Chapter 32

Ralph, as the days passed, felt that Clare was right: if Undine married
again he would possess himself more completely, be more definitely rid
of his past. And he did not doubt that she would gain her end: he knew
her violent desires and her cold tenacity. If she had failed to capture
Van Degen it was probably because she lacked experience of that
particular type of man, of his huge immediate wants and feeble
vacillating purposes; most of all, because she had not yet measured the
strength of the social considerations that restrained him. It was a
mistake she was not likely to repeat, and her failure had probably been
a useful preliminary to success. It was a long time since Ralph had
allowed himself to think of her, and as he did so the overwhelming fact
of her beauty became present to him again, no longer as an element of
his being but as a power dispassionately estimated. He said to himself:
"Any man who can feel at all will feel it as I did"; and the conviction
grew in him that Raymond de Chelles, of whom he had formed an idea
through Bowen's talk, was not the man to give her up, even if she failed
to obtain the release his religion exacted.

Meanwhile Ralph was gradually beginning to feel himself freer and
lighter. Undine's act, by cutting the last link between them, seemed to
have given him back to himself; and the mere fact that he could consider
his case in all its bearings, impartially and ironically, showed him the
distance he had travelled, the extent to which he had renewed himself.
He had been moved, too, by Clare's cry of joy at his release. Though
the nature of his feeling for her had not changed he was aware of a new
quality in their friendship. When he went back to his book again his
sense of power had lost its asperity, and the spectacle of life seemed
less like a witless dangling of limp dolls. He was well on in his second
chapter now.

This lightness of mood was still on him when, returning one afternoon to
Washington Square, full of projects for a long evening's work, he found
his mother awaiting him with a strange face. He followed her into the
drawing-room, and she explained that there had been a telephone message
she didn't understand--something perfectly crazy about Paul--of course
it was all a mistake...

Ralph's first thought was of an accident, and his heart contracted. "Did
Laura telephone?"

"No, no; not Laura. It seemed to be a message from Mrs. Spragg:
something about sending some one here to fetch him--a queer name like
Heeny--to fetch him to a steamer on Saturday. I was to be sure to have
his things packed...but of course it's a misunderstanding..." She gave
an uncertain laugh, and looked up at Ralph as though entreating him to