Running from What Follows You — The House of Mirth

Lawrence Selden arrives in Monte Carlo hoping distance will cure his feelings for Lily Bart. The resort seems designed for escape: sun, spectacle, and the illusion that life is a holiday. From Mrs. Fisher he learns Lily is aboard the Dorsets' yacht, dazzling Cannes while Bertha Dorset keeps George distracted and pursues Ned Silverton on the side.

Selden tells himself he is healed. Then he boards a train for Nice and Lily steps into his carriage with the Dorsets' party. He cannot flee. In a few months her beauty has hardened from transparent feeling into something brilliant and sealed, like glass. She is perfect to everyone on the yacht: attentive to Bertha, soothing to George, bright with the men. Selden sees the performance and understands how desperate the situation must be.

Mrs. Fisher explains the bargain plainly. Lily is there to occupy George while Bertha conducts her affair. The arrangement works until jealousy and success collide. Silverton gossips to Selden about poisoned marriages and comic tragedy. That night Selden spots Bertha leaving a garden with Silverton while fireworks dazzle the crowd.

Lily stands on the brink of a chasm she pretends not to see. Selden asks himself what he is running from and already knows the answer. Monte Carlo accommodates every mood, but it cannot rewrite the past he shares with her. Beauty and usefulness have merged in Lily until she seems carved from a single substance.

The chapter ends with both of them gambling: she on borrowed protection, he on the hope that absence has made him free. Neither bet is safe, and the Riviera sun only makes the stakes clearer.