Book II
29. Chapter XXIX.
(continued)
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.
"Why are we stopping? This is not Granny's," Madame
Olenska exclaimed.
"No: I shall get out here," he stammered, opening
the door and jumping to the pavement. By the light of
a street-lamp he saw her startled face, and the instinctive
motion she made to detain him. He closed the
door, and leaned for a moment in the window.
"You're right: I ought not to have come today," he
said, lowering his voice so that the coachman should
not hear. She bent forward, and seemed about to speak;
but he had already called out the order to drive on, and
the carriage rolled away while he stood on the corner.
The snow was over, and a tingling wind had sprung
up, that lashed his face as he stood gazing. Suddenly he
felt something stiff and cold on his lashes, and perceived
that he had been crying, and that the wind had
frozen his tears.
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