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rambled on, pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly
reality which her silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not or could not say the one word that
would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better
keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a wound he could not heal.
"It's my business, you know," he went on, "to help you to see these things as the people who are fondest of
you see them. The Mingotts, the Wellands, the van der Luydens, all your friends and relations: if I didn't show
you honestly how they judge such questions, it wouldn't be fair of me, would it?" He spoke insistently, almost
pleading with her in his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence.
She said slowly: "No; it wouldn't be fair."
The fire had crumbled down to greyness, and one of the lamps made a gurgling appeal for attention. Madame
Olenska rose, wound it up and returned to the fire, but without resuming her seat.
Her remaining on her feet seemed to signify that there was nothing more for either of them to say, and Archer
stood up also.
"Very well; I will do what you wish," she said abruptly. The blood rushed to his forehead; and, taken aback by
the suddenness of her surrender, he caught her two hands awkwardly in his.
"I--I do want to help you," he said.
"You do help me. Good night, my cousin."
He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the
door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night
Information about Project Gutenberg 54
bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.
XIII.
It was a crowded night at Wallack's theatre.
The play was "The Shaughraun," with Dion Boucicault in the title role and Harry Montague and Ada Dyas as
the lovers. The popularity of the admirable English company was at its height, and the Shaughraun always
packed the house. In the galleries the enthusiasm was unreserved; in the stalls and boxes, people smiled a little
at the hackneyed sentiments and clap- trap situations, and enjoyed the play as much as the galleries did.
There was one episode, in particular, that held the house from floor to ceiling. It was that in which Harry
Montague, after a sad, almost monosyllabic scene of parting with Miss Dyas, bade her good-bye, and turned
to go. The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire, wore a gray
cashmere dress without fashionable loopings or trimmings, moulded to her tall figure and flowing in long
lines about her feet. Around her neck was a narrow black velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back.
When her wooer turned from her she rested her arms against the mantel-shelf and bowed her face in her
hands. On the threshold he paused to look at her; then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of velvet ribbon,
kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude. And on this silent parting the
curtain fell.
It was always for the sake of that particular scene that Newland Archer went to see "The Shaughraun." He
thought the adieux of Montague and Ada Dyas as fine as anything he had ever seen Croisette and Bressant do
in Paris, or Madge Robertson and Kendal in London; in its reticence, its dumb sorrow, it moved him more
than the most famous histrionic outpourings.
On the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancy by reminding him--he could not
have said why--of his leave-taking from Madame Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days
earlier.
It would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between the two situations as between the
appearance of the persons concerned. Newland Archer could not pretend to anything approaching the young
English actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas was a tall red-haired woman of monumental build whose
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