"Oh, I guess not--not in this new set she's going with! Don't tell her
ANYHOW."

He turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried
loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her
hand on his arm.

"He can't do anything to her, can he?"

"Do anything to her?" He swung about furiously. "I'd like to see him
touch her--that's all!"



II

Undine's white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose
carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops
of the Central Park.

She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed
eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth
Avenue--and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!

She turned back into the room, and going to her writing-table laid Mrs.
Fairford's note before her, and began to study it minutely. She had read
in the "Boudoir Chat" of one of the Sunday papers that the smartest
women were using the new pigeon-blood notepaper with white ink; and
rather against her mother's advice she had ordered a large supply, with