Ralph had begun to laugh again.  Suddenly he heard his own laugh and it pulled him up.  What was he laughing about?  What was he talking about?  The thing was to act—­to hold his tongue and act.  There was no use uttering windy threats to this broken-spirited old man.

A fury of action burned in Ralph, pouring light into his mind and strength into his muscles.  He caught up his hat and turned to the door.

As he opened it Mr. Spragg rose again and came forward with his slow shambling step.  He laid his hand on Ralph’s arm.

“I’d ‘a’ given anything—­anything short of my girl herself—­not to have this happen to you, Ralph Marvell.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ralph.

They looked at each other for a moment; then Mr. Spragg added:  “But it has happened, you know.  Bear that in mind.  Nothing you can do will change it.  Time and again, I’ve found that a good thing to remember.”

XXIII

In the Adirondacks Ralph Marvell sat day after day on the balcony of his little house above the lake, staring at the great white cloud-reflections in the water and at the dark line of trees that closed them in.  Now and then he got into the canoe and paddled himself through a winding chain of ponds to some lonely clearing in the forest; and there he lay on his back in the pine-needles and watched the great clouds form and dissolve themselves above his head.

All his past life seemed to be symbolized by the building-up and breaking-down of those fluctuating shapes, which incalculable wind-currents perpetually shifted and remodelled or swept from the zenith like a pinch of dust.  His sister told him that he looked well—­better than he had in years; and there were moments when his listlessness, his stony insensibility to the small pricks and frictions of daily life, might have passed for the serenity of recovered health.

There was no one with whom he could speak of Undine.  His family had thrown over the whole subject a pall of silence which even Laura Fairford shrank from raising.  As for his mother, Ralph had seen at once that the idea of talking over the situation was positively frightening to her.  There was no provision for such emergencies in the moral order of Washington Square.  The affair was a “scandal,” and it was not in the Dagonet tradition to acknowledge the existence of scandals.  Ralph recalled a dim memory of his childhood, the tale of a misguided friend of his mother’s who had left her husband for a more congenial companion, and who, years later, returning ill and friendless to New York, had appealed for sympathy to Mrs. Marvell.  The latter had not refused to give it; but she had put on her black cashmere and two veils when she went to see her unhappy friend, and had never mentioned these errands of mercy to her husband.