Chapter 45

She advanced into the room and slowly looked about her. The big vulgar
writing-table wreathed in bronze was heaped with letters and papers.
Among them stood a lapis bowl in a Renaissance mounting of enamel and
a vase of Phenician glass that was like a bit of rainbow caught in
cobwebs. On a table against the window a little Greek marble lifted its
pure lines. On every side some rare and sensitive object seemed to be
shrinking back from the false colours and crude contours of the hotel
furniture. There were no books in the room, but the florid console under
the mirror was stacked with old numbers of Town Talk and the New York
Radiator. Undine recalled the dingy hall-room that Moffatt had lodged in
at Mrs. Flynn's, over Hober's livery stable, and her heart beat at the
signs of his altered state. When her eyes came back to him their lids
were moist.

"Don't send me away," she repeated. He looked at her and smiled. "What
is it? What's the matter?"

"I don't know--but I had to come. To-day, when you spoke again of
sailing, I felt as if I couldn't stand it." She lifted her eyes and
looked in his profoundly.

He reddened a little under her gaze, but she could detect no softening
or confusion in the shrewd steady glance he gave her back.

"Things going wrong again--is that the trouble?" he merely asked with a
comforting inflexion.

"They always are wrong; it's all been an awful mistake. But I shouldn't
care if you were here and I could see you sometimes. You're so STRONG:
that's what I feel about you, Elmer. I was the only one to feel it that
time they all turned against you out at Apex.... Do you remember the
afternoon I met you down on Main Street, and we walked out together to
the Park? I knew then that you were stronger than any of them...."

She had never spoken more sincerely. For the moment all thought of
self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt again, as she had felt
that day, the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his.
Something in her voice must have attested it, for she saw a change in
his face.

"You're not the beauty you were," he said irrelevantly; "but you're a
lot more fetching."

The oddly qualified praise made her laugh with mingled pleasure and
annoyance.

"I suppose I must be dreadfully changed--"

"You're all right!--But I've got to go back home," he broke off
abruptly. "I've put it off too long."

She paled and looked away, helpless in her sudden disappointment. "I
knew you'd say that.... And I shall just be left here...." She sat down
on the sofa near which they had been standing, and two tears formed on
her