The House of Mirth | Page 6

them? Sometimes I have fancied you might be that friend--I don't know why, except that
you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't have to pretend with you or be
on my guard against you." Her voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat
gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a child.
"You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My aunt is full of copy-book
axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that
to live up to them would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other
women--my best friends--well, they use me or abuse me; but they don't care a straw what
happens to me. I've been about too long--people are getting tired of me; they are
beginning to say I ought to marry."
There was a moment's pause, during which Selden meditated one or two replies
calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he rejected them in favour of the
simple question: "Well, why don't you?"
She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all, and that is one of the
disagreeable things I was asking for."
"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably. "Isn't marriage your vocation?
Isn't it what you're all brought up for?"

She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"
"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the first man who came
along."
"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there must be some one
with the requisite qualifications."
She shook her head wearily. "I threw away one or two good chances when I first came
out--I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly poor--and very expensive. I
must have a great deal of money."
Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.
"What's become of Dillworth?" he asked.
"Oh, his mother was frightened--she was afraid I should have all the family jewels reset.
And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn't do over the drawing-room."
"The very thing you are marrying for!"
"Exactly. So she packed him off to India."
"Hard luck--but you can do better than Dillworth."
He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting one between her lips
and slipping the others into a little gold case attached to her long pearl chain.
"Have I time? Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of her cigarette to
his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black
lashes were set in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted
into the pure pallour of the cheek.
She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between the puffs of her
cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco,
and her eyes lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but
with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost
susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active
conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.
"You collect, don't you--you know about first editions and things?"
"As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up something
in the rubbish heap; and I go and look on at the big sales."
She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept them inattentively,
and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.

"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"
Selden stared and laughed.
"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector, you see; I simply like to have
good editions of the books I am fond of."
She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?"
"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real collector values a thing for its
rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night--old
Jefferson Gryce certainly didn't."
She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch fabulous prices, don't they? It
seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going
to read! And I suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians either?"
"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use those in the
public libraries or in private collections. It seems to be the mere rarity