She listened, discouraged yet fascinated by his sturdy inaccessibility to all her arguments and objections.  He knew what he wanted, saw his road before him, and acknowledged no obstacles.  Her defense was drawn from reasons he did not understand, or based on difficulties that did not exist for him; and gradually she felt herself yielding to the steady pressure of his will.  Yet the reasons he brushed away came back with redoubled tenacity whenever he paused long enough for her to picture the consequences of what he exacted.

“You don’t know—­you don’t understand—­” she kept repeating; but she knew that his ignorance was part of his terrible power, and that it was hopeless to try to make him feel the value of what he was asking her to give up.

“See here, Undine,” he said slowly, as if he measured her resistance though he couldn’t fathom it, “I guess it had better be yes or no right here.  It ain’t going to do either of us any good to drag this thing out.  If you want to come back to me, come—­if you don’t, we’ll shake hands on it now.  I’m due in Apex for a directors’ meeting on the twentieth, and as it is I’ll have to cable for a special to get me out there.  No, no, don’t cry—­it ain’t that kind of a story ... but I’ll have a deck suite for you on the Semantic if you’ll sail with me the day after to-morrow.”

XLVI

In the great high-ceilinged library of a private hotel overlooking one of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out into the twilight.

The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and Paul, looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive, and bands of spring flowers set in turf.  He was now a big boy of nearly nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home that day for the Easter holidays.  He had not been back since Christmas, and it was the first time he had seen the new hotel which his step-father had bought, and in which Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt had hastily established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a flying trip to America.  They were always coming and going; during the two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to New York and back, or rushing down to Rome or up to the Engadine:  Paul never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they were going somewhere else.  He did not even know that there was any method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity:  “Oh yes—­I got a telegram last week.”

He had been almost sure—­as sure as he ever was of anything—­that he should find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn’t had time to telegraph) apprised him that she and Mr. Moffatt had run down to Deauville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the summer; they were taking an early train back, and would be at home for dinner—­were in fact having a lot of people to dine.