the pallour of her delicately-hollowed face.

“You look tired⁠—do sit down,” he repeated gently.

She did not seem to hear the request. “I wanted you to know that I left Mrs. Hatch immediately after I saw you,” she said, as though continuing her confession.

“Yes⁠—yes; I know,” he assented, with a rising tinge of embarrassment.

“And that I did so because you told me to. Before you came I had already begun to see that it would be impossible to remain with her⁠—for the reasons you gave me; but I wouldn’t admit it⁠—I wouldn’t let you see that I understood what you meant.”

“Ah, I might have trusted you to find your own way out⁠—don’t overwhelm me with the sense of my officiousness!”

His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that anyone should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of wordplay and evasion.

“It was not that⁠—I was not ungrateful,” she insisted. But the power of expression failed her suddenly; she felt a tremor in her throat, and two tears gathered and fell slowly from her eyes.

Selden moved forward and took her hand. “You are very tired. Why won’t you sit down and let me make you comfortable?”

He drew her to the armchair near the fire, and placed a cushion behind her shoulders.

“And now you must let me make you some tea: you know I always have that amount of hospitality at my command.”

She shook her head, and two more tears ran over. But she did not weep easily, and the long habit of self-control reasserted itself, though she was still too tremulous to speak.

“You know I can coax the water to boil in five minutes,” Selden continued, speaking as though she were a troubled child.

His words recalled the vision of that other afternoon when they had sat together over his tea-table and talked jestingly of her future. There were moments when that day seemed more remote than any other event in her life; and yet she could always relive it in its minutest detail.

She made a gesture of refusal. “No: I drink too much tea. I would rather sit quiet⁠—I must go in a moment,” she added confusedly.

Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden’s side the determining impulse was still lacking.

The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden’s inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.

“I must go,” she repeated, making a motion to rise from her chair. “But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont, and that sometimes⁠—sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them⁠—they have helped me, and kept me from mistakes; kept me from really becoming what many people have thought me.”

Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life.

A change had come over Selden’s face as she spoke. Its guarded look had yielded to an expression still untinged by personal emotion, but full of a gentle understanding.

“I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really made the difference. The difference is in yourself⁠—it will always be there. And since it is there, it can’t really matter to you what people think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you.”

“Ah, don’t say that⁠—don’t say that what you have told me has made no difference. It seems to shut me out⁠—to leave me all alone with the other people.” She