Lily wakes from happy dreams to two notes at her bedside. Judy Trenor is coming to town for a flying visit and hopes she can dine. Selden writes that a case calls him to Albany and asks at what hour tomorrow she will see him. The conservatory at the Brys' still feels like part of the dream. She means to evade him, then writes TOMORROW AT FOUR and tells herself she can put him off when tomorrow comes. Judy's summons seems to restore their old footing. Lily is dining at Carry Fisher's studio, where last night's performers will hear plantation music after dinner. She telegraphs that she will come at ten, leaves the studio shortly after, and drives up Fifth Avenue to the Trenors'.
She waits on the doorstep long enough to wonder at the delay. A caretaker admits her instead of a footman. Gus Trenor, flushed and talkative, leads her to the den Judy usually occupies, offers new Egyptians, and says Judy has a devil of a headache. The room has flowers and a littered writing-table, but Judy's figure does not start up from the chair. When Lily says she will go up, he tells her she will not find Judy: she ain't there. Judy telephoned him to let Lily know. He did not send the message.
He puts himself between her and the door. The man who pays, he says, should at least sit at the table. The money was his; there is such a thing as fair play and interest. When she recoils and says that if she owes him she shall be paid, his face darkens. He is mad about her. He accuses her of planning to borrow from Selden or Rosedale and take her chances of fooling them as she has fooled him. Moral shame and physical fear become one drowning sensation. Only when she stands her ground without theatrics does old habit pluck him back. He tells her to go home, and turns toward the hearth.
She hears herself bid him ring for a hansom and put her in it. In the hall, before the hovering caretaker, she exchanges light words and charges him with the usual messages for Judy while she shakes with loathing. On the doorstep a man's figure, half familiar, turns from the opposite corner and vanishes. In the cab the Furies wake: she has picked up the Eumenides in a house where she was staying, and the iron clang of their wings is in her brain. She cannot face the black walnut bed at Mrs Peniston's. She pushes up the cab roof and calls Gerty Farish's address. Even if Gerty is asleep, the bell will reach every recess of the tiny flat.
Coming Up in Chapter 14
Shaken and sleepless, Lily knocks on Gerty Farish's door while Selden, across town, is falling in love with the woman he thinks he can rescue. Their paths are about to cross in the cruelest way.
