They looked at each other uncertainly a moment; then he dropped his voice to say: "Even if I did, I probably shouldn't see anything of you."
"Why not? Why won't you come and see me? I've always wanted to be friends."
He came the next day and found in her drawing-room two ladies whom she introduced as her sisters-in-law. The ladies lingered on for a long time, sipping their tea stiffly and exchanging low-voiced remarks while Undine talked with Moffatt; and when they left, with small sidelong bows in his direction.
Undine exclaimed: "Now you see how they all watch me!"
She began to go into the details of her married life, drawing on the experiences of the first months for instances that scarcely applied to her present liberated state. She could thus, without great exaggeration, picture herself as entrapped into a bondage hardly conceivable to Moffatt, and she saw him redden with excitement as he listened. "I call it darned low—darned low—" he broke in at intervals.
"Of course I go round more now," she concluded. "I mean to see my friends—I don't care what he says."
"What CAN he say?"
"Oh, he despises Americans—they all do."
"Well, I guess we can still sit up and take nourishment."
They laughed and slipped back to talking of earlier things. She urged him to put off his sailing—there were so many things they might do together: sight-seeing and excursions—and she could perhaps show him some of the private collections he hadn't seen, the ones it was hard to get admitted to. This instantly roused his attention, and after naming one or two collections he had already seen she hit on one he had found inaccessible and was particularly anxious to visit. "There's an Ingres there that's one of the things I came over to have a look at; but I was told there was no use trying."