"
He had never heard her speak in such a tone, and he
remembered the phrase she had used a little while
before.
"Yes, the Gorgon HAS dried your tears," he said.
"Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say
that she blinds people. What she does is just the
contrary--she fastens their eyelids open, so that they're
never again in the blessed darkness. Isn't there a Chinese
torture like that? There ought to be. Ah, believe
me, it's a miserable little country!"
The carriage had crossed Forty-second Street: May's
sturdy brougham-horse was carrying them northward
as if he had been a Kentucky trotter. Archer choked
with the sense of wasted minutes and vain words.
"Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?" he asked.
"For US? But there's no US in that sense! We're near
each other only if we stay far from each other. Then we
can be ourselves. Otherwise we're only Newland Archer,
the husband of Ellen Olenska's cousin, and Ellen
Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer's wife, trying
to be happy behind the backs of the people who trust
them."
"Ah, I'm beyond that," he groaned.
"No, you're not! You've never been beyond. And I
have," she said, in a strange voice, "and I know what it
looks like there."
He sat silent, dazed with inarticulate pain. Then he
groped in the darkness of the carriage for the little bell
that signalled orders to the coachman. He remembered
that May rang twice when she wished to stop. He
pressed the bell, and the carriage drew up beside the
curbstone.
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