Chapter 44 - Page 2

speech, tricks of attitude--and easy and
free and enviable as she thought them, she would not for the world have
been back among them at the cost of knowing no more than they.

Moffatt made no allusion to his visit to Saint Desert; but when the
party had re-grouped itself about coffee and liqueurs on the terrace, he
bent over to ask confidentially: "What about my tapestries?"

She replied in the same tone: "You oughtn't to have let Fleischhauer
write that letter. My husband's furious."

He seemed honestly surprised. "Why? Didn't I offer him enough?"

"He's furious that any one should offer anything. I thought when he
found out what they were worth he might be tempted; but he'd rather see
me starve than part with one of his grand-father's snuff-boxes."

"Well, he knows now what the tapestries are worth. I offered more than
Fleischhauer advised."

"Yes; but you were in too much of a hurry."

"I've got to be; I'm going back next week."

She felt her eyes cloud with disappointment. "Oh, why do you? I hoped
you might stay on."

They looked at each other uncertainly a moment; then he dropped his
voice to say: "Even if I did, I probably shouldn't see anything of you."

"Why not? Why won't you come and see me? I've always wanted to be
friends."

He came the next day and found in her drawing-room two ladies whom she
introduced as her sisters-in-law. The ladies lingered on for a long
time, sipping their tea stiffly and exchanging low-voiced remarks while
Undine talked with Moffatt; and when they left, with small sidelong bows
in his direction.

Undine exclaimed: "Now you see how they all watch me!"

She began to go into the details of her married life, drawing on the
experiences of the first months for instances that scarcely applied to
her present liberated state. She could thus, without great exaggeration,
picture herself as entrapped into a bondage hardly conceivable to
Moffatt, and she saw him redden with excitement as he listened. "I call
it darned low--darned low--" he broke in at intervals.

"Of course I go round more now," she concluded. "I mean to see my
friends--I don't care what he says."

"What CAN he say?"

"Oh, he despises Americans--they all do."

"Well, I guess we can still sit up and take nourishment."

They laughed and slipped back to talking of earlier things. She urged
him to put off his sailing--there were so many things they might do
together: sight-seeing and excursions--and she could perhaps show him
some of the private collections he hadn't seen, the