She shook her head. “I don’t believe
she could afford it, even if I could persuade her
to leave father. You know father hasn’t
done very well lately: I shouldn’t like
to ask him for the money.”
“You’re so confoundedly proud!”
He was edging nearer. “It would all be
so easy if you’d only be a little fond of me...”
She froze to her sofa-end. “We women can’t
repair our mistakes. Don’t make me more
miserable by reminding me of mine.”
“Oh, nonsense! There’s nothing cash
won’t do. Why won’t you let me straighten
things out for you?”
Her colour rose again, and she looked him quickly
and consciously in the eye. It was time to play
her last card. “You seem to forget that
I am—married,” she said.
Van Degen was silent—for a moment she thought
he was swaying to her in the flush of surrender.
But he remained doggedly seated, meeting her look
with an odd clearing of his heated gaze, as if a shrewd
businessman had suddenly replaced the pining gentleman
at the window.
“Hang it—so am I!” he rejoined;
and Undine saw that in the last issue he was still
the stronger of the two.
Nothing was bitterer to her than to confess to herself
the failure of her power; but her last talk with Van
Degen had taught her a lesson almost worth the abasement.
She saw the mistake she had made in taking money from
him, and understood that if she drifted into repeating
that mistake her future would be irretrievably compromised.
What she wanted was not a hand-to-mouth existence
of precarious intrigue: to one with her gifts
the privileges of life should come openly. Already
in her short experience she had seen enough of the
women who sacrifice future security for immediate
success, and she meant to lay solid foundations before
she began to build up the light super-structure of
enjoyment.
Nevertheless it was galling to see Van Degen leave,
and to know that for the time he had broken away from
her. Over a nature so insensible to the spells
of memory, the visible and tangible would always prevail.
If she could have been with him again in Paris, where,
in the shining spring days, every sight and sound
ministered to such influences, she was sure she could
have regained her hold. And the sense of frustration
was intensified by the fact that every one she knew
was to be there: her potential rivals were crowding
the east-bound steamers. New York was a desert,
and Ralph’s seeming unconsciousness of the fact
increased her resentment. She had had but one
chance at Europe since her marriage, and that had
been wasted through her husband’s unaccountable
perversity. She knew now with what packed hours
of Paris and London they had paid for their empty
weeks in Italy.
