"What's the matter?" he asked, as she continued to
stare silently at the telegram.
She crumpled the strip of paper in her hand. If only she had been alone,
had had a chance to think out her answers!
"What on earth's the matter?" he repeated.
"Oh, nothing--nothing."
"Nothing? When you're as white as a sheet?"
"Am I?" She gave a slight laugh. "It's only a cable from home."
"Ralph?"
She hesitated. "No. Laura."
"What the devil is SHE cabling you about?"
"She says Ralph wants me."
"Now--at once?"
"At once."
Van Degen laughed impatiently. "Why don't he tell you so himself? What
business is it of Laura Fairford's?"
Undine's gesture implied a "What indeed?"
"Is that all she says?"
She hesitated again. "Yes--that's all." As she spoke she tossed the
telegram into the basket beneath the writing-table. "As if I didn't HAVE
to go anyhow?" she exclaimed.
With an aching clearness of vision she saw what lay before her--the
hurried preparations, the long tedious voyage on a steamer chosen at
haphazard, the arrival in the deadly July heat, and the relapse into all
the insufferable daily fag of nursery and kitchen--she saw it and her
imagination recoiled.
Van Degen's eyes still hung on her: she guessed that he was intensely
engaged in trying to follow what was passing through her mind. Presently
he came up to her again, no longer perilous and importunate, but
awkwardly tender, ridiculously moved by her distress.
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