Mrs. Spragg overflowed with compunction.  “I’m so sorry, Undie.  I guess it was just seeing you in this glare of light.”

“Yes—­the light’s awful; do turn some off,” ordered Undine, for whom, ordinarily, no radiance was too strong; and Mrs. Spragg, grateful to have commands laid upon her, hastened to obey.

Undine, after this, submitted in brooding silence to having her dress unlaced, and her slippers and dressing-gown brought to her.  Mrs. Spragg visibly yearned to say more, but she restrained the impulse lest it should provoke her dismissal.

“Won’t you take just a sup of milk before you go to bed?” she suggested at length, as Undine sank into an armchair.

“I’ve got some for you right here in the parlour.”

Without looking up the girl answered:  “No.  I don’t want anything.  Do go to bed.”

Her mother seemed to be struggling between the life-long instinct of obedience and a swift unformulated fear.  “I’m going, Undie.”  She wavered.  “Didn’t they receive you right, daughter?” she asked with sudden resolution.

“What nonsense!  How should they receive me?  Everybody was lovely to me.”  Undine rose to her feet and went on with her undressing, tossing her clothes on the floor and shaking her hair over her bare shoulders.

Mrs. Spragg stooped to gather up the scattered garments as they fell, folding them with a wistful caressing touch, and laying them on the lounge, without daring to raise her eyes to her daughter.  It was not till she heard Undine throw herself on the bed that she went toward her and drew the coverlet up with deprecating hands.

“Oh, do put the light out—­I’m dead tired,” the girl grumbled, pressing her face into the pillow.

Mrs. Spragg turned away obediently; then, gathering all her scattered impulses into a passionate act of courage, she moved back to the bedside.

“Undie—­you didn’t see anybody—­I mean at the theatre?  Anybody you didn’t want to see?”

Undine, at the question, raised her head and started right against the tossed pillows, her white exasperated face close to her mother’s twitching features.  The two women examined each other a moment, fear and anger in their crossed glances; then Undine answered:  “No, nobody.  Good-night.”

IX

Undine, late the next day, waited alone under the leafless trellising of a wistaria arbour on the west side of the Central Park.  She had put on her plainest dress, and wound a closely, patterned veil over her least vivid hat; but even thus toned down to the situation she was conscious of blazing out from it inconveniently.

The habit of meeting young men in sequestered spots was not unknown to her:  the novelty was in feeling any embarrassment about it.  Even now she—­was disturbed not so much by the unlikely chance of an accidental encounter with Ralph Marvell as by the remembrance of similar meetings, far from accidental, with the romantic Aaronson.  Could it be that the hand now adorned with Ralph’s engagement ring had once, in this very spot, surrendered itself to the riding-master’s pressure?  At the thought a wave of physical disgust passed over her, blotting out another memory as distasteful but more remote.