Undine divided her shining glances between the two. “I guess he isn’t going to treat me any different afterward,” she proclaimed with joyous defiance.
“Ah, well, there’s no telling, you know. Hadn’t we better begin at once? Seriously, I want awfully to get you into the spring show.”
“Oh, really? That would be too lovely!”
“YOU would be, certainly—the way I mean to do you. But I see Ralph getting glum. Cheer up, my dear fellow; I daresay you’ll be invited to some of the sittings—that’s for Miss Spragg to say.—Ah, here comes your neighbour back, confound him—You’ll let me know when we can begin?”
As Popple moved away Undine turned eagerly to Marvell. “Do you suppose there’s time? I’d love to have him to do me!”
Ralph smiled. “My poor child—he WOULD ‘do’ you, with a vengeance. Infernal cheek, his asking you to sit—”
She stared. “But why? He’s painted your cousin, and all the smart women.”
“Oh, if a ‘smart’ portrait’s all you want!”
“I want what the others want,” she answered, frowning and pouting a little. She was already beginning to resent in Ralph the slightest sign of resistance to her pleasure; and her resentment took the form—a familiar one in Apex courtships—of turning on him, in the next entr’acte, a deliberately averted shoulder. The result of this was to bring her, for the first time, in more direct relation to her other neighbour. As she turned he turned too, showing her, above a shining shirt-front fastened with a large imitation pearl, a ruddy plump snub face without an angle in it, which yet looked sharper than a razor. Undine’s eyes met his with a startled look, and for a long moment they remained suspended on each other’s stare.
Undine at length shrank back with an unrecognizing face; but her movement made her opera-glass slip to the floor, and her neighbour bent down and picked it up.
“Well—don’t you know me yet?” he said with a slight smile, as he restored the glass to her.
She had grown white to the lips, and when she tried to speak the effort produced only a faint click in her throat. She felt that the change in her appearance must be visible, and the dread of letting Marvell see it made her continue to turn her ravaged face to her other neighbour. The round black eyes set prominently in the latter’s round glossy countenance had expressed at first only an impersonal and slightly ironic interest; but a look of surprise grew in them as Undine’s silence continued.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you want me to speak to you?”
She became aware that Marvell, as if unconscious of her slight show of displeasure, had left his seat, and was making his way toward the aisle; and this assertion of independence, which a moment before she would so deeply have resented, now gave her a feeling of intense relief.
“No—don’t speak to me, please. I’ll tell you another time—I’ll write.” Her neighbour continued to gaze at her, forming his lips into a noiseless whistle under his small dark moustache.
“Well, I—That’s about the stiffest,” he murmured; and as she made no answer he added: “Afraid I’ll ask to be introduced to your friend?”
She made a faint movement of entreaty. “I can’t explain. I promise to see you; but I ASK you not to talk to me now.”
He unfolded his programme, and went on speaking in a low tone while he affected to study it. “Anything to oblige, of course. That’s always been my motto. But is it a bargain—fair and square? You’ll see me?”
She receded farther from him. “I promise. I—I WANT to,” she faltered.
“All right, then. Call me up in the morning at the Driscoll Building. Seven-o-nine—got it?”
She nodded, and he added in a still lower tone: “I suppose I can congratulate you, anyhow?” and then, without waiting for her reply, turned to study Mrs. Van Degen’s box through his opera-glass. Clare, as if aware of the scrutiny fixed on her from below leaned back and threw a question over her shoulder to Ralph Marvell, who had just seated himself behind her.
“Who’s the funny man with the red face talking to Miss Spragg?”
Ralph bent forward. “The man next to her? Never saw him before. But I think you’re mistaken: she’s not speaking to him.”
“She WAS—Wasn’t she, Harriet?”
Miss Ray pinched her lips together without speaking, and Mrs. Van Degen paused for the fraction of a second. “Perhaps he’s an Apex friend,” she then suggested.
“Very likely. Only I think she’d have introduced him if he had been.”
His cousin faintly shrugged. “Shall you encourage that?”
Peter Van Degen, who had strayed into his wife’s box for a moment, caught the colloquy, and lifted his opera-glass.
“The fellow next to Miss Spragg? (By George, Ralph, she’s ripping tonight!) Wait a minute—I know his face. Saw him in old Harmon Driscoll’s office the day of the Eubaw Mine meeting. This chap’s his secretary, or something. Driscoll called him in to give some facts to the directors, and he seemed a mighty wide-awake customer.”
Clare Van Degen turned gaily to her cousin. “If he has anything to do with the Driscolls you’d better cultivate him! That’s the kind of acquaintance the Dagonets have always needed. I married to set them an example!”
Ralph rose with a laugh. “You’re right. I’ll hurry back and make his acquaintance.” He held out his hand to his cousin, avoiding her disappointed eyes.
Undine, on entering her bedroom late that evening, was startled by the presence of a muffled figure which revealed itself, through the dimness, as the ungirded midnight outline of Mrs. Spragg.
“MOTHER? What on earth—?” the girl exclaimed, as Mrs. Spragg pressed the electric button and flooded the room with light. The idea of a mother’s sitting up for her daughter was so foreign to Apex customs that it roused only mistrust and irritation in the object of the demonstration.
Mrs. Spragg came forward deprecatingly to lift the cloak from her daughter’s shoulders.
“I just HAD to, Undie—I told father I HAD to. I wanted to hear all about it.”
Undine shrugged away from her. “Mercy! At this hour? You’ll be as white as a sheet tomorrow, sitting up all night like this.”
She moved toward the toilet-table, and began to demolish with feverish hands the structure which Mrs. Heeny, a few hours earlier, had so lovingly raised. But the rose caught in a mesh of hair, and Mrs. Spragg, venturing timidly to release it, had a full view of her daughter’s face in the glass.
“Why, Undie, YOU’RE as white as a sheet now! You look fairly sick. What’s the matter, daughter?”
The girl broke away from her.
“Oh, can’t you leave me alone, mother? There—do I look white NOW?” she cried, the blood flaming into her pale cheeks; and as Mrs. Spragg shrank back, she added more mildly, in the tone of a parent rebuking a persistent child: “It’s enough to MAKE anybody sick to be stared at that way!”
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 dressinggown brought to her. Mrs. Spragg visibly yearned to say more, but she restrained the impulse lest it should provoke her dismissal.
“Won’t