hivalry, and by the sense that a nature of
such emotional intensity as his must always be "ridden on the curb."

Van Degen was helping himself from the tray of iced cocktails which
stood near the tea-table, and Popple, turning to Undine, took up the
thread of his discourse. But why, he asked, why allude before others to
feelings so few could understand? The average man--lucky devil!--(with a
compassionate glance at Van Degen's back) the average man knew nothing
of the fierce conflict between the lower and higher natures; and even
the woman whose eyes had kindled it--how much did SHE guess of its
violence? Did she know--Popple recklessly asked--how often the artist
was forgotten in the man--how often the man would take the bit between
his teeth, were it not that the look in her eyes recalled some sacred
memory, some lesson learned perhaps beside his mother's knee? "I say,
Popp--was that where you learned to mix this drink? Because it does the
old lady credit," Van Degen called out, smacking his lips; while the
artist, dashing a nervous hand through his hair, muttered: "Hang it,
Peter--is NOTHING sacred to you?"

It pleased Undine to feel herself capable of inspiring such emotions.
She would have been fatigued by the necessity of maintaining her own
talk on Popple's level, but she liked to listen to him, and especially
to have others overhear what he said to her.

Her feeling for Van Degen was different. There was more similarity of
tastes between them, though his manner flattered her vanity less than
Popple's. She felt the strength of Van Degen's contempt for everything
he did not understand or could not buy: that was the only kind of
"exclusiveness" that impressed her. And he was still to her, as in her
inexperienced days, the master of the mundane science she had once
imagined that Ralph Marvell possessed. During the three years since her
marriage she had learned to make distinctions unknown to her girlish
categories. She had found out that she had given herself to the
exclusive and the dowdy when the future belonged to the showy and the
promiscuous; that she was in the case of those who have cast in
their lot with a fallen cause, or--to use an analogy more within her
range--who have hired an opera box on the wrong night. It was all
confusing and exasperating. Apex ideals had been based on the myth of
"old families" ruling New York from a throne of Revolutionary tradition,
with the new millionaires paying them feudal