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Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs

"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What ait is to be a woman" She leaned back in a luxury of discontent

Selden was ru in a cupboard for the cake

"Even woes of a flat"

"Oh, governesses--or s But not girls--not poor, irl who lives in a flat"

She sat up in surprise "You do?"

"I do," he assured her, eht-for cake

"Oh, I know--you mean Gerty Farish" She smiled a little unkindly "But I said MARRIAGEABLE--and besides, she has a horrid little place, and noand the food tastes of soap I should hate that, you know"

"You shouldn't dine with her on wash-days," said Selden, cutting the cake

They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the kettle, while she laze As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish had chosen She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet see her to her fate

She seeht "It was horrid ofcoot she was your cousin But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy And besides, she is free and I ae to be happy even in her flat It e the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the ash--room I know I should be a better woman"

"Is it so very bad?" he asked sympathetically

She s up to be filled

"That sho seldom you come there Why don't you come oftener?"

"When I do come, it's not to look at Mrs Peniston's furniture"