ous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
blunder and bring him once more to her feet.

The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
more than it was worth.

"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
delightful had just happened to you!"

The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities. Miss
Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her wavered
between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
inferior from c