ze of the deceived
benefactress. "I didn't believe it when he told me; I'd never have
thought it of you. Before you'd even applied for your divorce!"

Undine made no attempt to deny the charge or to defend herself. For
a moment she was lost in the pursuit of an unseizable clue--the
explanation of this monstrous last perversity of fate. Suddenly she rose
to her feet with a set face.

"The Marvells must have told him--the beasts!" It relieved her to be
able to cry it out.

"It was your husband's sister--what did you say her name was? When you
didn't answer her cable, she cabled Mr. Van Degen to find out where you
were and tell you to come straight back."

Undine stared. "He never did!"

"No."

"Doesn't that show you the story's all trumped up?"

Indiana shook her head. "He said nothing to you about it because he was
with you when you received the first cable, and you told him it was from
your sister-in-law, just worrying you as usual to go home; and when he
asked if there was anything else in it you said there wasn't another
thing."

Undine, intently following her, caught at this with a spring. "Then he
knew it all along--he admits that? And it made no earthly difference to
him at the time?" She turned almost victoriously on her friend. "Did he
happen to explain THAT, I wonder?"

"Yes." Indiana's longanimity grew almost solemn. "It came over him
gradually, he said. One day when he wasn't feeling very well he thought
to himself: 'Would she act like that to ME if I was dying?' And after
that he never felt the same to you." Indiana lowered her empurpled
lids. "Men have their feelings too--even when they're carried away by
passion." After a pause she added: "I don't know as I can blame him.
Undine. You see, you were his ideal."

XXV

Undine Marvell, for the next few months, tasted all the accumulated
bitterness of failure. After January the drifting hordes of her
compatriots had scattered to the four quarters of the globe, leaving
Paris to resume, under its low grey sky, its compacter winter
personality. Noting, from her more and more deserted corner, each least
sign of the social revival, Undine felt herself as stranded and baffled
as after the ineffectual summers of her girlhood. She was not without
possible alternatives; but the sense of what she had lost took the
savour from all that was left. She might have attached herself to some
migratory group winged for Italy or Egypt; but the prospect of travel