As she lay there she heard Mrs. Heeny’s voice in the passage.  Hitherto she had avoided the masseuse, as she did every one else associated with her past.  Mrs. Heeny had behaved with extreme discretion, refraining from all direct allusions to Undine’s misadventure; but her silence was obviously the criticism of a superior mind.  Once again Undine had disregarded her injunction to “go slow,” with results that justified the warning.  Mrs. Heeny’s very reserve, however, now marked her as a safe adviser; and Undine sprang up and called her in.  “My sakes.  Undine!  You look’s if you’d been setting up all night with a remains!” the masseuse exclaimed in her round rich tones.

Undine, without answering, caught up the pearls and thrust them into Mrs. Heeny’s hands.

“Good land alive!” The masseuse dropped into a chair and let the twist slip through her fat flexible fingers.  “Well, you got a fortune right round your neck whenever you wear them, Undine Spragg.”

Undine murmured something indistinguishable.  “I want you to take them—­” she began.

“Take ’em?  Where to?”

“Why, to—­” She was checked by the wondering simplicity of Mrs. Heeny’s stare.  The masseuse must know where the pearls had come from, yet it had evidently not occurred to her that Mrs. Marvell was about to ask her to return them to their donor.  In the light of Mrs. Heeny’s unclouded gaze the whole episode took on a different aspect, and Undine began to be vaguely astonished at her immediate submission to her father’s will.  The pearls were hers, after all!

“To be re-strung?” Mrs. Heeny placidly suggested.  “Why, you’d oughter to have it done right here before your eyes, with pearls that are worth what these are.”

As Undine listened, a new thought shaped itself.  She could not continue to wear the pearls:  the idea had become intolerable.  But for the first time she saw what they might be converted into, and what they might rescue her from; and suddenly she brought out:  “Do you suppose I could get anything for them?”

“Get anything?  Why, what—­”

“Anything like what they’re worth, I mean.  They cost a lot of money:  they came from the biggest place in Paris.”  Under Mrs. Heeny’s simplifying eye it was comparatively easy to make these explanations.  “I want you to try and sell them for me—­I want you to do the best you can with them.  I can’t do it myself—­but you must swear you’ll never tell a soul,” she pressed on breathlessly.

“Why, you poor child—­it ain’t the first time,” said Mrs. Heeny, coiling the pearls in her big palm.  “It’s a pity too:  they’re such beauties.  But you’ll get others,” she added, as the necklace vanished into her bag.

A few days later there appeared from the same receptacle a bundle of banknotes considerable enough to quiet Undine’s last scruples.  She no longer understood why she had hesitated.  Why should she have thought it necessary to give back the pearls to Van Degen?  His obligation to her represented far more than the relatively small sum she had been able to realize on the necklace.  She hid the money in her dress, and when Mrs. Heeny had gone on to Mrs. Spragg’s room she drew the packet out, and counting the bills over, murmured to herself:  “Now I can get away!”