ne returned with unconscious flippancy.

"I do. That's the trouble. WHY won't seats do you?"

"Mabel could buy seats for herself."

"That's so," interpolated Mrs. Spragg--always the first to succumb to
her daughter's arguments.

"Well, I guess I can't buy a box for her."

Undine's face gloomed more deeply. She sat silent, her chocolate
thickening in the cup, while one hand, almost as much beringed as her
mother's, drummed on the crumpled table-cloth.

"We might as well go straight back to Apex," she breathed at last
between her teeth.

Mrs. Spragg cast a frightened glance at her husband. These struggles
between two resolute wills always brought on her palpitations, and she
wished she had her phial of digitalis with her.

"A parterre box costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night," said
Mr. Spragg, transferring a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket.

"I only want it once."

He looked at her with a quizzical puckering of his crows'-feet. "You
only want most things once. Undine."

It was an observation they had made in her earliest youth--Undine never
wanted anything long, but she wanted it "right off." And until she got
it the house was uninhabitable.

"I'd a good deal rather have a box for the season," she rejoined, and he
saw the opening he had given her. She had two ways of getting things
out of him against his principles; the tender wheedling way, and the
harsh-lipped and cold--and he did not know which he dreaded most. As a
child they had admired her assertiveness, had made Apex ring with their
boasts of it; but it had long since cowed Mrs. Spragg, and it was
beginning to frighten her husband.

"Fact is, Undie," he said, weakening, "I'm a little mite strapped just
this month."

Her eyes grew absent-minded, as they always did when he alluded to
business. THAT was man's province; and what did men go "down town" for
but to bring back the spoils to their women? She rose abruptly, leaving
her parents seated, and said, more to herself than the others: "Think
I'll go for a ride."

"Oh, Undine!" fluttered Mrs. Spragg. She always had palpitations when
Undine rode, and since the Aaronson episode her fears were not confined
to what the horse might do.

"Why don't you take your mother out shopping a little?" Mr. Spragg
suggested, conscious of the limitation of his resources.

Undine made no answer, but swept down the room, and out of the door
ahead of her mother, with scorn and anger in every line of her