The House of Mirth | Page 5

shabby leather chairs.
"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What a miserable thing it is to be
a woman." She leaned back in a luxury of discontent.
Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.
"Even women," he said, "have been known to enjoy the privileges of a flat."
"Oh, governesses--or widows. But not girls--not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!"
"I even know a girl who lives in a flat."

She sat up in surprise. "You do?"
"I do," he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for cake.
"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish." She smiled a little unkindly. "But I said
MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no maid, and such
queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate
that, you know."
"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting the cake.
They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the kettle, while she
measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished
as a bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over
her wrist, he was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin
Gertrude Farish had chosen. She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had
produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
She seemed to read his thought. "It was horrid of me to say that of Gerty," she said with
charming compunction. "I forgot she was your cousin. But we're so different, you know:
she likes being good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I
were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure bliss to
arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could
only do over my aunt's drawing-room I know I should be a better woman."
"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically.
She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be filled.
"That shows how seldom you come there. Why don't you come oftener?"
"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs. Peniston's furniture."
"Nonsense," she said. "You don't come at all--and yet we get on so well when we meet."
"Perhaps that's the reason," he answered promptly. "I'm afraid I haven't any cream, you
know--shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?"
"I shall like it better." She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a thin disk into her
cup. "But that is not the reason," she insisted.
"The reason for what?"
"For your never coming." She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in her charming
eyes. "I wish I knew--I wish I could make you out. Of course I know there are men who
don't like me--one can tell that at a glance. And there are others who are afraid of me:
they think I want to marry them." She smiled up at him frankly. "But I don't think you
dislike me--and you can't possibly think I want to marry you."

"No--I absolve you of that," he agreed.
"Well, then---?"
He had carried his cup to the fireplace, and stood leaning against the chimney-piece and
looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement. The provocation in her eyes
increased his amusement--he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such
small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type
had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and
he had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.
"Well, then," he said with a plunge, "perhaps THAT'S the reason."
"What?"
"The fact that you don't want to marry me. Perhaps I don't regard it as such a strong
inducement to go and see you." He felt a slight shiver down his spine as he ventured this,
but her laugh reassured him.
"Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn't worthy of you. It's stupid of you to make love to me, and it
isn't like you to be stupid." She leaned back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly
judicial that, if they had been in her aunt's drawing-room, he might almost have tried to
disprove her deduction.
"Don't you see," she continued, "that there are men enough to say pleasant things to me,
and that what I want is a friend who won't be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need