“Don’t let’s pay Peter the compliment of squabbling over him,” he said, turning away to pour himself a cup of tea.

When he had filled his cup he sat down beside Undine, with a smile.  “No doubt he was joking—­and thought you were; but if you really made him believe we might go with him you’d better drop him a line.”

Undine’s brow still gloomed.  “You refuse, then?”

“Refuse?  I don’t need to!  Do you want to succeed to half the chorus-world of New York?”

“They won’t be on board with us, I suppose!”

“The echoes of their conversation will.  It’s the only language Peter knows.”

“He told me he longed for the influence of a good woman—­” She checked herself, reddening at Ralph’s laugh.

“Well, tell him to apply again when he’s been under it a month or two.  Meanwhile we’ll stick to the liners.”

Ralph was beginning to learn that the only road to her reason lay through her vanity, and he fancied that if she could be made to see Van Degen as an object of ridicule she might give up the idea of the Sorceress of her own accord.  But her will hardened slowly under his joking opposition, and she became no less formidable as she grew more calm.  He was used to women who, in such cases, yielded as a matter of course to masculine judgments:  if one pronounced a man “not decent” the question was closed.  But it was Undine’s habit to ascribe all interference with her plans to personal motives, and he could see that she attributed his opposition to the furtive machinations of poor Clare.  It was odious to him to prolong the discussion, for the accent of recrimination was the one he most dreaded on her lips.  But the moment came when he had to take the brunt of it, averting his thoughts as best he might from the glimpse it gave of a world of mean familiarities, of reprisals drawn from the vulgarest of vocabularies.  Certain retorts sped through the air like the flight of household utensils, certain charges rang out like accusations of tampering with the groceries.  He stiffened himself against such comparisons, but they stuck in his imagination and left him thankful when Undine’s anger yielded to a burst of tears.  He had held his own and gained his point.  The trip on the Sorceress was given up, and a note of withdrawal despatched to Van Degen; but at the same time Ralph cabled his sister to ask if she could increase her loan.  For he had conquered only at the cost of a concession:  Undine was to stay in Paris till October, and they were to sail on a fast steamer, in a deck-suite, like the Harvey Shallums.

Undine’s ill-humour was soon dispelled by any new distraction, and she gave herself to the untroubled enjoyment of Paris.  The Shallums were the centre of a like-minded group, and in the hours the ladies could spare from their dress-makers the restaurants shook with their hilarity and the suburbs with the shriek of their motors.  Van Degen, who had postponed his sailing, was a frequent sharer in these amusements; but Ralph counted on New York influences to detach him from Undine’s train.  He was learning to influence her through her social instincts where he had once tried to appeal to other sensibilities.