their purpose, and she found that, in the
character of the last American divorcee, she was even regarded as
eligible to the small and intimate inner circle of their loosely-knit
association. At first she could not make out what had entitled her to
this privilege, and increasing enlightenment produced a revolt of the
Apex puritanism which, despite some odd accommodations and compliances,
still carried its head so high in her.

Undine had been perfectly sincere in telling Indiana Rolliver that she
was not "an Immoral woman." The pleasures for which her sex took such
risks had never attracted her, and she did not even crave the excitement
of having it thought that they did. She wanted, passionately and
persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in
any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability; and despite her
surface-sophistication her notion of amusement was hardly less innocent
than when she had hung on the plumber's fence with Indiana Frusk. It
gave her, therefore, no satisfaction to find herself included among
Madame Adelschein's intimates. It embarrassed her to feel that she was
expected to be "queer" and "different," to respond to pass-words and
talk in innuendo, to associate with the equivocal and the subterranean
and affect to despise the ingenuous daylight joys which really satisfied
her soul. But the business shrewdness which was never quite dormant in
her suggested that this was not the moment for such scruples. She must
make the best of what she could get and wait her chance of getting
something better; and meanwhile the most practical use to which she
could put her shady friends was to flash their authentic nobility in the
dazzled eyes of Mrs. Rolliver.

With this object in view she made haste, in a fashionable tea-room of
the rue de Rivoli, to group about Indiana the most titled members of the
band; and the felicity of the occasion would have been unmarred had she
not suddenly caught sight of Raymond de Chelles sitting on the other
side of the room.

She had not seen Chelles since her return to Paris. It had seemed
preferable to leave their meeting to chance and the present chance
might have served as well as another but for the fact that among his
companions were two or three of the most eminent ladies of the
proud quarter beyond the Seine. It was what Undine, in moments of
discouragement, characterized as "her luck" that one of these should
be the hated Miss Wincher of Pot