The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (if you liked this book .TXT) 📕

in the working-classes; but that was because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the point of view was less interesting.

She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.

“Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when you’re feeling right. Miss Haines didn’t act fair to you.”

Lily’s colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty’s.

“Oh, thank you: I’m not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I am clumsy.”

“Well, it’s mean work for anybody with a headache.” Miss Kilroy paused irresolutely. “You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever try orangeine?”

“Thank you.” Lily held out her hand. “It’s very kind of you⁠—I mean to go home.”

She looked gratefully at Miss Kilroy, but neither knew what more to say. Lily was aware that the other was on the point of offering to go home with her, but she wanted to be alone and silent⁠—even kindness, the sort of kindness that Miss Kilroy could give, would have jarred on her just then.

“Thank you,” she repeated as she turned away.

She struck westward through the dreary March twilight, toward the street where her boardinghouse stood. She had resolutely refused Gerty’s offer of hospitality. Something of her mother’s fierce shrinking from observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole, less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by hours of unwonted confinement, she was beginning to feel acutely the ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. The day’s task done, she dreaded to return to her narrow room, with its blotched wallpaper and shabby paint; and she hated every step of the walk thither, through the degradation of a New York street in the last stages of decline from fashion to commerce.

But what she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist’s at the corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist’s door.

Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk who had waited on her before, and slipped the prescription into his hand. There could be no question about the prescription: it was a copy of one of Mrs. Hatch’s, obligingly furnished by that lady’s chemist. Lily was confident that the clerk would fill it without hesitation; yet the nervous dread of a refusal, or even of an expression of doubt, communicated itself to her restless hands as she affected to examine the bottles of perfume stacked on the glass case before her.

The clerk had read the prescription without comment; but in the act of handing out the bottle he paused.

“You don’t want to increase the dose, you know,” he remarked.

Lily’s heart contracted. What did he mean by looking at her in that way?

“Of course not,” she murmured, holding out her hand.

“That’s all right: it’s a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off you go⁠—the doctors don’t know why.”

The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, choked the murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emerged safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the delicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from her momentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were already stealing over her.

In her confusion she stumbled against a man who was hurrying down the last steps of the elevated station. He drew back, and she heard her name uttered with surprise. It was Rosedale, fur-coated, glossy and prosperous⁠—but why did she seem to see him so far off, and as if through a mist of splintered crystals? Before she could account for the phenomenon she found herself shaking hands with him. They had parted with scorn on her side and anger upon his; but all trace of these emotions seemed to vanish as their hands met, and she was only aware of a confused wish that she might continue to hold fast to him.

“Why, what’s the matter, Miss Lily? You’re not well!” he exclaimed; and she forced her lips into a pallid smile of reassurance.

“I’m a little tired⁠—it’s nothing. Stay with me a moment, please,” she faltered. That she should be asking this service of Rosedale!

He glanced at the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with the shriek of the “elevated” and the tumult of trams and wagons contending hideously in their ears.

“We can’t stay here; but let me take you somewhere for a cup of tea. The Longworth is only a few yards off, and there’ll be no one there at this hour.”

A cup of tea in quiet, somewhere out of the noise and ugliness, seemed for the moment the one solace she could bear. A few steps brought them to the ladies’ door of the hotel he had named, and a moment later he was seated opposite to her, and the waiter had placed the tea-tray between them.

“Not a drop of brandy or whiskey first? You look regularly done up, Miss Lily. Well, take your tea strong, then; and, waiter, get a cushion for the lady’s back.”

Lily smiled faintly at the injunction to take her tea strong. It