racted no attention.

Ralph was angry, sore, ashamed. He felt as if Laura, whose hand he
instantly detected, had taken a cruel pleasure in her work, and for an
instant he hated her for it. Then a sense of relief stole over him. He
was glad he could look about him without meeting Undine's eyes, and he
understood that what had been done to his room he must do to his memory
and his imagination: he must so readjust his mind that, whichever way he
turned his thoughts, her face should no longer confront him. But
that was a task that Laura could not perform for him, a task to be
accomplished only by the hard continuous tension of his will.

With the setting in of the mood of silence all desire to fight his
wife's suit died out. The idea of touching publicly on anything that had
passed between himself and Undine had become unthinkable. Insensibly he
had been subdued to the point of view about him, and the idea of calling
on the law to repair his shattered happiness struck him as even more
grotesque than it was degrading. Nevertheless, some contradictory
impulse of his divided spirit made him resent, on the part of his mother
and sister, a too-ready acceptance of his attitude. There were moments
when their tacit assumption that his wife was banished and forgotten
irritated him like the hushed tread of sympathizers about the bed of an
invalid who will not admit that he suffers.

His irritation was aggravated by the discovery that Mrs. Marvell and
Laura had already begun to treat Paul as if he were an orphan. One day,
coming unnoticed into the nursery, Ralph heard the boy ask when his
mother was coming back; and Mrs. Fairford, who was with him, answered:
"She's not coming back, dearest; and you're not to speak of her to
father."

Ralph, when the boy was out of hearing, rebuked his sister for her
answer. "I don't want you to talk of his mother as if she were dead. I
don't want you to forbid Paul to speak of her."

Laura, though usually so yielding, defended herself. "What's the use of
encouraging him to speak of her when he's never to see her? The sooner
he forgets her the better."

Ralph pondered. "Later--if she asks to see him--I shan't refuse."

Mrs. Fairford pressed her lips together to check the answer: "She never
will!"

Ralph heard it, nevertheless, and let it pass. Nothing gave him so
profound a sense of estrangement from his former life as the conviction
that his sister was probably right. He did not really believ