Their stalls were in the middle of the house, and around them swept the great curve of boxes at which Undine had so often looked up in the remote Stentorian days.  Then all had been one indistinguishable glitter, now the scene was full of familiar details:  the house was thronged with people she knew, and every box seemed to contain a parcel of her past.  At first she had shrunk from recognition; but gradually, as she perceived that no one noticed her, that she was merely part of the invisible crowd out of range of the exploring opera glasses, she felt a defiant desire to make herself seen.  When the performance was over her father wanted to leave the house by the door at which they had entered, but she guided him toward the stockholders’ entrance, and pressed her way among the furred and jewelled ladies waiting for their motors.  “Oh, it’s the wrong door—­never mind, we’ll walk to the corner and get a cab,” she exclaimed, speaking loudly enough to be overheard.  Two or three heads turned, and she met Dicky Bowles’s glance, and returned his laughing bow.  The woman talking to him looked around, coloured slightly, and made a barely perceptible motion of her head.  Just beyond her, Mrs. Chauncey Elling, plumed and purple, stared, parted her lips, and turned to say something important to young Jim Driscoll, who looked up involuntarily and then squared his shoulders and gazed fixedly at a distant point, as people do at a funeral.  Behind them Undine caught sight of Clare Van Degen; she stood alone, and her face was pale and listless.  “Shall I go up and speak to her?” Undine wondered.  Some intuition told her that, alone of all the women present, Clare might have greeted her kindly; but she hung back, and Mrs. Harmon Driscoll surged by on Popple’s arm.  Popple crimsoned, coughed, and signalled despotically to Mrs. Driscoll’s footman.  Over his shoulder Undine received a bow from Charles Bowen, and behind Bowen she saw two or three other men she knew, and read in their faces surprise, curiosity, and the wish to show their pleasure at seeing her.  But she grasped her father’s arm and drew him out among the entangled motors and vociferating policemen.

Neither she nor Mr. Spragg spoke a word on the way home; but when they reached the Malibran her father followed her up to her room.  She had dropped her cloak and stood before the wardrobe mirror studying her reflection when he came up behind her and she saw that he was looking at it too.

“Where did that necklace come from?”

Undine’s neck grew pink under the shining circlet.  It was the first time since her return to New York that she had put on a low dress and thus uncovered the string of pearls she always wore.  She made no answer, and Mr. Spragg continued:  “Did your husband give them to you?”

“Ralph!” She could not restrain a laugh.

“Who did, then?”

Undine remained silent.  She really had not thought about the pearls, except in so far as she consciously enjoyed the pleasure of possessing them; and her father, habitually so unobservant, had seemed the last person likely to raise the awkward question of their origin.