till feel himself so swayed by
them. How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view
of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?

The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he
strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of
company.

"Walking? A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now that
women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine. It would be a
curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the
sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to
obscure the moral issue."

Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van
Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined
himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control. Happily
Van Alstyne prided himself on his summing up of social aspects, and with
Selden for audience was eager to show the sureness of his touch. Mrs.
Fisher lived in an East side street near the Park, and as the two men
walked down Fifth Avenue the new architectural developments of that
versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne's comment.

"That Greiner house, now--a typical rung in the social ladder! The man
who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table
at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a
style his friends might have thought the money had given out. Not a bad
purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western
sight-seer. By and bye he'll get out of that phase, and want something
that the crowd will pass and the few pause before. Especially if he
marries my clever cousin----"

Selden dashed in with the query: "And the Wellington Brys'? Rather
clever of its kind, don't you think?"

They were just beneath the wide white facade, with its rich restraint of
line, which suggested the clever corseting of a redundant figure.

"That's the next stage: the desire to imply that one has been to Europe,
and has a standard. I'm sure Mrs. Bry thinks her house a copy of the
TRIANON; in America every marble house with gilt furniture is thought to
be a copy of the TRIANON. What a clever chap that architect is,
though--how he takes his client's measure! He has put the whole of Mrs.
Bry in his use of the composite order. Now for the Trenors, you remember,