These bright weeks of the Parisian spring had given her a first real glimpse into the art of living.  From the experts who had taught her to subdue the curves of her figure and soften her bright free stare with dusky pencillings, to the skilled purveyors of countless forms of pleasure—­the theatres and restaurants, the green and blossoming suburbs, the whole shining shifting spectacle of nights and days—­every sight and sound and word had combined to charm her perceptions and refine her taste.  And her growing friendship with Raymond de Chelles had been the most potent of these influences.

Chelles, at once immensely “taken,” had not only shown his eagerness to share in the helter-skelter motions of Undine’s party, but had given her glimpses of another, still more brilliant existence, that life of the inaccessible “Faubourg” of which the first tantalizing hints had but lately reached her.  Hitherto she had assumed that Paris existed for the stranger, that its native life was merely an obscure foundation for the dazzling superstructure of hotels and restaurants in which her compatriots disported themselves.  But lately she had begun to hear about other American women, the women who had married into the French aristocracy, and who led, in the high-walled houses beyond the Seine which she had once thought so dull and dingy, a life that made her own seem as undistinguished as the social existence of the Mealey House.  Perhaps what most exasperated her was the discovery, in this impenetrable group, of the Miss Wincher who had poisoned her far-off summer at Potash Springs.  To recognize her old enemy in the Marquise de Trezac who so frequently figured in the Parisian chronicle was the more irritating to Undine because her intervening social experiences had caused her to look back on Nettie Wincher as a frumpy girl who wouldn’t have “had a show” in New York.

Once more all the accepted values were reversed, and it turned out that Miss Wincher had been in possession of some key to success on which Undine had not yet put her hand.  To know that others were indifferent to what she had thought important was to cheapen all present pleasure and turn the whole force of her desires in a new direction.  What she wanted for the moment was to linger on in Paris, prolonging her flirtation with Chelles, and profiting by it to detach herself from her compatriots and enter doors closed to their approach.  And Chelles himself attracted her:  she thought him as “sweet” as she had once thought Ralph, whose fastidiousness and refinement were blent in him with a delightful foreign vivacity.  His chief value, however, lay in his power of exciting Van Degen’s jealousy.  She knew enough of French customs to be aware that such devotion as Chelles’ was not likely to have much practical bearing on her future; but Peter had an alarming way of lapsing into security, and as a spur to his ardour she knew the value of other men’s attentions.