Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in his library in East Thirty-ninth Street.
He had just got back from a big official reception for theinauguration of the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and thespectacle of those great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages,where the throng of fashion circulated through a series ofscientifically catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rustedspring of memory.
"Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms," he heard someone say; and instantly everything about him vanished, and he was sittingalone on a hard leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figurein a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely- fitted vista ofthe old Museum.
The vision had roused a host of other associations, and he satlooking with new eyes at the library which, for over thirty years, hadbeen the scene of his solitary musings and of all the familyconfabulations.
It was the room in which most of the real things of his life hadhappened. There his wife, nearly twenty-six years ago, had broken tohim, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the youngwomen of the new generation to smile, the news that she was to have achild; and there their eldest boy, Dallas, too delicate to be taken tochurch in midwinter, had been christened by their old friend the Bishopof New York, the ample magnificent irreplaceable Bishop, so long thepride and ornament of his diocese. There Dallas had first staggeredacross the floor shouting "Dad," while May and the nurse laughed behindthe door; there their second child, Mary (who was so like her mother),had announced her engagement to the dullest and most reliable of ReggieChivers's many sons; and there Archer had kissed her through her weddingveil before they went down to the motor which was to carry them toGrace Church--for in a world where all else had reeled on itsfoundations the "Grace Church wedding" remained an unchangedinstitution.
It was in the library that he and May had always discussed the futureof the children: the studies of Dallas and his young brother Bill,Mary's incurable indifference to "accomplishments," and passion forsport and philanthropy, and the vague leanings toward "art" which hadfinally landed the restless and curious Dallas in the office of a risingNew York architect.
The young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law andbusiness and taking up all sorts of new things. If they were notabsorbed in state politics or municipal reform, the chances were thatthey were going in for Central American archaeology, for architecture orlandscape-engineering; taking a keen and learned interest in theprerevolutionary buildings of their own country, studying and adaptingGeorgian types, and protesting at the meaningless use of the word"Colonial." Nobody nowadays had "Colonial" houses except the millionairegrocers of the suburbs.
But above all--sometimes Archer put it above all--it was in thatlibrary that the Governor of New York, coming down from Albany oneevening to dine and spend the night, had turned to his host, and said,banging his clenched fist on the table and gnashing his eye-glasses:"Hang the professional politician! You're the kind of man the countrywants, Archer. If the stable's ever to be cleaned out, men like you havegot to lend a hand in the cleaning."
"Men like you--" how Archer had glowed at the phrase! How eagerly hehad risen up at the call! It was an echo of Ned Winsett's old appeal toroll his sleeves up and get down into the muck; but spoken by a man whoset the example of the gesture, and whose summons to follow him wasirresistible.
Archer, as he looked back, was not sure that men like himself WEREwhat his country needed, at least in the active service to whichTheodore Roosevelt had pointed; in fact, there was reason to think itdid not, for after a year in the State Assembly he had not beenre-elected, and had dropped back thankfully into obscure if usefulmunicipal work, and from that again to the writing of occasionalarticles in one of the reforming weeklies that were trying to shake thecountry out of its apathy. It was little enough to look back on; butwhen he remembered to what the young men of his generation and his sethad looked forward--the narrow groove of money-making, sport and societyto which their vision had been limited--even his small contribution tothe new state of things seemed to count, as each brick counts in awell-built wall. He had done little in public life; he would always beby nature a contemplative and a dilettante; but he had had high thingsto contemplate, great things to delight in; and one great man'sfriendship to be his strength and pride.
He had been, in short, what people were beginning to call "a goodcitizen." In New York, for many years past, every new movement,philanthropic, municipal or artistic, had taken account of his opinionand wanted his name. People said: "Ask Archer" when there was a questionof starting the first school for crippled children, reorganising theMuseum of Art, founding the Grolier Club, inaugurating the new Library,or getting up a new society of chamber music. His days were full, andthey were filled decently. He supposed it was all a man ought to ask.
Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thoughtof it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repinedwould have been like despairing because one had not drawn the firstprize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in HIS lottery,and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedlyagainst him. When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly,serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a book or apicture: she had become the composite vision of all that he had missed.That vision, faint and tenuous as it was, had kept him from thinking ofother women. He had been what was called a faithful husband; and whenMay had suddenly died--carried off by the infectious pneumonia throughwhich she had nursed their youngest child--he had honestly mourned her.Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matterif marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of a duty:lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites. Lookingabout him, he honoured his own past, and mourned for it. After all,there was good in the old ways.
His eyes, making the round of the room--done over by Dallas withEnglish mezzotints, Chippendale cabinets, bits of chosen blue-and-whiteand pleasantly shaded electric lamps--came back to the old Eastlakewriting- table that he had never been willing to banish, and to hisfirst photograph of May, which still kept its place beside his inkstand.
There she was, tall, round-bosomed and willowy, in her starchedmuslin and flapping Leghorn, as he had seen her under the orange-treesin the Mission garden. And as he had seen her that day, so she hadremained; never quite at the same height, yet never far below it:generous, faithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, soincapable of growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into piecesand rebuilt itself without her ever being conscious of the change. Thishard bright blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparentlyunaltered. Her incapacity to recognise change made her children concealtheir views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from thefirst, a joint pretence of sameness, a kind of innocent familyhypocrisy, in which father and children had unconsciously collaborated.And she had died thinking the world a good place, full of loving andharmonious households like her own, and resigned to leave it because shewas convinced that, whatever happened, Newland would continue toinculcate in Dallas the same principles and prejudices which had shapedhis parents' lives, and that Dallas in turn (when Newland followed her)would transmit the sacred trust to little Bill. And of Mary she was sureas of her own self. So, having snatched little Bill from the grave, andgiven her life in the effort, she went contentedly to her place in theArcher vault in St. Mark's, where Mrs. Archer already lay safe from theterrifying "trend" which her daughter-in-law had never even become awareof.
Opposite May's portrait stood one of her daughter. Mary Chivers wasas tall and fair as her mother, but large-waisted, flat-chested andslightly slouching, as the altered fashion required. Mary Chivers'smighty feats of athleticism could not have been performed with thetwenty-inch waist that May Archer's azure sash so easily spanned. Andthe difference seemed symbolic; the mother's life had been as closelygirt as her figure. Mary, who was no less conventional, and no moreintelligent, yet led a larger life and held more tolerant views. Therewas good in the new order too.
The telephone clicked, and Archer, turning from the photographs,unhooked the transmitter at his elbow. How far they were from the dayswhen the legs of the brass-buttoned messenger boy had been New York'sonly means of quick communication!
"Chicago wants you."
Ah--it must be a long-distance from Dallas, who had been sent toChicago by his firm to talk over the plan of the Lakeside palace theywere to build for a young millionaire with ideas. The firm always sentDallas on such errands.
"Hallo, Dad--Yes: Dallas. I say--how do you feel about sailing onWednesday? Mauretania: Yes, next Wednesday as ever is. Our client wantsme to look at some Italian gardens before we settle anything, and hasasked me to nip over on the next boat. I've got to be back on the firstof June--" the voice broke into a joyful conscious laugh--"so we mustlook alive. I say, Dad, I want your help: do come."
Dallas seemed to be speaking in the room: the voice was as near byand natural as if he had been lounging in his favourite arm-chair by thefire. The fact would not ordinarily have surprised Archer, forlong-distance telephoning had become as much a matter of course aselectric lighting and five-day Atlantic voyages. But the laugh didstartle him; it still seemed wonderful that across all those miles andmiles of country--forest, river, mountain, prairie, roaring cities andbusy indifferent millions--Dallas's laugh should be able to say: "Ofcourse, whatever happens, I must get back on the first, because FannyBeaufort and I are to be married on the fifth."
The voice began again: "Think it over? No, sir: not a minute. You'vegot to say yes now. Why not, I'd like to know? If you can allege asingle reason--No; I knew it. Then it's a go, eh? Because I count on youto ring up the Cunard office first thing tomorrow; and you'd betterbook a return on a boat from Marseilles. I say, Dad; it'll be our lasttime together, in this kind of way--. Oh, good! I knew you would."
Chicago rang off, and Archer rose and began to pace up and down the room.
It would be their last time together in this kind of way: the boy wasright. They would have lots of other "times" after Dallas's marriage,his father was sure; for the two were born comrades, and Fanny Beaufort,whatever one might think of her, did not seem likely to interfere withtheir intimacy. On the contrary, from what he had seen of her, hethought she would be naturally included in it. Still, change was change,and differences were differences, and much as he felt himself drawntoward his future daughter-in-law, it was tempting to seize this lastchance of being alone with his boy.
There was no reason why he should not seize it, except the profoundone that he had lost the habit of travel. May had disliked to moveexcept for valid reasons, such as taking the children to the sea or inthe mountains: she could imagine no other motive for leaving the housein Thirty-ninth Street or their comfortable quarters at the Wellands' inNewport. After Dallas had taken his degree she had thought it her dutyto travel for six months; and the whole family had made theold-fashioned tour through England, Switzerland and Italy. Their timebeing limited (no one knew why) they had omitted France. Archerremembered Dallas's wrath at being asked to contemplate Mont Blancinstead of Rheims and Chartres. But Mary and Bill wantedmountain-climbing, and had already yawned their way in Dallas's wakethrough the English cathedrals; and May, always fair to her children,had insisted on holding the balance evenly between their athletic andartistic proclivities. She had indeed proposed that her husband shouldgo to Paris for a fortnight, and join them on the Italian lakes afterthey had "done" Switzerland; but Archer had declined. "We'll sticktogether," he said; and May's face had brightened at his setting such agood example to Dallas.
Since her death, nearly two years before, there had been no reasonfor his continuing in the same routine. His children had urged him totravel: Mary Chivers had felt sure it would do him good to go abroad and"see the galleries." The very mysteriousness of such a cure made herthe more confident of its efficacy. But Archer had found himself heldfast by habit, by memories, by a sudden startled shrinking from newthings.
Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he hadsunk. The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted onefor doing anything else. At least that was the view that the men of hisgeneration had taken. The trenchant divisions between right and wrong,honest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so littlescope for the unforeseen. There are moments when a man's imagination, soeasily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its dailylevel, and surveys the long windings of destiny. Archer hung there andwondered. . . .
What was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whosestandards had bent and bound him? He remembered a sneering prophecy ofpoor Lawrence Lefferts's, uttered years ago in that very room: "Ifthings go on at this rate, our children will be marrying Beaufort'sbastards."
It was just what Archer's eldest son, the pride of his life, wasdoing; and nobody wondered or reproved. Even the boy's Aunt Janey, whostill looked so exactly as she used to in her elderly youth, had takenher mother's emeralds and seed-pearls out of their pink cotton-wool, andcarried them with her own twitching hands to the future bride; andFanny Beaufort, instead of looking disappointed at not receiving a "set"from a Paris jeweller, had exclaimed at their old-fashioned beauty, anddeclared that when she wore them she should feel like an Isabeyminiature.
Fanny Beaufort, who had appeared in New York at eighteen, after thedeath of her parents, had won its heart much as Madame Olenska had wonit thirty years earlier; only instead of being distrustful and afraid ofher, society took her joyfully for granted. She was pretty, amusing andaccomplished: what more did any one want? Nobody was narrow-mindedenough to rake up against her the half-forgotten facts of her father'spast and her own origin. Only the older people remembered so obscure anincident in the business life of New York as Beaufort's failure, or thefact that after his wife's death he had been quietly married to thenotorious Fanny Ring, and had left the country with his new wife, and alittle girl who inherited her beauty. He was subsequently heard of inConstantinople, then in Russia; and a dozen years later Americantravellers were handsomely entertained by him in Buenos Ayres, where herepresented a large insurance agency. He and his wife died there in theodour of prosperity; and one day their orphaned daughter had appeared inNew York in charge of May Archer's sister-in-law, Mrs. Jack Welland,whose husband had been appointed the girl's guardian. The fact threw herinto almost cousinly relationship with Newland Archer's children, andnobody was surprised when Dallas's engagement was announced.
Nothing could more dearly give the measure of the distance that theworld had travelled. People nowadays were too busy--busy with reformsand "movements," with fads and fetishes and frivolities--to bother muchabout their neighbours. And of what account was anybody's past, in thehuge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the sameplane?
Newland Archer, looking out of his hotel window at the stately gaietyof the Paris streets, felt his heart beating with the confusion andeagerness of youth.
It was long since it had thus plunged and reared under his wideningwaistcoat, leaving him, the next minute, with an empty breast and hottemples. He wondered if it was thus that his son's conducted itself inthe presence of Miss Fanny Beaufort--and decided that it was not. "Itfunctions as actively, no doubt, but the rhythm is different," hereflected, recalling the cool composure with which the young man hadannounced his engagement, and taken for granted that his family wouldapprove.
"The difference is that these young people take it for granted thatthey're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always tookit for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder--the thing one's socertain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?"
It was the day after their arrival in Paris, and the spring sunshineheld Archer in his open window, above the wide silvery prospect of thePlace Vendome. One of the things he had stipulated--almost the onlyone-- when he had agreed to come abroad with Dallas, was that, in Paris,he shouldn't be made to go to one of the newfangled "palaces."
"Oh, all right--of course," Dallas good-naturedly agreed. "I'll takeyou to some jolly old-fashioned place-- the Bristol say--" leaving hisfather speechless at hearing that the century-long home of kings andemperors was now spoken of as an old-fashioned inn, where one went forits quaint inconveniences and lingering local colour.
Archer had pictured often enough, in the first impatient years, thescene of his return to Paris; then the personal vision had faded, and hehad simply tried to see the city as the setting of Madame Olenska'slife. Sitting alone at night in his library, after the household hadgone to bed, he had evoked the radiant outbreak of spring down theavenues of horse-chestnuts, the flowers and statues in the publicgardens, the whiff of lilacs from the flower-carts, the majestic roll ofthe river under the great bridges, and the life of art and study andpleasure that filled each mighty artery to bursting. Now the spectaclewas before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy,old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with theruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being. . . .
Dallas's hand came down cheerily on his shoulder. "Hullo, father:this is something like, isn't it?" They stood for a while looking out insilence, and then the young man continued: "By the way, I've got amessage for you: the Countess Olenska expects us both at half- pastfive."
He said it lightly, carelessly, as he might have imparted any casualitem of information, such as the hour at which their train was to leavefor Florence the next evening. Archer looked at him, and thought he sawin his gay young eyes a gleam of his great-grandmother Mingott's malice.
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Dallas pursued. "Fanny made me swear to dothree things while I was in Paris: get her the score of the last Debussysongs, go to the Grand-Guignol and see Madame Olenska. You know she wasawfully good to Fanny when Mr. Beaufort sent her over from Buenos Ayresto the Assomption. Fanny hadn't any friends in Paris, and MadameOlenska used to be kind to her and trot her about on holidays. I believeshe was a great friend of the first Mrs. Beaufort's. And she's ourcousin, of course. So I rang her up this morning, before I went out, andtold her you and I were here for two days and wanted to see her."
Archer continued to stare at him. "You told her I was here?"
"Of course--why not?" Dallas's eye brows went up whimsically. Then,getting no answer, he slipped his arm through his father's with aconfidential pressure.
"I say, father: what was she like?"
Archer felt his colour rise under his son's unabashed gaze. "Come,own up: you and she were great pals, weren't you? Wasn't she mostawfully lovely?"
"Lovely? I don't know. She was different."
"Ah--there you have it! That's what it always comes to, doesn't it?When she comes, SHE'S DIFFERENT--and one doesn't know why. It's exactlywhat I feel about Fanny."
His father drew back a step, releasing his arm. "About Fanny? But, my dear fellow--I should hope so! Only I don't see--"
"Dash it, Dad, don't be prehistoric! Wasn't she-- once--your Fanny?"
Dallas belonged body and soul to the new generation. He was thefirst-born of Newland and May Archer, yet it had never been possible toinculcate in him even the rudiments of reserve. "What's the use ofmaking mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out," he alwaysobjected when enjoined to discretion. But Archer, meeting his eyes, sawthe filial light under their banter.
"My Fanny?"
"Well, the woman you'd have chucked everything for: only you didn't," continued his surprising son.
"I didn't," echoed Archer with a kind of solemnity.
"No: you date, you see, dear old boy. But mother said--"
"Your mother?"
"Yes: the day before she died. It was when she sent for me alone--youremember? She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be,because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you mostwanted."
Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyesremained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below thewindow. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me."
"No. I forgot. You never did ask each other anything, did you? Andyou never told each other anything. You just sat and watched each other,and guessed at what was going on underneath. A deaf-and-dumb asylum, infact! Well, I back your generation for knowing more about each other'sprivate thoughts than we ever have time to find out about our own.--Isay, Dad," Dallas broke off, "you're not angry with me? If you are,let's make it up and go and lunch at Henri's. I've got to rush out toVersailles afterward."
Archer did not accompany his son to Versailles. He preferred to spendthe afternoon in solitary roamings through Paris. He had to deal all atonce with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulatelifetime.
After a little while he did not regret Dallas's indiscretion. Itseemed to take an iron band from his heart to know that, after all, someone had guessed and pitied. . . . And that it should have been his wifemoved him indescribably. Dallas, for all his affectionate insight,would not have understood that. To the boy, no doubt, the episode wasonly a pathetic instance of vain frustration, of wasted forces. But wasit really no more? For a long time Archer sat on a bench in the ChampsElysees and wondered, while the stream of life rolled by. . . .
A few streets away, a few hours away, Ellen Olenska waited. She hadnever gone back to her husband, and when he had died, some years before,she had made no change in her way of living. There was nothing now tokeep her and Archer apart--and that afternoon he was to see her.
He got up and walked across the Place de la Concorde and theTuileries gardens to the Louvre. She had once told him that she oftenwent there, and he had a fancy to spend the intervening time in a placewhere he could think of her as perhaps having lately been. For an houror more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle ofafternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in theirhalf-forgotten splendour, filling his soul with the long echoes ofbeauty. After all, his life had been too starved. . . .
Suddenly, before an effulgent Titian, he found himself saying: "ButI'm only fifty-seven--" and then he turned away. For such summer dreamsit was too late; but surely not for a quiet harvest of friendship, ofcomradeship, in the blessed hush of her nearness.
He went back to the hotel, where he and Dallas were to meet; andtogether they walked again across the Place de la Concorde and over thebridge that leads to the Chamber of Deputies.
Dallas, unconscious of what was going on in his father's mind, wastalking excitedly and abundantly of Versailles. He had had but oneprevious glimpse of it, during a holiday trip in which he had tried topack all the sights he had been deprived of when he had had to go withthe family to Switzerland; and tumultuous enthusiasm and cock-surecriticism tripped each other up on his lips.
As Archer listened, his sense of inadequacy and inexpressivenessincreased. The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the facilityand self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a master but asan equal. "That's it: they feel equal to things--they know their wayabout," he mused, thinking of his son as the spokesman of the newgeneration which had swept away all the old landmarks, and with them thesign- posts and the danger-signal.
Suddenly Dallas stopped short, grasping his father's arm. "Oh, by Jove," he exclaimed.
They had come out into the great tree-planted space before theInvalides. The dome of Mansart floated ethereally above the buddingtrees and the long grey front of the building: drawing up into itselfall the rays of afternoon light, it hung there like the visible symbolof the race's glory.
Archer knew that Madame Olenska lived in a square near one of theavenues radiating from the Invalides; and he had pictured the quarter asquiet and almost obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit itup. Now, by some queer process of association, that golden light becamefor him the pervading illumination in which she lived. For nearly thirtyyears, her life--of which he knew so strangely little--had been spentin this rich atmosphere that he already felt to be too dense and yet toostimulating for his lungs. He thought of the theatres she must havebeen to, the pictures she must have looked at, the sober and splendidold houses she must have frequented, the people she must have talkedwith, the incessant stir of ideas, curiosities, images and associationsthrown out by an intensely social race in a setting of immemorialmanners; and suddenly he remembered the young Frenchman who had oncesaid to him: "Ah, good conversation--there is nothing like it, isthere?"
Archer had not seen M. Riviere, or heard of him, for nearly thirtyyears; and that fact gave the measure of his ignorance of MadameOlenska's existence. More than half a lifetime divided them, and she hadspent the long interval among people he did not know, in a society hebut faintly guessed at, in conditions he would never wholly understand.During that time he had been living with his youthful memory of her; butshe had doubtless had other and more tangible companionship. Perhapsshe too had kept her memory of him as something apart; but if she had,it must have been like a relic in a small dim chapel, where there wasnot time to pray every day. . . .
They had crossed the Place des Invalides, and were walking down oneof the thoroughfares flanking the building. It was a quiet quarter,after all, in spite of its splendour and its history; and the fact gaveone an idea of the riches Paris had to draw on, since such scenes asthis were left to the few and the indifferent.
The day was fading into a soft sun-shot haze, pricked here and thereby a yellow electric light, and passers were rare in the little squareinto which they had turned. Dallas stopped again, and looked up.
"It must be here," he said, slipping his arm through his father'swith a movement from which Archer's shyness did not shrink; and theystood together looking up at the house.
It was a modern building, without distinctive character, butmany-windowed, and pleasantly balconied up its wide cream-colouredfront. On one of the upper balconies, which hung well above the roundedtops of the horse-chestnuts in the square, the awnings were stilllowered, as though the sun had just left it.
"I wonder which floor--?" Dallas conjectured; and moving toward theporte-cochere he put his head into the porter's lodge, and came back tosay: "The fifth. It must be the one with the awnings."
Archer remained motionless, gazing at the upper windows as if the end of their pilgrimage had been attained.
"I say, you know, it's nearly six," his son at length reminded him.
The father glanced away at an empty bench under the trees.
"I believe I'll sit there a moment," he said.
"Why--aren't you well?" his son exclaimed.
"Oh, perfectly. But I should like you, please, to go up without me."
Dallas paused before him, visibly bewildered. "But, I say, Dad: do you mean you won't come up at all?"
"I don't know," said Archer slowly.
"If you don't she won't understand."
"Go, my boy; perhaps I shall follow you."
Dallas gave him a long look through the twilight.
"But what on earth shall I say?"
"My dear fellow, don't you always know what to say?" his father rejoined with a smile.
"Very well. I shall say you're old-fashioned, and prefer walking up the five flights because you don't like lifts."
His father smiled again. "Say I'm old-fashioned: that's enough."
Dallas looked at him again, and then, with an incredulous gesture, passed out of sight under the vaulted doorway.
Archer sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at the awningedbalcony. He calculated the time it would take his son to be carried upin the lift to the fifth floor, to ring the bell, and be admitted to thehall, and then ushered into the drawing-room. He pictured Dallasentering that room with his quick assured step and his delightful smile,and wondered if the people were right who said that his boy "took afterhim."
Then he tried to see the persons already in the room--for probably atthat sociable hour there would be more than one--and among them a darklady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out along thin hand with three rings on it. . . . He thought she would besitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked behind heron a table.
"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heardhimself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should loseits edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded eachother.
He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyesnever turning from the balcony. At length a light shone through thewindows, and a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony, drewup the awnings, and closed the shutters.
At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel. |
