The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

As soon as Ray had pulled himself out of his slough of despond, and / began to struggle forward on such footing as he found firm, he felt the / rise of the social instinct in him. He went about and delivered his / letters; he appeared at one of Mrs. Chapley's Thursdays, and began to be / passed from one afternoon tea to another. He met the Mayquaits at Mrs. / Chapley's, those Gitchigumee people she had asked him about, and at / their house he met a lady so securely his senior that she could let him / see at once she had taken a great fancy to him. The Mayquaits have since / bought a right of way into the heart of society, but they were then in / the peripheral circles, and this lady seemed anxious to be accounted for / in that strange company of rich outcasts. Something in Ray's intelligent / young good looks must have appealed to her as a possible solvent. As / soon as he was presented to her she began to ply him with subtle / questions concerning their hostess and their fellow-guests, with whom / she professed to find herself by a species of accident springing from / their common interest in a certain charity: that particular tea was to / promote it.

Perhaps it was the steadfast good faith of the pretty boy in / refusing to share in her light satire, while he could not help showing / that he enjoyed it, which commended Ray more and more to her. He told / her how he came to be there, not because she asked, for she did not ask, / but because he perceived that she wished to know, and because it is / always pleasant to speak about one's self upon any pretext, and he / evinced a delicate sympathy with her misgiving. It flattered him that / she should single him out for her appeal as if he were of her sort, and / he eagerly accepted an invitation she made him. Through her favor and / patronage he began to go to lunches and dinners; he went to balls, and / danced sometimes when his pockets were so empty that he walked one way / to save his car fares. But his poverty was without care; it did not eat / into his heart, for no one else shared it; and those spectres of want / and shame which haunt the city's night, and will not always away at / dawn, but remain present to eyes that have watched and wept, vanished in / the joyous light that his youth shed about him, as he hurried home with / the waltz music beating in his blood. A remote sense, very remote and / dim, of something all wrong attended him at moments in his pleasure; at / moments it seemed even he who was wrong. But this fled before his / analysis; he could not see what harm he was doing. To pass his leisure / in the company of well-bred, well-dressed, prosperous, and handsome / people was so obviously right and fit that it seemed absurd to suffer / any question of it. He met mainly very refined persons, whose interests / were all elevated, and whose tastes were often altruistic. He found / himself in a set of young people, who loved art and literature and / music, and he talked to his heart's content with agreeable girls about / pictures and books and theatres.

It surprised him that with all this opportunity and contiguity he did / not fall in love; after the freest give and take of esthetic sympathies / he came away with a kindled fancy and a cold heart. There was one girl / he thought would have let him be in love with her if he wished, but when / he questioned his soul he found that he did not wish, or could not. He / said to himself that it was her money, for she was rich as well as / beautiful and wise; and he feigned that if it had not been for her money / he might have been in love with her. Her people, an aunt and uncle, whom / she lived with, made much of him, and the way seemed clear. They began / to tell each other about themselves, and once he interested her very / much by the story of his adventures in first coming to New York.

"And did you never meet the two young women afterwards? " she asked.

"Yes. That was the curious part of it," he said, and piqued that she / called them "two young women," he went on to tell her of the Hugheses, / whom he set forth in all the picturesqueness he could command. She / listened intensely, and even provoked him with some questions to go on; / but at the end she said nothing; and after that she was the same and not / the same to him. At first he thought it might be her objection to his / knowing such queer people; she was very proud; but he was still made / much of by her family, and there was nothing but this difference in her / that marked with its delicate distinctness the loss of a chance.

He was not touched except in his vanity. Without the subtle willingness / which she had subtly withdrawn, his life was still surpassingly rich on / the side where it had been hopelessly poor; and in spite of his personal / poverty he was in the enjoyment of a social affluence beyond the magic / of mere money. Sometimes he regarded it all as his due, and at all times / he took it with simple ingratitude; but he had moments of passionate / humility when he realized that he owed his good fortune to the caprice / of a worldly old woman, whom he did not respect very much.

When he began to go into society, he did not forget his earlier friends; / he rather prided himself on his constancy; he thought it was uncommon, / and he found it a consolation when other things failed him. It was even / an amusement full of literary suggestion for him to turn from his own / dream of what the world was to Hughes's dream of what the world should / be; and it flattered him that the old man should have taken the sort of / fancy to him that he had. Hughes consulted him as a person with a / different outlook on life, and valued him as a practical mind, akin to / his own in quality, if not in direction. First and last, he read him his / whole book; he stormily disputed with him about the passages which Ray / criticised as to their basal facts; but he adopted some changes Ray / suggested.