She felt Lipscomb’s loud whisper in her back:  “Say, you girls, I guess I’ll cut this and come back for you when the show busts up.”  They heard him shuffle out of the box, and Mabel settled back to undisturbed enjoyment of the stage.

When the last entr’acte began Undine stood up, resolved to stay no longer.  Mabel, lost in the study of the audience, had not noticed her movement, and as she passed alone into the back of the box the door opened and Ralph Marvell came in.

Undine stood with one arm listlessly raised to detach her cloak from the wall.  Her attitude showed the long slimness of her figure and the fresh curve of the throat below her bent-back head.  Her face was paler and softer than usual, and the eyes she rested on Marvell’s face looked deep and starry under their fixed brows.

“Oh—­you’re not going?” he exclaimed.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she answered simply.

“I waited till now on purpose to dodge your other visitors.”

She laughed with pleasure.  “Oh, we hadn’t so many!”

Some intuition had already told her that frankness was the tone to take with him.  They sat down together on the red damask sofa, against the hanging cloaks.  As Undine leaned back her hair caught in the spangles of the wrap behind her, and she had to sit motionless while the young man freed the captive mesh.  Then they settled themselves again, laughing a little at the incident.

A glance had made the situation clear to Mrs. Lipscomb, and they saw her return to her rapt inspection of the boxes.  In their mirror-hung recess the light was subdued to a rosy dimness and the hum of the audience came to them through half-drawn silken curtains.  Undine noticed the delicacy and finish of her companion’s features as his head detached itself against the red silk walls.  The hand with which he stroked his small moustache was finely-finished too, but sinewy and not effeminate.  She had always associated finish and refinement entirely with her own sex, but she began to think they might be even more agreeable in a man.  Marvell’s eyes were grey, like her own, with chestnut eyebrows and darker lashes; and his skin was as clear as a woman’s, but pleasantly reddish, like his hands.

As he sat talking in a low tone, questioning her about the music, asking her what she had been doing since he had last seen her, she was aware that he looked at her less than usual, and she also glanced away; but when she turned her eyes suddenly they always met his gaze.

His talk remained impersonal.  She was a little disappointed that he did not compliment her on her dress or her hair—­Undine was accustomed to hearing a great deal about her hair, and the episode of the spangles had opened the way to a graceful allusion—­but the instinct of sex told her that, under his quiet words, he was throbbing with the sense of her proximity.  And his self-restraint sobered her, made her refrain from the flashing and fidgeting which were the only way she knew of taking part in the immemorial love-dance.  She talked simply and frankly of herself, of her parents, of how few people they knew in New York, and of how, at times, she was almost sorry she had persuaded them to give up Apex.