!"

"Mr. Rolliver, my dear?" Undine's laugh showed that she took this for
unmixed comedy. "That's a nice way to remind me that you're heaps and
heaps better-looking than I am!"

Indiana gave her an acute glance. "Millard Binch didn't think so--not
even at the very end."

"Oh, poor Millard!" The women's smiles mingled easily over the common
reminiscence, and once again, on the threshold. Undine enfolded her
friend. In the light of the autumn afternoon she paused a moment at
the door of the Nouveau Luxe, and looked aimlessly forth at the brave
spectacle in which she seemed no longer to have a stake.

Many of her old friends had already returned to Paris: the Harvey
Shallums, May Beringer, Dicky Bowles and other westward-bound nomads
lingering on for a glimpse of the autumn theatres and fashions before
hurrying back to inaugurate the New York season. A year ago Undine would
have had no difficulty in introducing Indiana Rolliver to this group--a
group above which her own aspirations already beat an impatient wing.
Now her place in it had become too precarious for her to force an
entrance for her protectress. Her New York friends were at no pains to
conceal from her that in their opinion her divorce had been a blunder.
Their logic was that of Apex reversed. Since she had not been "sure" of
Van Degen, why in the world, they asked, had she thrown away a position
she WAS sure of? Mrs. Harvey Shallum, in particular, had not scrupled
to put the question squarely. "Chelles was awfully taken--he would have
introduced you everywhere. I thought you were wild to know smart French
people; I thought Harvey and I weren't good enough for you any longer.
And now you've done your best to spoil everything! Of course I feel for
you tremendously--that's the reason why I'm talking so frankly. You
must be horribly depressed. Come and dine to-night--or no, if you don't
mind I'd rather you chose another evening. I'd forgotten that I'd asked
the Jim Driscolls, and it might be uncomfortable--for YOU...."

In another world she was still welcome, at first perhaps even more so
than before: the world, namely, to which she had proposed to present
Indiana Rolliver. Roviano, Madame Adelschein, and a few of the freer
spirits of her old St. Moritz band, reappearing in Paris with the close
of the watering-place season, had quickly discovered her and shown a
keen interest in her liberation. It appeared in some mysterious way to
make her more available for