e slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a
vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed--and the darkness would
frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the
room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated
her room at Mrs. Peniston's--its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact
that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human
nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four
walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.

Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as
superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even
had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs.
Peniston's mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as
Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that
questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the
darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but
compassion holding its breath.

She started up and looked forth on the passing streets. Gerty!--they
were nearing Gerty's corner. If only she could reach there before this
labouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips--if only she could
feel the hold of Gerty's arms while she shook in the ague-fit of fear
that was coming upon her! She pushed up the door in the roof and called
the address to the driver. It was not so late--Gerty might still be
waking. And even if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrate
every recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend's
call.

Chapter 14

Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys' entertainment, woke
from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were less vivid in hue, more
subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they
were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such
flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was
accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through
the cracks of other people's lives.

Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but
unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to
herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If
these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine
psychology, it must be remembered that