is the main-spring of
such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the
amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York
August, mitigated only by poor Gerty's presence, her worldly wisdom would
have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that
Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be the first step
toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of
season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the Gormers' tumultuous
progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view
of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury--the daily waking to an
assured absence of care and presence of material ease--gradually blunted
her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void
they could not fill. Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating good-nature, and
the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as
they treated each other--all these characteristic notes of difference
began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in
her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed
idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her
pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to
cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in
the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of
adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be
blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her
craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy
elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the
band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
her; but Mattie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that
they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If
Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity,
had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where
the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man
could either break his engagements, or keep them in a painting-jacket and
slipper