“I went with that girl on purpose, and you know
it,” he broke out abruptly. “It makes
me too damned sick to see Millard Binch going round
looking as if he’d patented you.”
“You’ve got no right—”
she interrupted; and suddenly she was in his arms,
and feeling that no one had ever kissed her before....
The week that followed was a big bright blur—the
wildest vividest moment of her life. And it was
only eight days later that they were in the train
together, Apex and all her plans and promises behind
them, and a bigger and brighter blur ahead, into which
they were plunging as the “Limited” plunged
into the sunset....
Undine stood up, looking about her with vague eyes,
as if she had come back from a long distance.
Elmer Moffatt was still in Paris—he was
in reach, within telephone-call. She stood hesitating
a moment; then she went into her dressing-room, and
turning over the pages of the telephone book, looked
out the number of the Nouveau Luxe....
Undine had been right in supposing that her husband
would expect their life to go on as before. There
was no appreciable change in the situation save that
he was more often absent-finding abundant reasons,
agricultural and political, for frequent trips to Saint
Desert—and that, when in Paris, he no longer
showed any curiosity concerning her occupations and
engagements. They lived as much apart is if their
cramped domicile had been a palace; and when Undine—as
she now frequently did—joined the Shallums
or Rollivers for a dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, or
a party at a petit theatre, she was not put to the
trouble of prevaricating.
Her first impulse, after her scene with Raymond, had
been to ring up Indiana Rolliver and invite herself
to dine. It chanced that Indiana (who was now
in full social progress, and had “run over”
for a few weeks to get her dresses for Newport) had
organized for the same evening a showy cosmopolitan
banquet in which she was enchanted to include the
Marquise de Chelles; and Undine, as she had hoped,
found Elmer Moffatt of the party. When she drove
up to the Nouveau Luxe she had not fixed on any plan
of action; but once she had crossed its magic threshold
her energies revived like plants in water. At
last she was in her native air again, among associations
she shared and conventions she understood; and all
her self-confidence returned as the familiar accents
uttered the accustomed things.
Save for an occasional perfunctory call, she had hitherto
made no effort to see her compatriots, and she noticed
that Mrs. Jim Driscoll and Bertha Shallum received
her with a touch of constraint; but it vanished when
they remarked the cordiality of Moffatt’s greeting.
Her seat was at his side, and her old sense of triumph
returned as she perceived the importance his notice
conferred, not only in the eyes of her own party but
of the other diners. Moffatt was evidently a notable
figure in all the worlds represented about the crowded
tables, and Undine saw that many people who seemed
personally unacquainted with him were recognizing
and pointing him out. She was conscious of receiving
a large share of the attention he attracted, and,
bathed again in the bright air of publicity, she remembered
the evening when Raymond de Chelles’ first admiring
glance had given her the same sense of triumph.
