Her spirits were not lightened by the developments of the next few days.  She kept herself well in the foreground of Indiana’s life, and cultivated toward the rarely-visible Rolliver a manner in which impersonal admiration for the statesman was tempered with the politest indifference to the man.  Indiana seemed to do justice to her efforts and to be reassured by the result; but still there came no hint of a reward.  For a time Undine restrained the question on her lips; but one afternoon, when she had inducted Indiana into the deepest mysteries of Parisian complexion-making, the importance of the service and the confidential mood it engendered seemed to warrant a discreet allusion to their bargain.

Indiana leaned back among her cushions with an embarrassed laugh.

“Oh, my dear, I’ve been meaning to tell you—­it’s off, I’m afraid.  The dinner is, I mean.  You see, Mr. Van Degen has seen you ’round with me, and the very minute I asked him to come and dine he guessed—­”

“He guessed—­and he wouldn’t?”

“Well, no.  He wouldn’t.  I hate to tell you.”

“Oh—­” Undine threw off a vague laugh.  “Since you’re intimate enough for him to tell you that he must, have told you more—­told you something to justify his behaviour.  He couldn’t—­even Peter Van Degen couldn’t—­just simply have said to you:  ‘I wont see her.’”

Mrs. Rolliver hesitated, visibly troubled to the point of regretting her intervention.

“He did say more?” Undine insisted.  “He gave you a reason?

“He said you’d know.”

“Oh how base—­how base!” Undine was trembling with one of her little-girl rages, the storms of destructive fury before which Mr. and Mrs. Spragg had cowered when she was a charming golden-curled cherub.  But life had administered some of the discipline which her parents had spared her, and she pulled herself together with a gasp of pain.  “Of course he’s been turned against me.  His wife has the whole of New York behind her, and I’ve no one; but I know it would be all right if I could only see him.”

Her friend made no answer, and Undine pursued, with an irrepressible outbreak of her old vehemence:  “Indiana Rolliver, if you won’t do it for me I’ll go straight off to his hotel this very minute.  I’ll wait there in the hall till he sees me!”

Indiana lifted a protesting hand.  “Don’t, Undine—­not that!”

“Why not?”

“Well—­I wouldn’t, that’s all.”

“You wouldn’t?  Why wouldn’t you?  You must have a reason.”  Undine faced her with levelled brows.  “Without a reason you can’t have changed so utterly since our last talk.  You were positive enough then that I had a right to make him see me.”

Somewhat to her surprise, Indiana made no effort to elude the challenge.  “Yes, I did think so then.  But I know now that it wouldn’t do you the least bit of good.”

“Have they turned him so completely against me?  I don’t care if they have!  I know him—­I can get him back.”