atching for them on the days when a foreign post was due, and as the
weeks went by without a sign he began to invent excuses for leaving the
office earlier and hurrying back to Washington Square to search
the letter-box for a big tinted envelope with a straggling blotted
superscription.

Undine's departure had given him a momentary sense of liberation: at
that stage in their relations any change would have brought relief. But
now that she was gone he knew she could never really go. Though his
feeling for her had changed, it still ruled his life. If he saw her in
her weakness he felt her in her power: the power of youth and physical
radiance that clung to his disenchanted memories as the scent she used
clung to her letters. Looking back at their four years of marriage he
began to ask himself if he had done all he could to draw her
half-formed spirit from its sleep. Had he not expected too much at
first, and grown too indifferent in the sequel? After all, she was still
in the toy age; and perhaps the very extravagance of his love had
retarded her growth, helped to imprison her in a little circle of
frivolous illusions. But the last months had made a man of him, and when
she came back he would know how to lift her to the height of his
experience.

So he would reason, day by day, as he hastened back to Washington
Square; but when he opened the door, and his first glance at the hall
table showed him there was no letter there, his illusions shrivelled
down to their weak roots. She had not written: she did not mean to
write. He and the boy were no longer a part of her life. When she
came back everything would be as it had been before, with the dreary
difference that she had tasted new pleasures and that their absence
would take the savour from all he had to give her. Then the coming of
another foreign mail would lift his hopes, and as he hurried home he
would imagine new reasons for expecting a letter....

Week after week he swung between the extremes of hope and dejection,
and at last, when the strain had become unbearable, he cabled her. The
answer ran: "Very well best love writing"; but the promised letter never
came....

He went on steadily with his work: he even passed through a phase of
exaggerated energy. But his baffled youth fought in him for air. Was
this to be the end? Was he to wear his life out in useless drudgery? The
plain prose of it, of course, was that the economic situation remained
unchanged by the sen