The Greatest Works of Edith Wharton - 31 Books in One Edition. Edith Wharton

light on them; but he went about with a more assured step, shrank less from meeting his friends, and even began to dine out again, and to laugh at some of the jokes he heard.

      Laura Fairford, to get Paul away from town, had gone early to the country; and Ralph, who went down to her every Saturday, usually found Clare Van Degen there. Since his divorce he had never entered his cousin’s pinnacled palace; and Clare had never asked him why he stayed away. This mutual silence had been their sole allusion to Van Degen’s share in the catastrophe, though Ralph had spoken frankly of its other aspects. They talked, however, most often of impersonal subjects—books, pictures, plays, or whatever the world that interested them was doing—and she showed no desire to draw him back to his own affairs. She was again staying late in town—to have a pretext, as he guessed, for coming down on Sundays to the Fairfords’—and they often made the trip together in her motor; but he had not yet spoken to her of having begun his book. One May evening, however, as they sat alone in the verandah, he suddenly told her that he was writing. As he spoke his heart beat like a boy’s; but once the words were out they gave him a feeling of self-confidence, and he began to sketch his plan, and then to go into its details. Clare listened devoutly, her eyes burning on him through the dusk like the stars deepening above the garden; and when she got up to go in he followed her with a new sense of reassurance.

      The dinner that evening was unusually pleasant. Charles Bowen, just back from his usual spring travels, had come straight down to his friends from the steamer; and the fund of impressions he brought with him gave Ralph a desire to be up and wandering. And why not—when the book was done? He smiled across the table at Clare.

      “Next summer you’ll have to charter a yacht, and take us all off to the Aegean. We can’t have Charles condescending to us about the out-of-the-way places he’s been seeing.”

      Was it really he who was speaking, and his cousin who was sending him back her dusky smile? Well—why not, again? The seasons renewed themselves, and he too was putting out a new growth. “My book—my book—my book,” kept repeating itself under all his thoughts, as Undine’s name had once perpetually murmured there. That night as he went up to bed he said to himself that he was actually ceasing to think about his wife…

      As he passed Laura’s door she called him in, and put her arms about him.

      “You look so well, dear!”

      “But why shouldn’t I?” he answered gaily, as if ridiculing the fancy that he had ever looked otherwise. Paul was sleeping behind the next door, and the sense of the boy’s nearness gave him a warmer glow. His little world was rounding itself out again, and once more he felt safe and at peace in its circle.

      His sister looked as if she had something more to say; but she merely kissed him good night, and he went up whistling to his room. The next morning he was to take a walk with Clare, and while he lounged about the drawingroom, waiting for her to come down, a servant came in with the Sunday papers. Ralph picked one up, and was absently unfolding it when his eye fell on his own name: a sight he had been spared since the last echoes of his divorce had subsided. His impulse was to fling the paper down, to hurl it as far from him as he could; but a grim fascination tightened his hold and drew his eyes back to the hated headline.

      NEW YORK BEAUTY WEDS FRENCH NOBLEMAN MRS. UNDINE MARVELL CONFIDENT POPE WILL ANNUL PREVIOUS MARRIAGE MRS. MARVELL TALKS ABOUT HER CASE

      There it was before him in all its long-drawn horror—an “interview”—an “interview” of Undine’s about her coming marriage! Ah, she talked about her case indeed! Her confidences filled the greater part of a column, and the only detail she seemed to have omitted was the name of her future husband, who was referred to by herself as “my fiancé” and by the interviewer as “the Count” or “a prominent scion of the French nobility.”

      Ralph heard Laura’s step behind him. He threw the paper aside and their eyes met.

      “Is this what you wanted to tell me last night?”

      “Last night?—Is it in the papers?”

      “Who told you? Bowen? What else has he heard?”

      “Oh, Ralph, what does it matter—what can it matter?”

      “Who’s the man? Did he tell you that?” Ralph insisted. He saw her growing agitation. “Why can’t you answer? Is it any one I know?”

      “He was told in Paris it was his friend Raymond de Chelles.”

      Ralph laughed, and his laugh sounded in his own ears like an echo of the dreary mirth with which he had filled Mr. Spragg’s office the day he had learned that Undine intended to divorce him. But now his wrath was seasoned with a wholesome irony. The fact of his wife’s having reached another stage in her ascent fell into its place as a part of the huge human buffoonery.

      “Besides,” Laura went on, “it’s all perfect nonsense, of course. How in the world can she have her marriage annulled?”

      Ralph pondered: this put the matter in another light. “With a great deal of money I suppose she might.”

      “Well, she certainly won’t get that from Chelles. He’s far from rich, Charles tells me.” Laura waited, watching him, before she risked: “That’s what convinces me she wouldn’t have him if she could.”

      Ralph shrugged. “There may be other inducements. But she won’t be able to manage it.” He heard himself speaking quite collectedly. Had Undine at last lost her power of wounding him?

      Clare came in, dressed for their walk, and under Laura’s anxious eyes he picked up the newspaper and held it out with a careless: “Look at this!”

      His cousin’s glance flew down the column, and he saw the tremor of her lashes as she read. Then she lifted her head. “But you’ll be free!” Her face was as vivid as a flower.