The clearness with which he judged the girl and himself seemed the
surest proof that his feeling was more than a surface thrill. He was not
blind to her crudity and her limitations, but they were a part of her
grace and her persuasion. Diverse et ondoyante--so he had seen her from
the first. But was not that merely the sign of a quicker response to the
world's manifold appeal? There was Harriet Ray, sealed up tight in the
vacuum of inherited opinion, where not a breath of fresh sensation could
get at her: there could be no call to rescue young ladies so
secured from the perils of reality! Undine had no such traditional
safeguards--Ralph guessed Mrs. Spragg's opinions to be as fluid as
her daughter's--and the girl's very sensitiveness to new impressions,
combined with her obvious lack of any sense of relative values, would
make her an easy prey to the powers of folly. He seemed to see her--as
he sat there, pressing his fists into his temples--he seemed to see her
like a lovely rock-bound Andromeda, with the devouring monster Society
careering up to make a mouthful of her; and himself whirling down on his
winged horse--just Pegasus turned Rosinante for the nonce--to cut her
bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue...



VII

Some two months later than the date of young Marvell's midnight vigil,
Mrs. Heeny, seated on a low chair at Undine's knee, gave the girl's left
hand an approving pat as she laid aside her lapful of polishers.

"There! I guess you can put your ring on again," she said with a laugh
of jovial significance; and Undine, echoing the laugh in a murmur of
complacency, slipped on the fourth finger of her recovered hand a band