Chapter 12

In the quiet place with the green water-fall Ralph's vision might
have kept faith with him; but how could he hope to surprise it in the
midsummer crowds of St. Moritz? Undine, at any rate, had found there
what she wanted; and when he was at her side, and her radiant smile
included him, every other question was in abeyance. But there were hours
of solitary striding over bare grassy slopes, face to face with the
ironic interrogation of sky and mountains, when his anxieties came back,
more persistent and importunate. Sometimes they took the form of merely
material difficulties. How, for instance, was he to meet the cost of
their ruinous suite at the Engadine Palace while he awaited Mr. Spragg's
next remittance? And once the hotel bills were paid, what would be left
for the journey back to Paris, the looming expenses there, the price
of the passage to America? These questions would fling him back on the
thought of his projected book, which was, after all, to be what the
masterpieces of literature had mostly been--a pot-boiler. Well! Why not?
Did not the worshipper always heap the rarest essences on the altar of
his divinity? Ralph still rejoiced in the thought of giving back to
Undine something of the beauty of their first months together. But even
on his solitary walks the vision eluded him; and he could spare so few
hours to its pursuit!

Undine's days were crowded, and it was still a matter of course that
where she went he should follow. He had risen visibly in her opinion
since they had been absorbed into the life of the big hotels, and she
had seen that his command of foreign tongues put him at an advantage
even in circles where English was generally spoken if not understood.
Undine herself, hampered by her lack of languages, was soon drawn into
the group of compatriots who struck the social pitch of their hotel.

Their types were familiar enough to Ralph, who had taken their measure
in former wanderings, and come across their duplicates in every scene
of continental idleness. Foremost among them was Mrs. Harvey Shallum,
a showy Parisianized figure, with a small wax-featured husband whose
ultra-fashionable clothes seemed a tribute to his wife's importance
rather than the mark of his personal taste. Mr. Shallum, in fact, could
not be said to have any personal bent. Though he conversed with a
colourless fluency in the principal European tongues, he seldom
exercised his gift except in intercourse with hotel-managers and
head-waiters; and his long silences were broken only by resigned
allusions to the enormities he had suffered at the hands of this gifted
but unscrupulous class.

Mrs. Shallum, though in command of but a few verbs, all of which, on her
lips, became irregular, managed to express a