“I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the others, and besides, she’s always hated Bertha Dorset. But what have you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she flamed out about some money you’d got from Gus; I never knew her so hot before. You know she’ll let him do anything but spend money on his friends; the only reason she’s decent to me now is that she knows I’m not hard up. He speculated for you, you say? Well, what’s the harm? He had no business to lose. He didn’t lose? Then what on earth—but I never could understand you, Lily!”

  The end of it was that, after anxious inquiry and much deliberation, Mrs. Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina’s renowned millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against untrained assistance and was induced to yield only by the fact that she owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To Regina’s work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness continued to hover over her at a distance.

  Lily had taken up her work early in January; it was now two months later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the other workwomen. They were, of course, aware of her history—the exact situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all the others—but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was humiliating to find that after two months of drudgery she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.

  She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual because Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of a dream.

  “I told her he’d never look at her again, and he didn’t. I wouldn’t have, either; I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion Ball and had a hack for her both ways. She’s taken ten bottles, and her headaches don’t seem no better; but she’s written a testimonial to say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture in the paper. Mrs. Trenor’s hat? The one with the green Paradise? Here, Miss Haines; it’ll be ready right off. That was one of the Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why, Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat, the blue tulle: she’s tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out—a good deal like Mamie Leach, on’y thinner.”

  On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which, startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface. It was the strangest part of Lily’s strange experience, the hearing of these names, the seeing the fragmentary and distorted image of the world she had lived in reflected in the mirror of the working-girls’ minds. She had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence. Every girl in Mme. Regina’s work-room knew to whom the headgear in her hands was destined, and had her opinion of its future wearer and a definite knowledge of the latter’s place in the social system. That Lily was a star fallen from that sky did not, after the first stir of curiosity had subsided, materially add to their interest in her. She had fallen, she had “gone under,” and true to the ideal of their race, they were awed only by success, by the gross, tangible image of material achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with whom it was an effort to talk.

  “Miss Bart, if you can’t sew those spangles on more regular, I guess you’d better give the hat to Miss Kilroy.”

  Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right; the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt tired and confused; it was an effort to put her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who took it with a suppressed smile.

  “I’m sorry; I’m afraid I am not well,” she said to the forewoman.

  Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of Mme. Regina’s consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her workers. In that temple of art, no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.

  “You’d better go back to binding edges,” she said drily.

  Lily slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal; once in the street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days—how distant they now seemed!—when she had visited the Girls’ Club with Gerty Farish, she had felt an enlightened interest 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 boarding-house 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 wall-paper 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 to-day 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 side-walk 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 waggons 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 whisky 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 was the temptation she was always struggling to resist. Her craving for the keen stimulant was forever conflicting with that other craving for sleep, the midnight craving which only the little phial in her hand could still. But to-day, at any rate, the tea could hardly be too strong; she counted on it to pour warmth and resolution into her empty veins.

  As she leaned back before him, her lids drooping in utter lassitude, though the first warm draught already tinged her face with returning life, Rosedale was seized afresh by the poignant surprise of her beauty. The dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue-veined pallour of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips, as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there. Against the dull chocolate-coloured background of the restaurant, the purity of her head stood out as it had never done in the most brightly lit ball-room. He looked at her with a startled, uncomfortable feeling as though her beauty were a forgotten enemy that had lain in ambush and now sprang out on him unawares.

  To clear the air he tried to take an easy tone with her. “Why, Miss Lily, I haven’t seen you for an age. I didn’t know what had become of you.”

  As he spoke, he was checked by an embarrassing sense of the complications to which this might lead. Though he had not seen her, he had heard of her; he knew of her connection with Mrs. Hatch and of the talk resulting from it. Mrs. Hatch’s milieu was one which he had once assiduously frequented, and now as devoutly shunned.

  Lily, to whom the tea had restored her usual clearness of mind, saw what was in his thoughts and said with a slight smile: “You would not be likely to know about me. I have joined the working classes.”

  He stared in genuine wonder. “You don’t mean—? Why, what on earth are you doing?”

  “Learning to be a milliner—at least trying to learn,” she hastily qualified the statement.

  Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise. “Come off; you ain’t serious, are you?”

  “Perfectly serious. I’m obliged to work for my living.”

  “But I understood—I thought you were with Norma Hatch.”

  “You heard I had gone to her as her secretary?”

  “Something of the kind, I believe.” He leaned forward to refill her cup.

  Lily guessed the possibilities of embarrassment which the topic held for him, and raising her eyes to his, she said suddenly: “I left her two months ago.”

  Rosedale continued to fumble awkwardly with the tea-pot, and she felt sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that Rosedale did not hear?

  “Wasn’t it a soft berth?” he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.

  “Too soft; one might have sunk in too deep.” Lily rested one arm on the edge of the table and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended herself.

  “You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she might make things too easy for one.”

  Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was lost on him.

  “It was no place for you, anyhow,” he agreed, so suffused and immersed in the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances, looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.

  “I left,” Lily continued, “lest people should say I was helping Mrs. Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh—who is not in the least too good for her—and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well have stayed where I was.”

  “Oh, Freddy—” Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had acquired. “Freddy don’t count; but I knew you weren’t mixed up in that. It ain’t your style.”

  Lily coloured slightly; she could not conceal from herself that the words gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there drinking more tea and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale. But the old habit of observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.

  Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. “Wait a minute—don’t go yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out. And you haven’t told me—” He broke off, conscious of going farther than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it, understood also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her face, he began again abruptly: “What on earth did you mean by saying just now that you were learning to be a milliner?”

  “Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina’s.”

  “Good Lord—you? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down; Mrs. Fisher told me about it, but I understood you got a legacy from her—”

  “I got ten thousand dollars, but the legacy is not to be paid till next summer.”

  “Well, but—look here, you could borrow on it any time you wanted.”

  She shook her head gravely. “No, for I owe it already.”

  “Owe it? The whole ten thousand?”

  “Every penny.” She paused and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on his face: “I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about having made some money for me in stocks.”

  She waited, and Rosedale, congested with embarrassment, muttered that he remembered something of the kind.

  “He made about nine thousand dollars,” Lily pursued, in the same tone of eager communicativeness. “At the time, I understood that he was speculating with my own money; it was incredibly stupid of me, but I knew nothing of business. Afterward I found out that he had not used my money, that what he said he had made for me he had really given me. It was meant in kindness, of course; but it was not the sort of obligation one could remain under. Unfortunately I had spent the money before I discovered my mistake, and so my legacy will have to go to pay it back. That is the reason why I am trying to learn a trade.”