e back together from a party, she felt a sudden impulse to
speak. Sitting close to him in the darkness of the carriage, it ought to
have been easy for her to find the needed word; but the barrier of his
indifference hung between them, and street after street slipped by,
and the spangled blackness of the river unrolled itself beneath their
wheels, before she leaned over to touch his hand.

"What is it, my dear?"

She had not yet found the word, and already his tone told her she was
too late. A year ago, if she had slipped her hand in his, she would not
have had that answer.

"Your mother blames me for our not having a child. Everybody thinks it's
my fault."

He paused before answering, and she sat watching his shadowy profile
against the passing lamps.

"My mother's ideas are old-fashioned; and I don't know that it's
anybody's business but yours and mine."

"Yes, but--"

"Here we are." The brougham was turning under the archway of the hotel,
and the light of Hubert's tall windows fell across the dusky court.
Raymond helped her out, and they mounted to their door by the stairs
which Hubert had recarpeted in velvet, with a marble nymph lurking in
the azaleas on the landing.

In the antechamber Raymond paused to take her cloak from her shoulders,
and his eyes rested on her with a faint smile of approval.

"You never looked better; your dress is extremely becoming. Good-night,
my dear," he said, kissing her hand as he turned away.

Undine kept this incident to herself: her wounded pride made her shrink
from confessing it even to Madame de Trezac. She was sure Raymond would
"come back"; Ralph always had, to the last. During their remaining weeks
in Paris she reassured herself with the thought that once they were back
at Saint Desert she would easily regain her lost hold; and when Raymond
suggested their leaving Paris she acquiesced without a protest. But at
Saint Desert she seemed no nearer to him than in Paris. He continued to
treat her with unvarying amiability, but he seemed wholly absorbed in
the management of the estate, in his books, his sketching and his music.
He had begun to interest himself in politics and had been urged to stand
for his department. This necessitated frequent displacements: trips to
Beaune or Dijon and occasional absences in Paris. Undine, when he was
away, was not left alone, for the dowager Marquise had established
herself at Saint Desert for the summer, and relays of brothers
and sis