robe mirror studying her
reflection when he came up behind her and she saw that he was looking at
it too.

"Where did that necklace come from?"

Undine's neck grew pink under the shining circlet. It was the first time
since her return to New York that she had put on a low dress and thus
uncovered the string of pearls she always wore. She made no answer, and
Mr. Spragg continued: "Did your husband give them to you?"

"RALPH!" She could not restrain a laugh.

"Who did, then?"

Undine remained silent. She really had not thought about the pearls,
except in so far as she consciously enjoyed the pleasure of possessing
them; and her father, habitually so unobservant, had seemed the last
person likely to raise the awkward question of their origin.

"Why--" she began, without knowing what she meant to say.

"I guess you better send 'em back to the party they belong to," Mr.
Spragg continued, in a voice she did not know.

"They belong to me!" she flamed up. He looked at her as if she had grown
suddenly small and insignificant. "You better send 'em back to Peter Van
Degen the first thing to-morrow morning," he said as he went out of the
room. As far as Undine could remember, it was the first time in her life
that he had ever ordered her to do anything; and when the door closed on
him she had the distinct sense that the question had closed with it, and
that she would have to obey. She took the pearls off and threw them from
her angrily. The humiliation her father had inflicted on her was merged
with the humiliation to which she had subjected herself in going to the
opera, and she had never before hated her life as she hated it then.

All night she lay sleepless, wondering miserably what to do; and out
of her hatred of her life, and her hatred of Peter Van Degen, there
gradually grew a loathing of Van Degen's pearls. How could she have
kept them; how have continued to wear them about her neck! Only
her absorption in other cares could have kept her from feeling the
humiliation of carrying about with her the price of her shame. Her
novel-reading had filled her mind with the vocabulary of outraged
virtue, and with pathetic allusions to woman's frailty, and while she
pitied herself she thought her father heroic. She was proud to think
that she had such a man to defend her, and rejoiced that it was in her
power to express her scorn of Van Degen by sending back his jewels.

But her righteous ardour gradually cooled, and she was