desses gobbling terrapin. Gad, what a
show of good-looking women; but not one of 'em could touch that little
cousin of mine. Talk of jewels--what's a woman want with jewels when
she's got herself to show? The trouble is that all these fal-bals they
wear cover up their figures when they've got 'em. I never knew till
tonight what an outline Lily has."

"It's not her fault if everybody don't know it now," growled Trenor,
flushed with the struggle of getting into his fur-lined coat. "Damned bad
taste, I call it--no, no cigar for me. You can't tell what you're smoking
in one of these new houses--likely as not the CHEF buys the cigars. Stay
for supper? Not if I know it! When people crowd their rooms so that you
can't get near any one you want to speak to, I'd as soon sup in the
elevated at the rush hour. My wife was dead right to stay away: she says
life's too short to spend it in breaking in new people."

Chapter 13

Lily woke from happy dreams to find two notes at her bedside.

One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town that
afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dine
with her. The other was from Selden. He wrote briefly that an important
case called him to Albany, whence he would be unable to return till the
evening, and asked Lily to let him know at what hour on the following day
she would see him.

Lily, leaning back among her pillows, gazed musingly at his letter. The
scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part of her dreams; she
had not expected to wake to such evidence of its reality. Her first
movement was one of annoyance: this unforeseen act of Selden's added
another complication to life. It was so unlike him to yield to such an
irrational impulse! Did he really mean to ask her to marry him? She had
once shown him the impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent
behaviour seemed to prove that he had accepted the situation with a
reasonableness somewhat mortifying to her vanity. It was all the more
agreeable to find that this reasonableness was maintained only at the
cost of not seeing her; but, though nothing in life was as sweet as the
sense of her power over him, she saw the danger of allowing the episode
of the previous night to have a sequel. Since she could not marry him, it
would be kinder to him, as well as easier for herself, to write a line
amicably evading his request to see her: he was not the man to mistake
such a hint, and when