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Updated: June 29, 2025
She was aware of the fading of the summer light outside, of the movements of her maid, who was laying out her dinner-dress in the room beyond, and of the fact that the tea-roses on her writing-table, shaken by Van Degen's tread, were dropping their petals over Ralph's letter, and down on the crumpled telegram which she could see through the trellised sides of the scrap-basket.
Van Degen's cheque helped to calm her, and the weeks whirled on toward the Driscoll ball. The ball was as brilliant as she had hoped, and her own part in it as thrilling as a page from one of the "society novels" with which she had cheated the monotony of Apex days.
Van Degen's company was large enough to surround two of the tables on the terrace, and Bowen noted the skill with which Undine, leaving him to Mrs. Shallum's care, contrived to draw Raymond de Chelles to the other table. Still more noticeable was the effect of this stratagem on Van Degen, who also found himself relegated to Mrs. Shallum's group.
In another moment Van Degen would be gone. Worse yet, while he wavered in the doorway the Shallums and Chelles, after vainly awaiting her, might dash back from the Bois and break in on them. These and other chances rose before her, urging her to action; but she held fast, immovable, unwavering, a proud yet plaintive image of renunciation. Van Degen's hand was on the door.
Their admiration was all for herself, and her beauty deepened under it as flowers take a warmer colour in the rays of sunset. Only Van Degen's glance weighed on her a little too heavily. Was it possible that he might become a "bother" less negligible than those he had relieved her of?
Van Degen received this protest with a sound of almost vulgar derision, but Undine thrilled agreeably under the glance which her portrayer cast on her. She was flattered by Van Degen's notice, and thought his impertinence witty; but she glowed inwardly at Mr. Popple's eloquence.
He meant that she should have the "handsomest" wedding the New York press had ever celebrated, and her mother's fancy was already afloat on a sea of luxuries a motor, a Fifth Avenue house, and a tiara that should out-blaze Mrs. Van Degen's; but these were movable benefits, to be conferred whenever Mr. Spragg happened to be "on the right side" of the market.
The humiliation her father had inflicted on her was merged with the humiliation to which she had subjected herself in going to the opera, and she had never before hated her life as she hated it then. All night she lay sleepless, wondering miserably what to do; and out of her hatred of her life, and her hatred of Peter Van Degen, there gradually grew a loathing of Van Degen's pearls.
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