The Art of Polite Dismissal — The Age of Innocence

On the hall bench lie a sable-lined overcoat and an opera hat with a gold J. B. in the lining. Archer, who has walked up Fifth Avenue thinking how small both his own world and the artists' world are, nearly leaves his card and goes. He stays to outlast Beaufort instead, and finds Madame Olenska half-reclined against orchids from Beaufort's own hot-houses, wearing red velvet trimmed with black fur where any New York hostess would wear a "simple dinner dress." Beaufort tempts her with an oyster supper at Delmonico's and singers who will sing all night. She dismisses him with one cool phrase: she still has business to talk over with Mr Archer.

The business is her freedom, and the scene turns on what neither of them says. Ellen tells him she wants to cast off her old life and become just like everybody else. Archer, now the family's lawyer, warns that her husband could make his charges in public, and that New York's law favours divorce while its customs do not. Then he waits for a flash of anger or a cry of denial. None comes. During one long pause he fixes in his mind the three rings on her hand, none of them a wedding ring. When she asks whether her freedom counts for nothing, it flashes across him that the Count's charge is true and that she hopes to marry the partner of her guilt.

From that moment Archer stops asking and starts talking. He offers the newspapers, the family, the children who might need protecting, every stock phrase that rises to his lips, so that he will not have to hear what her silence might confess. He calls this showing her honestly how the people fondest of her see things. When she asks whether he takes their view, he wanders off to stare at a picture before answering with a question of his own. Ellen winds the gurgling lamp, stays on her feet, and says she will do what he wishes. "Good night, my cousin." She gives up her freedom in a sentence. He finds his eloquence on the pavement outside.