“I went with that girl on purpose, and you know it,” he broke out abruptly.  “It makes me too damned sick to see Millard Binch going round looking as if he’d patented you.”

“You’ve got no right—­” she interrupted; and suddenly she was in his arms, and feeling that no one had ever kissed her before....

The week that followed was a big bright blur—­the wildest vividest moment of her life.  And it was only eight days later that they were in the train together, Apex and all her plans and promises behind them, and a bigger and brighter blur ahead, into which they were plunging as the “Limited” plunged into the sunset....

Undine stood up, looking about her with vague eyes, as if she had come back from a long distance.  Elmer Moffatt was still in Paris—­he was in reach, within telephone-call.  She stood hesitating a moment; then she went into her dressing-room, and turning over the pages of the telephone book, looked out the number of the Nouveau Luxe....

XLIV

Undine had been right in supposing that her husband would expect their life to go on as before.  There was no appreciable change in the situation save that he was more often absent-finding abundant reasons, agricultural and political, for frequent trips to Saint Desert—­and that, when in Paris, he no longer showed any curiosity concerning her occupations and engagements.  They lived as much apart is if their cramped domicile had been a palace; and when Undine—­as she now frequently did—­joined the Shallums or Rollivers for a dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, or a party at a petit theatre, she was not put to the trouble of prevaricating.

Her first impulse, after her scene with Raymond, had been to ring up Indiana Rolliver and invite herself to dine.  It chanced that Indiana (who was now in full social progress, and had “run over” for a few weeks to get her dresses for Newport) had organized for the same evening a showy cosmopolitan banquet in which she was enchanted to include the Marquise de Chelles; and Undine, as she had hoped, found Elmer Moffatt of the party.  When she drove up to the Nouveau Luxe she had not fixed on any plan of action; but once she had crossed its magic threshold her energies revived like plants in water.  At last she was in her native air again, among associations she shared and conventions she understood; and all her self-confidence returned as the familiar accents uttered the accustomed things.

Save for an occasional perfunctory call, she had hitherto made no effort to see her compatriots, and she noticed that Mrs. Jim Driscoll and Bertha Shallum received her with a touch of constraint; but it vanished when they remarked the cordiality of Moffatt’s greeting.  Her seat was at his side, and her old sense of triumph returned as she perceived the importance his notice conferred, not only in the eyes of her own party but of the other diners.  Moffatt was evidently a notable figure in all the worlds represented about the crowded tables, and Undine saw that many people who seemed personally unacquainted with him were recognizing and pointing him out.  She was conscious of receiving a large share of the attention he attracted, and, bathed again in the bright air of publicity, she remembered the evening when Raymond de Chelles’ first admiring glance had given her the same sense of triumph.