triots actual beauty--to
charge them with producing the effect without having the features; but
in this case--you say you know the lady?"

"Yes: she's the wife of an old friend."

"The wife? She's married? There, again, it's so puzzling! Your
young girls look so experienced, and your married women sometimes
so--unmarried."

"Well, they often are--in these days of divorce!"

The other's interest quickened. "Your friend's divorced?"

"Oh, no; heaven forbid! Mrs. Marvell hasn't been long married; and it
was a love-match of the good old kind."

"Ah--and the husband? Which is he?"

"He's not here--he's in New York."

"Feverishly adding to a fortune already monstrous?"

"No; not precisely monstrous. The Marvells are not well off," said
Bowen, amused by his friend's interrogations.

"And he allows an exquisite being like that to come to Paris without
him--and in company with the red-faced gentleman who seems so alive to
his advantages?"

"We don't 'allow' our women this or that; I don't think we set much
store by the compulsory virtues."

His companion received this with amusement. "If: you're as detached as
that, why does the obsolete institution of marriage survive with you?"

"Oh, it still has its uses. One couldn't be divorced without it."

Chelles laughed again; but his straying eye still followed the same
direction, and Bowen noticed that the fact was not unremarked by the
object of his contemplation. Undine's party was one of the liveliest in
the room: the American laugh rose above the din of the orchestra as the
American toilets dominated the less daring effects at the other
tables. Undine, on entering, had seemed to be in the same mood as her
companions; but Bowen saw that, as she became conscious of his friend's
observation, she isolated herself in a kind of soft abstraction; and
he admired the adaptability which enabled her to draw from such
surroundings the contrasting graces of reserve.

They had greeted each other with all the outer signs of cordiality,
but Bowen fancied she would not care to have him speak to her. She was
evidently dining with Van Degen, and Van Degen's proximity was the last
fact she would wish to have transmitted to the critics in Washington
Square. Bowen was therefore surprised when, as he rose to leave the
restaurant, he heard himself hailed by Peter.

"Hallo--hold on! When did you come over? Mrs. Marvell's dying for the
last news about the old homestead."

Undine's smi