“Forget what?  That you don’t want to give up what you’ve got?”

“How can I?  Such things are not done out here.  Why, I’m a Catholic; and the Catholic Church—­” She broke off, reading the end in his face.  “But later, perhaps ... things might change.  Oh, Elmer, if only you’d stay over here and let me see you sometimes!”

“Yes—­the way your friends see each other.  We’re differently made out in Apex.  When I want that sort of thing I go down to North Fifth Street for it.”

She paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it.  What he asked was impossible—­and she gloried in his asking it.  Feeling her power, she tried to temporize.  “At least if you stayed we could be friends—­I shouldn’t feel so terribly alone.”

He laughed impatiently.  “Don’t talk magazine stuff to me, Undine Spragg.  I guess we want each other the same way.  Only our ideas are different.  You’ve got all muddled, living out here among a lot of loafers who call it a career to run round after every petticoat.  I’ve got my job out at home, and I belong where my job is.”

“Are you going to be tied to business all your life?” Her smile was faintly depreciatory.

“I guess business is tied to me:  Wall Street acts as if it couldn’t get along without me.”  He gave his shoulders a shake and moved a few steps nearer.  “See here, Undine—­you’re the one that don’t understand.  If I was to sell out to-morrow, and spend the rest of my life reading art magazines in a pink villa, I wouldn’t do what you’re asking me.  And I’ve about as much idea of dropping business as you have of taking to district nursing.  There are things a man doesn’t do.  I understand why your husband won’t sell those tapestries—­till he’s got to.  His ancestors are his business:  Wall Street’s mine.”

He paused, and they silently faced each other.  Undine made no attempt to approach him:  she understood that if he yielded it would be only to recover his advantage and deepen her feeling of defeat.  She put out her hand and took up the sunshade she had dropped on entering.  “I suppose it’s good-bye then,” she said.

“You haven’t got the nerve?”

“The nerve for what?”

“To come where you belong:  with me.”

She laughed a little and then sighed.  She wished he would come nearer, or look at her differently:  she felt, under his cool eye, no more compelling than a woman of wax in a show-case.

“How could I get a divorce?  With my religion—­”

“Why, you were born a Baptist, weren’t you?  That’s where you used to attend church when I waited round the corner, Sunday mornings, with one of old Hober’s buggies.”  They both laughed, and he went on:  “If you’ll come along home with me I’ll see you get your divorce all right.  Who cares what they do over here?  You’re an American, ain’t you?  What you want is the home-made article.”