 CHAPTER 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 Marvel, 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 hear after 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, colored, substantiated it by the force of his own great need, as a man might breathe the 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 the 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 shown 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 on 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 the subtle blindness that permitted images to give their color 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 honor 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 few hours earlier was still his wife and the mother of Paul Marvel. 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 moat 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 event. 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 Marvel 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, quagulous 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. Those thoughts were with her as she dressed, but at the illings 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 women 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 Claire 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 Harman B. Dreskell's unexpected victory. The Ararat investigation had been mysteriously stopped, quashed, in the language of the law, and Elmer Muffet 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 glasses, had made it plain that the favor she had accepted would necessitate her being more conspicuously in his company, though she 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. Andine 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 a woman's merits. Andine 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 illing 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 downtown had to look elsewhere for sympathy. Van Degen's chick helped to calm her, and the weeks hurled on toward the driscoll ball. The ball was as brilliant as she had hoped, and her 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 which 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 color 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? Andine 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 sailed 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 Papel, 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 Andine, 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. Heaney's attendance, and to engage a motor by the month. Other unforeseen expenses, the bills that, at such times, seemed to run up without visible impulsion, were added to by a severe illness of little pals, 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 check 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-sea-linked drawing-room, to which Undine had adapted her usual background of cushions, bric-a-brac, and flowers, since one must make one 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 batration-saloness unpleasantly flushed, and primitive men looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated gentleman usually pined at her. Look here, the installment plans 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 a while. This is a good buy to like it 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. But 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. He thought too 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 than 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 Raph 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 Raph. She looked down with a slight increase of color. I oughtn't 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 the grave look. I thought you'd be sorryer to leave me. Oh, it won't be for long, it needn't be, you know. He was perceptively softening. It's damnable the way you're tied down. Fancy rutting 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. Raph would never let me go abroad without him. She paused, and then, with the quick upward sweep of the lids, after all, it's better it should be goodbye, 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 the 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. He 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? Raph 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 be all 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 color 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 flesh 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. End of CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. OF THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Mary Rody. THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY by Edith Wharton CHAPTER 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 sacrificed future security for immediate success, and she meant to lay solid foundations before she began to build up the light superstructure 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 eastbound 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 fines 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 dullness 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. Heaney's go-slow-undean. 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. Sprague's intervention. For some time past Mr. Sprague 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 Roliver, 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, inspiring him the bother of Mrs. Sprague'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 mustache. Suddenly he raised a hand to stroke the limp beard in which the mustache was merged. Then he groped for the masonic emblem that had lost itself in one of the foals 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 heeded 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 the 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. Sprague still held to his mild tone of banter. I never knew you short on reasons, Undy. Trouble is, you don't always know other peoples when you see them. 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. Jehochaphat. 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 vigor 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. Sprague'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 fag-dies on his daughter. Why, he worships the ground you walk on, Undy. 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. Sprague'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 leveled 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 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 marvel or a dagonette. 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, ringing 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. Sprague 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 I 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 the puzzled stare. The way they've acted to me and mother? Why, we never so much as said 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. 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 marbles 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 the 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 pen handle 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? Andine 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 young, Andine, 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, Andine, 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 someone there who'd do anything, who could do anything, if I was free. Mr. Sprague's hands continued to grasp his chair arms. Good God, Undine Marvel, are you sitting there in your sane senses and talking to me of what you could do if you were free? Their glasses 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. Sprague looked up abruptly. The stenographer stood on the threshold, and above her shoulder Undine perceived the ingratiating grin of Elmer Muffett. A little father 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. Sprague and Undine. I agree entirely with Mrs. Marvel, 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 gold times, I suppose. You thought Father and I were quarreling? But we never quarrel any more. He always agrees with me. She smiled at Mr. Sprague and turned her shining eyes on Muffett. I wished 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 had been beaten, or rather he looked like a man who does not know when he has beaten, and his eyes had the gleam of mocking confidence that had carried him unabashed through his lowest hours at Apex. I presume you are here to see me on business? Mr. Sprague inquired, rising from his chair with the glance that seemed to ask his daughter silence. Why, yes, Senator, rejoined Muffett, who was given in playful moments to the bestowal of titles high-sounding. At least I am here to ask you a little question that may lead to business. Mr. Sprague crossed the office and held open the door. Step this way, please, he said, guiding Muffett 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, Andine's thoughts turned back to her own preoccupations. It had not struck her, as in Congress, that Muffett should have business dealings with her father. She was even a little surprised that Mr. Sprague should still treat him so coldly. But she had no time to give to such considerations. Her own difficulties were too importinately 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 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 pacing 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 subtle 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 way her father liked her to look at him. The door opened, and she heard Mr. Sprague say behind her, No, sir, I won't, that's final. He came in alone with the brooding face and lowered himself heavily into his chair. It was plain that the talk between the two men had had an abrupt ending. Degen looked at her father with the passing flicker of curiosity. Certainly it was an odd coincidence that Muffet should have called while she was there. What did he want? She asked, glancing back toward the door. Mr. Sprague mumbled his invisible toothpick. Oh, just another of his wildcat 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 tried everybody else first. He'd go and ring the devil's front doorbell if he thought he could get anything out of him. I suppose he did himself a lot of harm by testifying in the ararat and 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 Muffet, currents of rapid intelligence seemed to be flowing between them. Suddenly Undine leaned over the desk, her eyes widening trustfully, and the limpet smile flowing up to them. Father, I did what you wanted that one time anyhow. Don't you listen to me and help me out now? CHAPTER XVIII. Dine 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 Muffet'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 Muffet's unlucky entrance had visibly strengthened his resistance. The worst of it was that the obstacles in the way were real enough. Mr. Sprague 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. Sprague would no longer be burdened with a helpless son-in-law. But even this argument did not move him. Undeen, 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 exponents' business principles were elastic. Mr. Sprague 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 Undeen said, and if their reasons were adequate they were justified. If Ralph Marvell had been a drunkard or unfaithful, Mr. Sprague would have approved Undeen'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 Marvell's. Such things happened, as Mr. Sprague knew, but they should not happen to any woman of his name while he had the power to prevent it, and Undeen recognized that for the moment he had that power. As she emerged from the elevator she was surprised to see Moffat 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 anyone else she would have passed on, but Moffat'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. In glancing at her watch as she came out of Moffat's office, saw that he'd 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. Moffat'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. After three years had passed since they had made the pact, and Moffat 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 had once admitted it. Well, then, I want you to introduce me to your husband." Andine 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?' Moffat explained it 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 Moffat 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 Moffat had just appealed to Mr. Sprag, but Mr. Sprag 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 in my power to do for 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 he 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 Job, 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 Moffat to meet Claire Van Degen, Mrs. Fairford, and Charles Bowen. It had occurred to her that the simplest way of explaining Moffat was to tell Ralph that she had unexpectedly discovered an old apex acquaintance in the protagonist of the great Ararat Trust fight. Moffat'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 Harman B. Driscoll he was a conspicuous and, to some minds, almost an heroic figure. Undine remembered that Claire and Mrs. Fairford had once expressed a wish to see this braver of the Olympians, and her suggestion that he should be asked to meet them gave Ralph evident pleasure. It was long since she had made any conciliatory sign to his family. Moffat's social gifts were hardly of a kind to please the two ladies. He would have shown more brightly in Peter Van Degen's set than in his wife's. But neither Claire nor Mrs. Fairford had expected a man of conventional cut, and Moffat's loud easiness was obviously less disturbing to them than to their hostess. Degen felt only his crudeness, and the tacit criticism passed on it by the mere presence of such men as her husband and Boan, 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 Andine'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 refill his champagne glass. The men sat long over their cigars, but after an interval Andine called Charles Boan into the drawing-room to settle some question in dispute between Claire and Mrs. Fairford, and thus gave Moffat 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 Andine 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 seemed 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 illusion. "'Do you know,' he exclaimed after a moment, "'I don't believe the fellow's beaten yet.' She looked up quickly. "'And 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. Job, I wish I could put him in a book. There's something epic about him—a kind of epic frontery.' Undean's pulses beat faster as she listened. Was it not what Moffat 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 Undean'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 a 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 of the 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' and all the attendant confusion and expense, if only Moffitt'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, on Dean, 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. On Dean regained her strength slowly, and as the days dragged on, the suggestion of the European trip procured 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. Heaney, whose daily administrations had once more been prescribed, and asking only that the noise of Paul's play should be kept from her. His scampering 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 abused 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 Moffat'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. Moffat 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 Moffat'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 Moffat as his parties. How far he stood in with the parties he left it to Moffat 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 Moffat'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 Moffat'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 Moffat and Driscoll type moved, like shadowy, destructive monsters beneath the darting small fry of the surface. He knew that business had created its own special morality, and his musings on man's relation to his self-imposed laws had shown him how little human conduct has 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 Moffat'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. Sprague. 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. Sprague 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. Sprague threw back his head and stared at the garlanded French clock on the chimney-piece. Mrs. Sprague 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 don't know, but what I agree with the doctor who said there warn any disease, but only sick people—every case is different, I guess. Mr. Sprague, munching his cigar, turned a ruminating glance on Ralph. Seems to me it all boils down to one thing. Was this fellow were 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. Sprague 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. What'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 is binding, and they say his shipwrecked fellows will make a meal of a 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 Spancy wandered off on a long trail of speculation, from which he was pulled back with a jerk by the need of immediate action. Moffitt'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, and 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 led into the secret of some age-long natural process. As he listened to Moffitt, 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 Moffitt talked he began to feel as blank and blundering as the class of dramatic students before whom the great actor had analysed his part. The affair was in fact difficult and complex, and Moffitt saw it 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 Moffitt'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 Moffitt, and to study at close range the large powerful instrument of his intelligence. As he came out of Moffitt's office at the conclusion of this visit, Ralph met Mr. Sprague descending from his ivory. He stopped short with a backward glance at Moffitt's door. Hello! What were you doing in there with those cup-throats? Ralph judged discretion to be essential. Oh! Just a little business for the firm. Mr. Sprague said no more, but resorted to the soothing labial motion of revolving his phantom toothpick. "'How's Andy 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 Shalems in Paris.' Mr. Sprague 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 Moffitt?' "'Why, by chance, Undine ran across him somewhere and asked him to die in the other night.' "'Undine asked him to die?' "'Yes, she told me he used to know him out at Apex.' Mr. Sprague 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. Sprague, by a slight lift of his brooding brows, seemed to convey a deep, 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. Sprague's that Undine's parents had wind of her European plan and were strongly opposed to it. He concluded that Mr. Sprague 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 Moffitt'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 windfall. The 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 disemble 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 West End Avenue Howe should be let for the summer, was too practical not to be acted on, and Ralph found that she had already put her hand on the hairy lip-skums, 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 lip-skums were so eager to take it. As the day of departure approached became harder for her to temper her beams, but her pleasure showed itself so amably 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 grandmothers, and won her way into old Mr. Dagonet sympathies by her devotion to the child, and her pretty way of joining in his games. Undine was not consciously acting apart. This new phase was as natural to her as the other. In the joy of her gratified desire 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 hours 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 Moffat. 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. At the air apparent, Moffat asked, adding, Happy to make your acquaintance, sir! As the boy at Undine's bidding held out a fist sticky with sugar-plums. 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 Moffat was not insensible to the pictures 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. Moffat 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 unarmful for you? Moffat asked, his eyes lingering with real kindness 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 Moffat. Undine was glad to be relieved for 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, Paulie, 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! Moffat 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 Moffat 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! There are 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. Moffat 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 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." Moffat 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 Moffat 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 and Italy.� She laughed a little in the mere enjoyment of putting her plans into words, and Moffat 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.� Your glance has crossed again, and something in his cool scrutiny impelled Undine to say with a burst of candor, �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 Bench's wife, Indiana Frost, that was, didn't you see in the papers that Indiana had fixed it up with James J. Rolliver to marry her? They say it was easy enough squaring Millard Bench. You'd know it would be, but it cost Rolliver near a million to mislead 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 Moffat 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 Bench, the druggest'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. Moffat 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." CHAPTER XIX. THE PARISION 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 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 jeweled heads, of shoulders bare or black-coated, encircling the close-packed tables. He'd come half an hour before the time he'd 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 facetious, 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 idea. 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 of 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 compelers to bind themselves to a 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 compremont de Chelle, 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, adieu, 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 Chelle stroked his handsome brown mustache. 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, necessary foundations in 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. He put it in a nutshell. The idea 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. Chelle thoughtfully unfolded his napkin. My impression's a superficial one, of course, but as for what goes on underneath... He looked across the room. If I'm 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, Conte de Zara, the Frenchman murmured, inserting a fork into his melon. Bowen looked at him with enjoyment. He was such a precious footnote to the page. The two men, accidentally thrown together some years previously during a trip up the Nile, always met again with a pleasure when Bowen returned to France. Raymond de Chelle, 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 Hotel for a two-month study of human nature, applying to the pursuit the discriminating taste and transient ardour that gave 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 means of simplicity and intelligence of which no other race has found the secret. If Raymond de Chelle had been English, he would have been a mere fox-hunting animal, with appetites but without tastes. But in his lighter gallant clay the wholesome territorial savor, the inherited passion for sport and agriculture, were blend with an openness to finer sensations, a sense of the common-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 a 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. Chelle raised his eyebrows 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 that lady over there, fair-haired and 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, Undean Marvell was seating herself at Peter Van Degen's side, in the company of the Harvey Shalems, the beautiful Mrs. Berenger, 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 tonight she seemed to have been brushed by the wing of poetry, and its shadow lingered in her eyes. Chelle's 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 marvels 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 this red-faced man 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 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. Shell laughed again, but his straying eyes still followed the same direction in 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 orchestras, the American toilets dominated the less daring effects at 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 science 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. Hello, hold on, when did you come over? Mrs. Marvel's dying for the latest 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'd 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 in tennis. And dear Laura, was she well too, and was Paul with her or still with his grandmother? They were all dreadfully bad correspondence, 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 straight 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 have finished. Van Degen echoed the request, and Bowen, amused by Undine's arts, was presently introducing Shell 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 skillfully 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. Shallam's care, contrived to draw Raymond de Shell to the other table. Still more noticeable was the effect of this stratagem on Van Degen, who also found himself relegated to Mrs. Shallam's group. Poor Peter's state was betrayed by the harassability which wrecked itself on a jostling waiter, and found cause for loud remonstrances 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 this thought, felt the pang of the sociologist over the individual havoc wrought by every social readjustment, and had so long been clear to him that poor Ralph was a survival, and destined as such to go down in any conflict with their rising forces. CHAPTER XX. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. 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 ambulent flower carts, the appetizing expanse of the fruiterer's windows, even the chromatic effects of the pettifors 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 meager and starved the past appeared in comparison with this abundant present. The noise, the sound, the promiscuity beneath her eyes symbolised 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 dressmakers and jewelers, the crowded lunches at fashionable restaurants, the perfunctory dashed through a picture show, or the lingering visit to the last new milliner. The afternoon motor rushed to some leafy suburb where tea and music 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 Café de Paris, and the little play at the Cappuccino de Verité 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 rouse 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 felt it was 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 that 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-humored 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 a novel? Undean the previous winter had been dazzled by the figures which a well-known magazine editor whom she'd met at a 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 candlesticks. But when she suggested Ralph's taking up his novel he answered with a lap 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 Undean 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 colored 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. Undean 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, whether she and Mrs. Shalem had gone with Raymond Duchel to spend a night at the Old Marquis 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 pencilings, 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 Duchel had been the most potent of these influences. Shal, 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 faux-burg 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 disborded 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 Mealy 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 Potish Springs. To recognize her old enemy and the marquise de Tezac, 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 thought was important was to cheapen all present pleasure and turn the whole force of her desire in a new direction. What she wanted for the moment was to linger on in Paris, prolonging her flirtations with Schell, and profiting by it to detach herself from her compatriots, and enter doors closed to their approach. And Schell himself attracted her. She thought of him as sweet as she had once thought Ralph, whose fastidiousness and refinement were blending 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 Schell's 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 frescoe's brilliant marriage, the journals of two continents had recently chronicled with unprecedented richness of detail, had made less impression on him than she'd hoped. He treated it as a comic episode without special bearing on their case, and once when Undine cited Rollover's expensive fight for freedom as an instance of the power of love over the most invulnerable natures, he answered carelessly, oh, his first wife was a laundry, I believe. But all about them couples were unpairing and pairing again with an ease and rapidity that encouraged Undine to bite 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'd gained by going away at a stage when he was sureer 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 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 had hardly time to get to the station. You rushed off where, may I ask? Vegan still lowered down on her. Oh, didn't I tell you? I've been down staying at Shell 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 the water all around it and a funny kind of bridge they pull up. Shell said he wanted me to see just how they lived at home and I did, I saw everything. The tapestries that the cans 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 that I might be happier if I 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 Diegen. 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 Diegen groaned, dropping down on the end of the sofa. Was the cook got down to chaperone you? Undean laughed. You talk like Ralph. I had Bertha with me. Bertha, his tone of contempt surprised her. She had supposed that Mrs. Shalom'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? Shell 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 Diegen thoughtfully. At any rate, he's not a married man. Van Diegen got to his feet again and was standing accusingly before her. But as she spoke, the blood rose in 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 going round with you. With me, his face fell at the retort, then he broke into a laugh. He adored Undean'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 Diegen smiled. She knew he liked such illusions 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 tonight? His nearness was not agreeable to Undean, but she liked his free way, his contempt for verbal preliminaries. Roused 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 Diegen's manner, she felt a hint of the masterful way that had once subdued her in Elmer Moffat. But she drew back, releasing herself. Tonight, 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 tonight. 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, I'm imprudent that people are talking. He stood up with an angry laugh. I suppose you're dining with Shell, is that it? Is that the way you cross-examine Claire? I don't care a hang what Claire 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 is 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 damn little dancing masters than for one of us. Undine was still smiling up at him, but suddenly her face 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 I 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 aches 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 Treville. You've never tried Treville. There's an awfully jolly crowd there and the motorings 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, Michelle, tonight. Come with me and we'll talk things over and next week we'll run down to Treville and choose the villa. Undine's heart was beating fast, but she felt within her estranged, lucid force of resistance. Because of that sense of security, she left her hands in Van Diegans. So Mr. Sprague 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 goodbye, 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 really were 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 goodbye. Goodbye, now. What's the use of talking like that? He jumped up and followed her. Look, 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 Shalom to stop over with you for the summer. I'll take the house at Truville and make my wife come out there, hang it she shall. If you only 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 home 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 Shell? 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, on her bright, do you think he'll marry you? She looked at him with a sudden harshness 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 a 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 a 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 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. At the message it concerned her boy, her brain would have acted more quickly. She had never troubled herself over the possibility of pause 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 in the need of her. Probably his mother and sister 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 Marvel 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 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? 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 and 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? Van Degen'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 unsufferable 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 unfortunate, 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 goodbye. 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 Shell. I've told you, we must say goodbye. I've got to look out for my future. He stood before her, irresolute, tormented, his lazy mind and impatient senses laboring 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 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 crumbled telegram, which she could see through the trellis sides of the scrap basket. In another moment Van Degen would be gone. Worse yet, while he wavered in the door, the shalloms and shell, after vainly awaiting her, might dash back from the boi 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. Array 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, Van Degen. I'll do anything in God's world to keep you. She turned her eyes in 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. End of Chapter 20.