“Mr. Rolliver, my dear?” Undine’s laugh showed that she took this for unmixed comedy.  “That’s a nice way to remind me that you’re heaps and heaps better-looking than I am!”

Indiana gave her an acute glance.  “Millard Binch didn’t think so—­not even at the very end.”

“Oh, poor Millard!” The women’s smiles mingled easily over the common reminiscence, and once again, on the threshold.  Undine enfolded her friend.  In the light of the autumn afternoon she paused a moment at the door of the Nouveau Luxe, and looked aimlessly forth at the brave spectacle in which she seemed no longer to have a stake.

Many of her old friends had already returned to Paris:  the Harvey Shallums, May Beringer, Dicky Bowles and other westward-bound nomads lingering on for a glimpse of the autumn theatres and fashions before hurrying back to inaugurate the New York season.  A year ago Undine would have had no difficulty in introducing Indiana Rolliver to this group—­a group above which her own aspirations already beat an impatient wing.  Now her place in it had become too precarious for her to force an entrance for her protectress.  Her New York friends were at no pains to conceal from her that in their opinion her divorce had been a blunder.  Their logic was that of Apex reversed.  Since she had not been “sure” of Van Degen, why in the world, they asked, had she thrown away a position she was sure of?  Mrs. Harvey Shallum, in particular, had not scrupled to put the question squarely.  “Chelles was awfully taken—­he would have introduced you everywhere.  I thought you were wild to know smart French people; I thought Harvey and I weren’t good enough for you any longer.  And now you’ve done your best to spoil everything!  Of course I feel for you tremendously—­that’s the reason why I’m talking so frankly.  You must be horribly depressed.  Come and dine to-night—­or no, if you don’t mind I’d rather you chose another evening.  I’d forgotten that I’d asked the Jim Driscolls, and it might be uncomfortable—­for you....”

In another world she was still welcome, at first perhaps even more so than before:  the world, namely, to which she had proposed to present Indiana Rolliver.  Roviano, Madame Adelschein, and a few of the freer spirits of her old St. Moritz band, reappearing in Paris with the close of the watering-place season, had quickly discovered her and shown a keen interest in her liberation.  It appeared in some mysterious way to make her more available for their purpose, and she found that, in the character of the last American divorcee, she was even regarded as eligible to the small and intimate inner circle of their loosely-knit association.  At first she could not make out what had entitled her to this privilege, and increasing enlightenment produced a revolt of the Apex puritanism which, despite some odd accommodations and compliances, still carried its head so high in her.