He turned away and wandered across the room, his hands in his pockets.  On her ornate writing desk he saw a photograph of Paul, bright-curled and sturdy-legged, in a manly reefer, and bent over it with a murmur of approval.  “Say—­what a fellow!  Got him with you?”

Undine coloured.  “No—­” she began; and seeing his look of surprise, she embarked on her usual explanation.  “I can’t tell you how I miss him,” she ended, with a ring of truth that carried conviction to her own ears if not to Moffatt’s.

“Why don’t you get him back, then?”

“Why, I—­”

Moffatt had picked up the frame and was looking at the photograph more closely.  “Pants!” he chuckled.  “I declare!”

He turned back to Undine.  “Who does he belong to, anyhow?”

“Belong to?”

“Who got him when you were divorced?  Did you?”

“Oh, I got everything,” she said, her instinct of self-defense on the alert.

“So I thought.”  He stood before her, stoutly planted on his short legs, and speaking with an aggressive energy.  “Well, I know what I’d do if he was mine.”

“If he was yours?”

“And you tried to get him away from me.  Fight you to a finish!  If it cost me down to my last dollar I would.”

The conversation seemed to be wandering from the point, and she answered, with a touch of impatience:  “It wouldn’t cost you anything like that.  I haven’t got a dollar to fight back with.”

“Well, you ain’t got to fight.  Your decree gave him to you, didn’t it?  Why don’t you send right over and get him?  That’s what I’d do if I was you.”

Undine looked up.  “But I’m awfully poor; I can’t afford to have him here.”

“You couldn’t, up to now; but now you’re going to get married.  You’re going to be able to give him a home and a father’s care—­and the foreign languages.  That’s what I’d say if I was you...His father takes considerable stock in him, don’t he?”

She coloured, a denial on her lips; but she could not shape it.  “We’re both awfully fond of him, of course...  His father’d never give him up!”

“Just so.”  Moffatt’s face had grown as sharp as glass.  “You’ve got the Marvells running.  All you’ve got to do’s to sit tight and wait for their cheque.”  He dropped back to his equestrian seat on the lyre-backed chair.

Undine stood up and moved uneasily toward the window.  She seemed to see her little boy as though he were in the room with her; she did not understand how she could have lived so long without him...She stood for a long time without speaking, feeling behind her the concentrated irony of Moffatt’s gaze.

“You couldn’t lend me the money—­manage to borrow it for me, I mean?” she finally turned back to ask.  He laughed.  “If I could manage to borrow any money at this particular minute—­well, I’d have to lend every dollar of it to Elmer Moffatt, Esquire.  I’m stone-broke, if you want to know.  And wanted for an Investigation too.  That’s why I’m over here improving my mind.”