the adventure. There
were moments when he would have liked to affirm his freedom in however
commonplace a way: moments when the vulgarest way would have seemed
the most satisfying. But he always ended by walking home alone and
tip-toeing upstairs through the sleeping house lest he should wake his
boy....

On Saturday afternoons, when the business world was hurrying to the
country for golf and tennis, he stayed in town and took Paul to see the
Spraggs. Several times since his wife's departure he had tried to bring
about closer relations between his own family and Undine's; and the
ladies of Washington Square, in their eagerness to meet his wishes, had
made various friendly advances to Mrs. Spragg. But they were met by a
mute resistance which made Ralph suspect that Undine's strictures on his
family had taken root in her mother's brooding mind; and he gave up the
struggle to bring together what had been so effectually put asunder.

If he regretted his lack of success it was chiefly because he was so
sorry for the Spraggs. Soon after Undine's marriage they had abandoned
their polychrome suite at the Stentorian, and since then their
peregrinations had carried them through half the hotels of the
metropolis. Undine, who had early discovered her mistake in thinking
hotel life fashionable, had tried to persuade her parents to take a
house of their own; but though they refrained from taxing her with
inconsistency they did not act on her suggestion. Mrs. Spragg seemed
to shrink from the thought of "going back to house-keeping," and Ralph
suspected that she depended on the transit from hotel to hotel as the
one element of variety in her life. As for Mr. Spragg, it was impossible
to imagine any one in whom the domestic sentiments were more completely
unlocalized and disconnected from any fixed habits; and he was probably
aware of his changes of abode chiefly as they obliged him to ascend from
the Subway, or descend from the "Elevated," a few blocks higher up or
lower down.

Neither husband nor wife complained to Ralph of their frequent
displacements, or assigned to them any cause save the vague one of
"guessing they could do better"; but Ralph noticed that the decreasing
luxury of their life synchronized with Undine's growing demands for
money. During the last few months they had transferred themselves to the
"Malibran," a tall narrow structure resembling a grain-elevator divided
into cells, where linoleum and lincrusta simulate