ween them was one
which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling;
and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of
such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into
resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they
faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's
elephantine sofas. The sofa in question, and the apartment peopled by its
monstrous mates, served at length to suggest the turn of Selden's reply.

"Gerty told me that you were acting as Mrs. Hatch's secretary; and I knew
she was anxious to hear how you were getting on."

Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. "Why
didn't she look me up herself, then?" she asked.

"Because, as you didn't send her your address, she was afraid of being
importunate." Selden continued with a smile: "You see no such scruples
restrained me; but then I haven't as much to risk if I incur your
displeasure."

Lily answered his smile. "You haven't incurred it as yet; but I have an
idea that you are going to."

"That rests with you, doesn't it? You see my initiative doesn't go beyond
putting myself at your disposal."

"But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?" she asked in the same
light tone.

Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch's drawing-room; then he said, with
a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection:
"You are to let me take you away from here."

Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it
and said coldly: "And may I ask where you mean me to go?"

"Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is
that it should be away from here."

The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words
cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own
were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at
a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and
unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of
authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.

"I am very much obliged to you," she said, "for taking such an interest
in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention
of leaving."

Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of
uncontrollable expectancy.

"That simply means that you don't know where you are!" he