Undine, hitherto, had found more benefits than drawbacks in her marriage; but now the tie began to gall.  It was hard to be criticized for every grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do the reaching for her!  Ralph had gone into business to make more money for her; but it was plain that the “more” would never be much, and that he would not achieve the quick rise to affluence which was man’s natural tribute to woman’s merits.  Undine felt herself trapped, deceived; and it was intolerable that the agent of her disillusionment should presume to be the critic of her conduct.  Her annoyance, however, died out with her fears.  Ralph, the morning after the Elling dinner, went his way as usual, and after nerving herself for the explosion which did not come she set down his indifference to the dulling effect of “business.”  No wonder poor women whose husbands were always “down-town” had to look elsewhere for sympathy!  Van Degen’s cheque helped to calm her, and the weeks whirled on toward the Driscoll ball.

The ball was as brilliant as she had hoped, and her own part in it as thrilling as a page from one of the “society novels” with which she had cheated the monotony of Apex days.  She had no time for reading now:  every hour was packed with what she would have called life, and the intensity of her sensations culminated on that triumphant evening.  What could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied her dress, the men did not so much as look at it?  Their admiration was all for herself, and her beauty deepened under it as flowers take a warmer colour in the rays of sunset.  Only Van Degen’s glance weighed on her a little too heavily.  Was it possible that he might become a “bother” less negligible than those he had relieved her of?  Undine was not greatly alarmed—­she still had full faith in her powers of self-defense; but she disliked to feel the least crease in the smooth surface of existence.  She had always been what her parents called “sensitive.”

As the winter passed, material cares once more assailed her.  In the thrill of liberation produced by Van Degen’s gift she had been imprudent—­had launched into fresh expenses.  Not that she accused herself of extravagance:  she had done nothing not really necessary.  The drawing-room, for instance, cried out to be “done over,” and Popple, who was an authority on decoration, had shown her, with a few strokes of his pencil how easily it might be transformed into a French “period” room, all curves and cupids:  just the setting for a pretty woman and his portrait of her.  But Undine, still hopeful of leaving West End Avenue, had heroically resisted the suggestion, and contented herself with the renewal of the curtains and carpet, and the purchase of some fragile gilt chairs which, as she told Ralph, would be “so much to the good” when they moved—­the explanation, as she made it, seemed an additional evidence of her thrift.