produced the same effect on others. Her entrances were always triumphs;
but they had no sequel. As soon as people began to talk they ceased to
see her. Any sense of insufficiency exasperated her, and she had vague
thoughts of cultivating herself, and went so far as to spend a
morning in the Louvre and go to one or two lectures by a fashionable
philosopher. But though she returned from these expeditions charged with
opinions, their expression did not excite the interest she had hoped.
Her views, if abundant, were confused, and the more she said the more
nebulous they seemed to grow. She was disconcerted, moreover, by finding
that everybody appeared to know about the things she thought she had
discovered, and her comments clearly produced more bewilderment than
interest.

Remembering the attention she had attracted on her first appearance in
Raymond's world she concluded that she had "gone off" or grown dowdy,
and instead of wasting more time in museums and lecture-halls she
prolonged her hours at the dress-maker's and gave up the rest of the day
to the scientific cultivation of her beauty.

"I suppose I've turned into a perfect frump down there in that
wilderness," she lamented to Madame de Trezac, who replied inexorably:
"Oh, no, you're as handsome as ever; but people here don't go on looking
at each other forever as they do in London."

Meanwhile financial cares became more pressing. A dunning letter from
one of her tradesmen fell into Raymond's hands, and the talk it led to
ended in his making it clear to her that she must settle her personal
debts without his aid. All the "scenes" about money which had disturbed
her past had ended in some mysterious solution of her difficulty.
Disagreeable as they were, she had always, vulgarly speaking, found they
paid; but now it was she who was expected to pay. Raymond took his
stand without ill-temper or apology: he simply argued from inveterate
precedent. But it was impossible for Undine to understand a social
organization which did not regard the indulging of woman as its first
purpose, or to believe that any one taking another view was not moved by
avarice or malice; and the discussion ended in mutual acrimony.

The morning afterward, Raymond came into her room with a letter in his
hand.

"Is this your doing?" he asked. His look and voice expressed something
she had never known before: the disciplined anger of a man trained to
keep his emotions in fixed channels, but kno