in former wanderings, and come across their duplicates in every scene
of continental idleness. Foremost among them was Mrs. Harvey Shallum,
a showy Parisianized figure, with a small wax-featured husband whose
ultra-fashionable clothes seemed a tribute to his wife's importance
rather than the mark of his personal taste. Mr. Shallum, in fact, could
not be said to have any personal bent. Though he conversed with a
colourless fluency in the principal European tongues, he seldom
exercised his gift except in intercourse with hotel-managers and
head-waiters; and his long silences were broken only by resigned
allusions to the enormities he had suffered at the hands of this gifted
but unscrupulous class.

Mrs. Shallum, though in command of but a few verbs, all of which, on her
lips, became irregular, managed to express a polyglot personality as
vivid as her husband's was effaced. Her only idea of intercourse with
her kind was to organize it into bands and subject it to frequent
displacements; and society smiled at her for these exertions like an
infant vigorously rocked. She saw at once Undine's value as a factor in
her scheme, and the two formed an alliance on which Ralph refrained from
shedding the cold light of depreciation. It was a point of honour
with him not to seem to disdain any of Undine's amusements: the noisy
interminable picnics, the hot promiscuous balls, the concerts,
bridge-parties and theatricals which helped to disguise the difference
between the high Alps and Paris or New York. He told himself that there
is always a Narcissus-element in youth, and that what Undine really
enjoyed was the image of her own charm mirrored in the general
admiration. With her quick perceptions and adaptabilities she would soon
learn to care more about the quality of the reflecting surface; and
meanwhile no criticism of his should mar her pleasure.