“We’ll go up to Switzerland.”
He had a fleeting glimpse of the quiet place with
the green water-fall, where he might have made tryst
with his vision; then he turned his mind from it and
said: “We’ll go just where you want.
How soon can you be ready to start?”
“Oh, to-morrow—the first thing to-morrow!
I’ll make Celeste get out of bed now and pack.
Can we go right through to St. Moritz? I’d
rather sleep in the train than in another of these
awful places.”
She was on her feet in a flash, her face alight, her
hair waving and floating about her as though it rose
on her happy heart-beats.
“Oh, Ralph, it’s sweet of you, and
I love you!” she cried out, letting him take
her to his breast.
In the quiet place with the green water-fall Ralph’s
vision might have kept faith with him; but how could
he hope to surprise it in the midsummer crowds of
St. Moritz? Undine, at any rate, had found there
what she wanted; and when he was at her side, and her
radiant smile included him, every other question was
in abeyance. But there were hours of solitary
striding over bare grassy slopes, face to face with
the ironic interrogation of sky and mountains, when
his anxieties came back, more persistent and importunate.
Sometimes they took the form of merely material difficulties.
How, for instance, was he to meet the cost of their
ruinous suite at the Engadine Palace while he awaited
Mr. Spragg’s next remittance? And once
the hotel bills were paid, what would be left for
the journey back to Paris, the looming expenses there,
the price of the passage to America? These questions
would fling him back on the thought of his projected
book, which was, after all, to be what the masterpieces
of literature had mostly been—a pot-boiler.
Well! Why not? Did not the worshipper always
heap the rarest essences on the altar of his divinity?
Ralph still rejoiced in the thought of giving back
to Undine something of the beauty of their first months
together. But even on his solitary walks the
vision eluded him; and he could spare so few hours
to its pursuit!
Undine’s days were crowded, and it was still
a matter of course that where she went he should follow.
He had risen visibly in her opinion since they had
been absorbed into the life of the big hotels, and
she had seen that his command of foreign tongues put
him at an advantage even in circles where English
was generally spoken if not understood. Undine
herself, hampered by her lack of languages, was soon
drawn into the group of compatriots who struck the
social pitch of their hotel.
