op; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her
case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with it, however,
she went the full length of its consequences; and these had never been
more clearly present to her than when, the next afternoon, she set out
for a walk with Rosedale.

It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted with the
light of summer, and something in the lines of the landscape, and in the
golden haze which bathed them, recalled to Miss Bart the September
afternoon when she had climbed the slopes of Bellomont with Selden. The
importunate memory was kept before her by its ironic contrast to her
present situation, since her walk with Selden had represented an
irresistible flight from just such a climax as the present excursion was
designed to bring about. But other memories importuned her also; the
recollection of similar situations, as skillfully led up to, but through
some malice of fortune, or her own unsteadiness of purpose, always
failing of the intended result. Well, her purpose was steady enough now.
She saw that the whole weary work of rehabilitation must begin again, and
against far greater odds, if Bertha Dorset should succeed in breaking up
her friendship with the Gormers; and her longing for shelter and security
was intensified by the passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only
wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of
Rosedale--the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create--she would at
least present an invulnerable front to her enemy.

She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant, to keep
up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale was too frankly tending.
As she walked beside him, shrinking in every nerve from the way in which
his look and tone made free of her, yet telling herself that this
momentary endurance of his mood was the price she must pay for her
ultimate power over him, she tried to calculate the exact point at which
concession must turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be
made equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
impenetrable to such hints, and she had a sense of something hard and
self-contained behind the superficial warmth of his manner.

They had been seated for some time in the seclusion of a rocky glen above
the lake, when she suddenly cut short the culmination of an impassioned
period by turning upon him the grave loveliness of her gaze.