At first this also amused Undine; then the tacit criticism implied began to irritate her.  She hoped Raymond would speak of his mother’s attitude:  she had her answer ready if he did!  But he made no comment, he took no notice; her impulses of retaliation spent themselves against the blank surface of his indifference.  He was as amiable, as considerate as ever; as ready, within reason, to accede to her wishes and gratify her whims.  Once or twice, when she suggested running up to Paris to take Paul to the dentist, or to look for a servant, he agreed to the necessity and went up with her.  But instead of going to an hotel they went to their apartment, where carpets were up and curtains down, and a care-taker prepared primitive food at uncertain hours; and Undine’s first glimpse of Hubert’s illuminated windows deepened her rancour and her sense of helplessness.

As Madame de Trezac had predicted, Raymond’s vigilance gradually relaxed, and during their excursions to the capital Undine came and went as she pleased.  But her visits were too short to permit of her falling in with the social pace, and when she showed herself among her friends she felt countrified and out-of-place, as if even her clothes had come from Saint Desert.  Nevertheless her dresses were more than ever her chief preoccupation:  in Paris she spent hours at the dressmaker’s, and in the country the arrival of a box of new gowns was the chief event of the vacant days.  But there was more bitterness than joy in the unpacking, and the dresses hung in her wardrobe like so many unfulfilled promises of pleasure, reminding her of the days at the Stentorian when she had reviewed other finery with the same cheated eyes.  In spite of this, she multiplied her orders, writing up to the dress-makers for patterns, and to the milliners for boxes of hats which she tried on, and kept for days, without being able to make a choice.  Now and then she even sent her maid up to Paris to bring back great assortments of veils, gloves, flowers and laces; and after periods of painful indecision she ended by keeping the greater number, lest those she sent back should turn out to be the ones that were worn in Paris.  She knew she was spending too much money, and she had lost her youthful faith in providential solutions; but she had always had the habit of going out to buy something when she was bored, and never had she been in greater need of such solace.

The dulness of her life seemed to have passed into her blood:  her complexion was less animated, her hair less shining.  The change in her looks alarmed her, and she scanned the fashion-papers for new scents and powders, and experimented in facial bandaging, electric massage and other processes of renovation.  Odd atavisms woke in her, and she began to pore over patent medicine advertisements, to send stamped envelopes to beauty doctors and professors of physical development, and to brood on the advantage of consulting faith-healers, mind-readers and their kindred adepts.  She even wrote to her mother for the receipts of some of her grandfather’s forgotten nostrums, and modified her daily life, and her hours of sleeping, eating and exercise, in accordance with each new experiment.