Chapter 2 - Page 2

freedom, and she made a
third attempt: "Yours with love, Leota B. Spragg." This, however,
seemed excessive, as the ladies had never met; and after several other
experiments she finally decided on a compromise, and ended the note:
"Yours sincerely, Mrs. Leota B. Spragg." That might be conventional.
Undine reflected, but it was certainly correct. This point settled, she
flung open her door, calling imperiously down the passage: "Celeste!"
and adding, as the French maid appeared: "I want to look over all my
dinner-dresses."

Considering the extent of Miss Spragg's wardrobe her dinner-dresses were
not many. She had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her
lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid.
Since then, indeed, she and Mrs. Spragg had succumbed to the abstract
pleasure of buying two or three more, simply because they were too
exquisite and Undine looked too lovely in them; but she had grown tired
of these also--tired of seeing them hang unworn in her wardrobe, like so
many derisive points of interrogation. And now, as Celeste spread them
out on the bed, they seemed disgustingly common-place, and as familiar
as if she had danced them to shreds. Nevertheless, she yielded to the
maid's persuasions and tried them on.

The first and second did not gain by prolonged inspection: they looked
old-fashioned already. "It's something about the sleeves," Undine
grumbled as she threw them aside.

The third was certainly the prettiest; but then it was the one she
had worn at the hotel dance the night before and the impossibility of
wearing it again within the week was too obvious for discussion. Yet she
enjoyed looking at herself in it, for it reminded her of her sparkling
passages with Claud Walsingham Popple, and her quieter but more fruitful
talk with his little friend--the young man she had hardly noticed.

"You can go, Celeste--I'll take off the dress myself," she said: and
when Celeste had passed out, laden with discarded finery. Undine bolted
her door, dragged the tall pier-glass forward and, rummaging in a drawer
for fan and gloves, swept to a seat before the mirror with the air of a
lady arriving at an evening party. Celeste, before leaving, had drawn
down the blinds and turned on the electric light, and the white and gold
room, with its blazing wall-brackets, formed a sufficiently brilliant
background to carry out the illusion. So untempered a glare would have
been destructive to all half-tones and subtleties of modelling; but
Undine's beauty was as vivid, and almost as crude, as the brightness
suffusing it. Her black brows, her reddish-tawny hair and the pure red
and white of her complexion defied the