The entr’acte was nearly over when the door opened and two gentlemen stumbled over Mr. Lipscomb’s legs.  The foremost was Claud Walsingham Popple; and above his shoulder shone the batrachian countenance of Peter Van Degen.  A brief murmur from Mr. Popple made his companion known to the two ladies, and Mr. Van Degen promptly seated himself behind Undine, relegating the painter to Mrs. Lipscomb’s elbow.

“Queer go—­I happened to see your friend there waving to old Popp across the house.  So I bolted over and collared him:  told him he’d got to introduce me before he was a minute older.  I tried to find out who you were the other day at the Motor Show—­no, where was it?  Oh, those pictures at Goldmark’s.  What d’you think of ’em, by the way?  You ought to be painted yourself—­no, I mean it, you know—­you ought to get old Popp to do you.  He’d do your hair ripplingly.  You must let me come and talk to you about it...  About the picture or your hair?  Well, your hair if you don’t mind.  Where’d you say you were staying?  Oh, you live here, do you?  I say, that’s first rate!”

Undine sat well forward, curving toward him a little, as she had seen the other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than Mr. Peter Van Degen.  Mr. Popple’s talk was certainly more brilliant and purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind Mrs. Lipscomb’s shoulder; but she remembered how lightly he had been treated at the Fairford dinner, and she wanted—­oh, how she wanted!—­to have Ralph Marvell see her talking to Van Degen.

She poured out her heart to him, improvising an opinion on the pictures and an opinion on the music, falling in gaily with his suggestion of a jolly little dinner some night soon, at the Cafe Martin, and strengthening her position, as she thought, by an easy allusion to her acquaintance with Mrs. Van Degen.  But at the word her companion’s eye clouded, and a shade of constraint dimmed his enterprising smile.

“My wife—?  Oh, she doesn’t go to restaurants—­she moves on too high a plane.  But we’ll get old Popp, and Mrs.—­, Mrs.—­, what’d you say your fat friend’s name was?  Just a select little crowd of four—­and some kind of a cheerful show afterward...  Jove!  There’s the curtain, and I must skip.”

As the door closed on him Undine’s cheeks burned with resentment.  If Mrs. Van Degen didn’t go to restaurants, why had he supposed that she would? and to have to drag Mabel in her wake!  The leaden sense of failure overcame her again.  Here was the evening nearly over, and what had it led to?  Looking up from the stalls, she had fancied that to sit in a box was to be in society—­now she saw it might but emphasize one’s exclusion.  And she was burdened with the box for the rest of the season!  It was really stupid of her father to have exceeded his instructions:  why had he not done as she told him?...  Undine felt helpless and tired... hateful memories of Apex crowded back on her.  Was it going to be as dreary here as there?