being
which her gesture gave, reminded him of other summer days they had spent
together long rambling boy-and-girl days in the hot woods and fields,
when they had never thought of talking to each other unless there was
something they particularly wanted to say. His tired fancy strayed off
for a second to the thought of what it would have been like come back,
at the end of the day, to such a sweet community of silence; but his
mind was too crowded with importunate facts for any lasting view of
visionary distances. The thought faded, and he merely felt how restful
it was to have her near...

"I'm glad you stayed in town: you must let me come again," he said.

"I suppose you can't always get away," she answered; and she began to
listen, with grave intelligent eyes, to his description of his tedious
days.

With her eyes on him he felt the exquisite relief of talking about
himself as he had not dared to talk to any one since his marriage.
He would not for the world have confessed his discouragement, his
consciousness of incapacity; to Undine and in Washington Square any
hint of failure would have been taken as a criticism of what his wife
demanded of him. Only to Clare Van Degen could he cry out his present
despondency and his loathing of the interminable task ahead.

"A man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is,
and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if
there's time for both. But there's Paul to be looked out for, and I
daren't chuck my job--I'm in mortal terror of its chucking me..."

Little by little he slipped into a detailed recital of all his lesser
worries, the most recent of which was his experience with the Lipscombs,
who, after a two months' tenancy of the West End Avenue house, had
decamped without paying their rent.

Clare laughed contemptuously. "Yes--I heard he'd come to grief and been
suspended from the Stock Exchange, and I see in the papers that his
wife's retort has been to sue for a divorce."

Ralph knew that, like all their clan, his cousin regarded a divorce-suit
as a vulgar and unnecessary way of taking the public into one's
confidence. His mind flashed back to the family feast in Washington
Square in celebration of his engagement. He recalled his grandfather's
chance allusion to Mrs. Lipscomb, and Undine's answer, fluted out on her
highest note: "Oh, I guess she'll get a divorce pretty soon. He's been a
disappointment to her."

Ralph could stil