" He took it up, and found himself plunged in an
atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books;
so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender, that it
gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary
of human passions. All through the night he pursued
through those enchanted pages the vision of a
woman who had the face of Ellen Olenska; but when
he woke the next morning, and looked out at the
brownstone houses across the street, and thought of his
desk in Mr. Letterblair's office, and the family pew in
Grace Church, his hour in the park of Skuytercliff
became as far outside the pale of probability as the
visions of the night.
"Mercy, how pale you look, Newland!" Janey
commented over the coffee-cups at breakfast; and his mother
added: "Newland, dear, I've noticed lately that you've
been coughing; I do hope you're not letting yourself be
overworked?" For it was the conviction of both ladies
that, under the iron despotism of his senior partners,
the young man's life was spent in the most exhausting
professional labours--and he had never thought it
necessary to undeceive them.
The next two or three days dragged by heavily. The
taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and
there were moments when he felt as if he were being
buried alive under his future. He heard nothing of the
Countess Olenska, or of the perfect little house, and
though he met Beaufort at the club they merely nodded
at each other across the whist-tables.
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