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Updated: July 18, 2025
" TO DINE WITH ME TOO?" That must be what she was going to say, and Undine's heart gave a bound. " to see me some afternoon," Mrs. Van Degen ended, going down the steps to her motor, at the door of which a much-furred footman waited with more furs on his arm. Undine's face burned as she turned to receive her cloak.
It seemed as if all were going well; for the poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused Degen by his bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an Italian journey in the spring. He walked out twice; was he still happy? Who can tell?
It is known that in 1847 he was in Frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a young baker called Degen 'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of age, we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and of a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in the part of Hotspur.
Among them also Peter Van Degen presently appeared. He had been on a tour around the world, and Undine could not look at a newspaper without seeing some allusion to his progress.
"Why so pale and sad, fair cousin? What's up?" Van Degen asked, as they emerged from the lift in which they had descended alone from the studio. "I don't know I'm tired of posing. And it was so frightfully hot." "Yes. Popple always keeps his place at low-neck temperature, as if the portraits might catch cold." Van Degen glanced at his watch. "Where are you off to?"
It doesn't matter, at any rate," she ended, laughing, "because nobody I care about will see me." Van Degen echoed her laugh. "Oh, come that's rough on Ralph!" She looked down with a slight increase of colour. "I oughtn't to have said it, ought I? But the fact is I'm unhappy and a little hurt " "Unhappy? Hurt?" He was at her side again. "Why, what's wrong?" She lifted her eyes with a grave look.
In the sitting-room Ralph found Undine seated behind a tea-table on the other side of which, in an attitude of easy intimacy, Peter Van Degen stretched his lounging length. He did not move on Ralph's appearance, no doubt thinking their kinship close enough to make his nod and "Hullo!" a sufficient greeting.
If only her father had listened to her! If a girl like Indiana Frusk could gain her end so easily, what might not Undine have accomplished? She knew Moffatt was right in saying that Indiana had never come up to her...She wondered how the marriage would strike Van Degen... She signalled to a cab and they walked toward it without speaking.
The artist himself, becomingly clad in mouse-coloured velveteen, had just turned away from the picture to hover above the tea-cups; but his place had been taken by the considerably broader bulk of Mr. Peter Van Degen, who, tightly moulded into a coat of the latest cut, stood before the portrait in the attitude of a first arrival.
Van Degen was helping himself from the tray of iced cocktails which stood near the tea-table, and Popple, turning to Undine, took up the thread of his discourse. But why, he asked, why allude before others to feelings so few could understand? The average man lucky devil!
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