Undine seemed unconscious of his embarrassment.  “He doesn’t give us nearly as much as father does,” she said; and, as Ralph remained silent, she went on: 

“Couldn’t you ask your sister, then?  I must have some clothes to go home in.”

His heart contracted as he looked at her.  What sinister change came over her when her will was crossed?  She seemed to grow inaccessible, implacable—­her eyes were like the eyes of an enemy.

“I don’t know—­I’ll see,” he said, rising and moving away from her.  At that moment the touch of her hand was repugnant.  Yes—­he might ask Laura, no doubt:  and whatever she had would be his.  But the necessity was bitter to him, and Undine’s unconsciousness of the fact hurt him more than her indifference to her father’s misfortune.

What hurt him most was the curious fact that, for all her light irresponsibility, it was always she who made the practical suggestion, hit the nail of expediency on the head.  No sentimental scruple made the blow waver or deflected her resolute aim.  She had thought at once of Laura, and Laura was his only, his inevitable, resource.  His anxious mind pictured his sister’s wonder, and made him wince under the sting of Henley Fairford’s irony:  Fairford, who at the time of the marriage had sat silent and pulled his moustache while every one else argued and objected, yet under whose silence Ralph had felt a deeper protest than under all the reasoning of the others.  It was no comfort to reflect that Fairford would probably continue to say nothing!  But necessity made light of these twinges, and Ralph set his teeth and cabled.

Undine’s chief surprise seemed to be that Laura’s response, though immediate and generous, did not enable them to stay on at St. Moritz.  But she apparently read in her husband’s look the uselessness of such a hope, for, with one of the sudden changes of mood that still disarmed him, she accepted the need of departure, and took leave philosophically of the Shallums and their band.  After all, Paris was ahead, and in September one would have a chance to see the new models and surprise the secret councils of the dressmakers.

Ralph was astonished at the tenacity with which she held to her purpose.  He tried, when they reached Paris, to make her feel the necessity of starting at once for home; but she complained of fatigue and of feeling vaguely unwell, and he had to yield to her desire for rest.  The word, however, was to strike him as strangely misapplied, for from the day of their arrival she was in state of perpetual activity.  She seemed to have mastered her Paris by divination, and between the hounds of the Boulevards and the Place Vendome she moved at once with supernatural ease.