With the setting in of the mood of silence all desire to fight his wife’s suit died out.  The idea of touching publicly on anything that had passed between himself and Undine had become unthinkable.  Insensibly he had been subdued to the point of view about him, and the idea of calling on the law to repair his shattered happiness struck him as even more grotesque than it was degrading.  Nevertheless, some contradictory impulse of his divided spirit made him resent, on the part of his mother and sister, a too-ready acceptance of his attitude.  There were moments when their tacit assumption that his wife was banished and forgotten irritated him like the hushed tread of sympathizers about the bed of an invalid who will not admit that he suffers.

His irritation was aggravated by the discovery that Mrs. Marvell and Laura had already begun to treat Paul as if he were an orphan.  One day, coming unnoticed into the nursery, Ralph heard the boy ask when his mother was coming back; and Mrs. Fairford, who was with him, answered:  “She’s not coming back, dearest; and you’re not to speak of her to father.”

Ralph, when the boy was out of hearing, rebuked his sister for her answer.  “I don’t want you to talk of his mother as if she were dead.  I don’t want you to forbid Paul to speak of her.”

Laura, though usually so yielding, defended herself.  “What’s the use of encouraging him to speak of her when he’s never to see her?  The sooner he forgets her the better.”

Ralph pondered.  “Later—­if she asks to see him—­I shan’t refuse.”

Mrs. Fairford pressed her lips together to check the answer:  “She never will!”

Ralph heard it, nevertheless, and let it pass.  Nothing gave him so profound a sense of estrangement from his former life as the conviction that his sister was probably right.  He did not really believe that Undine would ever ask to see her boy; but if she did he was determined not to refuse her request.

Time wore on, the Christmas holidays came and went, and the winter continued to grind out the weary measure of its days.  Toward the end of January Ralph received a registered letter, addressed to him at his office, and bearing in the corner of the envelope the names of a firm of Sioux Falls attorneys.  He instantly divined that it contained the legal notification of his wife’s application for divorce, and as he wrote his name in the postman’s book he smiled grimly at the thought that the stroke of his pen was doubtless signing her release.  He opened the letter, found it to be what he had expected, and locked it away in his desk without mentioning the matter to any one.