“What do you mean by ’something different’?” She was silent, and he insisted:  “Are you really thinking of marrying Chelles?”

She started as if he had surprised a secret.  “I’ll never forgive you if you speak of it—­”

“Good Lord!  Good Lord!” he groaned.

She remained motionless, with lowered lids, and he went up to her and pulled her about so that she faced him.  “Undine, honour bright—­do you think he’ll marry you?”

She looked at him with a sudden hardness in her eyes.  “I really can’t discuss such things with you.”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake don’t take that tone!  I don’t half know what I’m saying...but you mustn’t throw yourself away a second time.  I’ll do anything you want—­I swear I will!”

A knock on the door sent them apart, and a servant entered with a telegram.

Undine turned away to the window with the narrow blue slip.  She was glad of the interruption:  the sense of what she had at stake made her want to pause a moment and to draw breath.

The message was a long cable signed with Laura Fairford’s name.  It told her that Ralph had been taken suddenly ill with pneumonia, that his condition was serious and that the doctors advised his wife’s immediate return.

Undine had to read the words over two or three times to get them into her crowded mind; and even after she had done so she needed more time to see their bearing on her own situation.  If the message had concerned her boy her brain would have acted more quickly.  She had never troubled herself over the possibility of Paul’s falling ill in her absence, but she understood now that if the cable had been about him she would have rushed to the earliest steamer.  With Ralph it was different.  Ralph was always perfectly well—­she could not picture him as being suddenly at death’s door and in need of her.  Probably his mother and sister had had a panic:  they were always full of sentimental terrors.  The next moment an angry suspicion flashed across her:  what if the cable were a device of the Marvell women to bring her back?  Perhaps it had been sent with Ralph’s connivance!  No doubt Bowen had written home about her—­Washington Square had received some monstrous report of her doings!...  Yes, the cable was clearly an echo of Laura’s letter—­mother and daughter had cooked it up to spoil her pleasure.  Once the thought had occurred to her it struck root in her mind and began to throw out giant branches.  Van Degen followed her to the window, his face still flushed and working.  “What’s the matter?” he asked, as she continued to stare silently at the telegram.

She crumpled the strip of paper in her hand.  If only she had been alone, had had a chance to think out her answers!

“What on earth’s the matter?” he repeated.

“Oh, nothing—­nothing.”

“Nothing?  When you’re as white as a sheet?”

“Am I?” She gave a slight laugh.  “It’s only a cable from home.”