Alanna Thornton’s Reviews > The House of Mirth > Status Update

OOF <\3

“He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers: it was inevitable that he should connect her with the one touch of beauty in the dingy scene.”

This is so SAD

"There is some one I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you-we are sure to see each other again-but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you-I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you-and she'll be no trouble, she’ll take up no room."

Tears!!

"I am glad to have you tell me that; but nothing I have said has really made the difference. The difference is in yourself-it will always be there. And since it is there, it can't really matter to you what people think: you are so sure that your friends will always understand you."

Oh <3 he still thinks so highly of her

I’m not sure I understand what blackmail she has and could use to force her way back into society…

“She made the statement clearly, deliberately, with pauses between the sentences, so that each should have time to sink deeply into her hearer's mind. She had a passionate desire that some one should know the truth about this transaction…”

Lily had an odd sense of being behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted and the loose ends hung.

She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her flagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the change in her face-of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished

“Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different centre: it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.”

Society is everything to her, even after it betrayed her

Is he asking Lily to confirm that his wife was having an affair??