Chapter 26

The next phase in the unrolling vision was the episode of her return to
New York. She had gone to the Malibran, to her parents--for it was a
moment in her career when she clung passionately to the conformities,
and when the fact of being able to say: "I'm here with my father and
mother" was worth paying for even in the discomfort of that grim abode.
Nevertheless, it was another thorn in her pride that her parents could
not--for the meanest of material reasons--transfer themselves at her
coming to one of the big Fifth Avenue hotels. When she had suggested it
Mr. Spragg had briefly replied that, owing to the heavy expenses of her
divorce suit, he couldn't for the moment afford anything better; and
this announcement cast a deeper gloom over the future.

It was not an occasion for being "nervous," however; she had learned too
many hard facts in the last few months to think of having recourse
to her youthful methods. And something told her that if she made the
attempt it would be useless. Her father and mother seemed much older,
seemed tired and defeated, like herself.

Parents and daughter bore their common failure in a common silence,
broken only by Mrs. Spragg's occasional tentative allusions to her
grandson. But her anecdotes of Paul left a deeper silence behind them.
Undine did not want to talk of her boy. She could forget him when,
as she put it, things were "going her way," but in moments of
discouragement the thought of him was an added bitterness, subtly
different from her other bitter thoughts, and harder to quiet. It had
not occurred to her to try to gain possession of the child. She was
vaguely aware that the courts had given her his custody; but she had
never seriously thought of asserting this claim. Her parents' diminished
means and her own uncertain future made her regard the care of Paul as
an additional burden, and she quieted her scruples by thinking of him as
"better off" with Ralph's family, and of herself as rather touchingly
disinterested in putting his welfare before her own. Poor Mrs. Spragg
was pining for him, but Undine rejected her artless suggestion that Mrs.
Heeny should be sent to "bring him round." "I wouldn't ask them a favour
for the world--they're just waiting for a chance to be hateful to me,"
she scornfully declared; but it pained her that her boy, should be
so near, yet inaccessible, and for the first time she was visited by
unwonted questionings as to her share in the misfortunes that had
befallen her. She had voluntarily stepped out of her social frame, and
the only person on whom she could with any satisfaction have laid
the blame was the person to whom her mind now turned with a belated
tenderness. It was thus,