“Oh, Ralph, what does it matter—what
can it matter?”
“Who’s the man? Did he tell you that?”
Ralph insisted. He saw her growing agitation.
“Why can’t you answer? Is it any one
I know?”
“He was told in Paris it was his friend Raymond
de Chelles.”
Ralph laughed, and his laugh sounded in his own ears
like an echo of the dreary mirth with which he had
filled Mr. Spragg’s office the day he had learned
that Undine intended to divorce him. But now his
wrath was seasoned with a wholesome irony. The
fact of his wife’s having reached another stage
in her ascent fell into its place as a part of the
huge human buffoonery.
“Besides,” Laura went on, “it’s
all perfect nonsense, of course. How in the world
can she have her marriage annulled?”
Ralph pondered: this put the matter in another
light. “With a great deal of money I suppose
she might.”
“Well, she certainly won’t get that from
Chelles. He’s far from rich, Charles tells
me.” Laura waited, watching him, before
she risked: “That’s what convinces
me she wouldn’t have him if she could.”
Ralph shrugged. “There may be other inducements.
But she won’t be able to manage it.”
He heard himself speaking quite collectedly. Had
Undine at last lost her power of wounding him?
Clare came in, dressed for their walk, and under Laura’s
anxious eyes he picked up the newspaper and held it
out with a careless: “Look at this!”
His cousin’s glance flew down the column, and
he saw the tremor of her lashes as she read.
Then she lifted her head. “But you’ll
be free!” Her face was as vivid as a flower.
“Free? I’m free now, as far as that
goes!”
“Oh, but it will go so much farther when she
has another name—when she’s a different
person altogether! Then you’ll really have
Paul to yourself.”
“Paul?” Laura intervened with a nervous
laugh. “But there’s never been the
least doubt about his having Paul!”
They heard the boy’s laughter on the lawn, and
she went out to join him. Ralph was still looking
at his cousin.
“You’re glad, then?” came from him
involuntarily; and she startled him by bursting into
tears. He bent over and kissed her on the cheek.
Ralph, as the days passed, felt that Clare was right:
if Undine married again he would possess himself more
completely, be more definitely rid of his past.
And he did not doubt that she would gain her end:
he knew her violent desires and her cold tenacity.
If she had failed to capture Van Degen it was probably
because she lacked experience of that particular type
of man, of his huge immediate wants and feeble vacillating
purposes; most of all, because she had not yet measured
the strength of the social considerations that restrained
him. It was a mistake she was not likely to repeat,
and her failure had probably been a useful preliminary
