The Gormers are building a country house on Long Island, and Lily's duty is to walk the new estate while Mattie plunges into lighting and sanitation. One autumn morning, in a lane near the Dorset place, she comes on George. He is desperate. He says he never had a friend like her, that she is the only person who knows, and that she can free him. She tells him she feels no ill-will and that they cannot be friends as they were. He follows her into the plea: a word from her, and no hint of publicity.
She refuses. Later, at the Gormer house, Mattie mentions a neighbourly call from Mrs. George Dorset, who wanted to see the new rooms and was so good-natured that Mattie can see why people find her fascinating. Lily feels the drift before anyone names it. In town her hotel rooms look down a sallow vista of brick and fire-escapes, and the restaurant smells of coffee. She can still meet the weekly bill. She has paid the heaviest old debts out of what she received from Trenor. Carry's counsel keeps returning: she must try to marry Rosedale.
George comes to the cramped sitting-room and asks again. For a second the temptation is close. She repeats, as if it were a charm, that she knows nothing, she saw nothing. He groans that she sacrifices them both and colours to the eyes when she will not let him return. Carry then seats Rosedale as Lily's only fellow guest at dinner. For a moment she sees the fireside man, kind in a predatory way. Then Kate Corby and two or three men drop in, and he is again the florid Rosedale of Mattie's drawing-room.
Afterward Carry praises Lily's hair, says Morpeth wants to paint her, and hears that Lily will not accept a portrait from him. Mattie, Carry reports, has already visited with Bertha, and Bertha is insinuating horrors. The world is not a pretty place, Carry says. The only way to keep a footing is to fight it on its own terms, and not alone. If Bertha is still nasty, it is because she is still afraid. From Bertha's standpoint there is only one reason for that fear. Lily has spent the evening refusing to strike. Carry tells her she holds the means in her hand. She can marry George Dorset tomorrow, or she can marry somebody else.
Coming Up in Chapter 22
Carry Fisher's account of the situation has the cheerless distinctness of a winter dawn. She has opened windows that show no sky. Lily lets her put the case into plain words, because it is easier than saying it herself. Once she faces it, she will have to go the full length of its consequences.
