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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Custom of the Country
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2004 [EBook #11052]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steve Harris and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
+
+by EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Undine Spragg--how can you?" her mother wailed, raising a
+prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a
+languid "bell-boy" had just brought in.
+
+But her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to
+smile on her visitor while Miss Spragg, with a turn of her quick young
+fingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to the window to
+read it.
+
+"I guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at her
+mother.
+
+"Did you EVER, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride.
+
+Mrs. Heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, her
+rusty veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator bag at her feet, followed
+the mother's glance with good-humoured approval.
+
+"I never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spirit
+rather than the letter of her hostess's enquiry.
+
+Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairs
+in one of the private drawing-rooms of the Hotel Stentorian. The Spragg
+rooms were known as one of the Looey suites, and the drawing-room walls,
+above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung with
+salmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of Marie Antoinette
+and the Princess de Lamballe. In the centre of the florid carpet a gilt
+table with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tied
+with a pink bow. But for this ornament, and a copy of "The Hound of the
+Baskervilles" which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human
+use, and Mrs. Spragg herself wore as complete an air of detachment as if
+she had been a wax figure in a show-window. Her attire was fashionable
+enough to justify such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, with
+puffy eye-lids and drooping mouth, suggested a partially-melted wax
+figure which had run to double-chin.
+
+Mrs. Heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring look of solidity and
+reality. The planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and the
+grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organized and
+self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a
+"society" manicure and masseuse. Toward Mrs. Spragg and her daughter
+she filled the double role of manipulator and friend; and it was in the
+latter capacity that, her day's task ended, she had dropped in for a
+moment to "cheer up" the lonely ladies of the Stentorian.
+
+The young girl whose "form" had won Mrs. Heeny's professional
+commendation suddenly shifted its lovely lines as she turned back from
+the window.
+
+"Here--you can have it after all," she said, crumpling the note and
+tossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother's lap.
+
+"Why--isn't it from Mr. Popple?" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed unguardedly.
+
+"No--it isn't. What made you think I thought it was?" snapped her
+daughter; but the next instant she added, with an outbreak of childish
+disappointment: "It's only from Mr. Marvell's sister--at least she says
+she's his sister."
+
+Mrs. Spragg, with a puzzled frown, groped for her eye-glass among the
+jet fringes of her tightly-girded front.
+
+Mrs. Heeny's small blue eyes shot out sparks of curiosity.
+"Marvell--what Marvell is that?"
+
+The girl explained languidly: "A little fellow--I think Mr. Popple said
+his name was Ralph"; while her mother continued: "Undine met them both
+last night at that party downstairs. And from something Mr. Popple said
+to her about going to one of the new plays, she thought--"
+
+"How on earth do you know what I thought?" Undine flashed back, her grey
+eyes darting warnings at her mother under their straight black brows.
+
+"Why, you SAID you thought--" Mrs. Spragg began reproachfully; but Mrs.
+Heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of
+thought.
+
+"What Popple? Claud Walsingham Popple--the portrait painter?"
+
+"Yes--I suppose so. He said he'd like to paint me. Mabel Lipscomb
+introduced him. I don't care if I never see him again," the girl said,
+bathed in angry pink.
+
+"Do you know him, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg enquired.
+
+"I should say I did. I manicured him for his first society portrait--a
+full-length of Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll." Mrs. Heeny smiled indulgently
+on her hearers. "I know everybody. If they don't know ME they ain't in
+it, and Claud Walsingham Popple's in it. But he ain't nearly AS in it,"
+she continued judicially, "as Ralph Marvell--the little fellow, as you
+call him."
+
+Undine Spragg, at the word, swept round on the speaker with one of the
+quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility. She was always
+doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed
+to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of
+reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim
+length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless
+feet.
+
+"Why, do you know the Marvells? Are THEY stylish?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Heeny gave the discouraged gesture of a pedagogue who has vainly
+striven to implant the rudiments of knowledge in a rebellious mind.
+
+"Why, Undine Spragg, I've told you all about them time and again!
+His mother was a Dagonet. They live with old Urban Dagonet down in
+Washington Square."
+
+To Mrs. Spragg this conveyed even less than to her daughter, "'way down
+there? Why do they live with somebody else? Haven't they got the means
+to have a home of their own?"
+
+Undine's perceptions were more rapid, and she fixed her eyes searchingly
+on Mrs. Heeny.
+
+"Do you mean to say Mr. Marvell's as swell as Mr. Popple?"
+
+"As swell? Why, Claud Walsingham Popple ain't in the same class with
+him!"
+
+The girl was upon her mother with a spring, snatching and smoothing out
+the crumpled note.
+
+"Laura Fairford--is that the sister's name?"
+
+"Mrs. Henley Fairford; yes. What does she write about?"
+
+Undine's face lit up as if a shaft of sunset had struck it through the
+triple-curtained windows of the Stentorian.
+
+"She says she wants me to dine with her next Wednesday. Isn't it queer?
+Why does SHE want me? She's never seen me!" Her tone implied that she
+had long been accustomed to being "wanted" by those who had.
+
+Mrs. Heeny laughed. "HE saw you, didn't he?"
+
+"Who? Ralph Marvell? Why, of course he did--Mr. Popple brought him to
+the party here last night."
+
+"Well, there you are... When a young man in society wants to meet a girl
+again, he gets his sister to ask her."
+
+Undine stared at her incredulously. "How queer! But they haven't all
+got sisters, have they? It must be fearfully poky for the ones that
+haven't."
+
+"They get their mothers--or their married friends," said Mrs. Heeny
+omnisciently.
+
+"Married gentlemen?" enquired Mrs. Spragg, slightly shocked, but
+genuinely desirous of mastering her lesson.
+
+"Mercy, no! Married ladies."
+
+"But are there never any gentlemen present?" pursued Mrs. Spragg,
+feeling that if this were the case Undine would certainly be
+disappointed.
+
+"Present where? At their dinners? Of course--Mrs. Fairford gives the
+smartest little dinners in town. There was an account of one she gave
+last week in this morning's TOWN TALK: I guess it's right here among my
+clippings." Mrs. Heeny, swooping down on her bag, drew from it a handful
+of newspaper cuttings, which she spread on her ample lap and proceeded
+to sort with a moistened forefinger. "Here," she said, holding one of
+the slips at arm's length; and throwing back her head she read, in a
+slow unpunctuated chant: '"Mrs. Henley Fairford gave another of her
+natty little dinners last Wednesday as usual it was smart small and
+exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs
+as Madame Olga Loukowska gave some of her new steppe dances after
+dinner'--that's the French for new dance steps," Mrs. Heeny concluded,
+thrusting the documents back into her bag.
+
+"Do you know Mrs. Fairford too?" Undine asked eagerly; while Mrs.
+Spragg, impressed, but anxious for facts, pursued: "Does she reside on
+Fifth Avenue?"
+
+"No, she has a little house in Thirty-eighth Street, down beyond Park
+Avenue."
+
+The ladies' faces drooped again, and the masseuse went on promptly: "But
+they're glad enough to have her in the big houses!--Why, yes, I know
+her," she said, addressing herself to Undine. "I mass'd her for a
+sprained ankle a couple of years ago. She's got a lovely manner, but
+NO conversation. Some of my patients converse exquisitely," Mrs. Heeny
+added with discrimination.
+
+Undine was brooding over the note. "It IS written to mother--Mrs. Abner
+E. Spragg--I never saw anything so funny! 'Will you ALLOW your daughter
+to dine with me?' Allow! Is Mrs. Fairford peculiar?"
+
+"No--you are," said Mrs. Heeny bluntly. "Don't you know it's the thing
+in the best society to pretend that girls can't do anything without
+their mothers' permission? You just remember that. Undine. You mustn't
+accept invitations from gentlemen without you say you've got to ask your
+mother first."
+
+"Mercy! But how'll mother know what to say?"
+
+"Why, she'll say what you tell her to, of course. You'd better tell her
+you want to dine with Mrs. Fairford," Mrs. Heeny added humorously, as
+she gathered her waterproof together and stooped for her bag.
+
+"Have I got to write the note, then?" Mrs. Spragg asked with rising
+agitation.
+
+Mrs. Heeny reflected. "Why, no. I guess Undine can write it as if it was
+from you. Mrs. Fairford don't know your writing."
+
+This was an evident relief to Mrs. Spragg, and as Undine swept to her
+room with the note her mother sank back, murmuring plaintively: "Oh,
+don't go yet, Mrs. Heeny. I haven't seen a human being all day, and I
+can't seem to find anything to say to that French maid."
+
+Mrs. Heeny looked at her hostess with friendly compassion. She was well
+aware that she was the only bright spot on Mrs. Spragg's horizon. Since
+the Spraggs, some two years previously, had moved from Apex City to New
+York, they had made little progress in establishing relations with their
+new environment; and when, about four months earlier, Mrs. Spragg's
+doctor had called in Mrs. Heeny to minister professionally to his
+patient, he had done more for her spirit than for her body. Mrs. Heeny
+had had such "cases" before: she knew the rich helpless family, stranded
+in lonely splendour in a sumptuous West Side hotel, with a father
+compelled to seek a semblance of social life at the hotel bar, and a
+mother deprived of even this contact with her kind, and reduced to
+illness by boredom and inactivity. Poor Mrs. Spragg had done her own
+washing in her youth, but since her rising fortunes had made this
+occupation unsuitable she had sunk into the relative inertia which the
+ladies of Apex City regarded as one of the prerogatives of affluence. At
+Apex, however, she had belonged to a social club, and, until they moved
+to the Mealey House, had been kept busy by the incessant struggle with
+domestic cares; whereas New York seemed to offer no field for any form
+of lady-like activity. She therefore took her exercise vicariously, with
+Mrs. Heeny's help; and Mrs. Heeny knew how to manipulate her imagination
+as well as her muscles. It was Mrs. Heeny who peopled the solitude of
+the long ghostly days with lively anecdotes of the Van Degens, the
+Driscolls, the Chauncey Ellings and the other social potentates whose
+least doings Mrs. Spragg and Undine had followed from afar in the Apex
+papers, and who had come to seem so much more remote since only the
+width of the Central Park divided mother and daughter from their
+Olympian portals.
+
+Mrs. Spragg had no ambition for herself--she seemed to have transferred
+her whole personality to her child--but she was passionately resolved
+that Undine should have what she wanted, and she sometimes fancied that
+Mrs. Heeny, who crossed those sacred thresholds so familiarly, might
+some day gain admission for Undine.
+
+"Well--I'll stay a little mite longer if you want; and supposing I was
+to rub up your nails while we're talking? It'll be more sociable," the
+masseuse suggested, lifting her bag to the table and covering its shiny
+onyx surface with bottles and polishers.
+
+Mrs. Spragg consentingly slipped the rings from her small mottled hands.
+It was soothing to feel herself in Mrs. Heeny's grasp, and though she
+knew the attention would cost her three dollars she was secure in the
+sense that Abner wouldn't mind. It had been clear to Mrs. Spragg, ever
+since their rather precipitate departure from Apex City, that Abner was
+resolved not to mind--resolved at any cost to "see through" the
+New York adventure. It seemed likely now that the cost would be
+considerable. They had lived in New York for two years without any
+social benefit to their daughter; and it was of course for that purpose
+that they had come. If, at the time, there had been other and more
+pressing reasons, they were such as Mrs. Spragg and her husband
+never touched on, even in the gilded privacy of their bedroom at the
+Stentorian; and so completely had silence closed in on the subject that
+to Mrs. Spragg it had become non-existent: she really believed that,
+as Abner put it, they had left Apex because Undine was too big for the
+place.
+
+She seemed as yet--poor child!--too small for New York: actually
+imperceptible to its heedless multitudes; and her mother trembled for
+the day when her invisibility should be borne in on her. Mrs. Spragg
+did not mind the long delay for herself--she had stores of lymphatic
+patience. But she had noticed lately that Undine was beginning to be
+nervous, and there was nothing that Undine's parents dreaded so much as
+her being nervous. Mrs. Spragg's maternal apprehensions unconsciously
+escaped in her next words.
+
+"I do hope she'll quiet down now," she murmured, feeling quieter herself
+as her hand sank into Mrs. Heeny's roomy palm.
+
+"Who's that? Undine?"
+
+"Yes. She seemed so set on that Mr. Popple's coming round. From the way
+he acted last night she thought he'd be sure to come round this morning.
+She's so lonesome, poor child--I can't say as I blame her."
+
+"Oh, he'll come round. Things don't happen as quick as that in New
+York," said Mrs. Heeny, driving her nail-polisher cheeringly.
+
+Mrs. Spragg sighed again. "They don't appear to. They say New Yorkers
+are always in a hurry; but I can't say as they've hurried much to make
+our acquaintance."
+
+Mrs. Heeny drew back to study the effect of her work. "You wait, Mrs.
+Spragg, you wait. If you go too fast you sometimes have to rip out the
+whole seam."
+
+"Oh, that's so--that's SO!" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed, with a tragic
+emphasis that made the masseuse glance up at her.
+
+"Of course it's so. And it's more so in New York than anywhere. The
+wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it you can pull and pull, but
+you'll never get out of it again."
+
+Undine's mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. "I wish YOU'D
+tell Undine that, Mrs. Heeny."
+
+"Oh, I guess Undine's all right. A girl like her can afford to wait.
+And if young Marvell's really taken with her she'll have the run of the
+place in no time."
+
+This solacing thought enabled Mrs. Spragg to yield herself unreservedly
+to Mrs. Heeny's ministrations, which were prolonged for a happy
+confidential hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse good-bye, and
+was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door opened to admit
+her husband.
+
+Mr. Spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the
+centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. He
+was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure
+of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and
+his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black
+brows like his daughter's. His thin hair was worn a little too long over
+his coat collar, and a Masonic emblem dangled from the heavy gold chain
+which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat.
+
+He stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering
+glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: "Well, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately.
+"Undine's been asked out to a dinner-party; and Mrs. Heeny says it's to
+one of the first families. It's the sister of one of the gentlemen that
+Mabel Lipscomb introduced her to last night."
+
+There was a mild triumph in her tone, for it was owing to her insistence
+and Undine's that Mr. Spragg had been induced to give up the house
+they had bought in West End Avenue, and move with his family to the
+Stentorian. Undine had early decided that they could not hope to get
+on while they "kept house"--all the fashionable people she knew either
+boarded or lived in hotels. Mrs. Spragg was easily induced to take the
+same view, but Mr. Spragg had resisted, being at the moment unable
+either to sell his house or to let it as advantageously as he had hoped.
+After the move was made it seemed for a time as though he had been
+right, and the first social steps would be as difficult to make in a
+hotel as in one's own house; and Mrs. Spragg was therefore eager to have
+him know that Undine really owed her first invitation to a meeting under
+the roof of the Stentorian.
+
+"You see we were right to come here, Abner," she added, and he absently
+rejoined: "I guess you two always manage to be right."
+
+But his face remained unsmiling, and instead of seating himself and
+lighting his cigar, as he usually did before dinner, he took two or
+three aimless turns about the room, and then paused in front of his
+wife.
+
+"What's the matter--anything wrong down town?" she asked, her eyes
+reflecting his anxiety.
+
+Mrs. Spragg's knowledge of what went on "down town" was of the most
+elementary kind, but her husband's face was the barometer in which she
+had long been accustomed to read the leave to go on unrestrictedly,
+or the warning to pause and abstain till the coming storm should be
+weathered.
+
+He shook his head. "N--no. Nothing worse than what I can see to, if you
+and Undine will go steady for a while." He paused and looked across the
+room at his daughter's door. "Where is she--out?"
+
+"I guess she's in her room, going over her dresses with that French
+maid. I don't know as she's got anything fit to wear to that dinner,"
+Mrs. Spragg added in a tentative murmur.
+
+Mr. Spragg smiled at last. "Well--I guess she WILL have," he said
+prophetically.
+
+He glanced again at his daughter's door, as if to make sure of its being
+shut; then, standing close before his wife, he lowered his voice to say:
+"I saw Elmer Moffatt down town to-day."
+
+"Oh, Abner!" A wave of almost physical apprehension passed over Mrs.
+Spragg. Her jewelled hands trembled in her black brocade lap, and the
+pulpy curves of her face collapsed as if it were a pricked balloon.
+
+"Oh, Abner," she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter's door. Mr.
+Spragg's black eyebrows gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident
+that his anger was not against his wife.
+
+"What's the good of Oh Abner-ing? Elmer Moffatt's nothing to us--no
+more'n if we never laid eyes on him."
+
+"No--I know it; but what's he doing here? Did you speak to him?" she
+faltered.
+
+He slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. "No--I guess Elmer and
+I are pretty well talked out."
+
+Mrs. Spragg took up her moan. "Don't you tell her you saw him, Abner."
+
+"I'll do as you say; but she may meet him herself."
+
+"Oh, I guess not--not in this new set she's going with! Don't tell her
+ANYHOW."
+
+He turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried
+loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her
+hand on his arm.
+
+"He can't do anything to her, can he?"
+
+"Do anything to her?" He swung about furiously. "I'd like to see him
+touch her--that's all!"
+
+
+
+II
+
+Undine's white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose
+carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops
+of the Central Park.
+
+She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed
+eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth
+Avenue--and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!
+
+She turned back into the room, and going to her writing-table laid Mrs.
+Fairford's note before her, and began to study it minutely. She had read
+in the "Boudoir Chat" of one of the Sunday papers that the smartest
+women were using the new pigeon-blood notepaper with white ink; and
+rather against her mother's advice she had ordered a large supply, with
+her monogram in silver. It was a disappointment, therefore, to find that
+Mrs. Fairford wrote on the old-fashioned white sheet, without even a
+monogram--simply her address and telephone number. It gave Undine rather
+a poor opinion of Mrs. Fairford's social standing, and for a moment she
+thought with considerable satisfaction of answering the note on
+her pigeon-blood paper. Then she remembered Mrs. Heeny's emphatic
+commendation of Mrs. Fairford, and her pen wavered. What if white paper
+were really newer than pigeon blood? It might be more stylish, anyhow.
+Well, she didn't care if Mrs. Fairford didn't like red paper--SHE did!
+And she wasn't going to truckle to any woman who lived in a small house
+down beyond Park Avenue...
+
+Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She
+wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could
+not help modelling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion
+of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to
+choose between two courses. She hesitated a moment longer, and then took
+from the drawer a plain sheet with the hotel address.
+
+It was amusing to write the note in her mother's name--she giggled as
+she formed the phrase "I shall be happy to permit my daughter to take
+dinner with you" ("take dinner" seemed more elegant than Mrs. Fairford's
+"dine")--but when she came to the signature she was met by a new
+difficulty. Mrs. Fairford had signed herself "Laura Fairford"--just as
+one school-girl would write to another. But could this be a proper model
+for Mrs. Spragg? Undine could not tolerate the thought of her mother's
+abasing herself to a denizen of regions beyond Park Avenue, and she
+resolutely formed the signature: "Sincerely, Mrs. Abner E. Spragg." Then
+uncertainty overcame her, and she re-wrote her note and copied Mrs.
+Fairford's formula: "Yours sincerely, Leota B. Spragg." But this struck
+her as an odd juxtaposition of formality and freedom, and she made a
+third attempt: "Yours with love, Leota B. Spragg." This, however,
+seemed excessive, as the ladies had never met; and after several other
+experiments she finally decided on a compromise, and ended the note:
+"Yours sincerely, Mrs. Leota B. Spragg." That might be conventional.
+Undine reflected, but it was certainly correct. This point settled, she
+flung open her door, calling imperiously down the passage: "Celeste!"
+and adding, as the French maid appeared: "I want to look over all my
+dinner-dresses."
+
+Considering the extent of Miss Spragg's wardrobe her dinner-dresses were
+not many. She had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her
+lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid.
+Since then, indeed, she and Mrs. Spragg had succumbed to the abstract
+pleasure of buying two or three more, simply because they were too
+exquisite and Undine looked too lovely in them; but she had grown tired
+of these also--tired of seeing them hang unworn in her wardrobe, like so
+many derisive points of interrogation. And now, as Celeste spread them
+out on the bed, they seemed disgustingly common-place, and as familiar
+as if she had danced them to shreds. Nevertheless, she yielded to the
+maid's persuasions and tried them on.
+
+The first and second did not gain by prolonged inspection: they looked
+old-fashioned already. "It's something about the sleeves," Undine
+grumbled as she threw them aside.
+
+The third was certainly the prettiest; but then it was the one she
+had worn at the hotel dance the night before and the impossibility of
+wearing it again within the week was too obvious for discussion. Yet she
+enjoyed looking at herself in it, for it reminded her of her sparkling
+passages with Claud Walsingham Popple, and her quieter but more fruitful
+talk with his little friend--the young man she had hardly noticed.
+
+"You can go, Celeste--I'll take off the dress myself," she said: and
+when Celeste had passed out, laden with discarded finery. Undine bolted
+her door, dragged the tall pier-glass forward and, rummaging in a drawer
+for fan and gloves, swept to a seat before the mirror with the air of a
+lady arriving at an evening party. Celeste, before leaving, had drawn
+down the blinds and turned on the electric light, and the white and gold
+room, with its blazing wall-brackets, formed a sufficiently brilliant
+background to carry out the illusion. So untempered a glare would have
+been destructive to all half-tones and subtleties of modelling; but
+Undine's beauty was as vivid, and almost as crude, as the brightness
+suffusing it. Her black brows, her reddish-tawny hair and the pure red
+and white of her complexion defied the searching decomposing radiance:
+she might have been some fabled creature whose home was in a beam of
+light.
+
+Undine, as a child, had taken but a lukewarm interest in the diversions
+of her playmates. Even in the early days when she had lived with her
+parents in a ragged outskirt of Apex, and hung on the fence with Indiana
+Frusk, the freckled daughter of the plumber "across the way," she had
+cared little for dolls or skipping-ropes, and still less for the riotous
+games in which the loud Indiana played Atalanta to all the boyhood of
+the quarter. Already Undine's chief delight was to "dress up" in her
+mother's Sunday skirt and "play lady" before the wardrobe mirror. The
+taste had outlasted childhood, and she still practised the same secret
+pantomime, gliding in, settling her skirts, swaying her fan, moving her
+lips in soundless talk and laughter; but lately she had shrunk from
+everything that reminded her of her baffled social yearnings. Now,
+however, she could yield without afterthought to the joy of dramatizing
+her beauty. Within a few days she would be enacting the scene she was
+now mimicking; and it amused her to see in advance just what impression
+she would produce on Mrs. Fairford's guests.
+
+For a while she carried on her chat with an imaginary circle of
+admirers, twisting this way and that, fanning, fidgeting, twitching at
+her draperies, as she did in real life when people were noticing her.
+Her incessant movements were not the result of shyness: she thought it
+the correct thing to be animated in society, and noise and restlessness
+were her only notion of vivacity. She therefore watched herself
+approvingly, admiring the light on her hair, the flash of teeth between
+her smiling lips, the pure shadows of her throat and shoulders as she
+passed from one attitude to another. Only one fact disturbed her: there
+was a hint of too much fulness in the curves of her neck and in the
+spring of her hips. She was tall enough to carry off a little extra
+weight, but excessive slimness was the fashion, and she shuddered at the
+thought that she might some day deviate from the perpendicular.
+
+Presently she ceased to twist and sparkle at her image, and sinking into
+her chair gave herself up to retrospection. She was vexed, in looking
+back, to think how little notice she had taken of young Marvell, who
+turned out to be so much less negligible than his brilliant friend. She
+remembered thinking him rather shy, less accustomed to society; and
+though in his quiet deprecating way he had said one or two droll things
+he lacked Mr. Popple's masterly manner, his domineering yet caressing
+address. When Mr. Popple had fixed his black eyes on Undine, and
+murmured something "artistic" about the colour of her hair, she had
+thrilled to the depths of her being. Even now it seemed incredible that
+he should not turn out to be more distinguished than young Marvell: he
+seemed so much more in the key of the world she read about in the Sunday
+papers--the dazzling auriferous world of the Van Degens, the Driscolls
+and their peers.
+
+She was roused by the sound in the hall of her mother's last words to
+Mrs. Heeny. Undine waited till their adieux were over; then, opening her
+door, she seized the astonished masseuse and dragged her into the room.
+Mrs. Heeny gazed in admiration at the luminous apparition in whose hold
+she found herself.
+
+"Mercy, Undine--you do look stunning! Are you trying on your dress for
+Mrs. Fairford's?"
+
+"Yes--no--this is only an old thing." The girl's eyes glittered under
+their black brows. "Mrs. Heeny, you've got to tell me the truth--ARE
+they as swell as you said?"
+
+"Who? The Fairfords and Marvells? If they ain't swell enough for you.
+Undine Spragg, you'd better go right over to the court of England!"
+
+Undine straightened herself. "I want the best. Are they as swell as the
+Driscolls and Van Degens?"
+
+Mrs. Heeny sounded a scornful laugh. "Look at here, now, you unbelieving
+girl! As sure as I'm standing here before you, I've seen Mrs. Harmon B.
+Driscoll of Fifth Avenue laying in her pink velvet bed with Honiton lace
+sheets on it, and crying her eyes out because she couldn't get asked
+to one of Mrs. Paul Marvell's musicals. She'd never 'a dreamt of being
+asked to a dinner there! Not all of her money couldn't 'a bought her
+that--and she knows it!"
+
+Undine stood for a moment with bright cheeks and parted lips; then she
+flung her soft arms about the masseuse. "Oh Mrs. Heeny--you're lovely
+to me!" she breathed, her lips on Mrs. Heeny's rusty veil; while the
+latter, freeing herself with a good-natured laugh, said as she turned
+away: "Go steady. Undine, and you'll get anywheres."
+
+GO STEADY, UNDINE! Yes, that was the advice she needed. Sometimes, in
+her dark moods, she blamed her parents for not having given it to her.
+She was so young... and they had told her so little! As she looked back
+she shuddered at some of her escapes. Even since they had come to New
+York she had been on the verge of one or two perilous adventures, and
+there had been a moment during their first winter when she had actually
+engaged herself to the handsome Austrian riding-master who accompanied
+her in the Park. He had carelessly shown her a card-case with a coronet,
+and had confided in her that he had been forced to resign from a crack
+cavalry regiment for fighting a duel about a Countess; and as a result
+of these confidences she had pledged herself to him, and bestowed on him
+her pink pearl ring in exchange for one of twisted silver, which he said
+the Countess had given him on her deathbed with the request that he
+should never take it off till he met a woman more beautiful than
+herself.
+
+Soon afterward, luckily. Undine had run across Mabel Lipscomb, whom she
+had known at a middle western boarding-school as Mabel Blitch. Miss
+Blitch occupied a position of distinction as the only New York girl at
+the school, and for a time there had been sharp rivalry for her
+favour between Undine and Indiana Frusk, whose parents had somehow
+contrived--for one term--to obtain her admission to the same
+establishment. In spite of Indiana's unscrupulous methods, and of a
+certain violent way she had of capturing attention, the victory remained
+with Undine, whom Mabel pronounced more refined; and the discomfited
+Indiana, denouncing her schoolmates as a "bunch of mushes," had
+disappeared forever from the scene of her defeat.
+
+Since then Mabel had returned to New York and married a stock-broker;
+and Undine's first steps in social enlightenment dated from the day when
+she had met Mrs. Harry Lipscomb, and been again taken under her wing.
+
+Harry Lipscomb had insisted on investigating the riding-master's record,
+and had found that his real name was Aaronson, and that he had left
+Cracow under a charge of swindling servant-girls out of their savings;
+in the light of which discoveries Undine noticed for the first time that
+his lips were too red and that his hair was pommaded. That was one of
+the episodes that sickened her as she looked back, and made her resolve
+once more to trust less to her impulses--especially in the matter of
+giving away rings. In the interval, however, she felt she had learned a
+good deal, especially since, by Mabel Lipscomb's advice, the Spraggs had
+moved to the Stentorian, where that lady was herself established.
+
+There was nothing of the monopolist about Mabel, and she lost no time in
+making Undine free of the Stentorian group and its affiliated branches:
+a society addicted to "days," and linked together by membership in
+countless clubs, mundane, cultural or "earnest." Mabel took Undine to
+the days, and introduced her as a "guest" to the club-meetings, where
+she was supported by the presence of many other guests--"my friend Miss
+Stager, of Phalanx, Georgia," or (if the lady were literary) simply "my
+friend Ora Prance Chettle of Nebraska--you know what Mrs. Chettle stands
+for."
+
+Some of these reunions took place in the lofty hotels moored like a
+sonorously named fleet of battle-ships along the upper reaches of the
+West Side: the Olympian, the Incandescent, the Ormolu; while others,
+perhaps the more exclusive, were held in the equally lofty but more
+romantically styled apartment-houses: the Parthenon, the Tintern Abbey
+or the Lido.
+
+Undine's preference was for the worldly parties, at which games were
+played, and she returned home laden with prizes in Dutch silver; but
+she was duly impressed by the debating clubs, where ladies of local
+distinction addressed the company from an improvised platform, or the
+members argued on subjects of such imperishable interest as: "What is
+charm?" or "The Problem-Novel" after which pink lemonade and rainbow
+sandwiches were consumed amid heated discussion of the "ethical aspect"
+of the question.
+
+It was all very novel and interesting, and at first Undine envied Mabel
+Lipscomb for having made herself a place in such circles; but in time
+she began to despise her for being content to remain there. For it did
+not take Undine long to learn that introduction to Mabel's "set" had
+brought her no nearer to Fifth Avenue. Even in Apex, Undine's tender
+imagination had been nurtured on the feats and gestures of Fifth
+Avenue. She knew all of New York's golden aristocracy by name, and the
+lineaments of its most distinguished scions had been made familiar by
+passionate poring over the daily press. In Mabel's world she sought
+in vain for the originals, and only now and then caught a tantalizing
+glimpse of one of their familiars: as when Claud Walsingham Popple,
+engaged on the portrait of a lady whom the Lipscombs described as "the
+wife of a Steel Magnet," felt it his duty to attend one of his client's
+teas, where it became Mabel's privilege to make his acquaintance and to
+name to him her friend Miss Spragg.
+
+Unsuspected social gradations were thus revealed to the attentive
+Undine, but she was beginning to think that her sad proficiency had been
+acquired in vain when her hopes were revived by the appearance of Mr.
+Popple and his friend at the Stentorian dance. She thought she had
+learned enough to be safe from any risk of repeating the hideous
+Aaronson mistake; yet she now saw she had blundered again in
+distinguishing Claud Walsingham Popple while she almost snubbed his more
+retiring companion. It was all very puzzling, and her perplexity had
+been farther increased by Mrs. Heeny's tale of the great Mrs. Harmon B.
+Driscoll's despair.
+
+Hitherto Undine had imagined that the Driscoll and Van Degen clans and
+their allies held undisputed suzerainty over New York society. Mabel
+Lipscomb thought so too, and was given to bragging of her acquaintance
+with a Mrs. Spoff, who was merely a second cousin of Mrs. Harmon B.
+Driscoll's. Yet here was she. Undine Spragg of Apex, about to be
+introduced into an inner circle to which Driscolls and Van Degens had
+laid siege in vain! It was enough to make her feel a little dizzy with
+her triumph--to work her up into that state of perilous self-confidence
+in which all her worst follies had been committed.
+
+She stood up and, going close to the glass, examined the reflection
+of her bright eyes and glowing cheeks. This time her fears were
+superfluous: there were to be no more mistakes and no more follies now!
+She was going to know the right people at last--she was going to get
+what she wanted!
+
+As she stood there, smiling at her happy image, she heard her father's
+voice in the room beyond, and instantly began to tear off her dress,
+strip the long gloves from her arms and unpin the rose in her hair.
+Tossing the fallen finery aside, she slipped on a dressing-gown and
+opened the door into the drawing-room.
+
+Mr. Spragg was standing near her mother, who sat in a drooping attitude,
+her head sunk on her breast, as she did when she had one of her "turns."
+He looked up abruptly as Undine entered.
+
+"Father--has mother told you? Mrs. Fairford has asked me to dine. She's
+Mrs. Paul Marvell's daughter--Mrs. Marvell was a Dagonet--and they're
+sweller than anybody; they WON'T KNOW the Driscolls and Van Degens!"
+
+Mr. Spragg surveyed her with humorous fondness.
+
+"That so? What do they want to know you for, I wonder?" he jeered.
+
+"Can't imagine--unless they think I'll introduce YOU!" she jeered back
+in the same key, her arms around his stooping shoulders, her shining
+hair against his cheek.
+
+"Well--and are you going to? Have you accepted?" he took up her joke as
+she held him pinioned; while Mrs. Spragg, behind them, stirred in her
+seat with a little moan.
+
+Undine threw back her head, plunging her eyes in his, and pressing so
+close that to his tired elderly sight her face was a mere bright blur.
+
+"I want to awfully," she declared, "but I haven't got a single thing to
+wear."
+
+Mrs. Spragg, at this, moaned more audibly. "Undine, I wouldn't ask
+father to buy any more clothes right on top of those last bills."
+
+"I ain't on top of those last bills yet--I'm way down under them," Mr.
+Spragg interrupted, raising his hands to imprison his daughter's slender
+wrists.
+
+"Oh, well--if you want me to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked
+again, I've got a dress that'll do PERFECTLY," Undine threatened, in a
+tone between banter and vexation.
+
+Mr. Spragg held her away at arm's length, a smile drawing up the loose
+wrinkles about his eyes.
+
+"Well, that kind of dress might come in mighty handy on SOME occasions;
+so I guess you'd better hold on to it for future use, and go and select
+another for this Fairford dinner," he said; and before he could finish
+he was in her arms again, and she was smothering his last word in little
+cries and kisses.
+
+
+
+III
+
+Though she would not for the world have owned it to her parents, Undine
+was disappointed in the Fairford dinner.
+
+The house, to begin with, was small and rather shabby. There was no
+gilding, no lavish diffusion of light: the room they sat in after
+dinner, with its green-shaded lamps making faint pools of brightness,
+and its rows of books from floor to ceiling, reminded Undine of the old
+circulating library at Apex, before the new marble building was put up.
+Then, instead of a gas-log, or a polished grate with electric bulbs
+behind ruby glass, there was an old-fashioned wood-fire, like pictures
+of "Back to the farm for Christmas"; and when the logs fell forward Mrs.
+Pairford or her brother had to jump up to push them in place, and the
+ashes scattered over the hearth untidily.
+
+The dinner too was disappointing. Undine was too young to take note of
+culinary details, but she had expected to view the company through a
+bower of orchids and eat pretty-coloured entrees in ruffled papers.
+Instead, there was only a low centre-dish of ferns, and plain roasted
+and broiled meat that one could recognize--as if they'd been dyspeptics
+on a diet! With all the hints in the Sunday papers, she thought it dull
+of Mrs. Fairford not to have picked up something newer; and as the
+evening progressed she began to suspect that it wasn't a real "dinner
+party," and that they had just asked her in to share what they had when
+they were alone.
+
+But a glance about the table convinced her that Mrs. Fairford could not
+have meant to treat her other guests so lightly. They were only eight
+in number, but one was no less a person than young Mrs. Peter Van
+Degen--the one who had been a Dagonet--and the consideration which this
+young lady, herself one of the choicest ornaments of the Society Column,
+displayed toward the rest of the company, convinced Undine that they
+must be more important than they looked. She liked Mrs. Fairford,
+a small incisive woman, with a big nose and good teeth revealed by
+frequent smiles. In her dowdy black and antiquated ornaments she was not
+what Undine would have called "stylish"; but she had a droll kind way
+which reminded the girl of her father's manner when he was not tired or
+worried about money. One of the other ladies, having white hair, did not
+long arrest Undine's attention; and the fourth, a girl like herself, who
+was introduced as Miss Harriet Ray, she dismissed at a glance as plain
+and wearing a last year's "model."
+
+The men, too, were less striking than she had hoped. She had not
+expected much of Mr. Fairford, since married men were intrinsically
+uninteresting, and his baldness and grey moustache seemed naturally to
+relegate him to the background; but she had looked for some brilliant
+youths of her own age--in her inmost heart she had looked for Mr.
+Popple. He was not there, however, and of the other men one, whom they
+called Mr. Bowen, was hopelessly elderly--she supposed he was the
+husband of the white-haired lady--and the other two, who seemed to be
+friends of young Marvell's, were both lacking in Claud Walsingham's
+dash.
+
+Undine sat between Mr. Bowen and young Marvell, who struck her as very
+"sweet" (it was her word for friendliness), but even shyer than at the
+hotel dance. Yet she was not sure if he were shy, or if his quietness
+were only a new kind of self-possession which expressed itself
+negatively instead of aggressively. Small, well-knit, fair, he sat
+stroking his slight blond moustache and looking at her with kindly,
+almost tender eyes; but he left it to his sister and the others to draw
+her out and fit her into the pattern.
+
+Mrs. Fairford talked so well that the girl wondered why Mrs. Heeny had
+found her lacking in conversation. But though Undine thought silent
+people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. All the
+ladies in Apex City were more voluble than Mrs. Fairford, and had
+a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with Mrs. Fairford
+conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing in
+the others, giving each a turn, beating time for them with her smile,
+and somehow harmonizing and linking together what they said. She took
+particular pains to give Undine her due part in the performance; but
+the girl's expansive impulses were always balanced by odd reactions of
+mistrust, and to-night the latter prevailed. She meant to watch and
+listen without letting herself go, and she sat very straight and pink,
+answering promptly but briefly, with the nervous laugh that punctuated
+all her phrases--saying "I don't care if I do" when her host asked her
+to try some grapes, and "I wouldn't wonder" when she thought any one was
+trying to astonish her.
+
+This state of lucidity enabled her to take note of all that was being
+said. The talk ran more on general questions, and less on people, than
+she was used to; but though the allusions to pictures and books escaped
+her, she caught and stored up every personal reference, and the pink in
+her cheeks deepened at a random mention of Mr. Popple.
+
+"Yes--he's doing me," Mrs. Peter Van Degen was saying, in her slightly
+drawling voice. "He's doing everybody this year, you know--"
+
+"As if that were a reason!" Undine heard Mrs. Fairford breathe to Mr.
+Bowen; who replied, at the same pitch: "It's a Van Degen reason, isn't
+it?"--to which Mrs. Fairford shrugged assentingly.
+
+"That delightful Popple--he paints so exactly as he talks!" the
+white-haired lady took it up. "All his portraits seem to proclaim what
+a gentleman he is, and how he fascinates women! They're not pictures of
+Mrs. or Miss So-and-so, but simply of the impression Popple thinks he's
+made on them."
+
+Mrs. Fairford smiled. "I've sometimes thought," she mused, "that Mr.
+Popple must be the only gentleman I know; at least he's the only man
+who has ever told me he was a gentleman--and Mr. Popple never fails to
+mention it."
+
+Undine's ear was too well attuned to the national note of irony for her
+not to perceive that her companions were making sport of the painter.
+She winced at their banter as if it had been at her own expense, yet
+it gave her a dizzy sense of being at last in the very stronghold of
+fashion. Her attention was diverted by hearing Mrs. Van Degen, under
+cover of the general laugh, say in a low tone to young Marvell: "I
+thought you liked his things, or I wouldn't have had him paint me."
+
+Something in her tone made all Undine's perceptions bristle, and she
+strained her ears for the answer.
+
+"I think he'll do you capitally--you must let me come and see some day
+soon." Marvell's tone was always so light, so unemphasized, that she
+could not be sure of its being as indifferent as it sounded. She looked
+down at the fruit on her plate and shot a side-glance through her lashes
+at Mrs. Peter Van Degen.
+
+Mrs. Van Degen was neither beautiful nor imposing: just a dark
+girlish-looking creature with plaintive eyes and a fidgety frequent
+laugh. But she was more elaborately dressed and jewelled than the other
+ladies, and her elegance and her restlessness made her seem less alien
+to Undine. She had turned on Marvell a gaze at once pleading and
+possessive; but whether betokening merely an inherited intimacy (Undine
+had noticed that they were all more or less cousins) or a more personal
+feeling, her observer was unable to decide; just as the tone of
+the young man's reply might have expressed the open avowal of
+good-fellowship or the disguise of a different sentiment. All was
+blurred and puzzling to the girl in this world of half-lights,
+half-tones, eliminations and abbreviations; and she felt a violent
+longing to brush away the cobwebs and assert herself as the dominant
+figure of the scene.
+
+Yet in the drawing-room, with the ladies, where Mrs. Fairford came and
+sat by her, the spirit of caution once more prevailed. She wanted to be
+noticed but she dreaded to be patronized, and here again her hostess's
+gradations of tone were confusing. Mrs. Fairford made no tactless
+allusions to her being a newcomer in New York--there was nothing as
+bitter to the girl as that--but her questions as to what pictures had
+interested Undine at the various exhibitions of the moment, and which of
+the new books she had read, were almost as open to suspicion, since they
+had to be answered in the negative. Undine did not even know that there
+were any pictures to be seen, much less that "people" went to see them;
+and she had read no new book but "When The Kissing Had to Stop," of
+which Mrs. Fairford seemed not to have heard. On the theatre they were
+equally at odds, for while Undine had seen "Oolaloo" fourteen times, and
+was "wild" about Ned Norris in "The Soda-Water Fountain," she had not
+heard of the famous Berlin comedians who were performing Shakespeare at
+the German Theatre, and knew only by name the clever American actress
+who was trying to give "repertory" plays with a good stock company. The
+conversation was revived for a moment by her recalling that she had seen
+Sarah Bernhard in a play she called "Leg-long," and another which she
+pronounced "Fade"; but even this did not carry them far, as she had
+forgotten what both plays were about and had found the actress a good
+deal older than she expected.
+
+Matters were not improved by the return of the men from the
+smoking-room. Henley Fairford replaced his wife at Undine's side; and
+since it was unheard-of at Apex for a married man to force his society
+on a young girl, she inferred that the others didn't care to talk to
+her, and that her host and hostess were in league to take her off their
+hands. This discovery resulted in her holding her vivid head very high,
+and answering "I couldn't really say," or "Is that so?" to all Mr.
+Fairford's ventures; and as these were neither numerous nor striking it
+was a relief to both when the rising of the elderly lady gave the signal
+for departure.
+
+In the hall, where young Marvell had managed to precede her. Undine
+found Mrs. Van Degen putting on her cloak. As she gathered it about her
+she laid her hand on Marvell's arm.
+
+"Ralphie, dear, you'll come to the opera with me on Friday? We'll dine
+together first--Peter's got a club dinner." They exchanged what seemed a
+smile of intelligence, and Undine heard the young man accept. Then Mrs.
+Van Degen turned to her.
+
+"Good-bye, Miss Spragg. I hope you'll come--"
+
+"--TO DINE WITH ME TOO?" That must be what she was going to say, and
+Undine's heart gave a bound.
+
+"--to see me some afternoon," Mrs. Van Degen ended, going down the steps
+to her motor, at the door of which a much-furred footman waited with
+more furs on his arm.
+
+Undine's face burned as she turned to receive her cloak. When she had
+drawn it on with haughty deliberation she found Marvell at her side, in
+hat and overcoat, and her heart gave a higher bound. He was going to
+"escort" her home, of course! This brilliant youth--she felt now that he
+WAS brilliant--who dined alone with married women, whom the "Van Degen
+set" called "Ralphie, dear," had really no eyes for any one but herself;
+and at the thought her lost self-complacency flowed back warm through
+her veins.
+
+The street was coated with ice, and she had a delicious moment
+descending the steps on Marvell's arm, and holding it fast while they
+waited for her cab to come up; but when he had helped her in he closed
+the door and held his hand out over the lowered window.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, smiling; and she could not help the break of pride
+in her voice, as she faltered out stupidly, from the depths of her
+disillusionment: "Oh--good-bye."
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Father, you've got to take a box for me at the opera next Friday."
+
+From the tone of her voice Undine's parents knew at once that she was
+"nervous."
+
+They had counted a great deal on the Fairford dinner as a means of
+tranquillization, and it was a blow to detect signs of the opposite
+result when, late the next morning, their daughter came dawdling into
+the sodden splendour of the Stentorian breakfast-room.
+
+The symptoms of Undine's nervousness were unmistakable to Mr. and Mrs.
+Spragg. They could read the approaching storm in the darkening of her
+eyes from limpid grey to slate-colour, and in the way her straight
+black brows met above them and the red curves of her lips narrowed to a
+parallel line below.
+
+Mr. Spragg, having finished the last course of his heterogeneous meal,
+was adjusting his gold eye-glasses for a glance at the paper when
+Undine trailed down the sumptuous stuffy room, where coffee-fumes hung
+perpetually under the emblazoned ceiling and the spongy carpet might
+have absorbed a year's crumbs without a sweeping.
+
+About them sat other pallid families, richly dressed, and silently
+eating their way through a bill-of-fare which seemed to have ransacked
+the globe for gastronomic incompatibilities; and in the middle of the
+room a knot of equally pallid waiters, engaged in languid conversation,
+turned their backs by common consent on the persons they were supposed
+to serve.
+
+Undine, who rose too late to share the family breakfast, usually had her
+chocolate brought to her in bed by Celeste, after the manner described
+in the articles on "A Society Woman's Day" which were appearing in
+Boudoir Chat. Her mere appearance in the restaurant therefore prepared
+her parents for those symptoms of excessive tension which a nearer
+inspection confirmed, and Mr. Spragg folded his paper and hooked his
+glasses to his waistcoat with the air of a man who prefers to know the
+worst and have it over.
+
+"An opera box!" faltered Mrs. Spragg, pushing aside the bananas and
+cream with which she had been trying to tempt an appetite too languid
+for fried liver or crab mayonnaise.
+
+"A parterre box," Undine corrected, ignoring the exclamation, and
+continuing to address herself to her father. "Friday's the stylish
+night, and that new tenor's going to sing again in 'Cavaleeria,'" she
+condescended to explain.
+
+"That so?" Mr. Spragg thrust his hands into his waistcoat pockets, and
+began to tilt his chair till he remembered there was no wall to meet it.
+He regained his balance and said: "Wouldn't a couple of good orchestra
+seats do you?"
+
+"No; they wouldn't," Undine answered with a darkening brow. He looked at
+her humorously. "You invited the whole dinner-party, I suppose?"
+
+"No--no one."
+
+"Going all alone in a box?" She was disdainfully silent. "I don't s'pose
+you're thinking of taking mother and me?"
+
+This was so obviously comic that they all laughed--even Mrs. Spragg--and
+Undine went on more mildly: "I want to do something for Mabel Lipscomb:
+make some return. She's always taking me 'round, and I've never done a
+thing for her--not a single thing."
+
+This appeal to the national belief in the duty of reciprocal "treating"
+could not fail of its effect, and Mrs. Spragg murmured: "She never HAS,
+Abner,"--but Mr. Spragg's brow remained unrelenting.
+
+"Do you know what a box costs?"
+
+"No; but I s'pose you do," Undine returned with unconscious flippancy.
+
+"I do. That's the trouble. WHY won't seats do you?"
+
+"Mabel could buy seats for herself."
+
+"That's so," interpolated Mrs. Spragg--always the first to succumb to
+her daughter's arguments.
+
+"Well, I guess I can't buy a box for her."
+
+Undine's face gloomed more deeply. She sat silent, her chocolate
+thickening in the cup, while one hand, almost as much beringed as her
+mother's, drummed on the crumpled table-cloth.
+
+"We might as well go straight back to Apex," she breathed at last
+between her teeth.
+
+Mrs. Spragg cast a frightened glance at her husband. These struggles
+between two resolute wills always brought on her palpitations, and she
+wished she had her phial of digitalis with her.
+
+"A parterre box costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night," said
+Mr. Spragg, transferring a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"I only want it once."
+
+He looked at her with a quizzical puckering of his crows'-feet. "You
+only want most things once. Undine."
+
+It was an observation they had made in her earliest youth--Undine never
+wanted anything long, but she wanted it "right off." And until she got
+it the house was uninhabitable.
+
+"I'd a good deal rather have a box for the season," she rejoined, and he
+saw the opening he had given her. She had two ways of getting things
+out of him against his principles; the tender wheedling way, and the
+harsh-lipped and cold--and he did not know which he dreaded most. As a
+child they had admired her assertiveness, had made Apex ring with their
+boasts of it; but it had long since cowed Mrs. Spragg, and it was
+beginning to frighten her husband.
+
+"Fact is, Undie," he said, weakening, "I'm a little mite strapped just
+this month."
+
+Her eyes grew absent-minded, as they always did when he alluded to
+business. THAT was man's province; and what did men go "down town" for
+but to bring back the spoils to their women? She rose abruptly, leaving
+her parents seated, and said, more to herself than the others: "Think
+I'll go for a ride."
+
+"Oh, Undine!" fluttered Mrs. Spragg. She always had palpitations when
+Undine rode, and since the Aaronson episode her fears were not confined
+to what the horse might do.
+
+"Why don't you take your mother out shopping a little?" Mr. Spragg
+suggested, conscious of the limitation of his resources.
+
+Undine made no answer, but swept down the room, and out of the door
+ahead of her mother, with scorn and anger in every line of her arrogant
+young back. Mrs. Spragg tottered meekly after her, and Mr. Spragg
+lounged out into the marble hall to buy a cigar before taking the Subway
+to his office.
+
+Undine went for a ride, not because she felt particularly disposed for
+the exercise, but because she wished to discipline her mother. She was
+almost sure she would get her opera box, but she did not see why she
+should have to struggle for her rights, and she was especially annoyed
+with Mrs. Spragg for seconding her so half-heartedly. If she and her
+mother did not hold together in such crises she would have twice the
+work to do.
+
+Undine hated "scenes": she was essentially peace-loving, and would have
+preferred to live on terms of unbroken harmony with her parents. But
+she could not help it if they were unreasonable. Ever since she could
+remember there had been "fusses" about money; yet she and her mother had
+always got what they wanted, apparently without lasting detriment to the
+family fortunes. It was therefore natural to conclude that there were
+ample funds to draw upon, and that Mr. Spragg's occasional resistances
+were merely due to an imperfect understanding of what constituted the
+necessities of life.
+
+When she returned from her ride Mrs. Spragg received her as if she had
+come back from the dead. It was absurd, of course; but Undine was inured
+to the absurdity of parents.
+
+"Has father telephoned?" was her first brief question.
+
+"No, he hasn't yet."
+
+Undine's lips tightened, but she proceeded deliberately with the removal
+of her habit.
+
+"You'd think I'd asked him to buy me the Opera House, the way
+he's acting over a single box," she muttered, flinging aside her
+smartly-fitting coat. Mrs. Spragg received the flying garment and
+smoothed it out on the bed. Neither of the ladies could "bear" to have
+their maid about when they were at their toilet, and Mrs. Spragg had
+always performed these ancillary services for Undine.
+
+"You know, Undie, father hasn't always got the money in his pocket, and
+the bills have been pretty heavy lately. Father was a rich man for Apex,
+but that's different from being rich in New York."
+
+She stood before her daughter, looking down on her appealingly.
+
+Undine, who had seated herself while she detached her stock and
+waistcoat, raised her head with an impatient jerk. "Why on earth did we
+ever leave Apex, then?" she exclaimed.
+
+Mrs. Spragg's eyes usually dropped before her daughter's inclement gaze;
+but on this occasion they held their own with a kind of awe-struck
+courage, till Undine's lids sank above her flushing cheeks.
+
+She sprang up, tugging at the waistband of her habit, while Mrs. Spragg,
+relapsing from temerity to meekness, hovered about her with obstructive
+zeal. "If you'd only just let go of my skirt, mother--I can unhook it
+twice as quick myself."
+
+Mrs. Spragg drew back, understanding that her presence was no longer
+wanted. But on the threshold she paused, as if overruled by a stronger
+influence, and said, with a last look at her daughter: "You didn't meet
+anybody when you were out, did you, Undie?"
+
+Undine's brows drew together: she was struggling with her long
+patent-leather boot.
+
+"Meet anybody? Do you mean anybody I know? I don't KNOW anybody--I never
+shall, if father can't afford to let me go round with people!"
+
+The boot was off with a wrench, and she flung it violently across the
+old-rose carpet, while Mrs. Spragg, turning away to hide a look of
+inexpressible relief, slipped discreetly from the room.
+
+The day wore on. Undine had meant to go down and tell Mabel Lipscomb
+about the Fairford dinner, but its aftertaste was flat on her lips. What
+would it lead to? Nothing, as far as she could see. Ralph Marvell had
+not even asked when he might call; and she was ashamed to confess to
+Mabel that he had not driven home with her.
+
+Suddenly she decided that she would go and see the pictures of which
+Mrs. Fairford had spoken. Perhaps she might meet some of the people she
+had seen at dinner--from their talk one might have imagined that they
+spent their lives in picture-galleries.
+
+The thought reanimated her, and she put on her handsomest furs, and a
+hat for which she had not yet dared present the bill to her father. It
+was the fashionable hour in Fifth Avenue, but Undine knew none of the
+ladies who were bowing to each other from interlocked motors. She had to
+content herself with the gaze of admiration which she left in her wake
+along the pavement; but she was used to the homage of the streets and
+her vanity craved a choicer fare.
+
+When she reached the art gallery which Mrs. Fairford had named she found
+it even more crowded than Fifth Avenue; and some of the ladies and
+gentlemen wedged before the pictures had the "look" which signified
+social consecration. As Undine made her way among them, she was aware of
+attracting almost as much notice as in the street, and she flung herself
+into rapt attitudes before the canvases, scribbling notes in the
+catalogue in imitation of a tall girl in sables, while ripples of
+self-consciousness played up and down her watchful back.
+
+Presently her attention was drawn to a lady in black who was examining
+the pictures through a tortoise-shell eye-glass adorned with diamonds
+and hanging from a long pearl chain. Undine was instantly struck by the
+opportunities which this toy presented for graceful wrist movements
+and supercilious turns of the head. It seemed suddenly plebeian and
+promiscuous to look at the world with a naked eye, and all her floating
+desires were merged in the wish for a jewelled eye-glass and chain. So
+violent was this wish that, drawn on in the wake of the owner of the
+eye-glass, she found herself inadvertently bumping against a stout
+tight-coated young man whose impact knocked her catalogue from her hand.
+
+As the young man picked the catalogue up and held it out to her she
+noticed that his bulging eyes and queer retreating face were suffused
+with a glow of admiration. He was so unpleasant-looking that she would
+have resented his homage had not his odd physiognomy called up some
+vaguely agreeable association of ideas. Where had she seen before this
+grotesque saurian head, with eye-lids as thick as lips and lips as thick
+as ear-lobes? It fled before her down a perspective of innumerable
+newspaper portraits, all, like the original before her, tightly coated,
+with a huge pearl transfixing a silken tie....
+
+"Oh, thank you," she murmured, all gleams and graces, while he stood hat
+in hand, saying sociably:
+
+"The crowd's simply awful, isn't it?"
+
+At the same moment the lady of the eye-glass drifted closer, and with a
+tap of her wand, and a careless "Peter, look at this," swept him to the
+other side of the gallery.
+
+Undine's heart was beating excitedly, for as he turned away she had
+identified him. Peter Van Degen--who could he be but young Peter Van
+Degen, the son of the great banker, Thurber Van Degen, the husband of
+Ralph Marvell's cousin, the hero of "Sunday Supplements," the captor of
+Blue Ribbons at Horse-Shows, of Gold Cups at Motor Races, the owner of
+winning race-horses and "crack" sloops: the supreme exponent, in short,
+of those crowning arts that made all life seem stale and unprofitable
+outside the magic ring of the Society Column? Undine smiled as she
+recalled the look with which his pale protruding eyes had rested on
+her--it almost consoled her for his wife's indifference!
+
+When she reached home she found that she could not remember anything
+about the pictures she had seen...
+
+There was no message from her father, and a reaction of disgust set in.
+Of what good were such encounters if they were to have no sequel? She
+would probably never meet Peter Van Degen again--or, if she DID run
+across him in the same accidental way, she knew they could not continue
+their conversation without being "introduced." What was the use of being
+beautiful and attracting attention if one were perpetually doomed to
+relapse again into the obscure mass of the Uninvited?
+
+Her gloom was not lightened by finding Ralph Marvell's card on the
+drawing-room table. She thought it unflattering and almost impolite of
+him to call without making an appointment: it seemed to show that he
+did not wish to continue their acquaintance. But as she tossed the card
+aside her mother said: "He was real sorry not to see you. Undine--he sat
+here nearly an hour."
+
+Undine's attention was roused. "Sat here--all alone? Didn't you tell him
+I was out?"
+
+"Yes--but he came up all the same. He asked for me."
+
+"Asked for YOU?"
+
+The social order seemed to be falling in ruins at Undine's feet. A
+visitor who asked for a girl's mother!--she stared at Mrs. Spragg with
+cold incredulity. "What makes you think he did?"
+
+"Why, they told me so. I telephoned down that you were out, and they
+said he'd asked for me." Mrs. Spragg let the fact speak for itself--it
+was too much out of the range of her experience to admit of even a
+hypothetical explanation.
+
+Undine shrugged her shoulders. "It was a mistake, of course. Why on
+earth did you let him come up?"
+
+"I thought maybe he had a message for you, Undie."
+
+This plea struck her daughter as not without weight. "Well, did he?" she
+asked, drawing out her hat-pins and tossing down her hat on the onyx
+table.
+
+"Why, no--he just conversed. He was lovely to me, but I couldn't make
+out what he was after," Mrs. Spragg was obliged to own.
+
+Her daughter looked at her with a kind of chill commiseration. "You
+never CAN," she murmured, turning away.
+
+She stretched herself out moodily on one of the pink and gold sofas, and
+lay there brooding, an unread novel on her knee. Mrs. Spragg timidly
+slipped a cushion under her daughter's head, and then dissembled herself
+behind the lace window-curtains and sat watching the lights spring out
+down the long street and spread their glittering net across the Park. It
+was one of Mrs. Spragg's chief occupations to watch the nightly lighting
+of New York.
+
+Undine lay silent, her hands clasped behind her head. She was plunged in
+one of the moods of bitter retrospection when all her past seemed like a
+long struggle for something she could not have, from a trip to Europe to
+an opera-box; and when she felt sure that, as the past had been, so the
+future would be. And yet, as she had often told her parents, all she
+sought for was improvement: she honestly wanted the best.
+
+Her first struggle--after she had ceased to scream for candy, or sulk
+for a new toy--had been to get away from Apex in summer. Her summers,
+as she looked back on them, seemed to typify all that was dreariest and
+most exasperating in her life. The earliest had been spent in the yellow
+"frame" cottage where she had hung on the fence, kicking her toes
+against the broken palings and exchanging moist chewing-gum and
+half-eaten apples with Indiana Frusk. Later on, she had returned from
+her boarding-school to the comparative gentility of summer vacations at
+the Mealey House, whither her parents, forsaking their squalid suburb,
+had moved in the first flush of their rising fortunes. The tessellated
+floors, the plush parlours and organ-like radiators of the Mealey House
+had, aside from their intrinsic elegance, the immense advantage of
+lifting the Spraggs high above the Frusks, and making it possible for
+Undine, when she met Indiana in the street or at school, to chill her
+advances by a careless allusion to the splendours of hotel life. But
+even in such a setting, and in spite of the social superiority it
+implied, the long months of the middle western summer, fly-blown,
+torrid, exhaling stale odours, soon became as insufferable as they had
+been in the little yellow house. At school Undine met other girls whose
+parents took them to the Great Lakes for August; some even went to
+California, others--oh bliss ineffable!--went "east."
+
+Pale and listless under the stifling boredom of the Mealey House
+routine, Undine secretly sucked lemons, nibbled slate-pencils and drank
+pints of bitter coffee to aggravate her look of ill-health; and when she
+learned that even Indiana Frusk was to go on a month's visit to Buffalo
+it needed no artificial aids to emphasize the ravages of envy. Her
+parents, alarmed by her appearance, were at last convinced of the
+necessity of change, and timidly, tentatively, they transferred
+themselves for a month to a staring hotel on a glaring lake.
+
+There Undine enjoyed the satisfaction of sending ironic post-cards to
+Indiana, and discovering that she could more than hold her own
+against the youth and beauty of the other visitors. Then she made the
+acquaintance of a pretty woman from Richmond, whose husband, a mining
+engineer, had brought her west with him while he inspected the
+newly developed Eubaw mines; and the southern visitor's dismay, her
+repugnances, her recoil from the faces, the food, the amusements, the
+general bareness and stridency of the scene, were a terrible initiation
+to Undine. There was something still better beyond, then--more
+luxurious, more exciting, more worthy of her! She once said to herself,
+afterward, that it was always her fate to find out just too late about
+the "something beyond." But in this case it was not too late--and
+obstinately, inflexibly, she set herself to the task of forcing her
+parents to take her "east" the next summer.
+
+Yielding to the inevitable, they suffered themselves to be impelled to a
+Virginia "resort," where Undine had her first glimpse of more romantic
+possibilities--leafy moonlight rides and drives, picnics in mountain
+glades, and an atmosphere of Christmas-chromo sentimentality that
+tempered her hard edges a little, and gave her glimpses of a more
+delicate kind of pleasure. But here again everything was spoiled by a
+peep through another door. Undine, after a first mustering of the other
+girls in the hotel, had, as usual, found herself easily first--till the
+arrival, from Washington, of Mr. and Mrs. Wincher and their daughter.
+Undine was much handsomer than Miss Wincher, but she saw at a glance
+that she did not know how to use her beauty as the other used her
+plainness. She was exasperated too, by the discovery that Miss Wincher
+seemed not only unconscious of any possible rivalry between them, but
+actually unaware of her existence. Listless, long-faced, supercilious,
+the young lady from Washington sat apart reading novels or playing
+solitaire with her parents, as though the huge hotel's loud life of
+gossip and flirtation were invisible and inaudible to her. Undine never
+even succeeded in catching her eye: she always lowered it to her book
+when the Apex beauty trailed or rattled past her secluded corner. But
+one day an acquaintance of the Winchers' turned up--a lady from Boston,
+who had come to Virginia on a botanizing tour; and from scraps of Miss
+Wincher's conversation with the newcomer, Undine, straining her ears
+behind a column of the long veranda, obtained a new glimpse into the
+unimagined.
+
+The Winchers, it appeared, found themselves at Potash Springs merely
+because a severe illness of Mrs. Wincher's had made it impossible, at
+the last moment, to move her farther from Washington. They had let their
+house on the North Shore, and as soon as they could leave "this dreadful
+hole" were going to Europe for the autumn. Miss Wincher simply didn't
+know how she got through the days; though no doubt it was as good as
+a rest-cure after the rush of the winter. Of course they would have
+preferred to hire a house, but the "hole," if one could believe it,
+didn't offer one; so they had simply shut themselves off as best
+they could from the "hotel crew"--had her friend, Miss Wincher
+parenthetically asked, happened to notice the Sunday young men? They
+were queerer even than the "belles" they came for--and had escaped the
+promiscuity of the dinner-hour by turning one of their rooms into a
+dining-room, and picnicking there--with the Persimmon House standards,
+one couldn't describe it in any other way! But luckily the awful place
+was doing mamma good, and now they had nearly served their term...
+
+Undine turned sick as she listened. Only the evening before she had
+gone on a "buggy-ride" with a young gentleman from Deposit--a dentist's
+assistant--and had let him kiss her, and given him the flower from her
+hair. She loathed the thought of him now: she loathed all the people
+about her, and most of all the disdainful Miss Wincher. It enraged her
+to think that the Winchers classed her with the "hotel crew"--with the
+"belles" who awaited their Sunday young men. The place was forever
+blighted for her, and the next week she dragged her amazed but thankful
+parents back to Apex.
+
+But Miss Wincher's depreciatory talk had opened ampler vistas, and the
+pioneer blood in Undine would not let her rest. She had heard the call
+of the Atlantic seaboard, and the next summer found the Spraggs at Skog
+Harbour, Maine. Even now Undine felt a shiver of boredom as she recalled
+it. That summer had been the worst of all. The bare wind-beaten inn, all
+shingles without and blueberry pie within, was "exclusive," parochial,
+Bostonian; and the Spraggs wore through the interminable weeks in blank
+unmitigated isolation. The incomprehensible part of it was that every
+other woman in the hotel was plain, dowdy or elderly--and most of them
+all three. If there had been any competition on ordinary lines Undine
+would have won, as Van Degen said, "hands down." But there wasn't--the
+other "guests" simply formed a cold impenetrable group who walked,
+boated, played golf, and discussed Christian Science and the Subliminal,
+unaware of the tremulous organism drifting helplessly against their
+rock-bound circle.
+
+It was on the day the Spraggs left Skog Harbour that Undine vowed to
+herself with set lips: "I'll never try anything again till I try New
+York." Now she had gained her point and tried New York, and so far, it
+seemed, with no better success. From small things to great, everything
+went against her. In such hours of self-searching she was ready enough
+to acknowledge her own mistakes, but they exasperated her less than the
+blunders of her parents. She was sure, for instance, that she was on
+what Mrs. Heeny called "the right tack" at last: yet just at the moment
+when her luck seemed about to turn she was to be thwarted by her
+father's stupid obstinacy about the opera-box...
+
+She lay brooding over these things till long after Mrs. Spragg had gone
+away to dress for dinner, and it was nearly eight o'clock when she heard
+her father's dragging tread in the hall.
+
+She kept her eyes fixed on her book while he entered the room and moved
+about behind her, laying aside his hat and overcoat; then his steps came
+close and a small parcel dropped on the pages of her book.
+
+"Oh, father!" She sprang up, all alight, the novel on the floor, her
+fingers twitching for the tickets. But a substantial packet emerged,
+like nothing she had ever seen. She looked at it, hoping, fearing--she
+beamed blissful interrogation on her father while his sallow smile
+continued to tantalize her. Then she closed on him with a rush,
+smothering his words against her hair.
+
+"It's for more than one night--why, it's for every other Friday! Oh, you
+darling, you darling!" she exulted.
+
+Mr. Spragg, through the glittering meshes, feigned dismay. "That so?
+They must have given me the wrong--!" Then, convicted by her radiant
+eyes as she swung round on him: "I knew you only wanted it ONCE for
+yourself. Undine; but I thought maybe, off nights, you'd like to send it
+to your friends."
+
+Mrs. Spragg, who from her doorway had assisted with moist eyes at this
+closing pleasantry, came forward as Undine hurried away to dress.
+
+"Abner--can you really manage it all right?"
+
+He answered her with one of his awkward brief caresses. "Don't you fret
+about that, Leota. I'm bound to have her go round with these people she
+knows. I want her to be with them all she can."
+
+A pause fell between them, while Mrs. Spragg looked anxiously into his
+fagged eyes.
+
+"You seen Elmer again?"
+
+"No. Once was enough," he returned, with a scowl like Undine's.
+
+"Why--you SAID he couldn't come after her, Abner!"
+
+"No more he can. But what if she was to get nervous and lonesome, and
+want to go after him?"
+
+Mrs. Spragg shuddered away from the suggestion. "How'd he look? Just the
+same?" she whispered.
+
+"No. Spruced up. That's what scared me."
+
+It scared her too, to the point of blanching her habitually lifeless
+cheek. She continued to scrutinize her husband broodingly. "You look
+fairly sick, Abner. You better let me get you some of those stomach
+drops right off," she proposed.
+
+But he parried this with his unfailing humour. "I guess I'm too sick to
+risk that." He passed his hand through her arm with the conjugal gesture
+familiar to Apex City. "Come along down to dinner, mother--I guess
+Undine won't mind if I don't rig up to-night."
+
+
+
+V
+
+She had looked down at them, enviously, from the balcony--she had looked
+up at them, reverentially, from the stalls; but now at last she was on a
+line with them, among them, she was part of the sacred semicircle whose
+privilege it is, between the acts, to make the mere public forget that
+the curtain has fallen.
+
+As she swept to the left-hand seat of their crimson niche, waving Mabel
+Lipscomb to the opposite corner with a gesture learned during her
+apprenticeship in the stalls, Undine felt that quickening of the
+faculties that comes in the high moments of life. Her consciousness
+seemed to take in at once the whole bright curve of the auditorium, from
+the unbroken lines of spectators below her to the culminating blaze
+of the central chandelier; and she herself was the core of that vast
+illumination, the sentient throbbing surface which gathered all the
+shafts of light into a centre.
+
+It was almost a relief when, a moment later, the lights sank, the
+curtain rose, and the focus of illumination was shifted. The music, the
+scenery, and the movement on the stage, were like a rich mist tempering
+the radiance that shot on her from every side, and giving her time to
+subside, draw breath, adjust herself to this new clear medium which made
+her feel so oddly brittle and transparent.
+
+When the curtain fell on the first act she began to be aware of a subtle
+change in the house. In all the boxes cross-currents of movement had
+set in: groups were coalescing and breaking up, fans waving and heads
+twinkling, black coats emerging among white shoulders, late comers
+dropping their furs and laces in the red penumbra of the background.
+Undine, for the moment unconscious of herself, swept the house with her
+opera-glass, searching for familiar faces. Some she knew without being
+able to name them--fixed figure-heads of the social prow--others she
+recognized from their portraits in the papers; but of the few from whom
+she could herself claim recognition not one was visible, and as she
+pursued her investigations the whole scene grew blank and featureless.
+
+Almost all the boxes were full now, but one, just opposite, tantalized
+her by its continued emptiness. How queer to have an opera-box and not
+use it! What on earth could the people be doing--what rarer delight
+could they be tasting? Undine remembered that the numbers of the boxes
+and the names of their owners were given on the back of the programme,
+and after a rapid computation she turned to consult the list. Mondays
+and Fridays, Mrs. Peter Van Degen. That was it: the box was empty
+because Mrs. Van Degen was dining alone with Ralph Marvell! "PETER WILL
+BE AT ONE OF HIS DINNERS." Undine had a sharp vision of the Van Degen
+dining-room--she pictured it as oak-carved and sumptuous with gilding
+--with a small table in the centre, and rosy lights and flowers, and
+Ralph Marvell, across the hot-house grapes and champagne, leaning to
+take a light from his hostess's cigarette. Undine had seen such scenes
+on the stage, she had come upon them in the glowing pages of fiction,
+and it seemed to her that every detail was before her now, from the
+glitter of jewels on Mrs. Van Degen's bare shoulders to the way young
+Marvell stroked his slight blond moustache while he smiled and listened.
+
+Undine blushed with anger at her own simplicity in fancying that he had
+been "taken" by her--that she could ever really count among these happy
+self-absorbed people! They all had their friends, their ties, their
+delightful crowding obligations: why should they make room for an
+intruder in a circle so packed with the initiated?
+
+As her imagination developed the details of the scene in the Van Degen
+dining-room it became clear to her that fashionable society was
+horribly immoral and that she could never really be happy in such a
+poisoned atmosphere. She remembered that an eminent divine was preaching
+a series of sermons against Social Corruption, and she determined to go
+and hear him on the following Sunday.
+
+This train of thought was interrupted by the feeling that she was being
+intently observed from the neighbouring box. She turned around with a
+feint of speaking to Mrs. Lipscomb, and met the bulging stare of Peter
+Van Degen. He was standing behind the lady of the eye-glass, who had
+replaced her tortoise-shell implement by one of closely-set brilliants,
+which, at word from her companion, she critically bent on Undine.
+
+"No--I don't remember," she said; and the girl reddened, divining
+herself unidentified after this protracted scrutiny.
+
+But there was no doubt as to young Van Degen's remembering her. She was
+even conscious that he was trying to provoke in her some reciprocal sign
+of recognition; and the attempt drove her to the haughty study of her
+programme.
+
+"Why, there's Mr. Popple over there!" exclaimed Mabel Lipscomb, making
+large signs across the house with fan and play-bill.
+
+Undine had already become aware that Mabel, planted, blond and brimming,
+too near the edge of the box, was somehow out of scale and out of
+drawing; and the freedom of her demonstrations increased the effect
+of disproportion. No one else was wagging and waving in that way: a
+gestureless mute telegraphy seemed to pass between the other boxes.
+Still, Undine could not help following Mrs. Lipscomb's glance, and
+there in fact was Claud Popple, taller and more dominant than ever, and
+bending easily over what she felt must be the back of a brilliant woman.
+
+He replied by a discreet salute to Mrs. Lipscomb's intemperate motions,
+and Undine saw the brilliant woman's opera-glass turn in their
+direction, and said to herself that in a moment Mr. Popple would be
+"round." But the entr'acte wore on, and no one turned the handle of
+their door, or disturbed the peaceful somnolence of Harry Lipscomb, who,
+not being (as he put it) "onto" grand opera, had abandoned the struggle
+and withdrawn to the seclusion of the inner box. Undine jealously
+watched Mr. Popple's progress from box to box, from brilliant woman to
+brilliant woman; but just as it seemed about to carry him to their door
+he reappeared at his original post across the house.
+
+"Undie, do look--there's Mr. Marvell!" Mabel began again, with another
+conspicuous outbreak of signalling; and this time Undine flushed to the
+nape as Mrs. Peter Van Degen appeared in the opposite box with Ralph
+Marvell behind her. The two seemed to be alone in the box--as they had
+doubtless been alone all the evening!--and Undine furtively turned to
+see if Mr. Van Degen shared her disapproval. But Mr. Van Degen had
+disappeared, and Undine, leaning forward, nervously touched Mabel's arm.
+
+"What's the matter. Undine? Don't you see Mr. Marvell over there? Is
+that his sister he's with?"
+
+"No.--I wouldn't beckon like that," Undine whispered between her teeth.
+
+"Why not? Don't you want him to know you're here?"
+
+"Yes--but the other people are not beckoning."
+
+Mabel looked about unabashed. "Perhaps they've all found each other.
+Shall I send Harry over to tell him?" she shouted above the blare of the
+wind instruments.
+
+"NO!" gasped Undine as the curtain rose.
+
+She was no longer capable of following the action on the stage. Two
+presences possessed her imagination: that of Ralph Marvell, small,
+unattainable, remote, and that of Mabel Lipscomb, near-by, immense and
+irrepressible.
+
+It had become clear to Undine that Mabel Lipscomb was ridiculous. That
+was the reason why Popple did not come to the box. No one would care to
+be seen talking to her while Mabel was at her side: Mabel, monumental
+and moulded while the fashionable were flexible and diaphanous, Mabel
+strident and explicit while they were subdued and allusive. At the
+Stentorian she was the centre of her group--here she revealed herself
+as unknown and unknowing. Why, she didn't even know that Mrs. Peter Van
+Degen was not Ralph Marvell's sister! And she had a way of trumpeting
+out her ignorances that jarred on Undine's subtler methods. It was
+precisely at this point that there dawned on Undine what was to be one
+of the guiding principles of her career: "IT'S BETTER TO WATCH THAN TO
+ASK QUESTIONS."
+
+The curtain fell again, and Undine's eyes flew back to the Van Degen
+box. Several men were entering it together, and a moment later she saw
+Ralph Marvell rise from his seat and pass out. Half-unconsciously she
+placed herself in such a way as to have an eye on the door of the box.
+But its handle remained unturned, and Harry Lipscomb, leaning back
+on the sofa, his head against the opera cloaks, continued to breathe
+stentorously through his open mouth and stretched his legs a little
+farther across the threshold...
+
+The entr'acte was nearly over when the door opened and two gentlemen
+stumbled over Mr. Lipscomb's legs. The foremost was Claud Walsingham
+Popple; and above his shoulder shone the batrachian countenance of Peter
+Van Degen. A brief murmur from Mr. Popple made his companion known to
+the two ladies, and Mr. Van Degen promptly seated himself behind Undine,
+relegating the painter to Mrs. Lipscomb's elbow.
+
+"Queer go--I happened to see your friend there waving to old Popp across
+the house. So I bolted over and collared him: told him he'd got to
+introduce me before he was a minute older. I tried to find out who
+you were the other day at the Motor Show--no, where was it? Oh, those
+pictures at Goldmark's. What d'you think of 'em, by the way? You ought
+to be painted yourself--no, I mean it, you know--you ought to get old
+Popp to do you. He'd do your hair ripplingly. You must let me come and
+talk to you about it... About the picture or your hair? Well, your hair
+if you don't mind. Where'd you say you were staying? Oh, you LIVE here,
+do you? I say, that's first rate!"
+
+Undine sat well forward, curving toward him a little, as she had seen
+the other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible
+to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than Mr.
+Peter Van Degen. Mr. Popple's talk was certainly more brilliant and
+purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind Mrs.
+Lipscomb's shoulder; but she remembered how lightly he had been treated
+at the Fairford dinner, and she wanted--oh, how she wanted!--to have
+Ralph Marvell see her talking to Van Degen.
+
+She poured out her heart to him, improvising an opinion on the pictures
+and an opinion on the music, falling in gaily with his suggestion of
+a jolly little dinner some night soon, at the Cafe Martin, and
+strengthening her position, as she thought, by an easy allusion to her
+acquaintance with Mrs. Van Degen. But at the word her companion's eye
+clouded, and a shade of constraint dimmed his enterprising smile.
+
+"My wife--? Oh, SHE doesn't go to restaurants--she moves on too high a
+plane. But we'll get old Popp, and Mrs.--, Mrs.--, what'd you say your
+fat friend's name was? Just a select little crowd of four--and some kind
+of a cheerful show afterward... Jove! There's the curtain, and I must
+skip."
+
+As the door closed on him Undine's cheeks burned with resentment. If
+Mrs. Van Degen didn't go to restaurants, why had he supposed that SHE
+would? and to have to drag Mabel in her wake! The leaden sense of
+failure overcame her again. Here was the evening nearly over, and what
+had it led to? Looking up from the stalls, she had fancied that to sit
+in a box was to be in society--now she saw it might but emphasize one's
+exclusion. And she was burdened with the box for the rest of the season!
+It was really stupid of her father to have exceeded his instructions:
+why had he not done as she told him?... Undine felt helpless and
+tired... hateful memories of Apex crowded back on her. Was it going to
+be as dreary here as there?
+
+She felt Lipscomb's loud whisper in her back: "Say, you girls, I guess
+I'll cut this and come back for you when the show busts up." They heard
+him shuffle out of the box, and Mabel settled back to undisturbed
+enjoyment of the stage.
+
+When the last entr'acte began Undine stood up, resolved to stay no
+longer. Mabel, lost in the study of the audience, had not noticed her
+movement, and as she passed alone into the back of the box the door
+opened and Ralph Marvell came in.
+
+Undine stood with one arm listlessly raised to detach her cloak from the
+wall. Her attitude showed the long slimness of her figure and the fresh
+curve of the throat below her bent-back head. Her face was paler and
+softer than usual, and the eyes she rested on Marvell's face looked deep
+and starry under their fixed brows.
+
+"Oh--you're not going?" he exclaimed.
+
+"I thought you weren't coming," she answered simply.
+
+"I waited till now on purpose to dodge your other visitors."
+
+She laughed with pleasure. "Oh, we hadn't so many!"
+
+Some intuition had already told her that frankness was the tone to take
+with him. They sat down together on the red damask sofa, against the
+hanging cloaks. As Undine leaned back her hair caught in the spangles of
+the wrap behind her, and she had to sit motionless while the young man
+freed the captive mesh. Then they settled themselves again, laughing a
+little at the incident.
+
+A glance had made the situation clear to Mrs. Lipscomb, and they saw her
+return to her rapt inspection of the boxes. In their mirror-hung recess
+the light was subdued to a rosy dimness and the hum of the audience came
+to them through half-drawn silken curtains. Undine noticed the delicacy
+and finish of her companion's features as his head detached itself
+against the red silk walls. The hand with which he stroked his small
+moustache was finely-finished too, but sinewy and not effeminate. She
+had always associated finish and refinement entirely with her own sex,
+but she began to think they might be even more agreeable in a man.
+Marvell's eyes were grey, like her own, with chestnut eyebrows and
+darker lashes; and his skin was as clear as a woman's, but pleasantly
+reddish, like his hands.
+
+As he sat talking in a low tone, questioning her about the music, asking
+her what she had been doing since he had last seen her, she was aware
+that he looked at her less than usual, and she also glanced away; but
+when she turned her eyes suddenly they always met his gaze.
+
+His talk remained impersonal. She was a little disappointed that he did
+not compliment her on her dress or her hair--Undine was accustomed to
+hearing a great deal about her hair, and the episode of the spangles had
+opened the way to a graceful allusion--but the instinct of sex told her
+that, under his quiet words, he was throbbing with the sense of her
+proximity. And his self-restraint sobered her, made her refrain from the
+flashing and fidgeting which were the only way she knew of taking part
+in the immemorial love-dance. She talked simply and frankly of herself,
+of her parents, of how few people they knew in New York, and of how, at
+times, she was almost sorry she had persuaded them to give up Apex.
+
+"You see, they did it entirely on my account; they're awfully lonesome
+here; and I don't believe I shall ever learn New York ways either," she
+confessed, turning on him the eyes of youth and truthfulness. "Of course
+I know a few people; but they're not--not the way I expected New York
+people to be." She risked what seemed an involuntary glance at Mabel.
+"I've seen girls here to-night that I just LONG to know--they look so
+lovely and refined--but I don't suppose I ever shall. New York's not
+very friendly to strange girls, is it? I suppose you've got so many of
+your own already--and they're all so fascinating you don't care!" As she
+spoke she let her eyes rest on his, half-laughing, half-wistful, and
+then dropped her lashes while the pink stole slowly up to them.
+
+When he left her he asked if he might hope to find her at home the next
+day.
+
+The night was fine, and Marvell, having put his cousin into her motor,
+started to walk home to Washington Square. At the corner he was joined
+by Mr. Popple. "Hallo, Ralph, old man--did you run across our auburn
+beauty of the Stentorian? Who'd have thought old Harry Lipscomb'd have
+put us onto anything as good as that? Peter Van Degen was fairly taken
+off his feet--pulled me out of Mrs. Monty Thurber's box and dragged me
+'round by the collar to introduce him. Planning a dinner at Martin's
+already. Gad, young Peter must have what he wants WHEN he wants it! I
+put in a word for you--told him you and I ought to be let in on the
+ground floor. Funny the luck some girls have about getting started. I
+believe this one'll take if she can manage to shake the Lipscombs. I
+think I'll ask to paint her; might be a good thing for the spring show.
+She'd show up splendidly as a PENDANT to my Mrs. Van Degen--Blonde and
+Brunette... Night and Morning... Of course I prefer Mrs. Van Degen's
+type--personally, I MUST have breeding--but as a mere bit of flesh and
+blood... hallo, ain't you coming into the club?"
+
+Marvell was not coming into the club, and he drew a long breath of
+relief as his companion left him.
+
+Was it possible that he had ever thought leniently of the egregious
+Popple? The tone of social omniscience which he had once found so comic
+was now as offensive to him as a coarse physical touch. And the worst of
+it was that Popple, with the slight exaggeration of a caricature, really
+expressed the ideals of the world he frequented. As he spoke of Miss
+Spragg, so others at any rate would think of her: almost every one in
+Ralph's set would agree that it was luck for a girl from Apex to be
+started by Peter Van Degen at a Cafe Martin dinner...
+
+Ralph Marvell, mounting his grandfather's doorstep, looked up at the
+symmetrical old red house-front, with its frugal marble ornament, as he
+might have looked into a familiar human face.
+
+"They're right,--after all, in some ways they're right," he murmured,
+slipping his key into the door.
+
+"They" were his mother and old Mr. Urban Dagonet, both, from Ralph's
+earliest memories, so closely identified with the old house in
+Washington Square that they might have passed for its inner
+consciousness as it might have stood for their outward form; and the
+question as to which the house now seemed to affirm their intrinsic
+rightness was that of the social disintegration expressed by
+widely-different architectural physiognomies at the other end of Fifth
+Avenue. As Ralph pushed the bolts behind him, and passed into the hall,
+with its dark mahogany doors and the quiet "Dutch interior" effect of
+its black and white marble paving, he said to himself that what Popple
+called society was really just like the houses it lived in: a muddle of
+misapplied ornament over a thin steel shell of utility. The steel shell
+was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added
+in Fifth Avenue; and the union between them was as monstrous and
+factitious, as unlike the gradual homogeneous growth which flowers
+into what other countries know as society, as that between the Blois
+gargoyles on Peter Van Degen's roof and the skeleton walls supporting
+them.
+
+That was what "they" had always said; what, at least, the Dagonet
+attitude, the Dagonet view of life, the very lines of the furniture in
+the old Dagonet house expressed. Ralph sometimes called his mother and
+grandfather the Aborigines, and likened them to those vanishing denizens
+of the American continent doomed to rapid extinction with the advance of
+the invading race. He was fond of describing Washington Square as the
+"Reservation," and of prophesying that before long its inhabitants would
+be exhibited at ethnological shows, pathetically engaged in the exercise
+of their primitive industries.
+
+Small, cautious, middle-class, had been the ideals of aboriginal New
+York; but it suddenly struck the young man that they were singularly
+coherent and respectable as contrasted with the chaos of indiscriminate
+appetites which made up its modern tendencies. He too had wanted to be
+"modern," had revolted, half-humorously, against the restrictions and
+exclusions of the old code; and it must have been by one of the ironic
+reversions of heredity that, at this precise point, he began to see what
+there was to be said on the other side--his side, as he now felt it to
+be.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Upstairs, in his brown firelit room, he threw himself into an armchair,
+and remembered... Harvard first--then Oxford; then a year of wandering
+and rich initiation. Returning to New York, he had read law, and now
+had his desk in the office of the respectable firm in whose charge the
+Dagonet estate had mouldered for several generations. But his profession
+was the least real thing in his life. The realities lay about him now:
+the books jamming his old college bookcases and overflowing on chairs
+and tables; sketches too--he could do charming things, if only he had
+known how to finish them!--and, on the writing-table at his elbow,
+scattered sheets of prose and verse; charming things also, but, like the
+sketches, unfinished.
+
+Nothing in the Dagonet and Marvell tradition was opposed to this
+desultory dabbling with life. For four or five generations it had been
+the rule of both houses that a young fellow should go to Columbia or
+Harvard, read law, and then lapse into more or less cultivated inaction.
+The only essential was that he should live "like a gentleman"--that is,
+with a tranquil disdain for mere money-getting, a passive openness to
+the finer sensations, one or two fixed principles as to the quality of
+wine, and an archaic probity that had not yet learned to distinguish
+between private and "business" honour.
+
+No equipment could more thoroughly have unfitted the modern youth for
+getting on: it hardly needed the scribbled pages on the desk to complete
+the hopelessness of Ralph Marvell's case. He had accepted the fact with
+a humorous fatalism. Material resources were limited on both sides of
+the house, but there would always be enough for his frugal wants--enough
+to buy books (not "editions"), and pay now and then for a holiday dash
+to the great centres of art and ideas. And meanwhile there was the world
+of wonders within him. As a boy at the sea-side, Ralph, between tides,
+had once come on a cave--a secret inaccessible place with glaucous
+lights, mysterious murmurs, and a single shaft of communication with the
+sky. He had kept his find from the other boys, not churlishly, for he
+was always an outspoken lad, but because he felt there were things about
+the cave that the others, good fellows as they all were, couldn't be
+expected to understand, and that, anyhow, it would never be quite his
+cave again after he had let his thick-set freckled cousins play smuggler
+and pirate in it.
+
+And so with his inner world. Though so coloured by outer impressions,
+it wove a secret curtain about him, and he came and went in it with
+the same joy of furtive possession. One day, of course, some one would
+discover it and reign there with him--no, reign over it and him. Once or
+twice already a light foot had reached the threshold. His cousin Clare
+Dagonet, for instance: there had been a summer when her voice had
+sounded far down the windings... but he had run over to Spain for the
+autumn, and when he came back she was engaged to Peter Van Degen, and
+for a while it looked black in the cave. That was long ago, as time is
+reckoned under thirty; and for three years now he had felt for her only
+a half-contemptuous pity. To have stood at the mouth of his cave, and
+have turned from it to the Van Degen lair--!
+
+Poor Clare repented, indeed--she wanted it clearly but she repented in
+the Van Degen diamonds, and the Van Degen motor bore her broken heart
+from opera to ball. She had been subdued to what she worked in, and she
+could never again find her way to the enchanted cave... Ralph, since
+then, had reached the point of deciding that he would never marry;
+reached it not suddenly or dramatically, but with such sober advisedness
+as is urged on those about to take the opposite step. What he most
+wanted, now that the first flutter of being was over, was to learn and
+to do--to know what the great people had thought, think about their
+thinking, and then launch his own boat: write some good verse if
+possible; if not, then critical prose. A dramatic poem lay among the
+stuff at his elbow; but the prose critic was at his elbow too, and not
+to be satisfied about the poem; and poet and critic passed the nights
+in hot if unproductive debate. On the whole, it seemed likely that the
+critic would win the day, and the essay on "The Rhythmical Structures of
+Walt Whitman" take shape before "The Banished God." Yet if the light in
+the cave was less supernaturally blue, the chant of its tides less laden
+with unimaginable music, it was still a thronged and echoing place when
+Undine Spragg appeared on its threshold...
+
+His mother and sister of course wanted him to marry. They had the usual
+theory that he was "made" for conjugal bliss: women always thought that
+of a fellow who didn't get drunk and have low tastes. Ralph smiled at
+the idea as he sat crouched among his secret treasures. Marry--but whom,
+in the name of light and freedom? The daughters of his own race sold
+themselves to the Invaders; the daughters of the Invaders bought
+their husbands as they bought an opera-box. It ought all to have been
+transacted on the Stock Exchange. His mother, he knew, had no such
+ambitions for him: she would have liked him to fancy a "nice girl" like
+Harriet Ray.
+
+Harriet Ray was neither vulgar nor ambitious. She regarded Washington
+Square as the birthplace of Society, knew by heart all the cousinships
+of early New York, hated motor-cars, could not make herself understood
+on the telephone, and was determined, if she married, never to receive a
+divorced woman. As Mrs. Marvell often said, such girls as Harriet were
+growing rare. Ralph was not sure about this. He was inclined to think
+that, certain modifications allowed for, there would always be plenty of
+Harriet Rays for unworldly mothers to commend to their sons; and he had
+no desire to diminish their number by removing one from the ranks of the
+marriageable. He had no desire to marry at all--that had been the whole
+truth of it till he met Undine Spragg. And now--? He lit a cigar, and
+began to recall his hour's conversation with Mrs. Spragg.
+
+Ralph had never taken his mother's social faiths very seriously.
+Surveying the march of civilization from a loftier angle, he had early
+mingled with the Invaders, and curiously observed their rites and
+customs. But most of those he had met had already been modified by
+contact with the indigenous: they spoke the same language as his, though
+on their lips it had often so different a meaning. Ralph had never seen
+them actually in the making, before they had acquired the speech of the
+conquered race. But Mrs. Spragg still used the dialect of her people,
+and before the end of the visit Ralph had ceased to regret that her
+daughter was out. He felt obscurely that in the girl's presence--frank
+and simple as he thought her--he should have learned less of life in
+early Apex.
+
+Mrs. Spragg, once reconciled--or at least resigned--to the mysterious
+necessity of having to "entertain" a friend of Undine's, had yielded to
+the first touch on the weak springs of her garrulity. She had not seen
+Mrs. Heeny for two days, and this friendly young man with the gentle
+manner was almost as easy to talk to as the masseuse. And then she could
+tell him things that Mrs. Heeny already knew, and Mrs. Spragg liked
+to repeat her stories. To do so gave her almost her sole sense of
+permanence among the shifting scenes of life. So that, after she had
+lengthily deplored the untoward accident of Undine's absence, and her
+visitor, with a smile, and echoes of divers et ondoyant in his brain,
+had repeated her daughter's name after her, saying: "It's a wonderful
+find--how could you tell it would be such a fit?"--it came to her quite
+easily to answer: "Why, we called her after a hair-waver father put on
+the market the week she was born--" and then to explain, as he remained
+struck and silent: "It's from UNdoolay, you know, the French for
+crimping; father always thought the name made it take. He was quite a
+scholar, and had the greatest knack for finding names. I remember the
+time he invented his Goliath Glue he sat up all night over the Bible to
+get the name... No, father didn't start IN as a druggist," she went on,
+expanding with the signs of Marvell's interest; "he was educated for an
+undertaker, and built up a first-class business; but he was always
+a beautiful speaker, and after a while he sorter drifted into the
+ministry. Of course it didn't pay him anything like as well, so finally
+he opened a drug-store, and he did first-rate at that too, though his
+heart was always in the pulpit. But after he made such a success with
+his hair-waver he got speculating in land out at Apex, and somehow
+everything went--though Mr. Spragg did all he COULD--." Mrs. Spragg,
+when she found herself embarked on a long sentence, always ballasted it
+by italicizing the last word.
+
+Her husband, she continued, could not, at the time, do much for his
+father-in-law. Mr. Spragg had come to Apex as a poor boy, and their
+early married life had been a protracted struggle, darkened by domestic
+affliction. Two of their three children had died of typhoid in the
+epidemic which devastated Apex before the new water-works were built;
+and this calamity, by causing Mr. Spragg to resolve that thereafter
+Apex should drink pure water, had led directly to the founding of his
+fortunes.
+
+"He had taken over some of poor father's land for a bad debt, and when
+he got up the Pure Water move the company voted to buy the land and
+build the new reservoir up there: and after that we began to be better
+off, and it DID seem as if it had come out so to comfort us some about
+the children."
+
+Mr. Spragg, thereafter, had begun to be a power in Apex, and fat years
+had followed on the lean. Ralph Marvell was too little versed in affairs
+to read between the lines of Mrs. Spragg's untutored narrative, and he
+understood no more than she the occult connection between Mr. Spragg's
+domestic misfortunes and his business triumph. Mr. Spragg had "helped
+out" his ruined father-in-law, and had vowed on his children's graves
+that no Apex child should ever again drink poisoned water--and out
+of those two disinterested impulses, by some impressive law of
+compensation, material prosperity had come. What Ralph understood and
+appreciated was Mrs. Spragg's unaffected frankness in talking of her
+early life. Here was no retrospective pretense of an opulent past,
+such as the other Invaders were given to parading before the bland but
+undeceived subject race. The Spraggs had been "plain people" and had not
+yet learned to be ashamed of it. The fact drew them much closer to the
+Dagonet ideals than any sham elegance in the past tense. Ralph felt
+that his mother, who shuddered away from Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll, would
+understand and esteem Mrs. Spragg.
+
+But how long would their virgin innocence last? Popple's vulgar hands
+were on it already--Popple's and the unspeakable Van Degen's! Once they
+and theirs had begun the process of initiating Undine, there was no
+knowing--or rather there was too easy knowing--how it would end! It was
+incredible that she too should be destined to swell the ranks of the
+cheaply fashionable; yet were not her very freshness, her malleability,
+the mark of her fate? She was still at the age when the flexible soul
+offers itself to the first grasp. That the grasp should chance to be Van
+Degen's--that was what made Ralph's temples buzz, and swept away all his
+plans for his own future like a beaver's dam in a spring flood. To
+save her from Van Degen and Van Degenism: was that really to be his
+mission--the "call" for which his life had obscurely waited? It was
+not in the least what he had meant to do with the fugitive flash of
+consciousness he called self; but all that he had purposed for that
+transitory being sank into insignificance under the pressure of Undine's
+claims.
+
+Ralph Marvell's notion of women had been formed on the experiences
+common to good-looking young men of his kind. Women were drawn to him as
+much by his winning appealing quality, by the sense of a youthful warmth
+behind his light ironic exterior, as by his charms of face and mind.
+Except during Clare Dagonet's brief reign the depths in him had not been
+stirred; but in taking what each sentimental episode had to give he had
+preserved, through all his minor adventures, his faith in the great
+adventure to come. It was this faith that made him so easy a victim
+when love had at last appeared clad in the attributes of romance: the
+imaginative man's indestructible dream of a rounded passion.
+
+The clearness with which he judged the girl and himself seemed the
+surest proof that his feeling was more than a surface thrill. He was not
+blind to her crudity and her limitations, but they were a part of her
+grace and her persuasion. Diverse et ondoyante--so he had seen her from
+the first. But was not that merely the sign of a quicker response to the
+world's manifold appeal? There was Harriet Ray, sealed up tight in the
+vacuum of inherited opinion, where not a breath of fresh sensation could
+get at her: there could be no call to rescue young ladies so
+secured from the perils of reality! Undine had no such traditional
+safeguards--Ralph guessed Mrs. Spragg's opinions to be as fluid as
+her daughter's--and the girl's very sensitiveness to new impressions,
+combined with her obvious lack of any sense of relative values, would
+make her an easy prey to the powers of folly. He seemed to see her--as
+he sat there, pressing his fists into his temples--he seemed to see her
+like a lovely rock-bound Andromeda, with the devouring monster Society
+careering up to make a mouthful of her; and himself whirling down on his
+winged horse--just Pegasus turned Rosinante for the nonce--to cut her
+bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue...
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Some two months later than the date of young Marvell's midnight vigil,
+Mrs. Heeny, seated on a low chair at Undine's knee, gave the girl's left
+hand an approving pat as she laid aside her lapful of polishers.
+
+"There! I guess you can put your ring on again," she said with a laugh
+of jovial significance; and Undine, echoing the laugh in a murmur of
+complacency, slipped on the fourth finger of her recovered hand a band
+of sapphires in an intricate setting.
+
+Mrs. Heeny took up the hand again. "Them's old stones, Undine--they've
+got a different look," she said, examining the ring while she rubbed her
+cushioned palm over the girl's brilliant finger-tips. "And the setting's
+quaint--I wouldn't wonder but what it was one of old Gran'ma Dagonet's."
+
+Mrs. Spragg, hovering near in fond beatitude, looked up quickly.
+
+"Why, don't you s'pose he BOUGHT it for her, Mrs. Heeny? It came in a
+Tiff'ny box."
+
+The manicure laughed again. "Of course he's had Tiff'ny rub it up.
+Ain't you ever heard of ancestral jewels, Mrs. Spragg? In the Eu-ropean
+aristocracy they never go out and BUY engagement-rings; and Undine's
+marrying into our aristocracy."
+
+Mrs. Spragg looked relieved. "Oh, I thought maybe they were trying to
+scrimp on the ring--"
+
+Mrs. Heeny, shrugging away this explanation, rose from her seat and
+rolled back her shiny black sleeves.
+
+"Look at here, Undine, if you really want me to do your hair it's time
+we got to work."
+
+The girl swung about in her seat so that she faced the mirror on the
+dressing-table. Her shoulders shone through transparencies of lace
+and muslin which slipped back as she lifted her arms to draw the
+tortoise-shell pins from her hair.
+
+"Of course you've got to do it--I want to look perfectly lovely!"
+
+"Well--I dunno's my hand's in nowadays," said Mrs. Heeny in a tone that
+belied the doubt she cast on her own ability.
+
+"Oh, you're an ARTIST, Mrs. Heeny--and I just couldn't have had that
+French maid 'round to-night," sighed Mrs. Spragg, sinking into a chair
+near the dressing-table.
+
+Undine, with a backward toss of her head, scattered her loose locks
+about her. As they spread and sparkled under Mrs. Heeny's touch, Mrs.
+Spragg leaned back, drinking in through half-closed lids her daughter's
+loveliness. Some new quality seemed added to Undine's beauty: it had a
+milder bloom, a kind of melting grace, which might have been lent to it
+by the moisture in her mother's eyes.
+
+"So you're to see the old gentleman for the first time at this dinner?"
+Mrs. Heeny pursued, sweeping the live strands up into a loosely woven
+crown.
+
+"Yes. I'm frightened to death!" Undine, laughing confidently, took up a
+hand-glass and scrutinized the small brown mole above the curve of her
+upper lip.
+
+"I guess she'll know how to talk to him," Mrs. Spragg averred with a
+kind of quavering triumph.
+
+"She'll know how to LOOK at him, anyhow," said Mrs. Heeny; and Undine
+smiled at her own image.
+
+"I hope he won't think I'm too awful!"
+
+Mrs. Heeny laughed. "Did you read the description of yourself in the
+Radiator this morning? I wish't I'd 'a had time to cut it out. I guess
+I'll have to start a separate bag for YOUR clippings soon."
+
+Undine stretched her arms luxuriously above her head and gazed through
+lowered lids at the foreshortened reflection of her face.
+
+"Mercy! Don't jerk about like that. Am I to put in this
+rose?--There--you ARE lovely!" Mrs. Heeny sighed, as the pink petals
+sank into the hair above the girl's forehead. Undine pushed her chair
+back, and sat supporting her chin on her clasped hands while she studied
+the result of Mrs. Heeny's manipulations.
+
+"Yes--that's the way Mrs. Peter Van Degen's flower was put in the other
+night; only hers was a camellia.--Do you think I'd look better with a
+camellia?"
+
+"I guess if Mrs. Van Degen looked like a rose she'd 'a worn a rose,"
+Mrs. Heeny rejoined poetically. "Sit still a minute longer," she added.
+"Your hair's so heavy I'd feel easier if I was to put in another pin."
+
+Undine remained motionless, and the manicure, suddenly laying both hands
+on the girl's shoulders, and bending over to peer at her reflection,
+said playfully: "Ever been engaged before, Undine?"
+
+A blush rose to the face in the mirror, spreading from chin to brow, and
+running rosily over the white shoulders from which their covering had
+slipped down.
+
+"My! If he could see you now!" Mrs. Heeny jested.
+
+Mrs. Spragg, rising noiselessly, glided across the room and became lost
+in a minute examination of the dress laid out on the bed.
+
+With a supple twist Undine slipped from Mrs. Heeny's hold.
+
+"Engaged? Mercy, yes! Didn't you know? To the Prince of Wales. I broke
+it off because I wouldn't live in the Tower."
+
+Mrs. Spragg, lifting the dress cautiously over her arm, advanced with a
+reassured smile.
+
+"I s'pose Undie'll go to Europe now," she said to Mrs. Heeny.
+
+"I guess Undie WILL!" the young lady herself declared. "We're going to
+sail right afterward.--Here, mother, do be careful of my hair!" She
+ducked gracefully to slip into the lacy fabric which her mother held
+above her head. As she rose Venus-like above its folds there was a tap
+on the door, immediately followed by its tentative opening.
+
+"Mabel!" Undine muttered, her brows lowering like her father's; and
+Mrs. Spragg, wheeling about to screen her daughter, addressed herself
+protestingly to the half-open door.
+
+"Who's there? Oh, that YOU, Mrs. Lipscomb? Well, I don't know as you
+CAN--Undie isn't half dressed yet--"
+
+"Just like her--always pushing in!" Undine murmured as she slipped her
+arms into their transparent sleeves.
+
+"Oh, that don't matter--I'll help dress her!" Mrs. Lipscomb's large
+blond person surged across the threshold. "Seems to me I ought to lend a
+hand to-night, considering I was the one that introduced them!"
+
+Undine forced a smile, but Mrs. Spragg, her soft wrinkles deepening with
+resentment, muttered to Mrs. Heeny, as she bent down to shake out the
+girl's train: "I guess my daughter's only got to show herself--"
+
+The first meeting with old Mr. Dagonet was less formidable than Undine
+had expected. She had been once before to the house in Washington
+Square, when, with her mother, she had returned Mrs. Marvell's
+ceremonial visit; but on that occasion Ralph's grandfather had not
+been present. All the rites connected with her engagement were new and
+mysterious to Undine, and none more so than the unaccountable necessity
+of "dragging"--as she phrased it--Mrs. Spragg into the affair. It was an
+accepted article of the Apex creed that parental detachment should be
+completest at the moment when the filial fate was decided; and to find
+that New York reversed this rule was as puzzling to Undine as to her
+mother. Mrs. Spragg was so unprepared for the part she was to play
+that on the occasion of her visit to Mrs. Marvell her helplessness had
+infected Undine, and their half-hour in the sober faded drawing-room
+remained among the girl's most unsatisfactory memories.
+
+She re-entered it alone with more assurance. Her confidence in her
+beauty had hitherto carried her through every ordeal; and it was
+fortified now by the feeling of power that came with the sense of being
+loved. If they would only leave her mother out she was sure, in her
+own phrase, of being able to "run the thing"; and Mrs. Spragg had
+providentially been left out of the Dagonet dinner.
+
+It was to consist, it appeared, only of the small family group Undine
+had already met; and, seated at old Mr. Dagonet's right, in the high
+dark dining-room with mahogany doors and dim portraits of "Signers"
+and their females, she felt a conscious joy in her ascendancy. Old Mr.
+Dagonet--small, frail and softly sardonic--appeared to fall at once
+under her spell. If she felt, beneath his amenity, a kind of delicate
+dangerousness, like that of some fine surgical instrument, she ignored
+it as unimportant; for she had as yet no clear perception of forces that
+did not directly affect her.
+
+Mrs. Marvell, low-voiced, faded, yet impressive, was less responsive
+to her arts, and Undine divined in her the head of the opposition to
+Ralph's marriage. Mrs. Heeny had reported that Mrs. Marvell had other
+views for her son; and this was confirmed by such echoes of the short
+sharp struggle as reached the throbbing listeners at the Stentorian. But
+the conflict over, the air had immediately cleared, showing the enemy in
+the act of unconditional surrender. It surprised Undine that there had
+been no reprisals, no return on the points conceded. That was not her
+idea of warfare, and she could ascribe the completeness of the victory
+only to the effect of her charms.
+
+Mrs. Marvell's manner did not express entire subjugation; yet she seemed
+anxious to dispel any doubts of her good faith, and if she left the
+burden of the talk to her lively daughter it might have been because
+she felt more capable of showing indulgence by her silence than in her
+speech.
+
+As for Mrs. Fairford, she had never seemed more brilliantly bent
+on fusing the various elements under her hand. Undine had already
+discovered that she adored her brother, and had guessed that this
+would make her either a strong ally or a determined enemy. The latter
+alternative, however, did not alarm the girl. She thought Mrs. Fairford
+"bright," and wanted to be liked by her; and she was in the state of
+dizzy self-assurance when it seemed easy to win any sympathy she chose
+to seek.
+
+For the only other guests--Mrs. Fairford's husband, and the elderly
+Charles Bowen who seemed to be her special friend--Undine had no
+attention to spare: they remained on a plane with the dim pictures
+hanging at her back. She had expected a larger party; but she was
+relieved, on the whole, that it was small enough to permit of her
+dominating it. Not that she wished to do so by any loudness of
+assertion. Her quickness in noting external differences had already
+taught her to modulate and lower her voice, and to replace "The I-dea!"
+and "I wouldn't wonder" by more polished locutions; and she had not been
+ten minutes at table before she found that to seem very much in love,
+and a little confused and subdued by the newness and intensity of the
+sentiment, was, to the Dagonet mind, the becoming attitude for a young
+lady in her situation. The part was not hard to play, for she WAS in
+love, of course. It was pleasant, when she looked across the table, to
+meet Ralph's grey eyes, with that new look in them, and to feel that she
+had kindled it; but I it was only part of her larger pleasure in
+the general homage to her beauty, in the sensations of interest and
+curiosity excited by everything about her, from the family portraits
+overhead to the old Dagonet silver on the table--which were to be hers
+too, after all!
+
+The talk, as at Mrs. Fairford's, confused her by its lack of the
+personal allusion, its tendency to turn to books, pictures and politics.
+"Politics," to Undine, had always been like a kind of back-kitchen to
+business--the place where the refuse was thrown and the doubtful messes
+were brewed. As a drawing-room topic, and one to provoke disinterested
+sentiments, it had the hollowness of Fourth of July orations, and her
+mind wandered in spite of the desire to appear informed and competent.
+
+Old Mr. Dagonet, with his reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and
+relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her
+affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York.
+But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a
+fruitful theme, and Undine, called on for the first time to view her own
+progenitors as a subject of conversation, was struck by their lack of
+points. She had never paused to consider what her father and mother were
+"interested" in, and, challenged to specify, could have named--with
+sincerity--only herself. On the subject of her New York friends it was
+not much easier to enlarge; for so far her circle had grown less rapidly
+than she expected. She had fancied Ralph's wooing would at once admit
+her to all his social privileges; but he had shown a puzzling reluctance
+to introduce her to the Van Degen set, where he came and went with such
+familiarity; and the persons he seemed anxious to have her know--a few
+frumpy "clever women" of his sister's age, and one or two brisk
+old ladies in shabby houses with mahogany furniture and Stuart
+portraits--did not offer the opportunities she sought.
+
+"Oh, I don't know many people yet--I tell Ralph he's got to hurry up and
+take me round," she said to Mr. Dagonet, with a side-sparkle for Ralph,
+whose gaze, between the flowers and lights, she was aware of perpetually
+drawing.
+
+"My daughter will take you--you must know his mother's friends," the old
+gentleman rejoined while Mrs. Marvell smiled noncommittally.
+
+"But you have a great friend of your own--the lady who takes you into
+society," Mr. Dagonet pursued; and Undine had the sense that the
+irrepressible Mabel was again "pushing in."
+
+"Oh, yes--Mabel Lipscomb. We were school-mates," she said indifferently.
+
+"Lipscomb? Lipscomb? What is Mr. Lipscomb's occupation?"
+
+"He's a broker," said Undine, glad to be able to place her friend's
+husband in so handsome a light. The subtleties of a professional
+classification unknown to Apex had already taught her that in New York
+it is more distinguished to be a broker than a dentist; and she was
+surprised at Mr. Dagonet's lack of enthusiasm.
+
+"Ah? A broker?" He said it almost as Popple might have said "A
+DENTIST?" and Undine found herself astray in a new labyrinth of social
+distinctions. She felt a sudden contempt for Harry Lipscomb, who had
+already struck her as too loud, and irrelevantly comic. "I guess
+Mabel'll get a divorce pretty soon," she added, desiring, for personal
+reasons, to present Mrs. Lipscomb as favourably as possible.
+
+Mr. Dagonet's handsome eye-brows drew together. "A divorce? H'm--that's
+bad. Has he been misbehaving himself?"
+
+Undine looked innocently surprised. "Oh, I guess not. They like each
+other well enough. But he's been a disappointment to her. He isn't
+in the right set, and I think Mabel realizes she'll never really get
+anywhere till she gets rid of him."
+
+These words, uttered in the high fluting tone that she rose to when sure
+of her subject, fell on a pause which prolonged and deepened itself to
+receive them, while every face at the table, Ralph Marvell's excepted,
+reflected in varying degree Mr. Dagonet's pained astonishment.
+
+"But, my dear young lady--what would your friend's situation be if, as
+you put it, she 'got rid' of her husband on so trivial a pretext?"
+
+Undine, surprised at his dullness, tried to explain. "Oh that wouldn't
+be the reason GIVEN, of course. Any lawyer could fix it up for them.
+Don't they generally call it desertion?"
+
+There was another, more palpitating, silence, broken by a laugh from
+Ralph.
+
+"RALPH!" his mother breathed; then, turning to Undine, she said with
+a constrained smile: "I believe in certain parts of the country
+such--unfortunate arrangements--are beginning to be tolerated. But in
+New York, in spite of our growing indifference, a divorced woman is
+still--thank heaven!--at a decided disadvantage."
+
+Undine's eyes opened wide. Here at last was a topic that really
+interested her, and one that gave another amazing glimpse into the
+camera obscura of New York society. "Do you mean to say Mabel would be
+worse off, then? Couldn't she even go round as much as she does now?"
+
+Mrs. Marvell met this gravely. "It would depend, I should say, on the
+kind of people she wished to see."
+
+"Oh, the very best, of course! That would be her only object."
+
+Ralph interposed with another laugh. "You see, Undine, you'd better
+think twice before you divorce me!"
+
+"RALPH!" his mother again breathed; but the girl, flushed and sparkling,
+flung back: "Oh, it all depends on YOU! Out in Apex, if a girl marries a
+man who don't come up to what she expected, people consider it's to her
+credit to want to change. YOU'D better think twice of that!"
+
+"If I were only sure of knowing what you expect!" he caught up her joke,
+tossing it back at her across the fascinated silence of their listeners.
+
+"Why, EVERYTHING!" she announced--and Mr. Dagonet, turning, laid an
+intricately-veined old hand on, hers, and said, with a change of tone
+that relaxed the tension of the listeners: "My child, if you look like
+that you'll get it."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+It was doubtless owing to Mrs. Fairford's foresight that such
+possibilities of tension were curtailed, after dinner, by her carrying
+off Ralph and his betrothed to the theatre.
+
+Mr. Dagonet, it was understood, always went to bed after an hour's whist
+with his daughter; and the silent Mr. Fairford gave his evenings to
+bridge at his club. The party, therefore, consisted only of Undine and
+Ralph, with Mrs. Fairford and her attendant friend. Undine vaguely
+wondered why the grave and grey-haired Mr. Bowen formed so invariable a
+part of that lady's train; but she concluded that it was the York custom
+for married ladies to have gentlemen "'round" (as girls had in Apex),
+and that Mr. Bowen was the sole survivor of Laura Fairford's earlier
+triumphs.
+
+She had, however, little time to give to such conjectures, for the
+performance they were attending--the debut of a fashionable London
+actress--had attracted a large audience in which Undine immediately
+recognized a number of familiar faces. Her engagement had been announced
+only the day before, and she had the delicious sense of being "in
+all the papers," and of focussing countless glances of interest and
+curiosity as she swept through the theatre in Mrs. Fairford's wake.
+Their stalls were near the stage, and progress thither was slow enough
+to permit of prolonged enjoyment of this sensation. Before passing to
+her place she paused for Ralph to remove her cloak, and as he lifted it
+from her shoulders she heard a lady say behind her: "There she is--the
+one in white, with the lovely back--" and a man answer: "Gad! Where did
+he find anything as good as that?"
+
+Anonymous approval was sweet enough; but she was to taste a moment more
+exquisite when, in the proscenium box across the house, she saw Clare
+Van Degen seated beside the prim figure of Miss Harriet Ray. "They're
+here to see me with him--they hate it, but they couldn't keep away!"
+She turned and lifted a smile of possessorship to Ralph. Mrs. Fairford
+seemed also struck by the presence Of the two ladies, and Undine heard
+her whisper to Mr. Bowen: "Do you see Clare over there--and Harriet with
+her? Harriet WOULD COME--I call it Spartan! And so like Clare to ask
+her!"
+
+Her companion laughed. "It's one of the deepest instincts in human
+nature. The murdered are as much given as the murderer to haunting the
+scene of the crime."
+
+Doubtless guessing Ralph's desire to have Undine to himself, Mrs.
+Fairford had sent the girl in first; and Undine, as she seated herself,
+was aware that the occupant of the next stall half turned to her, as
+with a vague gesture of recognition. But just then the curtain rose, and
+she became absorbed in the development of the drama, especially as it
+tended to display the remarkable toilets which succeeded each other on
+the person of its leading lady. Undine, seated at Ralph Marvell's side,
+and feeling the thrill of his proximity as a subtler element in
+the general interest she was exciting, was at last repaid for the
+disappointment of her evening at the opera. It was characteristic of her
+that she remembered her failures as keenly as her triumphs, and that the
+passionate desire to obliterate, to "get even" with them, was always
+among the latent incentives of her conduct. Now at last she was having
+what she wanted--she was in conscious possession of the "real thing";
+and through her other, diffused, sensations Ralph's adoration gave her
+such a last refinement of pleasure as might have come to some warrior
+Queen borne in triumph by captive princes, and reading in the eyes of
+one the passion he dared not speak. When the curtain fell this vague
+enjoyment was heightened by various acts of recognition. All the people
+she wanted to "go with," as they said in Apex, seemed to be about her
+in the stalls and boxes; and her eyes continued to revert with special
+satisfaction to the incongruous group formed by Mrs. Peter Van Degen and
+Miss Ray. The sight made it irresistible to whisper to Ralph: "You ought
+to go round and talk to your cousin. Have you told her we're engaged?"
+
+"Clare? of course. She's going to call on you tomorrow."
+
+"Oh, she needn't put herself out--she's never been yet," said Undine
+loftily.
+
+He made no rejoinder, but presently asked: "Who's that you're waving
+to?"
+
+"Mr. Popple. He's coming round to see us. You know he wants to paint
+me." Undine fluttered and beamed as the brilliant Popple made his way
+across the stalls to the seat which her neighbour had momentarily left.
+
+"First-rate chap next to you--whoever he is--to give me this chance,"
+the artist declared. "Ha, Ralph, my boy, how did you pull it off? That's
+what we're all of us wondering." He leaned over to give Marvell's hand
+the ironic grasp of celibacy. "Well, you've left us lamenting: he has,
+you know. Miss Spragg. But I've got one pull over the others--I can
+paint you! He can't forbid that, can he? Not before marriage, anyhow!"
+
+Undine divided her shining glances between the two. "I guess he isn't
+going to treat me any different afterward," she proclaimed with joyous
+defiance.
+
+"Ah, well, there's no telling, you know. Hadn't we better begin at once?
+Seriously, I want awfully to get you into the spring show."
+
+"Oh, really? That would be too lovely!"
+
+"YOU would be, certainly--the way I mean to do you. But I see Ralph
+getting glum. Cheer up, my dear fellow; I daresay you'll be invited to
+some of the sittings--that's for Miss Spragg to say.--Ah, here comes
+your neighbour back, confound him--You'll let me know when we can
+begin?"
+
+As Popple moved away Undine turned eagerly to Marvell. "Do you suppose
+there's time? I'd love to have him to do me!"
+
+Ralph smiled. "My poor child--he WOULD 'do' you, with a vengeance.
+Infernal cheek, his asking you to sit--"
+
+She stared. "But why? He's painted your cousin, and all the smart
+women."
+
+"Oh, if a 'smart' portrait's all you want!"
+
+"I want what the others want," she answered, frowning and pouting a
+little. She was already beginning to resent in Ralph the slightest sign
+of resistance to her pleasure; and her resentment took the form--a
+familiar one in Apex courtships--of turning on him, in the next
+entr'acte, a deliberately averted shoulder. The result of this was to
+bring her, for the first time, in more direct relation to her other
+neighbour. As she turned he turned too, showing her, above a shining
+shirt-front fastened with a large imitation pearl, a ruddy plump snub
+face without an angle in it, which yet looked sharper than a razor.
+Undine's eyes met his with a startled look, and for a long moment they
+remained suspended on each other's stare.
+
+Undine at length shrank back with an unrecognizing face; but her
+movement made her opera-glass slip to the floor, and her neighbour bent
+down and picked it up.
+
+"Well--don't you know me yet?" he said with a slight smile, as he
+restored the glass to her.
+
+She had grown white to the lips, and when she tried to speak the effort
+produced only a faint click in her throat. She felt that the change in
+her appearance must be visible, and the dread of letting Marvell see it
+made her continue to turn her ravaged face to her other neighbour.
+The round black eyes set prominently in the latter's round glossy
+countenance had expressed at first only an impersonal and slightly
+ironic interest; but a look of surprise grew in them as Undine's silence
+continued.
+
+"What's the matter? Don't you want me to speak to you?"
+
+She became aware that Marvell, as if unconscious of her slight show of
+displeasure, had left his seat, and was making his way toward the aisle;
+and this assertion of independence, which a moment before she would so
+deeply have resented, now gave her a feeling of intense relief.
+
+"No--don't speak to me, please. I'll tell you another time--I'll
+write." Her neighbour continued to gaze at her, forming his lips into a
+noiseless whistle under his small dark moustache.
+
+"Well, I--That's about the stiffest," he murmured; and as she made no
+answer he added: "Afraid I'll ask to be introduced to your friend?"
+
+She made a faint movement of entreaty. "I can't explain. I promise to
+see you; but I ASK you not to talk to me now."
+
+He unfolded his programme, and went on speaking in a low tone while he
+affected to study it. "Anything to oblige, of course. That's always been
+my motto. But is it a bargain--fair and square? You'll see me?"
+
+She receded farther from him. "I promise. I--I WANT to," she faltered.
+
+"All right, then. Call me up in the morning at the Driscoll Building.
+Seven-o-nine--got it?"
+
+She nodded, and he added in a still lower tone: "I suppose I can
+congratulate you, anyhow?" and then, without waiting for her reply,
+turned to study Mrs. Van Degen's box through his opera-glass. Clare, as
+if aware of the scrutiny fixed on her from below leaned back and threw a
+question over her shoulder to Ralph Marvell, who had just seated himself
+behind her.
+
+"Who's the funny man with the red face talking to Miss Spragg?"
+
+Ralph bent forward. "The man next to her? Never saw him before. But I
+think you're mistaken: she's not speaking to him."
+
+"She WAS--Wasn't she, Harriet?"
+
+Miss Ray pinched her lips together without speaking, and Mrs. Van Degen
+paused for the fraction of a second. "Perhaps he's an Apex friend," she
+then suggested.
+
+"Very likely. Only I think she'd have introduced him if he had been."
+
+His cousin faintly shrugged. "Shall you encourage that?"
+
+Peter Van Degen, who had strayed into his wife's box for a moment,
+caught the colloquy, and lifted his opera-glass.
+
+"The fellow next to Miss Spragg? (By George, Ralph, she's ripping
+to-night!) Wait a minute--I know his face. Saw him in old Harmon
+Driscoll's office the day of the Eubaw Mine meeting. This chap's his
+secretary, or something. Driscoll called him in to give some facts to
+the directors, and he seemed a mighty wide-awake customer."
+
+Clare Van Degen turned gaily to her cousin. "If he has anything to
+do with the Driscolls you'd better cultivate him! That's the kind of
+acquaintance the Dagonets have always needed. I married to set them an
+example!"
+
+Ralph rose with a laugh. "You're right. I'll hurry back and make
+his acquaintance." He held out his hand to his cousin, avoiding her
+disappointed eyes.
+
+Undine, on entering her bedroom late that evening, was startled by the
+presence of a muffled figure which revealed itself, through the dimness,
+as the ungirded midnight outline of Mrs. Spragg.
+
+"MOTHER? What on earth--?" the girl exclaimed, as Mrs. Spragg pressed
+the electric button and flooded the room with light. The idea of a
+mother's sitting up for her daughter was so foreign to Apex customs
+that it roused only mistrust and irritation in the object of the
+demonstration.
+
+Mrs. Spragg came forward deprecatingly to lift the cloak from her
+daughter's shoulders.
+
+"I just HAD to, Undie--I told father I HAD to. I wanted to hear all
+about it."
+
+Undine shrugged away from her. "Mercy! At this hour? You'll be as white
+as a sheet to-morrow, sitting up all night like this."
+
+She moved toward the toilet-table, and began to demolish with feverish
+hands the structure which Mrs. Heeny, a few hours earlier, had so
+lovingly raised. But the rose caught in a mesh of hair, and Mrs. Spragg,
+venturing timidly to release it, had a full view of her daughter's face
+in the glass.
+
+"Why, Undie, YOU'RE as white as a sheet now! You look fairly sick.
+What's the matter, daughter?"
+
+The girl broke away from her.
+
+"Oh, can't you leave me alone, mother? There--do I look white NOW?" she
+cried, the blood flaming into her pale cheeks; and as Mrs. Spragg
+shrank back, she added more mildly, in the tone of a parent rebuking a
+persistent child: "It's enough to MAKE anybody sick to be stared at that
+way!"
+
+Mrs. Spragg overflowed with compunction. "I'm so sorry, Undie. I guess
+it was just seeing you in this glare of light."
+
+"Yes--the light's awful; do turn some off," ordered Undine, for whom,
+ordinarily, no radiance was too strong; and Mrs. Spragg, grateful to
+have commands laid upon her, hastened to obey.
+
+Undine, after this, submitted in brooding silence to having her dress
+unlaced, and her slippers and dressing-gown brought to her. Mrs. Spragg
+visibly yearned to say more, but she restrained the impulse lest it
+should provoke her dismissal.
+
+"Won't you take just a sup of milk before you go to bed?" she suggested
+at length, as Undine sank into an armchair.
+
+"I've got some for you right here in the parlour."
+
+Without looking up the girl answered: "No. I don't want anything. Do go
+to bed."
+
+Her mother seemed to be struggling between the life-long instinct
+of obedience and a swift unformulated fear. "I'm going, Undie." She
+wavered. "Didn't they receive you right, daughter?" she asked with
+sudden resolution.
+
+"What nonsense! How should they receive me? Everybody was lovely to me."
+Undine rose to her feet and went on with her undressing, tossing her
+clothes on the floor and shaking her hair over her bare shoulders.
+
+Mrs. Spragg stooped to gather up the scattered garments as they fell,
+folding them with a wistful caressing touch, and laying them on the
+lounge, without daring to raise her eyes to her daughter. It was not
+till she heard Undine throw herself on the bed that she went toward her
+and drew the coverlet up with deprecating hands.
+
+"Oh, do put the light out--I'm dead tired," the girl grumbled, pressing
+her face into the pillow.
+
+Mrs. Spragg turned away obediently; then, gathering all her scattered
+impulses into a passionate act of courage, she moved back to the
+bedside.
+
+"Undie--you didn't see anybody--I mean at the theatre? ANYBODY YOU
+DIDN'T WANT TO SEE?"
+
+Undine, at the question, raised her head and started right against
+the tossed pillows, her white exasperated face close to her mother's
+twitching features. The two women examined each other a moment, fear
+and anger in their crossed glances; then Undine answered: "No, nobody.
+Good-night."
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Undine, late the next day, waited alone under the leafless trellising of
+a wistaria arbour on the west side of the Central Park. She had put on
+her plainest dress, and wound a closely, patterned veil over her least
+vivid hat; but even thus toned down to the situation she was conscious
+of blazing out from it inconveniently.
+
+The habit of meeting young men in sequestered spots was not unknown to
+her: the novelty was in feeling any embarrassment about it. Even now
+she--was disturbed not so much by the unlikely chance of an accidental
+encounter with Ralph Marvell as by the remembrance of similar meetings,
+far from accidental, with the romantic Aaronson. Could it be that the
+hand now adorned with Ralph's engagement ring had once, in this very
+spot, surrendered itself to the riding-master's pressure? At the thought
+a wave of physical disgust passed over her, blotting out another memory
+as distasteful but more remote.
+
+It was revived by the appearance of a ruddy middle-sized young man, his
+stoutish figure tightly buttoned into a square-shouldered over-coat, who
+presently approached along the path that led to the arbour. Silhouetted
+against the slope of the asphalt, the newcomer revealed an outline thick
+yet compact, with a round head set on a neck in which, at the first
+chance, prosperity would be likely to develop a red crease. His face,
+with its rounded surfaces, and the sanguine innocence of a complexion
+belied by prematurely astute black eyes, had a look of jovial cunning
+which Undine had formerly thought "smart" but which now struck her as
+merely vulgar. She felt that in the Marvell set Elmer Moffatt would have
+been stamped as "not a gentleman." Nevertheless something in his look
+seemed to promise the capacity to develop into any character he might
+care to assume; though it did not seem probable that, for the present,
+that of a gentleman would be among them. He had always had a brisk
+swaggering step, and the faintly impudent tilt of the head that she had
+once thought "dashing"; but whereas this look had formerly denoted
+a somewhat desperate defiance of the world and its judgments it now
+suggested an almost assured relation to these powers; and Undine's heart
+sank at the thought of what the change implied.
+
+As he drew nearer, the young man's air of assurance was replaced by an
+expression of mildly humorous surprise.
+
+"Well--this is white of you. Undine!" he said, taking her lifeless
+fingers into his dapperly gloved hand.
+
+Through her veil she formed the words: "I said I'd come."
+
+He laughed. "That's so. And you see I believed you. Though I might not
+have--"
+
+"I don't see the use of beginning like this," she interrupted nervously.
+
+"That's so too. Suppose we walk along a little ways? It's rather chilly
+standing round."
+
+He turned down the path that descended toward the Ramble and the girl
+moved on beside him with her long flowing steps.
+
+When they had reached the comparative shelter of the interlacing trees
+Moffatt paused again to say: "If we're going to talk I'd like to see
+you. Undine;" and after a first moment of reluctance she submissively
+threw back her veil.
+
+He let his eyes rest on her in silence; then he said judicially: "You've
+filled out some; but you're paler." After another appreciative scrutiny
+he added: "There's mighty few women as well worth looking at, and I'm
+obliged to you for letting me have the chance again."
+
+Undine's brows drew together, but she softened her frown to a quivering
+smile.
+
+"I'm glad to see you too, Elmer--I am, REALLY!"
+
+He returned her smile while his glance continued to study her
+humorously. "You didn't betray the fact last night. Miss Spragg."
+
+"I was so taken aback. I thought you were out in Alaska somewhere."
+
+The young man shaped his lips into the mute whistle by which he
+habitually vented his surprise. "You DID? Didn't Abner E. Spragg tell
+you he'd seen me down town?"
+
+Undine gave him a startled glance. "Father? Why, have you seen him? He
+never said a word about it!"
+
+Her companion's whistle became audible. "He's running yet!" he said
+gaily. "I wish I could scare some people as easy as I can your father."
+
+The girl hesitated. "I never felt toward you the way father did," she
+hazarded at length; and he gave her another long look in return.
+
+"Well, if they'd left you alone I don't believe you'd ever have acted
+mean to me," was the conclusion he drew from it.
+
+"I didn't mean to, Elmer ... I give you my word--but I was so young ...
+I didn't know anything...."
+
+His eyes had a twinkle of reminiscent pleasantry. "No--I don't suppose
+it WOULD teach a girl much to be engaged two years to a stiff like
+Millard Binch; and that was about all that had happened to you before I
+came along."
+
+Undine flushed to the forehead. "Oh, Elmer--I was only a child when I
+was engaged to Millard--"
+
+"That's a fact. And you went on being one a good while afterward. The
+Apex Eagle always head-lined you 'The child-bride'--"
+
+"I can't see what's the use--now--."
+
+"That ruled out of court too? See here. Undine--what CAN we talk about?
+I understood that was what we were here for."
+
+"Of course." She made an effort at recovery. "I only meant to
+say--what's the use of raking up things that are over?"
+
+"Rake up? That's the idea, is it? Was that why you tried to cut me last
+night?"
+
+"I--oh, Elmer! I didn't mean to; only, you see, I'm engaged."
+
+"Oh, I saw that fast enough. I'd have seen it even if I didn't read the
+papers." He gave a short laugh. "He was feeling pretty good, sitting
+there alongside of you, wasn't he? I don't wonder he was. I remember.
+But I don't see that that was a reason for cold-shouldering me. I'm
+a respectable member of society now--I'm one of Harmon B. Driscoll's
+private secretaries." He brought out the fact with mock solemnity.
+
+But to Undine, though undoubtedly impressive, the statement did not
+immediately present itself as a subject for pleasantry.
+
+"Elmer Moffatt--you ARE?"
+
+He laughed again. "Guess you'd have remembered me last night if you'd
+known it."
+
+She was following her own train of thought with a look of pale
+intensity. "You're LIVING in New York, then--you're going to live here
+right along?"
+
+"Well, it looks that way; as long as I can hang on to this job. Great
+men always gravitate to the metropolis. And I gravitated here just as
+Uncle Harmon B. was looking round for somebody who could give him an
+inside tip on the Eubaw mine deal--you know the Driscolls are
+pretty deep in Eubaw. I happened to go out there after our little
+unpleasantness at Apex, and it was just the time the deal went through.
+So in one way your folks did me a good turn when they made Apex too hot
+for me: funny to think of, ain't it?"
+
+Undine, recovering herself, held out her hand impulsively.
+
+"I'm real glad of it--I mean I'm real glad you've had such a stroke of
+luck!"
+
+"Much obliged," he returned. "By the way, you might mention the fact to
+Abner E. Spragg next time you run across him."
+
+"Father'll be real glad too, Elmer." She hesitated, and then went on:
+"You must see now that it was natural father and mother should have felt
+the way they did--"
+
+"Oh, the only thing that struck me as unnatural was their making you
+feel so too. But I'm free to admit I wasn't a promising case in those
+days." His glance played over her for a moment. "Say, Undine--it was
+good while it lasted, though, wasn't it?"
+
+She shrank back with a burning face and eyes of misery.
+
+"Why, what's the matter? That ruled out too? Oh, all right. Look at
+here, Undine, suppose you let me know what you ARE here to talk about,
+anyhow."
+
+She cast a helpless glance down the windings of the wooded glen in which
+they had halted.
+
+"Just to ask you--to beg you--not to say anything of this kind
+again--EVER--"
+
+"Anything about you and me?"
+
+She nodded mutely.
+
+"Why, what's wrong? Anybody been saying anything against me?"
+
+"Oh, no. It's not that!"
+
+"What on earth is it, then--except that you're ashamed of me, one way
+or another?" She made no answer, and he stood digging the tip of his
+walking-stick into a fissure of the asphalt. At length he went on in a
+tone that showed a first faint trace of irritation: "I don't want to
+break into your gilt-edged crowd, if it's that you're scared of."
+
+His tone seemed to increase her distress. "No, no--you don't understand.
+All I want is that nothing shall be known."
+
+"Yes; but WHY? It was all straight enough, if you come to that."
+
+"It doesn't matter ... whether it was straight ... or ... not ..." He
+interpolated a whistle which made her add: "What I mean is that out here
+in the East they don't even like it if a girl's been ENGAGED before."
+
+This last strain on his credulity wrung a laugh from Moffatt. "Gee!
+How'd they expect her fair young life to pass? Playing 'Holy City' on
+the melodeon, and knitting tidies for church fairs?"
+
+"Girls are looked after here. It's all different. Their mothers go round
+with them."
+
+This increased her companion's hilarity and he glanced about him with a
+pretense of compunction. "Excuse ME! I ought to have remembered. Where's
+your chaperon, Miss Spragg?" He crooked his arm with mock ceremony.
+"Allow me to escort you to the bew-fay. You see I'm onto the New York
+style myself."
+
+A sigh of discouragement escaped her. "Elmer--if you really believe I
+never wanted to act mean to you, don't you act mean to me now!"
+
+"Act mean?" He grew serious again and moved nearer to her. "What is it
+you want, Undine? Why can't you say it right out?"
+
+"What I told you. I don't want Ralph Marvell--or any of them--to know
+anything. If any of his folks found out, they'd never let him marry
+me--never! And he wouldn't want to: he'd be so horrified. And it would
+KILL me, Elmer--it would just kill me!"
+
+She pressed close to him, forgetful of her new reserves and repugnances,
+and impelled by the passionate absorbing desire to wring from him some
+definite pledge of safety.
+
+"Oh, Elmer, if you ever liked me, help me now, and I'll help you if I
+get the chance!"
+
+He had recovered his coolness as hers forsook her, and stood his ground
+steadily, though her entreating hands, her glowing face, were near
+enough to have shaken less sturdy nerves.
+
+"That so, Puss? You just ask me to pass the sponge over Elmer Moffatt of
+Apex City? Cut the gentleman when we meet? That the size of it?"
+
+"Oh, Elmer, it's my first chance--I can't lose it!" she broke out,
+sobbing.
+
+"Nonsense, child! Of course you shan't. Here, look up. Undine--why, I
+never saw you cry before. Don't you be afraid of me--_I_ ain't going to
+interrupt the wedding march." He began to whistle a bar of Lohengrin. "I
+only just want one little promise in return."
+
+She threw a startled look at him and he added reassuringly: "Oh, don't
+mistake me. I don't want to butt into your set--not for social purposes,
+anyhow; but if ever it should come handy to know any of 'em in a
+business way, would you fix it up for me--AFTER YOU'RE MARRIED?'"
+
+Their eyes met, and she remained silent for a tremulous moment or two;
+then she held out her hand. "Afterward--yes. I promise. And YOU promise,
+Elmer?"
+
+"Oh, to have and to hold!" he sang out, swinging about to follow her as
+she hurriedly began to retrace her steps.
+
+The March twilight had fallen, and the Stentorian facade was all aglow,
+when Undine regained its monumental threshold. She slipped through the
+marble vestibule and soared skyward in the mirror-lined lift, hardly
+conscious of the direction she was taking. What she wanted was solitude,
+and the time to put some order into her thoughts; and she hoped to steal
+into her room without meeting her mother. Through her thick veil the
+clusters of lights in the Spragg drawing-room dilated and flowed
+together in a yellow blur, from which, as she entered, a figure detached
+itself; and with a start of annoyance she saw Ralph Marvell rise from
+the perusal of the "fiction number" of a magazine which had replaced
+"The Hound of the Baskervilles" on the onyx table.
+
+"Yes; you told me not to come--and here I am." He lifted her hand to his
+lips as his eyes tried to find hers through the veil.
+
+She drew back with a nervous gesture. "I told you I'd be awfully late."
+
+"I know--trying on! And you're horribly tired, and wishing with all your
+might I wasn't here."
+
+"I'm not so sure I'm not!" she rejoined, trying to hide her vexation in
+a smile.
+
+"What a tragic little voice! You really are done up. I couldn't help
+dropping in for a minute; but of course if you say so I'll be off." She
+was removing her long gloves and he took her hands and drew her close.
+"Only take off your veil, and let me see you."
+
+A quiver of resistance ran through her: he felt it and dropped her
+hands.
+
+"Please don't tease. I never could bear it," she stammered, drawing
+away.
+
+"Till to-morrow, then; that is, if the dress-makers permit."
+
+She forced a laugh. "If I showed myself now you might not come back
+to-morrow. I look perfectly hideous--it was so hot and they kept me so
+long."
+
+"All to make yourself more beautiful for a man who's blind with your
+beauty already?"
+
+The words made her smile, and moving nearer she bent her head and stood
+still while he undid her veil. As he put it back their lips met, and his
+look of passionate tenderness was incense to her.
+
+But the next moment his expression passed from worship to concern.
+"Dear! Why, what's the matter? You've been crying!"
+
+She put both hands to her hat in the instinctive effort to hide her
+face. His persistence was as irritating as her mother's.
+
+"I told you it was frightfully hot--and all my things were horrid; and
+it made me so cross and nervous!" She turned to the looking-glass with a
+feint of smoothing her hair.
+
+Marvell laid his hand on her arm, "I can't bear to see you so done up.
+Why can't we be married to-morrow, and escape all these ridiculous
+preparations? I shall hate your fine clothes if they're going to make
+you so miserable."
+
+She dropped her hands, and swept about on him, her face lit up by a new
+idea. He was extraordinarily handsome and appealing, and her heart began
+to beat faster.
+
+"I hate it all too! I wish we COULD be married right away!"
+
+Marvell caught her to him joyously. "Dearest--dearest! Don't, if you
+don't mean it! The thought's too glorious!"
+
+Undine lingered in his arms, not with any intent of tenderness, but as
+if too deeply lost in a new train of thought to be conscious of his
+hold.
+
+"I suppose most of the things COULD be got ready sooner--if I said they
+MUST," she brooded, with a fixed gaze that travelled past him. "And the
+rest--why shouldn't the rest be sent over to Europe after us? I want to
+go straight off with you, away from everything--ever so far away,
+where there'll be nobody but you and me alone!" She had a flash of
+illumination which made her turn her lips to his.
+
+"Oh, my darling--my darling!" Marvell whispered.
+
+
+
+X
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were both given to such long periods of ruminating
+apathy that the student of inheritance might have wondered whence Undine
+derived her overflowing activity. The answer would have been obtained
+by observing her father's business life. From the moment he set foot
+in Wall Street Mr. Spragg became another man. Physically the change
+revealed itself only by the subtlest signs. As he steered his way to his
+office through the jostling crowd of William Street his relaxed muscles
+did not grow more taut or his lounging gait less desultory. His
+shoulders were hollowed by the usual droop, and his rusty black
+waistcoat showed the same creased concavity at the waist, the same
+flabby prominence below. It was only in his face that the difference was
+perceptible, though even here it rather lurked behind the features than
+openly modified them: showing itself now and then in the cautious glint
+of half-closed eyes, the forward thrust of black brows, or a tightening
+of the lax lines of the mouth--as the gleam of a night-watchman's light
+might flash across the darkness of a shuttered house-front. The shutters
+were more tightly barred than usual, when, on a morning some two
+weeks later than the date of the incidents last recorded, Mr. Spragg
+approached the steel and concrete tower in which his office occupied a
+lofty pigeon-hole. Events had moved rapidly and somewhat surprisingly in
+the interval, and Mr. Spragg had already accustomed himself to the fact
+that his daughter was to be married within the week, instead of awaiting
+the traditional post-Lenten date. Conventionally the change meant little
+to him; but on the practical side it presented unforeseen difficulties.
+Mr. Spragg had learned within the last weeks that a New York marriage
+involved material obligations unknown to Apex. Marvell, indeed, had
+been loftily careless of such questions; but his grandfather, on the
+announcement of the engagement, had called on Mr. Spragg and put before
+him, with polished precision, the young man's financial situation.
+
+Mr. Spragg, at the moment, had been inclined to deal with his visitor in
+a spirit of indulgent irony. As he leaned back in his revolving chair,
+with feet adroitly balanced against a tilted scrap basket, his air of
+relaxed power made Mr. Dagonet's venerable elegance seem as harmless as
+that of an ivory jack-straw--and his first replies to his visitor were
+made with the mildness of a kindly giant.
+
+"Ralph don't make a living out of the law, you say? No, it didn't strike
+me he'd be likely to, from the talks I've had with him. Fact is, the
+law's a business that wants--" Mr. Spragg broke off, checked by a
+protest from Mr. Dagonet. "Oh, a PROFESSION, you call it? It ain't a
+business?" His smile grew more indulgent as this novel distinction
+dawned on him. "Why, I guess that's the whole trouble with Ralph. Nobody
+expects to make money in a PROFESSION; and if you've taught him to
+regard the law that way, he'd better go right into cooking-stoves and
+done with it."
+
+Mr. Dagonet, within a narrower range, had his own play of humour; and it
+met Mr. Spragg's with a leap. "It's because I knew he would manage to
+make cooking-stoves as unremunerative as a profession that I saved him
+from so glaring a failure by putting him into the law."
+
+The retort drew a grunt of amusement from Mr. Spragg; and the eyes of
+the two men met in unexpected understanding.
+
+"That so? What can he do, then?" the future father-in-law enquired.
+
+"He can write poetry--at least he tells me he can." Mr. Dagonet
+hesitated, as if aware of the inadequacy of the alternative, and then
+added: "And he can count on three thousand a year from me."
+
+Mr. Spragg tilted himself farther back without disturbing his
+subtly-calculated relation to the scrap basket.
+
+"Does it cost anything like that to print his poetry?"
+
+Mr. Dagonet smiled again: he was clearly enjoying his visit. "Dear,
+no--he doesn't go in for 'luxe' editions. And now and then he gets ten
+dollars from a magazine."
+
+Mr. Spragg mused. "Wasn't he ever TAUGHT to work?"
+
+"No; I really couldn't have afforded that."
+
+"I see. Then they've got to live on two hundred and fifty dollars a
+month."
+
+Mr. Dagonet remained pleasantly unmoved. "Does it cost anything like
+that to buy your daughter's dresses?"
+
+A subterranean chuckle agitated the lower folds of Mr. Spragg's
+waistcoat.
+
+"I might put him in the way of something--I guess he's smart enough."
+
+Mr. Dagonet made a gesture of friendly warning. "It will pay us both in
+the end to keep him out of business," he said, rising as if to show that
+his mission was accomplished.
+
+The results of this friendly conference had been more serious than
+Mr. Spragg could have foreseen--and the victory remained with his
+antagonist. It had not entered into Mr. Spragg's calculations that he
+would have to give his daughter any fixed income on her marriage. He
+meant that she should have the "handsomest" wedding the New York press
+had ever celebrated, and her mother's fancy was already afloat on a sea
+of luxuries--a motor, a Fifth Avenue house, and a tiara that should
+out-blaze Mrs. Van Degen's; but these were movable benefits, to be
+conferred whenever Mr. Spragg happened to be "on the right side" of the
+market. It was a different matter to be called on, at such short notice,
+to bridge the gap between young Marvell's allowance and Undine's
+requirements; and her father's immediate conclusion was that the
+engagement had better be broken off. Such scissions were almost painless
+in Apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl's
+pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to do better.
+
+"You'd better wait awhile and look round again," was the way he had put
+it to her at the opening of the talk of which, even now, he could not
+recall the close without a tremor.
+
+Undine, when she took his meaning, had been terrible. Everything had
+gone down before her, as towns and villages went down before one of the
+tornadoes of her native state. Wait awhile? Look round? Did he suppose
+she was marrying for MONEY? Didn't he see it was all a question, now
+and here, of the kind of people she wanted to "go with"? Did he want
+to throw her straight back into the Lipscomb set, to have her marry a
+dentist and live in a West Side flat? Why hadn't they stayed in Apex, if
+that was all he thought she was fit for? She might as well have married
+Millard Binch, instead of handing him over to Indiana Frusk! Couldn't
+her father understand that nice girls, in New York, didn't regard
+getting married like going on a buggy-ride? It was enough to ruin a
+girl's chances if she broke her engagement to a man in Ralph Marvell's
+set. All kinds of spiteful things would be said about her, and she would
+never be able to go with the right people again. They had better go back
+to Apex right off--it was they and not SHE who had wanted to leave Apex,
+anyhow--she could call her mother to witness it. She had always, when it
+came to that, done what her father and mother wanted, but she'd given
+up trying to make out what they were after, unless it was to make her
+miserable; and if that was it, hadn't they had enough of it by this
+time? She had, anyhow. But after this she meant to lead her own life;
+and they needn't ask her where she was going, or what she meant to do,
+because this time she'd die before she told them--and they'd made life
+so hateful to her that she only wished she was dead already.
+
+Mr. Spragg heard her out in silence, pulling at his beard with one
+sallow wrinkled hand, while the other dragged down the armhole of his
+waistcoat. Suddenly he looked up and said: "Ain't you in love with the
+fellow, Undie?"
+
+The girl glared back at him, her splendid brows beetling like an
+Amazon's. "Do you think I'd care a cent for all the rest of it if I
+wasn't?"
+
+"Well, if you are, you and he won't mind beginning in a small way."
+
+Her look poured contempt on his ignorance. "Do you s'pose I'd drag him
+down?" With a magnificent gesture she tore Marvell's ring from her
+finger. "I'll send this back this minute. I'll tell him I thought he
+was a rich man, and now I see I'm mistaken--" She burst into shattering
+sobs, rocking her beautiful body back and forward in all the abandonment
+of young grief; and her father stood over her, stroking her shoulder and
+saying helplessly: "I'll see what I can do, Undine--"
+
+All his life, and at ever-diminishing intervals, Mr. Spragg had been
+called on by his womenkind to "see what he could do"; and the seeing had
+almost always resulted as they wished. Undine did not have to send back
+her ring, and in her state of trance-like happiness she hardly asked by
+what means her path had been smoothed, but merely accepted her mother's
+assurance that "father had fixed everything all right."
+
+Mr. Spragg accepted the situation also. A son-in-law who expected to
+be pensioned like a Grand Army veteran was a phenomenon new to his
+experience; but if that was what Undine wanted she should have it. Only
+two days later, however, he was met by a new demand--the young people
+had decided to be married "right off," instead of waiting till June.
+This change of plan was made known to Mr. Spragg at a moment when he was
+peculiarly unprepared for the financial readjustment it necessitated. He
+had always declared himself able to cope with any crisis if Undine and
+her mother would "go steady"; but he now warned them of his inability to
+keep up with the new pace they had set. Undine, not deigning to return
+to the charge, had commissioned her mother to speak for her; and Mr.
+Spragg was surprised to meet in his wife a firmness as inflexible as his
+daughter's.
+
+"I can't do it, Loot--can't put my hand on the cash," he had protested;
+but Mrs. Spragg fought him inch by inch, her back to the wall--flinging
+out at last, as he pressed her closer: "Well, if you want to know, she's
+seen Elmer."
+
+The bolt reached its mark, and her husband turned an agitated face on
+her.
+
+"Elmer? What on earth--he didn't come HERE?"
+
+"No; but he sat next to her the other night at the theatre, and she's
+wild with us for not having warned her."
+
+Mr. Spragg's scowl drew his projecting brows together. "Warned her of
+what? What's Elmer to her? Why's she afraid of Elmer Moffatt?"
+
+"She's afraid of his talking."
+
+"Talking? What on earth can he say that'll hurt HER?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Mrs. Spragg wailed. "She's so nervous I can hardly
+get a word out of her."
+
+Mr. Spragg's whitening face showed the touch of a new fear. "Is she
+afraid he'll get round her again--make up to her? Is that what she
+means by 'talking'?" "I don't know, I don't know. I only know she is
+afraid--she's afraid as death of him."
+
+For a long interval they sat silently looking at each other while their
+heavy eyes exchanged conjectures: then Mr. Spragg rose from his chair,
+saying, as he took up his hat: "Don't you fret, Leota; I'll see what I
+can do."
+
+He had been "seeing" now for an arduous fortnight; and the strain on his
+vision had resulted in a state of tension such as he had not undergone
+since the epic days of the Pure Water Move at Apex. It was not his habit
+to impart his fears to Mrs. Spragg and Undine, and they continued the
+bridal preparations, secure in their invariable experience that, once
+"father" had been convinced of the impossibility of evading their
+demands, he might be trusted to satisfy them by means with which his
+womenkind need not concern themselves. Mr. Spragg, as he approached his
+office on the morning in question, felt reasonably sure of fulfilling
+these expectations; but he reflected that a few more such victories
+would mean disaster.
+
+He entered the vast marble vestibule of the Ararat Trust Building and
+walked toward the express elevator that was to carry him up to his
+office. At the door of the elevator a man turned to him, and he
+recognized Elmer Moffatt, who put out his hand with an easy gesture.
+
+Mr. Spragg did not ignore the gesture: he did not even withhold his
+hand. In his code the cut, as a conscious sign of disapproval, did not
+exist. In the south, if you had a grudge against a man you tried to
+shoot him; in the west, you tried to do him in a mean turn in business;
+but in neither region was the cut among the social weapons of offense.
+Mr. Spragg, therefore, seeing Moffatt in his path, extended a lifeless
+hand while he faced the young man scowlingly. Moffatt met the hand and
+the scowl with equal coolness.
+
+"Going up to your office? I was on my way there."
+
+The elevator door rolled back, and Mr. Spragg, entering it, found his
+companion at his side. They remained silent during the ascent to Mr.
+Spragg's threshold; but there the latter turned to enquire ironically of
+Moffatt: "Anything left to say?"
+
+Moffatt smiled. "Nothing LEFT--no; I'm carrying a whole new line of
+goods."
+
+Mr. Spragg pondered the reply; then he opened the door and suffered
+Moffatt to follow him in. Behind an inner glazed enclosure, with its one
+window dimmed by a sooty perspective barred with chimneys, he seated
+himself at a dusty littered desk, and groped instinctively for the
+support of the scrap basket. Moffatt, uninvited, dropped into the
+nearest chair, and Mr. Spragg said, after another silence: "I'm pretty
+busy this morning."
+
+"I know you are: that's why I'm here," Moffatt serenely answered. He
+leaned back, crossing his legs, and twisting his small stiff moustache
+with a plump hand adorned by a cameo.
+
+"Fact is," he went on, "this is a coals-of-fire call. You think I owe
+you a grudge, and I'm going to show you I'm not that kind. I'm going
+to put you onto a good thing--oh, not because I'm so fond of you; just
+because it happens to hit my sense of a joke."
+
+While Moffatt talked Mr. Spragg took up the pile of letters on his desk
+and sat shuffling them like a pack of cards. He dealt them deliberately
+to two imaginary players; then he pushed them aside and drew out his
+watch.
+
+"All right--I carry one too," said the young man easily. "But you'll
+find it's time gained to hear what I've got to say."
+
+Mr. Spragg considered the vista of chimneys without speaking, and
+Moffatt continued: "I don't suppose you care to hear the story of my
+life, so I won't refer you to the back numbers. You used to say out in
+Apex that I spent too much time loafing round the bar of the Mealey
+House; that was one of the things you had against me. Well, maybe I
+did--but it taught me to talk, and to listen to the other fellows too.
+Just at present I'm one of Harmon B. Driscoll's private secretaries, and
+some of that Mealey House loafing has come in more useful than any job I
+ever put my hand to. The old man happened to hear I knew something about
+the inside of the Eubaw deal, and took me on to have the information
+where he could get at it. I've given him good talk for his money;
+but I've done some listening too. Eubaw ain't the only commodity the
+Driscolls deal in."
+
+Mr. Spragg restored his watch to his pocket and shifted his drowsy gaze
+from the window to his visitor's face.
+
+"Yes," said Moffatt, as if in reply to the movement, "the Driscolls are
+getting busy out in Apex. Now they've got all the street railroads in
+their pocket they want the water-supply too--but you know that as well
+as I do. Fact is, they've got to have it; and there's where you and I
+come in."
+
+Mr. Spragg thrust his hands in his waistcoat arm-holes and turned his
+eyes back to the window.
+
+"I'm out of that long ago," he said indifferently.
+
+"Sure," Moffatt acquiesced; "but you know what went on when you were in
+it."
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Spragg, shifting one hand to the Masonic emblem on his
+watch-chain.
+
+"Well, Representative James J. Rolliver, who was in it with you, ain't
+out of it yet. He's the man the Driscolls are up against. What d'you
+know about him?"
+
+Mr. Spragg twirled the emblem thoughtfully. "Driscoll tell you to come
+here?"
+
+Moffatt laughed. "No, SIR--not by a good many miles."
+
+Mr. Spragg removed his feet from the scrap basket and straightened
+himself in his chair.
+
+"Well--I didn't either; good morning, Mr. Moffatt."
+
+The young man stared a moment, a humorous glint in his small black eyes;
+but he made no motion to leave his seat. "Undine's to be married next
+week, isn't she?" he asked in a conversational tone.
+
+Mr. Spragg's face blackened and he swung about in his revolving chair.
+
+"You go to--"
+
+Moffatt raised a deprecating hand. "Oh, you needn't warn me off. I
+don't want to be invited to the wedding. And I don't want to forbid the
+banns."
+
+There was a derisive sound in Mr. Spragg's throat.
+
+"But I DO want to get out of Driscoll's office," Moffatt imperturbably
+continued. "There's no future there for a fellow like me. I see things
+big. That's the reason Apex was too tight a fit for me. It's only
+the little fellows that succeed in little places. New York's my
+size--without a single alteration. I could prove it to you to-morrow if
+I could put my hand on fifty thousand dollars."
+
+Mr. Spragg did not repeat his gesture of dismissal: he was once more
+listening guardedly but intently. Moffatt saw it and continued.
+
+"And I could put my hand on double that sum--yes, sir, DOUBLE--if you'd
+just step round with me to old Driscoll's office before five P. M. See
+the connection, Mr. Spragg?"
+
+The older man remained silent while his visitor hummed a bar or two of
+"In the Gloaming"; then he said: "You want me to tell Driscoll what I
+know about James J. Rolliver?"
+
+"I want you to tell the truth--I want you to stand for political purity
+in your native state. A man of your prominence owes it to the community,
+sir," cried Moffatt. Mr. Spragg was still tormenting his Masonic emblem.
+
+"Rolliver and I always stood together," he said at last, with a tinge of
+reluctance.
+
+"Well, how much have you made out of it? Ain't he always been ahead of
+the game?"
+
+"I can't do it--I can't do it," said Mr. Spragg, bringing his clenched
+hand down on the desk, as if addressing an invisible throng of
+assailants.
+
+Moffatt rose without any evidence of disappointment in his ruddy
+countenance. "Well, so long," he said, moving toward the door. Near
+the threshold he paused to add carelessly: "Excuse my referring to a
+personal matter--but I understand Miss Spragg's wedding takes place next
+Monday."
+
+Mr. Spragg was silent.
+
+"How's that?" Moffatt continued unabashed. "I saw in the papers the date
+was set for the end of June."
+
+Mr. Spragg rose heavily from his seat. "I presume my daughter has her
+reasons," he said, moving toward the door in Moffatt's wake.
+
+"I guess she has--same as I have for wanting you to step round with me
+to old Driscoll's. If Undine's reasons are as good as mine--"
+
+"Stop right here, Elmer Moffatt!" the older man broke out with lifted
+hand. Moffatt made a burlesque feint of evading a blow; then his face
+grew serious, and he moved close to Mr. Spragg, whose arm had fallen to
+his side.
+
+"See here, I know Undine's reasons. I've had a talk with her--didn't
+she tell you? SHE don't beat about the bush the way you do. She told me
+straight out what was bothering her. She wants the Marvells to think
+she's right out of Kindergarten. 'No goods sent out on approval from
+this counter.' And I see her point--_I_ don't mean to publish my
+meemo'rs. Only a deal's a deal." He paused a moment, twisting his
+fingers about the heavy gold watch-chain that crossed his waistcoat.
+"Tell you what, Mr. Spragg, I don't bear malice--not against Undine,
+anyway--and if I could have afforded it I'd have been glad enough to
+oblige her and forget old times. But you didn't hesitate to kick me when
+I was down and it's taken me a day or two to get on my legs again after
+that kicking. I see my way now to get there and keep there; and there's
+a kinder poetic justice in your being the man to help me up. If I can
+get hold of fifty thousand dollars within a day or so I don't care who's
+got the start of me. I've got a dead sure thing in sight, and you're the
+only man that can get it for me. Now do you see where we're coming out?"
+
+Mr. Spragg, during this discourse, had remained motionless, his hands
+in his pockets, his jaws moving mechanically, as though he mumbled a
+tooth-pick under his beard. His sallow cheek had turned a shade paler,
+and his brows hung threateningly over his half-closed eyes. But there
+was no threat--there was scarcely more than a note of dull curiosity--in
+the voice with which he said: "You mean to talk?"
+
+Moffatt's rosy face grew as hard as a steel safe. "I mean YOU to
+talk--to old Driscoll." He paused, and then added: "It's a hundred
+thousand down, between us."
+
+Mr. Spragg once more consulted his watch. "I'll see you again," he said
+with an effort.
+
+Moffatt struck one fist against the other. "No, SIR--you won't! You'll
+only hear from me--through the Marvell family. Your news ain't worth a
+dollar to Driscoll if he don't get it to-day."
+
+He was checked by the sound of steps in the outer office, and Mr.
+Spragg's stenographer appeared in the doorway.
+
+"It's Mr. Marvell," she announced; and Ralph Marvell, glowing with haste
+and happiness, stood between the two men, holding out his hand to Mr.
+Spragg.
+
+"Am I awfully in the way, sir? Turn me out if I am--but first let me
+just say a word about this necklace I've ordered for Un--"
+
+He broke off, made aware by Mr. Spragg's glance of the presence of Elmer
+Moffatt, who, with unwonted discretion, had dropped back into the
+shadow of the door. Marvell turned on Moffatt a bright gaze full of the
+instinctive hospitality of youth; but Moffatt looked straight past him
+at Mr. Spragg. The latter, as if in response to an imperceptible signal,
+mechanically pronounced his visitor's name; and the two young men moved
+toward each other.
+
+"I beg your pardon most awfully--am I breaking up an important
+conference?" Ralph asked as he shook hands.
+
+"Why, no--I guess we're pretty nearly through. I'll step outside and woo
+the blonde while you're talking," Moffatt rejoined in the same key.
+
+"Thanks so much--I shan't take two seconds." Ralph broke off to
+scrutinize him. "But haven't we met before? It seems to me I've seen
+you--just lately--"
+
+Moffatt seemed about to answer, but his reply was checked by an abrupt
+movement on the part of Mr. Spragg. There was a perceptible pause,
+during which Moffatt's bright black glance rested questioningly on
+Ralph; then he looked again at the older man, and their eyes held each
+other for a silent moment.
+
+"Why, no--not as I'm aware of, Mr. Marvell," Moffatt said, addressing
+himself amicably to Ralph. "Better late than never, though--and I hope
+to have the pleasure soon again."
+
+He divided a nod between the two men, and passed into the outer office,
+where they heard him addressing the stenographer in a strain of
+exaggerated gallantry.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+The July sun enclosed in a ring of fire the ilex grove of a villa in the
+hills near Siena.
+
+Below, by the roadside, the long yellow house seemed to waver and
+palpitate in the glare; but steep by steep, behind it, the cool
+ilex-dusk mounted to the ledge where Ralph Marvell, stretched on his
+back in the grass, lay gazing up at a black reticulation of branches
+between which bits of sky gleamed with the hardness and brilliancy of
+blue enamel.
+
+Up there too the air was thick with heat; but compared with the white
+fire below it was a dim and tempered warmth, like that of the churches
+in which he and Undine sometimes took refuge at the height of the torrid
+days.
+
+Ralph loved the heavy Italian summer, as he had loved the light spring
+days leading up to it: the long line of dancing days that had drawn them
+on and on ever since they had left their ship at Naples four months
+earlier. Four months of beauty, changeful, inexhaustible, weaving itself
+about him in shapes of softness and strength; and beside him, hand in
+hand with him, embodying that spirit of shifting magic, the radiant
+creature through whose eyes he saw it. This was what their hastened
+marriage had blessed them with, giving them leisure, before summer came,
+to penetrate to remote folds of the southern mountains, to linger in the
+shade of Sicilian orange-groves, and finally, travelling by slow stages
+to the Adriatic, to reach the central hill-country where even in July
+they might hope for a breathable air.
+
+To Ralph the Sienese air was not only breathable but intoxicating. The
+sun, treading the earth like a vintager, drew from it heady fragrances,
+crushed out of it new colours. All the values of the temperate landscape
+were reversed: the noon high-lights were whiter but the shadows had
+unimagined colour. On the blackness of cork and ilex and cypress lay the
+green and purple lustres, the coppery iridescences, of old bronze; and
+night after night the skies were wine-blue and bubbling with stars.
+Ralph said to himself that no one who had not seen Italy thus prostrate
+beneath the sun knew what secret treasures she could yield.
+
+As he lay there, fragments of past states of emotion, fugitive
+felicities of thought and sensation, rose and floated on the surface
+of his thoughts. It was one of those moments when the accumulated
+impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing
+each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of
+such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general
+life that one felt one's self a mere wave on the wild stream of being,
+yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known
+within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in
+its fulness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words
+were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had
+but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they
+were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the
+blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the
+wand lie.
+
+He stared up at the pattern they made till his eyes ached with excess of
+light; then he changed his position and looked at his wife.
+
+Undine, near by, leaned against a gnarled tree with the slightly
+constrained air of a person unused to sylvan abandonments. Her beautiful
+back could not adapt itself to the irregularities of the tree-trunk,
+and she moved a little now and then in the effort to find an easier
+position. But her expression was serene, and Ralph, looking up at her
+through drowsy lids, thought her face had never been more exquisite.
+
+"You look as cool as a wave," he said, reaching out for the hand on her
+knee. She let him have it, and he drew it closer, scrutinizing it as if
+it had been a bit of precious porcelain or ivory. It was small and soft,
+a mere featherweight, a puff-ball of a hand--not quick and thrilling,
+not a speaking hand, but one to be fondled and dressed in rings, and to
+leave a rosy blur in the brain. The fingers were short and tapering,
+dimpled at the base, with nails as smooth as rose-leaves. Ralph lifted
+them one by one, like a child playing with piano-keys, but they were
+inelastic and did not spring back far--only far enough to show the
+dimples.
+
+He turned the hand over and traced the course of its blue veins from the
+wrist to the rounding of the palm below the fingers; then he put a kiss
+in the warm hollow between. The upper world had vanished: his universe
+had shrunk to the palm of a hand. But there was no sense of diminution.
+In the mystic depths whence his passion sprang, earthly dimensions were
+ignored and the curve of beauty was boundless enough to hold whatever
+the imagination could pour into it. Ralph had never felt more convinced
+of his power to write a great poem; but now it was Undine's hand which
+held the magic wand of expression.
+
+She stirred again uneasily, answering his last words with a faint accent
+of reproach.
+
+"I don't FEEL cool. You said there'd be a breeze up here.".
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You poor darling! Wasn't it ever as hot as this in Apex?"
+
+She withdrew her hand with a slight grimace.
+
+"Yes--but I didn't marry you to go back to Apex!"
+
+Ralph laughed again; then he lifted himself on his elbow and regained
+the hand. "I wonder what you DID marry me for?"
+
+"Mercy! It's too hot for conundrums." She spoke without impatience, but
+with a lassitude less joyous than his.
+
+He roused himself. "Do you really mind the heat so much? We'll go, if
+you do."
+
+She sat up eagerly. "Go to Switzerland, you mean?"
+
+"Well, I hadn't taken quite as long a leap. I only meant we might drive
+back to Siena."
+
+She relapsed listlessly against her tree-trunk. "Oh, Siena's hotter than
+this."
+
+"We could go and sit in the cathedral--it's always cool there at
+sunset."
+
+"We've sat in the cathedral at sunset every day for a week."
+
+"Well, what do you say to stopping at Lecceto on the way? I haven't
+shown you Lecceto yet; and the drive back by moonlight would be
+glorious."
+
+This woke her to a slight show of interest. "It might be nice--but where
+could we get anything to eat?"
+
+Ralph laughed again. "I don't believe we could. You're too practical."
+
+"Well, somebody's got to be. And the food in the hotel is too disgusting
+if we're not on time."
+
+"I admit that the best of it has usually been appropriated by the
+extremely good-looking cavalry-officer who's so keen to know you."
+
+Undine's face brightened. "You know he's not a Count; he's a Marquis.
+His name's Roviano; his palace in Rome is in the guide-books, and
+he speaks English beautifully. Celeste found out about him from the
+headwaiter," she said, with the security of one who treats of recognized
+values.
+
+Marvell, sitting upright, reached lazily across the grass for his hat.
+"Then there's all the more reason for rushing back to defend our share."
+He spoke in the bantering tone which had become the habitual expression
+of his tenderness; but his eyes softened as they absorbed in a last
+glance the glimmering submarine light of the ancient grove, through
+which Undine's figure wavered nereid-like above him.
+
+"You never looked your name more than you do now," he said, kneeling
+at her side and putting his arm about her. She smiled back a little
+vaguely, as if not seizing his allusion, and being content to let it
+drop into the store of unexplained references which had once stimulated
+her curiosity but now merely gave her leisure to think of other things.
+But her smile was no less lovely for its vagueness, and indeed, to
+Ralph, the loveliness was enhanced by the latent doubt. He remembered
+afterward that at that moment the cup of life seemed to brim over.
+
+"Come, dear--here or there--it's all divine!"
+
+In the carriage, however, she remained insensible to the soft spell of
+the evening, noticing only the heat and dust, and saying, as they passed
+under the wooded cliff of Lecceto, that they might as well have stopped
+there after all, since with such a headache as she felt coming on she
+didn't care if she dined or not. Ralph looked up yearningly at the long
+walls overhead; but Undine's mood was hardly favourable to communion
+with such scenes, and he made no attempt to stop the carriage. Instead
+he presently said: "If you're tired of Italy, we've got the world to
+choose from."
+
+She did not speak for a moment; then she said: "It's the heat I'm tired
+of. Don't people generally come here earlier?"
+
+"Yes. That's why I chose the summer: so that we could have it all to
+ourselves."
+
+She tried to put a note of reasonableness into her voice. "If you'd told
+me we were going everywhere at the wrong time, of course I could have
+arranged about my clothes."
+
+"You poor darling! Let us, by all means, go to the place where the
+clothes will be right: they're too beautiful to be left out of our
+scheme of life."
+
+Her lips hardened. "I know you don't care how I look. But you didn't
+give me time to order anything before we were married, and I've got
+nothing but my last winter's things to wear."
+
+Ralph smiled. Even his subjugated mind perceived the inconsistency
+of Undine's taxing him with having hastened their marriage; but her
+variations on the eternal feminine still enchanted him.
+
+"We'll go wherever you please--you make every place the one place," he
+said, as if he were humouring an irresistible child.
+
+"To Switzerland, then? Celeste says St. Moritz is too heavenly,"
+exclaimed Undine, who gathered her ideas of Europe chiefly from the
+conversation of her experienced attendant.
+
+"One can be cool short of the Engadine. Why not go south again--say to
+Capri?"
+
+"Capri? Is that the island we saw from Naples, where the artists go?"
+She drew her brows together. "It would be simply awful getting there in
+this heat."
+
+"Well, then, I know a little place in Switzerland where one can still
+get away from the crowd, and we can sit and look at a green water-fall
+while I lie in wait for adjectives."
+
+Mr. Spragg's astonishment on learning that his son-in-law contemplated
+maintaining a household on the earnings of his Muse was still matter for
+pleasantry between the pair; and one of the humours of their first weeks
+together had consisted in picturing themselves as a primeval couple
+setting forth across a virgin continent and subsisting on the adjectives
+which Ralph was to trap for his epic. On this occasion, however, his
+wife did not take up the joke, and he remained silent while their
+carriage climbed the long dusty hill to the Fontebranda gate. He had
+seen her face droop as he suggested the possibility of an escape from
+the crowds in Switzerland, and it came to him, with the sharpness of a
+knife-thrust, that a crowd was what she wanted--that she was sick to
+death of being alone with him.
+
+He sat motionless, staring ahead at the red-brown walls and towers
+on the steep above them. After all there was nothing sudden in his
+discovery. For weeks it had hung on the edge of consciousness, but
+he had turned from it with the heart's instinctive clinging to the
+unrealities by which it lives. Even now a hundred qualifying reasons
+rushed to his aid. They told him it was not of himself that Undine had
+wearied, but only of their present way of life. He had said a moment
+before, without conscious exaggeration, that her presence made any place
+the one place; yet how willingly would he have consented to share in
+such a life as she was leading before their marriage? And he had to
+acknowledge their months of desultory wandering from one remote Italian
+hill-top to another must have seemed as purposeless to her as balls and
+dinners would have been to him. An imagination like his, peopled with
+such varied images and associations, fed by so many currents from the
+long stream of human experience, could hardly picture the bareness of
+the small half-lit place in which his wife's spirit fluttered. Her mind
+was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in
+which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic
+as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant
+hands had been taught to adorn it. He was beginning to understand this,
+and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience.
+The task of opening new windows in her mind was inspiring enough to give
+him infinite patience; and he would not yet own to himself that her
+pliancy and variety were imitative rather than spontaneous.
+
+Meanwhile he had no desire to sacrifice her wishes to his, and it
+distressed him that he dared not confess his real reason for avoiding
+the Engadine. The truth was that their funds were shrinking faster than
+he had expected. Mr. Spragg, after bluntly opposing their hastened
+marriage on the ground that he was not prepared, at such short notice,
+to make the necessary provision for his daughter, had shortly afterward
+(probably, as Undine observed to Ralph, in consequence of a lucky "turn"
+in the Street) met their wishes with all possible liberality, bestowing
+on them a wedding in conformity with Mrs. Spragg's ideals and up to the
+highest standard of Mrs. Heeny's clippings, and pledging himself to
+provide Undine with an income adequate to so brilliant a beginning. It
+was understood that Ralph, on their return, should renounce the law for
+some more paying business; but this seemed the smallest of sacrifices to
+make for the privilege of calling Undine his wife; and besides, he still
+secretly hoped that, in the interval, his real vocation might declare
+itself in some work which would justify his adopting the life of
+letters.
+
+He had assumed that Undine's allowance, with the addition of his own
+small income, would be enough to satisfy their needs. His own were few,
+and had always been within his means; but his wife's daily requirements,
+combined with her intermittent outbreaks of extravagance, had thrown out
+all his calculations, and they were already seriously exceeding their
+income.
+
+If any one had prophesied before his marriage that he would find it
+difficult to tell this to Undine he would have smiled at the suggestion;
+and during their first days together it had seemed as though pecuniary
+questions were the last likely to be raised between them. But his
+marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a
+disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without
+it but merely a blind confidence that it will somehow be provided. If
+Undine, like the lilies of the field, took no care, it was not because
+her wants were as few but because she assumed that care would be taken
+for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral
+insouciance with Sheban elegance.
+
+She had met Ralph's first note of warning with the assurance that she
+"didn't mean to worry"; and her tone implied that it was his business to
+do so for her. He certainly wanted to guard her from this as from all
+other cares; he wanted also, and still more passionately after the topic
+had once or twice recurred between them, to guard himself from the risk
+of judging where he still adored. These restraints to frankness kept him
+silent during the remainder of the drive, and when, after dinner, Undine
+again complained of her headache, he let her go up to her room and
+wandered out into the dimly lit streets to renewed communion with his
+problems.
+
+They hung on him insistently as darkness fell, and Siena grew vocal with
+that shrill diversity of sounds that breaks, on summer nights, from
+every cleft of the masonry in old Italian towns. Then the moon rose,
+unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and Ralph,
+leaning against an old brick parapet, and watching each silver-blue
+remoteness disclose itself between the dark masses of the middle
+distance, felt his spirit enlarged and pacified. For the first time, as
+his senses thrilled to the deep touch of beauty, he asked himself if out
+of these floating and fugitive vibrations he might not build something
+concrete and stable, if even such dull common cares as now oppressed him
+might not become the motive power of creation. If he could only, on
+the spot, do something with all the accumulated spoils of the last
+months--something that should both put money into his pocket and harmony
+into the rich confusion of his spirit! "I'll write--I'll write: that
+must be what the whole thing means," he said to himself, with a vague
+clutch at some solution which should keep him a little longer hanging
+half-way down the steep of disenchantment.
+
+He would have stayed on, heedless of time, to trace the ramifications
+of his idea in the complex beauty of the scene, but for the longing to
+share his mood with Undine. For the last few months every thought and
+sensation had been instantly transmuted into such emotional impulses
+and, though the currents of communication between himself and Undine
+were neither deep nor numerous, each fresh rush of feeling seemed
+strong enough to clear a way to her heart. He hurried back, almost
+breathlessly, to the inn; but even as he knocked at her door the subtle
+emanation of other influences seemed to arrest and chill him.
+
+She had put out the lamp, and sat by the window in the moonlight, her
+head propped on a listless hand. As Marvell entered she turned; then,
+without speaking, she looked away again.
+
+He was used to this mute reception, and had learned that it had no
+personal motive, but was the result of an extremely simplified social
+code. Mr. and Mrs. Spragg seldom spoke to each other when they met, and
+words of greeting seemed almost unknown to their domestic vocabulary.
+Marvell, at first, had fancied that his own warmth would call forth a
+response from his wife, who had been so quick to learn the forms of
+worldly intercourse; but he soon saw that she regarded intimacy as a
+pretext for escaping from such forms into a total absence of expression.
+
+To-night, however, he felt another meaning in her silence, and perceived
+that she intended him to feel it. He met it by silence, but of a
+different kind; letting his nearness speak for him as he knelt beside
+her and laid his cheek against hers. She seemed hardly aware of
+the gesture; but to that he was also used. She had never shown any
+repugnance to his tenderness, but such response as it evoked was remote
+and Ariel-like, suggesting, from the first, not so much of the recoil of
+ignorance as the coolness of the element from which she took her name.
+
+As he pressed her to him she seemed to grow less impassive and he felt
+her resign herself like a tired child. He held his breath, not daring to
+break the spell.
+
+At length he whispered: "I've just seen such a wonderful thing--I wish
+you'd been with me!"
+
+"What sort of a thing?" She turned her head with a faint show of
+interest.
+
+"A--I don't know--a vision.... It came to me out there just now with the
+moonrise."
+
+"A vision?" Her interest flagged. "I never cared much about spirits.
+Mother used to try to drag me to seances--but they always made me
+sleepy."
+
+Ralph laughed. "I don't mean a dead spirit but a living one! I saw the
+vision of a book I mean to do. It came to me suddenly, magnificently,
+swooped down on me as that big white moon swooped down on the black
+landscape, tore at me like a great white eagle-like the bird of Jove!
+After all, imagination WAS the eagle that devoured Prometheus!"
+
+She drew away abruptly, and the bright moonlight showed him the
+apprehension in her face. "You're not going to write a book HERE?"
+
+He stood up and wandered away a step or two; then he turned and came
+back. "Of course not here. Wherever you want. The main point is that
+it's come to me--no, that it's come BACK to me! For it's all these
+months together, it's all our happiness--it's the meaning of life that
+I've found, and it's you, dearest, you who've given it to me!"
+
+He dropped down beside her again; but she disengaged herself and he
+heard a little sob in her throat.
+
+"Undine--what's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing...I don't know...I suppose I'm homesick..."
+
+"Homesick? You poor darling! You're tired of travelling? What is it?"
+
+"I don't know...I don't like Europe...it's not what I expected, and I
+think it's all too dreadfully dreary!" The words broke from her in a
+long wail of rebellion.
+
+Marvell gazed at her perplexedly. It seemed strange that such unguessed
+thoughts should have been stirring in the heart pressed to his. "It's
+less interesting than you expected--or less amusing? Is that it?"
+
+"It's dirty and ugly--all the towns we've been to are disgustingly
+dirty. I loathe the smells and the beggars. I'm sick and tired of the
+stuffy rooms in the hotels. I thought it would all be so splendid--but
+New York's ever so much nicer!"
+
+"Not New York in July?"
+
+"I don't care--there are the roof-gardens, anyway; and there are always
+people round. All these places seem as if they were dead. It's all like
+some awful cemetery."
+
+A sense of compunction checked Marvell's laughter. "Don't cry,
+dear--don't! I see, I understand. You're lonely and the heat has tired
+you out. It IS dull here; awfully dull; I've been stupid not to feel it.
+But we'll start at once--we'll get out of it."
+
+She brightened instantly. "We'll go up to Switzerland?"
+
+"We'll go up to Switzerland." He had a fleeting glimpse of the quiet
+place with the green water-fall, where he might have made tryst with his
+vision; then he turned his mind from it and said: "We'll go just where
+you want. How soon can you be ready to start?"
+
+"Oh, to-morrow--the first thing to-morrow! I'll make Celeste get out
+of bed now and pack. Can we go right through to St. Moritz? I'd rather
+sleep in the train than in another of these awful places."
+
+She was on her feet in a flash, her face alight, her hair waving and
+floating about her as though it rose on her happy heart-beats.
+
+"Oh, Ralph, it's SWEET of you, and I love you!" she cried out, letting
+him take her to his breast.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+In the quiet place with the green water-fall Ralph's vision might
+have kept faith with him; but how could he hope to surprise it in the
+midsummer crowds of St. Moritz? Undine, at any rate, had found there
+what she wanted; and when he was at her side, and her radiant smile
+included him, every other question was in abeyance. But there were hours
+of solitary striding over bare grassy slopes, face to face with the
+ironic interrogation of sky and mountains, when his anxieties came back,
+more persistent and importunate. Sometimes they took the form of merely
+material difficulties. How, for instance, was he to meet the cost of
+their ruinous suite at the Engadine Palace while he awaited Mr. Spragg's
+next remittance? And once the hotel bills were paid, what would be left
+for the journey back to Paris, the looming expenses there, the price
+of the passage to America? These questions would fling him back on the
+thought of his projected book, which was, after all, to be what the
+masterpieces of literature had mostly been--a pot-boiler. Well! Why not?
+Did not the worshipper always heap the rarest essences on the altar of
+his divinity? Ralph still rejoiced in the thought of giving back to
+Undine something of the beauty of their first months together. But even
+on his solitary walks the vision eluded him; and he could spare so few
+hours to its pursuit!
+
+Undine's days were crowded, and it was still a matter of course that
+where she went he should follow. He had risen visibly in her opinion
+since they had been absorbed into the life of the big hotels, and she
+had seen that his command of foreign tongues put him at an advantage
+even in circles where English was generally spoken if not understood.
+Undine herself, hampered by her lack of languages, was soon drawn into
+the group of compatriots who struck the social pitch of their hotel.
+
+Their types were familiar enough to Ralph, who had taken their measure
+in former wanderings, and come across their duplicates in every scene
+of continental idleness. Foremost among them was Mrs. Harvey Shallum,
+a showy Parisianized figure, with a small wax-featured husband whose
+ultra-fashionable clothes seemed a tribute to his wife's importance
+rather than the mark of his personal taste. Mr. Shallum, in fact, could
+not be said to have any personal bent. Though he conversed with a
+colourless fluency in the principal European tongues, he seldom
+exercised his gift except in intercourse with hotel-managers and
+head-waiters; and his long silences were broken only by resigned
+allusions to the enormities he had suffered at the hands of this gifted
+but unscrupulous class.
+
+Mrs. Shallum, though in command of but a few verbs, all of which, on her
+lips, became irregular, managed to express a polyglot personality as
+vivid as her husband's was effaced. Her only idea of intercourse with
+her kind was to organize it into bands and subject it to frequent
+displacements; and society smiled at her for these exertions like an
+infant vigorously rocked. She saw at once Undine's value as a factor in
+her scheme, and the two formed an alliance on which Ralph refrained from
+shedding the cold light of depreciation. It was a point of honour
+with him not to seem to disdain any of Undine's amusements: the noisy
+interminable picnics, the hot promiscuous balls, the concerts,
+bridge-parties and theatricals which helped to disguise the difference
+between the high Alps and Paris or New York. He told himself that there
+is always a Narcissus-element in youth, and that what Undine really
+enjoyed was the image of her own charm mirrored in the general
+admiration. With her quick perceptions and adaptabilities she would soon
+learn to care more about the quality of the reflecting surface; and
+meanwhile no criticism of his should mar her pleasure.
+
+The appearance at their hotel of the cavalry-officer from Siena was a
+not wholly agreeable surprise; but even after the handsome Marquis had
+been introduced to Undine, and had whirled her through an evening's
+dances, Ralph was not seriously disturbed. Husband and wife had grown
+closer to each other since they had come to St. Moritz, and in the brief
+moments she could give him Undine was now always gay and approachable.
+Her fitful humours had vanished, and she showed qualities of comradeship
+that seemed the promise of a deeper understanding. But this very hope
+made him more subject to her moods, more fearful of disturbing the
+harmony between them. Least of all could he broach the subject of money:
+he had too keen a memory of the way her lips could narrow, and her eyes
+turn from him as if he were a stranger.
+
+It was a different matter that one day brought the look he feared to her
+face. She had announced her intention of going on an excursion with Mrs.
+Shallum and three or four of the young men who formed the nucleus of
+their shifting circle, and for the first time she did not ask Ralph if
+he were coming; but he felt no resentment at being left out. He was
+tired of these noisy assaults on the high solitudes, and the prospect
+of a quiet afternoon turned his thoughts to his book. Now if ever there
+seemed a chance of recapturing the moonlight vision...
+
+From his balcony he looked down on the assembling party. Mrs. Shallum
+was already screaming bilingually at various windows in the long facade;
+and Undine presently came out of the hotel with the Marchese Roviano and
+two young English diplomatists. Slim and tall in her trim mountain
+garb, she made the ornate Mrs. Shallum look like a piece of ambulant
+upholstery. The high air brightened her cheeks and struck new lights
+from her hair, and Ralph had never seen her so touched with morning
+freshness. The party was not yet complete, and he felt a movement of
+annoyance when he recognized, in the last person to join it, a Russian
+lady of cosmopolitan notoriety whom he had run across in his unmarried
+days, and as to whom he had already warned Undine. Knowing what
+strange specimens from the depths slip through the wide meshes of the
+watering-place world, he had foreseen that a meeting with the Baroness
+Adelschein was inevitable; but he had not expected her to become one of
+his wife's intimate circle.
+
+When the excursionists had started he turned back to his writing-table
+and tried to take up his work; but he could not fix his thoughts:
+they were far away, in pursuit of Undine. He had been but five months
+married, and it seemed, after all, rather soon for him to be dropped out
+of such excursions as unquestioningly as poor Harvey Shallum. He smiled
+away this first twinge of jealousy, but the irritation it left found
+a pretext in his displeasure at Undine's choice of companions. Mrs.
+Shallum grated on his taste, but she was as open to inspection as
+a shop-window, and he was sure that time would teach his wife the
+cheapness of what she had to show. Roviano and the Englishmen were well
+enough too: frankly bent on amusement, but pleasant and well-bred. But
+they would naturally take their tone from the women they were with;
+and Madame Adelschein's tone was notorious. He knew also that Undine's
+faculty of self-defense was weakened by the instinct of adapting herself
+to whatever company she was in, of copying "the others" in speech and
+gesture as closely as she reflected them in dress; and he was disturbed
+by the thought of what her ignorance might expose her to.
+
+She came back late, flushed with her long walk, her face all sparkle and
+mystery, as he had seen it in the first days of their courtship; and the
+look somehow revived his irritated sense of having been intentionally
+left out of the party.
+
+"You've been gone forever. Was it the Adelschein who made you go such
+lengths?" he asked her, trying to keep to his usual joking tone.
+
+Undine, as she dropped down on the sofa and unpinned her hat, shed on
+him the light of her guileless gaze.
+
+"I don't know: everybody was amusing. The Marquis is awfully bright."
+
+"I'd no idea you or Bertha Shallum knew Madame Adelschein well enough to
+take her off with you in that way."
+
+Undine sat absently smoothing the tuft of glossy cock's-feathers in her
+hat.
+
+"I don't see that you've got to know people particularly well to go for
+a walk with them. The Baroness is awfully bright too."
+
+She always gave her acquaintances their titles, seeming not, in this
+respect, to have noticed that a simpler form prevailed.
+
+"I don't dispute the interest of what she says; but I've told you what
+decent people think of what she does," Ralph retorted, exasperated by
+what seemed a wilful pretense of ignorance.
+
+She continued to scrutinize him with her clear eyes, in which there was
+no shadow of offense.
+
+"You mean they don't want to go round with her? You're mistaken: it's
+not true. She goes round with everybody. She dined last night with the
+Grand Duchess; Roviano told me so."
+
+This was not calculated to make Ralph take a more tolerant view of the
+question.
+
+"Does he also tell you what's said of her?"
+
+"What's said of her?" Undine's limpid glance rebuked him. "Do you mean
+that disgusting scandal you told me about? Do you suppose I'd let him
+talk to me about such things? I meant you're mistaken about her social
+position. He says she goes everywhere."
+
+Ralph laughed impatiently. "No doubt Roviano's an authority; but it
+doesn't happen to be his business to choose your friends for you."
+
+Undine echoed his laugh. "Well, I guess I don't need anybody to do that:
+I can do it myself," she said, with the good-humoured curtness that was
+the habitual note of intercourse with the Spraggs.
+
+Ralph sat down beside her and laid a caressing touch on her shoulder.
+"No, you can't, you foolish child. You know nothing of this society
+you're in; of its antecedents, its rules, its conventions; and it's my
+affair to look after you, and warn you when you're on the wrong track."
+
+"Mercy, what a solemn speech!" She shrugged away his hand without
+ill-temper. "I don't believe an American woman needs to know such a lot
+about their old rules. They can see I mean to follow my own, and if they
+don't like it they needn't go with me."
+
+"Oh, they'll go with you fast enough, as you call it. They'll be too
+charmed to. The question is how far they'll make you go with THEM, and
+where they'll finally land you."
+
+She tossed her head back with the movement she had learned in "speaking"
+school-pieces about freedom and the British tyrant.
+
+"No one's ever yet gone any farther with me than I wanted!" she
+declared. She was really exquisitely simple.
+
+"I'm not sure Roviano hasn't, in vouching for Madame Adelschein. But he
+probably thinks you know about her. To him this isn't 'society' any more
+than the people in an omnibus are. Society, to everybody here, means
+the sanction of their own special group and of the corresponding groups
+elsewhere. The Adelschein goes about in a place like this because it's
+nobody's business to stop her; but the women who tolerate her here would
+drop her like a shot if she set foot on their own ground."
+
+The thoughtful air with which Undine heard him out made him fancy this
+argument had carried; and as be ended she threw him a bright look.
+
+"Well, that's easy enough: I can drop her if she comes to New York."
+
+Ralph sat silent for a moment--then he turned away and began to gather
+up his scattered pages.
+
+Undine, in the ensuing days, was no less often with Madame Adelschein,
+and Ralph suspected a challenge in her open frequentation of the lady.
+But if challenge there were, he let it lie. Whether his wife saw more or
+less of Madame Adelschein seemed no longer of much consequence: she had
+so amply shown him her ability to protect herself. The pang lay in the
+completeness of the proof--in the perfect functioning of her instinct
+of self-preservation. For the first time he was face to face with his
+hovering dread: he was judging where he still adored.
+
+Before long more pressing cares absorbed him. He had already begun to
+watch the post for his father-in-law's monthly remittance, without
+precisely knowing how, even with its aid, he was to bridge the gulf of
+expense between St. Moritz and New York. The non-arrival of Mr. Spragg's
+cheque was productive of graver tears, and these were abruptly confirmed
+when, coming in one afternoon, he found Undine crying over a letter from
+her mother.
+
+Her distress made him fear that Mr. Spragg was ill, and he drew her to
+him soothingly; but she broke away with an impatient movement.
+
+"Oh, they're all well enough--but father's lost a lot of money. He's
+been speculating, and he can't send us anything for at least three
+months."
+
+Ralph murmured reassuringly: "As long as there's no one ill!"--but in
+reality he was following her despairing gaze down the long perspective
+of their barren quarter.
+
+"Three months! Three months!"
+
+Undine dried her eyes, and sat with set lips and tapping foot while he
+read her mother's letter.
+
+"Your poor father! It's a hard knock for him. I'm sorry," he said as he
+handed it back.
+
+For a moment she did not seem to hear; then she said between her teeth:
+"It's hard for US. I suppose now we'll have to go straight home."
+
+He looked at her with wonder. "If that were all! In any case I should
+have to be back in a few weeks."
+
+"But we needn't have left here in August! It's the first place in Europe
+that I've liked, and it's just my luck to be dragged away from it!"
+
+"I'm so awfully sorry, dearest. It's my fault for persuading you to
+marry a pauper."
+
+"It's father's fault. Why on earth did he go and speculate? There's no
+use his saying he's sorry now!" She sat brooding for a moment and then
+suddenly took Ralph's hand. "Couldn't your people do something--help us
+out just this once, I mean?"
+
+He flushed to the forehead: it seemed inconceivable that she should make
+such a suggestion.
+
+"I couldn't ask them--it's not possible. My grandfather does as much as
+he can for me, and my mother has nothing but what he gives her."
+
+Undine seemed unconscious of his embarrassment. "He doesn't give us
+nearly as much as father does," she said; and, as Ralph remained silent,
+she went on:
+
+"Couldn't you ask your sister, then? I must have some clothes to go home
+in."
+
+His heart contracted as he looked at her. What sinister change came
+over her when her will was crossed? She seemed to grow inaccessible,
+implacable--her eyes were like the eyes of an enemy.
+
+"I don't know--I'll see," he said, rising and moving away from her.
+At that moment the touch of her hand was repugnant. Yes--he might ask
+Laura, no doubt: and whatever she had would be his. But the necessity
+was bitter to him, and Undine's unconsciousness of the fact hurt him
+more than her indifference to her father's misfortune.
+
+What hurt him most was the curious fact that, for all her light
+irresponsibility, it was always she who made the practical suggestion,
+hit the nail of expediency on the head. No sentimental scruple made the
+blow waver or deflected her resolute aim. She had thought at once of
+Laura, and Laura was his only, his inevitable, resource. His anxious
+mind pictured his sister's wonder, and made him wince under the sting of
+Henley Fairford's irony: Fairford, who at the time of the marriage had
+sat silent and pulled his moustache while every one else argued and
+objected, yet under whose silence Ralph had felt a deeper protest than
+under all the reasoning of the others. It was no comfort to reflect that
+Fairford would probably continue to say nothing! But necessity made
+light of these twinges, and Ralph set his teeth and cabled.
+
+Undine's chief surprise seemed to be that Laura's response, though
+immediate and generous, did not enable them to stay on at St. Moritz.
+But she apparently read in her husband's look the uselessness of such a
+hope, for, with one of the sudden changes of mood that still disarmed
+him, she accepted the need of departure, and took leave philosophically
+of the Shallums and their band. After all, Paris was ahead, and in
+September one would have a chance to see the new models and surprise the
+secret councils of the dressmakers.
+
+Ralph was astonished at the tenacity with which she held to her purpose.
+He tried, when they reached Paris, to make her feel the necessity of
+starting at once for home; but she complained of fatigue and of feeling
+vaguely unwell, and he had to yield to her desire for rest. The word,
+however, was to strike him as strangely misapplied, for from the day of
+their arrival she was in state of perpetual activity. She seemed to
+have mastered her Paris by divination, and between the hounds of the
+Boulevards and the Place Vendome she moved at once with supernatural
+ease.
+
+"Of course," she explained to him, "I understand how little we've got
+to spend; but I left New York without a rag, and it was you who made me
+countermand my trousseau, instead of having it sent after us. I wish now
+I hadn't listened to you--father'd have had to pay for THAT before he
+lost his money. As it is, it will be cheaper in the end for me to pick
+up a few things here. The advantage of going to the French dress-makers
+is that they'll wait twice as long for their money as the people at
+home. And they're all crazy to dress me--Bertha Shallum will tell you
+so: she says no one ever had such a chance! That's why I was willing to
+come to this stuffy little hotel--I wanted to save every scrap I could
+to get a few decent things. And over here they're accustomed to being
+bargained with--you ought to see how I've beaten them down! Have you any
+idea what a dinner-dress costs in New York--?"
+
+So it went on, obtusely and persistently, whenever he tried to sound
+the note of prudence. But on other themes she was more than usually
+responsive. Paris enchanted her, and they had delightful hours at
+the theatres--the "little" ones--amusing dinners at fashionable
+restaurants, and reckless evenings in haunts where she thrilled with
+simple glee at the thought of what she must so obviously be "taken for."
+All these familiar diversions regained, for Ralph, a fresh zest in her
+company. Her innocence, her high spirits, her astounding comments and
+credulities, renovated the old Parisian adventure and flung a veil of
+romance over its hackneyed scenes. Beheld through such a medium the
+future looked less near and implacable, and Ralph, when he had received
+a reassuring letter from his sister, let his conscience sleep and
+slipped forth on the high tide of pleasure. After all, in New York
+amusements would be fewer, and their life, for a time, perhaps more
+quiet. Moreover, Ralph's dim glimpses of Mr. Spragg's past suggested
+that the latter was likely to be on his feet again at any moment, and
+atoning by redoubled prodigalities for his temporary straits; and beyond
+all these possibilities there was the book to be written--the book on
+which Ralph was sure he should get a real hold as soon as they settled
+down in New York.
+
+Meanwhile the daily cost of living, and the bills that could not be
+deferred, were eating deep into Laura's subsidy. Ralph's anxieties
+returned, and his plight was brought home to him with a shock when, on
+going one day to engage passages, he learned that the prices were that
+of the "rush season," and one of the conditions immediate payment. At
+other times, he was told the rules were easier; but in September and
+October no exception could be made.
+
+As he walked away with this fresh weight on his mind he caught sight of
+the strolling figure of Peter Van Degen--Peter lounging and luxuriating
+among the seductions of the Boulevard with the disgusting ease of a man
+whose wants are all measured by money, and who always has enough to
+gratify them.
+
+His present sense of these advantages revealed itself in the affability
+of his greeting to Ralph, and in his off-hand request that the latter
+should "look up Clare," who had come over with him to get her winter
+finery.
+
+"She's motoring to Italy next week with some of her long-haired
+friends--but I'm off for the other side; going back on the Sorceress.
+She's just been overhauled at Greenock, and we ought to have a good spin
+over. Better come along with me, old man."
+
+The Sorceress was Van Degen's steam-yacht, most huge and complicated of
+her kind: it was his habit, after his semi-annual flights to Paris and
+London, to take a joyous company back on her and let Clare return by
+steamer. The character of these parties made the invitation almost
+an offense to Ralph; but reflecting that it was probably a phrase
+distributed to every acquaintance when Van Degen was in a rosy mood, he
+merely answered: "Much obliged, my dear fellow; but Undine and I are
+sailing immediately."
+
+Peter's glassy eye grew livelier. "Ah, to be sure--you're not over the
+honeymoon yet. How's the bride? Stunning as ever? My regards to her,
+please. I suppose she's too deep in dress-making to be called on?
+Don't you forget to look up Clare!" He hurried on in pursuit of a
+flitting petticoat and Ralph continued his walk home.
+
+He prolonged it a little in order to put off telling Undine of his
+plight; for he could devise only one way of meeting the cost of the
+voyage, and that was to take it at once, and thus curtail their Parisian
+expenses. But he knew how unwelcome this plan would be, and he shrank
+the more from seeing Undine's face harden; since, of late, he had so
+basked in its brightness.
+
+When at last he entered the little salon she called "stuffy" he found
+her in conference with a blond-bearded gentleman who wore the red
+ribbon in his lapel, and who, on Ralph's appearance--and at a sign, as
+it appeared, from Mrs. Marvell--swept into his note-case some small
+objects that had lain on the table, and bowed himself out with a
+"Madame--Monsieur" worthy of the highest traditions.
+
+Ralph looked after him with amusement. "Who's your friend--an Ambassador
+or a tailor?"
+
+Undine was rapidly slipping on her rings, which, as he now saw, had also
+been scattered over the table.
+
+"Oh, it was only that jeweller I told you about--the one Bertha Shallum
+goes to."
+
+"A jeweller? Good heavens, my poor girl! You're buying jewels?" The
+extravagance of the idea struck a laugh from him.
+
+Undine's face did not harden: it took on, instead, almost deprecating
+look. "Of course not--how silly you are! I only wanted a few old things
+reset. But I won't if you'd rather not."
+
+She came to him and sat down at his side, laying her hand on his arm. He
+took the hand up and looked at the deep gleam of the sapphires in the
+old family ring he had given her.
+
+"You won't have that reset?" he said, smiling and twisting the ring
+about on her finger; then he went on with his thankless explanation.
+"It's not that I don't want you to do this or that; it's simply that,
+for the moment, we're rather strapped. I've just been to see the steamer
+people, and our passages will cost a good deal more than I thought."
+
+He mentioned the sum and the fact that he must give an answer the next
+day. Would she consent to sail that very Saturday? Or should they go a
+fortnight later, in a slow boat from Plymouth?
+
+Undine frowned on both alternatives. She was an indifferent sailor and
+shrank from the possible "nastiness" of the cheaper boat. She wanted
+to get the voyage over as quickly and luxuriously as possible--Bertha
+Shallum had told her that in a "deck-suite" no one need be sea-sick--but
+she wanted still more to have another week or two of Paris; and it was
+always hard to make her see why circumstances could not be bent to her
+wishes.
+
+"This week? But how on earth can I be ready? Besides, we're dining at
+Enghien with the Shallums on Saturday, and motoring to Chantilly with
+the Jim Driscolls on Sunday. I can't imagine how you thought we could go
+this week!"
+
+But she still opposed the cheap steamer, and after they had carried the
+question on to Voisin's, and there unprofitably discussed it through a
+long luncheon, it seemed no nearer a solution.
+
+"Well, think it over--let me know this evening," Ralph said,
+proportioning the waiter's fee to a bill burdened by Undine's reckless
+choice of primeurs.
+
+His wife was to join the newly-arrived Mrs. Shallum in a round of the
+rue de la Paix; and he had seized the opportunity of slipping off to a
+classical performance at the Francais. On their arrival in Paris he had
+taken Undine to one of these entertainments, but it left her too weary
+and puzzled for him to renew the attempt, and he had not found time
+to go back without her. He was glad now to shed his cares in such an
+atmosphere. The play was of the greatest, the interpretation that of the
+vanishing grand manner which lived in his first memories of the Parisian
+stage, and his surrender such influences as complete as in his early
+days. Caught up in the fiery chariot of art, he felt once more the tug
+of its coursers in his muscles, and the rush of their flight still
+throbbed in him when he walked back late to the hotel.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+He had expected to find Undine still out; but on the stairs he crossed
+Mrs. Shallum, who threw at him from under an immense hat-brim: "Yes,
+she's in, but you'd better come and have tea with me at the Luxe. I
+don't think husbands are wanted!"
+
+Ralph laughingly rejoined that that was just the moment for them to
+appear; and Mrs. Shallum swept on, crying back: "All the same, I'll wait
+for you!"
+
+In the sitting-room Ralph found Undine seated behind a tea-table on the
+other side of which, in an attitude of easy intimacy, Peter Van Degen
+stretched his lounging length.
+
+He did not move on Ralph's appearance, no doubt thinking their kinship
+close enough to make his nod and "Hullo!" a sufficient greeting. Peter
+in intimacy was given to miscalculations of the sort, and Ralph's first
+movement was to glance at Undine and see how it affected her. But her
+eyes gave out the vivid rays that noise and banter always struck from
+them; her face, at such moments, was like a theatre with all the lustres
+blazing. That the illumination should have been kindled by his cousin's
+husband was not precisely agreeable to Marvell, who thought Peter a bore
+in society and an insufferable nuisance on closer terms. But he was
+becoming blunted to Undine's lack of discrimination; and his own
+treatment of Van Degen was always tempered by his sympathy for Clare.
+
+He therefore listened with apparent good-humour to Peter's suggestion of
+an evening at a petit theatre with the Harvey Shallums, and joined in
+the laugh with which Undine declared: "Oh, Ralph won't go--he only
+likes the theatres where they walk around in bathtowels and talk
+poetry.--Isn't that what you've just been seeing?" she added, with a
+turn of the neck that shed her brightness on him.
+
+"What? One of those five-barrelled shows at the Francais? Great Scott,
+Ralph--no wonder your wife's pining for the Folies Bergere!"
+
+"She needn't, my dear fellow. We never interfere with each other's
+vices."
+
+Peter, unsolicited, was comfortably lighting a cigarette. "Ah, there's
+the secret of domestic happiness. Marry somebody who likes all the
+things you don't, and make love to somebody who likes all the things you
+do."
+
+Undine laughed appreciatively. "Only it dooms poor Ralph to such awful
+frumps. Can't you see the sort of woman who'd love his sort of play?"
+
+"Oh, I can see her fast enough--my wife loves 'em," said their visitor,
+rising with a grin; while Ralph threw, out: "So don't waste your pity on
+me!" and Undine's laugh had the slight note of asperity that the mention
+of Clare always elicited.
+
+"To-morrow night, then, at Paillard's," Van Degen concluded. "And about
+the other business--that's a go too? I leave it to you to settle the
+date."
+
+The nod and laugh they exchanged seemed to hint at depths of collusion
+from which Ralph was pointedly excluded; and he wondered how large
+a programme of pleasure they had already had time to sketch out. He
+disliked the idea of Undine's being too frequently seen with Van Degen,
+whose Parisian reputation was not fortified by the connections that
+propped it up in New York; but he did not want to interfere with her
+pleasure, and he was still wondering what to say when, as the door
+closed, she turned to him gaily.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come! I've got some news for you." She laid a light
+touch on his arm.
+
+Touch and tone were enough to disperse his anxieties, and he answered
+that he was in luck to find her already in when he had supposed her
+engaged, over a Nouveau Luxe tea-table, in repairing the afternoon's
+ravages.
+
+"Oh, I didn't shop much--I didn't stay out long." She raised a kindling
+face to him. "And what do you think I've been doing? While you were
+sitting in your stuffy old theatre, worrying about the money I was
+spending (oh, you needn't fib--I know you were!) I was saving you
+hundreds and thousands. I've saved you the price of our passage!"
+
+Ralph laughed in pure enjoyment of her beauty. When she shone on him
+like that what did it matter what nonsense she talked?
+
+"You wonderful woman--how did you do it? By countermanding a tiara?"
+
+"You know I'm not such a fool as you pretend!" She held him at arm's
+length with a nod of joyous mystery. "You'll simply never guess! I've
+made Peter Van Degen ask us to go home on the Sorceress. What. do you
+say to that?"
+
+She flashed it out on a laugh of triumph, without appearing to have a
+doubt of the effect the announcement would produce.
+
+Ralph stared at her. "The Sorceress? You MADE him?"
+
+"Well, I managed it, I worked him round to it! He's crazy about the idea
+now--but I don't think he'd thought of it before he came."
+
+"I should say not!" Ralph ejaculated. "He never would have had the cheek
+to think of it."
+
+"Well, I've made him, anyhow! Did you ever know such luck?"
+
+"Such luck?" He groaned at her obstinate innocence. "Do you suppose I'll
+let you cross the ocean on the Sorceress?"
+
+She shrugged impatiently. "You say that because your cousin doesn't go
+on her."
+
+"If she doesn't, it's because it's no place for decent women."
+
+"It's Clare's fault if it isn't. Everybody knows she's crazy about you,
+and she makes him feel it. That's why he takes up with other women."
+
+Her anger reddened her cheeks and dropped her brows like a black bar
+above her glowing eyes. Even in his recoil from what she said Ralph felt
+the tempestuous heat of her beauty. But for the first time his latent
+resentments rose in him, and he gave her back wrath for wrath.
+
+"Is that the precious stuff he tells you?"
+
+"Do you suppose I had to wait for him to tell me? Everybody knows
+it--everybody in New York knew she was wild when you married. That's
+why she's always been so nasty to me. If you won't go on the Sorceress
+they'll all say it's because she was jealous of me and wouldn't let
+you."
+
+Ralph's indignation had already flickered down to disgust. Undine was no
+longer beautiful--she seemed to have the face of her thoughts. He stood
+up with an impatient laugh.
+
+"Is that another of his arguments? I don't wonder they're convincing--"
+But as quickly as it had come the sneer dropped, yielding to a wave of
+pity, the vague impulse to silence and protect her. How could he have
+given way to the provocation of her weakness, when his business was to
+defend her from it and lift her above it? He recalled his old dreams of
+saving her from Van Degenism--it was not thus that he had imagined the
+rescue.
+
+"Don't let's pay Peter the compliment of squabbling over him," he said,
+turning away to pour himself a cup of tea.
+
+When he had filled his cup he sat down beside Undine, with a smile. "No
+doubt he was joking--and thought you were; but if you really made him
+believe we might go with him you'd better drop him a line."
+
+Undine's brow still gloomed. "You refuse, then?"
+
+"Refuse? I don't need to! Do you want to succeed to half the
+chorus-world of New York?"
+
+"They won't be on board with us, I suppose!"
+
+"The echoes of their conversation will. It's the only language Peter
+knows."
+
+"He told me he longed for the influence of a good woman--" She checked
+herself, reddening at Ralph's laugh.
+
+"Well, tell him to apply again when he's been under it a month or two.
+Meanwhile we'll stick to the liners."
+
+Ralph was beginning to learn that the only road to her reason lay
+through her vanity, and he fancied that if she could be made to see
+Van Degen as an object of ridicule she might give up the idea of the
+Sorceress of her own accord. But her will hardened slowly under his
+joking opposition, and she became no less formidable as she grew more
+calm. He was used to women who, in such cases, yielded as a matter of
+course to masculine judgments: if one pronounced a man "not decent"
+the question was closed. But it was Undine's habit to ascribe all
+interference with her plans to personal motives, and he could see that
+she attributed his opposition to the furtive machinations of poor Clare.
+It was odious to him to prolong the discussion, for the accent of
+recrimination was the one he most dreaded on her lips. But the moment
+came when he had to take the brunt of it, averting his thoughts as best
+he might from the glimpse it gave of a world of mean familiarities, of
+reprisals drawn from the vulgarest of vocabularies. Certain retorts sped
+through the air like the flight of household utensils, certain charges
+rang out like accusations of tampering with the groceries. He stiffened
+himself against such comparisons, but they stuck in his imagination and
+left him thankful when Undine's anger yielded to a burst of tears. He
+had held his own and gained his point. The trip on the Sorceress was
+given up, and a note of withdrawal despatched to Van Degen; but at the
+same time Ralph cabled his sister to ask if she could increase her loan.
+For he had conquered only at the cost of a concession: Undine was to
+stay in Paris till October, and they were to sail on a fast steamer, in
+a deck-suite, like the Harvey Shallums.
+
+Undine's ill-humour was soon dispelled by any new distraction, and she
+gave herself to the untroubled enjoyment of Paris. The Shallums were the
+centre of a like-minded group, and in the hours the ladies could spare
+from their dress-makers the restaurants shook with their hilarity
+and the suburbs with the shriek of their motors. Van Degen, who had
+postponed his sailing, was a frequent sharer in these amusements; but
+Ralph counted on New York influences to detach him from Undine's train.
+He was learning to influence her through her social instincts where he
+had once tried to appeal to other sensibilities.
+
+His worst moment came when he went to see Clare Van Degen, who, on the
+eve of departure, had begged him to come to her hotel. He found her less
+restless and rattling than usual, with a look in her eyes that reminded
+him of the days when she had haunted his thoughts. The visit passed off
+without vain returns to the past; but as he was leaving she surprised
+him by saying: "Don't let Peter make a goose of your wife."
+
+Ralph reddened, but laughed.
+
+"Oh, Undine's wonderfully able to defend herself, even against such
+seductions as Peter's."
+
+Mrs. Van Degen looked down with a smile at the bracelets on her thin
+brown wrist. "His personal seductions--yes. But as an inventor of
+amusements he's inexhaustible; and Undine likes to be amused."
+
+Ralph made no reply but showed no annoyance. He simply took her hand and
+kissed it as he said good-bye; and she turned from him without audible
+farewell.
+
+As the day of departure approached. Undine's absorption in her dresses
+almost precluded the thought of amusement. Early and late she was
+closeted with fitters and packers--even the competent Celeste not being
+trusted to handle the treasures now pouring in--and Ralph cursed his
+weakness in not restraining her, and then fled for solace to museums and
+galleries.
+
+He could not rouse in her any scruple about incurring fresh debts, yet
+he knew she was no longer unaware of the value of money. She had
+learned to bargain, pare down prices, evade fees, brow-beat the small
+tradespeople and wheedle concessions from the great--not, as Ralph
+perceived, from any effort to restrain her expenses, but only to prolong
+and intensify the pleasure of spending. Pained by the trait, he tried
+to laugh her out of it. He told her once that she had a miserly
+hand--showing her, in proof, that, for all their softness, the fingers
+would not bend back, or the pink palm open. But she retorted a little
+sharply that it was no wonder, since she'd heard nothing talked of since
+their marriage but economy; and this left him without any answer. So
+the purveyors continued to mount to their apartment, and Ralph, in the
+course of his frequent nights from it, found himself always dodging the
+corners of black glazed boxes and swaying pyramids of pasteboard; always
+lifting his hat to sidling milliners' girls, or effacing himself before
+slender vendeuses floating by in a mist of opopanax. He felt incompetent
+to pronounce on the needs to which these visitors ministered; but the
+reappearance among them of the blond-bearded jeweller gave him ground
+for fresh fears. Undine had assured him that she had given up the idea
+of having her ornaments reset, and there had been ample time for their
+return; but on his questioning her she explained that there had been
+delays and "bothers" and put him in the wrong by asking ironically if he
+supposed she was buying things "for pleasure" when she knew as well as
+he that there wasn't any money to pay for them.
+
+But his thoughts were not all dark. Undine's moods still infected him,
+and when she was happy he felt an answering lightness. Even when
+her amusements were too primitive to be shared he could enjoy their
+reflection in her face. Only, as he looked back, he was struck by the
+evanescence, the lack of substance, in their moments of sympathy, and
+by the permanent marks left by each breach between them. Yet he still
+fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she
+acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice.
+
+Something of this was in his mind when, the afternoon before their
+departure, he came home to help her with their last arrangements. She
+had begged him, for the day, to leave her alone in their cramped salon,
+into which belated bundles were still pouring; and it was nearly dark
+when he returned. The evening before she had seemed pale and nervous,
+and at the last moment had excused herself from dining with the Shallums
+at a suburban restaurant. It was so unlike her to miss any opportunity
+of the kind that Ralph had felt a little anxious. But with the arrival
+of the packers she was afoot and in command again, and he withdrew
+submissively, as Mr. Spragg, in the early Apex days, might have fled
+from the spring storm of "house-cleaning."
+
+When he entered the sitting-room, he found it still in disorder. Every
+chair was hidden under scattered dresses, tissue-paper surged from the
+yawning trunks and, prone among her heaped-up finery. Undine lay with
+closed eyes on the sofa.
+
+She raised her head as he entered, and then turned listlessly away.
+
+"My poor girl, what's the matter? Haven't they finished yet?"
+
+Instead of answering she pressed her face into the cushion and began to
+sob. The violence of her weeping shook her hair down on her shoulders,
+and her hands, clenching the arm of the sofa, pressed it away from her
+as if any contact were insufferable.
+
+Ralph bent over her in alarm. "Why, what's wrong, dear? What's
+happened?"
+
+Her fatigue of the previous evening came back to him--a puzzled hunted
+look in her eyes; and with the memory a vague wonder revived. He had
+fancied himself fairly disencumbered of the stock formulas about the
+hallowing effects of motherhood, and there were many reasons for not
+welcoming the news he suspected she had to give; but the woman a man
+loves is always a special case, and everything was different that befell
+Undine. If this was what had befallen her it was wonderful and divine:
+for the moment that was all he felt.
+
+"Dear, tell me what's the matter," he pleaded.
+
+She sobbed on unheedingly and he waited for her agitation to subside. He
+shrank from the phrases considered appropriate to the situation, but he
+wanted to hold her close and give her the depth of his heart in long
+kiss.
+
+Suddenly she sat upright and turned a desperate face on him. "Why on
+earth are you staring at me like that? Anybody can see what's the
+matter!"
+
+He winced at her tone, but managed to get one of her hands in his; and
+they stayed thus in silence, eye to eye.
+
+"Are you as sorry as all that?" he began at length conscious of the
+flatness of his voice.
+
+"Sorry--sorry? I'm--I'm--" She snatched her hand away, and went on
+weeping.
+
+"But, Undine--dearest--bye and bye you'll feel differently--I know you
+will!"
+
+"Differently? Differently? When? In a year? It TAKES a year--a whole
+year out of life! What do I care how I shall feel in a year?"
+
+The chill of her tone struck in. This was more than a revolt of the
+nerves: it was a settled, a reasoned resentment. Ralph found himself
+groping for extenuations, evasions--anything to put a little warmth into
+her! "Who knows? Perhaps, after all, it's a mistake."
+
+There was no answering light in her face. She turned her head from him
+wearily.
+
+"Don't you think, dear, you may be mistaken?"
+
+"Mistaken? How on earth can I be mistaken?"
+
+Even in that moment of confusion he was struck by the cold competence of
+her tone, and wondered how she could be so sure.
+
+"You mean you've asked--you've consulted--?" The irony of it took him
+by the throat. They were the very words he might have spoken in some
+miserable secret colloquy--the words he was speaking to his wife!
+
+She repeated dully: "I know I'm not mistaken."
+
+There was another long silence. Undine lay still, her eyes shut,
+drumming on the arm of the sofa with a restless hand. The other lay
+cold in Ralph's clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the
+benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of
+the approach of illness, anxiety, and expense, and of the general
+unnecessary disorganization of their lives.
+
+"That's all you feel, then?" he asked at length a little bitterly, as if
+to disguise from himself the hateful fact that he felt it too. He stood
+up and moved away. "That's all?" he repeated.
+
+"Why, what else do you expect me to feel? I feel horribly ill, if that's
+what you want." He saw the sobs trembling up through her again.
+
+"Poor dear--poor girl...I'm so sorry--so dreadfully sorry!"
+
+The senseless reiteration seemed to exasperate her. He knew it by the
+quiver that ran through her like the premonitory ripple on smooth water
+before the coming of the wind. She turned about on him and jumped to her
+feet.
+
+"Sorry--you're sorry? YOU'RE sorry? Why, what earthly difference will it
+make to YOU?" She drew back a few steps and lifted her slender arms from
+her sides. "Look at me--see how I look--how I'm going to look! YOU
+won't hate yourself more and more every morning when you get up and see
+yourself in the glass! YOUR life's going on just as usual! But what's
+mine going to be for months and months? And just as I'd been to all this
+bother--fagging myself to death about all these things--" her tragic
+gesture swept the disordered room--"just as I thought I was going home
+to enjoy myself, and look nice, and see people again, and have a little
+pleasure after all our worries--" She dropped back on the sofa with
+another burst of tears. "For all the good this rubbish will do me now! I
+loathe the very sight of it!" she sobbed with her face in her hands.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+It was one of the distinctions of Mr. Claud Walsingham Popple that his
+studio was never too much encumbered with the attributes of his art
+to permit the installing, in one of its cushioned corners, of an
+elaborately furnished tea-table flanked by the most varied seductions
+in sandwiches and pastry.
+
+Mr. Popple, like all great men, had at first had his ups and downs; but
+his reputation had been permanently established by the verdict of a
+wealthy patron who, returning from an excursion into other fields of
+portraiture, had given it as the final fruit of his experience that
+Popple was the only man who could "do pearls." To sitters for whom this
+was of the first consequence it was another of the artist's merits
+that he always subordinated art to elegance, in life as well as in his
+portraits. The "messy" element of production was no more visible in
+his expensively screened and tapestried studio than its results were
+perceptible in his painting; and it was often said, in praise of his
+work, that he was the only artist who kept his studio tidy enough for a
+lady to sit to him in a new dress.
+
+Mr. Popple, in fact, held that the personality of the artist should at
+all times be dissembled behind that of the man. It was his opinion that
+the essence of good-breeding lay in tossing off a picture as easily as
+you lit a cigarette. Ralph Marvell had once said of him that when he
+began a portrait he always turned back his cuffs and said: "Ladies
+and gentlemen, you can see there's absolutely nothing here," and Mrs.
+Fairford supplemented the description by defining his painting as
+"chafing-dish" art. On a certain late afternoon of December, some four
+years after Mr. Popple's first meeting with Miss Undine Spragg of Apex,
+even the symbolic chafing-dish was nowhere visible in his studio; the
+only evidence of its recent activity being the full-length portrait of
+Mrs. Ralph Marvell, who, from her lofty easel and her heavily garlanded
+frame, faced the doorway with the air of having been invited to
+"receive" for Mr. Popple.
+
+The artist himself, becomingly clad in mouse-coloured velveteen, had
+just turned away from the picture to hover above the tea-cups; but his
+place had been taken by the considerably broader bulk of Mr. Peter Van
+Degen, who, tightly moulded into a coat of the latest cut, stood before
+the portrait in the attitude of a first arrival.
+
+"Yes, it's good--it's damn good, Popp; you've hit the hair off
+ripplingly; but the pearls ain't big enough," he pronounced.
+
+A slight laugh sounded from the raised dais behind the easel.
+
+"Of course they're not! But it's not HIS fault, poor man; HE didn't give
+them to me!" As she spoke Mrs. Ralph Marvell rose from a monumental gilt
+arm-chair of pseudo-Venetian design and swept her long draperies to Van
+Degen's side.
+
+"He might, then--for the privilege of painting you!" the latter
+rejoined, transferring his bulging stare from the counterfeit to the
+original. His eyes rested on Mrs. Marvell's in what seemed a quick
+exchange of understanding; then they passed on to a critical inspection
+of her person. She was dressed for the sitting in something faint and
+shining, above which the long curves of her neck looked dead white in
+the cold light of the studio; and her hair, all a shadowless rosy gold,
+was starred with a hard glitter of diamonds.
+
+"The privilege of painting me? Mercy, _I_ have to pay for being painted!
+He'll tell you he's giving me the picture--but what do you suppose this
+cost?" She laid a finger-tip on her shimmering dress.
+
+Van Degen's eye rested on her with cold enjoyment. "Does the price come
+higher than the dress?"
+
+She ignored the allusion. "Of course what they charge for is the cut--"
+
+"What they cut away? That's what they ought to charge for, ain't it,
+Popp?"
+
+Undine took this with cool disdain, but Mr. Popple's sensibilities were
+offended.
+
+"My dear Peter--really--the artist, you understand, sees all this as a
+pure question of colour, of pattern; and it's a point of honour with the
+MAN to steel himself against the personal seduction."
+
+Mr. Van Degen received this protest with a sound of almost vulgar
+derision, but Undine thrilled agreeably under the glance which her
+portrayer cast on her. She was flattered by Van Degen's notice, and
+thought his impertinence witty; but she glowed inwardly at Mr. Popple's
+eloquence. After more than three years of social experience she still
+thought he "spoke beautifully," like the hero of a novel, and she
+ascribed to jealousy the lack of seriousness with which her husband's
+friends regarded him. His conversation struck her as intellectual, and
+his eagerness to have her share his thoughts was in flattering contrast
+to Ralph's growing tendency to keep his to himself. Popple's homage
+seemed the, subtlest proof of what Ralph could have made of her if he
+had "really understood" her. It was but another step to ascribe all her
+past mistakes to the lack of such understanding; and the satisfaction
+derived from this thought had once impelled her to tell the artist that
+he alone knew how to rouse her 'higher self.' He had assured her that
+the memory of her words would thereafter hallow his life; and as he
+hinted that it had been stained by the darkest errors she was moved at
+the thought of the purifying influence she exerted.
+
+Thus it was that a man should talk to a true woman--but how few whom
+she had known possessed the secret! Ralph, in the first months of their
+marriage, had been eloquent too, had even gone the length of quoting
+poetry; but he disconcerted her by his baffling twists and strange
+allusions (she always scented ridicule in the unknown), and the poets he
+quoted were esoteric and abstruse. Mr. Popple's rhetoric was drawn from
+more familiar sources, and abounded in favourite phrases and in moving
+reminiscences of the Fifth Reader. He was moreover as literary as he
+was artistic; possessing an unequalled acquaintance with contemporary
+fiction, and dipping even into the lighter type of memoirs, in which the
+old acquaintances of history are served up in the disguise of "A Royal
+Sorceress" or "Passion in a Palace." The mastery with which Mr.
+Popple discussed the novel of the day, especially in relation to
+the sensibilities of its hero and heroine, gave Undine a sense of
+intellectual activity which contrasted strikingly with Marvell's
+flippant estimate of such works. "Passion," the artist implied, would
+have been the dominant note of his life, had it not been held in check
+by a sentiment of exalted chivalry, and by the sense that a nature of
+such emotional intensity as his must always be "ridden on the curb."
+
+Van Degen was helping himself from the tray of iced cocktails which
+stood near the tea-table, and Popple, turning to Undine, took up the
+thread of his discourse. But why, he asked, why allude before others to
+feelings so few could understand? The average man--lucky devil!--(with a
+compassionate glance at Van Degen's back) the average man knew nothing
+of the fierce conflict between the lower and higher natures; and even
+the woman whose eyes had kindled it--how much did SHE guess of its
+violence? Did she know--Popple recklessly asked--how often the artist
+was forgotten in the man--how often the man would take the bit between
+his teeth, were it not that the look in her eyes recalled some sacred
+memory, some lesson learned perhaps beside his mother's knee? "I say,
+Popp--was that where you learned to mix this drink? Because it does the
+old lady credit," Van Degen called out, smacking his lips; while the
+artist, dashing a nervous hand through his hair, muttered: "Hang it,
+Peter--is NOTHING sacred to you?"
+
+It pleased Undine to feel herself capable of inspiring such emotions.
+She would have been fatigued by the necessity of maintaining her own
+talk on Popple's level, but she liked to listen to him, and especially
+to have others overhear what he said to her.
+
+Her feeling for Van Degen was different. There was more similarity of
+tastes between them, though his manner flattered her vanity less than
+Popple's. She felt the strength of Van Degen's contempt for everything
+he did not understand or could not buy: that was the only kind of
+"exclusiveness" that impressed her. And he was still to her, as in her
+inexperienced days, the master of the mundane science she had once
+imagined that Ralph Marvell possessed. During the three years since her
+marriage she had learned to make distinctions unknown to her girlish
+categories. She had found out that she had given herself to the
+exclusive and the dowdy when the future belonged to the showy and the
+promiscuous; that she was in the case of those who have cast in
+their lot with a fallen cause, or--to use an analogy more within her
+range--who have hired an opera box on the wrong night. It was all
+confusing and exasperating. Apex ideals had been based on the myth of
+"old families" ruling New York from a throne of Revolutionary tradition,
+with the new millionaires paying them feudal allegiance. But experience
+had long since proved the delusiveness of the simile. Mrs. Marvell's
+classification of the world into the visited and the unvisited was as
+obsolete as a mediaeval cosmogony. Some of those whom Washington Square
+left unvisited were the centre of social systems far outside its
+ken, and as indifferent to its opinions as the constellations to the
+reckonings of the astronomers; and all these systems joyously revolved
+about their central sun of gold.
+
+There were moments after Undine's return to New York when she was
+tempted to class her marriage with the hateful early mistakes from the
+memories of which she had hoped it would free her. Since it was never
+her habit to accuse herself of such mistakes it was inevitable that she
+should gradually come to lay the blame on Ralph. She found a poignant
+pleasure, at this stage of her career, in the question: "What does a
+young girl know of life?" And the poignancy was deepened by the fact
+that each of the friends to whom she put the question seemed convinced
+that--had the privilege been his--he would have known how to spare her
+the disenchantment it implied.
+
+The conviction of having blundered was never more present to her than
+when, on this particular afternoon, the guests invited by Mr. Popple to
+view her portrait began to assemble before it.
+
+Some of the principal figures of Undine's group had rallied for
+the occasion, and almost all were in exasperating enjoyment of
+the privileges for which she pined. There was young Jim Driscoll,
+heir-apparent of the house, with his short stout mistrustful wife, who
+hated society, but went everywhere lest it might be thought she had been
+left out; the "beautiful Mrs. Beringer," a lovely aimless being, who
+kept (as Laura Fairford said) a home for stray opinions, and could never
+quite tell them apart; little Dicky Bowles, whom every one invited
+because he was understood to "say things" if one didn't; the Harvey
+Shallums, fresh from Paris, and dragging in their wake a bewildered
+nobleman vaguely designated as "the Count," who offered cautious
+conversational openings, like an explorer trying beads on savages; and,
+behind these more salient types, the usual filling in of those who are
+seen everywhere because they have learned to catch the social eye.
+
+Such a company was one to flatter the artist as much his sitter, so
+completely did it represent that unamity of opinion which constitutes
+social strength. Not one the number was troubled by any personal theory
+of art: all they asked of a portrait was that the costume should be
+sufficiently "life-like," and the face not too much so; and a long
+experience in idealizing flesh and realizing dress-fabrics had enabled
+Mr. Popple to meet both demands.
+
+"Hang it," Peter Van Degen pronounced, standing before the easel in
+an attitude of inspired interpretation, "the great thing in a man's
+portrait is to catch the likeness--we all know that; but with a woman's
+it's different--a woman's picture has got to be pleasing. Who wants
+it about if it isn't? Those big chaps who blow about what they call
+realism--how do THEIR portraits look in a drawing-room? Do you suppose
+they ever ask themselves that? THEY don't care--they're not going to
+live with the things! And what do they know of drawing-rooms, anyhow?
+Lots of them haven't even got a dress-suit. There's where old Popp has
+the pull over 'em--HE knows how we live and what we want."
+
+This was received by the artist with a deprecating murmur, and by his
+public with warm expressions of approval.
+
+"Happily in this case," Popple began ("as in that of so many of my
+sitters," he hastily put in), "there has been no need to idealize-nature
+herself has outdone the artist's dream."
+
+Undine, radiantly challenging comparison with her portrait, glanced
+up at it with a smile of conscious merit, which deepened as young Jim
+Driscoll declared:
+
+"By Jove, Mamie, you must be done exactly like that for the new
+music-room."
+
+His wife turned a cautious eye upon the picture.
+
+"How big is it? For our house it would have to be a good deal bigger,"
+she objected; and Popple, fired by the thought of such a dimensional
+opportunity, rejoined that it would be the chance of all others to.
+"work in" a marble portico and a court-train: he had just done Mrs.
+Lycurgus Ambler in a court-train and feathers, and as THAT was for
+Buffalo of course the pictures needn't clash.
+
+"Well, it would have to be a good deal bigger than Mrs. Ambler's," Mrs.
+Driscoll insisted; and on Popple's suggestion that in that case he might
+"work in" Driscoll, in court-dress also--("You've been presented? Well,
+you WILL be,--you'll HAVE to, if I do the picture--which will make a
+lovely memento")--Van Degen turned aside to murmur to Undine: "Pure
+bluff, you know--Jim couldn't pay for a photograph. Old Driscoll's high
+and dry since the Ararat investigation."
+
+She threw him a puzzled glance, having no time, in her crowded
+existence, to follow the perturbations of Wall Street save as they
+affected the hospitality of Fifth Avenue.
+
+"You mean they've lost their money? Won't they give their fancy ball,
+then?"
+
+Van Degen shrugged. "Nobody knows how it's coming out That queer chap
+Elmer Moffatt threatens to give old Driscoll a fancy ball--says he's
+going to dress him in stripes! It seems he knows too much about the Apex
+street-railways."
+
+Undine paled a little. Though she had already tried on her costume for
+the Driscoll ball her disappointment at Van Degen's announcement was
+effaced by the mention of Moffatt's name. She had not had the curiosity
+to follow the reports of the "Ararat Trust Investigation," but once
+or twice lately, in the snatches of smoking-room talk, she had been
+surprised by a vague allusion to Elmer Moffatt, as to an erratic
+financial influence, half ridiculed, yet already half redoubtable. Was
+it possible that the redoubtable element had prevailed? That the time
+had come when Elmer Moffatt--the Elmer Moffatt of Apex!--could, even for
+a moment, cause consternation in the Driscoll camp? He had always said
+he "saw things big"; but no one had ever believed he was destined to
+carry them out on the same scale. Yet apparently in those idle Apex
+days, while he seemed to be "loafing and fooling," as her father called
+it, he had really been sharpening his weapons of aggression; there had
+been something, after all, in the effect of loose-drifting power she had
+always felt in him. Her heart beat faster, and she longed to question
+Van Degen; but she was afraid of betraying herself, and turned back
+to the group about the picture. Mrs. Driscoll was still presenting
+objections in a tone of small mild obstinacy. "Oh, it's a LIKENESS, of
+course--I can see that; but there's one thing I must say, Mr. Popple. It
+looks like a last year's dress."
+
+The attention of the ladies instantly rallied to the picture, and the
+artist paled at the challenge.
+
+"It doesn't look like a last year's face, anyhow--that's what makes them
+all wild," Van Degen murmured. Undine gave him back a quick smile. She
+had already forgotten about Moffatt. Any triumph in which she shared
+left a glow in her veins, and the success of the picture obscured all
+other impressions. She saw herself throning in a central panel at the
+spring exhibition, with the crowd pushing about the picture, repeating
+her name; and she decided to stop on the way home and telephone her
+press-agent to do a paragraph about Popple's tea.
+
+But in the hall, as she drew on her cloak, her thoughts reverted to the
+Driscoll fancy ball. What a blow if it were given up after she had taken
+so much trouble about her dress! She was to go as the Empress Josephine,
+after the Prudhon portrait in the Louvre. The dress was already fitted
+and partly embroidered, and she foresaw the difficulty of persuading the
+dress-maker to take it back.
+
+"Why so pale and sad, fair cousin? What's up?" Van Degen asked, as they
+emerged from the lift in which they had descended alone from the studio.
+
+"I don't know--I'm tired of posing. And it was so frightfully hot."
+
+"Yes. Popple always keeps his place at low-neck temperature, as if the
+portraits might catch cold." Van Degen glanced at his watch. "Where are
+you off to?"
+
+"West End Avenue, of course--if I can find a cab to take me there."
+
+It was not the least of Undine's grievances that she was still living in
+the house which represented Mr. Spragg's first real-estate venture in
+New York. It had been understood, at the time of her marriage, that
+the young couple were to be established within the sacred precincts of
+fashion; but on their return from the honeymoon the still untenanted
+house in West End Avenue had been placed at their disposal, and in view
+of Mr. Spragg's financial embarrassment even Undine had seen the folly
+of refusing it. That first winter, more-over, she had not regretted her
+exile: while she awaited her boy's birth she was glad to be out of sight
+of Fifth Avenue, and to take her hateful compulsory exercise where no
+familiar eye could fall on her. And the next year of course her father
+would give them a better house.
+
+But the next year rents had risen in the Fifth Avenue quarter, and
+meanwhile little Paul Marvell, from his beautiful pink cradle, was
+already interfering with his mother's plans. Ralph, alarmed by the fresh
+rush of expenses, sided with his father-in-law in urging Undine to
+resign herself to West End Avenue; and thus after three years she
+was still submitting to the incessant pin-pricks inflicted by the
+incongruity between her social and geographical situation--the need of
+having to give a west side address to her tradesmen, and the deeper
+irritation of hearing her friends say: "Do let me give you a lift home,
+dear--Oh, I'd forgotten! I'm afraid I haven't the time to go so far--"
+
+It was bad enough to have no motor of her own, to be avowedly dependent
+on "lifts," openly and unconcealably in quest of them, and perpetually
+plotting to provoke their offer (she did so hate to be seen in a cab!)
+but to miss them, as often as not, because of the remoteness of her
+destination, emphasized the hateful sense of being "out of things."
+
+Van Degen looked out at the long snow-piled streets, down which the
+lamps were beginning to put their dreary yellow splashes.
+
+"Of course you won't get a cab on a night like this. If you don't mind
+the open car, you'd better jump in with me. I'll run you out to the High
+Bridge and give you a breath of air before dinner."
+
+The offer was tempting, for Undine's triumph in the studio had left her
+tired and nervous--she was beginning to learn that success may be as
+fatiguing as failure. Moreover, she was going to a big dinner that
+evening, and the fresh air would give her the eyes and complexion she
+needed; but in the back of her mind there lingered the vague sense of
+a forgotten engagement. As she tried to recall it she felt Van Degen
+raising the fur collar about her chin.
+
+"Got anything you can put over your head? Will that lace thing do? Come
+along, then." He pushed her through the swinging doors, and added with a
+laugh, as they reached the street: "You're not afraid of being seen with
+me, are you? It's all right at this hour--Ralph's still swinging on a
+strap in the elevated."
+
+The winter twilight was deliriously cold, and as they swept through
+Central Park, and gathered impetus for their northward flight along the
+darkening Boulevard, Undine felt the rush of physical joy that drowns
+scruples and silences memory. Her scruples, indeed, were not serious;
+but Ralph disliked her being too much with Van Degen, and it was her way
+to get what she wanted with as little "fuss" as possible. Moreover, she
+knew it was a mistake to make herself too accessible to a man of Peter's
+sort: her impatience to enjoy was curbed by an instinct for holding off
+and biding her time that resembled the patient skill with which her
+father had conducted the sale of his "bad" real estate in the Pure Water
+Move days. But now and then youth had its way--she could not always
+resist the present pleasure. And it was amusing, too, to be "talked
+about" with Peter Van Degen, who was noted for not caring for "nice
+women." She enjoyed the thought of triumphing over meretricious charms:
+it ennobled her in her own eyes to influence such a man for good.
+
+Nevertheless, as the motor flew on through the icy twilight, her present
+cares flew with it. She could not shake off the thought of the useless
+fancy dress which symbolized the other crowding expenses she had not
+dared confess to Ralph. Van Degen heard her sigh, and bent down,
+lowering the speed of the motor.
+
+"What's the matter? Isn't everything all right?"
+
+His tone made her suddenly feel that she could confide in him, and
+though she began by murmuring that it was nothing she did so with the
+conscious purpose of being persuaded to confess. And his extraordinary
+"niceness" seemed to justify her and to prove that she had been right in
+trusting her instinct rather than in following the counsels of prudence.
+Heretofore, in their talks, she had never gone beyond the vaguest hint
+of material "bothers"--as to which dissimulation seemed vain while one
+lived in West End Avenue! But now that the avowal of a definite worry
+had been wrung from her she felt the injustice of the view generally
+taken of poor Peter. For he had been neither too enterprising nor too
+cautious (though people said of him that he "didn't care to part"); he
+had just laughed away, in bluff brotherly fashion, the gnawing thought
+of the fancy dress, had assured her he'd give a ball himself rather
+than miss seeing her wear it, and had added: "Oh, hang waiting for the
+bill--won't a couple of thou make it all right?" in a tone that showed
+what a small matter money was to any one who took the larger view of
+life.
+
+The whole incident passed off so quickly and easily that within a few
+minutes she had settled down--with a nod for his "Everything jolly again
+now?"--to untroubled enjoyment of the hour. Peace of mind, she said to
+herself, was all she needed to make her happy--and that was just what
+Ralph had never given her! At the thought his face seemed to rise before
+her, with the sharp lines of care between the eyes: it was almost like a
+part of his "nagging" that he should thrust himself in at such a moment!
+She tried to shut her eyes to the face; but a moment later it was
+replaced by another, a small odd likeness of itself; and with a cry of
+compunction she started up from her furs.
+
+"Mercy! It's the boy's birthday--I was to take him to his grandmother's.
+She was to have a cake for him and Ralph was to come up town. I KNEW
+there was something I'd forgotten!"
+
+
+
+XV
+
+In the Dagonet drawing-room the lamps had long been lit, and Mrs.
+Fairford, after a last impatient turn, had put aside the curtains of
+worn damask to strain her eyes into the darkening square. She came
+back to the hearth, where Charles Bowen stood leaning between the prim
+caryatides of the white marble chimney-piece.
+
+"No sign of her. She's simply forgotten."
+
+Bowen looked at his watch, and turned to compare it with the
+high-waisted Empire clock.
+
+"Six o'clock. Why not telephone again? There must be some mistake.
+Perhaps she knew Ralph would be late."
+
+Laura laughed. "I haven't noticed that she follows Ralph's movements
+so closely. When I telephoned just now the servant said she'd been out
+since two. The nurse waited till half-past four, not liking to come
+without orders; and now it's too late for Paul to come."
+
+She wandered away toward the farther end of the room, where,
+through half-open doors, a shining surface of mahogany reflected a
+flower-wreathed cake in which two candles dwindled.
+
+"Put them out, please," she said to some one in the background; then she
+shut the doors and turned back to Bowen.
+
+"It's all so unlucky--my grandfather giving up his drive, and mother
+backing out of her hospital meeting, and having all the committee down
+on her. And Henley: I'd even coaxed Henley away from his bridge! He
+escaped again just before you came. Undine promised she'd have the boy
+here at four. It's not as if it had never happened before. She's always
+breaking her engagements."
+
+"She has so many that it's inevitable some should get broken."
+
+"All if she'd only choose! Now that Ralph has had into business, and
+is kept in his office so late, it's cruel of her to drag him out every
+night. He told us the other day they hadn't dined at home for a month.
+Undine doesn't seem to notice how hard he works."
+
+Bowen gazed meditatively at the crumbling fire. "No--why should she?"
+
+"Why SHOULD she? Really, Charles--!"
+
+"Why should she, when she knows nothing about it?"
+
+"She may know nothing about his business; but she must know it's her
+extravagance that's forced him into it." Mrs. Fairford looked at Bowen
+reproachfully. "You talk as if you were on her side!"
+
+"Are there sides already? If so, I want to look down on them impartially
+from the heights of pure speculation. I want to get a general view of
+the whole problem of American marriages."
+
+Mrs. Fairford dropped into her arm-chair with a sigh. "If that's what
+you want you must make haste! Most of them don't last long enough to be
+classified."
+
+"I grant you it takes an active mind. But the weak point is so
+frequently the same that after a time one knows where to look for it."
+
+"What do you call the weak point?"
+
+He paused. "The fact that the average American looks down on his wife."
+
+Mrs. Fairford was up with a spring. "If that's where paradox lands you!"
+
+Bowen mildly stood his ground. "Well--doesn't he prove it? How much does
+he let her share in the real business of life? How much does he rely on
+her judgment and help in the conduct of serious affairs? Take Ralph for
+instance--you say his wife's extravagance forces him to work too hard;
+but that's not what's wrong. It's normal for a man to work hard for a
+woman--what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it."
+
+"To tell Undine? She'd be bored to death if he did!"
+
+"Just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it's against the
+custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man's again--I don't
+mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus.
+Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply
+because we don't take enough interest in THEM."
+
+Mrs. Fairford, sinking back into her chair, sat gazing at the
+vertiginous depths above which his thought seemed to dangle her.
+
+"YOU don't? The American man doesn't--the most slaving, self-effacing,
+self-sacrificing--?"
+
+"Yes; and the most indifferent: there's the point. The 'slaving's' no
+argument against the indifference To slave for women is part of the old
+American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they've
+ceased to believe in. Then again, in this country the passion for making
+money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man
+lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn't know what else to do
+with it."
+
+"Then you call it a mere want of imagination for a man to spend his
+money on his wife?"
+
+"Not necessarily--but it's a want of imagination to fancy it's all
+he owes her. Look about you and you'll see what I mean. Why does the
+European woman interest herself so much more in what the men are doing?
+Because she's so important to them that they make it worth her while!
+She's not a parenthesis, as she is here--she's in the very middle
+of the picture. I'm not implying that Ralph isn't interested in his
+wife--he's a passionate, a pathetic exception. But even he has to
+conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed.
+Where does the real life of most American men lie? In some woman's
+drawing-room or in their offices? The answer's obvious, isn't it? The
+emotional centre of gravity's not the same in the two hemispheres. In
+the effete societies it's love, in our new one it's business. In America
+the real crime passionnel is a 'big steal'--there's more excitement in
+wrecking railways than homes."
+
+Bowen paused to light another cigarette, and then took up his theme.
+"Isn't that the key to our easy divorces? If we cared for women in the
+old barbarous possessive way do you suppose we'd give them up as
+readily as we do? The real paradox is the fact that the men who make,
+materially, the biggest sacrifices for their women, should do least for
+them ideally and romantically. And what's the result--how do the women
+avenge themselves? All my sympathy's with them, poor deluded dears, when
+I see their fallacious little attempt to trick out the leavings
+tossed them by the preoccupied male--the money and the motors and the
+clothes--and pretend to themselves and each other that THAT'S what
+really constitutes life! Oh, I know what you're going to say--it's less
+and less of a pretense with them, I grant you; they're more and more
+succumbing to the force of the suggestion; but here and there I fancy
+there's one who still sees through the humbug, and knows that money and
+motors and clothes are simply the big bribe she's paid for keeping out
+of some man's way!"
+
+Mrs. Fairford presented an amazed silence to the rush of this tirade;
+but when she rallied it was to murmur: "And is Undine one of the
+exceptions?"
+
+Her companion took the shot with a smile. "No--she's a monstrously
+perfect result of the system: the completest proof of its triumph. It's
+Ralph who's the victim and the exception."
+
+"Ah, poor Ralph!" Mrs. Fairford raised her head quickly. "I hear him
+now. I suppose," she added in an undertone, "we can't give him your
+explanation for his wife's having forgotten to come?"
+
+Bowen echoed her sigh, and then seemed to toss it from him with his
+cigarette-end; but he stood in silence while the door opened and Ralph
+Marvell entered.
+
+"Well, Laura! Hallo, Charles--have you been celebrating too?" Ralph
+turned to his sister. "It's outrageous of me to be so late, and I
+daren't look my son in the face! But I stayed down town to make
+provision for his future birthdays." He returned Mrs. Fairford's kiss.
+"Don't tell me the party's over, and the guest of honour gone to bed?"
+
+As he stood before them, laughing and a little flushed, the strain of
+long fatigue sounding through his gaiety and looking out of his anxious
+eyes, Mrs. Fairford threw a glance at Bowen and then turned away to ring
+the bell.
+
+"Sit down, Ralph--you look tired. I'll give you some tea."
+
+He dropped into an arm-chair. "I did have rather a rush to get here--but
+hadn't I better join the revellers? Where are they?"
+
+He walked to the end of the room and threw open the dining-room doors.
+"Hallo--where have they all gone to? What a jolly cake!" He went up to
+it. "Why, it's never even been cut!"
+
+Mrs. Fairford called after him: "Come and have your tea first."
+
+"No, no--tea afterward, thanks. Are they all upstairs with my
+grandfather? I must make my peace with Undine--" His sister put her arm
+through his, and drew him back to the fire.
+
+"Undine didn't come."
+
+"Didn't come? Who brought the boy, then?"
+
+"He didn't come either. That's why the cake's not cut."
+
+Ralph frowned. "What's the mystery? Is he ill, or what's happened?"
+
+"Nothing's happened--Paul's all right. Apparently Undine forgot. She
+never went home for him, and the nurse waited till it was too late to
+come."
+
+She saw his eyes darken; but he merely gave a slight laugh and drew out
+his cigarette case. "Poor little Paul--poor chap!" He moved toward the
+fire. "Yes, please--some tea."
+
+He dropped back into his chair with a look of weariness, as if some
+strong stimulant had suddenly ceased to take effect on him; but before
+the tea-table was brought back he had glanced at his watch and was on
+his feet again.
+
+"But this won't do. I must rush home and see the poor chap before
+dinner. And my mother--and my grandfather? I want to say a word to
+them--I must make Paul's excuses!"
+
+"Grandfather's taking his nap. And mother had to rush out for a
+postponed committee meeting--she left as soon as we heard Paul wasn't
+coming."
+
+"Ah, I see." He sat down again. "Yes, make the strong, please. I've had
+a beastly fagging sort of day."
+
+He leaned back with half-closed eyes, his untouched cup in his hand.
+Bowen took leave, and Laura sat silent, watching her brother under
+lowered lids while she feigned to be busy with the kettle. Ralph
+presently emptied his cup and put it aside; then, sinking into his
+former attitude, he clasped his hands behind his head and lay staring
+apathetically into the fire. But suddenly he came to life and started
+up. A motor-horn had sounded outside, and there was a noise of wheels at
+the door.
+
+"There's Undine! I wonder what could have kept her." He jumped up and
+walked to the door; but it was Clare Van Degen who came in. At sight of
+him she gave a little murmur of pleasure. "What luck to find you! No,
+not luck--I came because I knew you'd be here. He never comes near me,
+Laura: I have to hunt him down to get a glimpse of him!"
+
+Slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss Mrs. Fairford and
+then turned back to Ralph. "Yes, I knew I'd catch you here. I knew
+it was the boy's birthday, and I've brought him a present: a vulgar
+expensive Van Degen offering. I've not enough imagination left to find
+the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. When I
+look for a present nowadays I never say to the shopman: 'I want this or
+that'--I simply say: 'Give me something that costs so much.'"
+
+She drew a parcel from her muff. "Where's the victim of my vulgarity?
+Let me crush him under the weight of my gold."
+
+Mrs. Fairford sighed out "Clare--Clare!" and Ralph smiled at his cousin.
+
+"I'm sorry; but you'll have to depute me to present it. The birthday's
+over; you're too late."
+
+She looked surprised. "Why, I've just left Mamie Driscoll, and she told
+me Undine was still at Popple's studio a few minutes ago: Popple's
+giving a tea to show the picture."
+
+"Popple's giving a tea?" Ralph struck an attitude of mock consternation.
+"Ah, in that case--! In Popple's society who wouldn't forget the flight
+of time?"
+
+He had recovered his usual easy tone, and Laura sat that Mrs. Van
+Degen's words had dispelled his preoccupation. He turned to his cousin.
+"Will you trust me with your present for the boy?"
+
+Clare gave him the parcel. "I'm sorry not to give it myself. I said what
+I did because I knew what you and Laura were thinking--but it's really
+a battered old Dagonet bowl that came down to me from our revered
+great-grandmother."
+
+"What--the heirloom you used to eat your porridge out of?" Ralph
+detained her hand to put a kiss on it. "That's dear of you!"
+
+She threw him one of her strange glances. "Why not say: 'That's like
+you?' But you don't remember what I'm like." She turned away to glance
+at the clock. "It's late, and I must be off. I'm going to a big dinner
+at the Chauncey Ellings'--but you must be going there too, Ralph? You'd
+better let me drive you home."
+
+In the motor Ralph leaned back in silence, while the rug was drawn
+over their knees, and Clare restlessly fingered the row of gold-topped
+objects in the rack at her elbow. It was restful to be swept through the
+crowded streets in this smooth fashion, and Clare's presence at his side
+gave him a vague sense of ease.
+
+For a long time now feminine nearness had come to mean to him, not
+this relief from tension, but the ever-renewed dread of small daily
+deceptions, evasions, subterfuges. The change had come gradually, marked
+by one disillusionment after another; but there had been one moment that
+formed the point beyond which there was no returning. It was the moment,
+a month or two before his boy's birth, when, glancing over a batch of
+belated Paris bills, he had come on one from the jeweller he had once
+found in private conference with Undine. The bill was not large, but two
+of its items stood out sharply. "Resetting pearl and diamond pendant.
+Resetting sapphire and diamond ring." The pearl and diamond pendant was
+his mother's wedding present; the ring was the one he had given Undine
+on their engagement. That they were both family relics, kept unchanged
+through several generations, scarcely mattered to him at the time: he
+felt only the stab of his wife's deception. She had assured him in Paris
+that she had not had her jewels reset. He had noticed, soon after their
+return to New York, that she had left off her engagement-ring; but the
+others were soon discarded also, and in answer to his question she had
+told him that, in her ailing state, rings "worried" her. Now he saw she
+had deceived him, and, forgetting everything else, he went to her, bill
+in hand. Her tears and distress filled him with immediate contrition.
+Was this a time to torment her about trifles? His anger seemed to
+cause her actual physical fear, and at the sight he abased himself in
+entreaties for forgiveness. When the scene ended she had pardoned him,
+and the reset ring was on her finger...
+
+Soon afterward, the birth of the boy seemed to wipe out these
+humiliating memories; yet Marvell found in time that they were not
+effaced, but only momentarily crowded out of sight. In reality, the
+incident had a meaning out of proportion to its apparent seriousness,
+for it put in his hand a clue to a new side of his wife's character. He
+no longer minded her having lied about the jeweller; what pained him was
+that she had been unconscious of the wound she inflicted in destroying
+the identity of the jewels. He saw that, even after their explanation,
+she still supposed he was angry only because she had deceived him; and
+the discovery that she was completely unconscious of states of feeling
+on which so much of his inner life depended marked a new stage in their
+relation. He was not thinking of all this as he sat beside Clare Van
+Degen; but it was part of the chronic disquietude which made him more
+alive to his cousin's sympathy, her shy unspoken understanding. After
+all, he and she were of the same blood and had the same traditions. She
+was light and frivolous, without strength of will or depth of purpose;
+but she had the frankness of her foibles, and she would never have lied
+to him or traded on his tenderness.
+
+Clare's nervousness gradually subsided, and she lapsed into a low-voiced
+mood which seemed like an answer to his secret thought. But she did not
+sound the personal note, and they chatted quietly of commonplace things:
+of the dinner-dance at which they were presently to meet, of the
+costume she had chosen for the Driscoll fancy-ball, the recurring
+rumours of old Driscoll's financial embarrassment, and the mysterious
+personality of Elmer Moffatt, on whose movements Wall Street was
+beginning to fix a fascinated eye. When Ralph, the year after his
+marriage, had renounced his profession to go into partnership with a
+firm of real-estate agents, he had come in contact for the first time
+with the drama of "business," and whenever he could turn his attention
+from his own tasks he found a certain interest in watching the fierce
+interplay of its forces. In the down-town world he had heard things
+of Moffatt that seemed to single him out from the common herd of
+money-makers: anecdotes of his coolness, his lazy good-temper, the
+humorous detachment he preserved in the heat of conflicting interests;
+and his figure was enlarged by the mystery that hung about it--the fact
+that no one seemed to know whence he came, or how he had acquired the
+information which, for the moment, was making him so formidable. "I
+should like to see him," Ralph said; "he must be a good specimen of the
+one of the few picturesque types we've got."
+
+"Yes--it might be amusing to fish him out; but the most picturesque
+types in Wall Street are generally the tamest in a drawing-room." Clare
+considered. "But doesn't Undine know him? I seem to remember seeing them
+together."
+
+"Undine and Moffatt? Then you KNOW him--you've' met him?"
+
+"Not actually met him--but he's been pointed out to me. It must have
+been some years ago. Yes--it was one night at the theatre, just after
+you announced your engagement." He fancied her voice trembled slightly,
+as though she thought he might notice her way of dating her memories.
+"You came into our box," she went on, "and I asked you the name of the
+red-faced man who was sitting in the stall next to Undine. You didn't
+know, but some one told us it was Moffatt."
+
+Marvell was more struck by her tone than by what she was saying. "If
+Undine knows him it's odd she's never mentioned it," he answered
+indifferently.
+
+The motor stopped at his door and Clare, as she held out her hand,
+turned a first full look on him.
+
+"Why do you never come to see me? I miss you more than ever," she said.
+
+He pressed her hand without answering, but after the motor had rolled
+away he stood for a while on the pavement, looking after it.
+
+When he entered the house the hall was still dark and the small
+over-furnished drawing-room empty. The parlour-maid told him that Mrs.
+Marvell had not yet come in, and he went upstairs to the nursery. But on
+the threshold the nurse met him with the whispered request not to make
+a noise, as it had been hard to quiet the boy after the afternoon's
+disappointment, and she had just succeeded in putting him to sleep.
+Ralph went down to his own room and threw himself in the old college
+arm-chair in which, four years previously, he had sat the night out,
+dreaming of Undine. He had no study of his own, and he had crowded into
+his narrow bed-room his prints and bookshelves, and the other relics of
+his youth. As he sat among them now the memory of that other night swept
+over him--the night when he had heard the "call"! Fool as he had been
+not to recognize its meaning then, he knew himself triply mocked in
+being, even now, at its mercy. The flame of love that had played
+about his passion for his wife had died down to its embers; all the
+transfiguring hopes and illusions were gone, but they had left an
+unquenchable ache for her nearness, her smile, her touch. His life
+had come to be nothing but a long effort to win these mercies by one
+concession after another: the sacrifice of his literary projects,
+the exchange of his profession for an uncongenial business, and the
+incessant struggle to make enough money to satisfy her increasing
+exactions. That was where the "call" had led him... The clock struck
+eight, but it was useless to begin to dress till Undine came in, and he
+stretched himself out in his chair, reached for a pipe and took up the
+evening paper. His passing annoyance had died out; he was usually too
+tired after his day's work for such feelings to keep their edge long.
+But he was curious--disinterestedly curious--to know what pretext Undine
+would invent for being so late, and what excuse she would have found for
+forgetting the little boy's birthday.
+
+He read on till half-past eight; then he stood up and sauntered to the
+window. The avenue below it was deserted; not a carriage or motor turned
+the corner around which he expected Undine to appear, and he looked idly
+in the opposite direction. There too the perspective was nearly empty,
+so empty that he singled out, a dozen blocks away, the blazing lamps
+of a large touring-car that was bearing furiously down the avenue from
+Morningside. As it drew nearer its speed slackened, and he saw it hug
+the curb and stop at his door. By the light of the street lamp he
+recognized his wife as she sprang out and detected a familiar silhouette
+in her companion's fur-coated figure. Then the motor flew on and Undine
+ran up the steps. Ralph went out on the landing. He saw her coming up
+quickly, as if to reach her room unperceived; but when she caught sight
+of him she stopped, her head thrown back and the light falling on her
+blown hair and glowing face.
+
+"Well?" she said, smiling up at him.
+
+"They waited for you all the afternoon in Washington Square--the boy
+never had his birthday," he answered.
+
+Her colour deepened, but she instantly rejoined: "Why, what happened?
+Why didn't the nurse take him?"
+
+"You said you were coming to fetch him, so she waited."
+
+"But I telephoned--"
+
+He said to himself: "Is THAT the lie?" and answered: "Where from?"
+
+"Why, the studio, of course--" She flung her cloak open, as if to attest
+her veracity. "The sitting lasted longer than usual--there was something
+about the dress he couldn't get--"
+
+"But I thought he was giving a tea."
+
+"He had tea afterward; he always does. And he asked some people in to
+see my portrait. That detained me too. I didn't know they were coming,
+and when they turned up I couldn't rush away. It would have looked as
+if I didn't like the picture." She paused and they gave each other a
+searching simultaneous glance. "Who told you it was a tea?" she asked.
+
+"Clare Van Degen. I saw her at my mother's."
+
+"So you weren't unconsoled after all--!"
+
+"The nurse didn't get any message. My people were awfully disappointed;
+and the poor boy has cried his eyes out."
+
+"Dear me! What a fuss! But I might have known my message wouldn't be
+delivered. Everything always happens to put me in the wrong with your
+family."
+
+With a little air of injured pride she started to go to her room; but he
+put out a hand to detain her.
+
+"You've just come from the studio?"
+
+"Yes. It is awfully late? I must go and dress. We're dining with the
+Ellings, you know."
+
+"I know... How did you come? In a cab?"
+
+She faced him limpidly. "No; I couldn't find one that would bring me--so
+Peter gave me a lift, like an angel. I'm blown to bits. He had his open
+car."
+
+Her colour was still high, and Ralph noticed that her lower lip twitched
+a little. He had led her to the point they had reached solely to be able
+to say: "If you're straight from the studio, how was it that I saw you
+coming down from Morningside?"
+
+Unless he asked her that there would be no point in his
+cross-questioning, and he would have sacrificed his pride without
+a purpose. But suddenly, as they stood there face to face, almost
+touching, she became something immeasurably alien and far off, and the
+question died on his lips.
+
+"Is that all?" she asked with a slight smile.
+
+"Yes; you'd better go and dress," he said, and turned back to his room.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+The turnings of life seldom show a sign-post; or rather, though the
+sign is always there, it is usually placed some distance back, like the
+notices that give warning of a bad hill or a level railway-crossing.
+
+Ralph Marvell, pondering upon this, reflected that for him the sign had
+been set, more than three years earlier, in an Italian ilex-grove. That
+day his life had brimmed over--so he had put it at the time. He saw now
+that it had brimmed over indeed: brimmed to the extent of leaving the
+cup empty, or at least of uncovering the dregs beneath the nectar. He
+knew now that he should never hereafter look at his wife's hand without
+remembering something he had read in it that day. Its surface-language
+had been sweet enough, but under the rosy lines he had seen the warning
+letters.
+
+Since then he had been walking with a ghost: the miserable ghost of his
+illusion. Only he had somehow vivified, coloured, substantiated it, by
+the force of his own great need--as a man might breathe a semblance of
+life into a dear drowned body that he cannot give up for dead. All this
+came to him with aching distinctness the morning after his talk with his
+wife on the stairs. He had accused himself, in midnight retrospect, of
+having failed to press home his conclusion because he dared not face
+the truth. But he knew this was not the case. It was not the truth he
+feared, it was another lie. If he had foreseen a chance of her saying:
+"Yes, I was with Peter Van Degen, and for the reason you think," he
+would have put it to the touch, stood up to the blow like a man; but he
+knew she would never say that. She would go on eluding and doubling,
+watching him as he watched her; and at that game she was sure to beat
+him in the end.
+
+On their way home from the Elling dinner this certainty had become so
+insufferable that it nearly escaped him in the cry: "You needn't watch
+me--I shall never again watch you!" But he had held his peace, knowing
+she would not understand. How little, indeed, she ever understood,
+had been made clear to him when, the same night, he had followed her
+upstairs through the sleeping house. She had gone on ahead while he
+stayed below to lock doors and put out lights, and he had supposed her
+to be already in her room when he reached the upper landing; but she
+stood there waiting in the spot where he had waited for her a few hours
+earlier. She had shone her vividest at dinner, with revolving brilliancy
+that collective approval always struck from her; and the glow of it
+still hung on her as she paused there in the dimness, her shining cloak
+dropped from her white shoulders.
+
+"Ralphie--" she began, a soft hand on his arm. He stopped, and she
+pulled him about so that their faces were close, and he saw her lips
+curving for a kiss. Every line of her face sought him, from the sweep of
+the narrowed eyelids to the dimples that played away from her smile. His
+eye received the picture with distinctness; but for the first time it
+did not pass into his veins. It was as if he had been struck with a
+subtle blindness that permitted images to give their colour to the eye
+but communicated nothing to the brain.
+
+"Good-night," he said, as he passed on.
+
+When a man felt in that way about a woman he was surely in a position to
+deal with his case impartially. This came to Ralph as the joyless solace
+of the morning. At last the bandage was off and he could see. And what
+did he see? Only the uselessness of driving his wife to subterfuges that
+were no longer necessary. Was Van Degen her lover? Probably not--the
+suspicion died as it rose. She would not take more risks than she could
+help, and it was admiration, not love, that she wanted. She wanted
+to enjoy herself, and her conception of enjoyment was publicity,
+promiscuity--the band, the banners, the crowd, the close contact of
+covetous impulses, and the sense of walking among them in cool security.
+Any personal entanglement might mean "bother," and bother was the thing
+she most abhorred. Probably, as the queer formula went, his "honour"
+was safe: he could count on the letter of her fidelity. At moment the
+conviction meant no more to him than if he had been assured of the
+honesty of the first strangers he met in the street. A stranger--that
+was what she had always been to him. So malleable outwardly, she had
+remained insensible to the touch of the heart.
+
+These thoughts accompanied him on his way to business the next morning.
+Then, as the routine took him back, the feeling of strangeness
+diminished. There he was again at his daily task--nothing tangible was
+altered. He was there for the same purpose as yesterday: to make money
+for his wife and child. The woman he had turned from on the stairs a few
+hours earlier was still his wife and the mother of Paul Marvell. She was
+an inherent part of his life; the inner disruption had not resulted in
+any outward upheaval. And with the sense of inevitableness there came a
+sudden wave of pity. Poor Undine! She was what the gods had made her--a
+creature of skin-deep reactions, a mote in the beam of pleasure. He
+had no desire to "preach down" such heart as she had--he felt only a
+stronger wish to reach it, teach it, move it to something of the pity
+that filled his own. They were fellow-victims in the noyade of marriage,
+but if they ceased to struggle perhaps the drowning would be easier for
+both...Meanwhile the first of the month was at hand, with its usual
+batch of bills; and there was no time to think of any struggle less
+pressing than that connected with paying them...
+
+Undine had been surprised, and a little disconcerted, at her husband's
+acceptance of the birthday incident. Since the resetting of her bridal
+ornaments the relations between Washington Square and West End Avenue
+had been more and more strained; and the silent disapproval of the
+Marvell ladies was more irritating to her than open recrimination. She
+knew how keenly Ralph must feel her last slight to his family, and she
+had been frightened when she guessed that he had seen her returning with
+Van Degen. He must have been watching from the window, since, credulous
+as he always was, he evidently had a reason for not believing her when
+she told him she had come from the studio. There was therefore something
+both puzzling and disturbing in his silence; and she made up her mind
+that it must be either explained or cajoled away.
+
+These thoughts were with her as she dressed; but at the Ellings' they
+fled like ghosts before light and laughter. She had never been more open
+to the suggestions of immediate enjoyment. At last she had reached the
+envied situation of the pretty woman with whom society must reckon, and
+if she had only had the means to live up to her opportunities she would
+have been perfectly content with life, with herself and her husband. She
+still thought Ralph "sweet" when she was not bored by his good advice or
+exasperated by his inability to pay her bills. The question of money
+was what chiefly stood between them; and now that this was momentarily
+disposed of by Van Degen's offer she looked at Ralph more kindly--she
+even felt a return of her first impersonal affection for him. Everybody
+could see that Clare Van Degen was "gone" on him, and Undine always
+liked to know that what belonged to her was coveted by others. Her
+reassurance had been fortified by the news she had heard at the Elling
+dinner--the published fact of Harmon B. Driscoll's unexpected victory.
+The Ararat investigation had been mysteriously stopped--quashed, in the
+language of the law--and Elmer Moffatt "turned down," as Van Degen (who
+sat next to her) expressed it.
+
+"I don't believe we'll ever hear of that gentleman again," he said
+contemptuously; and their eyes crossed gaily as she exclaimed: "Then
+they'll give the fancy ball after all?"
+
+"I should have given you one anyhow--shouldn't you have liked that as
+well?" "Oh, you can give me one too!" she returned; and he bent closer
+to say: "By Jove, I will--and anything else you want."
+
+But on the way home her fears revived. Ralph's indifference struck
+her as unnatural. He had not returned to the subject of Paul's
+disappointment, had not even asked her to write a word of excuse to his
+mother. Van Degen's way of looking at her at dinner--he was incapable
+of graduating his glances--had made it plain that the favour she had
+accepted would necessitate her being more conspicuously in his company
+(though she was still resolved that it should be on just such terms as
+she chose); and it would be extremely troublesome if, at this juncture,
+Ralph should suddenly turn suspicious and secretive.
+
+Undine, hitherto, had found more benefits than drawbacks in her
+marriage; but now the tie began to gall. It was hard to be criticized
+for every grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do the
+reaching for her! Ralph had gone into business to make more money for
+her; but it was plain that the "more" would never be much, and that he
+would not achieve the quick rise to affluence which was man's natural
+tribute to woman's merits. Undine felt herself trapped, deceived; and it
+was intolerable that the agent of her disillusionment should presume to
+be the critic of her conduct. Her annoyance, however, died out with
+her fears. Ralph, the morning after the Elling dinner, went his way as
+usual, and after nerving herself for the explosion which did not come
+she set down his indifference to the dulling effect of "business." No
+wonder poor women whose husbands were always "down-town" had to look
+elsewhere for sympathy! Van Degen's cheque helped to calm her, and the
+weeks whirled on toward the Driscoll ball.
+
+The ball was as brilliant as she had hoped, and her own part in it as
+thrilling as a page from one of the "society novels" with which she had
+cheated the monotony of Apex days. She had no time for reading now:
+every hour was packed with what she would have called life, and the
+intensity of her sensations culminated on that triumphant evening. What
+could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied
+her dress, the men did not so much as look at it? Their admiration was
+all for herself, and her beauty deepened under it as flowers take a
+warmer colour in the rays of sunset. Only Van Degen's glance weighed
+on her a little too heavily. Was it possible that he might become a
+"bother" less negligible than those he had relieved her of? Undine
+was not greatly alarmed--she still had full faith in her powers of
+self-defense; but she disliked to feel the least crease in the smooth
+surface of existence. She had always been what her parents called
+"sensitive."
+
+As the winter passed, material cares once more assailed her. In
+the thrill of liberation produced by Van Degen's gift she had been
+imprudent--had launched into fresh expenses. Not that she accused
+herself of extravagance: she had done nothing not really necessary. The
+drawing-room, for instance, cried out to be "done over," and Popple, who
+was an authority on decoration, had shown her, with a few strokes of his
+pencil how easily it might be transformed into a French "period" room,
+all curves and cupids: just the setting for a pretty woman and his
+portrait of her. But Undine, still hopeful of leaving West End Avenue,
+had heroically resisted the suggestion, and contented herself with the
+renewal of the curtains and carpet, and the purchase of some fragile
+gilt chairs which, as she told Ralph, would be "so much to the good"
+when they moved--the explanation, as she made it, seemed an additional
+evidence of her thrift.
+
+Partly as a result of these exertions she had a "nervous breakdown"
+toward the middle of the winter, and her physician having ordered
+massage and a daily drive it became necessary to secure Mrs. Heeny's
+attendance and to engage a motor by the month. Other unforeseen
+expenses--the bills, that, at such times, seem to run up without visible
+impulsion--were added to by a severe illness of little Paul's: a long
+costly illness, with three nurses and frequent consultations. During
+these days Ralph's anxiety drove him to what seemed to Undine foolish
+excesses of expenditure and when the boy began to get better the doctors
+advised country air. Ralph at once hired a small house at Tuxedo and
+Undine of course accompanied her son to the country; but she spent only
+the Sundays with him, running up to town during the week to be with
+her husband, as she explained. This necessitated the keeping up of two
+households, and even for so short a time the strain on Ralph's purse was
+severe. So it came about that the bill for the fancy-dress was still
+unpaid, and Undine left to wonder distractedly what had become of
+Van Degen's money. That Van Degen seemed also to wonder was becoming
+unpleasantly apparent: his cheque had evidently not brought in the
+return he expected, and he put his grievance to her frankly one day when
+he motored down to lunch at Tuxedo.
+
+They were sitting, after luncheon, in the low-ceilinged drawing-room to
+which Undine had adapted her usual background of cushions, bric-a-brac
+and flowers--since one must make one's setting "home-like," however
+little one's habits happened to correspond with that particular effect.
+Undine, conscious of the intimate charm of her mise-en-scene, and of
+the recovered freshness and bloom which put her in harmony with it, had
+never been more sure of her power to keep her friend in the desired
+state of adoring submission. But Peter, as he grew more adoring, became
+less submissive; and there came a moment when she needed all her wits to
+save the situation. It was easy enough to rebuff him, the easier as his
+physical proximity always roused in her a vague instinct of resistance;
+but it was hard so to temper the rebuff with promise that the game of
+suspense should still delude him. He put it to her at last, standing
+squarely before her, his batrachian sallowness unpleasantly flushed,
+and primitive man looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated
+gentleman usually pined at her.
+
+"Look here--the installment plan's all right; but ain't you a bit behind
+even on that?" (She had brusquely eluded a nearer approach.) "Anyhow,
+I think I'd rather let the interest accumulate for a while. This is
+good-bye till I get back from Europe."
+
+The announcement took her by surprise. "Europe? Why, when are you
+sailing?"
+
+"On the first of April: good day for a fool to acknowledge his folly.
+I'm beaten, and I'm running away."
+
+She sat looking down, her hand absently occupied with the twist of
+pearls he had given her. In a flash she saw the peril of this departure.
+Once off on the Sorceress, he was lost to her--the power of old
+associations would prevail. Yet if she were as "nice" to him as he
+asked--"nice" enough to keep him--the end might not be much more to her
+advantage. Hitherto she had let herself drift on the current of their
+adventure, but she now saw what port she had half-unconsciously been
+trying for. If she had striven so hard to hold him, had "played" him
+with such patience and such skill, it was for something more than her
+passing amusement and convenience: for a purpose the more tenaciously
+cherished that she had not dared name it to herself. In the light of
+this discovery she saw the need of feigning complete indifference.
+
+"Ah, you happy man! It's good-bye indeed, then," she threw back at him,
+lifting a plaintive smile to his frown.
+
+"Oh, you'll turn up in Paris later, I suppose--to get your things for
+Newport."
+
+"Paris? Newport? They're not on my map! When Ralph can get away we shall
+go to the Adirondacks for the boy. I hope I shan't need Paris clothes
+there! It doesn't matter, at any rate," she ended, laughing, "because
+nobody I care about will see me."
+
+Van Degen echoed her laugh. "Oh, come--that's rough on Ralph!"
+
+She looked down with a slight increase of colour. "I oughtn't to have
+said it, ought I? But the fact is I'm unhappy--and a little hurt--"
+
+"Unhappy? Hurt?" He was at her side again. "Why, what's wrong?"
+
+She lifted her eyes with a grave look. "I thought you'd be sorrier to
+leave me."
+
+"Oh, it won't be for long--it needn't be, you know." He was perceptibly
+softening. "It's damnable, the way you're tied down. Fancy rotting all
+summer in the Adirondacks! Why do you stand it? You oughtn't to be bound
+for life by a girl's mistake."
+
+The lashes trembled slightly on her cheek. "Aren't we all bound by our
+mistakes--we women? Don't let us talk of such things! Ralph would never
+let me go abroad without him." She paused, and then, with a quick upward
+sweep of the lids: "After all, it's better it should be good-bye--since
+I'm paying for another mistake in being so unhappy at your going."
+
+"Another mistake? Why do you call it that?"
+
+"Because I've misunderstood you--or you me." She continued to smile at
+him wistfully. "And some things are best mended by a break."
+
+He met her smile with a loud sigh--she could feel him in the meshes
+again. "IS it to be a break between us?"
+
+"Haven't you just said so? Anyhow, it might as well be, since we shan't
+be in the same place again for months."
+
+The frock-coated gentleman once more languished from his eyes: she
+thought she trembled on the edge of victory. "Hang it," he broke out,
+"you ought to have a change--you're looking awfully pulled down. Why
+can't you coax your mother to run over to Paris with you? Ralph couldn't
+object to that."
+
+She shook her head. "I don't believe she could afford it, even if I
+could persuade her to leave father. You know father hasn't done very
+well lately: I shouldn't like to ask him for the money."
+
+"You're so confoundedly proud!" He was edging nearer. "It would all be
+so easy if you'd only be a little fond of me..."
+
+She froze to her sofa-end. "We women can't repair our mistakes. Don't
+make me more miserable by reminding me of mine."
+
+"Oh, nonsense! There's nothing cash won't do. Why won't you let me
+straighten things out for you?"
+
+Her colour rose again, and she looked him quickly and consciously in
+the eye. It was time to play her last card. "You seem to forget that I
+am--married," she said.
+
+Van Degen was silent--for a moment she thought he was swaying to her in
+the flush of surrender. But he remained doggedly seated, meeting her
+look with an odd clearing of his heated gaze, as if a shrewd businessman
+had suddenly replaced the pining gentleman at the window.
+
+"Hang it--so am I!" he rejoined; and Undine saw that in the last issue
+he was still the stronger of the two.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Nothing was bitterer to her than to confess to herself the failure of
+her power; but her last talk with Van Degen had taught her a lesson
+almost worth the abasement. She saw the mistake she had made in taking
+money from him, and understood that if she drifted into repeating that
+mistake her future would be irretrievably compromised. What she wanted
+was not a hand-to-mouth existence of precarious intrigue: to one with
+her gifts the privileges of life should come openly. Already in her
+short experience she had seen enough of the women who sacrifice future
+security for immediate success, and she meant to lay solid foundations
+before she began to build up the light super-structure of enjoyment.
+
+Nevertheless it was galling to see Van Degen leave, and to know that for
+the time he had broken away from her. Over a nature so insensible to the
+spells of memory, the visible and tangible would always prevail. If she
+could have been with him again in Paris, where, in the shining spring
+days, every sight and sound ministered to such influences, she was sure
+she could have regained her hold. And the sense of frustration was
+intensified by the fact that every one she knew was to be there: her
+potential rivals were crowding the east-bound steamers. New York was a
+desert, and Ralph's seeming unconsciousness of the fact increased her
+resentment. She had had but one chance at Europe since her marriage, and
+that had been wasted through her husband's unaccountable perversity. She
+knew now with what packed hours of Paris and London they had paid for
+their empty weeks in Italy.
+
+Meanwhile the long months of the New York spring stretched out before
+her in all their social vacancy to the measureless blank of a summer in
+the Adirondacks. In her girlhood she had plumbed the dim depths of such
+summers; but then she had been sustained by the hope of bringing some
+capture to the surface. Now she knew better: there were no "finds" for
+her in that direction. The people she wanted would be at Newport or
+in Europe, and she was too resolutely bent on a definite object, too
+sternly animated by her father's business instinct, to turn aside in
+quest of casual distractions.
+
+The chief difficulty in the way of her attaining any distant end had
+always been her reluctance to plod through the intervening stretches
+of dulness and privation. She had begun to see this, but she could not
+always master the weakness: never had she stood in greater need of
+Mrs. Heeny's "Go slow. Undine!" Her imagination was incapable of long
+flights. She could not cheat her impatience with the mirage of far-off
+satisfactions, and for the moment present and future seemed equally
+void. But her desire to go to Europe and to rejoin the little New York
+world that was reforming itself in London and Paris was fortified by
+reasons which seemed urgent enough to justify an appeal to her father.
+
+She went down to his office to plead her case, fearing Mrs. Spragg's
+intervention. For some time past Mr. Spragg had been rather continuously
+overworked, and the strain was beginning to tell on him. He had never
+quite regained, in New York, the financial security of his Apex days.
+Since he had changed his base of operations his affairs had followed
+an uncertain course, and Undine suspected that his breach with his old
+political ally, the Representative Rolliver who had seen him through the
+muddiest reaches of the Pure Water Move, was not unconnected with his
+failure to get a footing in Wall Street. But all this was vague and
+shadowy to her Even had "business" been less of a mystery, she was too
+much absorbed in her own affairs to project herself into her father's
+case; and she thought she was sacrificing enough to delicacy of feeling
+in sparing him the "bother" of Mrs. Spragg's opposition. When she came
+to him with a grievance he always heard her out with the same mild
+patience; but the long habit of "managing" him had made her, in his own
+language, "discount" this tolerance, and when she ceased to speak her
+heart throbbed with suspense as he leaned back, twirling an invisible
+toothpick under his sallow moustache. Presently he raised a hand to
+stroke the limp beard in which the moustache was merged; then he groped
+for the Masonic emblem that had lost itself in one of the folds of his
+depleted waistcoat.
+
+He seemed to fish his answer from the same rusty depths, for as his
+fingers closed about the trinket he said: "Yes, the heated term IS
+trying in New York. That's why the Fresh Air Fund pulled my last dollar
+out of me last week."
+
+Undine frowned: there was nothing more irritating, in these encounters
+with her father, than his habit of opening the discussion with a joke.
+
+"I wish you'd understand that I'm serious, father. I've never been
+strong since the baby was born, and I need a change. But it's not only
+that: there are other reasons for my wanting to go."
+
+Mr. Spragg still held to his mild tone of banter. "I never knew you
+short on reasons, Undie. Trouble is you don't always know other people's
+when you see 'em."
+
+His daughter's lips tightened. "I know your reasons when I see them,
+father: I've heard them often enough. But you can't know mine because I
+haven't told you--not the real ones."
+
+"Jehoshaphat! I thought they were all real as long as you had a use for
+them."
+
+Experience had taught her that such protracted trifling usually
+concealed an exceptional vigour of resistance, and the suspense
+strengthened her determination.
+
+"My reasons are all real enough," she answered; "but there's one more
+serious than the others."
+
+Mr. Spragg's brows began to jut. "More bills?"
+
+"No." She stretched out her hand and began to finger the dusty objects
+on his desk. "I'm unhappy at home."
+
+"Unhappy--!" His start overturned the gorged waste-paper basket and shot
+a shower of paper across the rug. He stooped to put the basket back;
+then he turned his slow fagged eyes on his daughter. "Why, he worships
+the ground you walk on, Undie."
+
+"That's not always a reason, for a woman--" It was the answer she would
+have given to Popple or Van Degen, but she saw in an instant the
+mistake of thinking it would impress her father. In the atmosphere
+of sentimental casuistry to which she had become accustomed, she had
+forgotten that Mr. Spragg's private rule of conduct was as simple as his
+business morality was complicated.
+
+He glowered at her under thrust-out brows. "It isn't a reason, isn't it?
+I can seem to remember the time when you used to think it was equal to a
+whole carload of whitewash."
+
+She blushed a bright red, and her own brows were levelled at his above
+her stormy steel-grey eyes. The sense of her blunder made her angrier
+with him, and more ruthless.
+
+"I can't expect you to understand--you never HAVE, you or mother, when
+it came to my feelings. I suppose some people are born sensitive--I
+can't imagine anybody'd CHOOSE to be so. Because I've been too proud to
+complain you've taken it for granted that I was perfectly happy. But my
+marriage was a mistake from the beginning; and Ralph feels just as I do
+about it. His people hate me, they've always hated me; and he looks at
+everything as they do. They've never forgiven me for his having had to
+go into business--with their aristocratic ideas they look down on a man
+who works for his living. Of course it's all right for YOU to do it,
+because you're not a Marvell or a Dagonet; but they think Ralph ought to
+just lie back and let you support the baby and me."
+
+This time she had found the right note: she knew it by the tightening of
+her father's slack muscles and the sudden straightening of his back.
+
+"By George, he pretty near does!" he exclaimed bringing down his fist
+on the desk. "They haven't been taking it out of you about that, have
+they?" "They don't fight fair enough to say so. They just egg him on to
+turn against me. They only consented to his marrying me because they
+thought you were so crazy about the match you'd give us everything, and
+he'd have nothing to do but sit at home and write books."
+
+Mr. Spragg emitted a derisive groan. "From what I hear of the amount of
+business he's doing I guess he could keep the Poet's Corner going right
+along. I suppose the old man was right--he hasn't got it in him to make
+money."
+
+"Of course not; he wasn't brought up to it, and in his heart of hearts
+he's ashamed of having to do it. He told me it was killing a little more
+of him every day."
+
+"Do they back him up in that kind of talk?"
+
+"They back him up in everything. Their ideas are all different from
+ours. They look down on us--can't you see that? Can't you guess how they
+treat me from the way they've acted to you and mother?"
+
+He met this with a puzzled stare. "The way they've acted to me and
+mother? Why, we never so much as set eyes on them."
+
+"That's just what I mean! I don't believe they've even called on mother
+this year, have they? Last year they just left their cards without
+asking. And why do you suppose they never invite you to dine? In their
+set lots of people older than you and mother dine every night of the
+winter--society's full of them. The Marvells are ashamed to have you
+meet their friends: that's the reason. They're ashamed to have it known
+that Ralph married an Apex girl, and that you and mother haven't always
+had your own servants and carriages; and Ralph's ashamed of it too, now
+he's got over being crazy about me. If he was free I believe he'd turn
+round to-morrow and marry that Ray girl his mother's saving up for him."
+
+Mr. Spragg listened with a heavy brow and pushed-out lip. His daughter's
+outburst seemed at last to have roused him to a faint resentment. After
+she had ceased to speak he remained silent, twisting an inky penhandle
+between his fingers; then he said: "I guess mother and I can worry along
+without having Ralph's relatives drop in; but I'd like to make it clear
+to them that if you came from Apex your income came from there too. I
+presume they'd be sorry if Ralph was left to support you on HIS."
+
+She saw that she had scored in the first part of the argument, but every
+watchful nerve reminded her that the hardest stage was still ahead.
+
+"Oh, they're willing enough he should take your money--that's only
+natural, they think."
+
+A chuckle sounded deep down under Mr. Spragg's loose collar. "There
+seems to be practical unanimity on that point," he observed. "But I
+don't see," he continued, jerking round his bushy brows on her, "how
+going to Europe is going to help you out."
+
+Undine leaned close enough for her lowered voice to reach him. "Can't
+you understand that, knowing how they all feel about me--and how Ralph
+feels--I'd give almost anything to get away?"
+
+Her father looked at her compassionately. "I guess most of us feel that
+once in a way when we're youngy, Undine. Later on you'll see going away
+ain't much use when you've got to turn round and come back."
+
+She nodded at him with close-pressed lips, like a child in possession of
+some solemn secret.
+
+"That's just it--that's the reason I'm so wild to go; because it MIGHT
+mean I wouldn't ever have to come back."
+
+"Not come back? What on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"It might mean that I could get free--begin over again..."
+
+He had pushed his seat back with a sudden jerk and cut her short by
+striking his palm on the arm of the chair.
+
+"For the Lord's sake. Undine--do you know what you're saying?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know." She gave him back a confident smile. "If I can get
+away soon--go straight over to Paris...there's some one there who'd do
+anything... who COULD do anything...if I was free..."
+
+Mr. Spragg's hands continued to grasp his chair-arms. "Good God, Undine
+Marvell--are you sitting there in your sane senses and talking to me of
+what you could do if you were FREE?"
+
+Their glances met in an interval of speechless communion; but Undine did
+not shrink from her father's eyes and when she lowered her own it seemed
+to be only because there was nothing left for them to say.
+
+"I know just what I could do if I were free. I could marry the right
+man," she answered boldly.
+
+He met her with a murmur of helpless irony. "The right man? The right
+man? Haven't you had enough of trying for him yet?"
+
+As he spoke the door behind them opened, and Mr. Spragg looked up
+abruptly.
+
+The stenographer stood on the threshold, and above her shoulder Undine
+perceived the ingratiating grin of Elmer Moffatt.
+
+"'A little farther lend thy guiding hand'--but I guess I can go the rest
+of the way alone," he said, insinuating himself through the doorway with
+an airy gesture of dismissal; then he turned to Mr. Spragg and Undine.
+
+"I agree entirely with Mrs. Marvell--and I'm happy to have the
+opportunity of telling her so," he proclaimed, holding his hand out
+gallantly.
+
+Undine stood up with a laugh. "It sounded like old times, I suppose--you
+thought father and I were quarrelling? But we never quarrel any more: he
+always agrees with me." She smiled at Mr. Spragg and turned her shining
+eyes on Moffatt. "I wish that treaty had been signed a few years
+sooner!" the latter rejoined in his usual tone of humorous familiarity.
+
+Undine had not met him since her marriage, and of late the adverse turn
+of his fortunes had carried him quite beyond her thoughts. But
+his actual presence was always stimulating, and even through her
+self-absorption she was struck by his air of almost defiant prosperity.
+He did not look like a man who has been beaten; or rather he looked like
+a man who does not know when he is beaten; and his eye had the gleam of
+mocking confidence that had carried him unabashed through his lowest
+hours at Apex.
+
+"I presume you're here to see me on business?" Mr. Spragg enquired,
+rising from his chair with a glance that seemed to ask his daughter's
+silence.
+
+"Why, yes. Senator," rejoined Moffatt, who was given, in playful
+moments, to the bestowal of titles high-sounding. "At least I'm here to
+ask you a little question that may lead to business."
+
+Mr. Spragg crossed the office and held open the door. "Step this way,
+please," he said, guiding Moffatt out before him, though the latter hung
+back to exclaim: "No family secrets, Mrs. Marvell--anybody can turn the
+fierce white light on ME!"
+
+With the closing of the door Undine's thoughts turned back to her own
+preoccupations. It had not struck her as incongruous that Moffatt should
+have business dealings with her father: she was even a little surprised
+that Mr. Spragg should still treat him so coldly. But she had no time to
+give to such considerations. Her own difficulties were too importunately
+present to her. She moved restlessly about the office, listening to
+the rise and fall of the two voices on the other side of the partition
+without once wondering what they were discussing.
+
+What should she say to her father when he came back--what argument was
+most likely to prevail with him? If he really had no money to give her
+she was imprisoned fast--Van Degen was lost to her, and the old life
+must go on interminably...In her nervous pacings she paused before the
+blotched looking-glass that hung in a corner of the office under a
+steel engraving of Daniel Webster. Even that defective surface could not
+disfigure her, and she drew fresh hope from the sight of her beauty.
+Her few weeks of ill-health had given her cheeks a subtler curve and
+deepened the shadows beneath her eyes, and she was handsomer than before
+her marriage. No, Van Degen was not lost to her even! From narrowed lids
+to parted lips her face was swept by a smile like retracted sunlight. He
+was not lost to her while she could smile like that! Besides, even if
+her father had no money, there were always mysterious ways of "raising"
+it--in the old Apex days he had often boasted of such feats. As the
+hope rose her eyes widened trustfully, and this time the smile that
+flowed up to them was as limpid as a child's. That was the was her
+father liked her to look at him...
+
+The door opened, and she heard Mr. Spragg say behind her: "No, sir, I
+won't--that's final."
+
+He came in alone, with a brooding face, and lowered himself heavily into
+his chair. It was plain that the talk between the two men had had an
+abrupt ending. Undine looked at her father with a passing flicker of
+curiosity. Certainly it was an odd coincidence that Moffatt should have
+called while she was there...
+
+"What did he want?" she asked, glancing back toward the door.
+
+Mr. Spragg mumbled his invisible toothpick. "Oh, just another of his
+wild-cat schemes--some real-estate deal he's in."
+
+"Why did he come to YOU about it?"
+
+He looked away from her, fumbling among the letters on the desk. "Guess
+he'd tried everybody else first. He'd go and ring the devil's front-door
+bell if he thought he could get anything out of him."
+
+"I suppose he did himself a lot of harm by testifying in the Ararat
+investigation?"
+
+"Yes, SIR--he's down and out this time."
+
+He uttered the words with a certain satisfaction. His daughter did not
+answer, and they sat silent, facing each other across the littered desk.
+Under their brief about Elmer Moffatt currents of rapid intelligence
+seemed to be flowing between them. Suddenly Undine leaned over the desk,
+her eyes widening trustfully, and the limpid smile flowing up to them.
+
+"Father, I did what you wanted that one time, anyhow--won't you listen
+to me and help me out now?"
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Undine stood alone on the landing outside her father's office.
+
+Only once before had she failed to gain her end with him--and there
+was a peculiar irony in the fact that Moffatt's intrusion should have
+brought before her the providential result of her previous failure. Not
+that she confessed to any real resemblance between the two situations.
+In the present case she knew well enough what she wanted, and how to
+get it. But the analogy had served her father's purpose, and Moffatt's
+unlucky entrance had visibly strengthened his resistance.
+
+The worst of it was that the obstacles in the way were real enough. Mr.
+Spragg had not put her off with vague asseverations--somewhat against
+her will he had forced his proofs on her, showing her how much above his
+promised allowance he had contributed in the last three years to
+the support of her household. Since she could not accuse herself of
+extravagance--having still full faith in her gift of "managing"--she
+could only conclude that it was impossible to live on what her father
+and Ralph could provide; and this seemed a practical reason for desiring
+her freedom. If she and Ralph parted he would of course return to his
+family, and Mr. Spragg would no longer be burdened with a helpless
+son-in-law. But even this argument did not move him. Undine, as soon as
+she had risked Van Degen's name, found herself face to face with a code
+of domestic conduct as rigid as its exponent's business principles were
+elastic. Mr. Spragg did not regard divorce as intrinsically wrong or
+even inexpedient; and of its social disadvantages he had never even
+heard. Lots of women did it, as Undine said, and if their reasons were
+adequate they were justified. If Ralph Marvell had been a drunkard or
+"unfaithful" Mr. Spragg would have approved Undine's desire to divorce
+him; but that it should be prompted by her inclination for another
+man--and a man with a wife of his own--was as shocking to him as it
+would have been to the most uncompromising of the Dagonets and Marvells.
+Such things happened, as Mr. Spragg knew, but they should not happen to
+any woman of his name while he had the power to prevent it; and Undine
+recognized that for the moment he had that power.
+
+As she emerged from the elevator she was surprised to see Moffatt in the
+vestibule. His presence was an irritating reminder of her failure, and
+she walked past him with a rapid bow; but he overtook her.
+
+"Mrs. Marvell--I've been waiting to say a word to you."
+
+If it had been any one else she would have passed on; but Moffatt's
+voice had always a detaining power. Even now that she knew him to be
+defeated and negligible, the power asserted itself, and she paused to
+say: "I'm afraid I can't stop--I'm late for an engagement."
+
+"I shan't make you much later; but if you'd rather have me call round at
+your house--"
+
+"Oh, I'm so seldom in." She turned a wondering look on him. "What is it
+you wanted to say?"
+
+"Just two words. I've got an office in this building and the shortest
+way would be to come up there for a minute." As her look grew distant he
+added: "I think what I've got to say is worth the trip."
+
+His face was serious, without underlying irony: the face he wore when he
+wanted to be trusted.
+
+"Very well," she said, turning back.
+
+Undine, glancing at her watch as she came out of Moffatt's office, saw
+that he had been true to his promise of not keeping her more than ten
+minutes. The fact was characteristic. Under all his incalculableness
+there had always been a hard foundation of reliability: it seemed to be
+a matter of choice with him whether he let one feel that solid bottom
+or not. And in specific matters the same quality showed itself in an
+accuracy of statement, a precision of conduct, that contrasted curiously
+with his usual hyperbolic banter and his loose lounging manner. No one
+could be more elusive yet no one could be firmer to the touch. Her
+face had cleared and she moved more lightly as she left the building.
+Moffatt's communication had not been completely clear to her, but she
+understood the outline of the plan he had laid before her, and was
+satisfied with the bargain they had struck. He had begun by reminding
+her of her promise to introduce him to any friend of hers who might be
+useful in the way of business. Over three years had passed since they
+had made the pact, and Moffatt had kept loyally to his side of it. With
+the lapse of time the whole matter had become less important to her,
+but she wanted to prove her good faith, and when he reminded her of her
+promise she at once admitted it.
+
+"Well, then--I want you to introduce me to your husband."
+
+Undine was surprised; but beneath her surprise she felt a quick sense of
+relief. Ralph was easier to manage than so many of her friends--and it
+was a mark of his present indifference to acquiesce in anything she
+suggested.
+
+"My husband? Why, what can he do for you?"
+
+Moffatt explained at once, in the fewest words, as his way was when it
+came to business. He was interested in a big "deal" which involved the
+purchase of a piece of real estate held by a number of wrangling
+heirs. The real-estate broker with whom Ralph Marvell was associated
+represented these heirs, but Moffatt had his reasons for not approaching
+him directly. And he didn't want to go to Marvell with a "business
+proposition"--it would be better to be thrown with him socially as if by
+accident. It was with that object that Moffatt had just appealed to Mr.
+Spragg, but Mr. Spragg, as usual, had "turned him down," without even
+consenting to look into the case.
+
+"He'd rather have you miss a good thing than have it come to you through
+me. I don't know what on earth he thinks it's in my power to do to
+you--or ever was, for that matter," he added. "Anyhow," he went on to
+explain, "the power's all on your side now; and I'll show you how little
+the doing will hurt you as soon as I can have a quiet chat with
+your husband." He branched off again into technicalities, nebulous
+projections of capital and interest, taxes and rents, from which she
+finally extracted, and clung to, the central fact that if the "deal
+went through" it would mean a commission of forty thousand dollars to
+Marvell's firm, of which something over a fourth would come to Ralph.
+
+"By Jove, that's an amazing fellow!" Ralph Marvell exclaimed, turning
+back into the drawing-room, a few evenings later, at the conclusion of
+one of their little dinners. Undine looked up from her seat by the fire.
+She had had the inspired thought of inviting Moffatt to meet Clare Van
+Degen, Mrs. Fairford and Charles Bowen. It had occurred to her that
+the simplest way of explaining Moffatt was to tell Ralph that she had
+unexpectedly discovered an old Apex acquaintance in the protagonist of
+the great Ararat Trust fight. Moffatt's defeat had not wholly divested
+him of interest. As a factor in affairs he no longer inspired
+apprehension, but as the man who had dared to defy Harmon B. Driscoll he
+was a conspicuous and, to some minds, almost an heroic figure.
+
+Undine remembered that Clare and Mrs. Fairford had once expressed a wish
+to see this braver of the Olympians, and her suggestion that he should
+be asked meet them gave Ralph evident pleasure. It was long since she
+had made any conciliatory sign to his family.
+
+Moffatt's social gifts were hardly of a kind to please the two ladies:
+he would have shone more brightly in Peter Van Degen's set than in
+his wife's. But neither Clare nor Mrs. Fairford had expected a man
+of conventional cut, and Moffatt's loud easiness was obviously less
+disturbing to them than to their hostess. Undine felt only his
+crudeness, and the tacit criticism passed on it by the mere presence of
+such men as her husband and Bowen; but Mrs. Fairford' seemed to enjoy
+provoking him to fresh excesses of slang and hyperbole. Gradually she
+drew him into talking of the Driscoll campaign, and he became recklessly
+explicit. He seemed to have nothing to hold back: all the details of the
+prodigious exploit poured from him with Homeric volume. Then he broke
+off abruptly, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets and shaping
+his red lips to a whistle which he checked as his glance met Undine's.
+To conceal his embarrassment he leaned back in his chair, looked about
+the table with complacency, and said "I don't mind if I do" to the
+servant who approached to re-fill his champagne glass.
+
+The men sat long over their cigars; but after an interval Undine called
+Charles Bowen into the drawing-room to settle some question in dispute
+between Clare and Mrs. Fairford, and thus gave Moffatt a chance to be
+alone with her husband. Now that their guests had gone she was throbbing
+with anxiety to know what had passed between the two; but when Ralph
+rejoined her in the drawing-room she continued to keep her eyes on the
+fire and twirl her fan listlessly.
+
+"That's an amazing chap," Ralph repeated, looking down at her. "Where
+was it you ran across him--out at Apex?"
+
+As he leaned against the chimney-piece, lighting his cigarette, it
+struck Undine that he looked less fagged and lifeless than usual, and
+she felt more and more sure that something important had happened during
+the moment of isolation she had contrived.
+
+She opened and shut her fan reflectively. "Yes--years ago; father had
+some business with him and brought him home to dinner one day."
+
+"And you've never seen him since?"
+
+She waited, as if trying to piece her recollections together. "I suppose
+I must have; but all that seems so long ago," she said sighing. She had
+been given, of late, to such plaintive glances toward her happy girlhood
+but Ralph seemed not to notice the allusion.
+
+"Do you know," he exclaimed after a moment, "I don't believe the
+fellow's beaten yet."
+
+She looked up quickly. "Don't you?"
+
+"No; and I could see that Bowen didn't either. He strikes me as the kind
+of man who develops slowly, needs a big field, and perhaps makes some
+big mistakes, but gets where he wants to in the end. Jove, I wish I
+could put him in a book! There's something epic about him--a kind of
+epic effrontery."
+
+Undine's pulses beat faster as she listened. Was it not what Moffatt had
+always said of himself--that all he needed was time and elbow-room? How
+odd that Ralph, who seemed so dreamy and unobservant, should instantly
+have reached the same conclusion! But what she wanted to know was the
+practical result of their meeting.
+
+"What did you and he talk about when you were smoking?"
+
+"Oh, he got on the Driscoll fight again--gave us some extraordinary
+details. The man's a thundering brute, but he's full of observation and
+humour. Then, after Bowen joined you, he told me about a new deal he's
+gone into--rather a promising scheme, but on the same Titanic scale.
+It's just possible, by the way, that we may be able to do something for
+him: part of the property he's after is held in our office." He paused,
+knowing Undine's indifference to business matters; but the face she
+turned to him was alive with interest.
+
+"You mean you might sell the property to him?"
+
+"Well, if the thing comes off. There would be a big commission if we
+did." He glanced down on her half ironically. "You'd like that, wouldn't
+you?"
+
+She answered with a shade of reproach: "Why do you say that? I haven't
+complained."
+
+"Oh, no; but I know I've been a disappointment as a money-maker."
+
+She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes as if in utter weariness
+and indifference, and in a moment she felt him bending over her. "What's
+the matter? Don't you feel well?"
+
+"I'm a little tired. It's nothing." She pulled her hand away and burst
+into tears.
+
+Ralph knelt down by her chair and put his arm about her. It was the
+first time he had touched her since the night of the boy's birthday, and
+the sense of her softness woke a momentary warmth in his veins.
+
+"What is it, dear? What is it?"
+
+Without turning her head she sobbed out: "You seem to think I'm too
+selfish and odious--that I'm just pretending to be ill."
+
+"No, no," he assured her, smoothing back her hair. But she continued
+to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her
+weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to
+persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. She yielded to his arm,
+sobbing in short exhausted gasps, and leaning her whole weight on him as
+he guided her along the passage to her bedroom. On the lounge to which
+he lowered her she lay white and still, tears trickling through her
+lashes and her handkerchief pressed against her lips. He recognized the
+symptoms with a sinking heart: she was on the verge of a nervous attack
+such as she had had in the winter, and he foresaw with dismay the
+disastrous train of consequences, the doctors' and nurses' bills, and
+all the attendant confusion and expense. If only Moffatt's project might
+be realized--if for once he could feel a round sum in his pocket, and be
+freed from the perpetual daily strain!
+
+The next morning Undine, though calmer, was too weak to leave her bed,
+and her doctor prescribed rest and absence of worry--later, perhaps, a
+change of scene. He explained to Ralph that nothing was so wearing to
+a high-strung nature as monotony, and that if Mrs. Marvell were
+contemplating a Newport season it was necessary that she should be
+fortified to meet it. In such cases he often recommended a dash to Paris
+or London, just to tone up the nervous system.
+
+Undine regained her strength slowly, and as the days dragged on the
+suggestion of the European trip recurred with increasing frequency. But
+it came always from her medical adviser: she herself had grown strangely
+passive and indifferent. She continued to remain upstairs on her lounge,
+seeing no one but Mrs. Heeny, whose daily ministrations had once more
+been prescribed, and asking only that the noise of Paul's play should be
+kept from her. His scamperings overhead disturbed her sleep, and his bed
+was moved into the day nursery, above his father's room. The child's
+early romping did not trouble Ralph, since he himself was always awake
+before daylight. The days were not long enough to hold his cares, and
+they came and stood by him through the silent hours, when there was no
+other sound to drown their voices.
+
+Ralph had not made a success of his business. The real-estate brokers
+who had taken him into partnership had done so only with the hope of
+profiting by his social connections; and in this respect the alliance
+had been a failure. It was in such directions that he most lacked
+facility, and so far he had been of use to his partners only as an
+office-drudge. He was resigned to the continuance of such drudgery,
+though all his powers cried out against it; but even for the routine of
+business his aptitude was small, and he began to feel that he was not
+considered an addition to the firm. The difficulty of finding another
+opening made him fear a break; and his thoughts turned hopefully to
+Elmer Moffatt's hint of a "deal." The success of the negotiation might
+bring advantages beyond the immediate pecuniary profit; and that, at the
+present juncture, was important enough in itself.
+
+Moffatt reappeared two days after the dinner, presenting himself in West
+End Avenue in the late afternoon with the explanation that the business
+in hand necessitated discretion, and that he preferred not to be seen in
+Ralph's office. It was a question of negotiating with the utmost privacy
+for the purchase of a small strip of land between two large plots
+already acquired by purchasers cautiously designated by Moffatt as his
+"parties." How far he "stood in" with the parties he left it to Ralph
+to conjecture; but it was plain that he had a large stake in the
+transaction, and that it offered him his first chance of recovering
+himself since Driscoll had "thrown" him. The owners of the coveted
+plot did not seem anxious to sell, and there were personal reasons for
+Moffatt's not approaching them through Ralph's partners, who were the
+regular agents of the estate: so that Ralph's acquaintance with the
+conditions, combined with his detachments from the case, marked him out
+as a useful intermediary.
+
+Their first talk left Ralph with a dazzled sense of Moffatt's strength
+and keenness, but with a vague doubt as to the "straightness" of the
+proposed transaction. Ralph had never seen his way clearly in that dim
+underworld of affairs where men of the Moffatt and Driscoll type moved
+like shadowy destructive monsters beneath the darting small fry of the
+surface. He knew that "business" has created its own special morality;
+and his musings on man's relation to his self imposed laws had shown him
+how little human conduct is generally troubled about its own sanctions.
+He had a vivid sense of the things a man of his kind didn't do; but his
+inability to get a mental grasp on large financial problems made it hard
+to apply to them so simple a measure as this inherited standard. He only
+knew, as Moffatt's plan developed, that it seemed all right while he
+talked of it with its originator, but vaguely wrong when he thought it
+over afterward. It occurred to him to consult his grandfather; and if he
+renounced the idea for the obvious reason that Mr. Dagonet's ignorance
+of business was as fathomless as his own, this was not his sole motive.
+Finally it occurred to him to put the case hypothetically to Mr.
+Spragg. As far as Ralph knew, his father-in-law's business record was
+unblemished; yet one felt in him an elasticity of adjustment not allowed
+for in the Dagonet code.
+
+Mr. Spragg listened thoughtfully to Ralph's statement of the case,
+growling out here and there a tentative correction, and turning his
+cigar between his lips as he seemed to turn the problem over in the
+loose grasp of his mind.
+
+"Well, what's the trouble with it?" he asked at length, stretching his
+big square-toed shoes against the grate of his son-in-law's dining-room,
+where, in the after-dinner privacy of a family evening, Ralph had seized
+the occasion to consult him.
+
+"The trouble?" Ralph considered. "Why, that's just what I should like
+you to explain to me."
+
+Mr. Spragg threw back his head and stared at the garlanded French clock
+on the chimney-piece. Mrs. Spragg was sitting upstairs in her daughter's
+bedroom, and the silence of the house seemed to hang about the two men
+like a listening presence.
+
+"Well, I dunno but what I agree with the doctor who said there warn't
+any diseases, but only sick people. Every case is different, I guess."
+Mr. Spragg, munching his cigar, turned a ruminating glance on Ralph.
+"Seems to me it all boils down to one thing. Was this fellow we're
+supposing about under any obligation to the other party--the one he was
+trying to buy the property from?"
+
+Ralph hesitated. "Only the obligation recognized between decent men to
+deal with each other decently." Mr. Spragg listened to this with the
+suffering air of a teacher compelled to simplify upon his simplest
+questions.
+
+"Any personal obligation, I meant. Had the other fellow done him a good
+turn any time?"
+
+"No--I don't imagine them to have had any previous relations at all."
+
+His father-in-law stared. "Where's your trouble, then?" He sat for a
+moment frowning at the embers. "Even when it's the other way round it
+ain't always so easy to decide how far that kind of thing's binding...
+and they say shipwrecked fellows'll make a meal of friend as quick as
+they would of a total stranger." He drew himself together with a shake
+of his shoulders and pulled back his feet from the grate. "But I don't
+see the conundrum in your case, I guess it's up to both parties to take
+care of their own skins."
+
+He rose from his chair and wandered upstairs to Undine.
+
+That was the Wall Street code: it all "boiled down" to the personal
+obligation, to the salt eaten in the enemy's tent. Ralph's fancy
+wandered off on a long trail of speculation from which he was pulled
+back with a jerk by the need of immediate action. Moffatt's "deal"
+could not wait: quick decisions were essential to effective action, and
+brooding over ethical shades of difference might work more ill than
+good in a world committed to swift adjustments. The arrival of several
+unforeseen bills confirmed this view, and once Ralph had adopted it he
+began to take a detached interest in the affair.
+
+In Paris, in his younger days, he had once attended a lesson in acting
+given at the Conservatoire by one of the great lights of the theatre,
+and had seen an apparently uncomplicated role of the classic repertory,
+familiar to him through repeated performances, taken to pieces before
+his eyes, dissolved into its component elements, and built up again with
+a minuteness of elucidation and a range of reference that made him feel
+as though he had been let into the secret of some age-long natural
+process. As he listened to Moffatt the remembrance of that lesson came
+back to him. At the outset the "deal," and his own share in it, had
+seemed simple enough: he would have put on his hat and gone out on the
+spot in the full assurance of being able to transact the affair. But as
+Moffatt talked he began to feel as blank and blundering as the class of
+dramatic students before whom the great actor had analyzed his part. The
+affair was in fact difficult and complex, and Moffatt saw at once just
+where the difficulties lay and how the personal idiosyncrasies of "the
+parties" affected them. Such insight fascinated Ralph, and he strayed
+off into wondering why it did not qualify every financier to be a
+novelist, and what intrinsic barrier divided the two arts.
+
+Both men had strong incentives for hastening the affair; and within a
+fortnight after Moffatt's first advance Ralph was able to tell him that
+his offer was accepted. Over and above his personal satisfaction he felt
+the thrill of the agent whom some powerful negotiator has charged with
+a delicate mission: he might have been an eager young Jesuit carrying
+compromising papers to his superior. It had been stimulating to work
+with Moffatt, and to study at close range the large powerful instrument
+of his intelligence.
+
+As he came out of Moffatt's office at the conclusion of this visit
+Ralph met Mr. Spragg descending from his eyrie. He stopped short with a
+backward glance at Moffatt's door.
+
+"Hallo--what were you doing in there with those cut-throats?"
+
+Ralph judged discretion to be essential. "Oh, just a little business for
+the firm."
+
+Mr. Spragg said no more, but resorted to the soothing labial motion of
+revolving his phantom toothpick.
+
+"How's Undie getting along?" he merely asked, as he and his son-in-law
+descended together in the elevator.
+
+"She doesn't seem to feel much stronger. The doctor wants her to run
+over to Europe for a few weeks. She thinks of joining her friends the
+Shallums in Paris."
+
+Mr. Spragg was again silent, but he left the building at Ralph's side,
+and the two walked along together toward Wall Street.
+
+Presently the older man asked: "How did you get acquainted with
+Moffatt?"
+
+"Why, by chance--Undine ran across him somewhere and asked him to dine
+the other night."
+
+"Undine asked him to dine?"
+
+"Yes: she told me you used to know him out at Apex."
+
+Mr. Spragg appeared to search his memory for confirmation of the fact.
+"I believe he used to be round there at one time. I've never heard any
+good of him yet." He paused at a crossing and looked probingly at his
+son-in-law. "Is she terribly set on this trip to Europe?"
+
+Ralph smiled. "You know how it is when she takes a fancy to do
+anything--"
+
+Mr. Spragg, by a slight lift of his brooding brows, seemed to convey a
+deep if unspoken response.
+
+"Well, I'd let her do it this time--I'd let her do it," he said as he
+turned down the steps of the Subway.
+
+Ralph was surprised, for he had gathered from some frightened references
+of Mrs. Spragg's that Undine's parents had wind of her European plan and
+were strongly opposed to it. He concluded that Mr. Spragg had long since
+measured the extent of profitable resistance, and knew just when it
+became vain to hold out against his daughter or advise others to do so.
+
+Ralph, for his own part, had no inclination to resist. As he left
+Moffatt's office his inmost feeling was one of relief. He had reached
+the point of recognizing that it was best for both that his wife should
+go. When she returned perhaps their lives would readjust themselves--but
+for the moment he longed for some kind of benumbing influence, something
+that should give relief to the dull daily ache of feeling her so near
+and yet so inaccessible. Certainly there were more urgent uses for their
+brilliant wind-fall: heavy arrears of household debts had to be met, and
+the summer would bring its own burden. But perhaps another stroke of
+luck might befall him: he was getting to have the drifting dependence
+on "luck" of the man conscious of his inability to direct his life. And
+meanwhile it seemed easier to let Undine have what she wanted.
+
+Undine, on the whole, behaved with discretion. She received the good
+news languidly and showed no unseemly haste to profit by it. But it was
+as hard to hide the light in her eyes as to dissemble the fact that she
+had not only thought out every detail of the trip in advance, but had
+decided exactly how her husband and son were to be disposed of in her
+absence. Her suggestion that Ralph should take Paul to his grandparents,
+and that the West End Avenue house should be let for the summer, was too
+practical not to be acted on; and Ralph found she had already put her
+hand on the Harry Lipscombs, who, after three years of neglect, were to
+be dragged back to favour and made to feel, as the first step in their
+reinstatement, the necessity of hiring for the summer months a cool airy
+house on the West Side. On her return from Europe, Undine explained, she
+would of course go straight to Ralph and the boy in the Adirondacks; and
+it seemed a foolish extravagance to let the house stand empty when the
+Lipscombs were so eager to take it.
+
+As the day of departure approached it became harder for her to temper
+her beams; but her pleasure showed itself so amiably that Ralph began
+to think she might, after all, miss the boy and himself more than she
+imagined. She was tenderly preoccupied with Paul's welfare, and, to
+prepare for his translation to his grandparents' she gave the household
+in Washington Square more of her time than she had accorded it since her
+marriage. She explained that she wanted Paul to grow used to his new
+surroundings; and with that object she took him frequently to his
+grandmother's, and won her way into old Mr. Dagonet's sympathies by her
+devotion to the child and her pretty way of joining in his games.
+
+Undine was not consciously acting a part: this new phase was as natural
+to her as the other. In the joy of her gratified desires she wanted to
+make everybody about her happy. If only everyone would do as she wished
+she would never be unreasonable. She much preferred to see smiling faces
+about her, and her dread of the reproachful and dissatisfied countenance
+gave the measure of what she would do to avoid it.
+
+These thoughts were in her mind when, a day or two before sailing, she
+came out of the Washington Square house with her boy. It was a late
+spring afternoon, and she and Paul had lingered on till long past the
+hour sacred to his grandfather's nap. Now, as she came out into the
+square she saw that, however well Mr. Dagonet had borne their protracted
+romp, it had left his playmate flushed and sleepy; and she lifted Paul
+in her arms to carry him to the nearest cab-stand.
+
+As she raised herself she saw a thick-set figure approaching her across
+the square; and a moment later she was shaking hands with Elmer Moffatt.
+In the bright spring air he looked seasonably glossy and prosperous; and
+she noticed that he wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. His small
+black eyes twinkled with approval as they rested on her, and Undine
+reflected that, with Paul's arms about her neck, and his little flushed
+face against her own, she must present a not unpleasing image of young
+motherhood.
+
+"That the heir apparent?" Moffatt asked; adding "Happy to make your
+acquaintance, sir," as the boy, at Undine's bidding, held out a fist
+sticky with sugarplums.
+
+"He's been spending the afternoon with his grandfather, and they played
+so hard that he's sleepy," she explained. Little Paul, at that stage in
+his career, had a peculiar grace of wide-gazing deep-lashed eyes and
+arched cherubic lips, and Undine saw that Moffatt was not insensible
+to the picture she and her son composed. She did not dislike his
+admiration, for she no longer felt any shrinking from him--she would
+even have been glad to thank him for the service he had done her husband
+if she had known how to allude to it without awkwardness. Moffatt seemed
+equally pleased at the meeting, and they looked at each other almost
+intimately over Paul's tumbled curls.
+
+"He's a mighty fine fellow and no mistake--but isn't he rather an armful
+for you?" Moffatt asked, his eyes lingering with real kindliness on the
+child's face.
+
+"Oh, we haven't far to go. I'll pick up a cab at the corner."
+
+"Well, let me carry him that far anyhow," said Moffatt.
+
+Undine was glad to be relieved of her burden, for she was unused to the
+child's weight, and disliked to feel that her skirt was dragging on
+the pavement. "Go to the gentleman, Pauly--he'll carry you better than
+mother," she said.
+
+The little boy's first movement was one of recoil from the ruddy
+sharp-eyed countenance that was so unlike his father's delicate face;
+but he was an obedient child, and after a moment's hesitation he wound
+his arms trustfully about the red gentleman's neck.
+
+"That's a good fellow--sit tight and I'll give you a ride," Moffatt
+cried, hoisting the boy to his shoulder.
+
+Paul was not used to being perched at such a height, and his nature was
+hospitable to new impressions. "Oh, I like it up here--you're higher
+than father!" he exclaimed; and Moffatt hugged him with a laugh.
+
+"It must feel mighty good to come uptown to a fellow like you in the
+evenings," he said, addressing the child but looking at Undine, who also
+laughed a little.
+
+"Oh, they're a dreadful nuisance, you know; but Paul's a very good boy."
+
+"I wonder if he knows what a friend I've been to him lately," Moffatt
+went on, as they turned into Fifth Avenue.
+
+Undine smiled: she was glad he should have given her an opening. "He
+shall be told as soon as he's old enough to thank you. I'm so glad you
+came to Ralph about that business."
+
+"Oh I gave him a leg up, and I guess he's given me one too. Queer the
+way things come round--he's fairly put me in the way of a fresh start."
+
+Their eyes met in a silence which Undine was the first to break. "It's
+been awfully nice of you to do what you've done--right along. And this
+last thing has made a lot of difference to us."
+
+"Well, I'm glad you feel that way. I never wanted to be anything but
+'nice,' as you call it." Moffatt paused a moment and then added: "If
+you're less scared of me than your father is I'd be glad to call round
+and see you once in a while."
+
+The quick blood rushed to her cheeks. There was nothing challenging,
+demanding in his tone--she guessed at once that if he made the request
+it was simply for the pleasure of being with her, and she liked the
+magnanimity implied. Nevertheless she was not sorry to have to answer:
+"Of course I'll always be glad to see you--only, as it happens, I'm just
+sailing for Europe."
+
+"For Europe?" The word brought Moffatt to a stand so abruptly that
+little Paul lurched on his shoulder.
+
+"For Europe?" he repeated. "Why, I thought you said the other evening
+you expected to stay on in town till July. Didn't you think of going to
+the Adirondacks?"
+
+Flattered by his evident disappointment, she became high and careless in
+her triumph. "Oh, yes,--but that's all changed. Ralph and the boy are
+going, but I sail on Saturday to join some friends in Paris--and later I
+may do some motoring in Switzerland an Italy."
+
+She laughed a little in the mere enjoyment of putting her plans into
+words and Moffatt laughed too, but with an edge of sarcasm.
+
+"I see--I see: everything's changed, as you say, and your husband can
+blow you off to the trip. Well, I hope you'll have a first-class time."
+
+Their glances crossed again, and something in his cool scrutiny impelled
+Undine to say, with a burst of candour: "If I do, you know, I shall owe
+it all to you!"
+
+"Well, I always told you I meant to act white by you," he answered.
+
+They walked on in silence, and presently he began again in his usual
+joking strain: "See what one of the Apex girls has been up to?"
+
+Apex was too remote for her to understand the reference, and he went on:
+"Why, Millard Binch's wife--Indiana Frusk that was. Didn't you see in
+the papers that Indiana'd fixed it up with James J. Rolliver to marry
+her? They say it was easy enough squaring Millard Binch--you'd know it
+WOULD be--but it cost Roliver near a million to mislay Mrs. R. and the
+children. Well, Indiana's pulled it off, anyhow; she always WAS a bright
+girl. But she never came up to you."
+
+"Oh--" she stammered with a laugh, astonished and agitated by his news.
+Indiana Frusk and Rolliver! It showed how easily the thing could be
+done. If only her father had listened to her! If a girl like Indiana
+Frusk could gain her end so easily, what might not Undine have
+accomplished? She knew Moffatt was right in saying that Indiana had
+never come up to her...She wondered how the marriage would strike Van
+Degen...
+
+She signalled to a cab and they walked toward it without speaking.
+Undine was recalling with intensity that one of Indiana's shoulders was
+higher than the other, and that people in Apex had thought her lucky to
+catch Millard Binch, the druggist's clerk, when Undine herself had cast
+him off after a lingering engagement. And now Indiana Frusk was to be
+Mrs. James J. Rolliver!
+
+Undine got into the cab and bent forward to take little Paul.
+
+Moffatt lowered his charge with exaggerated care, and a "Steady there,
+steady," that made the child laugh; then, stooping over, he put a kiss
+on Paul's lips before handing him over to his mother.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"The Parisian Diamond Company--Anglo-American branch."
+
+Charles Bowen, seated, one rainy evening of the Paris season, in a
+corner of the great Nouveau Luxe restaurant, was lazily trying to
+resolve his impressions of the scene into the phrases of a letter to his
+old friend Mrs. Henley Fairford.
+
+The long habit of unwritten communion with this lady--in no way
+conditioned by the short rare letters they actually exchanged--usually
+caused his notations, in absence, to fall into such terms when the
+subject was of a kind to strike an answering flash from her. And who
+but Mrs. Fairford would see, from his own precise angle, the fantastic
+improbability, the layers on layers of unsubstantialness, on which the
+seemingly solid scene before him rested?
+
+The dining-room of the Nouveau Luxe was at its fullest, and, having
+contracted on the garden side through stress of weather, had even
+overflowed to the farther end of the long hall beyond; so that Bowen,
+from his corner, surveyed a seemingly endless perspective of plumed
+and jewelled heads, of shoulders bare or black-coated, encircling the
+close-packed tables. He had come half an hour before the time he had
+named to his expected guest, so that he might have the undisturbed
+amusement of watching the picture compose itself again before his eyes.
+During some forty years' perpetual exercise of his perceptions he had
+never come across anything that gave them the special titillation
+produced by the sight of the dinner-hour at the Nouveau Luxe: the same
+sense of putting his hand on human nature's passion for the factitious,
+its incorrigible habit of imitating the imitation.
+
+As he sat watching the familiar faces swept toward him on the rising
+tide of arrival--for it was one of the joys of the scene that the type
+was always the same even when the individual was not--he hailed with
+renewed appreciation this costly expression of a social ideal. The
+dining-room at the Nouveau Luxe represented, on such a spring evening,
+what unbounded material power had devised for the delusion of its
+leisure: a phantom "society," with all the rules, smirks, gestures of
+its model, but evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence while the other
+had been the product of continuity and choice. And the instinct which
+had driven a new class of world-compellers to bind themselves to slavish
+imitation of the superseded, and their prompt and reverent faith in
+the reality of the sham they had created, seemed to Bowen the most
+satisfying proof of human permanence.
+
+With this thought in his mind he looked up to greet his guest. The Comte
+Raymond de Chelles, straight, slim and gravely smiling, came toward him
+with frequent pauses of salutation at the crowded tables; saying, as he
+seated himself and turned his pleasant eyes on the scene: "Il n'y a pas
+a dire, my dear Bowen, it's charming and sympathetic and original--we
+owe America a debt of gratitude for inventing it!"
+
+Bowen felt a last touch of satisfaction: they were the very words to
+complete his thought.
+
+"My dear fellow, it's really you and your kind who are responsible. It's
+the direct creation of feudalism, like all the great social upheavals!"
+
+Raymond de Chelles stroked his handsome brown moustache. "I should have
+said, on the contrary, that one enjoyed it for the contrast. It's such
+a refreshing change from our institutions--which are, nevertheless, the
+necessary foundations of society. But just as one may have an infinite
+admiration for one's wife, and yet occasionally--" he waved a light hand
+toward the spectacle. "This, in the social order, is the diversion, the
+permitted diversion, that your original race has devised: a kind of
+superior Bohemia, where one may be respectable without being bored."
+
+Bowen laughed. "You've put it in a nutshell: the ideal of the American
+woman is to be respectable without being bored; and from that point of
+view this world they've invented has more originality than I gave it
+credit for."
+
+Chelles thoughtfully unfolded his napkin. "My impression's a superficial
+one, of course--for as to what goes on underneath--!" He looked across
+the room. "If I married I shouldn't care to have my wife come here too
+often."
+
+Bowen laughed again. "She'd be as safe as in a bank! Nothing ever goes
+on! Nothing that ever happens here is real."
+
+"Ah, quant a cela--" the Frenchman murmured, inserting a fork into
+his melon. Bowen looked at him with enjoyment--he was such a precious
+foot-note to the page! The two men, accidentally thrown together some
+years previously during a trip up the Nile, always met again with
+pleasure when Bowen returned to France. Raymond de Chelles, who came of
+a family of moderate fortune, lived for the greater part of the year on
+his father's estates in Burgundy; but he came up every spring to the
+entresol of the old Marquis's hotel for a two months' study of human
+nature, applying to the pursuit the discriminating taste and transient
+ardour that give the finest bloom to pleasure. Bowen liked him as a
+companion and admired him as a charming specimen of the Frenchman of his
+class, embodying in his lean, fatigued and finished person that happy
+mean of simplicity and intelligence of which no other race has found the
+secret. If Raymond de Chelles had been English he would have been a
+mere fox-hunting animal, with appetites but without tastes; but in his
+lighter Gallic clay the wholesome territorial savour, the inherited
+passion for sport and agriculture, were blent with an openness to finer
+sensations, a sense of the come-and-go of ideas, under which one felt
+the tight hold of two or three inherited notions, religious, political,
+and domestic, in total contradiction to his surface attitude. That the
+inherited notions would in the end prevail, everything in his appearance
+declared from the distinguished slant of his nose to the narrow forehead
+under his thinning hair; he was the kind of man who would inevitably
+"revert" when he married. But meanwhile the surface he presented to the
+play of life was broad enough to take in the fantastic spectacle of the
+Nouveau Luxe; and to see its gestures reflected in a Latin consciousness
+was an endless entertainment to Bowen.
+
+The tone of his guest's last words made him take them up. "But is the
+lady you allude to more than a hypothesis? Surely you're not thinking of
+getting married?"
+
+Chelles raised his eye-brows ironically. "When hasn't one to think of
+it, in my situation? One hears of nothing else at home--one knows that,
+like death, it has to come." His glance, which was still mustering the
+room, came to a sudden pause and kindled.
+
+"Who's the lady over there--fair-haired, in white--the one who's just
+come in with the red-faced man? They seem to be with a party of your
+compatriots."
+
+Bowen followed his glance to a neighbouring table, where, at the moment,
+Undine Marvell was seating herself at Peter Van Degen's side, in the
+company of the Harvey Shallums, the beautiful Mrs. Beringer and a dozen
+other New York figures.
+
+She was so placed that as she took her seat she recognized Bowen and
+sent him a smile across the tables. She was more simply dressed than
+usual, and the pink lights, warming her cheeks and striking gleams from
+her hair, gave her face a dewy freshness that was new to Bowen. He
+had always thought her beauty too obvious, too bathed in the bright
+publicity of the American air; but to-night she seemed to have been
+brushed by the wing of poetry, and its shadow lingered in her eyes.
+
+Chelles' gaze made it evident that he had received the same impression.
+
+"One is sometimes inclined to deny your compatriots actual beauty--to
+charge them with producing the effect without having the features; but
+in this case--you say you know the lady?"
+
+"Yes: she's the wife of an old friend."
+
+"The wife? She's married? There, again, it's so puzzling! Your
+young girls look so experienced, and your married women sometimes
+so--unmarried."
+
+"Well, they often are--in these days of divorce!"
+
+The other's interest quickened. "Your friend's divorced?"
+
+"Oh, no; heaven forbid! Mrs. Marvell hasn't been long married; and it
+was a love-match of the good old kind."
+
+"Ah--and the husband? Which is he?"
+
+"He's not here--he's in New York."
+
+"Feverishly adding to a fortune already monstrous?"
+
+"No; not precisely monstrous. The Marvells are not well off," said
+Bowen, amused by his friend's interrogations.
+
+"And he allows an exquisite being like that to come to Paris without
+him--and in company with the red-faced gentleman who seems so alive to
+his advantages?"
+
+"We don't 'allow' our women this or that; I don't think we set much
+store by the compulsory virtues."
+
+His companion received this with amusement. "If: you're as detached as
+that, why does the obsolete institution of marriage survive with you?"
+
+"Oh, it still has its uses. One couldn't be divorced without it."
+
+Chelles laughed again; but his straying eye still followed the same
+direction, and Bowen noticed that the fact was not unremarked by the
+object of his contemplation. Undine's party was one of the liveliest in
+the room: the American laugh rose above the din of the orchestra as the
+American toilets dominated the less daring effects at the other
+tables. Undine, on entering, had seemed to be in the same mood as her
+companions; but Bowen saw that, as she became conscious of his friend's
+observation, she isolated herself in a kind of soft abstraction; and
+he admired the adaptability which enabled her to draw from such
+surroundings the contrasting graces of reserve.
+
+They had greeted each other with all the outer signs of cordiality,
+but Bowen fancied she would not care to have him speak to her. She was
+evidently dining with Van Degen, and Van Degen's proximity was the last
+fact she would wish to have transmitted to the critics in Washington
+Square. Bowen was therefore surprised when, as he rose to leave the
+restaurant, he heard himself hailed by Peter.
+
+"Hallo--hold on! When did you come over? Mrs. Marvell's dying for the
+last news about the old homestead."
+
+Undine's smile confirmed the appeal. She wanted to know how lately Bowen
+had left New York, and pressed him to tell her when he had last seen her
+boy, how he was looking, and whether Ralph had been persuaded to go down
+to Clare's on Saturdays and get a little riding and tennis? And dear
+Laura--was she well too, and was Paul with her, or still with his
+grandmother? They were all dreadfully bad correspondents, and so was
+she. Undine laughingly admitted; and when Ralph had last written her
+these questions had still been undecided.
+
+As she smiled up at Bowen he saw her glance stray to the spot where his
+companion hovered; and when the diners rose to move toward the garden
+for coffee she said, with a sweet note and a detaining smile: "Do come
+with us--I haven't half finished."
+
+Van Degen echoed the request, and Bowen, amused by Undine's arts, was
+presently introducing Chelles, and joining with him in the party's
+transit to the terrace. The rain had ceased, and under the clear evening
+sky the restaurant garden opened green depths that skilfully hid its
+narrow boundaries. Van Degen's company was large enough to surround
+two of the tables on the terrace, and Bowen noted the skill with which
+Undine, leaving him to Mrs. Shallum's care, contrived to draw Raymond de
+Chelles to the other table. Still more noticeable was the effect of
+this stratagem on Van Degen, who also found himself relegated to Mrs.
+Shallum's group. Poor Peter's state was betrayed by the irascibility
+which wreaked itself on a jostling waiter, and found cause for loud
+remonstrance in the coldness of the coffee and the badness of the
+cigars; and Bowen, with something more than the curiosity of the
+looker-on, wondered whether this were the real clue to Undine's conduct.
+He had always smiled at Mrs. Fairford's fears for Ralph's domestic
+peace. He thought Undine too clear-headed to forfeit the advantages of
+her marriage; but it now struck him that she might have had a glimpse
+of larger opportunities. Bowen, at the thought, felt the pang of
+the sociologist over the individual havoc wrought by every social
+readjustment: it had so long been clear to him that poor Ralph was a
+survival, and destined, as such, to go down in any conflict with the
+rising forces.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+Some six weeks later. Undine Marvell stood at the window smiling down on
+her recovered Paris.
+
+Her hotel sitting-room had, as usual, been flowered, cushioned and
+lamp-shaded into a delusive semblance of stability; and she had really
+felt, for the last few weeks, that the life she was leading there must
+be going to last--it seemed so perfect an answer to all her wants!
+
+As she looked out at the thronged street, on which the summer light lay
+like a blush of pleasure, she felt herself naturally akin to all the
+bright and careless freedom of the scene. She had been away from
+Paris for two days, and the spectacle before her seemed more rich and
+suggestive after her brief absence from it. Her senses luxuriated in all
+its material details: the thronging motors, the brilliant shops, the
+novelty and daring of the women's dresses, the piled-up colours of
+the ambulant flower-carts, the appetizing expanse of the fruiterers'
+windows, even the chromatic effects of the petits fours behind the
+plate-glass of the pastry-cooks: all the surface-sparkle and variety of
+the inexhaustible streets of Paris.
+
+The scene before her typified to Undine her first real taste of life.
+How meagre and starved the past appeared in comparison with this
+abundant present! The noise, the crowd, the promiscuity beneath her eyes
+symbolized the glare and movement of her life. Every moment of her days
+was packed with excitement and exhilaration. Everything amused her: the
+long hours of bargaining and debate with dress-makers and jewellers, the
+crowded lunches at fashionable restaurants, the perfunctory dash through
+a picture-show or the lingering visit to the last new milliner; the
+afternoon motor-rush to some leafy suburb, where tea and musics and
+sunset were hastily absorbed on a crowded terrace above the Seine; the
+whirl home through the Bois to dress for dinner and start again on the
+round of evening diversions; the dinner at the Nouveau Luxe or the
+Cafe de Paris, and the little play at the Capucines or the Varietes,
+followed, because the night was "too lovely," and it was a shame to
+waste it, by a breathless flight back to the Bois, with supper in one
+of its lamp-hung restaurants, or, if the weather forbade, a tumultuous
+progress through the midnight haunts where "ladies" were not supposed
+to show themselves, and might consequently taste the thrill of being
+occasionally taken for their opposites.
+
+As the varied vision unrolled itself, Undine contrasted it with the pale
+monotony of her previous summers. The one she most resented was the
+first after her marriage, the European summer out of whose joys she had
+been cheated by her own ignorance and Ralph's perversity. They had been
+free then, there had been no child to hamper their movements, their
+money anxieties had hardly begun, the face of life had been fresh and
+radiant, and she had been doomed to waste such opportunities on a
+succession of ill-smelling Italian towns. She still felt it to be her
+deepest grievance against her husband; and now that, after four years of
+petty household worries, another chance of escape had come, he already
+wanted to drag her back to bondage!
+
+This fit of retrospection had been provoked by two letters which had
+come that morning. One was from Ralph, who began by reminding her that
+he had not heard from her for weeks, and went on to point out, in his
+usual tone of good-humoured remonstrance, that since her departure the
+drain on her letter of credit had been deep and constant. "I wanted
+you," he wrote, "to get all the fun you could out of the money I made
+last spring; but I didn't think you'd get through it quite so fast. Try
+to come home without leaving too many bills behind you. Your illness and
+Paul's cost more than I expected, and Lipscomb has had a bad knock in
+Wall Street, and hasn't yet paid his first quarter..."
+
+Always the same monotonous refrain! Was it her fault that she and the
+boy had been ill? Or that Harry Lipscomb had been "on the wrong side" of
+Wall Street? Ralph seemed to have money on the brain: his business life
+had certainly deteriorated him. And, since he hadn't made a success of
+it after all, why shouldn't he turn back to literature and try to write
+his novel? Undine, the previous winter, had been dazzled by the figures
+which a well-known magazine editor, whom she had met at dinner had named
+as within reach of the successful novelist. She perceived for the first
+time that literature was becoming fashionable, and instantly decided
+that it would be amusing and original if she and Ralph should owe their
+prosperity to his talent. She already saw herself, as the wife of a
+celebrated author, wearing "artistic" dresses and doing the drawing-room
+over with Gothic tapestries and dim lights in altar candle-sticks. But
+when she suggested Ralph's taking up his novel he answered with a laugh
+that his brains were sold to the firm--that when he came back at night
+the tank was empty...And now he wanted her to sail for home in a week!
+
+The other letter excited a deeper resentment. It was an appeal from
+Laura Fairford to return and look after Ralph. He was overworked and out
+of spirits, she wrote, and his mother and sister, reluctant as they
+were to interfere, felt they ought to urge Undine to come back to him.
+Details followed, unwelcome and officious. What right had Laura Fairford
+to preach to her of wifely obligations? No doubt Charles Bowen had sent
+home a highly-coloured report--and there was really a certain irony in
+Mrs. Fairford's criticizing her sister-in-law's conduct on information
+obtained from such a source! Undine turned from the window and threw
+herself down on her deeply cushioned sofa. She was feeling the pleasant
+fatigue consequent on her trip to the country, whither she and Mrs.
+Shallum had gone with Raymond de Chelles to spend a night at the old
+Marquis's chateau. When her travelling companions, an hour earlier, had
+left her at her door, she had half-promised to rejoin them for a late
+dinner in the Bois; and as she leaned back among the cushions disturbing
+thoughts were banished by the urgent necessity of deciding what dress
+she should wear.
+
+These bright weeks of the Parisian spring had given her a first real
+glimpse into the art of living. From the experts who had taught her to
+subdue the curves of her figure and soften her bright free stare with
+dusky pencillings, to the skilled purveyors of countless forms of
+pleasure--the theatres and restaurants, the green and blossoming
+suburbs, the whole shining shifting spectacle of nights and days--every
+sight and sound and word had combined to charm her perceptions and
+refine her taste. And her growing friendship with Raymond de Chelles had
+been the most potent of these influences.
+
+Chelles, at once immensely "taken," had not only shown his eagerness to
+share in the helter-skelter motions of Undine's party, but had given her
+glimpses of another, still more brilliant existence, that life of the
+inaccessible "Faubourg" of which the first tantalizing hints had but
+lately reached her. Hitherto she had assumed that Paris existed for the
+stranger, that its native life was merely an obscure foundation for
+the dazzling superstructure of hotels and restaurants in which her
+compatriots disported themselves. But lately she had begun to hear
+about other American women, the women who had married into the French
+aristocracy, and who led, in the high-walled houses beyond the Seine
+which she had once thought so dull and dingy, a life that made her own
+seem as undistinguished as the social existence of the Mealey
+House. Perhaps what most exasperated her was the discovery, in this
+impenetrable group, of the Miss Wincher who had poisoned her far-off
+summer at Potash Springs. To recognize her old enemy in the Marquise de
+Trezac who so frequently figured in the Parisian chronicle was the more
+irritating to Undine because her intervening social experiences had
+caused her to look back on Nettie Wincher as a frumpy girl who wouldn't
+have "had a show" in New York.
+
+Once more all the accepted values were reversed, and it turned out that
+Miss Wincher had been in possession of some key to success on which
+Undine had not yet put her hand. To know that others were indifferent to
+what she had thought important was to cheapen all present pleasure and
+turn the whole force of her desires in a new direction. What she wanted
+for the moment was to linger on in Paris, prolonging her flirtation with
+Chelles, and profiting by it to detach herself from her compatriots and
+enter doors closed to their approach. And Chelles himself attracted
+her: she thought him as "sweet" as she had once thought Ralph, whose
+fastidiousness and refinement were blent in him with a delightful
+foreign vivacity. His chief value, however, lay in his power of exciting
+Van Degen's jealousy. She knew enough of French customs to be aware that
+such devotion as Chelles' was not likely to have much practical bearing
+on her future; but Peter had an alarming way of lapsing into security,
+and as a spur to his ardour she knew the value of other men's
+attentions.
+
+It had become Undine's fixed purpose to bring Van Degen to a definite
+expression of his intentions. The case of Indiana Frusk, whose brilliant
+marriage the journals of two continents had recently chronicled with
+unprecedented richness of detail, had made less impression on him than
+she hoped. He treated it as a comic episode without special bearing on
+their case, and once, when Undine cited Rolliver's expensive fight for
+freedom as an instance of the power of love over the most invulnerable
+natures, had answered carelessly: "Oh, his first wife was a laundress, I
+believe."
+
+But all about them couples were unpairing and pairing again with an ease
+and rapidity that encouraged Undine to bide her time. It was simply a
+question of making Van Degen want her enough, and of not being obliged
+to abandon the game before he wanted her as much as she meant he should.
+This was precisely what would happen if she were compelled to leave
+Paris now. Already the event had shown how right she had been to come
+abroad: the attention she attracted in Paris had reawakened Van Degen's
+fancy, and her hold over him was stronger than when they had parted
+in America. But the next step must be taken with coolness and
+circumspection; and she must not throw away what she had gained by going
+away at a stage when he was surer of her than she of him. She was still
+intensely considering these questions when the door behind her opened
+and he came in.
+
+She looked up with a frown and he gave a deprecating laugh. "Didn't I
+knock? Don't look so savage! They told me downstairs you'd got back, and
+I just bolted in without thinking."
+
+He had widened and purpled since their first encounter, five years
+earlier, but his features had not matured. His face was still the
+face of a covetous bullying boy, with a large appetite for primitive
+satisfactions and a sturdy belief in his intrinsic right to them. It was
+all the more satisfying to Undine's vanity to see his look change at her
+tone from command to conciliation, and from conciliation to the entreaty
+of a capriciously-treated animal.
+
+"What a ridiculous hour for a visit!" she exclaimed, ignoring his
+excuse. "Well, if you disappear like that, without a word--"
+
+"I told my maid to telephone you I was going away."
+
+"You couldn't make time to do it yourself, I suppose?"
+
+"We rushed off suddenly; I'd hardly time to get to the station."
+
+"You rushed off where, may I ask?" Van Degen still lowered down on her.
+
+"Oh didn't I tell you? I've been down staying at Chelles' chateau in
+Burgundy." Her face lit up and she raised herself eagerly on her elbow.
+
+"It's the most wonderful old house you ever saw: a real castle, with
+towers, and water all round it, and a funny kind of bridge they pull up.
+Chelles said he wanted me to see just how they lived at home, and I did;
+I saw everything: the tapestries that Louis Quinze gave them, and the
+family portraits, and the chapel, where their own priest says mass, and
+they sit by themselves in a balcony with crowns all over it. The priest
+was a lovely old man--he said he'd give anything to convert me. Do you
+know, I think there's something very beautiful about the Roman Catholic
+religion? I've often felt I might have been happier if I'd had some
+religious influence in my life."
+
+She sighed a little, and turned her head away. She flattered herself
+that she had learned to strike the right note with Van Degen. At this
+crucial stage he needed a taste of his own methods, a glimpse of the
+fact that there were women in the world who could get on without him.
+
+He continued to gaze down at her sulkily. "Were the old people there?
+You never told me you knew his mother."
+
+"I don't. They weren't there. But it didn't make a bit of difference,
+because Raymond sent down a cook from the Luxe."
+
+"Oh, Lord," Van Degen groaned, dropping down on the end of the sofa.
+"Was the cook got down to chaperon you?"
+
+Undine laughed. "You talk like Ralph! I had Bertha with me."
+
+"BERTHA!" His tone of contempt surprised her. She had supposed that Mrs.
+Shallum's presence had made the visit perfectly correct.
+
+"You went without knowing his parents, and without their inviting you?
+Don't you know what that sort of thing means out here? Chelles did it
+to brag about you at his club. He wants to compromise you--that's his
+game!"
+
+"Do you suppose he does?" A flicker of a smile crossed her lips. "I'm
+so unconventional: when I like a man I never stop to think about such
+things. But I ought to, of course--you're quite right." She looked at
+Van Degen thoughtfully. "At any rate, he's not a married man."
+
+Van Degen had got to his feet again and was standing accusingly before
+her; but as she spoke the blood rose to his neck and ears. "What
+difference does that make?"
+
+"It might make a good deal. I see," she added, "how careful I ought to
+be about going round with you."
+
+"With ME?" His face fell at the retort; then he broke into a laugh. He
+adored Undine's "smartness," which was of precisely the same quality
+as his own. "Oh, that's another thing: you can always trust me to look
+after you!"
+
+"With your reputation? Much obliged!"
+
+Van Degen smiled. She knew he liked such allusions, and was pleased that
+she thought him compromising.
+
+"Oh, I'm as good as gold. You've made a new man of me!"
+
+"Have I?" She considered him in silence for a moment. "I wonder what
+you've done to me but make a discontented woman of me--discontented with
+everything I had before I knew you?"
+
+The change of tone was thrilling to him. He forgot her mockery, forgot
+his rival, and sat down at her side, almost in possession of her waist.
+"Look here," he asked, "where are we going to dine to-night?"
+
+His nearness was not agreeable to Undine, but she liked his free way,
+his contempt for verbal preliminaries. Ralph's reserves and delicacies,
+his perpetual desire that he and she should be attuned to the same key,
+had always vaguely bored her; whereas in Van Degen's manner she felt a
+hint of the masterful way that had once subdued her in Elmer Moffatt.
+But she drew back, releasing herself.
+
+"To-night? I can't--I'm engaged."
+
+"I know you are: engaged to ME! You promised last Sunday you'd dine with
+me out of town to-night."
+
+"How can I remember what I promised last Sunday? Besides, after what
+you've said, I see I oughtn't to."
+
+"What do you mean by what I've said?"
+
+"Why, that I'm imprudent; that people are talking--"
+
+He stood up with an angry laugh. "I suppose you're dining with Chelles.
+Is that it?"
+
+"Is that the way you cross-examine Clare?"
+
+"I don't care a hang what Clare does--I never have."
+
+"That must--in some ways--be rather convenient for her!"
+
+"Glad you think so. ARE you dining with him?"
+
+She slowly turned the wedding-ring upon her finger. "You know I'm NOT
+married to you--yet!"
+
+He took a random turn through the room; then he came back and planted
+himself wrathfully before her. "Can't you see the man's doing his best
+to make a fool of you?"
+
+She kept her amused gaze on him. "Does it strike you that it's such an
+awfully easy thing to do?"
+
+The edges of his ears were purple. "I sometimes think it's easier for
+these damned little dancing-masters than for one of us."
+
+Undine was still smiling up at him; but suddenly her grew grave. "What
+does it matter what I do or don't do, when Ralph has ordered me home
+next week?"
+
+"Ordered you home?" His face changed. "Well, you're not going, are you?"
+
+"What's the use of saying such things?" She gave a disenchanted laugh.
+"I'm a poor man's wife, and can't do the things my friends do. It's not
+because Ralph loves me that he wants me back--it's simply because he
+can't afford to let me stay!"
+
+Van Degen's perturbation was increasing. "But you mustn't go--it's
+preposterous! Why should a woman like you be sacrificed when a lot of
+dreary frumps have everything they want? Besides, you can't chuck me
+like this! Why, we're all to motor down to Aix next week, and perhaps
+take a dip into Italy--"
+
+"OH, ITALY--" she murmured on a note of yearning.
+
+He was closer now, and had her hands. "You'd love that, wouldn't you?
+As far as Venice, anyhow; and then in August there's Trouville--you've
+never tried Trouville? There's an awfully jolly crowd there--and the
+motoring's ripping in Normandy. If you say so I'll take a villa there
+instead of going back to Newport. And I'll put the Sorceress in
+commission, and you can make up parties and run off whenever you like,
+to Scotland or Norway--" He hung above her. "Don't dine with Chelles
+to-night! Come with me, and we'll talk things over; and next week we'll
+run down to Trouville to choose the villa."
+
+Undine's heart was beating fast, but she felt within her a strange lucid
+force of resistance. Because of that sense of security she left her
+hands in Van Degen's. So Mr. Spragg might have felt at the tensest hour
+of the Pure Water move. She leaned forward, holding her suitor off by
+the pressure of her bent-back palms.
+
+"Kiss me good-bye, Peter; I sail on Wednesday," she said.
+
+It was the first time she had permitted him a kiss, and as his face
+darkened down on her she felt a moment's recoil. But her physical
+reactions were never very acute: she always vaguely wondered why
+people made "such a fuss," were so violently for or against such
+demonstrations. A cool spirit within her seemed to watch over and
+regulate her sensations, and leave her capable of measuring the
+intensity of those she provoked.
+
+She turned to look at the clock. "You must go now--I shall be hours late
+for dinner."
+
+"Go--after that?" He held her fast. "Kiss me again," he commanded.
+
+It was wonderful how cool she felt--how easily she could slip out of his
+grasp! Any man could be managed like a child if he were really in love
+with one....
+
+"Don't be a goose, Peter; do you suppose I'd have kissed you if--"
+
+"If what--what--what?" he mimicked her ecstatically, not listening.
+
+She saw that if she wished to make him hear her she must put more
+distance between them, and she rose and moved across the room. From the
+fireplace she turned to add--"if we hadn't been saying good-bye?"
+
+"Good-bye--now? What's the use of talking like that?" He jumped up and
+followed her. "Look here, Undine--I'll do anything on earth you want;
+only don't talk of going! If you'll only stay I'll make it all as
+straight and square as you please. I'll get Bertha Shallum to stop over
+with you for the summer; I'll take a house at Trouville and make my wife
+come out there. Hang it, she SHALL, if you say so! Only be a little good
+to me!"
+
+Still she stood before him without speaking, aware that her implacable
+brows and narrowed lips would hold him off as long as she chose.
+
+"What's the matter. Undine? Why don't you answer? You know you can't go
+back to that deadly dry-rot!"
+
+She swept about on him with indignant eyes. "I can't go on with my
+present life either. It's hateful--as hateful as the other. If I don't
+go home I've got to decide on something different."
+
+"What do you mean by 'something different'?" She was silent, and he
+insisted: "Are you really thinking of marrying Chelles?"
+
+She started as if he had surprised a secret. "I'll never forgive you if
+you speak of it--"
+
+"Good Lord! Good Lord!" he groaned.
+
+She remained motionless, with lowered lids, and he went up to her and
+pulled her about so that she faced him. "Undine, honour bright--do you
+think he'll marry you?"
+
+She looked at him with a sudden hardness in her eyes. "I really can't
+discuss such things with you."
+
+"Oh, for the Lord's sake don't take that tone! I don't half know what
+I'm saying...but you mustn't throw yourself away a second time. I'll do
+anything you want--I swear I will!"
+
+A knock on the door sent them apart, and a servant entered with a
+telegram.
+
+Undine turned away to the window with the narrow blue slip. She was glad
+of the interruption: the sense of what she had at stake made her want to
+pause a moment and to draw breath.
+
+The message was a long cable signed with Laura Fairford's name. It told
+her that Ralph had been taken suddenly ill with pneumonia, that his
+condition was serious and that the doctors advised his wife's immediate
+return.
+
+Undine had to read the words over two or three times to get them into
+her crowded mind; and even after she had done so she needed more time to
+see their bearing on her own situation. If the message had concerned
+her boy her brain would have acted more quickly. She had never troubled
+herself over the possibility of Paul's falling ill in her absence, but
+she understood now that if the cable had been about him she would have
+rushed to the earliest steamer. With Ralph it was different. Ralph was
+always perfectly well--she could not picture him as being suddenly at
+death's door and in need of her. Probably his mother and sister had had
+a panic: they were always full of sentimental terrors. The next moment
+an angry suspicion flashed across her: what if the cable were a device
+of the Marvell women to bring her back? Perhaps it had been sent
+with Ralph's connivance! No doubt Bowen had written home about
+her--Washington Square had received some monstrous report of her
+doings!... Yes, the cable was clearly an echo of Laura's letter--mother
+and daughter had cooked it up to spoil her pleasure. Once the thought
+had occurred to her it struck root in her mind and began to throw out
+giant branches. Van Degen followed her to the window, his face still
+flushed and working. "What's the matter?" he asked, as she continued to
+stare silently at the telegram.
+
+She crumpled the strip of paper in her hand. If only she had been alone,
+had had a chance to think out her answers!
+
+"What on earth's the matter?" he repeated.
+
+"Oh, nothing--nothing."
+
+"Nothing? When you're as white as a sheet?"
+
+"Am I?" She gave a slight laugh. "It's only a cable from home."
+
+"Ralph?"
+
+She hesitated. "No. Laura."
+
+"What the devil is SHE cabling you about?"
+
+"She says Ralph wants me."
+
+"Now--at once?"
+
+"At once."
+
+Van Degen laughed impatiently. "Why don't he tell you so himself? What
+business is it of Laura Fairford's?"
+
+Undine's gesture implied a "What indeed?"
+
+"Is that all she says?"
+
+She hesitated again. "Yes--that's all." As she spoke she tossed the
+telegram into the basket beneath the writing-table. "As if I didn't HAVE
+to go anyhow?" she exclaimed.
+
+With an aching clearness of vision she saw what lay before her--the
+hurried preparations, the long tedious voyage on a steamer chosen at
+haphazard, the arrival in the deadly July heat, and the relapse into all
+the insufferable daily fag of nursery and kitchen--she saw it and her
+imagination recoiled.
+
+Van Degen's eyes still hung on her: she guessed that he was intensely
+engaged in trying to follow what was passing through her mind. Presently
+he came up to her again, no longer perilous and importunate, but
+awkwardly tender, ridiculously moved by her distress.
+
+"Undine, listen: won't you let me make it all right for you to stay?"
+
+Her heart began to beat more quickly, and she let him come close,
+meeting his eyes coldly but without anger.
+
+"What do you call 'making it all right'? Paying my bills? Don't you see
+that's what I hate, and will never let myself be dragged into again?"
+She laid her hand on his arm. "The time has come when I must be
+sensible, Peter; that's why we must say good-bye."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you're going back to Ralph?"
+
+She paused a moment; then she murmured between her lips: "I shall never
+go back to him."
+
+"Then you DO mean to marry Chelles?"
+
+"I've told you we must say good-bye. I've got to look out for my
+future."
+
+He stood before her, irresolute, tormented, his lazy mind and impatient
+senses labouring with a problem beyond their power. "Ain't I here to
+look out for your future?" he said at last.
+
+"No one shall look out for it in the way you mean. I'd rather never see
+you again--"
+
+He gave her a baffled stare. "Oh, damn it--if that's the way you feel!"
+He turned and flung away toward the door.
+
+She stood motionless where he left her, every nerve strung to the
+highest pitch of watchfulness. As she stood there, the scene about her
+stamped itself on her brain with the sharpest precision. She was aware
+of the fading of the summer light outside, of the movements of her maid,
+who was laying out her dinner-dress in the room beyond, and of the fact
+that the tea-roses on her writing-table, shaken by Van Degen's tread,
+were dropping their petals over Ralph's letter, and down on the crumpled
+telegram which she could see through the trellised sides of the
+scrap-basket.
+
+In another moment Van Degen would be gone. Worse yet, while he wavered
+in the doorway the Shallums and Chelles, after vainly awaiting her,
+might dash back from the Bois and break in on them. These and other
+chances rose before her, urging her to action; but she held fast,
+immovable, unwavering, a proud yet plaintive image of renunciation.
+
+Van Degen's hand was on the door. He half-opened it and then turned
+back.
+
+"That's all you've got to say, then?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+He jerked the door open and passed out. She saw him stop in the
+ante-room to pick up his hat and stick, his heavy figure silhouetted
+against the glare of the wall-lights. A ray of the same light fell
+on her where she stood in the unlit sitting-room, and her reflection
+bloomed out like a flower from the mirror that faced her. She looked
+at the image and waited. Van Degen put his hat on his head and slowly
+opened the door into the outer hall. Then he turned abruptly, his bulk
+eclipsing her reflection as he plunged back into the room and came up to
+her.
+
+"I'll do anything you say. Undine; I'll do anything in God's world to
+keep you!"
+
+She turned her eyes from the mirror and let them rest on his face, which
+looked as small and withered as an old man's, with a lower lip that
+trembled queerly....
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+The spring in New York proceeded through more than its usual extremes of
+temperature to the threshold of a sultry June.
+
+Ralph Marvell, wearily bent to his task, felt the fantastic humours of
+the weather as only one more incoherence in the general chaos of his
+case. It was strange enough, after four years of marriage, to find
+himself again in his old brown room in Washington Square. It was
+hardly there that he had expected Pegasus to land him; and, like a man
+returning to the scenes of his childhood, he found everything on a much
+smaller scale than he had imagined. Had the Dagonet boundaries really
+narrowed, or had the breach in the walls of his own life let in a wider
+vision?
+
+Certainly there had come to be other differences between his present and
+his former self than that embodied in the presence of his little boy in
+the next room. Paul, in fact, was now the chief link between Ralph and
+his past. Concerning his son he still felt and thought, in a general
+way, in the terms of the Dagonet tradition; he still wanted to implant
+in Paul some of the reserves and discriminations which divided that
+tradition from the new spirit of limitless concession. But for himself
+it was different. Since his transaction with Moffatt he had had the
+sense of living under a new dispensation. He was not sure that it was
+any worse than the other; but then he was no longer very sure about
+anything. Perhaps this growing indifference was merely the reaction from
+a long nervous strain: that his mother and sister thought it so was
+shown by the way in which they mutely watched and hovered. Their
+discretion was like the hushed tread about a sick-bed. They permitted
+themselves no criticism of Undine; he was asked no awkward questions,
+subjected to no ill-timed sympathy. They simply took him back, on his
+own terms, into the life he had left them to; and their silence had none
+of those subtle implications of disapproval which may be so much more
+wounding than speech.
+
+For a while he received a weekly letter from Undine. Vague and
+disappointing though they were, these missives helped him through the
+days; but he looked forward to them rather as a pretext for replies than
+for their actual contents. Undine was never at a loss for the spoken
+word: Ralph had often wondered at her verbal range and her fluent use of
+terms outside the current vocabulary. She had certainly not picked these
+up in books, since she never opened one: they seemed rather like some
+odd transmission of her preaching grandparent's oratory. But in her
+brief and colourless letters she repeated the same bald statements in
+the same few terms. She was well, she had been "round" with Bertha
+Shallum, she had dined with the Jim Driscolls or May Beringer or Dicky
+Bowles, the weather was too lovely or too awful; such was the gist of
+her news. On the last page she hoped Paul was well and sent him a kiss;
+but she never made a suggestion concerning his care or asked a question
+about his pursuits. One could only infer that, knowing in what good
+hands he was, she judged such solicitude superfluous; and it was thus
+that Ralph put the matter to his mother.
+
+"Of course she's not worrying about the boy--why should she? She knows
+that with you and Laura he's as happy as a king."
+
+To which Mrs. Marvell would answer gravely: "When you write, be sure
+to say I shan't put on his thinner flannels as long as this east wind
+lasts."
+
+As for her husband's welfare. Undine's sole allusion to it consisted
+in the invariable expression of the hope that he was getting along all
+right: the phrase was always the same, and Ralph learned to know
+just how far down the third page to look for it. In a postscript she
+sometimes asked him to tell her mother about a new way of doing hair or
+cutting a skirt; and this was usually the most eloquent passage of the
+letter. What satisfaction he extracted from these communications he
+would have found it hard to say; yet when they did not come he missed
+them hardly less than if they had given him all he craved. Sometimes the
+mere act of holding the blue or mauve sheet and breathing its scent was
+like holding his wife's hand and being enveloped in her fresh young
+fragrance: the sentimental disappointment vanished in the penetrating
+physical sensation. In other moods it was enough to trace the letters
+of the first line and the last for the desert of perfunctory phrases
+between the two to vanish, leaving him only the vision of their
+interlaced names, as of a mystic bond which her own hand had tied.
+Or else he saw her, closely, palpably before him, as she sat at her
+writing-table, frowning and a little flushed, her bent nape showing the
+light on her hair, her short lip pulled up by the effort of composition;
+and this picture had the violent reality of dream-images on the verge of
+waking. At other times, as he read her letter, he felt simply that at
+least in the moment of writing it she had been with him. But in one of
+the last she had said (to excuse a bad blot and an incoherent sentence):
+"Everybody's talking to me at once, and I don't know what I'm writing."
+That letter he had thrown into the fire....
+
+After the first few weeks, the letters came less and less regularly:
+at the end of two months they ceased. Ralph had got into the habit of
+watching for them on the days when a foreign post was due, and as the
+weeks went by without a sign he began to invent excuses for leaving the
+office earlier and hurrying back to Washington Square to search
+the letter-box for a big tinted envelope with a straggling blotted
+superscription.
+
+Undine's departure had given him a momentary sense of liberation: at
+that stage in their relations any change would have brought relief. But
+now that she was gone he knew she could never really go. Though his
+feeling for her had changed, it still ruled his life. If he saw her in
+her weakness he felt her in her power: the power of youth and physical
+radiance that clung to his disenchanted memories as the scent she used
+clung to her letters. Looking back at their four years of marriage he
+began to ask himself if he had done all he could to draw her
+half-formed spirit from its sleep. Had he not expected too much at
+first, and grown too indifferent in the sequel? After all, she was still
+in the toy age; and perhaps the very extravagance of his love had
+retarded her growth, helped to imprison her in a little circle of
+frivolous illusions. But the last months had made a man of him, and when
+she came back he would know how to lift her to the height of his
+experience.
+
+So he would reason, day by day, as he hastened back to Washington
+Square; but when he opened the door, and his first glance at the hall
+table showed him there was no letter there, his illusions shrivelled
+down to their weak roots. She had not written: she did not mean to
+write. He and the boy were no longer a part of her life. When she
+came back everything would be as it had been before, with the dreary
+difference that she had tasted new pleasures and that their absence
+would take the savour from all he had to give her. Then the coming of
+another foreign mail would lift his hopes, and as he hurried home he
+would imagine new reasons for expecting a letter....
+
+Week after week he swung between the extremes of hope and dejection,
+and at last, when the strain had become unbearable, he cabled her. The
+answer ran: "Very well best love writing"; but the promised letter never
+came....
+
+He went on steadily with his work: he even passed through a phase of
+exaggerated energy. But his baffled youth fought in him for air. Was
+this to be the end? Was he to wear his life out in useless drudgery? The
+plain prose of it, of course, was that the economic situation remained
+unchanged by the sentimental catastrophe and that he must go on working
+for his wife and child. But at any rate, as it was mainly for Paul that
+he would henceforth work, it should be on his own terms and according to
+his inherited notions of "straightness." He would never again engage in
+any transaction resembling his compact with Moffatt. Even now he was not
+sure there had been anything crooked in that; but the fact of his having
+instinctively referred the point to Mr. Spragg rather than to his
+grandfather implied a presumption against it.
+
+His partners were quick to profit by his sudden spurt of energy, and
+his work grew no lighter. He was not only the youngest and most recent
+member of the firm, but the one who had so far added least to the volume
+of its business. His hours were the longest, his absences, as summer
+approached, the least frequent and the most grudgingly accorded. No
+doubt his associates knew that he was pressed for money and could not
+risk a break. They "worked" him, and he was aware of it, and submitted
+because he dared not lose his job. But the long hours of mechanical
+drudgery were telling on his active body and undisciplined nerves. He
+had begun too late to subject himself to the persistent mortification of
+spirit and flesh which is a condition of the average business life; and
+after the long dull days in the office the evenings at his grandfather's
+whist-table did not give him the counter-stimulus he needed.
+
+Almost every one had gone out of town; but now and then Miss Ray came to
+dine, and Ralph, seated beneath the family portraits and opposite the
+desiccated Harriet, who had already faded to the semblance of one of
+her own great-aunts, listened languidly to the kind of talk that the
+originals might have exchanged about the same table when New York
+gentility centred in the Battery and the Bowling Green. Mr. Dagonet was
+always pleasant to see and hear, but his sarcasms were growing faint
+and recondite: they had as little bearing on life as the humours of a
+Restoration comedy. As for Mrs. Marvell and Miss Ray, they seemed to the
+young man even more spectrally remote: hardly anything that mattered to
+him existed for them, and their prejudices reminded him of sign-posts
+warning off trespassers who have long since ceased to intrude.
+
+Now and then he dined at his club and went on to the theatre with some
+young men of his own age; but he left them afterward, half vexed with
+himself for not being in the humour to prolong the adventure. There
+were moments when he would have liked to affirm his freedom in however
+commonplace a way: moments when the vulgarest way would have seemed
+the most satisfying. But he always ended by walking home alone and
+tip-toeing upstairs through the sleeping house lest he should wake his
+boy....
+
+On Saturday afternoons, when the business world was hurrying to the
+country for golf and tennis, he stayed in town and took Paul to see the
+Spraggs. Several times since his wife's departure he had tried to bring
+about closer relations between his own family and Undine's; and the
+ladies of Washington Square, in their eagerness to meet his wishes, had
+made various friendly advances to Mrs. Spragg. But they were met by a
+mute resistance which made Ralph suspect that Undine's strictures on his
+family had taken root in her mother's brooding mind; and he gave up the
+struggle to bring together what had been so effectually put asunder.
+
+If he regretted his lack of success it was chiefly because he was so
+sorry for the Spraggs. Soon after Undine's marriage they had abandoned
+their polychrome suite at the Stentorian, and since then their
+peregrinations had carried them through half the hotels of the
+metropolis. Undine, who had early discovered her mistake in thinking
+hotel life fashionable, had tried to persuade her parents to take a
+house of their own; but though they refrained from taxing her with
+inconsistency they did not act on her suggestion. Mrs. Spragg seemed
+to shrink from the thought of "going back to house-keeping," and Ralph
+suspected that she depended on the transit from hotel to hotel as the
+one element of variety in her life. As for Mr. Spragg, it was impossible
+to imagine any one in whom the domestic sentiments were more completely
+unlocalized and disconnected from any fixed habits; and he was probably
+aware of his changes of abode chiefly as they obliged him to ascend from
+the Subway, or descend from the "Elevated," a few blocks higher up or
+lower down.
+
+Neither husband nor wife complained to Ralph of their frequent
+displacements, or assigned to them any cause save the vague one of
+"guessing they could do better"; but Ralph noticed that the decreasing
+luxury of their life synchronized with Undine's growing demands for
+money. During the last few months they had transferred themselves to the
+"Malibran," a tall narrow structure resembling a grain-elevator divided
+into cells, where linoleum and lincrusta simulated the stucco and marble
+of the Stentorian, and fagged business men and their families consumed
+the watery stews dispensed by "coloured help" in the grey twilight of a
+basement dining-room.
+
+Mrs. Spragg had no sitting-room, and Paul and his father had to be
+received in one of the long public parlours, between ladies seated at
+rickety desks in the throes of correspondence and groups of listlessly
+conversing residents and callers.
+
+The Spraggs were intensely proud of their grandson, and Ralph perceived
+that they would have liked to see Paul charging uproariously from group
+to group, and thrusting his bright curls and cherubic smile upon the
+general attention. The fact that the boy preferred to stand between his
+grandfather's knees and play with Mr. Spragg's Masonic emblem, or dangle
+his legs from the arm of Mrs. Spragg's chair, seemed to his grandparents
+evidence of ill-health or undue repression, and he was subjected by Mrs.
+Spragg to searching enquiries as to how his food set, and whether he
+didn't think his Popper was too strict with him. A more embarrassing
+problem was raised by the "surprise" (in the shape of peanut candy or
+chocolate creams) which he was invited to hunt for in Gran'ma's pockets,
+and which Ralph had to confiscate on the way home lest the dietary rules
+of Washington Square should be too visibly infringed.
+
+Sometimes Ralph found Mrs. Heeny, ruddy and jovial, seated in the
+arm-chair opposite Mrs. Spragg, and regaling her with selections from a
+new batch of clippings. During Undine's illness of the previous winter
+Mrs. Heeny had become a familiar figure to Paul, who had learned to
+expect almost as much from her bag as from his grandmother's pockets; so
+that the intemperate Saturdays at the Malibran were usually followed by
+languid and abstemious Sundays in Washington Square. Mrs. Heeny, being
+unaware of this sequel to her bounties, formed the habit of appearing
+regularly on Saturdays, and while she chatted with his grandmother the
+little boy was encouraged to scatter the grimy carpet with face-creams
+and bunches of clippings in his thrilling quest for the sweets at the
+bottom of her bag.
+
+"I declare, if he ain't in just as much of a hurry f'r everything as his
+mother!" she exclaimed one day in her rich rolling voice; and stooping
+to pick up a long strip of newspaper which Paul had flung aside she
+added, as she smoothed it out: "I guess 'f he was a little mite older
+he'd be better pleased with this 'n with the candy. It's the very thing
+I was trying to find for you the other day, Mrs. Spragg," she went on,
+holding the bit of paper at arm's length; and she began to read out,
+with a loudness proportioned to the distance between her eyes and the
+text:
+
+"With two such sprinters as 'Pete' Van Degen and Dicky Bowles to set the
+pace, it's no wonder the New York set in Paris has struck a livelier
+gait than ever this spring. It's a high-pressure season and no mistake,
+and no one lags behind less than the fascinating Mrs. Ralph Marvell,
+who is to be seen daily and nightly in all the smartest restaurants and
+naughtiest theatres, with so many devoted swains in attendance that the
+rival beauties of both worlds are said to be making catty comments. But
+then Mrs. Marvell's gowns are almost as good as her looks--and how can
+you expect the other women to stand for such a monopoly?"
+
+To escape the strain of these visits, Ralph once or twice tried the
+experiment of leaving Paul with his grand-parents and calling for him in
+the late afternoon; but one day, on re-entering the Malibran, he was met
+by a small abashed figure clad in a kaleidoscopic tartan and a green
+velvet cap with a silver thistle. After this experience of the
+"surprises" of which Gran'ma was capable when she had a chance to take
+Paul shopping Ralph did not again venture to leave his son, and their
+subsequent Saturdays were passed together in the sultry gloom of the
+Malibran. Conversation with the Spraggs was almost impossible. Ralph
+could talk with his father-in-law in his office, but in the hotel
+parlour Mr. Spragg sat in a ruminating silence broken only by the
+emission of an occasional "Well--well" addressed to his grandson. As for
+Mrs. Spragg, her son-in-law could not remember having had a sustained
+conversation with her since the distant day when he had first called at
+the Stentorian, and had been "entertained," in Undine's absence, by her
+astonished mother. The shock of that encounter had moved Mrs. Spragg to
+eloquence; but Ralph's entrance into the family, without making him seem
+less of a stranger, appeared once for all to have relieved her of the
+obligation of finding something to say to him.
+
+The one question she invariably asked: "You heard from Undie?" had been
+relatively easy to answer while his wife's infrequent letters continued
+to arrive; but a Saturday came when he felt the blood rise to his
+temples as, for the fourth consecutive week, he stammered out, under the
+snapping eyes of Mrs. Heeny: "No, not by this post either--I begin to
+think I must have lost a letter"; and it was then that Mr. Spragg,
+who had sat silently looking up at the ceiling, cut short his wife's
+exclamation by an enquiry about real estate in the Bronx. After that,
+Ralph noticed, Mrs. Spragg never again renewed her question; and he
+understood that his father-in-law had guessed his embarrassment and
+wished to spare it.
+
+Ralph had never thought of looking for any delicacy of feeling under
+Mr. Spragg's large lazy irony, and the incident drew the two men nearer
+together. Mrs. Spragg, for her part, was certainly not delicate; but
+she was simple and without malice, and Ralph liked her for her silent
+acceptance of her diminished state. Sometimes, as he sat between the
+lonely primitive old couple, he wondered from what source Undine's
+voracious ambitions had been drawn: all she cared for, and attached
+importance to, was as remote from her parents' conception of life as her
+impatient greed from their passive stoicism.
+
+One hot afternoon toward the end of June Ralph suddenly wondered if
+Clare Van Degen were still in town. She had dined in Washington Square
+some ten days earlier, and he remembered her saying that she had sent
+the children down to Long Island, but that she herself meant to stay on
+in town till the heat grew unbearable. She hated her big showy place on
+Long Island, she was tired of the spring trip to London and Paris, where
+one met at every turn the faces one had grown sick of seeing all winter,
+and she declared that in the early summer New York was the only place in
+which one could escape from New Yorkers... She put the case amusingly,
+and it was like her to take up any attitude that went against the habits
+of her set; but she lived at the mercy of her moods, and one could never
+tell how long any one of them would rule her.
+
+As he sat in his office, with the noise and glare of the endless
+afternoon rising up in hot waves from the street, there wandered into
+Ralph's mind a vision of her shady drawing-room. All day it hung before
+him like the mirage of a spring before a dusty traveller: he felt a
+positive thirst for her presence, for the sound of her voice, the wide
+spaces and luxurious silences surrounding her.
+
+It was perhaps because, on that particular day, a spiral pain was
+twisting around in the back of his head, and digging in a little deeper
+with each twist, and because the figures on the balance sheet before him
+were hopping about like black imps in an infernal forward-and-back,
+that the picture hung there so persistently. It was a long time since he
+had wanted anything as much as, at that particular moment, he wanted to
+be with Clare and hear her voice; and as soon as he had ground out the
+day's measure of work he rang up the Van Degen palace and learned that
+she was still in town.
+
+The lowered awnings of her inner drawing-room cast a luminous shadow on
+old cabinets and consoles, and on the pale flowers scattered here and
+there in vases of bronze and porcelain. Clare's taste was as capricious
+as her moods, and the rest of the house was not in harmony with this
+room. There was, in particular, another drawing-room, which she now
+described as Peter's creation, but which Ralph knew to be partly hers: a
+heavily decorated apartment, where Popple's portrait of her throned over
+a waste of gilt furniture. It was characteristic that to-day she had
+had Ralph shown in by another way; and that, as she had spared him the
+polyphonic drawing-room, so she had skilfully adapted her own appearance
+to her soberer background. She sat near the window, reading, in a clear
+cool dress: and at his entrance she merely slipped a finger between the
+pages and looked up at him.
+
+Her way of receiving him made him feel that restlessness and stridency
+were as unlike her genuine self as the gilded drawing-room, and that
+this quiet creature was the only real Clare, the Clare who had once been
+so nearly his, and who seemed to want him to know that she had never
+wholly been any one else's.
+
+"Why didn't you let me know you were still in town?" he asked, as he sat
+down in the sofa-corner near her chair.
+
+Her dark smile deepened. "I hoped you'd come and see."
+
+"One never knows, with you."
+
+He was looking about the room with a kind of confused pleasure in its
+pale shadows and spots of dark rich colour. The old lacquer screen
+behind Clare's head looked like a lustreless black pool with gold leaves
+floating on it; and another piece, a little table at her elbow, had the
+brown bloom and the pear-like curves of an old violin.
+
+"I like to be here," Ralph said.
+
+She did not make the mistake of asking: "Then why do you never come?"
+Instead, she turned away and drew an inner curtain across the window to
+shut out the sunlight which was beginning to slant in under the awning.
+
+The mere fact of her not answering, and the final touch of well-being
+which her gesture gave, reminded him of other summer days they had spent
+together long rambling boy-and-girl days in the hot woods and fields,
+when they had never thought of talking to each other unless there was
+something they particularly wanted to say. His tired fancy strayed off
+for a second to the thought of what it would have been like come back,
+at the end of the day, to such a sweet community of silence; but his
+mind was too crowded with importunate facts for any lasting view of
+visionary distances. The thought faded, and he merely felt how restful
+it was to have her near...
+
+"I'm glad you stayed in town: you must let me come again," he said.
+
+"I suppose you can't always get away," she answered; and she began to
+listen, with grave intelligent eyes, to his description of his tedious
+days.
+
+With her eyes on him he felt the exquisite relief of talking about
+himself as he had not dared to talk to any one since his marriage.
+He would not for the world have confessed his discouragement, his
+consciousness of incapacity; to Undine and in Washington Square any
+hint of failure would have been taken as a criticism of what his wife
+demanded of him. Only to Clare Van Degen could he cry out his present
+despondency and his loathing of the interminable task ahead.
+
+"A man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is,
+and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if
+there's time for both. But there's Paul to be looked out for, and I
+daren't chuck my job--I'm in mortal terror of its chucking me..."
+
+Little by little he slipped into a detailed recital of all his lesser
+worries, the most recent of which was his experience with the Lipscombs,
+who, after a two months' tenancy of the West End Avenue house, had
+decamped without paying their rent.
+
+Clare laughed contemptuously. "Yes--I heard he'd come to grief and been
+suspended from the Stock Exchange, and I see in the papers that his
+wife's retort has been to sue for a divorce."
+
+Ralph knew that, like all their clan, his cousin regarded a divorce-suit
+as a vulgar and unnecessary way of taking the public into one's
+confidence. His mind flashed back to the family feast in Washington
+Square in celebration of his engagement. He recalled his grandfather's
+chance allusion to Mrs. Lipscomb, and Undine's answer, fluted out on her
+highest note: "Oh, I guess she'll get a divorce pretty soon. He's been a
+disappointment to her."
+
+Ralph could still hear the horrified murmur with which his mother had
+rebuked his laugh. For he had laughed--had thought Undine's speech fresh
+and natural! Now he felt the ironic rebound of her words. Heaven knew he
+had been a disappointment to her; and what was there in her own feeling,
+or in her inherited prejudices, to prevent her seeking the same redress
+as Mabel Lipscomb? He wondered if the same thought were in his cousin's
+mind...
+
+They began to talk of other things: books, pictures, plays; and one
+by one the closed doors opened and light was let into dusty shuttered
+places. Clare's mind was neither keen nor deep: Ralph, in the past, had
+smiled at her rash ardours and vague intensities. But she had his own
+range of allusions, and a great gift of momentary understanding; and
+he had so long beaten his thoughts out against a blank wall of
+incomprehension that her sympathy seemed full of insight.
+
+She began by a question about his writing, but the subject was
+distasteful to him, and he turned the talk to a new book in which he had
+been interested. She knew enough of it to slip in the right word here
+and there; and thence they wandered on to kindred topics. Under the
+warmth of her attention his torpid ideas awoke again, and his eyes took
+their fill of pleasure as she leaned forward, her thin brown hands
+clasped on her knees and her eager face reflecting all his feelings.
+
+There was a moment when the two currents of sensation were merged in
+one, and he began to feel confusedly that he was young and she was kind,
+and that there was nothing he would like better than to go on sitting
+there, not much caring what she said or how he answered, if only she
+would let him look at her and give him one of her thin brown hands to
+hold. Then the corkscrew in the back of his head dug into him again with
+a deeper thrust, and she seemed suddenly to recede to a great distance
+and be divided from him by a fog of pain. The fog lifted after a minute,
+but it left him queerly remote from her, from the cool room with its
+scents and shadows, and from all the objects which, a moment before, had
+so sharply impinged upon his senses. It was as though he looked at it
+all through a rain-blurred pane, against which his hand would strike if
+he held it out to her...
+
+That impression passed also, and he found himself thinking how tired he
+was and how little anything mattered. He recalled the unfinished piece
+of work on his desk, and for a moment had the odd illusion that it was
+there before him...
+
+She exclaimed: "But are you going?" and her exclamation made him aware
+that he had left his seat and was standing in front of her... He fancied
+there was some kind of appeal in her brown eyes; but she was so dim and
+far off that he couldn't be sure of what she wanted, and the next moment
+he found himself shaking hands with her, and heard her saying something
+kind and cold about its having been so nice to see him...
+
+Half way up the stairs little Paul, shining and rosy from supper, lurked
+in ambush for his evening game. Ralph was fond of stooping down to let
+the boy climb up his outstretched arms to his shoulders, but to-day, as
+he did so, Paul's hug seemed to crush him in a vice, and the shout
+of welcome that accompanied it racked his ears like an explosion of
+steam-whistles. The queer distance between himself and the rest of the
+world was annihilated again: everything stared and glared and clutched
+him. He tried to turn away his face from the child's hot kisses; and as
+he did so he caught sight of a mauve envelope among the hats and sticks
+on the hall table.
+
+Instantly he passed Paul over to his nurse, stammered out a word about
+being tired, and sprang up the long flights to his study. The pain
+in his head had stopped, but his hands trembled as he tore open the
+envelope. Within it was a second letter bearing a French stamp and
+addressed to himself. It looked like a business communication and had
+apparently been sent to Undine's hotel in Paris and forwarded to him by
+her hand. "Another bill!" he reflected grimly, as he threw it aside and
+felt in the outer envelope for her letter. There was nothing there, and
+after a first sharp pang of disappointment he picked up the enclosure
+and opened it.
+
+Inside was a lithographed circular, headed "Confidential" and bearing
+the Paris address of a firm of private detectives who undertook, in
+conditions of attested and inviolable discretion, to investigate
+"delicate" situations, look up doubtful antecedents, and furnish
+reliable evidence of misconduct--all on the most reasonable terms.
+
+For a long time Ralph sat and stared at this document; then he began to
+laugh and tossed it into the scrap-basket. After that, with a groan, he
+dropped his head against the edge of his writing table.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+When he woke, the first thing he remembered was the fact of having
+cried.
+
+He could not think how he had come to be such a fool. He hoped to heaven
+no one had seen him. He supposed he must have been worrying about the
+unfinished piece of work at the office: where was it, by the way, he
+wondered? Why--where he had left it the day before, of course! What a
+ridiculous thing to worry about--but it seemed to follow him about like
+a dog...
+
+He said to himself that he must get up presently and go down to the
+office. Presently--when he could open his eyes. Just now there was a
+dead weight on them; he tried one after another in vain. The effort set
+him weakly trembling, and he wanted to cry again. Nonsense! He must get
+out of bed.
+
+He stretched his arms out, trying to reach something to pull himself up
+by; but everything slipped away and evaded him. It was like trying
+to catch at bright short waves. Then suddenly his fingers clasped
+themselves about something firm and warm. A hand: a hand that gave back
+his pressure! The relief was inexpressible. He lay still and let the
+hand hold him, while mentally he went through the motions of getting
+up and beginning to dress. So indistinct were the boundaries between
+thought and action that he really felt himself moving about the room, in
+a queer disembodied way, as one treads the air in sleep. Then he felt
+the bedclothes over him and the pillows under his head.
+
+"I MUST get up," he said, and pulled at the hand.
+
+It pressed him down again: down into a dim deep pool of sleep. He lay
+there for a long time, in a silent blackness far below light and sound;
+then he gradually floated to the surface with the buoyancy of a dead
+body. But his body had never been more alive. Jagged strokes of pain
+tore through it, hands dragged at it with nails that bit like teeth.
+They wound thongs about him, bound him, tied weights to him, tried to
+pull him down with them; but still he floated, floated, danced on the
+fiery waves of pain, with barbed light pouring down on him from an
+arrowy sky.
+
+Charmed intervals of rest, blue sailings on melodious seas, alternated
+with the anguish. He became a leaf on the air, a feather on a current, a
+straw on the tide, the spray of the wave spinning itself to sunshine as
+the wave toppled over into gulfs of blue...
+
+He woke on a stony beach, his legs and arms still lashed to his sides
+and the thongs cutting into him; but the fierce sky was hidden, and
+hidden by his own languid lids. He felt the ecstasy of decreasing pain,
+and courage came to him to open his eyes and look about him...
+
+The beach was his own bed; the tempered light lay on familiar things,
+and some one was moving about in a shadowy way between bed and window.
+He was thirsty and some one gave him a drink. His pillow burned, and
+some one turned the cool side out. His brain was clear enough now for
+him to understand that he was ill, and to want to talk about it; but his
+tongue hung in his throat like a clapper in a bell. He must wait till
+the rope was pulled...
+
+So time and life stole back on him, and his thoughts laboured weakly
+with dim fears. Slowly he cleared a way through them, adjusted himself
+to his strange state, and found out that he was in his own room, in his
+grandfather's house, that alternating with the white-capped faces about
+him were those of his mother and sister, and that in a few days--if he
+took his beef-tea and didn't fret--Paul would be brought up from Long
+Island, whither, on account of the great heat, he had been carried off
+by Clare Van Degen.
+
+No one named Undine to him, and he did not speak of her. But one day,
+as he lay in bed in the summer twilight, he had a vision of a moment,
+a long way behind him--at the beginning of his illness, it must have
+been--when he had called out for her in his anguish, and some one had
+said: "She's coming: she'll be here next week."
+
+Could it be that next week was not yet here? He supposed that illness
+robbed one of all sense of time, and he lay still, as if in ambush,
+watching his scattered memories come out one by one and join themselves
+together. If he watched long enough he was sure he should recognize one
+that fitted into his picture of the day when he had asked for Undine.
+And at length a face came out of the twilight: a freckled face,
+benevolently bent over him under a starched cap. He had not seen the
+face for a long time, but suddenly it took shape and fitted itself into
+the picture...
+
+Laura Fairford sat near by, a book on her knee. At the sound of his
+voice she looked up.
+
+"What was the name of the first nurse?"
+
+"The first--?"
+
+"The one that went away."
+
+"Oh--Miss Hicks, you mean?"
+
+"How long is it since she went?"
+
+"It must be three weeks. She had another case."
+
+He thought this over carefully; then he spoke again. "Call Undine."
+
+She made no answer, and he repeated irritably: "Why don't you call her?
+I want to speak to her."
+
+Mrs. Fairford laid down her book and came to him.
+
+"She's not here--just now."
+
+He dealt with this also, laboriously. "You mean she's out--she's not in
+the house?"
+
+"I mean she hasn't come yet."
+
+As she spoke Ralph felt a sudden strength and hardness in his brain and
+body. Everything in him became as clear as noon.
+
+"But it was before Miss Hicks left that you told me you'd sent for her,
+and that she'd be here the following week. And you say Miss Hicks has
+been gone three weeks."
+
+This was what he had worked out in his head, and what he meant to say
+to his sister; but something seemed to snap shut in his throat, and he
+closed his eyes without speaking.
+
+Even when Mr. Spragg came to see him he said nothing. They talked about
+his illness, about the hot weather, about the rumours that Harmon B.
+Driscoll was again threatened with indictment; and then Mr. Spragg
+pulled himself out of his chair and said: "I presume you'll call round
+at the office before you leave the city."
+
+"Oh, yes: as soon as I'm up," Ralph answered. They understood each
+other.
+
+Clare had urged him to come down to Long Island and complete his
+convalescence there, but he preferred to stay in Washington Square till
+he should be strong enough for the journey to the Adirondacks, whither
+Laura had already preceded him with Paul. He did not want to see any
+one but his mother and grandfather till his legs could carry him to Mr.
+Spragg's office. It was an oppressive day in mid-August, with a
+yellow mist of heat in the sky, when at last he entered the big
+office-building. Swirls of dust lay on the mosaic floor, and a stale
+smell of decayed fruit and salt air and steaming asphalt filled the
+place like a fog. As he shot up in the elevator some one slapped him
+on the back, and turning he saw Elmer Moffatt at his side, smooth and
+rubicund under a new straw hat.
+
+Moffatt was loudly glad to see him. "I haven't laid eyes on you for
+months. At the old stand still?"
+
+"So am I," he added, as Ralph assented. "Hope to see you there again
+some day. Don't forget it's MY turn this time: glad if I can be any use
+to you. So long." Ralph's weak bones ached under his handshake.
+
+"How's Mrs. Marvell?" he turned back from his landing to call out; and
+Ralph answered: "Thanks; she's very well."
+
+Mr. Spragg sat alone in his murky inner office, the fly-blown engraving
+of Daniel Webster above his head and the congested scrap-basket beneath
+his feet. He looked fagged and sallow, like the day.
+
+Ralph sat down on the other side of the desk. For a moment his throat
+contracted as it had when he had tried to question his sister; then he
+asked: "Where's Undine?"
+
+Mr. Spragg glanced at the calendar that hung from a hat-peg on the door.
+Then he released the Masonic emblem from his grasp, drew out his watch
+and consulted it critically.
+
+"If the train's on time I presume she's somewhere between Chicago and
+Omaha round about now."
+
+Ralph stared at him, wondering if the heat had gone to his head. "I
+don't understand."
+
+"The Twentieth Century's generally considered the best route to Dakota,"
+explained Mr. Spragg, who pronounced the word ROWT.
+
+"Do you mean to say Undine's in the United States?"
+
+Mr. Spragg's lower lip groped for the phantom tooth-pick. "Why, let me
+see: hasn't Dakota been a state a year or two now?"
+
+"Oh, God--" Ralph cried, pushing his chair back violently and striding
+across the narrow room.
+
+As he turned, Mr. Spragg stood up and advanced a few steps. He had given
+up the quest for the tooth-pick, and his drawn-in lips were no more
+than a narrow depression in his beard. He stood before Ralph, absently
+shaking the loose change in his trouser-pockets.
+
+Ralph felt the same hardness and lucidity that had come to him when he
+had heard his sister's answer.
+
+"She's gone, you mean? Left me? With another man?"
+
+Mr. Spragg drew himself up with a kind of slouching majesty. "My
+daughter is not that style. I understand Undine thinks there have been
+mistakes on both sides. She considers the tie was formed too hastily. I
+believe desertion is the usual plea in such cases."
+
+Ralph stared about him, hardly listening. He did not resent his
+father-in-law's tone. In a dim way he guessed that Mr. Spragg was
+suffering hardly less than himself. But nothing was clear to him save
+the monstrous fact suddenly upheaved in his path. His wife had left him,
+and the plan for her evasion had been made and executed while he lay
+helpless: she had seized the opportunity of his illness to keep him in
+ignorance of her design. The humour of it suddenly struck him and he
+laughed.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that Undine's divorcing ME?"
+
+"I presume that's her plan," Mr. Spragg admitted.
+
+"For desertion?" Ralph pursued, still laughing.
+
+His father-in-law hesitated a moment; then he answered: "You've always
+done all you could for my daughter. There wasn't any other plea she
+could think of. She presumed this would be the most agreeable to your
+family."
+
+"It was good of her to think of that!"
+
+Mr. Spragg's only comment was a sigh.
+
+"Does she imagine I won't fight it?" Ralph broke out with sudden
+passion.
+
+His father-in-law looked at him thoughtfully. "I presume you realize it
+ain't easy to change Undine, once she's set on a thing."
+
+"Perhaps not. But if she really means to apply for a divorce I can make
+it a little less easy for her to get."
+
+"That's so," Mr. Spragg conceded. He turned back to his revolving chair,
+and seating himself in it began to drum on the desk with cigar-stained
+fingers.
+
+"And by God, I will!" Ralph thundered. Anger was the only emotion in him
+now. He had been fooled, cheated, made a mock of; but the score was not
+settled yet. He turned back and stood before Mr. Spragg.
+
+"I suppose she's gone with Van Degen?"
+
+"My daughter's gone alone, sir. I saw her off at the station. I
+understood she was to join a lady friend."
+
+At every point Ralph felt his hold slip off the surface of his
+father-in-law's impervious fatalism.
+
+"Does she suppose Van Degen's going to marry her?"
+
+"Undine didn't mention her future plans to me." After a moment Mr.
+Spragg appended: "If she had, I should have declined to discuss them
+with her." Ralph looked at him curiously, perceiving that he intended in
+this negative way to imply his disapproval of his daughter's course.
+
+"I shall fight it--I shall fight it!" the young man cried again. "You
+may tell her I shall fight it to the end!"
+
+Mr. Spragg pressed the nib of his pen against the dust-coated inkstand.
+"I suppose you would have to engage a lawyer. She'll know it that way,"
+he remarked.
+
+"She'll know it--you may count on that!"
+
+Ralph had begun to laugh again. Suddenly he heard his own laugh and it
+pulled him up. What was he laughing about? What was he talking about?
+The thing was to act--to hold his tongue and act. There was no use
+uttering windy threats to this broken-spirited old man.
+
+A fury of action burned in Ralph, pouring light into his mind and
+strength into his muscles. He caught up his hat and turned to the door.
+
+As he opened it Mr. Spragg rose again and came forward with his slow
+shambling step. He laid his hand on Ralph's arm.
+
+"I'd 'a' given anything--anything short of my girl herself--not to have
+this happen to you, Ralph Marvell."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Ralph.
+
+They looked at each other for a moment; then Mr. Spragg added: "But
+it HAS happened, you know. Bear that in mind. Nothing you can do will
+change it. Time and again, I've found that a good thing to remember."
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+In the Adirondacks Ralph Marvell sat day after day on the balcony of
+his little house above the lake, staring at the great white
+cloud-reflections in the water and at the dark line of trees that closed
+them in. Now and then he got into the canoe and paddled himself through
+a winding chain of ponds to some lonely clearing in the forest; and
+there he lay on his back in the pine-needles and watched the great
+clouds form and dissolve themselves above his head.
+
+All his past life seemed to be symbolized by the building-up and
+breaking-down of those fluctuating shapes, which incalculable
+wind-currents perpetually shifted and remodelled or swept from the
+zenith like a pinch of dust. His sister told him that he looked
+well--better than he had in years; and there were moments when his
+listlessness, his stony insensibility to the small pricks and frictions
+of daily life, might have passed for the serenity of recovered health.
+
+There was no one with whom he could speak of Undine. His family had
+thrown over the whole subject a pall of silence which even Laura
+Fairford shrank from raising. As for his mother, Ralph had seen at once
+that the idea of talking over the situation was positively frightening
+to her. There was no provision for such emergencies in the moral order
+of Washington Square. The affair was a "scandal," and it was not in
+the Dagonet tradition to acknowledge the existence of scandals. Ralph
+recalled a dim memory of his childhood, the tale of a misguided friend
+of his mother's who had left her husband for a more congenial companion,
+and who, years later, returning ill and friendless to New York, had
+appealed for sympathy to Mrs. Marvell. The latter had not refused to
+give it; but she had put on her black cashmere and two veils when she
+went to see her unhappy friend, and had never mentioned these errands of
+mercy to her husband.
+
+Ralph suspected that the constraint shown by his mother and sister was
+partly due to their having but a dim and confused view of what had
+happened. In their vocabulary the word "divorce" was wrapped in such a
+dark veil of innuendo as no ladylike hand would care to lift. They had
+not reached the point of differentiating divorces, but classed them
+indistinctively as disgraceful incidents, in which the woman was always
+to blame, but the man, though her innocent victim, was yet inevitably
+contaminated. The time involved in the "proceedings" was viewed as a
+penitential season during which it behoved the family of the persons
+concerned to behave as if they were dead; yet any open allusion to the
+reason for adopting such an attitude would have been regarded as the
+height of indelicacy.
+
+Mr. Dagonet's notion of the case was almost as remote from reality. All
+he asked was that his grandson should "thrash" somebody, and he could
+not be made to understand that the modern drama of divorce is sometimes
+cast without a Lovelace.
+
+"You might as well tell me there was nobody but Adam in the garden when
+Eve picked the apple. You say your wife was discontented? No woman ever
+knows she's discontented till some man tells her so. My God! I've seen
+smash-ups before now; but I never yet saw a marriage dissolved like
+a business partnership. Divorce without a lover? Why, it's--it's as
+unnatural as getting drunk on lemonade."
+
+After this first explosion Mr. Dagonet also became silent; and Ralph
+perceived that what annoyed him most was the fact of the "scandal's" not
+being one in any gentlemanly sense of the word. It was like some nasty
+business mess, about which Mr. Dagonet couldn't pretend to have an
+opinion, since such things didn't happen to men of his kind. That such
+a thing should have happened to his only grandson was probably the
+bitterest experience of his pleasantly uneventful life; and it added a
+touch of irony to Ralph's unhappiness to know how little, in the whole
+affair, he was cutting the figure Mr. Dagonet expected him to cut.
+
+At first he had chafed under the taciturnity surrounding him: had
+passionately longed to cry out his humiliation, his rebellion, his
+despair. Then he began to feel the tonic effect of silence; and the next
+stage was reached when it became clear to him that there was nothing to
+say. There were thoughts and thoughts: they bubbled up perpetually
+from the black springs of his hidden misery, they stole on him in the
+darkness of night, they blotted out the light of day; but when it came
+to putting them into words and applying them to the external facts
+of the case, they seemed totally unrelated to it. One more white and
+sun-touched glory had gone from his sky; but there seemed no way of
+connecting that with such practical issues as his being called on to
+decide whether Paul was to be put in knickerbockers or trousers, and
+whether he should go back to Washington Square for the winter or hire a
+small house for himself and his son.
+
+The latter question was ultimately decided by his remaining under his
+grandfather's roof. November found him back in the office again, in
+fairly good health, with an outer skin of indifference slowly forming
+over his lacerated soul. There had been a hard minute to live through
+when he came back to his old brown room in Washington Square. The walls
+and tables were covered with photographs of Undine: effigies of all
+shapes and sizes, expressing every possible sentiment dear to the
+photographic tradition. Ralph had gathered them all up when he had moved
+from West End Avenue after Undine's departure for Europe, and they
+throned over his other possessions as her image had throned over his
+future the night he had sat in that very room and dreamed of soaring up
+with her into the blue...
+
+It was impossible to go on living with her photographs about him; and
+one evening, going up to his room after dinner, he began to unhang them
+from the walls, and to gather them up from book-shelves and mantel-piece
+and tables. Then he looked about for some place in which to hide them.
+There were drawers under his book-cases; but they were full of old
+discarded things, and even if he emptied the drawers, the photographs,
+in their heavy frames, were almost all too large to fit into them. He
+turned next to the top shelf of his cupboard; but here the nurse had
+stored Paul's old toys, his sand-pails, shovels and croquet-box. Every
+corner was packed with the vain impedimenta of living, and the mere
+thought of clearing a space in the chaos was too great an effort.
+
+He began to replace the pictures one by one; and the last was still in
+his hand when he heard his sister's voice outside. He hurriedly put
+the portrait back in its usual place on his writing-table, and Mrs.
+Fairford, who had been dining in Washington Square, and had come up to
+bid him good night, flung her arms about him in a quick embrace and went
+down to her carriage.
+
+The next afternoon, when he came home from the office, he did not at
+first see any change in his room; but when he had lit his pipe and
+thrown himself into his arm-chair he noticed that the photograph of his
+wife's picture by Popple no longer faced him from the mantel-piece. He
+turned to his writing-table, but her image had vanished from there too;
+then his eye, making the circuit of the walls, perceived that they also
+had been stripped. Not a single photograph of Undine was left; yet so
+adroitly had the work of elimination been done, so ingeniously the
+remaining objects readjusted, that the change attracted no attention.
+
+Ralph was angry, sore, ashamed. He felt as if Laura, whose hand he
+instantly detected, had taken a cruel pleasure in her work, and for an
+instant he hated her for it. Then a sense of relief stole over him. He
+was glad he could look about him without meeting Undine's eyes, and he
+understood that what had been done to his room he must do to his memory
+and his imagination: he must so readjust his mind that, whichever way he
+turned his thoughts, her face should no longer confront him. But
+that was a task that Laura could not perform for him, a task to be
+accomplished only by the hard continuous tension of his will.
+
+With the setting in of the mood of silence all desire to fight his
+wife's suit died out. The idea of touching publicly on anything that had
+passed between himself and Undine had become unthinkable. Insensibly he
+had been subdued to the point of view about him, and the idea of calling
+on the law to repair his shattered happiness struck him as even more
+grotesque than it was degrading. Nevertheless, some contradictory
+impulse of his divided spirit made him resent, on the part of his mother
+and sister, a too-ready acceptance of his attitude. There were moments
+when their tacit assumption that his wife was banished and forgotten
+irritated him like the hushed tread of sympathizers about the bed of an
+invalid who will not admit that he suffers.
+
+His irritation was aggravated by the discovery that Mrs. Marvell and
+Laura had already begun to treat Paul as if he were an orphan. One day,
+coming unnoticed into the nursery, Ralph heard the boy ask when his
+mother was coming back; and Mrs. Fairford, who was with him, answered:
+"She's not coming back, dearest; and you're not to speak of her to
+father."
+
+Ralph, when the boy was out of hearing, rebuked his sister for her
+answer. "I don't want you to talk of his mother as if she were dead. I
+don't want you to forbid Paul to speak of her."
+
+Laura, though usually so yielding, defended herself. "What's the use of
+encouraging him to speak of her when he's never to see her? The sooner
+he forgets her the better."
+
+Ralph pondered. "Later--if she asks to see him--I shan't refuse."
+
+Mrs. Fairford pressed her lips together to check the answer: "She never
+will!"
+
+Ralph heard it, nevertheless, and let it pass. Nothing gave him so
+profound a sense of estrangement from his former life as the conviction
+that his sister was probably right. He did not really believe that
+Undine would ever ask to see her boy; but if she did he was determined
+not to refuse her request.
+
+Time wore on, the Christmas holidays came and went, and the winter
+continued to grind out the weary measure of its days. Toward the end
+of January Ralph received a registered letter, addressed to him at his
+office, and bearing in the corner of the envelope the names of a firm of
+Sioux Falls attorneys. He instantly divined that it contained the legal
+notification of his wife's application for divorce, and as he wrote his
+name in the postman's book he smiled grimly at the thought that the
+stroke of his pen was doubtless signing her release. He opened the
+letter, found it to be what he had expected, and locked it away in his
+desk without mentioning the matter to any one.
+
+He supposed that with the putting away of this document he was thrusting
+the whole subject out of sight; but not more than a fortnight later, as
+he sat in the Subway on his way down-town, his eye was caught by his
+own name on the first page of the heavily head-lined paper which the
+unshaved occupant of the next seat held between grimy fists. The blood
+rushed to Ralph's forehead as he looked over the man's arm and read:
+"Society Leader Gets Decree," and beneath it the subordinate clause:
+"Says Husband Too Absorbed In Business To Make Home Happy." For weeks
+afterward, wherever he went, he felt that blush upon his forehead. For
+the first time in his life the coarse fingering of public curiosity had
+touched the secret places of his soul, and nothing that had gone before
+seemed as humiliating as this trivial comment on his tragedy. The
+paragraph continued on its way through the press, and whenever he took
+up a newspaper he seemed to come upon it, slightly modified, variously
+developed, but always reverting with a kind of unctuous irony to his
+financial preoccupations and his wife's consequent loneliness. The
+phrase was even taken up by the paragraph writer, called forth excited
+letters from similarly situated victims, was commented on in humorous
+editorials and served as a text for pulpit denunciations of the growing
+craze for wealth; and finally, at his dentist's, Ralph came across it
+in a Family Weekly, as one of the "Heart problems" propounded to
+subscribers, with a Gramophone, a Straight-front Corset and a
+Vanity-box among the prizes offered for its solution.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+"If you'd only had the sense to come straight to me, Undine Spragg!
+There isn't a tip I couldn't have given you--not one!"
+
+This speech, in which a faintly contemptuous compassion for her friend's
+case was blent with the frankest pride in her own, probably represented
+the nearest approach to "tact" that Mrs. James J. Rolliver had yet
+acquired. Undine was impartial enough to note in it a distinct advance
+on the youthful methods of Indiana Frusk; yet it required a good deal
+of self-control to take the words to herself with a smile, while they
+seemed to be laying a visible scarlet welt across the pale face she kept
+valiantly turned to her friend. The fact that she must permit herself to
+be pitied by Indiana Frusk gave her the uttermost measure of the depth
+to which her fortunes had fallen. This abasement was inflicted on her
+in the staring gold apartment of the Hotel Nouveau Luxe in which the
+Rollivers had established themselves on their recent arrival in Paris.
+The vast drawing-room, adorned only by two high-shouldered gilt baskets
+of orchids drooping on their wires, reminded Undine of the "Looey suite"
+in which the opening scenes of her own history had been enacted; and
+the resemblance and the difference were emphasized by the fact that the
+image of her past self was not inaccurately repeated in the triumphant
+presence of Indiana Rolliver.
+
+"There isn't a tip I couldn't have given you--not one!" Mrs.
+Rolliver reproachfully repeated; and all Undine's superiorities and
+discriminations seemed to shrivel up in the crude blaze of the other's
+solid achievement.
+
+There was little comfort in noting, for one's private delectation, that
+Indiana spoke of her husband as "Mr. Rolliver," that she twanged a
+piercing R, that one of her shoulders was still higher than the other,
+and that her striking dress was totally unsuited to the hour, the
+place and the occasion. She still did and was all that Undine had so
+sedulously learned not to be and to do; but to dwell on these obstacles
+to her success was but to be more deeply impressed by the fact that she
+had nevertheless succeeded.
+
+Not much more than a year had elapsed since Undine Marvell, sitting
+in the drawing-room of another Parisian hotel, had heard the immense
+orchestral murmur of Paris rise through the open windows like the
+ascending movement of her own hopes. The immense murmur still sounded
+on, deafening and implacable as some elemental force; and the discord in
+her fate no more disturbed it than the motor wheels rolling by under
+the windows were disturbed by the particles of dust that they ground to
+finer powder as they passed.
+
+"I could have told you one thing right off," Mrs. Rolliver went on with
+her ringing energy. "And that is, to get your divorce first thing. A
+divorce is always a good thing to have: you never can tell when you may
+want it. You ought to have attended to that before you even BEGAN with
+Peter Van Degen."
+
+Undine listened, irresistibly impressed. "Did YOU?" she asked; but Mrs.
+Rolliver, at this, grew suddenly veiled and sibylline. She wound her
+big bejewelled hand through her pearls--there were ropes and ropes of
+them--and leaned back, modestly sinking her lids.
+
+"I'm here, anyhow," she rejoined, with "CIRCUMSPICE!" in look and tone.
+
+Undine, obedient to the challenge, continued to gaze at the pearls.
+They were real; there was no doubt about that. And so was Indiana's
+marriage--if she kept out of certain states.
+
+"Don't you see," Mrs. Rolliver continued, "that having to leave him when
+you did, and rush off to Dakota for six months, was--was giving him too
+much time to think; and giving it at the wrong time, too?" "Oh, I see.
+But what could I do? I'm not an immoral woman."
+
+"Of course not, dearest. You were merely thoughtless that's what I meant
+by saying you ought to have had your divorce ready."
+
+A flicker of self-esteem caused Undine to protest. "It wouldn't have
+made any difference. His wife would never have given him up."
+
+"She's so crazy about him?"
+
+"No: she hates him so. And she hates me too, because she's in love with
+my husband."
+
+Indiana bounced out of her lounging attitude and struck her hands
+together with a rattle of rings.
+
+"In love with your husband? What's the matter, then? Why on earth didn't
+the four of you fix it up together?"
+
+"You don't understand." (It was an undoubted relief to be able, at last,
+to say that to Indiana!) "Clare Van Degen thinks divorce wrong--or
+rather awfully vulgar."
+
+"VULGAR?" Indiana flamed. "If that isn't just too much! A woman who's in
+love with another woman's husband? What does she think refined, I'd like
+to know? Having a lover, I suppose--like the women in these nasty French
+plays? I've told Mr. Rolliver I won't go to the theatre with him again
+in Paris--it's too utterly low. And the swell society's just as bad:
+it's simply rotten. Thank goodness I was brought up in a place where
+there's some sense of decency left!" She looked compassionately at
+Undine. "It was New York that demoralized you--and I don't blame you for
+it. Out at Apex you'd have acted different. You never NEVER would have
+given way to your feelings before you'd got your divorce."
+
+A slow blush rose to Undine's forehead.
+
+"He seemed so unhappy--" she murmured.
+
+"Oh, I KNOW!" said Indiana in a tone of cold competence. She gave Undine
+an impatient glance. "What was the understanding between you, when you
+left Europe last August to go out to Dakota?"
+
+"Peter was to go to Reno in the autumn--so that it wouldn't look too
+much as if we were acting together. I was to come to Chicago to see him
+on his way out there."
+
+"And he never came?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And he stopped writing?"
+
+"Oh, he never writes."
+
+Indiana heaved a deep sigh of intelligence. "There's one perfectly clear
+rule: never let out of your sight a man who doesn't write."
+
+"I know. That's why I stayed with him--those few weeks last summer...."
+
+Indiana sat thinking, her fine shallow eyes fixed unblinkingly on her
+friend's embarrassed face.
+
+"I suppose there isn't anybody else--?"
+
+"Anybody--?"
+
+"Well--now you've got your divorce: anybody else it would come in handy
+for?"
+
+This was harder to bear than anything that had gone before: Undine could
+not have borne it if she had not had a purpose. "Mr. Van Degen owes it
+to me--" she began with an air of wounded dignity.
+
+"Yes, yes: I know. But that's just talk. If there IS anybody else--"
+
+"I can't imagine what you think of me, Indiana!"
+
+Indiana, without appearing to resent this challenge, again lost herself
+in meditation.
+
+"Well, I'll tell him he's just GOT to see you," she finally emerged from
+it to say.
+
+Undine gave a quick upward look: this was what she had been waiting
+for ever since she had read, a few days earlier, in the columns of her
+morning journal, that Mr. Peter Van Degen and Mr. and Mrs. James J.
+Rolliver had been fellow-passengers on board the Semantic. But she did
+not betray her expectations by as much as the tremor of an eye-lash. She
+knew her friend well enough to pour out to her the expected tribute of
+surprise.
+
+"Why, do you mean to say you know him, Indiana?"
+
+"Mercy, yes! He's round here all the time. He crossed on the steamer
+with us, and Mr. Rolliver's taken a fancy to him," Indiana explained, in
+the tone of the absorbed bride to whom her husband's preferences are the
+sole criterion.
+
+Undine turned a tear-suffused gaze on her. "Oh, Indiana, if I could only
+see him again I know it would be all right! He's awfully, awfully fond
+of me; but his family have influenced him against me--"
+
+"I know what THAT is!" Mrs. Rolliver interjected.
+
+"But perhaps," Undine continued, "it would be better if I could meet him
+first without his knowing beforehand--without your telling him ... I
+love him too much to reproach him!" she added nobly.
+
+Indiana pondered: it was clear that, though the nobility of the
+sentiment impressed her, she was disinclined to renounce the idea of
+taking a more active part in her friend's rehabilitation. But Undine
+went on: "Of course you've found out by this time that he's just a big
+spoiled baby. Afterward--when I've seen him--if you'd talk to him; or it
+you'd only just let him BE with you, and see how perfectly happy you and
+Mr. Rolliver are!"
+
+Indiana seized on this at once. "You mean that what he wants is the
+influence of a home like ours? Yes, yes, I understand. I tell you what
+I'll do: I'll just ask him round to dine, and let you know the day,
+without telling him beforehand that you're coming."
+
+"Oh, Indiana!" Undine held her in a close embrace, and then drew away
+to say: "I'm so glad I found you. You must go round with me everywhere.
+There are lots of people here I want you to know."
+
+Mrs. Rolliver's expression changed from vague sympathy to concentrated
+interest. "I suppose it's awfully gay here? Do you go round a great deal
+with the American set?"
+
+Undine hesitated for a fraction of a moment. "There are a few of them
+who are rather jolly. But I particularly want you to meet my friend the
+Marquis Roviano--he's from Rome; and a lovely Austrian woman, Baroness
+Adelschein."
+
+Her friend's face was brushed by a shade of distrust. "I don't know as I
+care much about meeting foreigners," she said indifferently.
+
+Undine smiled: it was agreeable at last to be able to give Indiana a
+"point" as valuable as any of hers on divorce.
+
+"Oh, some of them are awfully attractive; and THEY'LL make you meet the
+Americans."
+
+Indiana caught this on the bound: one began to see why she had got on in
+spite of everything.
+
+"Of course I'd love to know your friends," she said, kissing Undine; who
+answered, giving back the kiss:
+
+"You know there's nothing on earth I wouldn't do for you."
+
+Indiana drew back to look at her with a comic grimace under which a
+shade of anxiety was visible. "Well, that's a pretty large order. But
+there's just one thing you CAN do, dearest: please to let Mr. Rolliver
+alone!"
+
+"Mr. Rolliver, my dear?" Undine's laugh showed that she took this for
+unmixed comedy. "That's a nice way to remind me that you're heaps and
+heaps better-looking than I am!"
+
+Indiana gave her an acute glance. "Millard Binch didn't think so--not
+even at the very end."
+
+"Oh, poor Millard!" The women's smiles mingled easily over the common
+reminiscence, and once again, on the threshold. Undine enfolded her
+friend. In the light of the autumn afternoon she paused a moment at
+the door of the Nouveau Luxe, and looked aimlessly forth at the brave
+spectacle in which she seemed no longer to have a stake.
+
+Many of her old friends had already returned to Paris: the Harvey
+Shallums, May Beringer, Dicky Bowles and other westward-bound nomads
+lingering on for a glimpse of the autumn theatres and fashions before
+hurrying back to inaugurate the New York season. A year ago Undine would
+have had no difficulty in introducing Indiana Rolliver to this group--a
+group above which her own aspirations already beat an impatient wing.
+Now her place in it had become too precarious for her to force an
+entrance for her protectress. Her New York friends were at no pains to
+conceal from her that in their opinion her divorce had been a blunder.
+Their logic was that of Apex reversed. Since she had not been "sure" of
+Van Degen, why in the world, they asked, had she thrown away a position
+she WAS sure of? Mrs. Harvey Shallum, in particular, had not scrupled
+to put the question squarely. "Chelles was awfully taken--he would have
+introduced you everywhere. I thought you were wild to know smart French
+people; I thought Harvey and I weren't good enough for you any longer.
+And now you've done your best to spoil everything! Of course I feel for
+you tremendously--that's the reason why I'm talking so frankly. You
+must be horribly depressed. Come and dine to-night--or no, if you don't
+mind I'd rather you chose another evening. I'd forgotten that I'd asked
+the Jim Driscolls, and it might be uncomfortable--for YOU...."
+
+In another world she was still welcome, at first perhaps even more so
+than before: the world, namely, to which she had proposed to present
+Indiana Rolliver. Roviano, Madame Adelschein, and a few of the freer
+spirits of her old St. Moritz band, reappearing in Paris with the close
+of the watering-place season, had quickly discovered her and shown a
+keen interest in her liberation. It appeared in some mysterious way to
+make her more available for their purpose, and she found that, in the
+character of the last American divorcee, she was even regarded as
+eligible to the small and intimate inner circle of their loosely-knit
+association. At first she could not make out what had entitled her to
+this privilege, and increasing enlightenment produced a revolt of the
+Apex puritanism which, despite some odd accommodations and compliances,
+still carried its head so high in her.
+
+Undine had been perfectly sincere in telling Indiana Rolliver that she
+was not "an Immoral woman." The pleasures for which her sex took such
+risks had never attracted her, and she did not even crave the excitement
+of having it thought that they did. She wanted, passionately and
+persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in
+any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability; and despite her
+surface-sophistication her notion of amusement was hardly less innocent
+than when she had hung on the plumber's fence with Indiana Frusk. It
+gave her, therefore, no satisfaction to find herself included among
+Madame Adelschein's intimates. It embarrassed her to feel that she was
+expected to be "queer" and "different," to respond to pass-words and
+talk in innuendo, to associate with the equivocal and the subterranean
+and affect to despise the ingenuous daylight joys which really satisfied
+her soul. But the business shrewdness which was never quite dormant in
+her suggested that this was not the moment for such scruples. She must
+make the best of what she could get and wait her chance of getting
+something better; and meanwhile the most practical use to which she
+could put her shady friends was to flash their authentic nobility in the
+dazzled eyes of Mrs. Rolliver.
+
+With this object in view she made haste, in a fashionable tea-room of
+the rue de Rivoli, to group about Indiana the most titled members of the
+band; and the felicity of the occasion would have been unmarred had she
+not suddenly caught sight of Raymond de Chelles sitting on the other
+side of the room.
+
+She had not seen Chelles since her return to Paris. It had seemed
+preferable to leave their meeting to chance and the present chance
+might have served as well as another but for the fact that among his
+companions were two or three of the most eminent ladies of the
+proud quarter beyond the Seine. It was what Undine, in moments of
+discouragement, characterized as "her luck" that one of these should
+be the hated Miss Wincher of Potash Springs, who had now become the
+Marquise de Trezac. Undine knew that Chelles and his compatriots,
+however scandalized at her European companions, would be completely
+indifferent to Mrs. Rolliver's appearance; but one gesture of Madame de
+Trezac's eye-glass would wave Indiana to her place and thus brand the
+whole party as "wrong."
+
+All this passed through Undine's mind in the very moment of her
+noting the change of expression with which Chelles had signalled
+his recognition. If their encounter could have occurred in happier
+conditions it might have had far-reaching results. As it was, the
+crowded state of the tea-room, and the distance between their tables,
+sufficiently excused his restricting his greeting to an eager bow; and
+Undine went home heavy-hearted from this first attempt to reconstruct
+her past.
+
+Her spirits were not lightened by the developments of the next few
+days. She kept herself well in the foreground of Indiana's life,
+and cultivated toward the rarely-visible Rolliver a manner in which
+impersonal admiration for the statesman was tempered with the politest
+indifference to the man. Indiana seemed to do justice to her efforts and
+to be reassured by the result; but still there came no hint of a
+reward. For a time Undine restrained the question on her lips; but one
+afternoon, when she had inducted Indiana into the deepest mysteries
+of Parisian complexion-making, the importance of the service and the
+confidential mood it engendered seemed to warrant a discreet allusion to
+their bargain.
+
+Indiana leaned back among her cushions with an embarrassed laugh.
+
+"Oh, my dear, I've been meaning to tell you--it's off, I'm afraid. The
+dinner is, I mean. You see, Mr. Van Degen has seen you 'round with me,
+and the very minute I asked him to come and dine he guessed--"
+
+"He guessed--and he wouldn't?"
+
+"Well, no. He wouldn't. I hate to tell you."
+
+"Oh--" Undine threw off a vague laugh. "Since you're intimate enough for
+him to tell you THAT he must, have told you more--told you something to
+justify his behaviour. He couldn't--even Peter Van Degen couldn't--just
+simply have said to you: 'I wont see her.'"
+
+Mrs. Rolliver hesitated, visibly troubled to the point of regretting her
+intervention.
+
+"He DID say more?" Undine insisted. "He gave you a reason?
+
+"He said you'd know."
+
+"Oh how base--how base!" Undine was trembling with one of her
+little-girl rages, the storms of destructive fury before which Mr. and
+Mrs. Spragg had cowered when she was a charming golden-curled cherub.
+But life had administered some of the discipline which her parents had
+spared her, and she pulled herself together with a gasp of pain. "Of
+course he's been turned against me. His wife has the whole of New York
+behind her, and I've no one; but I know it would be all right if I could
+only see him."
+
+Her friend made no answer, and Undine pursued, with an irrepressible
+outbreak of her old vehemence: "Indiana Rolliver, if you won't do it for
+me I'll go straight off to his hotel this very minute. I'll wait there
+in the hall till he sees me!"
+
+Indiana lifted a protesting hand. "Don't, Undine--not that!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well--I wouldn't, that's all."
+
+"You wouldn't? Why wouldn't you? You must have a reason." Undine faced
+her with levelled brows. "Without a reason you can't have changed so
+utterly since our last talk. You were positive enough then that I had a
+right to make him see me."
+
+Somewhat to her surprise, Indiana made no effort to elude the challenge.
+"Yes, I did think so then. But I know now that it wouldn't do you the
+least bit of good."
+
+"Have they turned him so completely against me? I don't care if they
+have! I know him--I can get him back."
+
+"That's the trouble." Indiana shed on her a gaze of cold compassion.
+"It's not that any one has turned him against you. It's worse than
+that--"
+
+"What can be?"
+
+"You'll hate me if I tell you."
+
+"Then you'd better make him tell me himself!"
+
+"I can't. I tried to. The trouble is that it was YOU--something you did,
+I mean. Something he found out about you--"
+
+Undine, to restrain a spring of anger, had to clutch both arms of her
+chair. "About me? How fearfully false! Why, I've never even LOOKED at
+anybody--!"
+
+"It's nothing of that kind." Indiana's mournful head-shake seemed to
+deplore, in Undine, an unsuspected moral obtuseness. "It's the way you
+acted to your own husband."
+
+"I--my--to Ralph? HE reproaches me for that? Peter Van Degen does?"
+"Well, for one particular thing. He says that the very day you went off
+with him last year you got a cable from New York telling you to come
+back at once to Mr. Marvell, who was desperately ill."
+
+"How on earth did he know?" The cry escaped Undine before she could
+repress it.
+
+"It's true, then?" Indiana exclaimed. "Oh, Undine--"
+
+Undine sat speechless and motionless, the anger frozen to terror on her
+lips.
+
+Mrs. Rolliver turned on her the reproachful gaze of the deceived
+benefactress. "I didn't believe it when he told me; I'd never have
+thought it of you. Before you'd even applied for your divorce!"
+
+Undine made no attempt to deny the charge or to defend herself. For
+a moment she was lost in the pursuit of an unseizable clue--the
+explanation of this monstrous last perversity of fate. Suddenly she rose
+to her feet with a set face.
+
+"The Marvells must have told him--the beasts!" It relieved her to be
+able to cry it out.
+
+"It was your husband's sister--what did you say her name was? When you
+didn't answer her cable, she cabled Mr. Van Degen to find out where you
+were and tell you to come straight back."
+
+Undine stared. "He never did!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Doesn't that show you the story's all trumped up?"
+
+Indiana shook her head. "He said nothing to you about it because he was
+with you when you received the first cable, and you told him it was from
+your sister-in-law, just worrying you as usual to go home; and when he
+asked if there was anything else in it you said there wasn't another
+thing."
+
+Undine, intently following her, caught at this with a spring. "Then he
+knew it all along--he admits that? And it made no earthly difference to
+him at the time?" She turned almost victoriously on her friend. "Did he
+happen to explain THAT, I wonder?"
+
+"Yes." Indiana's longanimity grew almost solemn. "It came over him
+gradually, he said. One day when he wasn't feeling very well he thought
+to himself: 'Would she act like that to ME if I was dying?' And after
+that he never felt the same to you." Indiana lowered her empurpled
+lids. "Men have their feelings too--even when they're carried away by
+passion." After a pause she added: "I don't know as I can blame him.
+Undine. You see, you were his ideal."
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+Undine Marvell, for the next few months, tasted all the accumulated
+bitterness of failure. After January the drifting hordes of her
+compatriots had scattered to the four quarters of the globe, leaving
+Paris to resume, under its low grey sky, its compacter winter
+personality. Noting, from her more and more deserted corner, each least
+sign of the social revival, Undine felt herself as stranded and baffled
+as after the ineffectual summers of her girlhood. She was not without
+possible alternatives; but the sense of what she had lost took the
+savour from all that was left. She might have attached herself to some
+migratory group winged for Italy or Egypt; but the prospect of travel
+did not in itself appeal to her, and she was doubtful of its social
+benefit. She lacked the adventurous curiosity which seeks its occasion
+in the unknown; and though she could work doggedly for a given object
+the obstacles to be overcome had to be as distinct as the prize. Her one
+desire was to get back an equivalent of the precise value she had lost
+in ceasing to be Ralph Marvell's wife. Her new visiting-card, bearing
+her Christian name in place of her husband's, was like the coin of a
+debased currency testifying to her diminished trading capacity. Her
+restricted means, her vacant days, all the minor irritations of her
+life, were as nothing compared to this sense of a lost advantage. Even
+in the narrowed field of a Parisian winter she might have made herself
+a place in some more or less extra-social world; but her experiments in
+this line gave her no pleasure proportioned to the possible derogation.
+She feared to be associated with "the wrong people," and scented a shade
+of disrespect in every amicable advance. The more pressing attentions of
+one or two men she had formerly known filled her with a glow of outraged
+pride, and for the first time in her life she felt that even solitude
+might be preferable to certain kinds of society. Since ill health was
+the most plausible pretext for seclusion, it was almost a relief to find
+that she was really growing "nervous" and sleeping badly. The doctor she
+summoned advised her trying a small quiet place on the Riviera, not too
+near the sea; and thither in the early days of December, she transported
+herself with her maid and an omnibus-load of luggage.
+
+The place disconcerted her by being really small and quiet, and for a
+few days she struggled against the desire for flight. She had never
+before known a world as colourless and negative as that of the large
+white hotel where everybody went to bed at nine, and donkey-rides over
+stony hills were the only alternative to slow drives along dusty roads.
+Many of the dwellers in this temple of repose found even these exercises
+too stimulating, and preferred to sit for hours under the palms in
+the garden, playing Patience, embroidering, or reading odd volumes of
+Tauchnitz. Undine, driven by despair to an inspection of the hotel
+book-shelves, discovered that scarcely any work they contained was
+complete; but this did not seem to trouble the readers, who continued to
+feed their leisure with mutilated fiction, from which they occasionally
+raised their eyes to glance mistrustfully at the new arrival sweeping
+the garden gravel with her frivolous draperies. The inmates of the hotel
+were of different nationalities, but their racial differences were
+levelled by the stamp of a common mediocrity. All differences of tongue,
+of custom, of physiognomy, disappeared in this deep community of
+insignificance, which was like some secret bond, with the manifold signs
+and pass-words of its ignorances and its imperceptions. It was not the
+heterogeneous mediocrity of the American summer hotel where the lack of
+any standard is the nearest approach to a tie, but an organized codified
+dulness, in conscious possession of its rights, and strong in the
+voluntary ignorance of any others.
+
+It took Undine a long time to accustom herself to such an atmosphere,
+and meanwhile she fretted, fumed and flaunted, or abandoned herself to
+long periods of fruitless brooding. Sometimes a flame of anger shot up
+in her, dismally illuminating the path she had travelled and the blank
+wall to which it led. At other moments past and present were enveloped
+in a dull fog of rancour which distorted and faded even the image she
+presented to her morning mirror. There were days when every young face
+she saw left in her a taste of poison. But when she compared herself
+with the specimens of her sex who plied their languid industries under
+the palms, or looked away as she passed them in hall or staircase, her
+spirits rose, and she rang for her maid and dressed herself in her
+newest and vividest. These were unprofitable triumphs, however. She
+never made one of her attacks on the organized disapproval of the
+community without feeling she had lost ground by it; and the next day
+she would lie in bed and send down capricious orders for food, which her
+maid would presently remove untouched, with instructions to transmit her
+complaints to the landlord.
+
+Sometimes the events of the past year, ceaselessly revolving through her
+brain, became no longer a subject for criticism or justification but
+simply a series of pictures monotonously unrolled. Hour by hour, in such
+moods, she re-lived the incidents of her flight with Peter Van Degen:
+the part of her career that, since it had proved a failure, seemed least
+like herself and most difficult to justify. She had gone away with him,
+and had lived with him for two months: she, Undine Marvell, to whom
+respectability was the breath of life, to whom such follies had always
+been unintelligible and therefore inexcusable.--She had done this
+incredible thing, and she had done it from a motive that seemed, at
+the time, as clear, as logical, as free from the distorting mists of
+sentimentality, as any of her father's financial enterprises. It had
+been a bold move, but it had been as carefully calculated as the
+happiest Wall Street "stroke." She had gone away with Peter because,
+after the decisive scene in which she had put her power to the test, to
+yield to him seemed the surest means of victory. Even to her practical
+intelligence it was clear that an immediate dash to Dakota might look
+too calculated; and she had preserved her self-respect by telling
+herself that she was really his wife, and in no way to blame if the law
+delayed to ratify the bond. She was still persuaded of the justness of
+her reasoning; but she now saw that it had left certain risks out of
+account. Her life with Van Degen had taught her many things. The two had
+wandered from place to place, spending a great deal of money, always
+more and more money; for the first time in her life she had been able
+to buy everything she wanted. For a while this had kept her amused and
+busy; but presently she began to perceive that her companion's view of
+their relation was not the same as hers. She saw that he had always
+meant it to be an unavowed tie, screened by Mrs. Shallum's companionship
+and Clare's careless tolerance; and that on those terms he would have
+been ready to shed on their adventure the brightest blaze of notoriety.
+But since Undine had insisted on being carried off like a sentimental
+school-girl he meant to shroud the affair in mystery, and was as zealous
+in concealing their relation as she was bent on proclaiming it. In the
+"powerful" novels which Popple was fond of lending her she had met
+with increasing frequency the type of heroine who scorns to love
+clandestinely, and proclaims the sanctity of passion and the moral
+duty of obeying its call. Undine had been struck by these arguments as
+justifying and even ennobling her course, and had let Peter understand
+that she had been actuated by the highest motives in openly associating
+her life with his; but he had opposed a placid insensibility to these
+allusions, and had persisted in treating her as though their journey
+were the kind of escapade that a man of the world is bound to hide. She
+had expected him to take her to all the showy places where couples like
+themselves are relieved from a too sustained contemplation of nature by
+the distractions of the restaurant and the gaming-table; but he had
+carried her from one obscure corner of Europe to another, shunning
+fashionable hotels and crowded watering-places, and displaying an
+ingenuity in the discovery of the unvisited and the out-of-season that
+gave their journey an odd resemblance to her melancholy wedding-tour.
+
+She had never for a moment ceased to remember that the Dakota
+divorce-court was the objective point of this later honeymoon, and her
+allusions to the fact were as frequent as prudence permitted. Peter
+seemed in no way disturbed by them. He responded with expressions of
+increasing tenderness, or the purchase of another piece of jewelry;
+and though Undine could not remember his ever voluntarily bringing the
+subject of their marriage he did not shrink from her recurring mention
+of it. He seemed merely too steeped in present well-being to think
+of the future, and she ascribed this to the fact that his faculty of
+enjoyment could not project itself beyond the moment. Her business was
+to make each of their days so agreeable that when the last came he
+should be conscious of a void to be bridged over as rapidly as possible
+and when she thought this point had been reached she packed her trunks
+and started for Dakota.
+
+The next picture to follow was that of the dull months in the western
+divorce-town, where, to escape loneliness and avoid comment, she had
+cast in her lot with Mabel Lipscomb, who had lately arrived there on the
+same errand.
+
+Undine, at the outset, had been sorry for the friend whose new venture
+seemed likely to result so much less brilliantly than her own; but
+compassion had been replaced by irritation as Mabel's unpruned
+vulgarities, her enormous encroaching satisfaction with herself and
+her surroundings, began to pervade every corner of their provisional
+household. Undine, during the first months of her exile, had been
+sustained by the fullest confidence in her future. When she had parted
+from Van Degen she had felt sure he meant to marry her, and the fact
+that Mrs. Lipscomb was fortified by no similar hope made her easier to
+bear with. Undine was almost ashamed that the unwooed Mabel should be
+the witness of her own felicity, and planned to send her off on a trip
+to Denver when Peter should announce his arrival; but the weeks passed,
+and Peter did not come. Mabel, on the whole, behaved well in this
+contingency. Undine, in her first exultation, had confided all her
+hopes and plans to her friend, but Mabel took no undue advantage of the
+confidence. She was even tactful in her loud fond clumsy way, with a
+tact that insistently boomed and buzzed about its victim's head. But one
+day she mentioned that she had asked to dinner a gentleman from Little
+Rock who had come to Dakota with the same object as themselves, and
+whose acquaintance she had made through her lawyer.
+
+The gentleman from Little Rock came to dine, and within a week Undine
+understood that Mabel's future was assured. If Van Degen had been at
+hand Undine would have smiled with him at poor Mabel's infatuation and
+her suitor's crudeness. But Van Degen was not there. He made no sign, he
+sent no excuse; he simply continued to absent himself; and it was Undine
+who, in due course, had to make way for Mrs. Lipscomb's caller, and sit
+upstairs with a novel while the drawing-room below was given up to the
+enacting of an actual love-story.
+
+Even then, even to the end, Undine had to admit that Mabel had behaved
+"beautifully." But it is comparatively easy to behave beautifully when
+one is getting what one wants, and when some one else, who has not
+always been altogether kind, is not. The net result of Mrs. Lipscomb's
+magnanimity was that when, on the day of parting, she drew Undine to
+her bosom with the hand on which her new engagement-ring blazed, Undine
+hated her as she hated everything else connected with her vain exile in
+the wilderness.
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+The next phase in the unrolling vision was the episode of her return to
+New York. She had gone to the Malibran, to her parents--for it was a
+moment in her career when she clung passionately to the conformities,
+and when the fact of being able to say: "I'm here with my father and
+mother" was worth paying for even in the discomfort of that grim abode.
+Nevertheless, it was another thorn in her pride that her parents could
+not--for the meanest of material reasons--transfer themselves at her
+coming to one of the big Fifth Avenue hotels. When she had suggested it
+Mr. Spragg had briefly replied that, owing to the heavy expenses of her
+divorce suit, he couldn't for the moment afford anything better; and
+this announcement cast a deeper gloom over the future.
+
+It was not an occasion for being "nervous," however; she had learned too
+many hard facts in the last few months to think of having recourse
+to her youthful methods. And something told her that if she made the
+attempt it would be useless. Her father and mother seemed much older,
+seemed tired and defeated, like herself.
+
+Parents and daughter bore their common failure in a common silence,
+broken only by Mrs. Spragg's occasional tentative allusions to her
+grandson. But her anecdotes of Paul left a deeper silence behind them.
+Undine did not want to talk of her boy. She could forget him when,
+as she put it, things were "going her way," but in moments of
+discouragement the thought of him was an added bitterness, subtly
+different from her other bitter thoughts, and harder to quiet. It had
+not occurred to her to try to gain possession of the child. She was
+vaguely aware that the courts had given her his custody; but she had
+never seriously thought of asserting this claim. Her parents' diminished
+means and her own uncertain future made her regard the care of Paul as
+an additional burden, and she quieted her scruples by thinking of him as
+"better off" with Ralph's family, and of herself as rather touchingly
+disinterested in putting his welfare before her own. Poor Mrs. Spragg
+was pining for him, but Undine rejected her artless suggestion that Mrs.
+Heeny should be sent to "bring him round." "I wouldn't ask them a favour
+for the world--they're just waiting for a chance to be hateful to me,"
+she scornfully declared; but it pained her that her boy, should be
+so near, yet inaccessible, and for the first time she was visited by
+unwonted questionings as to her share in the misfortunes that had
+befallen her. She had voluntarily stepped out of her social frame, and
+the only person on whom she could with any satisfaction have laid
+the blame was the person to whom her mind now turned with a belated
+tenderness. It was thus, in fact, that she thought of Ralph. His pride,
+his reserve, all the secret expressions of his devotion, the tones of
+his voice, his quiet manner, even his disconcerting irony: these seemed,
+in contrast to what she had since known, the qualities essential to her
+happiness. She could console herself only by regarding it as part of her
+sad lot that poverty and the relentless animosity of his family, should
+have put an end to so perfect a union: she gradually began to look on
+herself and Ralph as the victims of dark machinations, and when she
+mentioned him she spoke forgivingly, and implied that "everything might
+have been different" if "people" had not "come between" them. She had
+arrived in New York in midseason, and the dread of seeing familiar
+faces kept her shut up in her room at the Malibran, reading novels and
+brooding over possibilities of escape. She tried to avoid the daily
+papers, but they formed the staple diet of her parents, and now and then
+she could not help taking one up and turning to the "Society Column."
+Its perusal produced the impression that the season must be the gayest
+New York had ever known. The Harmon B. Driscolls, young Jim and his
+wife, the Thurber Van Degens, the Chauncey Ellings, and all the other
+Fifth Avenue potentates, seemed to have their doors perpetually open
+to a stream of feasters among whom the familiar presences of Grace
+Beringer, Bertha Shallum, Dicky Bowles and Claud Walsingham Popple
+came and went with the irritating sameness of the figures in a
+stage-procession.
+
+Among them also Peter Van Degen presently appeared. He had been on a
+tour around the world, and Undine could not look at a newspaper without
+seeing some allusion to his progress. After his return she noticed that
+his name was usually coupled with his wife's: he and Clare seemed to
+be celebrating his home-coming in a series of festivities, and Undine
+guessed that he had reasons for wishing to keep before the world the
+evidences of his conjugal accord.
+
+Mrs. Heeny's clippings supplied her with such items as her own reading
+missed; and one day the masseuse appeared with a long article from the
+leading journal of Little Rock, describing the brilliant nuptials of
+Mabel Lipscomb--now Mrs. Homer Branney--and her departure for "the
+Coast" in the bridegroom's private car. This put the last touch to
+Undine's irritation, and the next morning she got up earlier than usual,
+put on her most effective dress, went for a quick walk around the Park,
+and told her father when she came in that she wanted him to take her to
+the opera that evening.
+
+Mr. Spragg stared and frowned. "You mean you want me to go round and
+hire a box for you?"
+
+"Oh, no." Undine coloured at the infelicitous allusion: besides, she
+knew now that the smart people who were "musical" went in stalls.
+
+"I only want two good seats. I don't see why I should stay shut up. I
+want you to go with me," she added.
+
+Her father received the latter part of the request without comment: he
+seemed to have gone beyond surprise. But he appeared that evening at
+dinner in a creased and loosely fitting dress-suit which he had probably
+not put on since the last time he had dined with his son-in-law, and he
+and Undine drove off together, leaving Mrs. Spragg to gaze after them
+with the pale stare of Hecuba.
+
+Their stalls were in the middle of the house, and around them swept
+the great curve of boxes at which Undine had so often looked up in the
+remote Stentorian days. Then all had been one indistinguishable glitter,
+now the scene was full of familiar details: the house was thronged with
+people she knew, and every box seemed to contain a parcel of her
+past. At first she had shrunk from recognition; but gradually, as she
+perceived that no one noticed her, that she was merely part of the
+invisible crowd out of range of the exploring opera glasses, she felt a
+defiant desire to make herself seen. When the performance was over her
+father wanted to leave the house by the door at which they had entered,
+but she guided him toward the stockholders' entrance, and pressed her
+way among the furred and jewelled ladies waiting for their motors. "Oh,
+it's the wrong door--never mind, we'll walk to the corner and get a
+cab," she exclaimed, speaking loudly enough to be overheard. Two or
+three heads turned, and she met Dicky Bowles's glance, and returned his
+laughing bow. The woman talking to him looked around, coloured slightly,
+and made a barely perceptible motion of her head. Just beyond her, Mrs.
+Chauncey Elling, plumed and purple, stared, parted her lips, and
+turned to say something important to young Jim Driscoll, who looked up
+involuntarily and then squared his shoulders and gazed fixedly at a
+distant point, as people do at a funeral. Behind them Undine caught
+sight of Clare Van Degen; she stood alone, and her face was pale and
+listless. "Shall I go up and speak to her?" Undine wondered. Some
+intuition told her that, alone of all the women present, Clare might
+have greeted her kindly; but she hung back, and Mrs. Harmon Driscoll
+surged by on Popple's arm. Popple crimsoned, coughed, and signalled
+despotically to Mrs. Driscoll's footman. Over his shoulder Undine
+received a bow from Charles Bowen, and behind Bowen she saw two or three
+other men she knew, and read in their faces surprise, curiosity, and the
+wish to show their pleasure at seeing her. But she grasped her father's
+arm and drew him out among the entangled motors and vociferating
+policemen.
+
+Neither she nor Mr. Spragg spoke a word on the way home; but when they
+reached the Malibran her father followed her up to her room. She had
+dropped her cloak and stood before the wardrobe mirror studying her
+reflection when he came up behind her and she saw that he was looking at
+it too.
+
+"Where did that necklace come from?"
+
+Undine's neck grew pink under the shining circlet. It was the first time
+since her return to New York that she had put on a low dress and thus
+uncovered the string of pearls she always wore. She made no answer, and
+Mr. Spragg continued: "Did your husband give them to you?"
+
+"RALPH!" She could not restrain a laugh.
+
+"Who did, then?"
+
+Undine remained silent. She really had not thought about the pearls,
+except in so far as she consciously enjoyed the pleasure of possessing
+them; and her father, habitually so unobservant, had seemed the last
+person likely to raise the awkward question of their origin.
+
+"Why--" she began, without knowing what she meant to say.
+
+"I guess you better send 'em back to the party they belong to," Mr.
+Spragg continued, in a voice she did not know.
+
+"They belong to me!" she flamed up. He looked at her as if she had grown
+suddenly small and insignificant. "You better send 'em back to Peter Van
+Degen the first thing to-morrow morning," he said as he went out of the
+room. As far as Undine could remember, it was the first time in her life
+that he had ever ordered her to do anything; and when the door closed on
+him she had the distinct sense that the question had closed with it, and
+that she would have to obey. She took the pearls off and threw them from
+her angrily. The humiliation her father had inflicted on her was merged
+with the humiliation to which she had subjected herself in going to the
+opera, and she had never before hated her life as she hated it then.
+
+All night she lay sleepless, wondering miserably what to do; and out
+of her hatred of her life, and her hatred of Peter Van Degen, there
+gradually grew a loathing of Van Degen's pearls. How could she have
+kept them; how have continued to wear them about her neck! Only
+her absorption in other cares could have kept her from feeling the
+humiliation of carrying about with her the price of her shame. Her
+novel-reading had filled her mind with the vocabulary of outraged
+virtue, and with pathetic allusions to woman's frailty, and while she
+pitied herself she thought her father heroic. She was proud to think
+that she had such a man to defend her, and rejoiced that it was in her
+power to express her scorn of Van Degen by sending back his jewels.
+
+But her righteous ardour gradually cooled, and she was left once more
+to face the dreary problem of the future. Her evening at the opera had
+shown her the impossibility of remaining in New York. She had neither
+the skill nor the power to fight the forces of indifference leagued
+against her: she must get away at once, and try to make a fresh start.
+But, as usual, the lack of money hampered her. Mr. Spragg could no
+longer afford to make her the allowance she had intermittently received
+from him during the first years of her marriage, and since she was now
+without child or household she could hardly make it a grievance that he
+had reduced her income. But what he allowed her, even with the addition
+of her alimony, was absurdly insufficient. Not that she looked far
+ahead; she had always felt herself predestined to ease and luxury, and
+the possibility of a future adapted to her present budget did not occur
+to her. But she desperately wanted enough money to carry her without
+anxiety through the coming year.
+
+When her breakfast tray was brought in she sent it away untouched and
+continued to lie in her darkened room. She knew that when she got up she
+must send back the pearls; but there was no longer any satisfaction
+in the thought, and she lay listlessly wondering how she could best
+transmit them to Van Degen.
+
+As she lay there she heard Mrs. Heeny's voice in the passage. Hitherto
+she had avoided the masseuse, as she did every one else associated with
+her past. Mrs. Heeny had behaved with extreme discretion, refraining
+from all direct allusions to Undine's misadventure; but her silence
+was obviously the criticism of a superior mind. Once again Undine had
+disregarded her injunction to "go slow," with results that justified the
+warning. Mrs. Heeny's very reserve, however, now marked her as a safe
+adviser; and Undine sprang up and called her in. "My sakes. Undine! You
+look's if you'd been setting up all night with a remains!" the masseuse
+exclaimed in her round rich tones.
+
+Undine, without answering, caught up the pearls and thrust them into
+Mrs. Heeny's hands.
+
+"Good land alive!" The masseuse dropped into a chair and let the twist
+slip through her fat flexible fingers. "Well, you got a fortune right
+round your neck whenever you wear them, Undine Spragg."
+
+Undine murmured something indistinguishable. "I want you to take them--"
+she began.
+
+"Take 'em? Where to?"
+
+"Why, to--" She was checked by the wondering simplicity of Mrs. Heeny's
+stare. The masseuse must know where the pearls had come from, yet it had
+evidently not occurred to her that Mrs. Marvell was about to ask her to
+return them to their donor. In the light of Mrs. Heeny's unclouded gaze
+the whole episode took on a different aspect, and Undine began to be
+vaguely astonished at her immediate submission to her father's will. The
+pearls were hers, after all!
+
+"To be re-strung?" Mrs. Heeny placidly suggested. "Why, you'd oughter
+to have it done right here before your eyes, with pearls that are worth
+what these are."
+
+As Undine listened, a new thought shaped itself. She could not continue
+to wear the pearls: the idea had become intolerable. But for the first
+time she saw what they might be converted into, and what they might
+rescue her from; and suddenly she brought out: "Do you suppose I could
+get anything for them?"
+
+"Get anything? Why, what--"
+
+"Anything like what they're worth, I mean. They cost a lot of money:
+they came from the biggest place in Paris." Under Mrs. Heeny's
+simplifying eye it was comparatively easy to make these explanations. "I
+want you to try and sell them for me--I want you to do the best you can
+with them. I can't do it myself--but you must swear you'll never tell a
+soul," she pressed on breathlessly.
+
+"Why, you poor child--it ain't the first time," said Mrs. Heeny, coiling
+the pearls in her big palm. "It's a pity too: they're such beauties. But
+you'll get others," she added, as the necklace vanished into her bag.
+
+A few days later there appeared from the same receptacle a bundle of
+banknotes considerable enough to quiet Undine's last scruples. She no
+longer understood why she had hesitated. Why should she have thought it
+necessary to give back the pearls to Van Degen? His obligation to her
+represented far more than the relatively small sum she had been able to
+realize on the necklace. She hid the money in her dress, and when Mrs.
+Heeny had gone on to Mrs. Spragg's room she drew the packet out, and
+counting the bills over, murmured to herself: "Now I can get away!"
+
+Her one thought was to return to Europe; but she did not want to go
+alone. The vision of her solitary figure adrift in the spring mob of
+trans-Atlantic pleasure-seekers depressed and mortified her. She would
+be sure to run across acquaintances, and they would infer that she was
+in quest of a new opportunity, a fresh start, and would suspect her of
+trying to use them for the purpose. The thought was repugnant to her
+newly awakened pride, and she decided that if she went to Europe her
+father and mother must go with her. The project was a bold one, and when
+she broached it she had to run the whole gamut of Mr. Spragg's irony. He
+wanted to know what she expected to do with him when she got him there;
+whether she meant to introduce him to "all those old Kings," how she
+thought he and her mother would look in court dress, and how she
+supposed he was going to get on without his New York paper. But Undine
+had been aware of having what he himself would have called "a pull" over
+her father since, the day after their visit to the opera, he had taken
+her aside to ask: "You sent back those pearls?" and she had answered
+coldly: "Mrs. Heeny's taken them."
+
+After a moment of half-bewildered resistance her parents, perhaps
+secretly flattered by this first expression of her need for them, had
+yielded to her entreaty, packed their trunks, and stoically set out for
+the unknown. Neither Mr. Spragg nor his wife had ever before been out of
+their country; and Undine had not understood, till they stood beside
+her tongue-tied and helpless on the dock at Cherbourg, the task she
+had undertaken in uprooting them. Mr. Spragg had never been physically
+active, but on foreign shores he was seized by a strange restlessness,
+and a helpless dependence on his daughter. Mrs. Spragg's long habit of
+apathy was overcome by her dread of being left alone when her husband
+and Undine went out, and she delayed and impeded their expeditions
+by insisting on accompanying them; so that, much as Undine disliked
+sightseeing, there seemed no alternative between "going round" with her
+parents and shutting herself up with them in the crowded hotels to which
+she successively transported them.
+
+The hotels were the only European institutions that really interested
+Mr. Spragg. He considered them manifestly inferior to those at home;
+but he was haunted by a statistical curiosity as to their size, their
+number, their cost and their capacity for housing and feeding the
+incalculable hordes of his countrymen. He went through galleries,
+churches and museums in a stolid silence like his daughter's; but in the
+hotels he never ceased to enquire and investigate, questioning every one
+who could speak English, comparing bills, collecting prospectuses and
+computing the cost of construction and the probable return on the
+investment. He regarded the non-existence of the cold-storage system as
+one more proof of European inferiority, and no longer wondered, in
+the absence of the room-to-room telephone, that foreigners hadn't yet
+mastered the first principles of time-saving.
+
+After a few weeks it became evident to both parents and daughter that
+their unnatural association could not continue much longer. Mrs.
+Spragg's shrinking from everything new and unfamiliar had developed into
+a kind of settled terror, and Mr. Spragg had begun to be depressed
+by the incredible number of the hotels and their simply incalculable
+housing capacity.
+
+"It ain't that they're any great shakes in themselves, any one of 'em;
+but there's such a darned lot of 'em: they're as thick as mosquitoes,
+every place you go." And he began to reckon up, on slips of paper, on
+the backs of bills and the margins of old newspapers, the number of
+travellers who could be simultaneously lodged, bathed and boarded on
+the continent of Europe. "Five hundred bedrooms--three hundred
+bathrooms--no; three hundred and fifty bathrooms, that one has: that
+makes, supposing two-thirds of 'em double up--do you s'pose as many as
+that do, Undie? That porter at Lucerne told me the Germans slept three
+in a room--well, call it eight hundred people; and three meals a day per
+head; no, four meals, with that afternoon tea they take; and the last
+place we were at--'way up on that mountain there--why, there were
+seventy-five hotels in that one spot alone, and all jam full--well, it
+beats me to know where all the people come from..."
+
+He had gone on in this fashion for what seemed to his daughter an
+endless length of days; and then suddenly he had roused himself to say:
+"See here, Undie, I got to go back and make the money to pay for all
+this."
+
+There had been no question on the part of any of the three of Undine's
+returning with them; and after she had conveyed them to their steamer,
+and seen their vaguely relieved faces merged in the handkerchief-waving
+throng along the taffrail, she had returned alone to Paris and made her
+unsuccessful attempt to enlist the aid of Indiana Rolliver.
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+She was still brooding over this last failure when one afternoon, as she
+loitered on the hotel terrace, she was approached by a young woman whom
+she had seen sitting near the wheeled chair of an old lady wearing a
+crumpled black bonnet under a funny fringed parasol with a jointed
+handle.
+
+The young woman, who was small, slight and brown, was dressed with a
+disregard of the fashion which contrasted oddly with the mauve powder on
+her face and the traces of artificial colour in her dark untidy hair.
+She looked as if she might have several different personalities, and as
+if the one of the moment had been hanging up a long time in her wardrobe
+and been hurriedly taken down as probably good enough for the present
+occasion.
+
+With her hands in her jacket pockets, and an agreeable smile on her
+boyish face, she strolled up to Undine and asked, in a pretty variety of
+Parisian English, if she had the pleasure of speaking to Mrs. Marvell.
+
+On Undine's assenting, the smile grew more alert and the lady continued:
+"I think you know my friend Sacha Adelschein?"
+
+No question could have been less welcome to Undine. If there was one
+point on which she was doggedly and puritanically resolved, it was that
+no extremes of social adversity should ever again draw her into the
+group of people among whom Madame Adelschein too conspicuously figured.
+Since her unsuccessful attempt to win over Indiana by introducing her to
+that group, Undine had been righteously resolved to remain aloof from
+it; and she was drawing herself up to her loftiest height of disapproval
+when the stranger, as if unconscious of it, went on: "Sacha speaks of
+you so often--she admires you so much.--I think you know also my cousin
+Chelles," she added, looking into Undine's eyes. "I am the Princess
+Estradina. I've come here with my mother for the air."
+
+The murmur of negation died on Undine's lips. She found herself
+grappling with a new social riddle, and such surprises were always
+stimulating. The name of the untidy-looking young woman she had been
+about to repel was one of the most eminent in the impregnable quarter
+beyond the Seine. No one figured more largely in the Parisian chronicle
+than the Princess Estradina, and no name more impressively headed the
+list at every marriage, funeral and philanthropic entertainment of
+the Faubourg Saint Germain than that of her mother, the Duchesse de
+Dordogne, who must be no other than the old woman sitting in the
+Bath-chair with the crumpled bonnet and the ridiculous sunshade.
+
+But it was not the appearance of the two ladies that surprised Undine.
+She knew that social gold does not always glitter, and that the lady she
+had heard spoken of as Lili Estradina was notoriously careless of the
+conventions; but that she should boast of her intimacy with Madame
+Adelschein, and use it as a pretext for naming herself, overthrew all
+Undine's hierarchies.
+
+"Yes--it's hideously dull here, and I'm dying of it. Do come over and
+speak to my mother. She's dying of it too; but don't tell her so,
+because she hasn't found it out. There were so many things our mothers
+never found out," the Princess rambled on, with her half-mocking
+half-intimate smile; and in another moment Undine, thrilled at having
+Mrs. Spragg thus coupled with a Duchess, found herself seated between
+mother and daughter, and responding by a radiant blush to the elder
+lady's amiable opening: "You know my nephew Raymond--he's your great
+admirer."
+
+How had it happened, whither would it lead, how long could it last? The
+questions raced through Undine's brain as she sat listening to her
+new friends--they seemed already too friendly to be called
+acquaintances!--replying to their enquiries, and trying to think far
+enough ahead to guess what they would expect her to say, and what tone
+it would be well to take. She was used to such feats of mental agility,
+and it was instinctive with her to become, for the moment, the person
+she thought her interlocutors expected her to be; but she had never had
+quite so new a part to play at such short notice. She took her cue,
+however, from the fact that the Princess Estradina, in her mother's
+presence, made no farther allusion to her dear friend Sacha, and seemed
+somehow, though she continued to chat on in the same easy strain, to
+look differently and throw out different implications. All these shades
+of demeanour were immediately perceptible to Undine, who tried to adapt
+herself to them by combining in her manner a mixture of Apex dash and
+New York dignity; and the result was so successful that when she rose to
+go the Princess, with a hand on her arm, said almost wistfully: "You're
+staying on too? Then do take pity on us! We might go on some trips
+together; and in the evenings we could make a bridge."
+
+A new life began for Undine. The Princess, chained her mother's side,
+and frankly restive under her filial duty, clung to her new acquaintance
+with a persistence too flattering to be analyzed. "My dear, I was on
+the brink of suicide when I saw your name in the visitors' list," she
+explained; and Undine felt like answering that she had nearly reached
+the same pass when the Princess's thin little hand had been held out
+to her. For the moment she was dizzy with the effect of that random
+gesture. Here she was, at the lowest ebb of her fortunes, miraculously
+rehabilitated, reinstated, and restored to the old victorious sense of
+her youth and her power! Her sole graces, her unaided personality, had
+worked the miracle; how should she not trust in them hereafter?
+
+Aside from her feeling of concrete attainment. Undine was deeply
+interested in her new friends. The Princess and her mother, in their
+different ways, were different from any one else she had known. The
+Princess, who might have been of any age between twenty and forty, had
+a small triangular face with caressing impudent eyes, a smile like a
+silent whistle and the gait of a baker's boy balancing his basket. She
+wore either baggy shabby clothes like a man's, or rich draperies that
+looked as if they had been rained on; and she seemed equally at ease
+in either style of dress, and carelessly unconscious of both. She was
+extremely familiar and unblushingly inquisitive, but she never gave
+Undine the time to ask her any questions or the opportunity to venture
+on any freedom with her. Nevertheless she did not scruple to talk of her
+sentimental experiences, and seemed surprised, and rather disappointed,
+that Undine had so few to relate in return. She playfully accused her
+beautiful new friend of being cachottiere, and at the sight of Undine's
+blush cried out: "Ah, you funny Americans! Why do you all behave as if
+love were a secret infirmity?"
+
+The old Duchess was even more impressive, because she fitted better into
+Undine's preconceived picture of the Faubourg Saint Germain, and was
+more like the people with whom she pictured the former Nettie Wincher as
+living in privileged intimacy. The Duchess was, indeed, more amiable
+and accessible than Undine's conception of a Duchess, and displayed a
+curiosity as great as her daughter's, and much more puerile, concerning
+her new friend's history and habits. But through her mild prattle, and
+in spite of her limited perceptions. Undine felt in her the same clear
+impenetrable barrier that she ran against occasionally in the Princess;
+and she was beginning to understand that this barrier represented a
+number of things about which she herself had yet to learn. She would
+not have known this a few years earlier, nor would she have seen in the
+Duchess anything but the ruin of an ugly woman, dressed in clothes that
+Mrs. Spragg wouldn't have touched. The Duchess certainly looked like a
+ruin; but Undine now saw that she looked like the ruin of a castle.
+
+The Princess, who was unofficially separated from her husband, had with
+her her two little girls. She seemed extremely attached to both--though
+avowing for the younger a preference she frankly ascribed to the
+interesting accident of its parentage--and she could not understand that
+Undine, as to whose domestic difficulties she minutely informed herself,
+should have consented to leave her child to strangers. "For, to one's
+child every one but one's self is a stranger; and whatever your
+egarements--" she began, breaking off with a stare when Undine
+interrupted her to explain that the courts had ascribed all the wrongs
+in the case to her husband. "But then--but then--" murmured the
+Princess, turning away from the subject as if checked by too deep an
+abyss of difference.
+
+The incident had embarrassed Undine, and though she tried to justify
+herself by allusions to her boy's dependence on his father's family,
+and to the duty of not standing in his way, she saw that she made no
+impression. "Whatever one's errors, one's child belongs to one," her
+hearer continued to repeat; and Undine, who was frequently scandalized
+by the Princess's conversation, now found herself in the odd position
+of having to set a watch upon her own in order not to scandalize the
+Princess.
+
+Each day, nevertheless, strengthened her hold on her new friends. After
+her first flush of triumph she began indeed to suspect that she had been
+a slight disappointment to the Princess, had not completely justified
+the hopes raised by the doubtful honour of being one of Sacha
+Adelschein's intimates. Undine guessed that the Princess had expected to
+find her more amusing, "queerer," more startling in speech and conduct.
+Though by instinct she was none of these things, she was eager to go as
+far as was expected; but she felt that her audacities were on lines
+too normal to be interesting, and that the Princess thought her rather
+school-girlish and old-fashioned. Still, they had in common their youth,
+their boredom, their high spirits and their hunger for amusement; and
+Undine was making the most of these ties when one day, coming back from
+a trip to Monte-Carlo with the Princess, she was brought up short by the
+sight of a lady--evidently a new arrival--who was seated in an attitude
+of respectful intimacy beside the old Duchess's chair. Undine, advancing
+unheard over the fine gravel of the garden path, recognized at a glance
+the Marquise de Trezac's drooping nose and disdainful back, and at the
+same moment heard her say: "--And her husband?"
+
+"Her husband? But she's an American--she's divorced," the Duchess
+replied, as if she were merely stating the same fact in two different
+ways; and Undine stopped short with a pang of apprehension.
+
+The Princess came up behind her. "Who's the solemn person with Mamma?
+Ah, that old bore of a Trezac!" She dropped her long eye-glass with a
+laugh. "Well, she'll be useful--she'll stick to Mamma like a leech and
+we shall get away oftener. Come, let's go and be charming to her."
+
+She approached Madame de Trezac effusively, and after an interchange of
+exclamations Undine heard her say "You know my friend Mrs. Marvell? No?
+How odd! Where do you manage to hide yourself, chere Madame? Undine,
+here's a compatriot who hasn't the pleasure--"
+
+"I'm such a hermit, dear Mrs. Marvell--the Princess shows me what I
+miss," the Marquise de Trezac murmured, rising to give her hand
+to Undine, and speaking in a voice so different from that of the
+supercilious Miss Wincher that only her facial angle and the droop of
+her nose linked her to the hated vision of Potash Springs.
+
+Undine felt herself dancing on a flood-tide of security. For the first
+time the memory of Potash Springs became a thing to smile at, and with
+the Princess's arm through hers she shone back triumphantly on Madame de
+Trezac, who seemed to have grown suddenly obsequious and insignificant,
+as though the waving of the Princess's wand had stripped her of all her
+false advantages.
+
+But upstairs, in her own room. Undine's courage fell. Madame de Trezac
+had been civil, effusive even, because for the moment she had been taken
+off her guard by finding Mrs. Marvell on terms of intimacy with the
+Princess Estradina and her mother. But the force of facts would reassert
+itself. Far from continuing to see Undine through her French friends'
+eyes she would probably invite them to view her compatriot through the
+searching lens of her own ampler information. "The old hypocrite--she'll
+tell them everything," Undine murmured, wincing at the recollection
+of the dentist's assistant from Deposit, and staring miserably at her
+reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Of what use were youth and
+grace and good looks, if one drop of poison distilled from the envy of
+a narrow-minded woman was enough to paralyze them? Of course Madame de
+Trezac knew and remembered, and, secure in her own impregnable position,
+would never rest till she had driven out the intruder.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+"What do you say to Nice to-morrow, dearest?" the Princess suggested
+a few evenings later as she followed Undine upstairs after a languid
+evening at bridge with the Duchess and Madame de Trezac.
+
+Half-way down the passage she stopped to open a door and, putting her
+finger to her lip, signed to Undine to enter. In the taper-lit dimness
+stood two small white beds, each surmounted by a crucifix and a palm
+branch, and each containing a small brown sleeping child with a mop of
+hair and a curiously finished little face. As the Princess stood gazing
+on their innocent slumbers she seemed for a moment like a third little
+girl scarcely bigger and browner than the others; and the smile with
+which she watched them was as clear as theirs. "Ah, si seulement je
+pouvais choisir leurs amants!" she sighed as she turned away.
+
+"--Nice to-morrow," she repeated, as she and Undine walked on to their
+rooms with linked arms. "We may as well make hay while the Trezac
+shines. She bores Mamma frightfully, but Mamma won't admit it because
+they belong to the same oeuvres. Shall it be the eleven train, dear?
+We can lunch at the Royal and look in the shops--we may meet somebody
+amusing. Anyhow, it's better than staying here!"
+
+Undine was sure the trip to Nice would be delightful. Their previous
+expeditions had shown her the Princess's faculty for organizing such
+adventures. At Monte-Carlo, a few days before, they had run across two
+or three amusing but unassorted people, and the Princess, having fused
+them in a jolly lunch, had followed it up by a bout at baccarat, and,
+finally hunting down an eminent composer who had just arrived to
+rehearse a new production, had insisted on his asking the party to tea,
+and treating them to fragments of his opera.
+
+A few days earlier, Undine's hope of renewing such pleasures would have
+been clouded by the dread of leaving Madame de Trezac alone with the
+Duchess. But she had no longer any fear of Madame de Trezac. She had
+discovered that her old rival of Potash Springs was in actual dread
+of her disfavour, and nervously anxious to conciliate her, and the
+discovery gave her such a sense of the heights she had scaled, and the
+security of her footing, that all her troubled past began to seem like
+the result of some providential "design," and vague impulses of piety
+stirred in her as she and the Princess whirled toward Nice through the
+blue and gold glitter of the morning.
+
+They wandered about the lively streets, they gazed into the beguiling
+shops, the Princess tried on hats and Undine bought them, and they
+lunched at the Royal on all sorts of succulent dishes prepared under
+the head-waiter's special supervision. But as they were savouring
+their "double" coffee and liqueurs, and Undine was wondering what her
+companion would devise for the afternoon, the Princess clapped her hands
+together and cried out: "Dearest, I'd forgotten! I must desert you."
+
+She explained that she'd promised the Duchess to look up a friend who
+was ill--a poor wretch who'd been sent to Cimiez for her lungs--and that
+she must rush off at once, and would be back as soon as possible--well,
+if not in an hour, then in two at latest. She was full of compunction,
+but she knew Undine would forgive her, and find something amusing to
+fill up the time: she advised her to go back and buy the black hat with
+the osprey, and try on the crepe de Chine they'd thought so smart: for
+any one as good-looking as herself the woman would probably alter it for
+nothing; and they could meet again at the Palace Tea-Rooms at four. She
+whirled away in a cloud of explanations, and Undine, left alone, sat
+down on the Promenade des Anglais. She did not believe a word the
+Princess had said. She had seen in a flash why she was being left, and
+why the plan had not been divulged to her before-hand; and she
+quivered with resentment and humiliation. "That's what she's wanted me
+for...that's why she made up to me. She's trying it to-day, and after
+this it'll happen regularly...she'll drag me over here every day or
+two...at least she thinks she will!"
+
+A sincere disgust was Undine's uppermost sensation. She was as much
+ashamed as Mrs. Spragg might have been at finding herself used to screen
+a clandestine adventure.
+
+"I'll let her see... I'll make her understand," she repeated angrily;
+and for a moment she was half-disposed to drive to the station and take
+the first train back. But the sense of her precarious situation withheld
+her; and presently, with bitterness in her heart, she got up and began
+to stroll toward the shops.
+
+To show that she was not a dupe, she arrived at the designated
+meeting-place nearly an hour later than the time appointed; but when she
+entered the Tea-Rooms the Princess was nowhere to be seen. The rooms
+were crowded, and Undine was guided toward a small inner apartment
+where isolated couples were absorbing refreshments in an atmosphere of
+intimacy that made it seem incongruous to be alone. She glanced about
+for a face she knew, but none was visible, and she was just giving up
+the search when she beheld Elmer Moffatt shouldering his way through the
+crowd.
+
+The sight was so surprising that she sat gazing with unconscious fixity
+at the round black head and glossy reddish face which kept appearing and
+disappearing through the intervening jungle of aigrettes. It was long
+since she had either heard of Moffatt or thought about him, and now, in
+her loneliness and exasperation, she took comfort in the sight of his
+confident capable face, and felt a longing to hear his voice and unbosom
+her woes to him. She had half risen to attract his attention when she
+saw him turn back and make way for a companion, who was cautiously
+steering her huge feathered hat between the tea-tables. The woman was
+of the vulgarest type; everything about her was cheap and gaudy. But
+Moffatt was obviously elated: he stood aside with a flourish to usher
+her in, and as he followed he shot out a pink shirt-cuff with jewelled
+links, and gave his moustache a gallant twist. Undine felt an
+unreasoning irritation: she was vexed with him both for not being alone
+and for being so vulgarly accompanied. As the couple seated themselves
+she caught Moffatt's glance and saw him redden to the edge of his white
+forehead; but he elaborately avoided her eye--he evidently wanted her to
+see him do it--and proceeded to minister to his companion's wants with
+an air of experienced gallantry.
+
+The incident, trifling as it was, filled up the measure of Undine's
+bitterness. She thought Moffatt pitiably ridiculous, and she hated him
+for showing himself in such a light at that particular moment. Her mind
+turned back to her own grievance, and she was just saying to herself
+that nothing on earth should prevent her letting the Princess know what
+she thought of her, when the lady in question at last appeared. She came
+hurriedly forward and behind her Undine perceived the figure of a slight
+quietly dressed man, as to whom her immediate impression was that he
+made every one else in the room look as common as Moffatt. An instant
+later the colour had flown to her face and her hand was in Raymond de
+Chelles, while the Princess, murmuring: "Cimiez's such a long way off;
+but you WILL forgive me?" looked into her eyes with a smile that added:
+"See how I pay for what I get!"
+
+Her first glance showed Undine how glad Raymond de Chelles was to see
+her. Since their last meeting his admiration for her seemed not only to
+have increased but to have acquired a different character. Undine, at
+an earlier stage in her career, might not have known exactly what the
+difference signified; but it was as clear to her now as if the Princess
+had said--what her beaming eyes seemed, in fact, to convey--"I'm only
+too glad to do my cousin the same kind of turn you're doing me."
+
+But Undine's increased experience, if it had made her more vigilant,
+had also given her a clearer measure of her power. She saw at once
+that Chelles, in seeking to meet her again, was not in quest of a mere
+passing adventure. He was evidently deeply drawn to her, and her present
+situation, if it made it natural to regard her as more accessible, had
+not altered the nature of his feeling. She saw and weighed all this in
+the first five minutes during which, over tea and muffins, the Princess
+descanted on her luck in happening to run across her cousin, and
+Chelles, his enchanted eyes on Undine, expressed his sense of his good
+fortune. He was staying, it appeared, with friends at Beaulieu, and had
+run over to Nice that afternoon by the merest chance: he added that,
+having just learned of his aunt's presence in the neighbourhood, he had
+already planned to present his homage to her.
+
+"Oh, don't come to us--we're too dull!" the Princess exclaimed. "Let us
+run over occasionally and call on you: we're dying for a pretext, aren't
+we?" she added, smiling at Undine.
+
+The latter smiled back vaguely, and looked across the room. Moffatt,
+looking flushed and foolish, was just pushing back his chair. To carry
+off his embarrassment he put an additional touch of importance; and as
+he swaggered out behind his companion, Undine said to herself, with a
+shiver: "If he'd been alone they would have found me taking tea with
+him."
+
+Undine, during the ensuing weeks, returned several times to Nice with
+the Princess; but, to the latter's surprise, she absolutely refused to
+have Raymond de Chelles included in their luncheon-parties, or even
+apprised in advance of their expeditions.
+
+The Princess, always impatient of unnecessary dissimulation, had not
+attempted to keep up the feint of the interesting invalid at Cimiez. She
+confessed to Undine that she was drawn to Nice by the presence there of
+the person without whom, for the moment, she found life intolerable,
+and whom she could not well receive under the same roof with her little
+girls and her mother. She appealed to Undine's sisterly heart to feel
+for her in her difficulty, and implied that--as her conduct had already
+proved--she would always be ready to render her friend a like service.
+It was at this point that Undine checked her by a decided word. "I
+understand your position, and I'm very sorry for you, of course," she
+began (the Princess stared at the "sorry"). "Your secret's perfectly
+safe with me, and I'll do anything I can for you...but if I go to Nice
+with you again you must promise not to ask your cousin to meet us."
+
+The Princess's face expressed the most genuine astonishment. "Oh, my
+dear, do forgive me if I've been stupid! He admires you so tremendously;
+and I thought--"
+
+"You'll do as I ask, please--won't you?" Undine went on, ignoring the
+interruption and looking straight at her under level brows; and the
+Princess, with a shrug, merely murmured: "What a pity! I fancied you
+liked him."
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+The early spring found Undine once more in Paris.
+
+She had every reason to be satisfied with the result of the course she
+had pursued since she had pronounced her ultimatum on the subject of
+Raymond de Chelles. She had continued to remain on the best of terms
+with the Princess, to rise in the estimation of the old Duchess, and
+to measure the rapidity of her ascent in the upward gaze of Madame de
+Trezac; and she had given Chelles to understand that, if he wished to
+renew their acquaintance, he must do so in the shelter of his venerable
+aunt's protection.
+
+To the Princess she was careful to make her attitude equally clear. "I
+like your cousin very much--he's delightful, and if I'm in Paris this
+spring I hope I shall see a great deal of him. But I know how easy it is
+for a woman in my position to get talked about--and I have my little boy
+to consider."
+
+Nevertheless, whenever Chelles came over from Beaulieu to spend a
+day with his aunt and cousin--an excursion he not infrequently
+repeated--Undine was at no pains to conceal her pleasure. Nor was there
+anything calculated in her attitude. Chelles seemed to her more charming
+than ever, and the warmth of his wooing was in flattering contrast to
+the cool reserve of his manners. At last she felt herself alive and
+young again, and it became a joy to look in her glass and to try on her
+new hats and dresses...
+
+The only menace ahead was the usual one of the want of money. While she
+had travelled with her parents she had been at relatively small expense,
+and since their return to America Mr. Spragg had sent her allowance
+regularly; yet almost all the money she had received for the pearls was
+already gone, and she knew her Paris season would be far more expensive
+than the quiet weeks on the Riviera.
+
+Meanwhile the sense of reviving popularity, and the charm of Chelles'
+devotion, had almost effaced the ugly memories of failure, and
+refurbished that image of herself in other minds which was her only
+notion of self-seeing. Under the guidance of Madame de Trezac she had
+found a prettily furnished apartment in a not too inaccessible quarter,
+and in its light bright drawing-room she sat one June afternoon
+listening, with all the forbearance of which she was capable, to the
+counsels of her newly-acquired guide.
+
+"Everything but marriage--" Madame de Trezac was repeating, her long
+head slightly tilted, her features wearing the rapt look of an adept
+reciting a hallowed formula.
+
+Raymond de Chelles had not been mentioned by either of the ladies, and
+the former Miss Wincher was merely imparting to her young friend one of
+the fundamental dogmas of her social creed; but Undine was conscious
+that the air between them vibrated with an unspoken name. She made no
+immediate answer, but her glance, passing by Madame de Trezac's dull
+countenance, sought her own reflection in the mirror behind her
+visitor's chair. A beam of spring sunlight touched the living masses of
+her hair and made the face beneath as radiant as a girl's. Undine smiled
+faintly at the promise her own eyes gave her, and then turned them back
+to her friend. "What can such women know about anything?" she thought
+compassionately.
+
+"There's everything against it," Madame de Trezac continued in a tone of
+patient exposition. She seemed to be doing her best to make the matter
+clear. "In the first place, between people in society a religious
+marriage is necessary; and, since the Church doesn't recognize divorce,
+that's obviously out of the question. In France, a man of position who
+goes through the form of civil marriage with a divorced woman is simply
+ruining himself and her. They might much better--from her point of
+view as well as his--be 'friends,' as it's called over here: such
+arrangements are understood and allowed for. But when a Frenchman
+marries he wants to marry as his people always have. He knows there are
+traditions he can't fight against--and in his heart he's glad there
+are."
+
+"Oh, I know: they've so much religious feeling. I admire that in them:
+their religion's so beautiful." Undine looked thoughtfully at her
+visitor. "I suppose even money--a great deal of money--wouldn't make the
+least bit of difference?"
+
+"None whatever, except to make matters worse," Madame de Trezac
+decisively rejoined. She returned Undine's look with something of Miss
+Wincher's contemptuous authority. "But," she added, softening to a
+smile, "between ourselves--I can say it, since we're neither of us
+children--a woman with tact, who's not in a position to remarry, will
+find society extremely indulgent... provided, of course, she keeps up
+appearances..."
+
+Undine turned to her with the frown of a startled Diana. "We don't look
+at things that way out at Apex," she said coldly; and the blood rose in
+Madame de Trezac's sallow cheek.
+
+"Oh, my dear, it's so refreshing to hear you talk like that! Personally,
+of course, I've never quite got used to the French view--"
+
+"I hope no American woman ever does," said Undine.
+
+She had been in Paris for about two months when this conversation took
+place, and in spite of her reviving self-confidence she was beginning to
+recognize the strength of the forces opposed to her. It had taken a long
+time to convince her that even money could not prevail against them;
+and, in the intervals of expressing her admiration for the Catholic
+creed, she now had violent reactions of militant Protestantism, during
+which she talked of the tyranny of Rome and recalled school stories of
+immoral Popes and persecuting Jesuits.
+
+Meanwhile her demeanour to Chelles was that of the incorruptible but
+fearless American woman, who cannot even conceive of love outside of
+marriage, but is ready to give her devoted friendship to the man on
+whom, in happier circumstances, she might have bestowed her hand. This
+attitude was provocative of many scenes, during which her suitor's
+unfailing powers of expression--his gift of looking and saying all
+the desperate and devoted things a pretty woman likes to think she
+inspires--gave Undine the thrilling sense of breathing the very air of
+French fiction. But she was aware that too prolonged tension of these
+cords usually ends in their snapping, and that Chelles' patience was
+probably in inverse ratio to his ardour.
+
+When Madame de Trezac had left her these thoughts remained in her mind.
+She understood exactly what each of her new friends wanted of her. The
+Princess, who was fond of her cousin, and had the French sense of family
+solidarity, would have liked to see Chelles happy in what seemed to her
+the only imaginable way. Madame de Trezac would have liked to do what
+she could to second the Princess's efforts in this or any other line;
+and even the old Duchess--though piously desirous of seeing her
+favourite nephew married--would have thought it not only natural but
+inevitable that, while awaiting that happy event, he should try to
+induce an amiable young woman to mitigate the drawbacks of celibacy.
+Meanwhile, they might one and all weary of her if Chelles did; and
+a persistent rejection of his suit would probably imperil her
+scarcely-gained footing among his friends. All this was clear to her,
+yet it did not shake her resolve. She was determined to give up Chelles
+unless he was willing to marry her; and the thought of her renunciation
+moved her to a kind of wistful melancholy.
+
+In this mood her mind reverted to a letter she had just received from
+her mother. Mrs. Spragg wrote more fully than usual, and the unwonted
+flow of her pen had been occasioned by an event for which she had long
+yearned. For months she had pined for a sight of her grandson, had tried
+to screw up her courage to write and ask permission to visit him, and,
+finally breaking through her sedentary habits, had begun to haunt the
+neighbourhood of Washington Square, with the result that one afternoon
+she had had the luck to meet the little boy coming out of the house with
+his nurse. She had spoken to him, and he had remembered her and called
+her "Granny"; and the next day she had received a note from Mrs.
+Fairford saying that Ralph would be glad to send Paul to see her. Mrs.
+Spragg enlarged on the delights of the visit and the growing beauty and
+cleverness of her grandson. She described to Undine exactly how Paul
+was dressed, how he looked and what he said, and told her how he had
+examined everything in the room, and, finally coming upon his mother's
+photograph, had asked who the lady was; and, on being told, had wanted
+to know if she was a very long way off, and when Granny thought she
+would come back.
+
+As Undine re-read her mother's pages, she felt an unusual tightness in
+her throat and two tears rose to her eyes. It was dreadful that her
+little boy should be growing up far away from her, perhaps dressed in
+clothes she would have hated; and wicked and unnatural that when he saw
+her picture he should have to be told who she was. "If I could only meet
+some good man who would give me a home and be a father to him," she
+thought--and the tears overflowed and ran down.
+
+Even as they fell, the door was thrown open to admit Raymond de Chelles,
+and the consciousness of the moisture still glistening on her cheeks
+perhaps strengthened her resolve to resist him, and thus made her more
+imperiously to be desired. Certain it is that on that day her suitor
+first alluded to a possibility which Madame de Trezac had prudently
+refrained from suggesting, there fell upon Undine's attentive ears the
+magic phrase "annulment of marriage."
+
+Her alert intelligence immediately set to work in this new direction;
+but almost at the same moment she became aware of a subtle change
+of tone in the Princess and her mother, a change reflected in the
+corresponding decline of Madame de Trezac's cordiality. Undine, since
+her arrival in Paris, had necessarily been less in the Princess's
+company, but when they met she had found her as friendly as ever. It was
+manifestly not a failing of the Princess's to forget past favours, and
+though increasingly absorbed by the demands of town life she treated her
+new friend with the same affectionate frankness, and Undine was given
+frequent opportunities to enlarge her Parisian acquaintance, not only in
+the Princess's intimate circle but in the majestic drawing-rooms of the
+Hotel de Dordogne. Now, however, there was a perceptible decline in
+these signs of hospitality, and Undine, on calling one day on the
+Duchess, noticed that her appearance sent a visible flutter of
+discomfort through the circle about her hostess's chair. Two or three of
+the ladies present looked away from the new-comer and at each other,
+and several of them seemed spontaneously to encircle without approaching
+her, while another--grey-haired, elderly and slightly frightened--with
+an "Adieu, ma bonne tante" to the Duchess, was hastily aided in her
+retreat down the long line of old gilded rooms.
+
+The incident was too mute and rapid to have been noticeable had it not
+been followed by the Duchess's resuming her conversation with the ladies
+nearest her as though Undine had just gone out of the room instead of
+entering it. The sense of having been thus rendered invisible filled
+Undine with a vehement desire to make herself seen, and an equally
+strong sense that all attempts to do so would be vain; and when, a few
+minutes later, she issued from the portals of the Hotel de Dordogne it
+was with the fixed resolve not to enter them again till she had had an
+explanation with the Princess.
+
+She was spared the trouble of seeking one by the arrival, early the next
+morning, of Madame de Trezac, who, entering almost with the breakfast
+tray, mysteriously asked to be allowed to communicate something of
+importance.
+
+"You'll understand, I know, the Princess's not coming herself--" Madame
+de Trezac began, sitting up very straight on the edge of the arm-chair
+over which Undine's lace dressing-gown hung.
+
+"If there's anything she wants to say to me, I don't," Undine answered,
+leaning back among her rosy pillows, and reflecting compassionately that
+the face opposite her was just the colour of the cafe au lait she was
+pouring out.
+
+"There are things that are...that might seem too pointed...if one said
+them one's self," Madame de Trezac continued. "Our dear Lili's so
+good-natured... she so hates to do anything unfriendly; but she
+naturally thinks first of her mother..."
+
+"Her mother? What's the matter with her mother?"
+
+"I told her I knew you didn't understand. I was sure you'd take it in
+good part..."
+
+Undine raised herself on her elbow. "What did Lili tell you to tell me?"
+
+"Oh, not to TELL you...simply to ask if, just for the present, you'd
+mind avoiding the Duchess's Thursdays ...calling on any other day, that
+is."
+
+"Any other day? She's not at home on any other. Do you mean she doesn't
+want me to call?"
+
+"Well--not while the Marquise de Chelles is in Paris. She's the
+Duchess's favourite niece--and of course they all hang together. That
+kind of family feeling is something you naturally don't--"
+
+Undine had a sudden glimpse of hidden intricacies.
+
+"That was Raymond de Chelles' mother I saw there yesterday? The one they
+hurried out when I came in?"
+
+"It seems she was very much upset. She somehow heard your name."
+
+"Why shouldn't she have heard my name? And why in the world should it
+upset her?"
+
+Madame de Trezac heaved a hesitating sigh. "Isn't it better to be frank?
+She thinks she has reason to feel badly--they all do."
+
+"To feel badly? Because her son wants to marry me?"
+
+"Of course they know that's impossible." Madame de Trezac smiled
+compassionately. "But they're afraid of your spoiling his other
+chances."
+
+Undine paused a moment before answering, "It won't be impossible when my
+marriage is annulled," she said.
+
+The effect of this statement was less electrifying than she had hoped.
+Her visitor simply broke into a laugh. "My dear child! Your marriage
+annulled? Who can have put such a mad idea into your head?"
+
+Undine's gaze followed the pattern she was tracing with a lustrous nail
+on her embroidered bedspread. "Raymond himself," she let fall.
+
+This time there was no mistaking the effect she produced. Madame de
+Trezac, with a murmured "Oh," sat gazing before her as if she had
+lost the thread of her argument; and it was only after a considerable
+interval that she recovered it sufficiently to exclaim: "They'll never
+hear of it--absolutely never!"
+
+"But they can't prevent it, can they?"
+
+"They can prevent its being of any use to you."
+
+"I see," Undine pensively assented.
+
+She knew the tone she had taken was virtually a declaration of war; but
+she was in a mood when the act of defiance, apart from its strategic
+value, was a satisfaction in itself. Moreover, if she could not gain
+her end without a fight it was better that the battle should be
+engaged while Raymond's ardour was at its height. To provoke immediate
+hostilities she sent for him the same afternoon, and related, quietly
+and without comment, the incident of her visit to the Duchess, and
+the mission with which Madame de Trezac had been charged. In the
+circumstances, she went on to explain, it was manifestly impossible that
+she should continue to receive his visits; and she met his wrathful
+comments on his relatives by the gently but firmly expressed resolve not
+to be the cause of any disagreement between himself and his family.
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+A few days after her decisive conversation with Raymond de Chelles,
+Undine, emerging from the doors of the Nouveau Luxe, where she had been
+to call on the newly-arrived Mrs. Homer Branney, once more found herself
+face to face with Elmer Moffatt.
+
+This time there was no mistaking his eagerness to be recognized. He
+stopped short as they met, and she read such pleasure in his eyes that
+she too stopped, holding out her hand.
+
+"I'm glad you're going to speak to me," she said, and Moffatt reddened at
+the allusion.
+
+"Well, I very nearly didn't. I didn't know you. You look about as old as
+you did when I first landed at Apex--remember?"
+
+He turned back and began to walk at her side in the direction of the
+Champs Elysees.
+
+"Say--this is all right!" he exclaimed; and she saw that his glance had
+left her and was ranging across the wide silvery square ahead of them to
+the congregated domes and spires beyond the river.
+
+"Do you like Paris?" she asked, wondering what theatres he had been to.
+
+"It beats everything." He seemed to be breathing in deeply the
+impression of fountains, sculpture, leafy' avenues and long-drawn
+architectural distances fading into the afternoon haze.
+
+"I suppose you've been to that old church over there?" he went on, his
+gold-topped stick pointing toward the towers of Notre Dame.
+
+"Oh, of course; when I used to sightsee. Have you never been to Paris
+before?"
+
+"No, this is my first look-round. I came across in March."
+
+"In March?" she echoed inattentively. It never occurred to her that
+other people's lives went on when they were out of her range of vision,
+and she tried in vain to remember what she had last heard of Moffatt.
+"Wasn't that a bad time to leave Wall Street?"
+
+"Well, so-so. Fact is, I was played out: needed a change." Nothing in
+his robust mien confirmed the statement, and he did not seem inclined to
+develop it. "I presume you're settled here now?" he went on. "I saw by
+the papers--"
+
+"Yes," she interrupted; adding, after a moment: "It was all a mistake
+from the first."
+
+"Well, I never thought he was your form," said Moffatt.
+
+His eyes had come back to her, and the look in them struck her as
+something she might use to her advantage; but the next moment he had
+glanced away with a furrowed brow, and she felt she had not wholly fixed
+his attention.
+
+"I live at the other end of Paris. Why not come back and have tea with
+me?" she suggested, half moved by a desire to know more of his affairs,
+and half by the thought that a talk with him might help to shed some
+light on hers.
+
+In the open taxi-cab he seemed to recover his sense of well-being, and
+leaned back, his hands on the knob of his stick, with the air of a man
+pleasantly aware of his privileges. "This Paris is a thundering good
+place," he repeated once or twice as they rolled on through the crush
+and glitter of the afternoon; and when they had descended at Undine's
+door, and he stood in her drawing-room, and looked out on the
+horse-chestnut trees rounding their green domes under the balcony, his
+satisfaction culminated in the comment: "I guess this lays out West End
+Avenue!"
+
+His eyes met Undine's with their old twinkle, and their expression
+encouraged her to murmur: "Of course there are times when I'm very
+lonely."
+
+She sat down behind the tea-table, and he stood at a little distance,
+watching her pull off her gloves with a queer comic twitch of his
+elastic mouth. "Well, I guess it's only when you want to be," he said,
+grasping a lyre-backed chair by its gilt cords, and sitting down astride
+of it, his light grey trousers stretching too tightly over his plump
+thighs. Undine was perfectly aware that he was a vulgar over-dressed
+man, with a red crease of fat above his collar and an impudent
+swaggering eye; yet she liked to see him there, and was conscious that
+he stirred the fibres of a self she had forgotten but had not ceased to
+understand.
+
+She had fancied her avowal of loneliness might call forth some
+sentimental phrase; but though Moffatt was clearly pleased to be with
+her she saw that she was not the centre of his thoughts, and the
+discovery irritated her.
+
+"I don't suppose YOU'VE known what it is to be lonely since you've been
+in Europe?" she continued as she held out his tea-cup.
+
+"Oh," he said jocosely, "I don't always go round with a guide"; and she
+rejoined on the same note: "Then perhaps I shall see something of you."
+
+"Why, there's nothing would suit me better; but the fact is, I'm
+probably sailing next week."
+
+"Oh, are you? I'm sorry." There was nothing feigned in her regret.
+
+"Anything I can do for you across the pond?"
+
+She hesitated. "There's something you can do for me right off."
+
+He looked at her more attentively, as if his practised eve had passed
+through the surface of her beauty to what might be going on behind it.
+"Do you want my blessing again?" he asked with sudden irony.
+
+Undine opened her eyes with a trustful look. "Yes--I do."
+
+"Well--I'll be damned!" said Moffatt gaily.
+
+"You've always been so awfully nice," she began; and he leaned back,
+grasping both sides of the chair-back, and shaking it a little with his
+laugh.
+
+He kept the same attitude while she proceeded to unfold her case,
+listening to her with the air of sober concentration that his frivolous
+face took on at any serious demand on his attention. When she had ended
+he kept the same look during an interval of silent pondering. "Is it the
+fellow who was over at Nice with you that day?"
+
+She looked at him with surprise. "How did you know?"
+
+"Why, I liked his looks," said Moffatt simply. He got up and strolled
+toward the window. On the way he stopped before a table covered with
+showy trifles, and after looking at them for a moment singled out a dim
+old brown and golden book which Chelles had given her. He examined
+it lingeringly, as though it touched the spring of some choked-up
+sensibility for which he had no language. "Say--" he began: it was the
+usual prelude to his enthusiasms; but he laid the book down and turned
+back.
+
+"Then you think if you had the cash you could fix it up all right with
+the Pope?"
+
+Her heart began to beat. She remembered that he had once put a job in
+Ralph's way, and had let her understand that he had done it partly for
+her sake.
+
+"Well," he continued, relapsing into hyperbole, "I wish I could send the
+old gentleman my cheque to-morrow morning: but the fact is I'm high and
+dry." He looked at her with a sudden odd intensity. "If I WASN'T, I
+dunno but what--" The phrase was lost in his familiar whistle.
+"That's an awfully fetching way you do your hair," he said. It was a
+disappointment to Undine to hear that his affairs were not prospering,
+for she knew that in his world "pull" and solvency were closely related,
+and that such support as she had hoped he might give her would be
+contingent on his own situation. But she had again a fleeting sense of
+his mysterious power of accomplishing things in the teeth of adversity;
+and she answered: "What I want is your advice."
+
+He turned away and wandered across the room, his hands in his pockets.
+On her ornate writing desk he saw a photograph of Paul, bright-curled
+and sturdy-legged, in a manly reefer, and bent over it with a murmur of
+approval. "Say--what a fellow! Got him with you?"
+
+Undine coloured. "No--" she began; and seeing his look of surprise, she
+embarked on her usual explanation. "I can't tell you how I miss him,"
+she ended, with a ring of truth that carried conviction to her own ears
+if not to Moffatt's.
+
+"Why don't you get him back, then?"
+
+"Why, I--"
+
+Moffatt had picked up the frame and was looking at the photograph more
+closely. "Pants!" he chuckled. "I declare!"
+
+He turned back to Undine. "Who DOES he belong to, anyhow?"
+
+"Belong to?"
+
+"Who got him when you were divorced? Did you?"
+
+"Oh, I got everything," she said, her instinct of self-defense on the
+alert.
+
+"So I thought." He stood before her, stoutly planted on his short legs,
+and speaking with an aggressive energy. "Well, I know what I'd do if he
+was mine."
+
+"If he was yours?"
+
+"And you tried to get him away from me. Fight you to a finish! If it
+cost me down to my last dollar I would."
+
+The conversation seemed to be wandering from the point, and she
+answered, with a touch of impatience: "It wouldn't cost you anything
+like that. I haven't got a dollar to fight back with."
+
+"Well, you ain't got to fight. Your decree gave him to you, didn't it?
+Why don't you send right over and get him? That's what I'd do if I was
+you."
+
+Undine looked up. "But I'm awfully poor; I can't afford to have him
+here."
+
+"You couldn't, up to now; but now you're going to get married. You're
+going to be able to give him a home and a father's care--and the
+foreign languages. That's what I'd say if I was you...His father takes
+considerable stock in him, don't he?"
+
+She coloured, a denial on her lips; but she could not shape it. "We're
+both awfully fond of him, of course... His father'd never give him up!"
+
+"Just so." Moffatt's face had grown as sharp as glass. "You've got the
+Marvells running. All you've got to do's to sit tight and wait for their
+cheque." He dropped back to his equestrian seat on the lyre-backed
+chair.
+
+Undine stood up and moved uneasily toward the window. She seemed to
+see her little boy as though he were in the room with her; she did not
+understand how she could have lived so long without him...She stood for
+a long time without speaking, feeling behind her the concentrated irony
+of Moffatt's gaze.
+
+"You couldn't lend me the money--manage to borrow it for me, I mean?"
+she finally turned back to ask. He laughed. "If I could manage to borrow
+any money at this particular minute--well, I'd have to lend every
+dollar of it to Elmer Moffatt, Esquire. I'm stone-broke, if you want
+to know. And wanted for an Investigation too. That's why I'm over here
+improving my mind."
+
+"Why, I thought you were going home next week?"
+
+He grinned. "I am, because I've found out there's a party wants me to
+stay away worse than the courts want me back. Making the trip just for
+my private satisfaction--there won't be any money in it, I'm afraid."
+
+Leaden disappointment descended on Undine. She had felt almost sure
+of Moffatt's helping her, and for an instant she wondered if some
+long-smouldering jealousy had flamed up under its cold cinders. But
+another look at his face denied her this solace; and his evident
+indifference was the last blow to her pride. The twinge it gave her
+prompted her to ask: "Don't you ever mean to get married?"
+
+Moffatt gave her a quick look. "Why, I shouldn't wonder--one of these
+days. Millionaires always collect something; but I've got to collect my
+millions first."
+
+He spoke coolly and half-humorously, and before he had ended she had
+lost all interest in his reply. He seemed aware of the fact, for he
+stood up and held out his hand. "Well, so long, Mrs. Marvell. It's been
+uncommonly pleasant to see you; and you'd better think over what I've
+said."
+
+She laid her hand sadly in his. "You've never had a child," she replied.
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+Nearly two years had passed since Ralph Marvell, waking from his long
+sleep in the hot summer light of Washington Square, had found that the
+face of life was changed for him.
+
+In the interval he had gradually adapted himself to the new order of
+things; but the months of adaptation had been a time of such darkness
+and confusion that, from the vantage-ground of his recovered lucidity,
+he could not yet distinguish the stages by which he had worked his way
+out; and even now his footing was not secure.
+
+His first effort had been to readjust his values--to take an inventory
+of them, and reclassify them, so that one at least might be made to
+appear as important as those he had lost; otherwise there could be no
+reason why he should go on living. He applied himself doggedly to this
+attempt; but whenever he thought he had found a reason that his mind
+could rest in, it gave way under him, and the old struggle for a
+foothold began again. His two objects in life were his boy and his book.
+The boy was incomparably the stronger argument, yet the less serviceable
+in filling the void. Ralph felt his son all the while, and all through
+his other feelings; but he could not think about him actively and
+continuously, could not forever exercise his eager empty dissatisfied
+mind on the relatively simple problem of clothing, educating and amusing
+a little boy of six. Yet Paul's existence was the all-sufficient reason
+for his own; and he turned again, with a kind of cold fervour, to his
+abandoned literary dream. Material needs obliged him to go on with
+his regular business; but, the day's work over, he was possessed of a
+leisure as bare and as blank as an unfurnished house, yet that was at
+least his own to furnish as he pleased.
+
+Meanwhile he was beginning to show a presentable face to the world, and
+to be once more treated like a man in whose case no one is particularly
+interested. His men friends ceased to say: "Hallo, old chap, I never saw
+you looking fitter!" and elderly ladies no longer told him they were
+sure he kept too much to himself, and urged him to drop in any afternoon
+for a quiet talk. People left him to his sorrow as a man is left to an
+incurable habit, an unfortunate tie: they ignored it, or looked over its
+head if they happened to catch a glimpse of it at his elbow.
+
+These glimpses were given to them more and more rarely. The smothered
+springs of life were bubbling up in Ralph, and there were days when he
+was glad to wake and see the sun in his window, and when he began to
+plan his book, and to fancy that the planning really interested him. He
+could even maintain the delusion for several days--for intervals each
+time appreciably longer--before it shrivelled up again in a scorching
+blast of disenchantment. The worst of it was that he could never tell
+when these hot gusts of anguish would overtake him. They came sometimes
+just when he felt most secure, when he was saying to himself: "After
+all, things are really worth while--" sometimes even when he was sitting
+with Clare Van Degen, listening to her voice, watching her hands, and
+turning over in his mind the opening chapters of his book.
+
+"You ought to write"; they had one and all said it to him from the
+first; and he fancied he might have begun sooner if he had not
+been urged on by their watchful fondness. Everybody wanted him to
+write--everybody had decided that he ought to, that he would, that
+he must be persuaded to; and the incessant imperceptible pressure of
+encouragement--the assumption of those about him that because it would
+be good for him to write he must naturally be able to--acted on his
+restive nerves as a stronger deterrent than disapproval.
+
+Even Clare had fallen into the same mistake; and one day, as he sat
+talking with her on the verandah of Laura Fairford's house on the
+Sound--where they now most frequently met--Ralph had half-impatiently
+rejoined: "Oh, if you think it's literature I need--!"
+
+Instantly he had seen her face change, and the speaking hands tremble on
+her knee. But she achieved the feat of not answering him, or turning her
+steady eyes from the dancing mid-summer water at the foot of Laura's
+lawn. Ralph leaned a little nearer, and for an instant his hand imagined
+the flutter of hers. But instead of clasping it he drew back, and rising
+from his chair wandered away to the other end of the verandah...No, he
+didn't feel as Clare felt. If he loved her--as he sometimes thought he
+did--it was not in the same way. He had a great tenderness for her, he
+was more nearly happy with her than with any one else; he liked to sit
+and talk with her, and watch her face and her hands, and he wished there
+were some way--some different way--of letting her know it; but he could
+not conceive that tenderness and desire could ever again be one for him:
+such a notion as that seemed part of the monstrous sentimental muddle on
+which his life had gone aground.
+
+"I shall write--of course I shall write some day," he said, turning back
+to his seat. "I've had a novel in the back of my head for years; and
+now's the time to pull it out."
+
+He hardly knew what he was saying; but before the end of the sentence he
+saw that Clare had understood what he meant to convey, and henceforth he
+felt committed to letting her talk to him as much as she pleased about
+his book. He himself, in consequence, took to thinking about it more
+consecutively; and just as his friends ceased to urge him to write, he
+sat down in earnest to begin.
+
+The vision that had come to him had no likeness to any of his earlier
+imaginings. Two or three subjects had haunted him, pleading for
+expression, during the first years of his marriage; but these now seemed
+either too lyrical or too tragic. He no longer saw life on the heroic
+scale: he wanted to do something in which men should look no bigger than
+the insects they were. He contrived in the course of time to reduce one
+of his old subjects to these dimensions, and after nights of brooding he
+made a dash at it, and wrote an opening chapter that struck him as
+not too bad. In the exhilaration of this first attempt he spent some
+pleasant evenings revising and polishing his work; and gradually a
+feeling of authority and importance developed in him. In the morning,
+when he woke, instead of his habitual sense of lassitude, he felt an
+eagerness to be up and doing, and a conviction that his individual task
+was a necessary part of the world's machinery. He kept his secret with
+the beginner's deadly fear of losing his hold on his half-real creations
+if he let in any outer light on them; but he went about with a more
+assured step, shrank less from meeting his friends, and even began to
+dine out again, and to laugh at some of the jokes he heard.
+
+Laura Fairford, to get Paul away from town, had gone early to the
+country; and Ralph, who went down to her every Saturday, usually found
+Clare Van Degen there. Since his divorce he had never entered his
+cousin's pinnacled palace; and Clare had never asked him why he stayed
+away. This mutual silence had been their sole allusion to Van Degen's
+share in the catastrophe, though Ralph had spoken frankly of its other
+aspects. They talked, however, most often of impersonal subjects--books,
+pictures, plays, or whatever the world that interested them was
+doing--and she showed no desire to draw him back to his own affairs. She
+was again staying late in town--to have a pretext, as he guessed, for
+coming down on Sundays to the Fairfords'--and they often made the trip
+together in her motor; but he had not yet spoken to her of having begun
+his book. One May evening, however, as they sat alone in the verandah,
+he suddenly told her that he was writing. As he spoke his heart beat
+like a boy's; but once the words were out they gave him a feeling of
+self-confidence, and he began to sketch his plan, and then to go into
+its details. Clare listened devoutly, her eyes burning on him through
+the dusk like the stars deepening above the garden; and when she got up
+to go in he followed her with a new sense of reassurance.
+
+The dinner that evening was unusually pleasant. Charles Bowen, just back
+from his usual spring travels, had come straight down to his friends
+from the steamer; and the fund of impressions he brought with him gave
+Ralph a desire to be up and wandering. And why not--when the book was
+done? He smiled across the table at Clare.
+
+"Next summer you'll have to charter a yacht, and take us all off to
+the Aegean. We can't have Charles condescending to us about the
+out-of-the-way places he's been seeing."
+
+Was it really he who was speaking, and his cousin who was sending
+him back her dusky smile? Well--why not, again? The seasons renewed
+themselves, and he too was putting out a new growth. "My book--my
+book--my book," kept repeating itself under all his thoughts, as
+Undine's name had once perpetually murmured there. That night as he went
+up to bed he said to himself that he was actually ceasing to think about
+his wife...
+
+As he passed Laura's door she called him in, and put her arms about him.
+
+"You look so well, dear!"
+
+"But why shouldn't I?" he answered gaily, as if ridiculing the fancy
+that he had ever looked otherwise. Paul was sleeping behind the next
+door, and the sense of the boy's nearness gave him a warmer glow. His
+little world was rounding itself out again, and once more he felt safe
+and at peace in its circle.
+
+His sister looked as if she had something more to say; but she merely
+kissed him good night, and he went up whistling to his room. The next
+morning he was to take a walk with Clare, and while he lounged about the
+drawing-room, waiting for her to come down, a servant came in with the
+Sunday papers. Ralph picked one up, and was absently unfolding it when
+his eye fell on his own name: a sight he had been spared since the last
+echoes of his divorce had subsided. His impulse was to fling the paper
+down, to hurl it as far from him as he could; but a grim fascination
+tightened his hold and drew his eyes back to the hated head-line.
+
+NEW YORK BEAUTY WEDS FRENCH NOBLEMAN MRS. UNDINE MARVELL CONFIDENT POPE
+WILL ANNUL PREVIOUS MARRIAGE MRS. MARVELL TALKS ABOUT HER CASE
+
+There it was before him in all its long-drawn horror--an "interview"--an
+"interview" of Undine's about her coming marriage! Ah, she talked about
+her case indeed! Her confidences filled the greater part of a column,
+and the only detail she seemed to have omitted was the name of her
+future husband, who was referred to by herself as "my fiance" and by
+the interviewer as "the Count" or "a prominent scion of the French
+nobility."
+
+Ralph heard Laura's step behind him. He threw the paper aside and their
+eyes met.
+
+"Is this what you wanted to tell me last night?"
+
+"Last night?--Is it in the papers?"
+
+"Who told you? Bowen? What else has he heard?"
+
+"Oh, Ralph, what does it matter--what can it matter?"
+
+"Who's the man? Did he tell you that?" Ralph insisted. He saw her
+growing agitation. "Why can't you answer? Is it any one I know?"
+
+"He was told in Paris it was his friend Raymond de Chelles."
+
+Ralph laughed, and his laugh sounded in his own ears like an echo of the
+dreary mirth with which he had filled Mr. Spragg's office the day he
+had learned that Undine intended to divorce him. But now his wrath was
+seasoned with a wholesome irony. The fact of his wife's having reached
+another stage in her ascent fell into its place as a part of the huge
+human buffoonery.
+
+"Besides," Laura went on, "it's all perfect nonsense, of course. How in
+the world can she have her marriage annulled?"
+
+Ralph pondered: this put the matter in another light. "With a great deal
+of money I suppose she might."
+
+"Well, she certainly won't get that from Chelles. He's far from rich,
+Charles tells me." Laura waited, watching him, before she risked:
+"That's what convinces me she wouldn't have him if she could."
+
+Ralph shrugged. "There may be other inducements. But she won't be able
+to manage it." He heard himself speaking quite collectedly. Had Undine
+at last lost her power of wounding him?
+
+Clare came in, dressed for their walk, and under Laura's anxious eyes he
+picked up the newspaper and held it out with a careless: "Look at this!"
+
+His cousin's glance flew down the column, and he saw the tremor of her
+lashes as she read. Then she lifted her head. "But you'll be free!" Her
+face was as vivid as a flower.
+
+"Free? I'm free now, as far as that goes!"
+
+"Oh, but it will go so much farther when she has another name--when
+she's a different person altogether! Then you'll really have Paul to
+yourself."
+
+"Paul?" Laura intervened with a nervous laugh. "But there's never been
+the least doubt about his having Paul!"
+
+They heard the boy's laughter on the lawn, and she went out to join him.
+Ralph was still looking at his cousin.
+
+"You're glad, then?" came from him involuntarily; and she startled him
+by bursting into tears. He bent over and kissed her on the cheek.
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+Ralph, as the days passed, felt that Clare was right: if Undine married
+again he would possess himself more completely, be more definitely rid
+of his past. And he did not doubt that she would gain her end: he knew
+her violent desires and her cold tenacity. If she had failed to capture
+Van Degen it was probably because she lacked experience of that
+particular type of man, of his huge immediate wants and feeble
+vacillating purposes; most of all, because she had not yet measured the
+strength of the social considerations that restrained him. It was a
+mistake she was not likely to repeat, and her failure had probably been
+a useful preliminary to success. It was a long time since Ralph had
+allowed himself to think of her, and as he did so the overwhelming fact
+of her beauty became present to him again, no longer as an element of
+his being but as a power dispassionately estimated. He said to himself:
+"Any man who can feel at all will feel it as I did"; and the conviction
+grew in him that Raymond de Chelles, of whom he had formed an idea
+through Bowen's talk, was not the man to give her up, even if she failed
+to obtain the release his religion exacted.
+
+Meanwhile Ralph was gradually beginning to feel himself freer and
+lighter. Undine's act, by cutting the last link between them, seemed to
+have given him back to himself; and the mere fact that he could consider
+his case in all its bearings, impartially and ironically, showed him the
+distance he had travelled, the extent to which he had renewed himself.
+He had been moved, too, by Clare's cry of joy at his release. Though
+the nature of his feeling for her had not changed he was aware of a new
+quality in their friendship. When he went back to his book again his
+sense of power had lost its asperity, and the spectacle of life seemed
+less like a witless dangling of limp dolls. He was well on in his second
+chapter now.
+
+This lightness of mood was still on him when, returning one afternoon to
+Washington Square, full of projects for a long evening's work, he found
+his mother awaiting him with a strange face. He followed her into the
+drawing-room, and she explained that there had been a telephone message
+she didn't understand--something perfectly crazy about Paul--of course
+it was all a mistake...
+
+Ralph's first thought was of an accident, and his heart contracted. "Did
+Laura telephone?"
+
+"No, no; not Laura. It seemed to be a message from Mrs. Spragg:
+something about sending some one here to fetch him--a queer name like
+Heeny--to fetch him to a steamer on Saturday. I was to be sure to have
+his things packed...but of course it's a misunderstanding..." She gave
+an uncertain laugh, and looked up at Ralph as though entreating him to
+return the reassurance she had given him.
+
+"Of course, of course," he echoed.
+
+He made his mother repeat her statement; but the unforeseen always
+flurried her, and she was confused and inaccurate. She didn't actually
+know who had telephoned: the voice hadn't sounded like Mrs. Spragg's...
+A woman's voice; yes--oh, not a lady's! And there was certainly
+something about a steamer...but he knew how the telephone bewildered
+her...and she was sure she was getting a little deaf. Hadn't he better
+call up the Malibran? Of course it was all a mistake--but... well,
+perhaps he HAD better go there himself...
+
+As he reached the front door a letter clinked in the box, and he saw
+his name on an ordinary looking business envelope. He turned the
+door-handle, paused again, and stooped to take out the letter. It bore
+the address of the firm of lawyers who had represented Undine in the
+divorce proceedings and as he tore open the envelope Paul's name started
+out at him.
+
+Mrs. Marvell had followed him into the hall, and her cry broke the
+silence. "Ralph--Ralph--is it anything she's done?"
+
+"Nothing--it's nothing." He stared at her. "What's the day of the week?"
+
+"Wednesday. Why, what--?" She suddenly seemed to understand. "She's not
+going to take him away from us?"
+
+Ralph dropped into a chair, crumpling the letter in his hand. He had
+been in a dream, poor fool that he was--a dream about his child! He sat
+gazing at the type-written phrases that spun themselves out before
+him. "My client's circumstances now happily permitting... at last in
+a position to offer her son a home...long separation...a mother's
+feelings...every social and educational advantage"...and then, at the
+end, the poisoned dart that struck him speechless: "The courts having
+awarded her the sole custody..."
+
+The sole custody! But that meant that Paul was hers, hers only, hers
+for always: that his father had no more claim on him than any casual
+stranger in the street! And he, Ralph Marvell, a sane man, young,
+able-bodied, in full possession of his wits, had assisted at the
+perpetration of this abominable wrong, had passively forfeited his right
+to the flesh of his body, the blood of his being! But it couldn't be--of
+course it couldn't be. The preposterousness of it proved that it wasn't
+true. There was a mistake somewhere; a mistake his own lawyer would
+instantly rectify. If a hammer hadn't been drumming in his head he
+could have recalled the terms of the decree--but for the moment all the
+details of the agonizing episode were lost in a blur of uncertainty.
+
+To escape his mother's silent anguish of interrogation he stood up and
+said: "I'll see Mr. Spragg--of course it's a mistake." But as he spoke
+he retravelled the hateful months during the divorce proceedings,
+remembering his incomprehensible lassitude, his acquiescence in his
+family's determination to ignore the whole episode, and his gradual
+lapse into the same state of apathy. He recalled all the old family
+catchwords, the full and elaborate vocabulary of evasion: "delicacy,"
+"pride," "personal dignity," "preferring not to know about such things";
+Mrs. Marvell's: "All I ask is that you won't mention the subject to
+your grandfather," Mr. Dagonet's: "Spare your mother, Ralph, whatever
+happens," and even Laura's terrified: "Of course, for Paul's sake, there
+must be no scandal."
+
+For Paul's sake! And it was because, for Paul's sake, there must be no
+scandal, that he, Paul's father, had tamely abstained from defending his
+rights and contesting his wife's charges, and had thus handed the child
+over to her keeping!
+
+As his cab whirled him up Fifth Avenue, Ralph's whole body throbbed with
+rage against the influences that had reduced him to such weakness. Then,
+gradually, he saw that the weakness was innate in him. He had been
+eloquent enough, in his free youth, against the conventions of his
+class; yet when the moment came to show his contempt for them they
+had mysteriously mastered him, deflecting his course like some hidden
+hereditary failing. As he looked back it seemed as though even his great
+disaster had been conventionalized and sentimentalized by this inherited
+attitude: that the thoughts he had thought about it were only those of
+generations of Dagonets, and that there had been nothing real and his
+own in his life but the foolish passion he had been trying so hard to
+think out of existence.
+
+Halfway to the Malibran he changed his direction, and drove to the house
+of the lawyer he had consulted at the time of his divorce. The lawyer
+had not yet come up town, and Ralph had a half hour of bitter meditation
+before the sound of a latch-key brought him to his feet. The visit did
+not last long. His host, after an affable greeting, listened without
+surprise to what he had to say, and when he had ended reminded him with
+somewhat ironic precision that, at the time of the divorce, he had asked
+for neither advice nor information--had simply declared that he wanted
+to "turn his back on the whole business" (Ralph recognized the phrase as
+one of his grandfather's), and, on hearing that in that case he had only
+to abstain from action, and was in no need of legal services, had gone
+away without farther enquiries.
+
+"You led me to infer you had your reasons--" the slighted counsellor
+concluded; and, in reply to Ralph's breathless question, he subjoined,
+"Why, you see, the case is closed, and I don't exactly know on what
+ground you can re-open it--unless, of course, you can bring evidence
+showing that the irregularity of the mother's life is such..."
+
+"She's going to marry again," Ralph threw in.
+
+"Indeed? Well, that in itself can hardly be described as irregular. In
+fact, in certain circumstances it might be construed as an advantage to
+the child."
+
+"Then I'm powerless?"
+
+"Why--unless there's an ulterior motive--through which pressure might be
+brought to bear."
+
+"You mean that the first thing to do is to find out what she's up to?"
+
+"Precisely. Of course, if it should prove to be a genuine case of
+maternal feeling, I won't conceal from you that the outlook's bad. At
+most, you could probably arrange to see your boy at stated intervals."
+
+To see his boy at stated intervals! Ralph wondered how a sane man could
+sit there, looking responsible and efficient, and talk such rubbish...As
+he got up to go the lawyer detained him to add: "Of course there's no
+immediate cause for alarm. It will take time to enforce the provision
+of the Dakota decree in New York, and till it's done your son can't
+be taken from you. But there's sure to be a lot of nasty talk in the
+papers; and you're bound to lose in the end."
+
+Ralph thanked him and left.
+
+He sped northward to the Malibran, where he learned that Mr. and Mrs.
+Spragg were at dinner. He sent his name down to the subterranean
+restaurant, and Mr. Spragg presently appeared between the limp portieres
+of the "Adam" writing-room. He had grown older and heavier, as if
+illness instead of health had put more flesh on his bones, and there
+were greyish tints in the hollows of his face.
+
+"What's this about Paul?" Ralph exclaimed. "My mother's had a message we
+can't make out."
+
+Mr. Spragg sat down, with the effect of immersing his spinal column in
+the depths of the arm-chair he selected. He crossed his legs, and swung
+one foot to and fro in its high wrinkled boot with elastic sides.
+
+"Didn't you get a letter?" he asked.
+
+"From my--from Undine's lawyers? Yes." Ralph held it out. "It's queer
+reading. She hasn't hitherto been very keen to have Paul with her."
+
+Mr. Spragg, adjusting his glasses, read the letter slowly, restored it
+to the envelope and gave it back. "My daughter has intimated that she
+wishes these gentlemen to act for her. I haven't received any additional
+instructions from her," he said, with none of the curtness of tone that
+his stiff legal vocabulary implied.
+
+"But the first communication I received was from you--at least from Mrs.
+Spragg."
+
+Mr. Spragg drew his beard through his hand. "The ladies are apt to be a
+trifle hasty. I believe Mrs. Spragg had a letter yesterday instructing
+her to select a reliable escort for Paul; and I suppose she thought--"
+
+"Oh, this is all too preposterous!" Ralph burst out, springing from his
+seat. "You don't for a moment imagine, do you--any of you--that I'm
+going to deliver up my son like a bale of goods in answer to any
+instructions in God's world?--Oh, yes, I know--I let him go--I
+abandoned my right to him...but I didn't know what I was doing...I was
+sick with grief and misery. My people were awfully broken up over the
+whole business, and I wanted to spare them. I wanted, above all, to
+spare my boy when he grew up. If I'd contested the case you know what
+the result would have been. I let it go by default--I made no conditions
+all I wanted was to keep Paul, and never to let him hear a word against
+his mother!"
+
+Mr. Spragg received this passionate appeal in a silence that implied not
+so much disdain or indifference, as the total inability to deal verbally
+with emotional crises. At length, he said, a slight unsteadiness in his
+usually calm tones: "I presume at the time it was optional with you to
+demand Paul's custody."
+
+"Oh, yes--it was optional," Ralph sneered.
+
+Mr. Spragg looked at him compassionately. "I'm sorry you didn't do it,"
+he said.
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+The upshot of Ralph's visit was that Mr. Spragg, after considerable
+deliberation, agreed, pending farther negotiations between the opposing
+lawyers, to undertake that no attempt should be made to remove Paul from
+his father's custody. Nevertheless, he seemed to think it quite natural
+that Undine, on the point of making a marriage which would put it in her
+power to give her child a suitable home, should assert her claim on him.
+It was more disconcerting to Ralph to learn that Mrs. Spragg, for once
+departing from her attitude of passive impartiality, had eagerly abetted
+her daughter's move; he had somehow felt that Undine's desertion of the
+child had established a kind of mute understanding between himself and
+his mother-in-law.
+
+"I thought Mrs. Spragg would know there's no earthly use trying to take
+Paul from me," he said with a desperate awkwardness of entreaty, and Mr.
+Spragg startled him by replying: "I presume his grandma thinks he'll
+belong to her more if we keep him in the family."
+
+Ralph, abruptly awakened from his dream of recovered peace, found
+himself confronted on every side by. indifference or hostility: it was
+as though the June fields in which his boy was playing had suddenly
+opened to engulph him. Mrs. Marvell's fears and tremors were almost
+harder to bear than the Spraggs' antagonism; and for the next few days
+Ralph wandered about miserably, dreading some fresh communication from
+Undine's lawyers, yet racked by the strain of hearing nothing more from
+them. Mr. Spragg had agreed to cable his daughter asking her to await a
+letter before enforcing her demands; but on the fourth day after
+Ralph's visit to the Malibran a telephone message summoned him to his
+father-in-law's office.
+
+Half an hour later their talk was over and he stood once more on the
+landing outside Mr. Spragg's door. Undine's answer had come and Paul's
+fate was sealed. His mother refused to give him up, refused to await
+the arrival of her lawyer's letter, and reiterated, in more peremptory
+language, her demand that the child should be sent immediately to Paris
+in Mrs. Heeny's care.
+
+Mr. Spragg, in face of Ralph's entreaties, remained pacific but remote.
+It was evident that, though he had no wish to quarrel with Ralph, he saw
+no reason for resisting Undine. "I guess she's got the law on her side,"
+he said; and in response to Ralph's passionate remonstrances he added
+fatalistically: "I presume you'll have to leave the matter to my
+daughter."
+
+Ralph had gone to the office resolved to control his temper and keep
+on the watch for any shred of information he might glean; but it soon
+became clear that Mr. Spragg knew as little as himself of Undine's
+projects, or of the stage her plans had reached. All she had apparently
+vouchsafed her parent was the statement that she intended to re-marry,
+and the command to send Paul over; and Ralph reflected that his own
+betrothal to her had probably been announced to Mr. Spragg in the same
+curt fashion.
+
+The thought brought back an overwhelming sense of the past. One by one
+the details of that incredible moment revived, and he felt in his
+veins the glow of rapture with which he had first approached the dingy
+threshold he was now leaving. There came back to him with peculiar
+vividness the memory of his rushing up to Mr. Spragg's office to consult
+him about a necklace for Undine. Ralph recalled the incident because his
+eager appeal for advice had been received by Mr. Spragg with the very
+phrase he had just used: "I presume you'll have to leave the matter to
+my daughter."
+
+Ralph saw him slouching in his chair, swung sideways from the untidy
+desk, his legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his jaws engaged
+on the phantom tooth-pick; and, in a corner of the office, the
+figure of a middle-sized red-faced young man who seemed to have been
+interrupted in the act of saying something disagreeable.
+
+"Why, it must have been then that I first saw Moffatt," Ralph reflected;
+and the thought suggested the memory of other, subsequent meetings in
+the same building, and of frequent ascents to Moffatt's office during
+the ardent weeks of their mysterious and remunerative "deal."
+
+Ralph wondered if Moffatt's office were still in the Ararat; and on the
+way out he paused before the black tablet affixed to the wall of the
+vestibule and sought and found the name in its familiar place.
+
+The next moment he was again absorbed in his own cares. Now that he had
+learned the imminence of Paul's danger, and the futility of pleading for
+delay, a thousand fantastic projects were contending in his head. To
+get the boy away--that seemed the first thing to do: to put him out of
+reach, and then invoke the law, get the case re-opened, and carry the
+fight from court to court till his rights should be recognized. It would
+cost a lot of money--well, the money would have to be found. The first
+step was to secure the boy's temporary safety; after that, the question
+of ways and means would have to be considered...Had there ever been a
+time, Ralph wondered, when that question hadn't been at the root of all
+the others?
+
+He had promised to let Clare Van Degen know the result of his visit, and
+half an hour later he was in her drawing-room. It was the first time he
+had entered it since his divorce; but Van Degen was tarpon-fishing in
+California--and besides, he had to see Clare. His one relief was in
+talking to her, in feverishly turning over with her every possibility of
+delay and obstruction; and he marvelled at the intelligence and energy
+she brought to the discussion of these questions. It was as if she had
+never before felt strongly enough about anything to put her heart or her
+brains into it; but now everything in her was at work for him.
+
+She listened intently to what he told her; then she said: "You tell me
+it will cost a great deal; but why take it to the courts at all? Why not
+give the money to Undine instead of to your lawyers?"
+
+Ralph looked at her in surprise, and she continued: "Why do you suppose
+she's suddenly made up her mind she must have Paul?"
+
+"That's comprehensible enough to any one who knows her. She wants him
+because he'll give her the appearance of respectability. Having him with
+her will prove, as no mere assertions can, that all the rights are on
+her side and the 'wrongs' on mine."
+
+Clare considered. "Yes; that's the obvious answer. But shall I tell you
+what I think, my dear? You and I are both completely out-of-date.
+I don't believe Undine cares a straw for 'the appearance of
+respectability.' What she wants is the money for her annulment."
+
+Ralph uttered an incredulous exclamation. "But don't you see?" she
+hurried on. "It's her only hope--her last chance. She's much too clever
+to burden herself with the child merely to annoy you. What she wants is
+to make you buy him back from her." She stood up and came to him with
+outstretched hands. "Perhaps I can be of use to you at last!"
+
+"You?" He summoned up a haggard smile. "As if you weren't
+always--letting me load you with all my bothers!"
+
+"Oh, if only I've hit on the way out of this one! Then there wouldn't be
+any others left!" Her eyes followed him intently as he turned away
+to the window and stood staring down at the sultry prospect of Fifth
+Avenue. As he turned over her conjecture its probability became more and
+more apparent. It put into logical relation all the incoherencies of
+Undine's recent conduct, completed and defined her anew as if a sharp
+line had been drawn about her fading image.
+
+"If it's that, I shall soon know," he said, turning back into the room.
+His course had instantly become plain. He had only to resist and Undine
+would have to show her hand. Simultaneously with this thought there
+sprang up in his mind the remembrance of the autumn afternoon in Paris
+when he had come home and found her, among her half-packed finery,
+desperately bewailing her coming motherhood. Clare's touch was on his
+arm. "If I'm right--you WILL let me help?"
+
+He laid his hand on hers without speaking, and she went on:
+
+"It will take a lot of money: all these law-suits do. Besides, she'd be
+ashamed to sell him cheap. You must be ready to give her anything she
+wants. And I've got a lot saved up--money of my own, I mean..."
+
+"Your own?" As he looked at her the rare blush rose under her brown
+skin.
+
+"My very own. Why shouldn't you believe me? I've been hoarding up my
+scrap of an income for years, thinking that some day I'd find I couldn't
+stand this any longer..." Her gesture embraced their sumptuous setting.
+"But now I know I shall never budge. There are the children; and
+besides, things are easier for me since--" she paused, embarrassed.
+
+"Yes, yes; I know." He felt like completing her phrase: "Since my wife
+has furnished you with the means of putting pressure on your husband--"
+but he simply repeated: "I know."
+
+"And you WILL let me help?"
+
+"Oh, we must get at the facts first." He caught her hands in his with
+sudden energy. "As you say, when Paul's safe there won't be another
+bother left!"
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+The means of raising the requisite amount of money became, during the
+next few weeks, the anxious theme of all Ralph's thoughts. His lawyers'
+enquiries soon brought the confirmation of Clare's surmise, and it
+became clear that--for reasons swathed in all the ingenuities of legal
+verbiage--Undine might, in return for a substantial consideration, be
+prevailed on to admit that it was for her son's advantage to remain with
+his father.
+
+The day this admission was communicated to Ralph his first impulse was
+to carry the news to his cousin. His mood was one of pure exaltation; he
+seemed to be hugging his boy to him as he walked. Paul and he were to
+belong to each other forever: no mysterious threat of separation could
+ever menace them again! He had the blissful sense of relief that the
+child himself might have had on waking out of a frightened dream and
+finding the jolly daylight in his room.
+
+Clare at once renewed her entreaty to be allowed to aid in ransoming
+her little cousin, but Ralph tried to put her off by explaining that he
+meant to "look about."
+
+"Look where? In the Dagonet coffers? Oh, Ralph, what's the use of
+pretending? Tell me what you've got to give her." It was amazing how
+his cousin suddenly dominated him. But as yet he couldn't go into the
+details of the bargain. That the reckoning between himself and Undine
+should be settled in dollars and cents seemed the last bitterest satire
+on his dreams: he felt himself miserably diminished by the smallness of
+what had filled his world.
+
+Nevertheless, the looking about had to be done; and a day came when
+he found himself once more at the door of Elmer Moffatt's office. His
+thoughts had been drawn back to Moffatt by the insistence with which the
+latter's name had lately been put forward by the press in connection
+with a revival of the Ararat investigation. Moffatt, it appeared, had
+been regarded as one of the most valuable witnesses for the State;
+his return from Europe had been anxiously awaited, his unreadiness to
+testify caustically criticized; then at last he had arrived, had gone on
+to Washington--and had apparently had nothing to tell.
+
+Ralph was too deep in his own troubles to waste any wonder over this
+anticlimax; but the frequent appearance of Moffatt's name in the morning
+papers acted as an unconscious suggestion. Besides, to whom else could
+he look for help? The sum his wife demanded could be acquired only by "a
+quick turn," and the fact that Ralph had once rendered the same kind of
+service to Moffatt made it natural to appeal to him now. The market,
+moreover, happened to be booming, and it seemed not unlikely that so
+experienced a speculator might have a "good thing" up his sleeve.
+
+Moffatt's office had been transformed since Ralph's last visit. Paint,
+varnish and brass railings gave an air of opulence to the outer
+precincts, and the inner room, with its mahogany bookcases containing
+morocco-bound "sets" and its wide blue leather arm-chairs, lacked only
+a palm or two to resemble the lounge of a fashionable hotel. Moffatt
+himself, as he came forward, gave Ralph the impression of having been
+done over by the same hand: he was smoother, broader, more supremely
+tailored, and his whole person exhaled the faintest whiff of an
+expensive scent. He installed his visitor in one of the blue arm-chairs,
+and sitting opposite, an elbow on his impressive "Washington" desk,
+listened attentively while Ralph made his request.
+
+"You want to be put onto something good in a damned hurry?" Moffatt
+twisted his moustache between two plump square-tipped fingers with
+a little black growth on their lower joints. "I don't suppose," he
+remarked, "there's a sane man between here and San Francisco who isn't
+consumed by that yearning."
+
+Having permitted himself this pleasantry he passed on to business.
+"Yes--it's a first-rate time to buy: no doubt of that. But you say you
+want to make a quick turn-over? Heard of a soft thing that won't wait,
+I presume? That's apt to be the way with soft things--all kinds of 'em.
+There's always other fellows after them." Moffatt's smile was playful.
+"Well, I'd go considerably out of my way to do you a good turn, because
+you did me one when I needed it mighty bad. 'In youth you sheltered me.'
+Yes, sir, that's the kind I am." He stood up, sauntered to the other
+side of the room, and took a small object from the top of the bookcase.
+
+"Fond of these pink crystals?" He held the oriental toy against the
+light. "Oh, I ain't a judge--but now and then I like to pick up a pretty
+thing." Ralph noticed that his eyes caressed it.
+
+"Well--now let's talk. You say you've got to have the funds for
+your--your investment within three weeks. That's quick work. And you
+want a hundred thousand. Can you put up fifty?"
+
+Ralph had been prepared for the question, but when it came he felt a
+moment's tremor. He knew he could count on half the amount from his
+grandfather; could possibly ask Fairford for a small additional
+loan--but what of the rest? Well, there was Clare. He had always known
+there would be no other way. And after all, the money was Clare's--it
+was Dagonet money. At least she said it was. All the misery of his
+predicament was distilled into the short silence that preceded his
+answer: "Yes--I think so."
+
+"Well, I guess I can double it for you." Moffatt spoke with an air of
+Olympian modesty. "Anyhow, I'll try. Only don't tell the other girls!"
+
+He proceeded to develop his plan to ears which Ralph tried to make alert
+and attentive, but in which perpetually, through the intricate concert
+of facts and figures, there broke the shout of a small boy racing across
+a suburban lawn. "When I pick him up to-night he'll be mine for good!"
+Ralph thought as Moffatt summed up: "There's the whole scheme in a
+nut-shell; but you'd better think it over. I don't want to let you in
+for anything you ain't quite sure about." "Oh, if you're sure--" Ralph
+was already calculating the time it would take to dash up to Clare Van
+Degen's on his way to catch the train for the Fairfords'.
+
+His impatience made it hard to pay due regard to Moffatt's parting
+civilities. "Glad to have seen you," he heard the latter assuring him
+with a final hand-grasp. "Wish you'd dine with me some evening at my
+club"; and, as Ralph murmured a vague acceptance: "How's that boy of
+yours, by the way?" Moffatt continued. "He was a stunning chap last time
+I saw him.--Excuse me if I've put my foot in it; but I understood you
+kept him with you...? Yes: that's what I thought.... Well, so long."
+
+Clare's inner sitting-room was empty; but the servant, presently
+returning, led Ralph into the gilded and tapestried wilderness where she
+occasionally chose to receive her visitors. There, under Popple's effigy
+of herself, she sat, small and alone, on a monumental sofa behind a
+tea-table laden with gold plate; while from his lofty frame, on the
+opposite wall Van Degen, portrayed by a "powerful" artist, cast on her
+the satisfied eye of proprietorship.
+
+Ralph, swept forward on the blast of his excitement, felt as in a dream
+the frivolous perversity of her receiving him in such a setting instead
+of in their usual quiet corner; but there was no room in his mind for
+anything but the cry that broke from him: "I believe I've done it!"
+
+He sat down and explained to her by what means, trying, as best he
+could, to restate the particulars of Moffatt's deal; and her manifest
+ignorance of business methods had the effect of making his vagueness
+appear less vague.
+
+"Anyhow, he seems to be sure it's a safe thing. I understand he's in
+with Rolliver now, and Rolliver practically controls Apex. This is some
+kind of a scheme to buy up all the works of public utility at Apex.
+They're practically sure of their charter, and Moffatt tells me I can
+count on doubling my investment within a few weeks. Of course I'll go
+into the details if you like--"
+
+"Oh, no; you've made it all so clear to me!" She really made him feel he
+had. "And besides, what on earth does it matter? The great thing is
+that it's done." She lifted her sparkling eyes. "And now--my share--you
+haven't told me..."
+
+He explained that Mr. Dagonet, to whom he had already named the amount
+demanded, had at once promised him twenty-five thousand dollars, to
+be eventually deducted from his share of the estate. His mother had
+something put by that she insisted on contributing; and Henley Fairford,
+of his own accord, had come forward with ten thousand: it was awfully
+decent of Henley...
+
+"Even Henley!" Clare sighed. "Then I'm the only one left out?"
+
+Ralph felt the colour in his face. "Well, you see, I shall need as much
+as fifty--"
+
+Her hands flew together joyfully. "But then you've got to let me help!
+Oh, I'm so glad--so glad! I've twenty thousand waiting."
+
+He looked about the room, checked anew by all its oppressive
+implications. "You're a darling...but I couldn't take it."
+
+"I've told you it's mine, every penny of it!"
+
+"Yes; but supposing things went wrong?"
+
+"Nothing CAN--if you'll only take it..."
+
+"I may lose it--"
+
+"_I_ sha'n't, if I've given it to you!" Her look followed his about the
+room and then came back to him. "Can't you imagine all it will make up
+for?"
+
+The rapture of the cry caught him up with it. Ah, yes, he could imagine
+it all! He stooped his head above her hands. "I accept," he said; and
+they stood and looked at each other like radiant children.
+
+She followed him to the door, and as he turned to leave he broke into a
+laugh. "It's queer, though, its happening in this room!"
+
+She was close beside him, her hand on the heavy tapestry curtaining the
+door; and her glance shot past him to her husband's portrait. Ralph
+caught the look, and a flood of old tendernesses and hates welled up in
+him. He drew her under the portrait and kissed her vehemently.
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+Within forty-eight hours Ralph's money was in Moffatt's hands, and the
+interval of suspense had begun.
+
+The transaction over, he felt the deceptive buoyancy that follows on
+periods of painful indecision. It seemed to him that now at last life
+had freed him from all trammelling delusions, leaving him only the best
+thing in its gift--his boy.
+
+The things he meant Paul to do and to be filled his fancy with happy
+pictures. The child was growing more and more interesting--throwing out
+countless tendrils of feeling and perception that delighted Ralph but
+preoccupied the watchful Laura.
+
+"He's going to be exactly like you, Ralph--" she paused and then risked
+it: "For his own sake, I wish there were just a drop or two of Spragg in
+him."
+
+Ralph laughed, understanding her. "Oh, the plodding citizen I've become
+will keep him from taking after the lyric idiot who begot him. Paul and
+I, between us, are going to turn out something first-rate."
+
+His book too was spreading and throwing out tendrils, and he worked
+at it in the white heat of energy which his factitious exhilaration
+produced. For a few weeks everything he did and said seemed as easy and
+unconditioned as the actions in a dream.
+
+Clare Van Degen, in the light of this mood, became again the comrade
+of his boyhood. He did not see her often, for she had gone down to the
+country with her children, but they communicated daily by letter or
+telephone, and now and then she came over to the Fairfords' for a night.
+There they renewed the long rambles of their youth, and once more the
+summer fields and woods seemed full of magic presences. Clare was no
+more intelligent, she followed him no farther in his flights; but some
+of the qualities that had become most precious to him were as native to
+her as its perfume to a flower. So, through the long June afternoons,
+they ranged together over many themes; and if her answers sometimes
+missed the mark it did not matter, because her silences never did.
+
+Meanwhile Ralph, from various sources, continued to pick up a good deal
+of more or less contradictory information about Elmer Moffatt. It seemed
+to be generally understood that Moffatt had come back from Europe with
+the intention of testifying in the Ararat investigation, and that his
+former patron, the great Harmon B. Driscoll, had managed to silence him;
+and it was implied that the price of this silence, which was set at
+a considerable figure, had been turned to account in a series of
+speculations likely to lift Moffatt to permanent eminence among the
+rulers of Wall Street. The stories as to his latest achievement, and the
+theories as to the man himself, varied with the visual angle of each
+reporter: and whenever any attempt was made to focus his hard sharp
+personality some guardian divinity seemed to throw a veil of mystery
+over him. His detractors, however, were the first to own that there
+was "something about him"; it was felt that he had passed beyond the
+meteoric stage, and the business world was unanimous in recognizing
+that he had "come to stay." A dawning sense of his stability was even
+beginning to make itself felt in Fifth Avenue. It was said that he had
+bought a house in Seventy-second Street, then that he meant to build
+near the Park; one or two people (always "taken by a friend") had been
+to his flat in the Pactolus, to see his Chinese porcelains and Persian
+rugs; now and then he had a few important men to dine at a Fifth Avenue
+restaurant; his name began to appear in philanthropic reports and on
+municipal committees (there were even rumours of its having been put
+up at a well-known club); and the rector of a wealthy parish, who was
+raising funds for a chantry, was known to have met him at dinner and to
+have stated afterward that "the man was not wholly a materialist."
+
+All these converging proofs of Moffatt's solidity strengthened Ralph's
+faith in his venture. He remembered with what astuteness and authority
+Moffatt had conducted their real estate transaction--how far off and
+unreal it all seemed!--and awaited events with the passive faith of a
+sufferer in the hands of a skilful surgeon.
+
+The days moved on toward the end of June, and each morning Ralph opened
+his newspaper with a keener thrill of expectation. Any day now he might
+read of the granting of the Apex charter: Moffatt had assured him it
+would "go through" before the close of the month. But the announcement
+did not appear, and after what seemed to Ralph a decent lapse of time he
+telephoned to ask for news. Moffatt was away, and when he came back a
+few days later he answered Ralph's enquiries evasively, with an edge of
+irritation in his voice. The same day Ralph received a letter from his
+lawyer, who had been reminded by Mrs. Marvell's representatives that the
+latest date agreed on for the execution of the financial agreement was
+the end of the following week.
+
+Ralph, alarmed, betook himself at once to the Ararat, and his first
+glimpse of Moffatt's round common face and fastidiously dressed person
+gave him an immediate sense of reassurance. He felt that under the
+circle of baldness on top of that carefully brushed head lay the
+solution of every monetary problem that could beset the soul of man.
+Moffatt's voice had recovered its usual cordial note, and the warmth of
+his welcome dispelled Ralph's last apprehension.
+
+"Why, yes, everything's going along first-rate. They thought they'd hung
+us up last week--but they haven't. There may be another week's delay;
+but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the Fourth."
+
+An office-boy came in with a name on a slip of paper, and Moffatt looked
+at his watch and held out a hearty hand. "Glad you came. Of course I'll
+keep you posted...No, this way...Look in again..." and he steered Ralph
+out by another door.
+
+July came, and passed into its second week. Ralph's lawyer had obtained
+a postponement from the other side, but Undine's representatives had
+given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the
+first of August. Ralph telephoned once or twice to Moffatt, receiving
+genially-worded assurances that everything was "going their way"; but he
+felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office, and
+let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension.
+Finally one afternoon Henley Fairford, coming back from town (which
+Ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over Sunday), brought word
+that the Apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter. It was
+useless to attempt to reach Moffatt on Sunday, and Ralph wore on as he
+could through the succeeding twenty-four hours. Clare Van Degen had come
+down to stay with her youngest boy, and in the afternoon she and Ralph
+took the two children for a sail. A light breeze brightened the waters
+of the Sound, and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out
+toward the sunset, coming back at last, under a failing breeze, as the
+summer sky passed from blue to a translucid green and then into the
+accumulating greys of twilight.
+
+As they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the
+darkening lawn, a sense of security descended again on Ralph. He could
+not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of
+any impending evil, and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him.
+
+The next morning, he and Clare travelled up to town together, and at the
+station he put her in the motor which was to take her to Long Island,
+and hastened down to Moffatt's office. When he arrived he was told that
+Moffatt was "engaged," and he had to wait for nearly half an hour in
+the outer office, where, to the steady click of the type-writer and
+the spasmodic buzzing of the telephone, his thoughts again began their
+restless circlings. Finally the inner door opened, and he found himself
+in the sanctuary. Moffatt was seated behind his desk, examining another
+little crystal vase somewhat like the one he had shown Ralph a few
+weeks earlier. As his visitor entered, he held it up against the light,
+revealing on its dewy sides an incised design as frail as the shadow of
+grass-blades on water.
+
+"Ain't she a peach?" He put the toy down and reached across the desk to
+shake hands. "Well, well," he went on, leaning back in his chair, and
+pushing out his lower lip in a half-comic pout, "they've got us in the
+neck this time and no mistake. Seen this morning's Radiator? I don't
+know how the thing leaked out--but the reformers somehow got a smell of
+the scheme, and whenever they get swishing round something's bound to
+get spilt."
+
+He talked gaily, genially, in his roundest tones and with his easiest
+gestures; never had he conveyed a completer sense of unhurried power;
+but Ralph noticed for the first time the crow's-feet about his eyes, and
+the sharpness of the contrast between the white of his forehead and the
+redness of the fold of neck above his collar.
+
+"Do you mean to say it's not going through?"
+
+"Not this time, anyhow. We're high and dry."
+
+Something seemed to snap in Ralph's head, and he sat down in the nearest
+chair. "Has the common stock dropped a lot?"
+
+"Well, you've got to lean over to see it." Moffatt pressed his
+finger-tips together and added thoughtfully: "But it's THERE all right.
+We're bound to get our charter in the end."
+
+"What do you call the end?"
+
+"Oh, before the Day of Judgment, sure: next year, I guess."
+
+"Next year?" Ralph flushed. "What earthly good will that do me?"
+
+"I don't say it's as pleasant as driving your best girl home by
+moonlight. But that's how it is. And the stuff's safe enough any
+way--I've told you that right along."
+
+"But you've told me all along I could count on a rise before August. You
+knew I had to have the money now."
+
+"I knew you WANTED to have the money now; and so did I, and several of
+my friends. I put you onto it because it was the only thing in sight
+likely to give you the return you wanted."
+
+"You ought at least to have warned me of the risk!"
+
+"Risk? I don't call it much of a risk to lie back in your chair and wait
+another few months for fifty thousand to drop into your lap. I tell you
+the thing's as safe as a bank."
+
+"How do I know it is? You've misled me about it from the first."
+
+Moffatt's face grew dark red to the forehead: for the first time in
+their acquaintance Ralph saw him on the verge of anger. "Well, if you
+get stuck so do I. I'm in it a good deal deeper than you. That's about
+the best guarantee I can give; unless you won't take my word for that
+either." To control himself Moffatt spoke with extreme deliberation,
+separating his syllables like a machine cutting something into even
+lengths.
+
+Ralph listened through a cloud of confusion; but he saw the madness
+of offending Moffatt, and tried to take a more conciliatory tone. "Of
+course I take your word for it. But I can't--I simply can't afford to
+lose..."
+
+"You ain't going to lose: I don't believe you'll even have to put up any
+margin. It's THERE safe enough, I tell you..."
+
+"Yes, yes; I understand. I'm sure you wouldn't have advised me--"
+Ralph's tongue seemed swollen, and he had difficulty in bringing out the
+words. "Only, you see--I can't wait; it's not possible; and I want to
+know if there isn't a way--"
+
+Moffatt looked at him with a sort of resigned compassion, as a doctor
+looks at a despairing mother who will not understand what he has tried
+to imply without uttering the word she dreads. Ralph understood the
+look, but hurried on.
+
+"You'll think I'm mad, or an ass, to talk like this; but the fact is, I
+must have the money." He waited and drew a hard breath. "I must have it:
+that's all. Perhaps I'd better tell you--"
+
+Moffatt, who had risen, as if assuming that the interview was over, sat
+down again and turned an attentive look on him. "Go ahead," he said,
+more humanly than he had hitherto spoken.
+
+"My boy...you spoke of him the other day... I'm awfully fond of him--"
+Ralph broke off, deterred by the impossibility of confiding his feeling
+for Paul to this coarse-grained man with whom he hadn't a sentiment in
+common.
+
+Moffatt was still looking at him. "I should say you would be! He's as
+smart a little chap as I ever saw; and I guess he's the kind that gets
+better every day."
+
+Ralph had collected himself, and went on with sudden resolution: "Well,
+you see--when my wife and I separated, I never dreamed she'd want the
+boy: the question never came up. If it had, of course--but she'd left
+him with me when she went away two years before, and at the time of the
+divorce I was a fool...I didn't take the proper steps..."
+
+"You mean she's got sole custody?"
+
+Ralph made a sign of assent, and Moffatt pondered. "That's bad--bad."
+
+"And now I understand she's going to marry again--and of course I can't
+give up my son."
+
+"She wants you to, eh?"
+
+Ralph again assented.
+
+Moffatt swung his chair about and leaned back in it, stretching out his
+plump legs and contemplating the tips of his varnished boots. He hummed
+a low tune behind inscrutable lips.
+
+"That's what you want the money for?" he finally raised his head to ask.
+
+The word came out of the depths of Ralph's anguish: "Yes."
+
+"And why you want it in such a hurry. I see." Moffatt reverted to the
+study of his boots. "It's a lot of money."
+
+"Yes. That's the difficulty. And I...she..."
+
+Ralph's tongue was again too thick for his mouth. "I'm afraid she won't
+wait...or take less..."
+
+Moffatt, abandoning the boots, was scrutinizing him through half-shut
+lids. "No," he said slowly, "I don't believe Undine Spragg'll take a
+single cent less."
+
+Ralph felt himself whiten. Was it insolence or ignorance that had
+prompted Moffatt's speech? Nothing in his voice or face showed the
+sense of any shades of expression or of feeling: he seemed to apply
+to everything the measure of the same crude flippancy. But such
+considerations could not curb Ralph now. He said to himself "Keep your
+temper--keep your temper--" and his anger suddenly boiled over.
+
+"Look here, Moffatt," he said, getting to his feet, "the fact that I've
+been divorced from Mrs. Marvell doesn't authorize any one to take that
+tone to me in speaking of her."
+
+Moffatt met the challenge with a calm stare under which there were
+dawning signs of surprise and interest. "That so? Well, if that's the
+case I presume I ought to feel the same way: I've been divorced from her
+myself."
+
+For an instant the words conveyed no meaning to Ralph; then they surged
+up into his brain and flung him forward with half-raised arm. But he
+felt the grotesqueness of the gesture and his arm dropped back to his
+side. A series of unimportant and irrelevant things raced through his
+mind; then obscurity settled down on it. "THIS man...THIS man..." was
+the one fiery point in his darkened consciousness.... "What on earth
+are you talking about?" he brought out.
+
+"Why, facts," said Moffatt, in a cool half-humorous voice. "You didn't
+know? I understood from Mrs. Marvell your folks had a prejudice against
+divorce, so I suppose she kept quiet about that early episode. The truth
+is," he continued amicably, "I wouldn't have alluded to it now if you
+hadn't taken rather a high tone with me about our little venture; but
+now it's out I guess you may as well hear the whole story. It's mighty
+wholesome for a man to have a round now and then with a few facts. Shall
+I go on?"
+
+Ralph had stood listening without a sign, but as Moffatt ended he made a
+slight motion of acquiescence. He did not otherwise change his attitude,
+except to grasp with one hand the back of the chair that Moffatt pushed
+toward him.
+
+"Rather stand?..." Moffatt himself dropped back into his seat and took
+the pose of easy narrative. "Well, it was this way. Undine Spragg and I
+were made one at Opake, Nebraska, just nine years ago last month. My!
+She was a beauty then. Nothing much had happened to her before but being
+engaged for a year or two to a soft called Millard Binch; the same she
+passed on to Indiana Rolliver; and--well, I guess she liked the change.
+We didn't have what you'd called a society wedding: no best man or
+bridesmaids or Voice that Breathed o'er Eden. Fact is, Pa and Ma didn't
+know about it till it was over. But it was a marriage fast enough, as
+they found out when they tried to undo it. Trouble was, they caught on
+too soon; we only had a fortnight. Then they hauled Undine back to Apex,
+and--well, I hadn't the cash or the pull to fight 'em. Uncle Abner was
+a pretty big man out there then; and he had James J. Rolliver behind
+him. I always know when I'm licked; and I was licked that time. So we
+unlooped the loop, and they fixed it up for me to make a trip to Alaska.
+Let me see--that was the year before they moved over to New York. Next
+time I saw Undine I sat alongside of her at the theatre the day your
+engagement was announced."
+
+He still kept to his half-humorous minor key, as though he were in the
+first stages of an after-dinner speech; but as he went on his bodily
+presence, which hitherto had seemed to Ralph the mere average garment of
+vulgarity, began to loom, huge and portentous as some monster released
+from a magician's bottle. His redness, his glossiness, his baldness, and
+the carefully brushed ring of hair encircling it; the square line of his
+shoulders, the too careful fit of his clothes, the prominent lustre of
+his scarf-pin, the growth of short black hair on his manicured hands,
+even the tiny cracks and crows'-feet beginning to show in the hard close
+surface of his complexion: all these solid witnesses to his reality
+and his proximity pressed on Ralph with the mounting pang of physical
+nausea.
+
+"THIS man...THIS man..." he couldn't get beyond the thought: whichever
+way he turned his haggard thought, there was Moffatt bodily blocking the
+perspective...Ralph's eyes roamed toward the crystal toy that stood on
+the desk beside Moffatt's hand. Faugh! That such a hand should have
+touched it!
+
+Suddenly he heard himself speaking. "Before my marriage--did you know
+they hadn't told me?"
+
+"Why, I understood as much..."
+
+Ralph pushed on: "You knew it the day I met you in Mr. Spragg's office?"
+
+Moffatt considered a moment, as if the incident had escaped him. "Did we
+meet there?" He seemed benevolently ready for enlightenment. But Ralph
+had been assailed by another memory; he recalled that Moffatt had dined
+one night in his house, that he and the man who now faced him had sat at
+the same table, their wife between them... He was seized with another
+dumb gust of fury; but it died out and left him face to face with the
+uselessness, the irrelevance of all the old attitudes of appropriation
+and defiance. He seemed to be stumbling about in his inherited
+prejudices like a modern man in mediaeval armour... Moffatt still sat at
+his desk, unmoved and apparently uncomprehending. "He doesn't even
+know what I'm feeling," flashed through Ralph; and the whole archaic
+structure of his rites and sanctions tumbled down about him.
+
+Through the noise of the crash he heard Moffatt's voice going on without
+perceptible change of tone: "About that other matter now...you can't
+feel any meaner about it than I do, I can tell you that... but all we've
+got to do is to sit tight..."
+
+Ralph turned from the voice, and found himself outside on the landing,
+and then in the street below.
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+He stood at the corner of Wall Street, looking up and down its hot
+summer perspective. He noticed the swirls of dust in the cracks of the
+pavement, the rubbish in the gutters, the ceaseless stream of perspiring
+faces that poured by under tilted hats.
+
+He found himself, next, slipping northward between the glazed walls of
+the Subway, another languid crowd in the seats about him and the nasal
+yelp of the stations ringing through the car like some repeated ritual
+wail. The blindness within him seemed to have intensified his physical
+perceptions, his sensitiveness to the heat, the noise, the smells of the
+dishevelled midsummer city; but combined with the acuter perception of
+these offenses was a complete indifference to them, as though he were
+some vivisected animal deprived of the power of discrimination.
+
+Now he had turned into Waverly Place, and was walking westward
+toward Washington Square. At the corner he pulled himself up, saying
+half-aloud: "The office--I ought to be at the office." He drew out his
+watch and stared at it blankly. What the devil had he taken it out for?
+He had to go through a laborious process of readjustment to find out
+what it had to say.... Twelve o'clock.... Should he turn back to the
+office? It seemed easier to cross the square, go up the steps of the old
+house and slip his key into the door....
+
+The house was empty. His mother, a few days previously, had departed
+with Mr. Dagonet for their usual two months on the Maine coast, where
+Ralph was to join them with his boy.... The blinds were all drawn down,
+and the freshness and silence of the marble-paved hall laid soothing
+hands on him.... He said to himself: "I'll jump into a cab presently,
+and go and lunch at the club--" He laid down his hat and stick and
+climbed the carpetless stairs to his room. When he entered it he had
+the shock of feeling himself in a strange place: it did not seem like
+anything he had ever seen before. Then, one by one, all the old stale
+usual things in it confronted him, and he longed with a sick intensity
+to be in a place that was really strange.
+
+"How on earth can I go on living here?" he wondered.
+
+A careless servant had left the outer shutters open, and the sun was
+beating on the window-panes. Ralph pushed open the windows, shut the
+shutters, and wandered toward his arm-chair. Beads of perspiration stood
+on his forehead: the temperature of the room reminded him of the heat
+under the ilexes of the Sienese villa where he and Undine had sat
+through a long July afternoon. He saw her before him, leaning against
+the tree-trunk in her white dress, limpid and inscrutable.... "We were
+made one at Opake, Nebraska...." Had she been thinking of it that
+afternoon at Siena, he wondered? Did she ever think of it at all?... It
+was she who had asked Moffatt to dine. She had said: "Father brought
+him home one day at Apex.... I don't remember ever having seen him
+since"--and the man she spoke of had had her in his arms ... and perhaps
+it was really all she remembered!
+
+She had lied to him--lied to him from the first ... there hadn't been
+a moment when she hadn't lied to him, deliberately, ingeniously and
+inventively. As he thought of it, there came to him, for the first time
+in months, that overwhelming sense of her physical nearness which had
+once so haunted and tortured him. Her freshness, her fragrance, the
+luminous haze of her youth, filled the room with a mocking glory; and he
+dropped his head on his hands to shut it out....
+
+The vision was swept away by another wave of hurrying thoughts. He felt
+it was intensely important that he should keep the thread of every one
+of them, that they all represented things to be said or done, or guarded
+against; and his mind, with the unwondering versatility and tireless
+haste of the dreamer's brain, seemed to be pursuing them all
+simultaneously. Then they became as unreal and meaningless as the red
+specks dancing behind the lids against which he had pressed his fists
+clenched, and he had the feeling that if he opened his eyes they would
+vanish, and the familiar daylight look in on him....
+
+A knock disturbed him. The old parlour-maid who was always left in
+charge of the house had come up to ask if he wasn't well, and if there
+was anything she could do for him. He told her no ... he was perfectly
+well ... or, rather, no, he wasn't ... he supposed it must be the heat;
+and he began to scold her for having forgotten to close the shutters.
+
+It wasn't her fault, it appeared, but Eliza's: her tone implied that he
+knew what one had to expect of Eliza ... and wouldn't he go down to the
+nice cool shady dining-room, and let her make him an iced drink and a
+few sandwiches?
+
+"I've always told Mrs. Marvell I couldn't turn my back for a second
+but what Eliza'd find a way to make trouble," the old woman continued,
+evidently glad of the chance to air a perennial grievance. "It's not
+only the things she FORGETS to do," she added significantly; and it
+dawned on Ralph that she was making an appeal to him, expecting him to
+take sides with her in the chronic conflict between herself and Eliza.
+He said to himself that perhaps she was right ... that perhaps there was
+something he ought to do ... that his mother was old, and didn't always
+see things; and for a while his mind revolved this problem with feverish
+intensity....
+
+"Then you'll come down, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The door closed, and he heard her heavy heels along the passage.
+
+"But the money--where's the money to come from?" The question sprang out
+from some denser fold of the fog in his brain. The money--how on earth
+was he to pay it back? How could he have wasted his time in thinking of
+anything else while that central difficulty existed?
+
+"But I can't ... I can't ... it's gone ... and even if it weren't...."
+He dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands. He had
+forgotten what he wanted the money for. He made a great effort to regain
+hold of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly
+ceased in his brain, and he sat with his eyes shut, staring straight
+into darkness.... The clock struck, and he remembered that he had said
+he would go down to the dining-room. "If I don't she'll come up--" He
+raised his head and sat listening for the sound of the old woman's step:
+it seemed to him perfectly intolerable that any one should cross the
+threshold of the room again.
+
+"Why can't they leave me alone?" he groaned.... At length through the
+silence of the empty house, he fancied he heard a door opening and
+closing far below; and he said to himself: "She's coming."
+
+He got to his feet and went to the door. He didn't feel anything now
+except the insane dread of hearing the woman's steps come nearer. He
+bolted the door and stood looking about the room. For a moment he was
+conscious of seeing it in every detail with a distinctness he had never
+before known; then everything in it vanished but the single narrow panel
+of a drawer under one of the bookcases. He went up to the drawer, knelt
+down and slipped his hand into it.
+
+As he raised himself he listened again, and this time he distinctly
+heard the old servant's steps on the stairs. He passed his left hand
+over the side of his head, and down the curve of the skull behind the
+ear. He said to himself: "My wife ... this will make it all right for
+her...." and a last flash of irony twitched through him. Then he felt
+again, more deliberately, for the spot he wanted, and put the muzzle of
+his revolver against it.
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+In a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed personages in
+perukes and orders, a circle of ladies and gentlemen, looking not unlike
+every-day versions of the official figures above their heads, sat
+examining with friendly interest a little boy in mourning.
+
+The boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black figure, islanded
+in the middle of the wide lustrous floor, looked curiously lonely
+and remote. This effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as
+something intentional, and almost naughty, for after having launched him
+from the door, and waited to judge of the impression he produced, she
+came forward and, giving him a slight push, said impatiently: "Paul! Why
+don't you go and kiss your new granny?"
+
+The boy, without turning to her, or moving, sent his blue glance gravely
+about the circle. "Does she want me to?" he asked, in a tone of evident
+apprehension; and on his mother's answering: "Of course, you silly!" he
+added earnestly: "How many more do you think there'll be?"
+
+Undine blushed to the ripples of her brilliant hair. "I never knew such
+a child! They've turned him into a perfect little savage!"
+
+Raymond de Chelles advanced from behind his mother's chair.
+
+"He won't be a savage long with me," he said, stooping down so that his
+fatigued finely-drawn face was close to Paul's. Their eyes met and
+the boy smiled. "Come along, old chap," Chelles continued in English,
+drawing the little boy after him.
+
+"Il est bien beau," the Marquise de Chelles observed, her eyes turning
+from Paul's grave face to her daughter-in-law's vivid countenance.
+
+"Do be nice, darling! Say, 'bonjour, Madame,'" Undine urged.
+
+An odd mingling of emotions stirred in her while she stood watching Paul
+make the round of the family group under her husband's guidance. It was
+"lovely" to have the child back, and to find him, after their three
+years' separation, grown into so endearing a figure: her first glimpse
+of him when, in Mrs. Heeny's arms, he had emerged that morning from the
+steamer train, had shown what an acquisition he would be. If she had
+had any lingering doubts on the point, the impression produced on her
+husband would have dispelled them. Chelles had been instantly charmed,
+and Paul, in a shy confused way, was already responding to his advances.
+The Count and Countess Raymond had returned but a few weeks before
+from their protracted wedding journey, and were staying--as they were
+apparently to do whenever they came to Paris--with the old Marquis,
+Raymond's father, who had amicably proposed that little Paul Marvell
+should also share the hospitality of the Hotel de Chelles. Undine, at
+first, was somewhat dismayed to find that she was expected to fit the
+boy and his nurse into a corner of her contracted entresol. But the
+possibility of a mother's not finding room for her son, however cramped
+her own quarters, seemed not to have occurred to her new relations, and
+the preparing of her dressing-room and boudoir for Paul's occupancy was
+carried on by the household with a zeal which obliged her to dissemble
+her lukewarmness.
+
+Undine had supposed that on her marriage one of the great suites of
+the Hotel de Chelles would be emptied of its tenants and put at her
+husband's disposal; but she had since learned that, even had such a plan
+occurred to her parents-in-law, considerations of economy would have
+hindered it. The old Marquis and his wife, who were content, when they
+came up from Burgundy in the spring, with a modest set of rooms looking
+out on the court of their ancestral residence, expected their son and
+his wife to fit themselves into the still smaller apartment which
+had served as Raymond's bachelor lodging. The rest of the fine old
+mouldering house--the tall-windowed premier on the garden, and the whole
+of the floor above--had been let for years to old fashioned tenants
+who would have been more surprised than their landlord had he suddenly
+proposed to dispossess them. Undine, at first, had regarded these
+arrangements as merely provisional. She was persuaded that, under her
+influence, Raymond would soon convert his parents to more modern ideas,
+and meanwhile she was still in the flush of a completer well-being than
+she had ever known, and disposed, for the moment, to make light of any
+inconveniences connected with it. The three months since her marriage
+had been more nearly like what she had dreamed of than any of her
+previous experiments in happiness. At last she had what she wanted, and
+for the first time the glow of triumph was warmed by a deeper feeling.
+Her husband was really charming (it was odd how he reminded her of
+Ralph!), and after her bitter two years of loneliness and humiliation it
+was delicious to find herself once more adored and protected.
+
+The very fact that Raymond was more jealous of her than Ralph had ever
+been--or at any rate less reluctant to show it--gave her a keener sense
+of recovered power. None of the men who had been in love with her before
+had been so frankly possessive, or so eager for reciprocal assurances
+of constancy. She knew that Ralph had suffered deeply from her intimacy
+with Van Degen, but he had betrayed his feeling only by a more studied
+detachment; and Van Degen, from the first, had been contemptuously
+indifferent to what she did or felt when she was out of his sight. As to
+her earlier experiences, she had frankly forgotten them: her sentimental
+memories went back no farther than the beginning of her New York career.
+
+Raymond seemed to attach more importance to love, in all its
+manifestations, than was usual or convenient in a husband; and she
+gradually began to be aware that her domination over him involved a
+corresponding loss of independence. Since their return to Paris she had
+found that she was expected to give a circumstantial report of every
+hour she spent away from him. She had nothing to hide, and no designs
+against his peace of mind except those connected with her frequent and
+costly sessions at the dress-makers'; but she had never before been
+called upon to account to any one for the use of her time, and after the
+first amused surprise at Raymond's always wanting to know where she had
+been and whom she had seen she began to be oppressed by so exacting a
+devotion. Her parents, from her tenderest youth, had tacitly recognized
+her inalienable right to "go round," and Ralph--though from motives
+which she divined to be different--had shown the same respect for her
+freedom. It was therefore disconcerting to find that Raymond expected
+her to choose her friends, and even her acquaintances, in conformity not
+only with his personal tastes but with a definite and complicated code
+of family prejudices and traditions; and she was especially surprised to
+discover that he viewed with disapproval her intimacy with the Princess
+Estradina.
+
+"My cousin's extremely amusing, of course, but utterly mad and very mal
+entouree. Most of the people she has about her ought to be in prison or
+Bedlam: especially that unspeakable Madame Adelschein, who's a candidate
+for both. My aunt's an angel, but she's been weak enough to let Lili
+turn the Hotel de Dordogne into an annex of Montmartre. Of course you'll
+have to show yourself there now and then: in these days families like
+ours must hold together. But go to the reunions de famille rather than
+to Lili's intimate parties; go with me, or with my mother; don't let
+yourself be seen there alone. You're too young and good-looking to be
+mixed up with that crew. A woman's classed--or rather unclassed--by
+being known as one of Lili's set."
+
+Agreeable as it was to Undine that an appeal to her discretion should
+be based on the ground of her youth and good-looks, she was dismayed
+to find herself cut off from the very circle she had meant them to
+establish her in. Before she had become Raymond's wife there had been a
+moment of sharp tension in her relations with the Princess Estradina and
+the old Duchess. They had done their best to prevent her marrying their
+cousin, and had gone so far as openly to accuse her of being the cause
+of a breach between themselves and his parents. But Ralph Marvell's
+death had brought about a sudden change in her situation. She was now no
+longer a divorced woman struggling to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for
+her remarriage, but a widow whose conspicuous beauty and independent
+situation made her the object of lawful aspirations. The first person to
+seize on this distinction and make the most of it was her old enemy the
+Marquise de Trezac. The latter, who had been loudly charged by the house
+of Chelles with furthering her beautiful compatriot's designs, had
+instantly seen a chance of vindicating herself by taking the widowed
+Mrs. Marvell under her wing and favouring the attentions of other
+suitors. These were not lacking, and the expected result had followed.
+Raymond de Chelles, more than ever infatuated as attainment became less
+certain, had claimed a definite promise from Undine, and his family,
+discouraged by his persistent bachelorhood, and their failure to fix his
+attention on any of the amiable maidens obviously designed to continue
+the race, had ended by withdrawing their opposition and discovering in
+Mrs. Marvell the moral and financial merits necessary to justify their
+change of front.
+
+"A good match? If she isn't, I should like to know what the Chelles call
+one!" Madame de Trezac went about indefatigably proclaiming. "Related to
+the best people in New York--well, by marriage, that is; and her husband
+left much more money than was expected. It goes to the boy, of course;
+but as the boy is with his mother she naturally enjoys the income. And
+her father's a rich man--much richer than is generally known; I mean
+what WE call rich in America, you understand!"
+
+Madame de Trezac had lately discovered that the proper attitude for
+the American married abroad was that of a militant patriotism; and she
+flaunted Undine Marvell in the face of the Faubourg like a particularly
+showy specimen of her national banner. The success of the experiment
+emboldened her to throw off the most sacred observances of her past. She
+took up Madame Adelschein, she entertained the James J. Rollivers,
+she resuscitated Creole dishes, she patronized negro melodists, she
+abandoned her weekly teas for impromptu afternoon dances, and the prim
+drawing-room in which dowagers had droned echoed with a cosmopolitan
+hubbub.
+
+Even when the period of tension was over, and Undine had been officially
+received into the family of her betrothed, Madame de Trezac did not
+at once surrender. She laughingly professed to have had enough of the
+proprieties, and declared herself bored by the social rites she had
+hitherto so piously performed. "You'll always find a corner of home
+here, dearest, when you get tired of their ceremonies and solemnities,"
+she said as she embraced the bride after the wedding breakfast; and
+Undine hoped that the devoted Nettie would in fact provide a refuge from
+the extreme domesticity of her new state. But since her return to Paris,
+and her taking up her domicile in the Hotel de Chelles, she had found
+Madame de Trezac less and less disposed to abet her in any assertion of
+independence.
+
+"My dear, a woman must adopt her husband's nationality whether she wants
+to or not. It's the law, and it's the custom besides. If you wanted
+to amuse yourself with your Nouveau Luxe friends you oughtn't to have
+married Raymond--but of course I say that only in joke. As if any woman
+would have hesitated who'd had your chance! Take my advice--keep out of
+Lili's set just at first. Later ... well, perhaps Raymond won't be so
+particular; but meanwhile you'd make a great mistake to go against his
+people--" and Madame de Trezac, with a "Chere Madame," swept forward
+from her tea-table to receive the first of the returning dowagers.
+
+It was about this time that Mrs. Heeny arrived with Paul; and for a
+while Undine was pleasantly absorbed in her boy. She kept Mrs. Heeny
+in Paris for a fortnight, and between her more pressing occupations it
+amused her to listen to the masseuse's New York gossip and her comments
+on the social organization of the old world. It was Mrs. Heeny's first
+visit to Europe, and she confessed to Undine that she had always wanted
+to "see something of the aristocracy"--using the phrase as a naturalist
+might, with no hint of personal pretensions. Mrs. Heeny's democratic
+ease was combined with the strictest professional discretion, and it
+would never have occurred to her to regard herself, or to wish others
+to regard her, as anything but a manipulator of muscles; but in that
+character she felt herself entitled to admission to the highest circles.
+
+"They certainly do things with style over here--but it's kinder
+one-horse after New York, ain't it? Is this what they call their season?
+Why, you dined home two nights last week. They ought to come over to New
+York and see!" And she poured into Undine's half-envious ear a list of
+the entertainments which had illuminated the last weeks of the New York
+winter. "I suppose you'll begin to give parties as soon as ever you get
+into a house of your own. You're not going to have one? Oh, well,
+then you'll give a lot of big week-ends at your place down in the
+Shatter-country--that's where the swells all go to in the summer time,
+ain't it? But I dunno what your ma would say if she knew you were going
+to live on with HIS folks after you're done honey-mooning. Why, we read
+in the papers you were going to live in some grand hotel or other--oh,
+they call their houses HOTELS, do they? That's funny: I suppose it's
+because they let out part of 'em. Well, you look handsomer than ever.
+Undine; I'll take THAT back to your mother, anyhow. And he's dead
+in love, I can see that; reminds me of the way--" but she broke off
+suddenly, as if something in Undine's look had silenced her.
+
+Even to herself. Undine did not like to call up the image of Ralph
+Marvell; and any mention of his name gave her a vague sense of distress.
+His death had released her, had given her what she wanted; yet she could
+honestly say to herself that she had not wanted him to die--at least
+not to die like that.... People said at the time that it was the hot
+weather--his own family had said so: he had never quite got over his
+attack of pneumonia, and the sudden rise of temperature--one of the
+fierce "heat-waves" that devastate New York in summer--had probably
+affected his brain: the doctors said such cases were not uncommon....
+She had worn black for a few weeks--not quite mourning, but something
+decently regretful (the dress-makers were beginning to provide a special
+garb for such cases); and even since her remarriage, and the lapse of
+a year, she continued to wish that she could have got what she wanted
+without having had to pay that particular price for it.
+
+This feeling was intensified by an incident--in itself far from
+unwelcome--which had occurred about three months after Ralph's death.
+Her lawyers had written to say that the sum of a hundred thousand
+dollars had been paid over to Marvell's estate by the Apex Consolidation
+Company; and as Marvell had left a will bequeathing everything he
+possessed to his son, this unexpected windfall handsomely increased
+Paul's patrimony. Undine had never relinquished her claim on her child;
+she had merely, by the advice of her lawyers, waived the assertion of
+her right for a few months after Marvell's death, with the express
+stipulation that her doing so was only a temporary concession to the
+feelings of her husband's family; and she had held out against all
+attempts to induce her to surrender Paul permanently. Before her
+marriage she had somewhat conspicuously adopted her husband's creed, and
+the Dagonets, picturing Paul as the prey of the Jesuits, had made the
+mistake of appealing to the courts for his custody. This had confirmed
+Undine's resistance, and her determination to keep the child. The case
+had been decided in her favour, and she had thereupon demanded, and
+obtained, an allowance of five thousand dollars, to be devoted to the
+bringing up and education of her son. This sum, added to what Mr. Spragg
+had agreed to give her, made up an income which had appreciably bettered
+her position, and justified Madame de Trezac's discreet allusions to
+her wealth. Nevertheless, it was one of the facts about which she least
+liked to think when any chance allusion evoked Ralph's image. The money
+was hers, of course; she had a right to it, and she was an ardent
+believer in "rights." But she wished she could have got it in some
+other way--she hated the thought of it as one more instance of the
+perverseness with which things she was entitled to always came to her as
+if they had been stolen.
+
+The approach of summer, and the culmination of the Paris season, swept
+aside such thoughts. The Countess Raymond de Chelles, contrasting
+her situation with that of Mrs. Undine Marvell, and the fulness and
+animation of her new life with the vacant dissatisfied days which
+had followed on her return from Dakota, forgot the smallness of her
+apartment, the inconvenient proximity of Paul and his nurse, the
+interminable round of visits with her mother-in-law, and the long
+dinners in the solemn hotels of all the family connection. The world was
+radiant, the lights were lit, the music playing; she was still young,
+and better-looking than ever, with a Countess's coronet, a famous
+chateau and a handsome and popular husband who adored her. And then
+suddenly the lights went out and the music stopped when one day Raymond,
+putting his arm about her, said in his tenderest tones: "And now, my
+dear, the world's had you long enough and it's my turn. What do you say
+to going down to Saint Desert?"
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+In a window of the long gallery of the chateau de Saint Desert the
+new Marquise de Chelles stood looking down the poplar avenue into the
+November rain. It had been raining heavily and persistently for a longer
+time than she could remember. Day after day the hills beyond the park
+had been curtained by motionless clouds, the gutters of the long steep
+roofs had gurgled with a perpetual overflow, the opaque surface of the
+moat been peppered by a continuous pelting of big drops. The water lay
+in glassy stretches under the trees and along the sodden edges of the
+garden-paths, it rose in a white mist from the fields beyond, it exuded
+in a chill moisture from the brick flooring of the passages and from the
+walls of the rooms on the lower floor. Everything in the great empty
+house smelt of dampness: the stuffing of the chairs, the threadbare
+folds of the faded curtains, the splendid tapestries, that were fading
+too, on the walls of the room in which Undine stood, and the wide bands
+of crape which her husband had insisted on her keeping on her black
+dresses till the last hour of her mourning for the old Marquis.
+
+The summer had been more than usually inclement, and since her first
+coming to the country Undine had lived through many periods of rainy
+weather; but none which had gone before had so completely epitomized, so
+summed up in one vast monotonous blur, the image of her long months at
+Saint Desert.
+
+When, the year before, she had reluctantly suffered herself to be torn
+from the joys of Paris, she had been sustained by the belief that her
+exile would not be of long duration. Once Paris was out of sight, she
+had even found a certain lazy charm in the long warm days at Saint
+Desert. Her parents-in-law had remained in town, and she enjoyed being
+alone with her husband, exploring and appraising the treasures of the
+great half abandoned house, and watching her boy scamper over the June
+meadows or trot about the gardens on the poney his stepfather had given
+him. Paul, after Mrs. Heeny's departure, had grown fretful and restive,
+and Undine had found it more and more difficult to fit his small
+exacting personality into her cramped rooms and crowded life. He
+irritated her by pining for his Aunt Laura, his Marvell granny, and old
+Mr. Dagonet's funny stories about gods and fairies; and his wistful
+allusions to his games with Clare's children sounded like a lesson he
+might have been drilled in to make her feel how little he belonged to
+her. But once released from Paris, and blessed with rabbits, a poney and
+the freedom of the fields, he became again all that a charming child
+should be, and for a time it amused her to share in his romps and
+rambles. Raymond seemed enchanted at the picture they made, and the
+quiet weeks of fresh air and outdoor activity gave her back a bloom that
+reflected itself in her tranquillized mood. She was the more resigned to
+this interlude because she was so sure of its not lasting. Before they
+left Paris a doctor had been found to say that Paul--who was certainly
+looking pale and pulled-down--was in urgent need of sea air, and Undine
+had nearly convinced her husband of the expediency of hiring a chalet at
+Deauville for July and August, when this plan, and with it every other
+prospect of escape, was dashed by the sudden death of the old Marquis.
+
+Undine, at first, had supposed that the resulting change could not
+be other than favourable. She had been on too formal terms with her
+father-in-law--a remote and ceremonious old gentleman to whom her own
+personality was evidently an insoluble enigma--to feel more than the
+merest conventional pang at his death; and it was certainly "more fun"
+to be a marchioness than a countess, and to know that one's husband
+was the head of the house. Besides, now they would have the chateau to
+themselves--or at least the old Marquise, when she came, would be there
+as a guest and not a ruler--and visions of smart house-parties and big
+shoots lit up the first weeks of Undine's enforced seclusion. Then, by
+degrees, the inexorable conditions of French mourning closed in on
+her. Immediately after the long-drawn funeral observances the bereaved
+family--mother, daughters, sons and sons-in-law--came down to
+seclude themselves at Saint Desert; and Undine, through the slow hot
+crape-smelling months, lived encircled by shrouded images of woe in
+which the only live points were the eyes constantly fixed on her least
+movements. The hope of escaping to the seaside with Paul vanished in
+the pained stare with which her mother-in-law received the suggestion.
+Undine learned the next day that it had cost the old Marquise a
+sleepless night, and might have had more distressing results had it not
+been explained as a harmless instance of transatlantic oddness. Raymond
+entreated his wife to atone for her involuntary legerete by submitting
+with a good grace to the usages of her adopted country; and he seemed to
+regard the remaining months of the summer as hardly long enough for this
+act of expiation. As Undine looked back on them, they appeared to have
+been composed of an interminable succession of identical days, in which
+attendance at early mass (in the coroneted gallery she had once so
+glowingly depicted to Van Degen) was followed by a great deal of
+conversational sitting about, a great deal of excellent eating, an
+occasional drive to the nearest town behind a pair of heavy draft
+horses, and long evenings in a lamp-heated drawing-room with all the
+windows shut, and the stout cure making an asthmatic fourth at the
+Marquise's card-table.
+
+Still, even these conditions were not permanent, and the discipline of
+the last years had trained Undine to wait and dissemble. The summer
+over, it was decided--after a protracted family conclave--that the
+state of the old Marquise's health made it advisable for her to spend
+the winter with the married daughter who lived near Pau. The other
+members of the family returned to their respective estates, and Undine
+once more found herself alone with her husband. But she knew by this
+time that there was to be no thought of Paris that winter, or even the
+next spring. Worse still, she was presently to discover that Raymond's
+accession of rank brought with it no financial advantages.
+
+Having but the vaguest notion of French testamentary law, she was
+dismayed to learn that the compulsory division of property made it
+impossible for a father to benefit his eldest son at the expense of the
+others. Raymond was therefore little richer than before, and with the
+debts of honour of a troublesome younger brother to settle, and Saint
+Desert to keep up, his available income was actually reduced. He held
+out, indeed, the hope of eventual improvement, since the old Marquis had
+managed his estates with a lofty contempt for modern methods, and the
+application of new principles of agriculture and forestry were certain
+to yield profitable results. But for a year or two, at any rate, this
+very change of treatment would necessitate the owner's continual
+supervision, and would not in the meanwhile produce any increase of
+income.
+
+To faire valoir the family acres had always, it appeared, been Raymond's
+deepest-seated purpose, and all his frivolities dropped from him with
+the prospect of putting his hand to the plough. He was not, indeed,
+inhuman enough to condemn his wife to perpetual exile. He meant, he
+assured her, that she should have her annual spring visit to Paris--but
+he stared in dismay at her suggestion that they should take possession
+of the coveted premier of the Hotel de Chelles. He was gallant enough to
+express the wish that it were in his power to house her on such a scale;
+but he could not conceal his surprise that she had ever seriously
+expected it. She was beginning to see that he felt her constitutional
+inability to understand anything about money as the deepest difference
+between them. It was a proficiency no one had ever expected her to
+acquire, and the lack of which she had even been encouraged to regard as
+a grace and to use as a pretext. During the interval between her divorce
+and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do
+without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and
+uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure
+to bubble up again at one's feet. Now, however, she found herself in a
+world where it represented not the means of individual gratification but
+the substance binding together whole groups of interests, and where the
+uses to which it might be put in twenty years were considered before the
+reasons for spending it on the spot. At first she was sure she could
+laugh Raymond out of his prudence or coax him round to her point of
+view. She did not understand how a man so romantically in love could be
+so unpersuadable on certain points. Hitherto she had had to contend
+with personal moods, now she was arguing against a policy; and she was
+gradually to learn that it was as natural to Raymond de Chelles to adore
+her and resist her as it had been to Ralph Marvell to adore her and let
+her have her way. At first, indeed, he appealed to her good sense, using
+arguments evidently drawn from accumulations of hereditary experience.
+But his economic plea was as unintelligible to her as the silly problems
+about pen-knives and apples in the "Mental Arithmetic" of her infancy;
+and when he struck a tenderer note and spoke of the duty of providing
+for the son he hoped for, she put her arms about him to whisper: "But
+then I oughtn't to be worried..."
+
+After that, she noticed, though he was as charming as ever, he behaved
+as if the case were closed. He had apparently decided that his arguments
+were unintelligible to her, and under all his ardour she felt the
+difference made by the discovery. It did not make him less kind, but it
+evidently made her less important; and she had the half-frightened sense
+that the day she ceased to please him she would cease to exist for him.
+That day was a long way off, of course, but the chill of it had brushed
+her face; and she was no longer heedless of such signs. She resolved to
+cultivate all the arts of patience and compliance, and habit might have
+helped them to take root if they had not been nipped by a new cataclysm.
+
+It was barely a week ago that her husband had been called to Paris to
+straighten out a fresh tangle in the affairs of the troublesome brother
+whose difficulties were apparently a part of the family tradition.
+Raymond's letters had been hurried, his telegrams brief and
+contradictory, and now, as Undine stood watching for the brougham that
+was to bring him from the station, she had the sense that with his
+arrival all her vague fears would be confirmed. There would be more
+money to pay out, of course--since the funds that could not be found for
+her just needs were apparently always forthcoming to settle Hubert's
+scandalous prodigalities--and that meant a longer perspective of
+solitude at Saint Desert, and a fresh pretext for postponing the
+hospitalities that were to follow on their period of mourning. The
+brougham--a vehicle as massive and lumbering as the pair that drew it--
+presently rolled into the court, and Raymond's sable figure (she had
+never before seen a man travel in such black clothes) sprang up the
+steps to the door. Whenever Undine saw him after an absence she had
+a curious sense of his coming back from unknown distances and not
+belonging to her or to any state of things she understood. Then habit
+reasserted itself, and she began to think of him again with a querulous
+familiarity. But she had learned to hide her feelings, and as he came in
+she put up her face for a kiss.
+
+"Yes--everything's settled--" his embrace expressed the satisfaction of
+the man returning from an accomplished task to the joys of his fireside.
+
+"Settled?" Her face kindled. "Without your having to pay?"
+
+He looked at her with a shrug. "Of course I've had to pay. Did you
+suppose Hubert's creditors would be put off with vanilla eclairs?"
+
+"Oh, if THAT'S what you mean--if Hubert has only to wire you at any time
+to be sure of his affairs being settled--!"
+
+She saw his lips narrow and a line come out between his eyes. "Wouldn't
+it be a happy thought to tell them to bring tea?" he suggested.
+
+"In the library, then. It's so cold here--and the tapestries smell so of
+rain."
+
+He paused a moment to scrutinize the long walls, on which the fabulous
+blues and pinks of the great Boucher series looked as livid as withered
+roses. "I suppose they ought to be taken down and aired," he said.
+
+She thought: "In THIS air--much good it would do them!" But she had
+already repented her outbreak about Hubert, and she followed her husband
+into the library with the resolve not to let him see her annoyance.
+Compared with the long grey gallery the library, with its brown walls
+of books, looked warm and home-like, and Raymond seemed to feel the
+influence of the softer atmosphere. He turned to his wife and put his
+arm about her.
+
+"I know it's been a trial to you, dearest; but this is the last time I
+shall have to pull the poor boy out."
+
+In spite of herself she laughed incredulously: Hubert's "last times"
+were a household word.
+
+But when tea had been brought, and they were alone over the fire,
+Raymond unfolded the amazing sequel. Hubert had found an heiress, Hubert
+was to be married, and henceforth the business of paying his debts
+(which might be counted on to recur as inevitably as the changes of the
+seasons) would devolve on his American bride--the charming Miss Looty
+Arlington, whom Raymond had remained over in Paris to meet.
+
+"An American? He's marrying an American?" Undine wavered between wrath
+and satisfaction. She felt a flash of resentment at any other intruder's
+venturing upon her territory--("Looty Arlington? Who is she? What a
+name!")--but it was quickly superseded by the relief of knowing that
+henceforth, as Raymond said, Hubert's debts would be some one else's
+business. Then a third consideration prevailed. "But if he's engaged to
+a rich girl, why on earth do WE have to pull him out?"
+
+Her husband explained that no other course was possible. Though General
+Arlington was immensely wealthy, ("her father's a general--a General
+Manager, whatever that may be,") he had exacted what he called "a clean
+slate" from his future son-in-law, and Hubert's creditors (the boy was
+such a donkey!) had in their possession certain papers that made it
+possible for them to press for immediate payment.
+
+"Your compatriots' views on such matters are so rigid--and it's all to
+their credit--that the marriage would have fallen through at once if the
+least hint of Hubert's mess had got out--and then we should have had him
+on our hands for life."
+
+Yes--from that point of view it was doubtless best to pay up; but Undine
+obscurely wished that their doing so had not incidentally helped an
+unknown compatriot to what the American papers were no doubt already
+announcing as "another brilliant foreign alliance."
+
+"Where on earth did your brother pick up anybody respectable? Do you
+know where her people come from? I suppose she's perfectly awful," she
+broke out with a sudden escape of irritation.
+
+"I believe Hubert made her acquaintance at a skating rink. They come
+from some new state--the general apologized for its not yet being on the
+map, but seemed surprised I hadn't heard of it. He said it was already
+known as one of 'the divorce states,' and the principal city had, in
+consequence, a very agreeable society. La petite n'est vraiment pas trop
+mal."
+
+"I daresay not! We're all good-looking. But she must be horribly
+common."
+
+Raymond seemed sincerely unable to formulate a judgment. "My dear, you
+have your own customs..."
+
+"Oh, I know we're all alike to you!" It was one of her grievances that
+he never attempted to discriminate between Americans. "You see no
+difference between me and a girl one gets engaged to at a skating rink!"
+
+He evaded the challenge by rejoining: "Miss Arlington's burning to know
+you. She says she's heard a great deal about you, and Hubert wants to
+bring her down next week. I think we'd better do what we can."
+
+"Of course." But Undine was still absorbed in the economic aspect of the
+case. "If they're as rich as you say, I suppose Hubert means to pay you
+back by and bye?"
+
+"Naturally. It's all arranged. He's given me a paper." He drew her hands
+into his. "You see we've every reason to be kind to Miss Arlington."
+
+"Oh, I'll be as kind as you like!" She brightened at the prospect of
+repayment. Yes, they would ask the girl down... She leaned a little
+nearer to her husband. "But then after a while we shall be a good deal
+better off--especially, as you say, with no more of Hubert's debts to
+worry us." And leaning back far enough to give her upward smile, she
+renewed her plea for the premier in the Hotel de Chelles: "Because,
+really, you know, as the head of the house you ought to--"
+
+"Ah, my dear, as the head of the house I've so many obligations; and one
+of them is not to miss a good stroke of business when it comes my way."
+
+Her hands slipped from his shoulders and she drew back. "What do you
+mean by a good stroke of business?
+
+"Why, an incredible piece of luck--it's what kept me on so long in
+Paris. Miss Arlington's father was looking for an apartment for the
+young couple, and I've let him the premier for twelve years on the
+understanding that he puts electric light and heating into the whole
+hotel. It's a wonderful chance, for of course we all benefit by it as
+much as Hubert."
+
+"A wonderful chance... benefit by it as much as Hubert!" He seemed to be
+speaking a strange language in which familiar-sounding syllables meant
+something totally unknown. Did he really think she was going to coop
+herself up again in their cramped quarters while Hubert and his
+skating-rink bride luxuriated overhead in the coveted premier? All the
+resentments that had been accumulating in her during the long baffled
+months since her marriage broke into speech. "It's extraordinary of you
+to do such a thing without consulting me!"
+
+"Without consulting you? But, my dear child, you've always professed the
+most complete indifference to business matters--you've frequently begged
+me not to bore you with them. You may be sure I've acted on the best
+advice; and my mother, whose head is as good as a man's, thinks I've
+made a remarkably good arrangement."
+
+"I daresay--but I'm not always thinking about money, as you are."
+
+As she spoke she had an ominous sense of impending peril; but she was
+too angry to avoid even the risks she saw. To her surprise Raymond put
+his arm about her with a smile. "There are many reasons why I have to
+think about money. One is that YOU don't; and another is that I must
+look out for the future of our son."
+
+Undine flushed to the forehead. She had grown accustomed to such
+allusions and the thought of having a child no longer filled her with
+the resentful terror she had felt before Paul's birth. She had been
+insensibly influenced by a different point of view, perhaps also by a
+difference in her own feeling; and the vision of herself as the mother
+of the future Marquis de Chelles was softened to happiness by the
+thought of giving Raymond a son. But all these lightly-rooted sentiments
+went down in the rush of her resentment, and she freed herself with a
+petulant movement. "Oh, my dear, you'd better leave it to your brother
+to perpetuate the race. There'll be more room for nurseries in their
+apartment!"
+
+She waited a moment, quivering with the expectation of her husband's
+answer; then, as none came except the silent darkening of his face, she
+walked to the door and turned round to fling back: "Of course you can do
+what you like with your own house, and make any arrangements that suit
+your family, without consulting me; but you needn't think I'm ever
+going back to live in that stuffy little hole, with Hubert and his wife
+splurging round on top of our heads!"
+
+"Ah--" said Raymond de Chelles in a low voice.
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+Undine did not fulfil her threat. The month of May saw her back in the
+rooms she had declared she would never set foot in, and after her long
+sojourn among the echoing vistas of Saint Desert the exiguity of her
+Paris quarters seemed like cosiness.
+
+In the interval many things had happened. Hubert, permitted by his
+anxious relatives to anticipate the term of the family mourning, had
+been showily and expensively united to his heiress; the Hotel de Chelles
+had been piped, heated and illuminated in accordance with the bride's
+requirements; and the young couple, not content with these utilitarian
+changes had moved doors, opened windows, torn down partitions, and given
+over the great trophied and pilastered dining-room to a decorative
+painter with a new theory of the human anatomy. Undine had silently
+assisted at this spectacle, and at the sight of the old Marquise's
+abject acquiescence; she had seen the Duchesse de Dordogne and the
+Princesse Estradina go past her door to visit Hubert's premier and
+marvel at the American bath-tubs and the Annamite bric-a-brac; and she
+had been present, with her husband, at the banquet at which Hubert had
+revealed to the astonished Faubourg the prehistoric episodes depicted on
+his dining-room walls. She had accepted all these necessities with the
+stoicism which the last months had developed in her; for more and more,
+as the days passed, she felt herself in the grasp of circumstances
+stronger than any effort she could oppose to them. The very absence
+of external pressure, of any tactless assertion of authority on her
+husband's part, intensified the sense of her helplessness. He simply
+left it to her to infer that, important as she might be to him in
+certain ways, there were others in which she did not weigh a feather.
+
+Their outward relations had not changed since her outburst on the
+subject of Hubert's marriage. That incident had left her half-ashamed,
+half-frightened at her behaviour, and she had tried to atone for it
+by the indirect arts that were her nearest approach to acknowledging
+herself in the wrong. Raymond met her advances with a good grace,
+and they lived through the rest of the winter on terms of apparent
+understanding. When the spring approached it was he who suggested that,
+since his mother had consented to Hubert's marrying before the year of
+mourning was over, there was really no reason why they should not go up
+to Paris as usual; and she was surprised at the readiness with which he
+prepared to accompany her.
+
+A year earlier she would have regarded this as another proof of her
+power; but she now drew her inferences less quickly. Raymond was as
+"lovely" to her as ever; but more than once, during their months in the
+country, she had had a startled sense of not giving him all he expected
+of her. She had admired him, before their marriage, as a model of social
+distinction; during the honeymoon he had been the most ardent of lovers;
+and with their settling down at Saint Desert she had prepared to resign
+herself to the society of a country gentleman absorbed in sport and
+agriculture. But Raymond, to her surprise, had again developed a
+disturbing resemblance to his predecessor. During the long winter
+afternoons, after he had gone over his accounts with the bailiff, or
+written his business letters, he took to dabbling with a paint-box, or
+picking out new scores at the piano; after dinner, when they went to the
+library, he seemed to expect to read aloud to her from the reviews and
+papers he was always receiving; and when he had discovered her inability
+to fix her attention he fell into the way of absorbing himself in one of
+the old brown books with which the room was lined. At first he tried--as
+Ralph had done--to tell her about what he was reading or what was
+happening in the world; but her sense of inadequacy made her slip
+away to other subjects, and little by little their talk died down to
+monosyllables. Was it possible that, in spite of his books, the evenings
+seemed as long to Raymond as to her, and that he had suggested going
+back to Paris because he was bored at Saint Desert? Bored as she was
+herself, she resented his not finding her company all-sufficient, and
+was mortified by the discovery that there were regions of his life she
+could not enter.
+
+But once back in Paris she had less time for introspection, and Raymond
+less for books. They resumed their dispersed and busy life, and in spite
+of Hubert's ostentatious vicinity, of the perpetual lack of money, and
+of Paul's innocent encroachments on her freedom, Undine, once more in
+her element, ceased to brood upon her grievances. She enjoyed going
+about with her husband, whose presence at her side was distinctly
+ornamental. He seemed to have grown suddenly younger and more animated,
+and when she saw other women looking at him she remembered how
+distinguished he was. It amused her to have him in her train, and
+driving about with him to dinners and dances, waiting for him on
+flower-decked landings, or pushing at his side through blazing
+theatre-lobbies, answered to her inmost ideal of domestic intimacy.
+
+He seemed disposed to allow her more liberty than before, and it was
+only now and then that he let drop a brief reminder of the conditions on
+which it was accorded. She was to keep certain people at a distance,
+she was not to cheapen herself by being seen at vulgar restaurants
+and tea-rooms, she was to join with him in fulfilling certain family
+obligations (going to a good many dull dinners among the number); but in
+other respects she was free to fill her days as she pleased.
+
+"Not that it leaves me much time," she admitted to Madame de Trezac;
+"what with going to see his mother every day, and never missing one of
+his sisters' jours, and showing myself at the Hotel de Dordogne whenever
+the Duchess gives a pay-up party to the stuffy people Lili Estradina
+won't be bothered with, there are days when I never lay eyes on Paul,
+and barely have time to be waved and manicured; but, apart from that,
+Raymond's really much nicer and less fussy than he was."
+
+Undine, as she grew older, had developed her mother's craving for a
+confidante, and Madame de Trezac had succeeded in that capacity to Mabel
+Lipscomb and Bertha Shallum.
+
+"Less fussy?" Madame de Trezac's long nose lengthened thoughtfully.
+"H'm--are you sure that's a good sign?"
+
+Undine stared and laughed. "Oh, my dear, you're so quaint! Why, nobody's
+jealous any more."
+
+"No; that's the worst of it." Madame de Trezac pondered. "It's a
+thousand pities you haven't got a son."
+
+"Yes; I wish we had." Undine stood up, impatient to end the
+conversation. Since she had learned that her continued childlessness
+was regarded by every one about her as not only unfortunate but somehow
+vaguely derogatory to her, she had genuinely begun to regret it; and any
+allusion to the subject disturbed her.
+
+"Especially," Madame de Trezac continued, "as Hubert's wife--"
+
+"Oh, if THAT'S all they want, it's a pity Raymond didn't marry Hubert's
+wife," Undine flung back; and on the stairs she murmured to herself:
+"Nettie has been talking to my mother-in-law."
+
+But this explanation did not quiet her, and that evening, as she and
+Raymond drove back together from a party, she felt a sudden impulse to
+speak. Sitting close to him in the darkness of the carriage, it ought to
+have been easy for her to find the needed word; but the barrier of his
+indifference hung between them, and street after street slipped by,
+and the spangled blackness of the river unrolled itself beneath their
+wheels, before she leaned over to touch his hand.
+
+"What is it, my dear?"
+
+She had not yet found the word, and already his tone told her she was
+too late. A year ago, if she had slipped her hand in his, she would not
+have had that answer.
+
+"Your mother blames me for our not having a child. Everybody thinks it's
+my fault."
+
+He paused before answering, and she sat watching his shadowy profile
+against the passing lamps.
+
+"My mother's ideas are old-fashioned; and I don't know that it's
+anybody's business but yours and mine."
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Here we are." The brougham was turning under the archway of the hotel,
+and the light of Hubert's tall windows fell across the dusky court.
+Raymond helped her out, and they mounted to their door by the stairs
+which Hubert had recarpeted in velvet, with a marble nymph lurking in
+the azaleas on the landing.
+
+In the antechamber Raymond paused to take her cloak from her shoulders,
+and his eyes rested on her with a faint smile of approval.
+
+"You never looked better; your dress is extremely becoming. Good-night,
+my dear," he said, kissing her hand as he turned away.
+
+Undine kept this incident to herself: her wounded pride made her shrink
+from confessing it even to Madame de Trezac. She was sure Raymond would
+"come back"; Ralph always had, to the last. During their remaining weeks
+in Paris she reassured herself with the thought that once they were back
+at Saint Desert she would easily regain her lost hold; and when Raymond
+suggested their leaving Paris she acquiesced without a protest. But at
+Saint Desert she seemed no nearer to him than in Paris. He continued to
+treat her with unvarying amiability, but he seemed wholly absorbed in
+the management of the estate, in his books, his sketching and his music.
+He had begun to interest himself in politics and had been urged to stand
+for his department. This necessitated frequent displacements: trips to
+Beaune or Dijon and occasional absences in Paris. Undine, when he was
+away, was not left alone, for the dowager Marquise had established
+herself at Saint Desert for the summer, and relays of brothers
+and sisters-in-law, aunts, cousins and ecclesiastical friends and
+connections succeeded each other under its capacious roof. Only Hubert
+and his wife were absent. They had taken a villa at Deauville, and in
+the morning papers Undine followed the chronicle of Hubert's polo scores
+and of the Countess Hubert's racing toilets.
+
+The days crawled on with a benumbing sameness. The old Marquise and the
+other ladies of the party sat on the terrace with their needle-work, the
+cure or one of the visiting uncles read aloud the Journal des Debats and
+prognosticated dark things of the Republic, Paul scoured the park and
+despoiled the kitchen-garden with the other children of the family,
+the inhabitants of the adjacent chateaux drove over to call, and
+occasionally the ponderous pair were harnessed to a landau as lumbering
+as the brougham, and the ladies of Saint Desert measured the dusty
+kilometres between themselves and their neighbours.
+
+It was the first time that Undine had seriously paused to consider
+the conditions of her new life, and as the days passed she began to
+understand that so they would continue to succeed each other till the
+end. Every one about her took it for granted that as long as she lived
+she would spend ten months of every year at Saint Desert and the
+remaining two in Paris. Of course, if health required it, she might go
+to les eaux with her husband; but the old Marquise was very doubtful as
+to the benefit of a course of waters, and her uncle the Duke and her
+cousin the Canon shared her view. In the case of young married women,
+especially, the unwholesome excitement of the modern watering-place was
+more than likely to do away with the possible benefit of the treatment.
+As to travel--had not Raymond and his wife been to Egypt and Asia Minor
+on their wedding-journey? Such reckless enterprise was unheard of in
+the annals of the house! Had they not spent days and days in the saddle,
+and slept in tents among the Arabs? (Who could tell, indeed, whether
+these imprudences were not the cause of the disappointment which it had
+pleased heaven to inflict on the young couple?) No one in the family
+had ever taken so long a wedding-journey. One bride had gone to
+England (even that was considered extreme), and another--the artistic
+daughter--had spent a week in Venice; which certainly showed that they
+were not behind the times, and had no old-fashioned prejudices. Since
+wedding-journeys were the fashion, they had taken them; but who had
+ever heard of travelling afterward?
+
+What could be the possible object of leaving one's family, one's habits,
+one's friends? It was natural that the Americans, who had no homes, who
+were born and died in hotels, should have contracted nomadic habits: but
+the new Marquise de Chelles was no longer an American, and she had Saint
+Desert and the Hotel de Chelles to live in, as generations of ladies of
+her name had done before her. Thus Undine beheld her future laid out for
+her, not directly and in blunt words, but obliquely and affably, in the
+allusions, the assumptions, the insinuations of the amiable women among
+whom her days were spent. Their interminable conversations were carried
+on to the click of knitting-needles and the rise and fall of industrious
+fingers above embroidery-frames; and as Undine sat staring at the
+lustrous nails of her idle hands she felt that her inability to occupy
+them was regarded as one of the chief causes of her restlessness. The
+innumerable rooms of Saint Desert were furnished with the embroidered
+hangings and tapestry chairs produced by generations of diligent
+chatelaines, and the untiring needles of the old Marquise, her daughters
+and dependents were still steadily increasing the provision.
+
+It struck Undine as curious that they should be willing to go on making
+chair-coverings and bed-curtains for a house that didn't really belong
+to them, and that she had a right to pull about and rearrange as she
+chose; but then that was only a part of their whole incomprehensible way
+of regarding themselves (in spite of their acute personal and parochial
+absorptions) as minor members of a powerful and indivisible whole, the
+huge voracious fetish they called The Family.
+
+Notwithstanding their very definite theories as to what Americans were
+and were not, they were evidently bewildered at finding no corresponding
+sense of solidarity in Undine; and little Paul's rootlessness, his lack
+of all local and linear ties, made them (for all the charm he exercised)
+regard him with something of the shyness of pious Christians toward
+an elfin child. But though mother and child gave them a sense of
+insuperable strangeness, it plainly never occurred to them that both
+would not be gradually subdued to the customs of Saint Desert. Dynasties
+had fallen, institutions changed, manners and morals, alas, deplorably
+declined; but as far back as memory went, the ladies of the line of
+Chelles had always sat at their needle-work on the terrace of Saint
+Desert, while the men of the house lamented the corruption of the
+government and the cure ascribed the unhappy state of the country to the
+decline of religious feeling and the rise in the cost of living. It was
+inevitable that, in the course of time, the new Marquise should come to
+understand the fundamental necessity of these things being as they were;
+and meanwhile the forbearance of her husband's family exercised itself,
+with the smiling discretion of their race, through the long succession
+of uneventful days.
+
+Once, in September, this routine was broken in upon by the unannounced
+descent of a flock of motors bearing the Princess Estradina and a chosen
+band from one watering-place to another. Raymond was away at the time,
+but family loyalty constrained the old Marquise to welcome her kinswoman
+and the latter's friends; and Undine once more found herself immersed in
+the world from which her marriage had removed her.
+
+The Princess, at first, seemed totally to have forgotten their former
+intimacy, and Undine was made to feel that in a life so variously
+agitated the episode could hardly have left a trace. But the night
+before her departure the incalculable Lili, with one of her sudden
+changes of humour, drew her former friend into her bedroom and plunged
+into an exchange of confidences. She naturally unfolded her own history
+first, and it was so packed with incident that the courtyard clock had
+struck two before she turned her attention to Undine.
+
+"My dear, you're handsomer than ever; only perhaps a shade too stout.
+Domestic bliss, I suppose? Take care! You need an emotion, a drama...
+You Americans are really extraordinary. You appear to live on change and
+excitement; and then suddenly a man comes along and claps a ring on your
+finger, and you never look through it to see what's going on outside.
+Aren't you ever the least bit bored? Why do I never see anything of you
+any more? I suppose it's the fault of my venerable aunt--she's never
+forgiven me for having a better time than her daughters. How can I help
+it if I don't look like the cure's umbrella? I daresay she owes you the
+same grudge. But why do you let her coop you up here? It's a thousand
+pities you haven't had a child. They'd all treat you differently if you
+had."
+
+It was the same perpetually reiterated condolence; and Undine flushed
+with anger as she listened. Why indeed had she let herself be cooped up?
+She could not have answered the Princess's question: she merely felt
+the impossibility of breaking through the mysterious web of traditions,
+conventions, prohibitions that enclosed her in their impenetrable
+net-work. But her vanity suggested the obvious pretext, and she murmured
+with a laugh: "I didn't know Raymond was going to be so jealous--"
+
+The Princess stared. "Is it Raymond who keeps you shut up here? And what
+about his trips to Dijon? And what do you suppose he does with himself
+when he runs up to Paris? Politics?" She shrugged ironically. "Politics
+don't occupy a man after midnight. Raymond jealous of you? Ah, merci!
+My dear, it's what I always say when people talk to me about fast
+Americans: you're the only innocent women left in the world..."
+
+
+
+XL
+
+After the Princess Estradina's departure, the days at Saint Desert
+succeeded each other indistinguishably; and more and more, as they
+passed, Undine felt herself drawn into the slow strong current already
+fed by so many tributary lives. Some spell she could not have named
+seemed to emanate from the old house which had so long been the
+custodian of an unbroken tradition: things had happened there in the
+same way for so many generations that to try to alter them seemed as
+vain as to contend with the elements.
+
+Winter came and went, and once more the calendar marked the first days
+of spring; but though the horse-chestnuts of the Champs Elysees were
+budding snow still lingered in the grass drives of Saint Desert and
+along the ridges of the hills beyond the park. Sometimes, as Undine
+looked out of the windows of the Boucher gallery, she felt as if her
+eyes had never rested on any other scene. Even her occasional brief
+trips to Paris left no lasting trace: the life of the vivid streets
+faded to a shadow as soon as the black and white horizon of Saint Desert
+closed in on her again.
+
+Though the afternoons were still cold she had lately taken to sitting in
+the gallery. The smiling scenes on its walls and the tall screens which
+broke its length made it more habitable than the drawing-rooms beyond;
+but her chief reason for preferring it was the satisfaction she found in
+having fires lit in both the monumental chimneys that faced each other
+down its long perspective. This satisfaction had its source in the old
+Marquise's disapproval. Never before in the history of Saint Desert had
+the consumption of firewood exceeded a certain carefully-calculated
+measure; but since Undine had been in authority this allowance had been
+doubled. If any one had told her, a year earlier, that one of the chief
+distractions of her new life would be to invent ways of annoying her
+mother-in-law, she would have laughed at the idea of wasting her time on
+such trifles. But she found herself with a great deal of time to waste,
+and with a fierce desire to spend it in upsetting the immemorial customs
+of Saint Desert. Her husband had mastered her in essentials, but she had
+discovered innumerable small ways of irritating and hurting him, and
+one--and not the least effectual--was to do anything that went counter
+to his mother's prejudices. It was not that he always shared her views,
+or was a particularly subservient son; but it seemed to be one of his
+fundamental principles that a man should respect his mother's wishes,
+and see to it that his household respected them. All Frenchmen of
+his class appeared to share this view, and to regard it as beyond
+discussion: it was based on something so much more Immutable than
+personal feeling that one might even hate one's mother and yet insist
+that her ideas as to the consumption of fire-wood should be regarded.
+
+The old Marquise, during the cold weather, always sat in her bedroom;
+and there, between the tapestried four-poster and the fireplace, the
+family grouped itself around the ground-glass of her single carcel lamp.
+In the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library;
+otherwise the family again sat about the Marquise's lamp till the
+footman came in at ten with tisane and biscuits de Reims; after which
+every one bade the dowager good night and scattered down the corridors
+to chill distances marked by tapers floating in cups of oil.
+
+Since Undine's coming the library fire had never been allowed to go out;
+and of late, after experimenting with the two drawing-rooms and the
+so-called "study" where Raymond kept his guns and saw the bailiff, she
+had selected the gallery as the most suitable place for the new and
+unfamiliar ceremony of afternoon tea. Afternoon refreshments had never
+before been served at Saint Desert except when company was expected;
+when they had invariably consisted in a decanter of sweet port and a
+plate of small dry cakes--the kind that kept. That the complicated rites
+of the tea-urn, with its offering-up of perishable delicacies, should be
+enacted for the sole enjoyment of the family, was a thing so unheard of
+that for a while Undine found sufficient amusement in elaborating the
+ceremonial, and in making the ancestral plate groan under more varied
+viands; and when this palled she devised the plan of performing the
+office in the gallery and lighting sacrificial fires in both chimneys.
+
+She had said to Raymond, at first: "It's ridiculous that your mother
+should sit in her bedroom all day. She says she does it to save fires;
+but if we have a fire downstairs why can't she let hers go out, and come
+down? I don't see why I should spend my life in your mother's bedroom."
+
+Raymond made no answer, and the Marquise did, in fact, let her fire go
+out. But she did not come down--she simply continued to sit upstairs
+without a fire.
+
+At first this also amused Undine; then the tacit criticism implied began
+to irritate her. She hoped Raymond would speak of his mother's attitude:
+she had her answer ready if he did! But he made no comment, he took no
+notice; her impulses of retaliation spent themselves against the blank
+surface of his indifference. He was as amiable, as considerate as ever;
+as ready, within reason, to accede to her wishes and gratify her whims.
+Once or twice, when she suggested running up to Paris to take Paul to
+the dentist, or to look for a servant, he agreed to the necessity and
+went up with her. But instead of going to an hotel they went to their
+apartment, where carpets were up and curtains down, and a care-taker
+prepared primitive food at uncertain hours; and Undine's first glimpse
+of Hubert's illuminated windows deepened her rancour and her sense of
+helplessness.
+
+As Madame de Trezac had predicted, Raymond's vigilance gradually
+relaxed, and during their excursions to the capital Undine came and went
+as she pleased. But her visits were too short to permit of her falling
+in with the social pace, and when she showed herself among her friends
+she felt countrified and out-of-place, as if even her clothes had come
+from Saint Desert. Nevertheless her dresses were more than ever her
+chief preoccupation: in Paris she spent hours at the dressmaker's, and
+in the country the arrival of a box of new gowns was the chief event
+of the vacant days. But there was more bitterness than joy in the
+unpacking, and the dresses hung in her wardrobe like so many unfulfilled
+promises of pleasure, reminding her of the days at the Stentorian when
+she had reviewed other finery with the same cheated eyes. In spite of
+this, she multiplied her orders, writing up to the dress-makers for
+patterns, and to the milliners for boxes of hats which she tried on, and
+kept for days, without being able to make a choice. Now and then she
+even sent her maid up to Paris to bring back great assortments of veils,
+gloves, flowers and laces; and after periods of painful indecision she
+ended by keeping the greater number, lest those she sent back should
+turn out to be the ones that were worn in Paris. She knew she was
+spending too much money, and she had lost her youthful faith in
+providential solutions; but she had always had the habit of going out to
+buy something when she was bored, and never had she been in greater need
+of such solace.
+
+The dulness of her life seemed to have passed into her blood: her
+complexion was less animated, her hair less shining. The change in her
+looks alarmed her, and she scanned the fashion-papers for new scents
+and powders, and experimented in facial bandaging, electric massage and
+other processes of renovation. Odd atavisms woke in her, and she began
+to pore over patent medicine advertisements, to send stamped envelopes
+to beauty doctors and professors of physical development, and to brood
+on the advantage of consulting faith-healers, mind-readers and their
+kindred adepts. She even wrote to her mother for the receipts of some of
+her grandfather's forgotten nostrums, and modified her daily life, and
+her hours of sleeping, eating and exercise, in accordance with each new
+experiment.
+
+Her constitutional restlessness lapsed into an apathy like Mrs.
+Spragg's, and the least demand on her activity irritated her. But she
+was beset by endless annoyances: bickerings with discontented maids, the
+difficulty of finding a tutor for Paul, and the problem of keeping him
+amused and occupied without having him too much on her hands. A great
+liking had sprung up between Raymond and the little boy, and during the
+summer Paul was perpetually at his step-father's side in the stables
+and the park. But with the coming of winter Raymond was oftener away,
+and Paul developed a persistent cold that kept him frequently indoors.
+The confinement made him fretful and exacting, and the old Marquise
+ascribed the change in his behaviour to the deplorable influence of his
+tutor, a "laic" recommended by one of Raymond's old professors. Raymond
+himself would have preferred an abbe: it was in the tradition of the
+house, and though Paul was not of the house it seemed fitting that he
+should conform to its ways. Moreover, when the married sisters came
+to stay they objected to having their children exposed to the tutor's
+influence, and even implied that Paul's society might be contaminating.
+But Undine, though she had so readily embraced her husband's faith,
+stubbornly resisted the suggestion that she should hand over her son to
+the Church. The tutor therefore remained; but the friction caused by
+his presence was so irritating to Undine that she began to consider the
+alternative of sending Paul to school. He was still small and tender
+for the experiment; but she persuaded herself that what he needed was
+"hardening," and having heard of a school where fashionable infancy was
+subjected to this process, she entered into correspondence with the
+master. His first letter convinced her that his establishment was just
+the place for Paul; but the second contained the price-list, and after
+comparing it with the tutor's keep and salary she wrote to say that she
+feared her little boy was too young to be sent away from home.
+
+Her husband, for some time past, had ceased to make any comment on her
+expenditure. She knew he thought her too extravagant, and felt sure he
+was minutely aware of what she spent; for Saint Desert projected on
+economic details a light as different as might be from the haze that
+veiled them in West End Avenue. She therefore concluded that Raymond's
+silence was intentional, and ascribed it to his having shortcomings of
+his own to conceal. The Princess Estradina's pleasantry had reached its
+mark. Undine did not believe that her husband was seriously in love with
+another woman--she could not conceive that any one could tire of her
+of whom she had not first tired--but she was humiliated by his
+indifference, and it was easier to ascribe it to the arts of a rival
+than to any deficiency in herself. It exasperated her to think that he
+might have consolations for the outward monotony of his life, and she
+resolved that when they returned to Paris he should see that she was not
+without similar opportunities.
+
+March, meanwhile, was verging on April, and still he did not speak of
+leaving. Undine had learned that he expected to have such decisions left
+to him, and she hid her impatience lest her showing it should incline
+him to delay. But one day, as she sat at tea in the gallery, he came in
+in his riding-clothes and said: "I've been over to the other side of the
+mountain. The February rains have weakened the dam of the Alette, and
+the vineyards will be in danger if we don't rebuild at once."
+
+She suppressed a yawn, thinking, as she did so, how dull he always
+looked when he talked of agriculture. It made him seem years older, and
+she reflected with a shiver that listening to him probably gave her the
+same look.
+
+He went on, as she handed him his tea: "I'm sorry it should happen
+just now. I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to give up your spring in
+Paris." "Oh, no--no!" she broke out. A throng of half-subdued grievances
+choked in her: she wanted to burst into sobs like a child.
+
+"I know it's a disappointment. But our expenses have been unusually
+heavy this year."
+
+"It seems to me they always are. I don't see why we should give up Paris
+because you've got to make repairs to a dam. Isn't Hubert ever going to
+pay back that money?"
+
+He looked at her with a mild surprise. "But surely you understood at the
+time that it won't be possible till his wife inherits?"
+
+"Till General Arlington dies, you mean? He doesn't look much older than
+you!"
+
+"You may remember that I showed you Hubert's note. He has paid the
+interest quite regularly."
+
+"That's kind of him!" She stood up, flaming with rebellion. "You can do
+as you please; but I mean to go to Paris."
+
+"My mother is not going. I didn't intend to open our apartment."
+
+"I understand. But I shall open it--that's all!"
+
+He had risen too, and she saw his face whiten. "I prefer that you
+shouldn't go without me."
+
+"Then I shall go and stay at the Nouveau Luxe with my American friends."
+
+"That never!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I consider it unsuitable."
+
+"Your considering it so doesn't prove it."
+
+They stood facing each other, quivering with an equal anger; then he
+controlled himself and said in a more conciliatory tone: "You never seem
+to see that there are necessities--"
+
+"Oh, neither do you--that's the trouble. You can't keep me shut up here
+all my life, and interfere with everything I want to do, just by saying
+it's unsuitable."
+
+"I've never interfered with your spending your money as you please."
+
+It was her turn to stare, sincerely wondering. "Mercy, I should hope
+not, when you've always grudged me every penny of yours!"
+
+"You know it's not because I grudge it. I would gladly take you to Paris
+if I had the money."
+
+"You can always find the money to spend on this place. Why don't you
+sell it if it's so fearfully expensive?"
+
+"Sell it? Sell Saint Desert?"
+
+The suggestion seemed to strike him as something monstrously, almost
+fiendishly significant: as if her random word had at last thrust
+into his hand the clue to their whole unhappy difference. Without
+understanding this, she guessed it from the change in his face: it was
+as if a deadly solvent had suddenly decomposed its familiar lines.
+
+"Well, why not?" His horror spurred her on. "You might sell some of the
+things in it anyhow. In America we're not ashamed to sell what we can't
+afford to keep." Her eyes fell on the storied hangings at his back.
+"Why, there's a fortune in this one room: you could get anything you
+chose for those tapestries. And you stand here and tell me you're a
+pauper!"
+
+His glance followed hers to the tapestries, and then returned to her
+face. "Ah, you don't understand," he said.
+
+"I understand that you care for all this old stuff more than you do for
+me, and that you'd rather see me unhappy and miserable than touch one of
+your great-grandfather's arm-chairs."
+
+The colour came slowly back to his face, but it hardened into lines she
+had never seen. He looked at her as though the place where she stood
+were empty. "You don't understand," he said again.
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+The incident left Undine with the baffled feeling of not being able to
+count on any of her old weapons of aggression. In all her struggles for
+authority her sense of the rightfulness of her cause had been measured
+by her power of making people do as she pleased. Raymond's firmness
+shook her faith in her own claims, and a blind desire to wound and
+destroy replaced her usual business-like intentness on gaining her
+end. But her ironies were as ineffectual as her arguments, and his
+imperviousness was the more exasperating because she divined that some
+of the things she said would have hurt him if any one else had said
+them: it was the fact of their coming from her that made them innocuous.
+Even when, at the close of their talk, she had burst out: "If you grudge
+me everything I care about we'd better separate," he had merely answered
+with a shrug: "It's one of the things we don't do--" and the answer had
+been like the slamming of an iron door in her face.
+
+An interval of silent brooding had resulted in a reaction of rebellion.
+She dared not carry out her threat of joining her compatriots at the
+Nouveau Luxe: she had too clear a memory of the results of her former
+revolt. But neither could she submit to her present fate without
+attempting to make Raymond understand his selfish folly. She had failed
+to prove it by argument, but she had an inherited faith in the value of
+practical demonstration. If he could be made to see how easily he could
+give her what she wanted perhaps he might come round to her view.
+
+With this idea in mind, she had gone up to Paris for twenty-four hours,
+on the pretext of finding a new nurse for Paul; and the steps then taken
+had enabled her, on the first occasion, to set her plan in motion. The
+occasion was furnished by Raymond's next trip to Beaune. He went off
+early one morning, leaving word that he should not be back till night;
+and on the afternoon of the same day she stood at her usual post in the
+gallery, scanning the long perspective of the poplar avenue.
+
+She had not stood there long before a black speck at the end of the
+avenue expanded into a motor that was presently throbbing at the
+entrance. Undine, at its approach, turned from the window, and as she
+moved down the gallery her glance rested on the great tapestries, with
+their ineffable minglings of blue and rose, as complacently as though
+they had been mirrors reflecting her own image.
+
+She was still looking at them when the door opened and a servant ushered
+in a small swarthy man who, in spite of his conspicuously London-made
+clothes, had an odd exotic air, as if he had worn rings in his ears or
+left a bale of spices at the door.
+
+He bowed to Undine, cast a rapid eye up and down the room, and then,
+with his back to the windows, stood intensely contemplating the wall
+that faced them.
+
+Undine's heart was beating excitedly. She knew the old Marquise was
+taking her afternoon nap in her room, yet each sound in the silent house
+seemed to be that of her heels on the stairs.
+
+"Ah--" said the visitor.
+
+He had begun to pace slowly down the gallery, keeping his face to the
+tapestries, like an actor playing to the footlights.
+
+"AH--" he said again.
+
+To ease the tension of her nerves Undine began: "They were given by
+Louis the Fifteenth to the Marquis de Chelles who--"
+
+"Their history has been published," the visitor briefly interposed; and
+she coloured at her blunder.
+
+The swarthy stranger, fitting a pair of eye-glasses to a nose that was
+like an instrument of precision, had begun a closer and more detailed
+inspection of the tapestries. He seemed totally unmindful of her
+presence, and his air of lofty indifference was beginning to make
+her wish she had not sent for him. His manner in Paris had been so
+different!
+
+Suddenly he turned and took off the glasses, which sprang back into a
+fold of his clothing like retracted feelers.
+
+"Yes." He stood and looked at her without seeing her. "Very well. I have
+brought down a gentleman."
+
+"A gentleman--?"
+
+"The greatest American collector--he buys only the best. He will not be
+long in Paris, and it was his only chance of coming down."
+
+Undine drew herself up. "I don't understand--I never said the tapestries
+were for sale."
+
+"Precisely. But this gentleman buys only this that are not for sale."
+
+It sounded dazzling and she wavered. "I don't know--you were only to put
+a price on them--"
+
+"Let me see him look at them first; then I'll put a price on them," he
+chuckled; and without waiting for her answer he went to the door and
+opened it. The gesture revealed the fur-coated back of a gentleman
+who stood at the opposite end of the hall examining the bust of a
+seventeenth century field-marshal.
+
+The dealer addressed the back respectfully. "Mr. Moffatt!"
+
+Moffatt, who appeared to be interested in the bust, glanced over his
+shoulder without moving. "See here--"
+
+His glance took in Undine, widened to astonishment and passed into
+apostrophe. "Well, if this ain't the damnedest--!" He came forward and
+took her by both hands. "Why, what on earth are you doing down here?"
+
+She laughed and blushed, in a tremor at the odd turn of the adventure.
+"I live here. Didn't you know?"
+
+"Not a word--never thought of asking the party's name." He turned
+jovially to the bowing dealer. "Say--I told you those tapestries'd
+have to be out and outers to make up for the trip; but now I see I was
+mistaken."
+
+Undine looked at him curiously. His physical appearance was unchanged:
+he was as compact and ruddy as ever, with the same astute eyes under the
+same guileless brow; but his self-confidence had become less aggressive,
+and she had never seen him so gallantly at ease.
+
+"I didn't know you'd become a great collector."
+
+"The greatest! Didn't he tell you so? I thought that was why I was
+allowed to come."
+
+She hesitated. "Of course, you know, the tapestries are not for sale--"
+
+"That so? I thought that was only his dodge to get me down. Well, I'm
+glad they ain't: it'll give us more time to talk."
+
+Watch in hand, the dealer intervened. "If, nevertheless, you would first
+take a glance. Our train--"
+
+"It ain't mine!" Moffatt interrupted; "at least not if there's a later
+one."
+
+Undine's presence of mind had returned. "Of course there is," she said
+gaily. She led the way back into the gallery, half hoping the dealer
+would allege a pressing reason for departure. She was excited and amused
+at Moffatt's unexpected appearance, but humiliated that he should
+suspect her of being in financial straits. She never wanted to see
+Moffatt except when she was happy and triumphant.
+
+The dealer had followed the other two into the gallery, and there was a
+moment's pause while they all stood silently before the tapestries. "By
+George!" Moffatt finally brought out.
+
+"They're historical, you know: the King gave them to Raymond's
+great-great-grandfather. The other day when I was in Paris," Undine
+hurried on, "I asked Mr. Fleischhauer to come down some time and tell us
+what they're worth ... and he seems to have misunderstood ... to have
+thought we meant to sell them." She addressed herself more pointedly to
+the dealer. "I'm sorry you've had the trip for nothing."
+
+Mr. Fleischhauer inclined himself eloquently. "It is not nothing to have
+seen such beauty."
+
+Moffatt gave him a humorous look. "I'd hate to see Mr. Fleischhauer miss
+his train--"
+
+"I shall not miss it: I miss nothing," said Mr. Fleischhauer. He bowed
+to Undine and backed toward the door.
+
+"See here," Moffatt called to him as he reached the threshold, "you let
+the motor take you to the station, and charge up this trip to me."
+
+When the door closed he turned to Undine with a laugh. "Well, this beats
+the band. I thought of course you were living up in Paris."
+
+Again she felt a twinge of embarrassment. "Oh, French people--I mean my
+husband's kind--always spend a part of the year on their estates."
+
+"But not this part, do they? Why, everything's humming up there now.
+I was dining at the Nouveau Luxe last night with the Driscolls and
+Shallums and Mrs. Rolliver, and all your old crowd were there whooping
+things up."
+
+The Driscolls and Shallums and Mrs. Rolliver! How carelessly he reeled
+off their names! One could see from his tone that he was one of them
+and wanted her to know it. And nothing could have given her a completer
+sense of his achievement--of the number of millions he must be worth.
+It must have come about very recently, yet he was already at ease in his
+new honours--he had the metropolitan tone. While she examined him with
+these thoughts in her mind she was aware of his giving her as close a
+scrutiny. "But I suppose you've got your own crowd now," he continued;
+"you always WERE a lap ahead of me." He sent his glance down the lordly
+length of the room. "It's sorter funny to see you in this kind of place;
+but you look it--you always DO look it!"
+
+She laughed. "So do you--I was just thinking it!" Their eyes met. "I
+suppose you must be awfully rich."
+
+He laughed too, holding her eyes. "Oh, out of sight! The Consolidation
+set me on my feet. I own pretty near the whole of Apex. I came down to
+buy these tapestries for my private car."
+
+The familiar accent of hyperbole exhilarated her. "I don't suppose I
+could stop you if you really wanted them!"
+
+"Nobody can stop me now if I want anything."
+
+They were looking at each other with challenge and complicity in their
+eyes. His voice, his look, all the loud confident vigorous things he
+embodied and expressed, set her blood beating with curiosity. "I didn't
+know you and Rolliver were friends," she said.
+
+"Oh JIM--" his accent verged on the protective. "Old Jim's all right.
+He's in Congress now. I've got to have somebody up in Washington." He
+had thrust his hands in his pockets, and with his head thrown back and
+his lips shaped to the familiar noiseless whistle, was looking slowly
+and discerningly about him.
+
+Presently his eyes reverted to her face. "So this is what I helped you
+to get," he said. "I've always meant to run over some day and take a
+look. What is it they call you--a Marquise?"
+
+She paled a little, and then flushed again. "What made you do it?" she
+broke out abruptly. "I've often wondered."
+
+He laughed. "What--lend you a hand? Why, my business instinct, I
+suppose. I saw you were in a tight place that time I ran across you in
+Paris--and I hadn't any grudge against you. Fact is, I've never had
+the time to nurse old scores, and if you neglect 'em they die off like
+gold-fish." He was still composedly regarding her. "It's funny to think
+of your having settled down to this kind of life; I hope you've got what
+you wanted. This is a great place you live in."
+
+"Yes; but I see a little too much of it. We live here most of the year."
+She had meant to give him the illusion of success, but some underlying
+community of instinct drew the confession from her lips.
+
+"That so? Why on earth don't you cut it and come up to Paris?"
+
+"Oh, Raymond's absorbed in the estates--and we haven't got the money.
+This place eats it all up."
+
+"Well, that sounds aristocratic; but ain't it rather out of date? When
+the swells are hard-up nowadays they generally chip off an heirloom."
+He wheeled round again to the tapestries. "There are a good many Paris
+seasons hanging right here on this wall."
+
+"Yes--I know." She tried to check herself, to summon up a glittering
+equivocation; but his face, his voice, the very words he used, were like
+so many hammer-strokes demolishing the unrealities that imprisoned her.
+Here was some one who spoke her language, who knew her meanings, who
+understood instinctively all the deep-seated wants for which her
+acquired vocabulary had no terms; and as she talked she once more seemed
+to herself intelligent, eloquent and interesting.
+
+"Of course it's frightfully lonely down here," she began; and through
+the opening made by the admission the whole flood of her grievances
+poured forth. She tried to let him see that she had not sacrificed
+herself for nothing; she touched on the superiorities of her situation,
+she gilded the circumstances of which she called herself the victim, and
+let titles, offices and attributes shed their utmost lustre on her tale;
+but what she had to boast of seemed small and tinkling compared with the
+evidences of his power.
+
+"Well, it's a downright shame you don't go round more," he kept saying;
+and she felt ashamed of her tame acceptance of her fate.
+
+When she had told her story she asked for his; and for the first time
+she listened to it with interest. He had what he wanted at last. The
+Apex Consolidation scheme, after a long interval of suspense, had
+obtained its charter and shot out huge ramifications. Rolliver had
+"stood in" with him at the critical moment, and between them they had
+"chucked out" old Harmon B. Driscoll bag and baggage, and got the
+whole town in their control. Absorbed in his theme, and forgetting her
+inability to follow him, Moffatt launched out on an epic recital of plot
+and counterplot, and she hung, a new Desdemona, on his conflict with the
+new anthropophagi. It was of no consequence that the details and the
+technicalities escaped her: she knew their meaningless syllables stood
+for success, and what that meant was as clear as day to her. Every Wall
+Street term had its equivalent in the language of Fifth Avenue, and
+while he talked of building up railways she was building up palaces, and
+picturing all the multiple lives he would lead in them. To have things
+had always seemed to her the first essential of existence, and as she
+listened to him the vision of the things he could have unrolled itself
+before her like the long triumph of an Asiatic conqueror.
+
+"And what are you going to do next?" she asked, almost breathlessly,
+when he had ended.
+
+"Oh, there's always a lot to do next. Business never goes to sleep."
+
+"Yes; but I mean besides business."
+
+"Why--everything I can, I guess." He leaned back in his chair with an
+air of placid power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted
+that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge as his vistas had
+become.
+
+She continued to question him, and he began to talk of his growing
+passion for pictures and furniture, and of his desire to form a
+collection which should be a great representative assemblage of
+unmatched specimens. As he spoke she saw his expression change, and his
+eyes grow younger, almost boyish, with a concentrated look in them that
+reminded her of long-forgotten things.
+
+"I mean to have the best, you know; not just to get ahead of the other
+fellows, but because I know it when I see it. I guess that's the only
+good reason," he concluded; and he added, looking at her with a smile:
+"It was what you were always after, wasn't it?"
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+Undine had gained her point, and the entresol of the Hotel de Chelles
+reopened its doors for the season.
+
+Hubert and his wife, in expectation of the birth of an heir, had
+withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which General Arlington had hired for
+them near Compiegne, and Undine was at least spared the sight of their
+bright windows and animated stairway. But she had to take her share of
+the felicitations which the whole far-reaching circle of friends and
+relations distributed to every member of Hubert's family on the approach
+of the happy event. Nor was this the hardest of her trials. Raymond had
+done what she asked--he had stood out against his mother's protests, set
+aside considerations of prudence, and consented to go up to Paris for
+two months; but he had done so on the understanding that during their
+stay they should exercise the most unremitting economy. As dinner-giving
+put the heaviest strain on their budget, all hospitality was suspended;
+and when Undine attempted to invite a few friends informally she was
+warned that she could not do so without causing the gravest offense to
+the many others genealogically entitled to the same attention.
+
+Raymond's insistence on this rule was simply part of an elaborate and
+inveterate system of "relations" (the whole of French social life seemed
+to depend on the exact interpretation of that word), and Undine felt
+the uselessness of struggling against such mysterious inhibitions. He
+reminded her, however, that their inability to receive would give them
+all the more opportunity for going out, and he showed himself more
+socially disposed than in the past. But his concession did not result as
+she had hoped. They were asked out as much as ever, but they were asked
+to big dinners, to impersonal crushes, to the kind of entertainment it
+is a slight to be omitted from but no compliment to be included in.
+Nothing could have been more galling to Undine, and she frankly bewailed
+the fact to Madame de Trezac.
+
+"Of course it's what was sure to come of being mewed up for months and
+months in the country. We're out of everything, and the people who are
+having a good time are simply too busy to remember us. We're only asked
+to the things that are made up from visiting-lists."
+
+Madame de Trezac listened sympathetically, but did not suppress a candid
+answer.
+
+"It's not altogether that, my dear; Raymond's not a man his friends
+forget. It's rather more, if you'll excuse my saying so, the fact of
+your being--you personally--in the wrong set."
+
+"The wrong set? Why, I'm in HIS set--the one that thinks itself too good
+for all the others. That's what you've always told me when I've said it
+bored me."
+
+"Well, that's what I mean--" Madame de Trezac took the plunge. "It's not
+a question of your being bored."
+
+Undine coloured; but she could take the hardest thrusts where her
+personal interest was involved. "You mean that I'M the bore, then?"
+
+"Well, you don't work hard enough--you don't keep up. It's not that they
+don't admire you--your looks, I mean; they think you beautiful; they're
+delighted to bring you out at their big dinners, with the Sevres and the
+plate. But a woman has got to be something more than good-looking to
+have a chance to be intimate with them: she's got to know what's being
+said about things. I watched you the other night at the Duchess's, and
+half the time you hadn't an idea what they were talking about. I haven't
+always, either; but then I have to put up with the big dinners."
+
+Undine winced under the criticism; but she had never lacked insight into
+the cause of her own failures, and she had already had premonitions of
+what Madame de Trezac so bluntly phrased. When Raymond ceased to be
+interested in her conversation she had concluded it was the way of
+husbands; but since then it had been slowly dawning on her that she
+produced the same effect on others. Her entrances were always triumphs;
+but they had no sequel. As soon as people began to talk they ceased to
+see her. Any sense of insufficiency exasperated her, and she had vague
+thoughts of cultivating herself, and went so far as to spend a
+morning in the Louvre and go to one or two lectures by a fashionable
+philosopher. But though she returned from these expeditions charged with
+opinions, their expression did not excite the interest she had hoped.
+Her views, if abundant, were confused, and the more she said the more
+nebulous they seemed to grow. She was disconcerted, moreover, by finding
+that everybody appeared to know about the things she thought she had
+discovered, and her comments clearly produced more bewilderment than
+interest.
+
+Remembering the attention she had attracted on her first appearance in
+Raymond's world she concluded that she had "gone off" or grown dowdy,
+and instead of wasting more time in museums and lecture-halls she
+prolonged her hours at the dress-maker's and gave up the rest of the day
+to the scientific cultivation of her beauty.
+
+"I suppose I've turned into a perfect frump down there in that
+wilderness," she lamented to Madame de Trezac, who replied inexorably:
+"Oh, no, you're as handsome as ever; but people here don't go on looking
+at each other forever as they do in London."
+
+Meanwhile financial cares became more pressing. A dunning letter from
+one of her tradesmen fell into Raymond's hands, and the talk it led to
+ended in his making it clear to her that she must settle her personal
+debts without his aid. All the "scenes" about money which had disturbed
+her past had ended in some mysterious solution of her difficulty.
+Disagreeable as they were, she had always, vulgarly speaking, found they
+paid; but now it was she who was expected to pay. Raymond took his
+stand without ill-temper or apology: he simply argued from inveterate
+precedent. But it was impossible for Undine to understand a social
+organization which did not regard the indulging of woman as its first
+purpose, or to believe that any one taking another view was not moved by
+avarice or malice; and the discussion ended in mutual acrimony.
+
+The morning afterward, Raymond came into her room with a letter in his
+hand.
+
+"Is this your doing?" he asked. His look and voice expressed something
+she had never known before: the disciplined anger of a man trained to
+keep his emotions in fixed channels, but knowing how to fill them to the
+brim.
+
+The letter was from Mr. Fleischhauer, who begged to transmit to the
+Marquis de Chelles an offer for his Boucher tapestries from a client
+prepared to pay the large sum named on condition that it was accepted
+before his approaching departure for America.
+
+"What does it mean?" Raymond continued, as she did not speak.
+
+"How should I know? It's a lot of money," she stammered, shaken out of
+her self-possession. She had not expected so prompt a sequel to the
+dealer's visit, and she was vexed with him for writing to Raymond
+without consulting her. But she recognized Moffatt's high-handed way,
+and her fears faded in the great blaze of the sum he offered.
+
+Her husband was still looking at her. "It was Fleischhauer who brought a
+man down to see the tapestries one day when I was away at Beaune?"
+
+He had known, then--everything was known at Saint Desert!
+
+She wavered a moment and then gave him back his look.
+
+"Yes--it was Fleischhauer; and I sent for him."
+
+"You sent for him?"
+
+He spoke in a voice so veiled and repressed that he seemed to be
+consciously saving it for some premeditated outbreak. Undine felt its
+menace, but the thought of Moffatt sent a flame through her, and the
+words he would have spoken seemed to fly to her lips.
+
+"Why shouldn't I? Something had to be done. We can't go on as we are.
+I've tried my best to economize--I've scraped and scrimped, and gone
+without heaps of things I've always had. I've moped for months and
+months at Saint Desert, and given up sending Paul to school because it
+was too expensive, and asking my friends to dine because we couldn't
+afford it. And you expect me to go on living like this for the rest of
+my life, when all you've got to do is to hold out your hand and have two
+million francs drop into it!"
+
+Her husband stood looking at her coldly and curiously, as though she
+were some alien apparition his eyes had never before beheld.
+
+"Ah, that's your answer--that's all you feel when you lay hands on
+things that are sacred to us!" He stopped a moment, and then let his
+voice break out with the volume she had felt it to be gathering. "And
+you're all alike," he exclaimed, "every one of you. You come among us
+from a country we don't know, and can't imagine, a country you care for
+so little that before you've been a day in ours you've forgotten the
+very house you were born in--if it wasn't torn down before you knew it!
+You come among us speaking our language and not knowing what we mean;
+wanting the things we want, and not knowing why we want them; aping our
+weaknesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridiculing all we care
+about--you come from hotels as big as towns, and from towns as flimsy as
+paper, where the streets haven't had time to be named, and the buildings
+are demolished before they're dry, and the people are as proud of
+changing as we are of holding to what we have--and we're fools enough
+to imagine that because you copy our ways and pick up our slang
+you understand anything about the things that make life decent and
+honourable for us!"
+
+He stopped again, his white face and drawn nostrils giving him so much
+the look of an extremely distinguished actor in a fine part that, in
+spite of the vehemence of his emotion, his silence might have been the
+deliberate pause for a replique. Undine kept him waiting long enough to
+give the effect of having lost her cue--then she brought out, with a
+little soft stare of incredulity: "Do you mean to say you're going to
+refuse such an offer?"
+
+"Ah--!" He turned back from the door, and picking up the letter that lay
+on the table between them, tore it in pieces and tossed the pieces on
+the floor. "That's how I refuse it!"
+
+The violence of his tone and gesture made her feel as though the
+fluttering strips were so many lashes laid across her face, and a rage
+that was half fear possessed her.
+
+"How dare you speak to me like that? Nobody's ever dared to before. Is
+talking to a woman in that way one of the things you call decent and
+honourable? Now that I know what you feel about me I don't want to stay
+in your house another day. And I don't mean to--I mean to walk out of it
+this very hour!"
+
+For a moment they stood face to face, the depths of their mutual
+incomprehension at last bared to each other's angry eyes; then Raymond,
+his glance travelling past her, pointed to the fragments of paper on the
+floor.
+
+"If you're capable of that you're capable of anything!" he said as he
+went out of the room.
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+She watched him go in a kind of stupour, knowing that when they next met
+he would be as courteous and self-possessed as if nothing had happened,
+but that everything would nevertheless go on in the same way--in HIS
+way--and that there was no more hope of shaking his resolve or altering
+his point of view than there would have been of transporting the
+deep-rooted masonry of Saint Desert by means of the wheeled supports on
+which Apex architecture performed its easy transits.
+
+One of her childish rages possessed her, sweeping away every feeling
+save the primitive impulse to hurt and destroy; but search as she would
+she could not find a crack in the strong armour of her husband's habits
+and prejudices. For a long time she continued to sit where he had left
+her, staring at the portraits on the walls as though they had joined
+hands to imprison her. Hitherto she had almost always felt herself a
+match for circumstances, but now the very dead were leagued to defeat
+her: people she had never seen and whose names she couldn't even
+remember seemed to be plotting and contriving against her under the
+escutcheoned grave-stones of Saint Desert.
+
+Her eyes turned to the old warm-toned furniture beneath the pictures,
+and to her own idle image in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Even in
+that one small room there were enough things of price to buy a release
+from her most pressing cares; and the great house, in which the room was
+a mere cell, and the other greater house in Burgundy, held treasures to
+deplete even such a purse as Moffatt's. She liked to see such things
+about her--without any real sense of their meaning she felt them to be
+the appropriate setting of a pretty woman, to embody something of the
+rareness and distinction she had always considered she possessed; and
+she reflected that if she had still been Moffatt's wife he would have
+given her just such a setting, and the power to live in it as became
+her.
+
+The thought sent her memory flying back to things she had turned it from
+for years. For the first time since their far-off weeks together she let
+herself relive the brief adventure. She had been drawn to Elmer Moffatt
+from the first--from the day when Ben Frusk, Indiana's brother, had
+brought him to a church picnic at Mulvey's Grove, and he had taken
+instant possession of Undine, sitting in the big "stage" beside her on
+the "ride" to the grove, supplanting Millard Binch (to whom she was
+still, though intermittently and incompletely, engaged), swinging her
+between the trees, rowing her on the lake, catching and kissing her
+in "forfeits," awarding her the first prize in the Beauty Show he
+hilariously organized and gallantly carried out, and finally (no one
+knew how) contriving to borrow a buggy and a fast colt from old Mulvey,
+and driving off with her at a two-forty gait while Millard and the
+others took their dust in the crawling stage.
+
+No one in Apex knew where young Moffatt had come from, and he offered
+no information on the subject. He simply appeared one day behind the
+counter in Luckaback's Dollar Shoe-store, drifted thence to the office
+of Semple and Binch, the coal-merchants, reappeared as the stenographer
+of the Police Court, and finally edged his way into the power-house of
+the Apex Water-Works. He boarded with old Mrs. Flynn, down in North
+Fifth Street, on the edge of the red-light slum, he never went to church
+or attended lectures, or showed any desire to improve or refine himself;
+but he managed to get himself invited to all the picnics and lodge
+sociables, and at a supper of the Phi Upsilon Society, to which he had
+contrived to affiliate himself, he made the best speech that had been
+heard there since young Jim Rolliver's first flights. The brothers of
+Undine's friends all pronounced him "great," though he had fits of
+uncouthness that made the young women slower in admitting him to favour.
+But at the Mulvey's Grove picnic he suddenly seemed to dominate them
+all, and Undine, as she drove away with him, tasted the public triumph
+which was necessary to her personal enjoyment.
+
+After that he became a leading figure in the youthful world of Apex, and
+no one was surprised when the Sons of Jonadab, (the local Temperance
+Society) invited him to deliver their Fourth of July oration. The
+ceremony took place, as usual, in the Baptist church, and Undine, all
+in white, with a red rose in her breast, sat just beneath the platform,
+with Indiana jealously glaring at her from a less privileged seat, and
+poor Millard's long neck craning over the row of prominent citizens
+behind the orator.
+
+Elmer Moffatt had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects
+of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the
+Blue and the Gray, convulsing them by a new version of Washington and
+the Cherry Tree (in which the infant patriot was depicted as having
+cut down the tree to check the deleterious spread of cherry bounce),
+dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations (he confessed
+to Undine that he had sat up half the night over Bartlett), and winding
+up with a peroration that drew tears from the Grand Army pensioners in
+the front row and caused the minister's wife to say that many a sermon
+from that platform had been less uplifting.
+
+An ice-cream supper always followed the "exercises," and as repairs were
+being made in the church basement, which was the usual scene of the
+festivity, the minister had offered the use of his house. The long table
+ran through the doorway between parlour and study, and another was set
+in the passage outside, with one end under the stairs. The stair-rail
+was wreathed in fire-weed and early golden-rod, and Temperance texts in
+smilax decked the walls. When the first course had been despatched the
+young ladies, gallantly seconded by the younger of the "Sons," helped to
+ladle out and carry in the ice-cream, which stood in great pails on the
+larder floor, and to replenish the jugs of lemonade and coffee. Elmer
+Moffatt was indefatigable in performing these services, and when the
+minister's wife pressed him to sit down and take a mouthful himself he
+modestly declined the place reserved for him among the dignitaries of
+the evening, and withdrew with a few chosen spirits to the dim table-end
+beneath the stairs. Explosions of hilarity came from this corner with
+increasing frequency, and now and then tumultuous rappings and howls of
+"Song! Song!" followed by adjurations to "Cough it up" and "Let her go,"
+drowned the conversational efforts at the other table.
+
+At length the noise subsided, and the group was ceasing to attract
+attention when, toward the end of the evening, the upper table, drooping
+under the lengthy elucubrations of the minister and the President of the
+Temperance Society, called on the orator of the day for a few remarks.
+There was an interval of scuffling and laughter beneath the stairs, and
+then the minister's lifted hand enjoined silence and Elmer Moffatt got
+to his feet.
+
+"Step out where the ladies can hear you better, Mr. Moffatt!" the
+minister called. Moffatt did so, steadying himself against the table and
+twisting his head about as if his collar had grown too tight. But if his
+bearing was vacillating his smile was unabashed, and there was no lack
+of confidence in the glance he threw at Undine Spragg as he began:
+"Ladies and Gentlemen, if there's one thing I like better than another
+about getting drunk--and I like most everything about it except the next
+morning--it's the opportunity you've given me of doing it right here, in
+the presence of this Society, which, as I gather from its literature,
+knows more about the subject than anybody else. Ladies and
+Gentlemen"--he straightened himself, and the table-cloth slid toward
+him--"ever since you honoured me with an invitation to address you from
+the temperance platform I've been assiduously studying that literature;
+and I've gathered from your own evidence--what I'd strongly suspected
+before--that all your converted drunkards had a hell of a good time
+before you got at 'em, and that... and that a good many of 'em have gone
+on having it since..."
+
+At this point he broke off, swept the audience with his confident smile,
+and then, collapsing, tried to sit down on a chair that didn't happen to
+be there, and disappeared among his agitated supporters.
+
+There was a night-mare moment during which Undine, through the doorway,
+saw Ben Frusk and the others close about the fallen orator to the crash
+of crockery and tumbling chairs; then some one jumped up and shut the
+parlour door, and a long-necked Sunday school teacher, who had been
+nervously waiting his chance, and had almost given it up, rose from his
+feet and recited High Tide at Gettysburg amid hysterical applause.
+
+The scandal was considerable, but Moffatt, though he vanished from the
+social horizon, managed to keep his place in the power-house till he
+went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a
+satisfactory reason for his absence. After that he drifted from one job
+to another, now extolled for his "smartness" and business capacity, now
+dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always
+full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of
+any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions
+interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable;
+sometimes he wore out their patience or was thought to be a dangerous
+dreamer. Whenever he found there was no hope of his ideas being adopted
+he lost interest in his work, came late and left early, or disappeared
+for two or three days at a time without troubling himself to account for
+his absences. At last even those who had been cynical enough to smile
+over his disgrace at the temperance supper began to speak of him as a
+hopeless failure, and he lost the support of the feminine community when
+one Sunday morning, just as the Baptist and Methodist churches were
+releasing their congregations, he walked up Eubaw Avenue with a young
+woman less known to those sacred edifices than to the saloons of North
+Fifth Street.
+
+Undine's estimate of people had always been based on their apparent
+power of getting what they wanted--provided it came under the category
+of things she understood wanting. Success was beauty and romance to her;
+yet it was at the moment when Elmer Moffatt's failure was most complete
+and flagrant that she suddenly felt the extent of his power. After the
+Eubaw Avenue scandal he had been asked not to return to the surveyor's
+office to which Ben Frusk had managed to get him admitted; and on the
+day of his dismissal he met Undine in Main Street, at the shopping hour,
+and, sauntering up cheerfully, invited her to take a walk with him. She
+was about to refuse when she saw Millard Binch's mother looking at her
+disapprovingly from the opposite street-corner.
+
+"Oh, well, I will--" she said; and they walked the length of Main Street
+and out to the immature park in which it ended. She was in a mood of
+aimless discontent and unrest, tired of her engagement to Millard Binch,
+disappointed with Moffatt, half-ashamed of being seen with him, and yet
+not sorry to have it known that she was independent enough to choose her
+companions without regard to the Apex verdict.
+
+"Well, I suppose you know I'm down and out," he began; and she responded
+virtuously: "You must have wanted to be, or you wouldn't have behaved
+the way you did last Sunday."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" he sneered. "What do I care, in a one-horse place like
+this? If it hadn't been for you I'd have got a move on long ago."
+
+She did not remember afterward what else he said: she recalled only the
+expression of a great sweeping scorn of Apex, into which her own disdain
+of it was absorbed like a drop in the sea, and the affirmation of a
+soaring self-confidence that seemed to lift her on wings. All her own
+attempts to get what she wanted had come to nothing; but she had always
+attributed her lack of success to the fact that she had had no one to
+second her. It was strange that Elmer Moffatt, a shiftless out-cast from
+even the small world she despised, should give her, in the very moment
+of his downfall, the sense of being able to succeed where she had
+failed. It was a feeling she never had in his absence, but that his
+nearness always instantly revived; and he seemed nearer to her now than
+he had ever been. They wandered on to the edge of the vague park, and
+sat down on a bench behind the empty band-stand.
+
+"I went with that girl on purpose, and you know it," he broke out
+abruptly. "It makes me too damned sick to see Millard Binch going round
+looking as if he'd patented you."
+
+"You've got no right--" she interrupted; and suddenly she was in his
+arms, and feeling that no one had ever kissed her before....
+
+The week that followed was a big bright blur--the wildest vividest
+moment of her life. And it was only eight days later that they were in
+the train together, Apex and all her plans and promises behind them, and
+a bigger and brighter blur ahead, into which they were plunging as the
+"Limited" plunged into the sunset....
+
+Undine stood up, looking about her with vague eyes, as if she had come
+back from a long distance. Elmer Moffatt was still in Paris--he was in
+reach, within telephone-call. She stood hesitating a moment; then
+she went into her dressing-room, and turning over the pages of the
+telephone book, looked out the number of the Nouveau Luxe....
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+Undine had been right in supposing that her husband would expect
+their life to go on as before. There was no appreciable change in the
+situation save that he was more often absent-finding abundant reasons,
+agricultural and political, for frequent trips to Saint Desert--and
+that, when in Paris, he no longer showed any curiosity concerning her
+occupations and engagements. They lived as much apart is if their
+cramped domicile had been a palace; and when Undine--as she now
+frequently did--joined the Shallums or Rollivers for a dinner at the
+Nouveau Luxe, or a party at a petit theatre, she was not put to the
+trouble of prevaricating.
+
+Her first impulse, after her scene with Raymond, had been to ring up
+Indiana Rolliver and invite herself to dine. It chanced that Indiana
+(who was now in full social progress, and had "run over" for a few weeks
+to get her dresses for Newport) had organized for the same evening a
+showy cosmopolitan banquet in which she was enchanted to include the
+Marquise de Chelles; and Undine, as she had hoped, found Elmer Moffatt
+of the party. When she drove up to the Nouveau Luxe she had not fixed
+on any plan of action; but once she had crossed its magic threshold her
+energies revived like plants in water. At last she was in her native air
+again, among associations she shared and conventions she understood; and
+all her self-confidence returned as the familiar accents uttered the
+accustomed things.
+
+Save for an occasional perfunctory call, she had hitherto made no effort
+to see her compatriots, and she noticed that Mrs. Jim Driscoll and
+Bertha Shallum received her with a touch of constraint; but it vanished
+when they remarked the cordiality of Moffatt's greeting. Her seat was
+at his side, and her old sense of triumph returned as she perceived the
+importance his notice conferred, not only in the eyes of her own party
+but of the other diners. Moffatt was evidently a notable figure in all
+the worlds represented about the crowded tables, and Undine saw that
+many people who seemed personally unacquainted with him were recognizing
+and pointing him out. She was conscious of receiving a large share of
+the attention he attracted, and, bathed again in the bright air of
+publicity, she remembered the evening when Raymond de Chelles' first
+admiring glance had given her the same sense of triumph.
+
+This inopportune memory did not trouble her: she was almost grateful to
+Raymond for giving her the touch of superiority her compatriots clearly
+felt in her. It was not merely her title and her "situation," but the
+experiences she had gained through them, that gave her this advantage
+over the loud vague company. She had learned things they did not guess:
+shades of conduct, turns of speech, tricks of attitude--and easy and
+free and enviable as she thought them, she would not for the world have
+been back among them at the cost of knowing no more than they.
+
+Moffatt made no allusion to his visit to Saint Desert; but when the
+party had re-grouped itself about coffee and liqueurs on the terrace, he
+bent over to ask confidentially: "What about my tapestries?"
+
+She replied in the same tone: "You oughtn't to have let Fleischhauer
+write that letter. My husband's furious."
+
+He seemed honestly surprised. "Why? Didn't I offer him enough?"
+
+"He's furious that any one should offer anything. I thought when he
+found out what they were worth he might be tempted; but he'd rather see
+me starve than part with one of his grand-father's snuff-boxes."
+
+"Well, he knows now what the tapestries are worth. I offered more than
+Fleischhauer advised."
+
+"Yes; but you were in too much of a hurry."
+
+"I've got to be; I'm going back next week."
+
+She felt her eyes cloud with disappointment. "Oh, why do you? I hoped
+you might stay on."
+
+They looked at each other uncertainly a moment; then he dropped his
+voice to say: "Even if I did, I probably shouldn't see anything of you."
+
+"Why not? Why won't you come and see me? I've always wanted to be
+friends."
+
+He came the next day and found in her drawing-room two ladies whom she
+introduced as her sisters-in-law. The ladies lingered on for a long
+time, sipping their tea stiffly and exchanging low-voiced remarks while
+Undine talked with Moffatt; and when they left, with small sidelong bows
+in his direction.
+
+Undine exclaimed: "Now you see how they all watch me!"
+
+She began to go into the details of her married life, drawing on the
+experiences of the first months for instances that scarcely applied to
+her present liberated state. She could thus, without great exaggeration,
+picture herself as entrapped into a bondage hardly conceivable to
+Moffatt, and she saw him redden with excitement as he listened. "I call
+it darned low--darned low--" he broke in at intervals.
+
+"Of course I go round more now," she concluded. "I mean to see my
+friends--I don't care what he says."
+
+"What CAN he say?"
+
+"Oh, he despises Americans--they all do."
+
+"Well, I guess we can still sit up and take nourishment."
+
+They laughed and slipped back to talking of earlier things. She urged
+him to put off his sailing--there were so many things they might do
+together: sight-seeing and excursions--and she could perhaps show him
+some of the private collections he hadn't seen, the ones it was hard to
+get admitted to. This instantly roused his attention, and after naming
+one or two collections he had already seen she hit on one he had found
+inaccessible and was particularly anxious to visit. "There's an Ingres
+there that's one of the things I came over to have a look at; but I was
+told there was no use trying."
+
+"Oh, I can easily manage it: the Duke's Raymond's uncle." It gave her a
+peculiar satisfaction to say it: she felt as though she were taking a
+surreptitious revenge on her husband. "But he's down in the country this
+week," she continued, "and no one--not even the family--is allowed to
+see the pictures when he's away. Of course his Ingres are the finest in
+France."
+
+She ran it off glibly, though a year ago she had never heard of the
+painter, and did not, even now, remember whether he was an Old Master or
+one of the very new ones whose names one hadn't had time to learn.
+
+Moffatt put off sailing, saw the Duke's Ingres under her guidance, and
+accompanied her to various other private galleries inaccessible
+to strangers. She had lived in almost total ignorance of such
+opportunities, but now that she could use them to advantage she showed a
+surprising quickness in picking up "tips," ferreting out rare things and
+getting a sight of hidden treasures. She even acquired as much of the
+jargon as a pretty woman needs to produce the impression of being
+well-informed; and Moffatt's sailing was more than once postponed.
+
+They saw each other almost daily, for she continued to come and go as
+she pleased, and Raymond showed neither surprise nor disapproval. When
+they were asked to family dinners she usually excused herself at the
+last moment on the plea of a headache and, calling up Indiana or Bertha
+Shallum, improvised a little party at the Nouveau Luxe; and on other
+occasions she accepted such invitations as she chose, without mentioning
+to her husband where she was going.
+
+In this world of lavish pleasures she lost what little prudence the
+discipline of Saint Desert had inculcated. She could never be with
+people who had all the things she envied without being hypnotized into
+the belief that she had only to put her hand out to obtain them, and all
+the unassuaged rancours and hungers of her early days in West End Avenue
+came back with increased acuity. She knew her wants so much better now,
+and was so much more worthy of the things she wanted!
+
+She had given up hoping that her father might make another hit in Wall
+Street. Mrs. Spragg's letters gave the impression that the days of big
+strokes were over for her husband, that he had gone down in the conflict
+with forces beyond his measure. If he had remained in Apex the tide of
+its new prosperity might have carried him to wealth; but New York's huge
+waves of success had submerged instead of floating him, and Rolliver's
+enmity was a hand perpetually stretched out to strike him lower. At
+most, Mr. Spragg's tenacity would keep him at the level he now held, and
+though he and his wife had still further simplified their way of
+living Undine understood that their self-denial would not increase
+her opportunities. She felt no compunction in continuing to accept an
+undiminished allowance: it was the hereditary habit of the parent animal
+to despoil himself for his progeny. But this conviction did not seem
+incompatible with a sentimental pity for her parents. Aside from all
+interested motives, she wished for their own sakes that they were better
+off. Their personal requirements were pathetically limited, but renewed
+prosperity would at least have procured them the happiness of giving her
+what she wanted.
+
+Moffatt lingered on; but he began to speak more definitely of sailing,
+and Undine foresaw the day when, strong as her attraction was, stronger
+influences would snap it like a thread. She knew she interested and
+amused him, and that it flattered his vanity to be seen with her, and to
+hear that rumour coupled their names; but he gave her, more than any
+one she had ever known, the sense of being detached from his life, in
+control of it, and able, without weakness or uncertainty, to choose
+which of its calls he should obey. If the call were that of business--of
+any of the great perilous affairs he handled like a snake-charmer
+spinning the deadly reptiles about his head--she knew she would drop
+from his life like a loosened leaf.
+
+These anxieties sharpened the intensity of her enjoyment, and made the
+contrast keener between her crowded sparkling hours and the vacant
+months at Saint Desert. Little as she understood of the qualities that
+made Moffatt what he was, the results were of the kind most palpable to
+her. He used life exactly as she would have used it in his place. Some
+of his enjoyments were beyond her range, but even these appealed to her
+because of the money that was required to gratify them. When she took
+him to see some inaccessible picture, or went with him to inspect the
+treasures of a famous dealer, she saw that the things he looked at moved
+him in a way she could not understand, and that the actual touching of
+rare textures--bronze or marble, or velvets flushed with the bloom of
+age--gave him sensations like those her own beauty had once roused in
+him. But the next moment he was laughing over some commonplace joke, or
+absorbed in a long cipher cable handed to him as they re-entered the
+Nouveau Luxe for tea, and his aesthetic emotions had been thrust back
+into their own compartment of the great steel strong-box of his mind.
+
+Her new life went on without comment or interference from her husband,
+and she saw that he had accepted their altered relation, and intended
+merely to keep up an external semblance of harmony. To that semblance
+she knew he attached intense importance: it was an article of his
+complicated social creed that a man of his class should appear to live
+on good terms with his wife. For different reasons it was scarcely
+less important to Undine: she had no wish to affront again the social
+reprobation that had so nearly wrecked her. But she could not keep up
+the life she was leading without more money, a great deal more money;
+and the thought of contracting her expenditure was no longer tolerable.
+
+One afternoon, several weeks later, she came in to find a tradesman's
+representative waiting with a bill. There was a noisy scene in the
+anteroom before the man threateningly withdrew--a scene witnessed by the
+servants, and overheard by her mother-in-law, whom she found seated in
+the drawing-room when she entered. The old Marquise's visits to her
+daughter-in-law were made at long intervals but with ritual regularity;
+she called every other Friday at five, and Undine had forgotten that she
+was due that day. This did not make for greater cordiality between them,
+and the altercation in the anteroom had been too loud for concealment.
+The Marquise was on her feet when her daughter-in-law came in, and
+instantly said with lowered eyes: "It would perhaps be best for me to
+go."
+
+"Oh, I don't care. You're welcome to tell Raymond you've heard me
+insulted because I'm too poor to pay my bills--he knows it well enough
+already!" The words broke from Undine unguardedly, but once spoken they
+nourished her defiance.
+
+"I'm sure my son has frequently recommended greater prudence--" the
+Marquise murmured.
+
+"Yes! It's a pity he didn't recommend it to your other son instead! All
+the money I was entitled to has gone to pay Hubert's debts."
+
+"Raymond has told me that there are certain things you fail to
+understand--I have no wish whatever to discuss them." The Marquise had
+gone toward the door; with her hand on it she paused to add: "I shall
+say nothing whatever of what has happened."
+
+Her icy magnanimity added the last touch to Undine's wrath. They knew
+her extremity, one and all, and it did not move them. At most, they
+would join in concealing it like a blot on their honour. And the menace
+grew and mounted, and not a hand was stretched to help her....
+
+Hardly a half-hour earlier Moffatt, with whom she had been visiting a
+"private view," had sent her home in his motor with the excuse that he
+must hurry back to the Nouveau Luxe to meet his stenographer and sign a
+batch of letters for the New York mail. It was therefore probable that
+he was still at home--that she should find him if she hastened there
+at once. An overwhelming desire to cry out her wrath and wretchedness
+brought her to her feet and sent her down to hail a passing cab. As it
+whirled her through the bright streets powdered with amber sunlight her
+brain throbbed with confused intentions. She did not think of Moffatt
+as a power she could use, but simply as some one who knew her and
+understood her grievance. It was essential to her at that moment to be
+told that she was right and that every one opposed to her was wrong.
+
+At the hotel she asked his number and was carried up in the lift. On the
+landing she paused a moment, disconcerted--it had occurred to her that
+he might not be alone. But she walked on quickly, found the number and
+knocked.... Moffatt opened the door, and she glanced beyond him and saw
+that the big bright sitting-room was empty.
+
+"Hullo!" he exclaimed, surprised; and as he stood aside to let her enter
+she saw him draw out his watch and glance at it surreptitiously. He was
+expecting someone, or he had an engagement elsewhere--something claimed
+him from which she was excluded. The thought flushed her with sudden
+resolution. She knew now what she had come for--to keep him from every
+one else, to keep him for herself alone.
+
+"Don't send me away!" she said, and laid her hand on his beseechingly.
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+She advanced into the room and slowly looked about her. The big vulgar
+writing-table wreathed in bronze was heaped with letters and papers.
+Among them stood a lapis bowl in a Renaissance mounting of enamel and
+a vase of Phenician glass that was like a bit of rainbow caught in
+cobwebs. On a table against the window a little Greek marble lifted its
+pure lines. On every side some rare and sensitive object seemed to be
+shrinking back from the false colours and crude contours of the hotel
+furniture. There were no books in the room, but the florid console under
+the mirror was stacked with old numbers of Town Talk and the New York
+Radiator. Undine recalled the dingy hall-room that Moffatt had lodged in
+at Mrs. Flynn's, over Hober's livery stable, and her heart beat at the
+signs of his altered state. When her eyes came back to him their lids
+were moist.
+
+"Don't send me away," she repeated. He looked at her and smiled. "What
+is it? What's the matter?"
+
+"I don't know--but I had to come. To-day, when you spoke again of
+sailing, I felt as if I couldn't stand it." She lifted her eyes and
+looked in his profoundly.
+
+He reddened a little under her gaze, but she could detect no softening
+or confusion in the shrewd steady glance he gave her back.
+
+"Things going wrong again--is that the trouble?" he merely asked with a
+comforting inflexion.
+
+"They always are wrong; it's all been an awful mistake. But I shouldn't
+care if you were here and I could see you sometimes. You're so STRONG:
+that's what I feel about you, Elmer. I was the only one to feel it that
+time they all turned against you out at Apex.... Do you remember the
+afternoon I met you down on Main Street, and we walked out together to
+the Park? I knew then that you were stronger than any of them...."
+
+She had never spoken more sincerely. For the moment all thought of
+self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt again, as she had felt
+that day, the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his.
+Something in her voice must have attested it, for she saw a change in
+his face.
+
+"You're not the beauty you were," he said irrelevantly; "but you're a
+lot more fetching."
+
+The oddly qualified praise made her laugh with mingled pleasure and
+annoyance.
+
+"I suppose I must be dreadfully changed--"
+
+"You're all right!--But I've got to go back home," he broke off
+abruptly. "I've put it off too long."
+
+She paled and looked away, helpless in her sudden disappointment. "I
+knew you'd say that.... And I shall just be left here...." She sat down
+on the sofa near which they had been standing, and two tears formed on
+her lashes and fell.
+
+Moffatt sat down beside her, and both were silent. She had never seen
+him at a loss before. She made no attempt to draw nearer, or to use any
+of the arts of cajolery; but presently she said, without rising: "I
+saw you look at your watch when I came in. I suppose somebody else is
+waiting for you."
+
+"It don't matter."
+
+"Some other woman?"
+
+"It don't matter."
+
+"I've wondered so often--but of course I've got no right to ask." She
+stood up slowly, understanding that he meant to let her go.
+
+"Just tell me one thing--did you never miss me?"
+
+"Oh, damnably!" he brought out with sudden bitterness.
+
+She came nearer, sinking her voice to a low whisper. "It's the only time
+I ever really cared--all through!"
+
+He had risen too, and they stood intensely gazing at each other.
+Moffatt's face was fixed and grave, as she had seen it in hours she now
+found herself rapidly reliving.
+
+"I believe you DID," he said.
+
+"Oh, Elmer--if I'd known--if I'd only known!"
+
+He made no answer, and she turned away, touching with an unconscious
+hand the edge of the lapis bowl among his papers.
+
+"Elmer, if you're going away it can't do any harm to tell me--is there
+any one else?"
+
+He gave a laugh that seemed to shake him free. "In that kind of way?
+Lord, no! Too busy!"
+
+She came close again and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Then why not--why
+shouldn't we--?" She leaned her head back so that her gaze slanted up
+through her wet lashes. "I can do as I please--my husband does. They
+think so differently about marriage over here: it's just a business
+contract. As long as a woman doesn't make a show of herself no one
+cares." She put her other hand up, so that she held him facing her.
+"I've always felt, all through everything, that I belonged to you."
+
+Moffatt left her hands on his shoulders, but did not lift his own to
+clasp them. For a moment she thought she had mistaken him, and a leaden
+sense of shame descended on her. Then he asked: "You say your husband
+goes with other women?"
+
+Lili Estradina's taunt flashed through her and she seized on it. "People
+have told me so--his own relations have. I've never stooped to spy on
+him...."
+
+"And the women in your set--I suppose it's taken for granted they all do
+the same?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Everything fixed up for them, same as it is for the husbands, eh?
+Nobody meddles or makes trouble if you know the ropes?"
+
+"No, nobody ... it's all quite easy...." She stopped, her faint
+smile checked, as his backward movement made her hands drop from his
+shoulders.
+
+"And that's what you're proposing to me? That you and I should do like
+the rest of 'em?" His face had lost its comic roundness and grown harsh
+and dark, as it had when her father had taken her away from him at
+Opake. He turned on his heel, walked the length of the room and halted
+with his back to her in the embrasure of the window. There he paused
+a full minute, his hands in his pockets, staring out at the perpetual
+interweaving of motors in the luminous setting of the square. Then he
+turned and spoke from where he stood.
+
+"Look here. Undine, if I'm to have you again I don't want to have you
+that way. That time out in Apex, when everybody in the place was against
+me, and I was down and out, you stood up to them and stuck by me.
+Remember that walk down Main Street? Don't I!--and the way the people
+glared and hurried by; and how you kept on alongside of me, talking and
+laughing, and looking your Sunday best. When Abner Spragg came out to
+Opake after us and pulled you back I was pretty sore at your deserting;
+but I came to see it was natural enough. You were only a spoilt girl,
+used to having everything you wanted; and I couldn't give you a thing
+then, and the folks you'd been taught to believe in all told you I never
+would. Well, I did look like a back number, and no blame to you for
+thinking so. I used to say it to myself over and over again, laying
+awake nights and totting up my mistakes ... and then there were days
+when the wind set another way, and I knew I'd pull it off yet, and
+I thought you might have held on...." He stopped, his head a little
+lowered, his concentrated gaze on her flushed face. "Well, anyhow," he
+broke out, "you were my wife once, and you were my wife first--and if
+you want to come back you've got to come that way: not slink through the
+back way when there's no one watching, but walk in by the front door,
+with your head up, and your Main Street look."
+
+Since the days when he had poured out to her his great fortune-building
+projects she had never heard him make so long a speech; and her heart,
+as she listened, beat with a new joy and terror. It seemed to her that
+the great moment of her life had come at last--the moment all her minor
+failures and successes had been building up with blind indefatigable
+hands.
+
+"Elmer--Elmer--" she sobbed out.
+
+She expected to find herself in his arms, shut in and shielded from all
+her troubles; but he stood his ground across the room, immovable.
+
+"Is it yes?"
+
+She faltered the word after him: "Yes--?"
+
+"Are you going to marry me?"
+
+She stared, bewildered. "Why, Elmer--marry you? You forget!"
+
+"Forget what? That you don't want to give up what you've got?"
+
+"How can I? Such things are not done out here. Why, I'm a Catholic; and
+the Catholic Church--" She broke off, reading the end in his face. "But
+later, perhaps ... things might change. Oh, Elmer, if only you'd stay
+over here and let me see you sometimes!"
+
+"Yes--the way your friends see each other. We're differently made out in
+Apex. When I want that sort of thing I go down to North Fifth Street for
+it."
+
+She paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it. What he
+asked was impossible--and she gloried in his asking it. Feeling her
+power, she tried to temporize. "At least if you stayed we could be
+friends--I shouldn't feel so terribly alone."
+
+He laughed impatiently. "Don't talk magazine stuff to me, Undine Spragg.
+I guess we want each other the same way. Only our ideas are different.
+You've got all muddled, living out here among a lot of loafers who call
+it a career to run round after every petticoat. I've got my job out at
+home, and I belong where my job is."
+
+"Are you going to be tied to business all your life?" Her smile was
+faintly depreciatory.
+
+"I guess business is tied to ME: Wall Street acts as if it couldn't get
+along without me." He gave his shoulders a shake and moved a few steps
+nearer. "See here, Undine--you're the one that don't understand. If I
+was to sell out to-morrow, and spend the rest of my life reading art
+magazines in a pink villa, I wouldn't do what you're asking me. And
+I've about as much idea of dropping business as you have of taking to
+district nursing. There are things a man doesn't do. I understand
+why your husband won't sell those tapestries--till he's got to. His
+ancestors are HIS business: Wall Street's mine."
+
+He paused, and they silently faced each other. Undine made no attempt
+to approach him: she understood that if he yielded it would be only to
+recover his advantage and deepen her feeling of defeat. She put out her
+hand and took up the sunshade she had dropped on entering. "I suppose
+it's good-bye then," she said.
+
+"You haven't got the nerve?"
+
+"The nerve for what?"
+
+"To come where you belong: with me."
+
+She laughed a little and then sighed. She wished he would come nearer,
+or look at her differently: she felt, under his cool eye, no more
+compelling than a woman of wax in a show-case.
+
+"How could I get a divorce? With my religion--"
+
+"Why, you were born a Baptist, weren't you? That's where you used to
+attend church when I waited round the corner, Sunday mornings, with one
+of old Hober's buggies." They both laughed, and he went on: "If you'll
+come along home with me I'll see you get your divorce all right. Who
+cares what they do over here? You're an American, ain't you? What you
+want is the home-made article."
+
+She listened, discouraged yet fascinated by his sturdy inaccessibility
+to all her arguments and objections. He knew what he wanted, saw his
+road before him, and acknowledged no obstacles. Her defense was drawn
+from reasons he did not understand, or based on difficulties that did
+not exist for him; and gradually she felt herself yielding to the steady
+pressure of his will. Yet the reasons he brushed away came back with
+redoubled tenacity whenever he paused long enough for her to picture the
+consequences of what he exacted.
+
+"You don't know--you don't understand--" she kept repeating; but she
+knew that his ignorance was part of his terrible power, and that it was
+hopeless to try to make him feel the value of what he was asking her to
+give up.
+
+"See here, Undine," he said slowly, as if he measured her resistance
+though he couldn't fathom it, "I guess it had better be yes or no right
+here. It ain't going to do either of us any good to drag this thing out.
+If you want to come back to me, come--if you don't, we'll shake hands on
+it now. I'm due in Apex for a directors' meeting on the twentieth, and
+as it is I'll have to cable for a special to get me out there. No, no,
+don't cry--it ain't that kind of a story ... but I'll have a deck suite
+for you on the Semantic if you'll sail with me the day after to-morrow."
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+In the great high-ceilinged library of a private hotel overlooking one
+of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out
+into the twilight.
+
+The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and Paul,
+looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron
+gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive,
+and bands of spring flowers set in turf. He was now a big boy of nearly
+nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home
+that day for the Easter holidays. He had not been back since Christmas,
+and it was the first time he had seen the new hotel which his
+step-father had bought, and in which Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt had hastily
+established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a
+flying trip to America. They were always coming and going; during the
+two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to
+New York and back, or rushing down to Rome or up to the Engadine: Paul
+never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they
+were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any
+method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that
+of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his
+mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: "Oh yes--I got a
+telegram last week."
+
+He had been almost sure--as sure as he ever was of anything--that he
+should find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn't
+had time to telegraph) apprised him that she and Mr. Moffatt had run
+down to Deauville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the
+summer; they were taking an early train back, and would be at home for
+dinner--were in fact having a lot of people to dine.
+
+It was just what he ought to have expected, and had been used to ever
+since he could remember; and generally he didn't much mind, especially
+since his mother had become Mrs. Moffatt, and the father he had been
+most used to, and liked best, had abruptly disappeared from his life.
+But the new hotel was big and strange, and his own room, in which there
+was not a toy or a book, or one of his dear battered relics (none of
+the new servants--they were always new--could find his things, or think
+where they had been put), seemed the loneliest spot in the whole house.
+He had gone up there after his solitary luncheon, served in the immense
+marble dining-room by a footman on the same scale, and had tried to
+occupy himself with pasting post-cards into his album; but the newness
+and sumptuousness of the room embarrassed him--the white fur rugs
+and brocade chairs seemed maliciously on the watch for smears and
+ink-spots--and after a while he pushed the album aside and began to roam
+through the house.
+
+He went to all the rooms in turn: his mother's first, the wonderful lacy
+bedroom, all pale silks and velvets, artful mirrors and veiled lamps,
+and the boudoir as big as a drawing-room, with pictures he would have
+liked to know about, and tables and cabinets holding things he was
+afraid to touch. Mr. Moffatt's rooms came next. They were soberer and
+darker, but as big and splendid; and in the bedroom, on the brown wall,
+hung a single picture--the portrait of a boy in grey velvet--that
+interested Paul most of all. The boy's hand rested on the head of a big
+dog, and he looked infinitely noble and charming, and yet (in spite of
+the dog) so sad and lonely that he too might have come home that very
+day to a strange house in which none of his old things could be found.
+
+From these rooms Paul wandered downstairs again. The library attracted
+him most: there were rows and rows of books, bound in dim browns and
+golds, and old faded reds as rich as velvet: they all looked as if they
+might have had stories in them as splendid as their bindings. But the
+bookcases were closed with gilt trellising, and when Paul reached up
+to open one, a servant told him that Mr. Moffatt's secretary kept them
+locked because the books were too valuable to be taken down. This seemed
+to make the library as strange as the rest of the house, and he passed
+on to the ballroom at the back. Through its closed doors he heard a
+sound of hammering, and when he tried the door-handle a servant passing
+with a tray-full of glasses told him that "they" hadn't finished, and
+wouldn't let anybody in.
+
+The mysterious pronoun somehow increased Paul's sense of isolation, and
+he went on to the drawing-rooms, steering his way prudently between the
+gold arm-chairs and shining tables, and wondering whether the wigged and
+corseleted heroes on the walls represented Mr. Moffatt's ancestors, and
+why, if they did, he looked so little like them. The dining-room beyond
+was more amusing, because busy servants were already laying the long
+table. It was too early for the florist, and the centre of the table was
+empty, but down the sides were gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer
+fruits-figs, strawberries and big blushing nectarines. Between them
+stood crystal decanters with red and yellow wine, and little dishes full
+of sweets; and against the walls were sideboards with great pieces
+of gold and silver, ewers and urns and branching candelabra, which
+sprinkled the green marble walls with starlike reflections.
+
+After a while he grew tired of watching the coming and going of
+white-sleeved footmen, and of listening to the butler's vociferated
+orders, and strayed back into the library. The habit of solitude had
+given him a passion for the printed page, and if he could have found
+a book anywhere--any kind of a book--he would have forgotten the long
+hours and the empty house. But the tables in the library held only
+massive unused inkstands and immense immaculate blotters; not a single
+volume had slipped its golden prison.
+
+His loneliness had grown overwhelming, and he suddenly thought of Mrs.
+Heeny's clippings. His mother, alarmed by an insidious gain in weight,
+had brought the masseuse back from New York with her, and Mrs. Heeny,
+with her old black bag and waterproof, was established in one of the
+grand bedrooms lined with mirrors. She had been loud in her joy at
+seeing her little friend that morning, but four years had passed since
+their last parting, and her personality had grown remote to him. He saw
+too many people, and they too often disappeared and were replaced by
+others: his scattered affections had ended by concentrating themselves
+on the charming image of the gentleman he called his French father; and
+since his French father had vanished no one else seemed to matter much
+to him.
+
+"Oh, well," Mrs. Heeny had said, discerning the reluctance under his
+civil greeting, "I guess you're as strange here as I am, and we're both
+pretty strange to each other. You just go and look round, and see what
+a lovely home your Ma's got to live in; and when you get tired of that,
+come up here to me and I'll give you a look at my clippings."
+
+The word woke a train of dormant associations, and Paul saw himself
+seated on a dingy carpet, between two familiar taciturn old presences,
+while he rummaged in the depths of a bag stuffed with strips of
+newspaper.
+
+He found Mrs. Heeny sitting in a pink arm-chair, her bonnet perched on a
+pink-shaded electric lamp and her numerous implements spread out on an
+immense pink toilet-table. Vague as his recollection of her was, she
+gave him at once a sense of reassurance that nothing else in the house
+conveyed, and after he had examined all her scissors and pastes and
+nail-polishers he turned to the bag, which stood on the carpet at her
+feet as if she were waiting for a train.
+
+"My, my!" she said, "do you want to get into that again? How you used to
+hunt in it for taffy, to be sure, when your Pa brought you up to Grandma
+Spragg's o' Saturdays! Well, I'm afraid there ain't any taffy in it now;
+but there's piles and piles of lovely new clippings you ain't seen."
+
+"My Papa?" He paused, his hand among the strips of newspaper. "My Papa
+never saw my Grandma Spragg. He never went to America."
+
+"Never went to America? Your Pa never--? Why, land alive!" Mrs. Heeny
+gasped, a blush empurpling her large warm face. "Why, Paul Marvell,
+don't you remember your own father, you that bear his name?" she
+exclaimed.
+
+The boy blushed also, conscious that it must have been wrong to forget,
+and yet not seeing how he was to blame.
+
+"That one died a long long time ago, didn't he? I was thinking of my
+French father," he explained.
+
+"Oh, mercy," ejaculated Mrs. Heeny; and as if to cut the conversation
+short she stooped over, creaking like a ship, and thrust her plump
+strong hand into the bag.
+
+"Here, now, just you look at these clippings--I guess you'll find a lot
+in them about your Ma.--Where do they come from? Why, out of the papers,
+of course," she added, in response to Paul's enquiry. "You'd oughter
+start a scrap-book yourself--you're plenty old enough. You could make
+a beauty just about your Ma, with her picture pasted in the front--and
+another about Mr. Moffatt and his collections. There's one I cut out the
+other day that says he's the greatest collector in America."
+
+Paul listened, fascinated. He had the feeling that Mrs. Heeny's
+clippings, aside from their great intrinsic interest, might furnish him
+the clue to many things he didn't understand, and that nobody had ever
+had time to explain to him. His mother's marriages, for instance: he was
+sure there was a great deal to find out about them. But she always said:
+"I'll tell you all about it when I come back"--and when she came back
+it was invariably to rush off somewhere else. So he had remained without
+a key to her transitions, and had had to take for granted numberless
+things that seemed to have no parallel in the experience of the other
+boys he knew.
+
+"Here--here it is," said Mrs. Heeny, adjusting the big tortoiseshell
+spectacles she had taken to wearing, and reading out in a slow chant
+that seemed to Paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy.
+
+"'It is reported in London that the price paid by Mr. Elmer Moffatt for
+the celebrated Grey Boy is the largest sum ever given for a Vandyck.
+Since Mr. Moffatt began to buy extensively it is estimated in art
+circles that values have gone up at least seventy-five per cent.'"
+
+But the price of the Grey Boy did not interest Paul, and he said a
+little impatiently: "I'd rather hear about my mother."
+
+"To be sure you would! You wait now." Mrs. Heeny made another dive, and
+again began to spread her clippings on her lap like cards on a big black
+table.
+
+"Here's one about her last portrait--no, here's a better one about
+her pearl necklace, the one Mr. Moffatt gave her last Christmas. 'The
+necklace, which was formerly the property of an Austrian Archduchess, is
+composed of five hundred perfectly matched pearls that took thirty years
+to collect. It is estimated among dealers in precious stones that since
+Mr. Moffatt began to buy the price of pearls has gone up over fifty per
+cent.'"
+
+Even this did not fix Paul's attention. He wanted to hear about his
+mother and Mr. Moffatt, and not about their things; and he didn't quite
+know how to frame his question. But Mrs. Heeny looked kindly at him and
+he tried. "Why is mother married to Mr. Moffatt now?"
+
+"Why, you must know that much, Paul." Mrs. Heeny again looked warm and
+worried. "She's married to him because she got a divorce--that's why."
+And suddenly she had another inspiration. "Didn't she ever send you
+over any of those splendid clippings that came out the time they were
+married? Why, I declare, that's a shame; but I must have some of 'em
+right here."
+
+She dived again, shuffled, sorted, and pulled out a long discoloured
+strip. "I've carried this round with me ever since, and so many's wanted
+to read it, it's all torn." She smoothed out the paper and began:
+
+"'Divorce and remarriage of Mrs. Undine Spragg-de Chelles. American
+Marquise renounces ancient French title to wed Railroad King. Quick work
+untying and tying. Boy and girl romance renewed. "'Reno, November 23d.
+The Marquise de Chelles, of Paris, France, formerly Mrs. Undine Spragg
+Marvell, of Apex City and New York, got a decree of divorce at a special
+session of the Court last night, and was remarried fifteen minutes
+later to Mr. Elmer Moffatt, the billionaire Railroad King, who was the
+Marquise's first husband.
+
+"'No case has ever been railroaded through the divorce courts of this
+State at a higher rate of speed: as Mr. Moffatt said last night, before
+he and his bride jumped onto their east-bound special, every record has
+been broken. It was just six months ago yesterday that the present Mrs.
+Moffatt came to Reno to look for her divorce. Owing to a delayed train,
+her counsel was late yesterday in receiving some necessary papers, and
+it was feared the decision would have to be held over; but Judge Toomey,
+who is a personal friend of Mr. Moffatt's, held a night session and
+rushed it through so that the happy couple could have the knot tied and
+board their special in time for Mrs. Moffatt to spend Thanksgiving in
+New York with her aged parents. The hearing began at seven ten p. m. and
+at eight o'clock the bridal couple were steaming out of the station.
+
+"'At the trial Mrs. Spragg-de Chelles, who wore copper velvet and
+sables, gave evidence as to the brutality of her French husband, but she
+had to talk fast as time pressed, and Judge Toomey wrote the entry at
+top speed, and then jumped into a motor with the happy couple and
+drove to the Justice of the Peace, where he acted as best man to the
+bridegroom. The latter is said to be one of the six wealthiest men east
+of the Rockies. His gifts to the bride are a necklace and tiara of
+pigeon-blood rubies belonging to Queen Marie Antoinette, a million
+dollar cheque and a house in New York. The happy pair will pass the
+honeymoon in Mrs. Moffatt's new home, 5009 Fifth Avenue, which is an
+exact copy of the Pitti Palace, Florence. They plan to spend their
+springs in France.'"
+
+Mrs. Heeny drew a long breath, folded the paper and took off her
+spectacles. "There," she said, with a benignant smile and a tap on
+Paul's cheek, "now you see how it all happened...."
+
+Paul was not sure he did; but he made no answer. His mind was too full
+of troubled thoughts. In the dazzling description of his mother's latest
+nuptials one fact alone stood out for him--that she had said things that
+weren't true of his French father. Something he had half-guessed in her,
+and averted his frightened thoughts from, took his little heart in an
+iron grasp. She said things that weren't true.... That was what he had
+always feared to find out.... She had got up and said before a lot of
+people things that were awfully false about his dear French father....
+
+The sound of a motor turning in at the gates made Mrs. Heeny exclaim
+"Here they are!" and a moment later Paul heard his mother calling to
+him. He got up reluctantly, and stood wavering till he felt Mrs. Heeny's
+astonished eye upon him. Then he heard Mr. Moffatt's jovial shout of
+"Paul Marvell, ahoy there!" and roused himself to run downstairs.
+
+As he reached the landing he saw that the ballroom doors were open and
+all the lustres lit. His mother and Mr. Moffatt stood in the middle of
+the shining floor, looking up at the walls; and Paul's heart gave
+a wondering bound, for there, set in great gilt panels, were the
+tapestries that had always hung in the gallery at Saint Desert.
+
+"Well, Senator, it feels good to shake your fist again!" his step-father
+said, taking him in a friendly grasp; and his mother, who looked
+handsomer and taller and more splendidly dressed than ever, exclaimed:
+"Mercy! how they've cut his hair!" before she bent to kiss him.
+
+"Oh, mother, mother!" he burst out, feeling, between his mother's face
+and the others, hardly less familiar, on the walls, that he was really
+at home again, and not in a strange house.
+
+"Gracious, how you squeeze!" she protested, loosening his arms. "But you
+look splendidly--and how you've grown!" She turned away from him and
+began to inspect the tapestries critically. "Somehow they look smaller
+here," she said with a tinge of disappointment.
+
+Mr. Moffatt gave a slight laugh and walked slowly down the room, as if
+to study its effect. As he turned back his wife said: "I didn't think
+you'd ever get them." He laughed again, more complacently. "Well, I
+don't know as I ever should have, if General Arlington hadn't happened
+to bust up."
+
+They both smiled, and Paul, seeing his mother's softened face, stole his
+hand in hers and began: "Mother, I took a prize in composition--"
+
+"Did you? You must tell me about it to-morrow. No, I really must rush
+off now and dress--I haven't even placed the dinner-cards." She freed
+her hand, and as she turned to go Paul heard Mr. Moffatt say: "Can't you
+ever give him a minute's time, Undine?"
+
+She made no answer, but sailed through the door with her head high, as
+she did when anything annoyed her; and Paul and his step-father stood
+alone in the illuminated ball-room.
+
+Mr. Moffatt smiled good-naturedly at the little boy and then turned back
+to the contemplation of the hangings.
+
+"I guess you know where those come from, don't you?" he asked in a tone
+of satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, yes," Paul answered eagerly, with a hope he dared not utter that,
+since the tapestries were there, his French father might be coming too.
+
+"You're a smart boy to remember them. I don't suppose you ever thought
+you'd see them here?"
+
+"I don't know," said Paul, embarrassed.
+
+"Well, I guess you wouldn't have if their owner hadn't been in a pretty
+tight place. It was like drawing teeth for him to let them go."
+
+Paul flushed up, and again the iron grasp was on his heart. He hadn't,
+hitherto, actually disliked Mr. Moffatt, who was always in a good
+humour, and seemed less busy and absent-minded than his mother; but at
+that instant he felt a rage of hate for him. He turned away and burst
+into tears.
+
+"Why, hullo, old chap--why, what's up?" Mr. Moffatt was on his knees
+beside the boy, and the arms embracing him were firm and friendly. But
+Paul, for the life of him, couldn't answer: he could only sob and sob as
+the great surges of loneliness broke over him.
+
+"Is it because your mother hadn't time for you? Well, she's like that,
+you know; and you and I have got to lump it," Mr. Moffatt continued,
+getting to his feet. He stood looking down at the boy with a queer
+smile. "If we two chaps stick together it won't be so bad--we can keep
+each other warm, don't you see? I like you first rate, you know; when
+you're big enough I mean to put you in my business. And it looks as if
+one of these days you'd be the richest boy in America...."
+
+The lamps were lit, the vases full of flowers, the foot-men assembled
+on the landing and in the vestibule below, when Undine descended to the
+drawing-room. As she passed the ballroom door she glanced in approvingly
+at the tapestries. They really looked better than she had been willing
+to admit: they made her ballroom the handsomest in Paris. But something
+had put her out on the way up from Deauville, and the simplest way of
+easing her nerves had been to affect indifference to the tapestries. Now
+she had quite recovered her good humour, and as she glanced down the
+list of guests she was awaiting she said to herself, with a sigh of
+satisfaction, that she was glad she had put on her rubies.
+
+For the first time since her marriage to Moffatt she was about to
+receive in her house the people she most wished to see there. The
+beginnings had been a little difficult; their first attempt in New York
+was so unpromising that she feared they might not be able to live down
+the sensational details of their reunion, and had insisted on her
+husband's taking her back to Paris. But her apprehensions were
+unfounded. It was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they
+had forgotten; and already they were all pretending beautifully. The
+French world had of course held out longest; it had strongholds she
+might never capture. But already seceders were beginning to show
+themselves, and her dinner-list that evening was graced with the names
+of an authentic Duke and a not too-damaged Countess. In addition, of
+course, she had the Shallums, the Chauncey Ellings, May Beringer, Dicky
+Bowles, Walsingham Popple, and the rest of the New York frequenters of
+the Nouveau Luxe; she had even, at the last minute, had the amusement of
+adding Peter Van Degen to their number. In the evening there were to be
+Spanish dancing and Russian singing; and Dicky Bowles had promised her
+a Grand Duke for her next dinner, if she could secure the new tenor who
+always refused to sing in private houses.
+
+Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she
+wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she
+might want if she knew about them. And there had been moments lately
+when she had had to confess to herself that Moffatt did not fit into the
+picture. At first she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his
+authority. He had given her all she had ever wished for, and more than
+she had ever dreamed of having: he had made up to her for all her
+failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his
+dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his
+defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his
+misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating
+swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had
+developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking
+that his two predecessors--who were gradually becoming merged in her
+memory--would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in
+such and such a case. And the comparison was almost always to Moffatt's
+disadvantage.
+
+This evening, however, she thought of him indulgently. She was pleased
+with his clever stroke in capturing the Saint Desert tapestries, which
+General Arlington's sudden bankruptcy, and a fresh gambling scandal of
+Hubert's, had compelled their owner to part with. She knew that Raymond
+de Chelles had told the dealers he would sell his tapestries to anyone
+but Mr. Elmer Moffatt, or a buyer acting for him; and it amused her to
+think that, thanks to Elmer's astuteness, they were under her roof after
+all, and that Raymond and all his clan were by this time aware of it.
+These facts disposed her favourably toward her husband, and deepened the
+sense of well-being with which--according to her invariable habit--she
+walked up to the mirror above the mantelpiece and studied the image it
+reflected.
+
+She was still lost in this pleasing contemplation when her husband
+entered, looking stouter and redder than ever, in evening clothes that
+were a little too tight. His shirt front was as glossy as his baldness,
+and in his buttonhole he wore the red ribbon bestowed on him for waiving
+his claim to a Velasquez that was wanted for the Louvre. He carried
+a newspaper in his hand, and stood looking about the room with a
+complacent eye.
+
+"Well, I guess this is all right," he said, and she answered briefly:
+"Don't forget you're to take down Madame de Follerive; and for goodness'
+sake don't call her 'Countess.'"
+
+"Why, she is one, ain't she?" he returned good-humouredly.
+
+"I wish you'd put that newspaper away," she continued; his habit of
+leaving old newspapers about the drawing-room annoyed her.
+
+"Oh, that reminds me--" instead of obeying her he unfolded the paper.
+"I brought it in to show you something. Jim Driscoll's been appointed
+Ambassador to England."
+
+"Jim Driscoll--!" She caught up the paper and stared at the paragraph
+he pointed to. Jim Driscoll--that pitiful nonentity, with his stout
+mistrustful commonplace wife! It seemed extraordinary that the
+government should have hunted up such insignificant people. And
+immediately she had a great vague vision of the splendours they were
+going to--all the banquets and ceremonies and precedences....
+
+"I shouldn't say she'd want to, with so few jewels--" She dropped the
+paper and turned to her husband. "If you had a spark of ambition, that's
+the kind of thing you'd try for. You could have got it just as easily as
+not!"
+
+He laughed and thrust his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes with the
+gesture she disliked. "As it happens, it's about the one thing I
+couldn't."
+
+"You couldn't? Why not?"
+
+"Because you're divorced. They won't have divorced Ambassadresses."
+
+"They won't? Why not, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Well, I guess the court ladies are afraid there'd be too many pretty
+women in the Embassies," he answered jocularly.
+
+She burst into an angry laugh, and the blood flamed up into her face.
+"I never heard of anything so insulting!" she cried, as if the rule had
+been invented to humiliate her.
+
+There was a noise of motors backing and advancing in the court, and she
+heard the first voices on the stairs. She turned to give herself a last
+look in the glass, saw the blaze of her rubies, the glitter of her hair,
+and remembered the brilliant names on her list.
+
+But under all the dazzle a tiny black cloud remained. She had learned
+that there was something she could never get, something that neither
+beauty nor influence nor millions could ever buy for her. She could
+never be an Ambassador's wife; and as she advanced to welcome her first
+guests she said to herself that it was the one part she was really made
+for.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton
+
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