“Why—­” she began, without knowing what she meant to say.

“I guess you better send ’em back to the party they belong to,” Mr. Spragg continued, in a voice she did not know.

“They belong to me!” she flamed up.  He looked at her as if she had grown suddenly small and insignificant.  “You better send ’em back to Peter Van Degen the first thing to-morrow morning,” he said as he went out of the room.  As far as Undine could remember, it was the first time in her life that he had ever ordered her to do anything; and when the door closed on him she had the distinct sense that the question had closed with it, and that she would have to obey.  She took the pearls off and threw them from her angrily.  The humiliation her father had inflicted on her was merged with the humiliation to which she had subjected herself in going to the opera, and she had never before hated her life as she hated it then.

All night she lay sleepless, wondering miserably what to do; and out of her hatred of her life, and her hatred of Peter Van Degen, there gradually grew a loathing of Van Degen’s pearls.  How could she have kept them; how have continued to wear them about her neck!  Only her absorption in other cares could have kept her from feeling the humiliation of carrying about with her the price of her shame.  Her novel-reading had filled her mind with the vocabulary of outraged virtue, and with pathetic allusions to woman’s frailty, and while she pitied herself she thought her father heroic.  She was proud to think that she had such a man to defend her, and rejoiced that it was in her power to express her scorn of Van Degen by sending back his jewels.

But her righteous ardour gradually cooled, and she was left once more to face the dreary problem of the future.  Her evening at the opera had shown her the impossibility of remaining in New York.  She had neither the skill nor the power to fight the forces of indifference leagued against her:  she must get away at once, and try to make a fresh start.  But, as usual, the lack of money hampered her.  Mr. Spragg could no longer afford to make her the allowance she had intermittently received from him during the first years of her marriage, and since she was now without child or household she could hardly make it a grievance that he had reduced her income.  But what he allowed her, even with the addition of her alimony, was absurdly insufficient.  Not that she looked far ahead; she had always felt herself predestined to ease and luxury, and the possibility of a future adapted to her present budget did not occur to her.  But she desperately wanted enough money to carry her without anxiety through the coming year.

When her breakfast tray was brought in she sent it away untouched and continued to lie in her darkened room.  She knew that when she got up she must send back the pearls; but there was no longer any satisfaction in the thought, and she lay listlessly wondering how she could best transmit them to Van Degen.