But his thoughts were not all dark.  Undine’s moods still infected him, and when she was happy he felt an answering lightness.  Even when her amusements were too primitive to be shared he could enjoy their reflection in her face.  Only, as he looked back, he was struck by the evanescence, the lack of substance, in their moments of sympathy, and by the permanent marks left by each breach between them.  Yet he still fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice.

Something of this was in his mind when, the afternoon before their departure, he came home to help her with their last arrangements.  She had begged him, for the day, to leave her alone in their cramped salon, into which belated bundles were still pouring; and it was nearly dark when he returned.  The evening before she had seemed pale and nervous, and at the last moment had excused herself from dining with the Shallums at a suburban restaurant.  It was so unlike her to miss any opportunity of the kind that Ralph had felt a little anxious.  But with the arrival of the packers she was afoot and in command again, and he withdrew submissively, as Mr. Spragg, in the early Apex days, might have fled from the spring storm of “house-cleaning.”

When he entered the sitting-room, he found it still in disorder.  Every chair was hidden under scattered dresses, tissue-paper surged from the yawning trunks and, prone among her heaped-up finery.  Undine lay with closed eyes on the sofa.

She raised her head as he entered, and then turned listlessly away.

“My poor girl, what’s the matter?  Haven’t they finished yet?”

Instead of answering she pressed her face into the cushion and began to sob.  The violence of her weeping shook her hair down on her shoulders, and her hands, clenching the arm of the sofa, pressed it away from her as if any contact were insufferable.

Ralph bent over her in alarm.  “Why, what’s wrong, dear?  What’s happened?”

Her fatigue of the previous evening came back to him—­a puzzled hunted look in her eyes; and with the memory a vague wonder revived.  He had fancied himself fairly disencumbered of the stock formulas about the hallowing effects of motherhood, and there were many reasons for not welcoming the news he suspected she had to give; but the woman a man loves is always a special case, and everything was different that befell Undine.  If this was what had befallen her it was wonderful and divine:  for the moment that was all he felt.

“Dear, tell me what’s the matter,” he pleaded.

She sobbed on unheedingly and he waited for her agitation to subside.  He shrank from the phrases considered appropriate to the situation, but he wanted to hold her close and give her the depth of his heart in long kiss.

Suddenly she sat upright and turned a desperate face on him.  “Why on earth are you staring at me like that?  Anybody can see what’s the matter!”