charmed to. The question is how far they'll make you go with THEM, and
where they'll finally land you."

She tossed her head back with the movement she had learned in "speaking"
school-pieces about freedom and the British tyrant.

"No one's ever yet gone any farther with me than I wanted!" she
declared. She was really exquisitely simple.

"I'm not sure Roviano hasn't, in vouching for Madame Adelschein. But he
probably thinks you know about her. To him this isn't 'society' any more
than the people in an omnibus are. Society, to everybody here, means
the sanction of their own special group and of the corresponding groups
elsewhere. The Adelschein goes about in a place like this because it's
nobody's business to stop her; but the women who tolerate her here would
drop her like a shot if she set foot on their own ground."

The thoughtful air with which Undine heard him out made him fancy this
argument had carried; and as be ended she threw him a bright look.

"Well, that's easy enough: I can drop her if she comes to New York."

Ralph sat silent for a moment--then he turned away and began to gather
up his scattered pages.

Undine, in the ensuing days, was no less often with Madame Adelschein,
and Ralph suspected a challenge in her open frequentation of the lady.
But if challenge there were, he let it lie. Whether his wife saw more or
less of Madame Adelschein seemed no longer of much consequence: she had
so amply shown him her ability to protect herself. The pang lay in the