he study of the female outline, affected their hearer in
an unexpected way. It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily's
beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of the comments had
imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of
indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the
standards by which she was fated to be measured! Does one go to Caliban
for a judgment on Miranda?

In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole
tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all
that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him
from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where
he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again.

He was roused by the pressure of ecstatic fingers. "Wasn't she too
beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple dress? It
makes her look like the real Lily--the Lily I know."

He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he corrected;
and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding, exclaimed joyfully:
"I'll tell her that! She always says you dislike her."

The performance over, Selden's first impulse was to seek Miss Bart.
During the interlude of music which succeeded the TABLEAUX, the actors
had seated themselves here and there in the audience, diversifying its
conventional appearance by the varied picturesqueness of their dress.
Lily, however, was not among them, and her absence served to protract the
effect she had produced on Selden: it would have broken the spell to see
her too soon in the surroundings from which accident had so happily
detached her. They had not met since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding,
and on his side the avoidance had been intentional. Tonight, however, he
knew that, sooner or later, he should find himself at her side; and
though he let the dispersing crowd drift him whither it would, without
making an immediate effort to reach her, his procrastination was not due
to any lingering resistance, but to the desire to luxuriate a moment in
the sense of complete surrender.

Lily had not an instant's doubt as to the meaning of the murmur greeting
her appearance. No other tableau had been received with that precise note
of approval: it had obviously been called forth by herself, and not by
the picture she impersonated. She had feared at the last moment that she
was risking too much in disp