“And what are you going to do next?” she asked, almost breathlessly, when he had ended.

“Oh, there’s always a lot to do next.  Business never goes to sleep.”

“Yes; but I mean besides business.”

“Why—­everything I can, I guess.”  He leaned back in his chair with an air of placid power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge as his vistas had become.

She continued to question him, and he began to talk of his growing passion for pictures and furniture, and of his desire to form a collection which should be a great representative assemblage of unmatched specimens.  As he spoke she saw his expression change, and his eyes grow younger, almost boyish, with a concentrated look in them that reminded her of long-forgotten things.

“I mean to have the best, you know; not just to get ahead of the other fellows, but because I know it when I see it.  I guess that’s the only good reason,” he concluded; and he added, looking at her with a smile:  “It was what you were always after, wasn’t it?”

XLII

Undine had gained her point, and the entresol of the Hotel de Chelles reopened its doors for the season.

Hubert and his wife, in expectation of the birth of an heir, had withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which General Arlington had hired for them near Compiegne, and Undine was at least spared the sight of their bright windows and animated stairway.  But she had to take her share of the felicitations which the whole far-reaching circle of friends and relations distributed to every member of Hubert’s family on the approach of the happy event.  Nor was this the hardest of her trials.  Raymond had done what she asked—­he had stood out against his mother’s protests, set aside considerations of prudence, and consented to go up to Paris for two months; but he had done so on the understanding that during their stay they should exercise the most unremitting economy.  As dinner-giving put the heaviest strain on their budget, all hospitality was suspended; and when Undine attempted to invite a few friends informally she was warned that she could not do so without causing the gravest offense to the many others genealogically entitled to the same attention.

Raymond’s insistence on this rule was simply part of an elaborate and inveterate system of “relations” (the whole of French social life seemed to depend on the exact interpretation of that word), and Undine felt the uselessness of struggling against such mysterious inhibitions.  He reminded her, however, that their inability to receive would give them all the more opportunity for going out, and he showed himself more socially disposed than in the past.  But his concession did not result as she had hoped.  They were asked out as much as ever, but they were asked to big dinners, to impersonal crushes, to the kind of entertainment it is a slight to be omitted from but no compliment to be included in.  Nothing could have been more galling to Undine, and she frankly bewailed the fact to Madame de Trezac.