You’d better think twice of that!’

‘If I were only sure of knowing what you expect!’ he caught up her joke, tossing it back at her across the fascinated silence of their listeners.

‘Why, everything!’ she announced – and Mr Dagonet, turning, laid an intricately-veined old hand on hers, and said, with a change of tone that relaxed the tension of the listeners: ‘My child, if you look like that you’ll get it.’

VIII

IT WAS doubtless owing to Mrs Fairford’s foresight that such possibilities of tension were curtailed, after dinner, by her carrying off Ralph and his betrothed to the theatre.

Mr Dagonet, it was understood, always went to bed after an hour’s whist with his daughter; and the silent Mr Fairford gave his evenings to bridge at his club. The party, therefore, consisted only of Undine and Ralph, with Mrs Fairford and her attendant friend. Undine vaguely wondered why the grave and grey-haired Mr Bowen formed so invariable a part of that lady’s train; but she concluded that it was the New York custom for married ladies to have gentlemen “round’ (as girls had in Apex), and that Mr Bowen was the sole survivor of Laura Fairford’s earlier triumphs.

She had, however, little time to give to such conjectures, for the performance they were attending – the début of a fashionable London actress – had attracted a large audience in which Undine immediately recognized a number of familiar faces. Her engagement had been announced only the day before, and she had the delicious sense of being ‘in all the papers’, and of focusing countless glances of interest and curiosity as she swept through the theatre in Mrs Fairford’s wake. Their stalls were near the stage, and progress thither was slow enough to permit of prolonged enjoyment of this sensation. Before passing to her place she paused for Ralph to remove her cloak, and as he lifted it from her shoulders she heard a lady say behind her: ‘There she is – the one in white, with the lovely back –’ and a man answer: ‘Gad! Where did he find anything as good as that?’

Anonymous approval was sweet enough; but she was to taste a moment more exquisite when, in the proscenium box across the house, she saw Clare Van Degen seated beside the prim figure of Miss Harriet Ray. ‘They’re here to see me with him – they hate it, but they couldn’t keep away!’ She turned and lifted a smile of possessorship to Ralph.

Mrs Fairford seemed also struck by the presence of the two ladies and Undine heard her whisper to Mr Bowen: ‘Do you see Clare over there – and Harriet with her? Harriet would come – I call it Spartan! And so like Clare to ask her!’

Her companion laughed. ‘It’s one of the deepest instincts in human nature. The murdered are as much given as the murderer to haunting the scene of the crime.’

Doubtless guessing Ralph’s desire to have Undine to himself, Mrs Fairford had sent the girl in first; and Undine, as she seated herself, was aware that the occupant of the next stall half turned to her, as with a vague gesture of recognition. But just then the curtain rose, and she became absorbed in the development of the drama, especially as it tended to display the remarkable toilets which succeeded each other on the person of its leading lady. Undine, seated at Ralph Marvell’s side, and feeling the thrill of his proximity as a subtler element in the general interest she was exciting, was at last repaid for the disappointment of her evening at the opera. It was characteristic of her that she remembered her failures as keenly as her triumphs, and that the passionate desire to obliterate, to ‘get even’ with them, was always among the latent incentives of her conduct. Now at last she was having what she wanted – she was in conscious possession of the ‘real thing’; and through her other, more diffused, sensations Ralph’s adoration gave her such a last refinement of pleasure as might have come to some warrior Queen borne in triumph by captive princes, and reading in the eyes of one the passion he dared not speak.

When the curtain fell this vague enjoyment was heightened by various acts of recognition. All the people she wanted to ‘go with’, as they said in Apex, seemed to be about her in the stalls and boxes; and her eyes continued to revert with special satisfaction to the incongruous group formed by Mrs Peter Van Degen and Miss Ray. The sight made it irresistible to whisper to Ralph: ‘You ought to go round and talk to your cousin. Have you told her we’re engaged?’

‘Clare? of course. She’s going to call on you tomorrow.’

‘Oh, she needn’t put herself out – she’s never been yet,’ said Undine loftily.

He made no rejoinder, but presently asked: ‘Who’s that you’re waving to?’

‘Mr Popple. He’s coming round to see us. You know he wants to paint me.’ Undine fluttered and beamed as the brilliant Popple made his way across the stalls to the seat which her neighbour had momentarily left.

‘First-rate chap next to you – whoever he is – to give me this chance,’ the artist declared. ‘Ha, Ralph, my boy, how did you pull it off? That’s what we’re all of us wondering.’ He leaned over to give Marvell’s hand the ironic grasp of celibacy. ‘Well, you’ve left us lamenting: he has, you know, Miss Spragg. But I’ve got one pull over the others – I can paint you! He can’t forbid that, can he? Not before marriage, anyhow!’

Undine divided her shining glances between the two. ‘I guess he isn’t going to treat me any different afterward,’ she proclaimed with joyous defiance.

‘Ah, well, there’s no telling, you know. Hadn’t we better begin at once? Seriously, I want awfully to get you into the spring show.’

‘Oh, really? That would be too lovely!’

‘You would be, certainly – the way I mean to do you. But I see Ralph getting glum. Cheer up, my dear fellow; I daresay you’ll be invited to some of the sittings – that’s for Miss Spragg to say. – Ah, here comes your neighbour back, confound him. – You’ll let me know when we can begin?’

As Popple moved away Undine turned eagerly to Marvell. ‘Do you suppose there’s time? I’d love to have him to do me!’

Ralph smiled. ‘My poor child – he would “do” you, with a vengeance.