ay high
in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost--she who needed
every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her,
must have pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have
afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching such a
heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with her guests
when they bade her good night.

A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily
Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a
universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.

She began to undress without ringing for her maid, whom she had sent to
bed. She had been long enough in bondage to other people's pleasure to be
considerate of those who depended on hers, and in her bitter moods it
sometimes struck her that she and her maid were in the same position,
except that the latter received her wages more regularly.

As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollow
and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth,
faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.

"Oh, I must stop worrying!" she exclaimed. "Unless it's the electric
light----" she reflected, springing up from her seat and lighting the
candles on the dressing-table.

She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the
candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a
background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but
the two lines about the mouth remained.

Lily rose and undressed in haste.

"It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think
about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty
cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence
against them.

But the odious things were there, and remained with her. She returned
wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy
load and toils on after a brief rest. She was almost sure she had
"landed" him: a few days' work and she would win her reward. But the
reward itself seemed unpalatable just then: she could get no zest from
the thought of victory. It would be a rest from worry, no more--and how
little that would have seemed to her a few years earlier! Her ambitions
had shrunk gradually in the desiccating air of failure. But why had she
failed? Was it her own fault or that of destiny?

She remembered how her mot