allegiance. But experience
had long since proved the delusiveness of the simile. Mrs. Marvell's
classification of the world into the visited and the unvisited was as
obsolete as a mediaeval cosmogony. Some of those whom Washington Square
left unvisited were the centre of social systems far outside its
ken, and as indifferent to its opinions as the constellations to the
reckonings of the astronomers; and all these systems joyously revolved
about their central sun of gold.

There were moments after Undine's return to New York when she was
tempted to class her marriage with the hateful early mistakes from the
memories of which she had hoped it would free her. Since it was never
her habit to accuse herself of such mistakes it was inevitable that she
should gradually come to lay the blame on Ralph. She found a poignant
pleasure, at this stage of her career, in the question: "What does a
young girl know of life?" And the poignancy was deepened by the fact
that each of the friends to whom she put the question seemed convinced
that--had the privilege been his--he would have known how to spare her
the disenchantment it implied.

The conviction of having blundered was never more present to her than
when, on this particular afternoon, the guests invited by Mr. Popple to
view her portrait began to assemble before it.

Some of the principal figures of Undine's group had rallied for
the occasion, and almost all were in exasperating enjoyment of
the privileges for which she pined. There was young Jim Driscoll,
heir-apparent of the house, with his short stout mistrustful wife, who
hated society, but went everywhere lest it might be thought she had been
left out; the "beautiful Mrs. Beringer," a lovely aimless being, who
kept (as Laura Fairford said) a home for stray opinions, and could never
quite tell them apart; little Dicky Bowles, whom every one invited
because he was understood to "say things" if one didn't; the Harvey
Shallums, fresh from Paris, and dragging in their wake a bewildered
nobleman vaguely designated as "the Count," who offered cautious
conversational openings, like an explorer trying beads on savages; and,
behind these more salient types, the usual filling in of those who are
seen everywhere because they have learned to catch the social eye.

Such a company was one to flatter the artist as much his sitter, so
completely did it represent that unamity of opinion which constitutes
social strength. Not one the numbe