“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.

XII

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.