ut seeking
to explain it. To Gerty herself it would once have seemed impossible that
she should ever again talk freely with him of Lily Bart; but what had
passed in the secrecy of her own breast seemed to resolve itself, when
the mist of the struggle cleared, into a breaking down of the bounds of
self, a deflecting of the wasted personal emotion into the general
current of human understanding.

It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gerty had
the opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden. The latter, having
presented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through the
dowdy animation of his cousin's tea-hour, conscious of something in her
voice and eye which solicited a word apart; and as soon as the last
visitor was gone Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seen
Miss Bart.

Selden's perceptible pause gave her time for a slight stir of surprise.

"I haven't seen her at all--I've perpetually missed seeing her since she
came back."

This unexpected admission made Gerty pause too; and she was still
hesitating on the brink of her subject when he relieved her by adding:
"I've wanted to see her--but she seems to have been absorbed by the
Gormer set since her return from Europe."

"That's all the more reason: she's been very unhappy."

"Unhappy at being with the Gormers?"

"Oh, I don't defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is at an
end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha
Dorset quarrelled with her."

"Ah----" Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where
he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin
continued to explain: "Judy Trenor and her own family have deserted her
too--and all because Bertha Dorset has said such horrible things. And she
is very poor--you know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy,
after giving her to understand that she was to have everything."

"Yes--I know," Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room, but
only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between
door and window. "Yes--she's been abominably treated; but it's
unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy
can't say to her."

His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. "There would be
other ways of showing your sympathy," she suggested.

Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which
projected from