Chapter 24 - Page 2

went on with
her ringing energy. "And that is, to get your divorce first thing. A
divorce is always a good thing to have: you never can tell when you may
want it. You ought to have attended to that before you even BEGAN with
Peter Van Degen."

Undine listened, irresistibly impressed. "Did YOU?" she asked; but Mrs.
Rolliver, at this, grew suddenly veiled and sibylline. She wound her
big bejewelled hand through her pearls--there were ropes and ropes of
them--and leaned back, modestly sinking her lids.

"I'm here, anyhow," she rejoined, with "CIRCUMSPICE!" in look and tone.

Undine, obedient to the challenge, continued to gaze at the pearls.
They were real; there was no doubt about that. And so was Indiana's
marriage--if she kept out of certain states.

"Don't you see," Mrs. Rolliver continued, "that having to leave him when
you did, and rush off to Dakota for six months, was--was giving him too
much time to think; and giving it at the wrong time, too?" "Oh, I see.
But what could I do? I'm not an immoral woman."

"Of course not, dearest. You were merely thoughtless that's what I meant
by saying you ought to have had your divorce ready."

A flicker of self-esteem caused Undine to protest. "It wouldn't have
made any difference. His wife would never have given him up."

"She's so crazy about him?"

"No: she hates him so. And she hates me too, because she's in love with
my husband."

Indiana bounced out of her lounging attitude and struck her hands
together with a rattle of rings.

"In love with your husband? What's the matter, then? Why on earth didn't
the four of you fix it up together?"

"You don't understand." (It was an undoubted relief to be able, at last,
to say that to Indiana!) "Clare Van Degen thinks divorce wrong--or
rather awfully vulgar."

"VULGAR?" Indiana flamed. "If that isn't just too much! A woman who's in
love with another woman's husband? What does she think refined, I'd like
to know? Having a lover, I suppose--like the women in these nasty French
plays? I've told Mr. Rolliver I won't go to the theatre with him again
in Paris--it's too utterly low. And the swell society's just as bad:
it's simply rotten. Thank goodness I was brought up in a place where
there's some sense of decency left!" She looked compassionately at
Undine. "It was New York that demoralized you--and I don't blame you for
it. Out at Apex you'd have acted different. You never NEVER would have
given way to your feelings before you'd got your divorce."

A slow blush rose to Undine's forehead.

"He