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"You knohen it comes to the point, your parents have always let you have your way ever since you were a little girl," he argued; and she had answered, with her clearest look: "Yes; and that's whatthey'll ever ask of irl"

That was the old New York note; that was the kind of answer he would like always to be sure of his wife'sIf one had habitually breathed the New York air there were ti

The papers he had retired to read did not tell hied him into an atmosphere in which he choked and spluttered They consisted e of letters between Count Olenski's solicitors and a French legal firm to whom the Countess had applied for the settlement of her financial situation There was also a short letter fro it, Newland Archer rose, jammed the papers back into their envelope, and reentered Mr Letterblair's office

"Here are the letters, sir If you wish, I'll see Madame Olenska," he said in a constrained voice

"Thank you--thank you, Mr Archer Coo into the matter afterward: in case you wish to call on our client toain that afternoon It was a winter evening of transparent clearness, with an innocent young moon above the house-tops; and he wanted to fill his soul's lungs with the pure radiance, and not exchange a ith any one till he and Mr Letterblair were closeted together after dinner It was impossible to decide otherwise than he had done: he must see Madame Olenska hireat wave of compassion had swept away his indifference and iure, to be saved at all costs froainst fate

He remembered what she had told him of Mrs Welland's request to be spared whatever was "unpleasant" in her history, and winced at the thought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New York air so pure "Are we only Pharisees after all?" he wondered, puzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive disgust at human vileness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty

For the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles had always been He passed for a young man who had not been afraid of risks, and he knew that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs Thorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest hi air of adventure But Mrs Rushworth was "that kind of woman"; foolish, vain, clandestine by nature, and far more attracted by the secrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as he possessed When the fact dawned on hi feature of the case The affair, in short, had been of the kind that ed from with calm consciences and an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected and those one enjoyed--and pitied In this view they were sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female relatives, who all shared Mrs Archer's belief that when "such things happened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehoays criminal of the woarded any woman who loved i, and mere si to do was to persuade hiirl, and then trust to her to look after him