“It’s the most wonderful old house you ever saw:  a real castle, with towers, and water all round it, and a funny kind of bridge they pull up.  Chelles said he wanted me to see just how they lived at home, and I did; I saw everything:  the tapestries that Louis Quinze gave them, and the family portraits, and the chapel, where their own priest says mass, and they sit by themselves in a balcony with crowns all over it.  The priest was a lovely old man—­he said he’d give anything to convert me.  Do you know, I think there’s something very beautiful about the Roman Catholic religion?  I’ve often felt I might have been happier if I’d had some religious influence in my life.”

She sighed a little, and turned her head away.  She flattered herself that she had learned to strike the right note with Van Degen.  At this crucial stage he needed a taste of his own methods, a glimpse of the fact that there were women in the world who could get on without him.

He continued to gaze down at her sulkily.  “Were the old people there?  You never told me you knew his mother.”

“I don’t.  They weren’t there.  But it didn’t make a bit of difference, because Raymond sent down a cook from the Luxe.”

“Oh, Lord,” Van Degen groaned, dropping down on the end of the sofa.  “Was the cook got down to chaperon you?”

Undine laughed.  “You talk like Ralph!  I had Bertha with me.”

“Bertha!” His tone of contempt surprised her.  She had supposed that Mrs. Shallum’s presence had made the visit perfectly correct.

“You went without knowing his parents, and without their inviting you?  Don’t you know what that sort of thing means out here?  Chelles did it to brag about you at his club.  He wants to compromise you—­that’s his game!”

“Do you suppose he does?” A flicker of a smile crossed her lips.  “I’m so unconventional:  when I like a man I never stop to think about such things.  But I ought to, of course—­you’re quite right.”  She looked at Van Degen thoughtfully.  “At any rate, he’s not a married man.”

Van Degen had got to his feet again and was standing accusingly before her; but as she spoke the blood rose to his neck and ears.  “What difference does that make?”

“It might make a good deal.  I see,” she added, “how careful I ought to be about going round with you.”

“With me?” His face fell at the retort; then he broke into a laugh.  He adored Undine’s “smartness,” which was of precisely the same quality as his own.  “Oh, that’s another thing:  you can always trust me to look after you!”

“With your reputation?  Much obliged!”

Van Degen smiled.  She knew he liked such allusions, and was pleased that she thought him compromising.

“Oh, I’m as good as gold.  You’ve made a new man of me!”

“Have I?” She considered him in silence for a moment.  “I wonder what you’ve done to me but make a discontented woman of me—­discontented with everything I had before I knew you?”