Chapter 40

After the Princess Estradina's departure, the days at Saint Desert
succeeded each other indistinguishably; and more and more, as they
passed, Undine felt herself drawn into the slow strong current already
fed by so many tributary lives. Some spell she could not have named
seemed to emanate from the old house which had so long been the
custodian of an unbroken tradition: things had happened there in the
same way for so many generations that to try to alter them seemed as
vain as to contend with the elements.

Winter came and went, and once more the calendar marked the first days
of spring; but though the horse-chestnuts of the Champs Elysees were
budding snow still lingered in the grass drives of Saint Desert and
along the ridges of the hills beyond the park. Sometimes, as Undine
looked out of the windows of the Boucher gallery, she felt as if her
eyes had never rested on any other scene. Even her occasional brief
trips to Paris left no lasting trace: the life of the vivid streets
faded to a shadow as soon as the black and white horizon of Saint Desert
closed in on her again.

Though the afternoons were still cold she had lately taken to sitting in
the gallery. The smiling scenes on its walls and the tall screens which
broke its length made it more habitable than the drawing-rooms beyond;
but her chief reason for preferring it was the satisfaction she found in
having fires lit in both the monumental chimneys that faced each other
down its long perspective. This satisfaction had its source in the old
Marquise's disapproval. Never before in the history of Saint Desert had
the consumption of firewood exceeded a certain carefully-calculated
measure; but since Undine had been in authority this allowance had been
doubled. If any one had told her, a year earlier, that one of the chief
distractions of her new life would be to invent ways of annoying her
mother-in-law, she would have laughed at the idea of wasting her time on
such trifles. But she found herself with a great deal of time to waste,
and with a fierce desire to spend it in upsetting the immemorial customs
of Saint Desert. Her husband had mastered her in essentials, but she had
discovered innumerable small ways of irritating and hurting him, and
one--and not the least effectual--was to do anything that went counter
to his mother's prejudices. It was not that he always shared her views,
or was a particularly subservient son; but it seemed to be one of his
fundamental principles that a man should respect his mother's wishes,
and see to it that his household respected them. All Frenchmen of
his class appeared to share this view, and to regard it as beyond
discussion: it was based on something so much more Immutable than
personal feeling that one might