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.
"Undine, listen: won't you let me make it all right for you to stay?"
Her heart began to beat more quickly, and she let him come close, meeting his eyes coldly but without anger.
"What do you call 'making it all right'? Paying my bills? Don't you see that's what I hate, and will never let myself be dragged into again?" She laid her hand on his arm. "The time has come when I must be sensible, Peter; that's why we must say good-bye."
"Do you mean to tell me you're going back to Ralph?"
She paused a moment; then she murmured between her lips: "I shall never go back to him."
"Then you DO mean to marry Chelles?"
"I've told you we must say good-bye. I've got to look out for my future."