hat no one had ever kissed her before....

The week that followed was a big bright blur--the wildest vividest
moment of her life. And it was only eight days later that they were in
the train together, Apex and all her plans and promises behind them, and
a bigger and brighter blur ahead, into which they were plunging as the
"Limited" plunged into the sunset....

Undine stood up, looking about her with vague eyes, as if she had come
back from a long distance. Elmer Moffatt was still in Paris--he was in
reach, within telephone-call. She stood hesitating a moment; then
she went into her dressing-room, and turning over the pages of the
telephone book, looked out the number of the Nouveau Luxe....

XLIV

Undine had been right in supposing that her husband would expect
their life to go on as before. There was no appreciable change in the
situation save that he was more often absent-finding abundant reasons,
agricultural and political, for frequent trips to Saint Desert--and
that, when in Paris, he no longer showed any curiosity concerning her
occupations and engagements. They lived as much apart is if their
cramped domicile had been a palace; and when Undine--as she now
frequently did--joined the Shallums or Rollivers for a dinner at the
Nouveau Luxe, or a party at a petit theatre, she was not put to the
trouble of prevaricating.

Her first impulse, after her scene with Raymond, had been to ring up
Indiana Rolliver and invite herself to dine. It chanced that Indiana
(who was now in full social progress, and had "run over" for a few weeks
to get her dresses for Newport) had organized for the same evening a
showy cosmopolitan banquet in which she was enchanted to include the
Marquise de Chelles; and Undine, as she had hoped, found Elmer Moffatt
of the party. When she drove up to the Nouveau Luxe she had not fixed
on any plan of action; but once she had crossed its magic threshold her
energies revived like plants in water. At last she was in her native air
again, among associations she shared and conventions she understood; and
all her self-confidence returned as the familiar accents uttered the
accustomed things.

Save for an occasional perfunctory call, she had hitherto made no effort
to see her compatriots, and she noticed that Mrs. Jim Driscoll and
Bertha Shallum received her with a touch of constraint; but it vanished
when they remarked the cordiality of Moffatt's greeting. Her seat was
at his side, and her old se