In the days that followed it seemed to him that he saw strangely little of her, and the little that he did see was less than satisfactory. Her absence from the piazza, and her refusals to go paddling with him, she excused on the plea of being busy with her new costume. But even on the pier at the bathing hour she seemed to shun him, or noticed him only with jeers and gibes at what she called his laziness.
“Ah, can anybody have a soul that is afraid of the sea?” she cried. “Come, Mr. Martin, let us race over to the monument!” With a splash and a flounce the two set out together, the green bathing dress and the triumphant blue; while Glyn sat alone on the wharf with a leaden heart and rage at his soul.
This state of affairs had very little altered when at last the day of the dance arrived. A hundred times in the interim had Stephen resolved to give up the whole affair and go home; but then he decided to wait and see this new Undine in the flesh. To his anxiety, the bracelet had not yet arrived; nor did it come until the last post on the evening of the dance, after everybody had gone upstairs to dress. In joyful relief, Stephen slipped the little box in the pocket of his improvised admiral’s costume, and ran downstairs to the hall to wait for the coming of his Undine.
Elfrida did not appear till late, when the room was filled with whirling harlequins and Pompadours and Swiss peasant maidens. The admiral stood by the door, waiting for her, his little box in his hand and his heart in his mouth. Finally, as though she had been on the watch to avoid him, he saw her enter the hall by one of the long windows opening from the veranda without. In spite of his vexation, he could not but smile with sheer pleasure at the sight of her, as her eyes and her white teeth flashed a smile upon the room. In her pale, sea-green draperies, dragging heavily at the hem with a fragile border of urchin shells, her creamy neck and shoulders bare, her flowing yellow hair bound and wreathed with strands of dark, wet seaweed—oh, she was pretty, indeed! Stephen sprang forward.
“Good-evening, Undine! Here—I have something for you, will you let me give it to you? A little ornament to complete your costume.”
“You may give it to me later,” she replied, with an indifference that chilled and baffled him; and he watched her miserably as she swung off into the two-step with a tall, sunburned youth from Boston—a conceited-looking pup, Glyn told himself, in a vain attempt at consolation.
The evening was half over before he managed to get near her again. “Our dance, Mr. Glyn,” she cried, taking his arm and smiling up at him. Her eyebrows, which, in spite of her fair hair, were black and thickly ridged, were arched high in the mocking expression that he hated to see upon her face. She was in wild spirits, gay with the evening’s success, fluttered with a reckless and inconsequent laughter that set the fibers of her lover’s heart quivering painfully.
“Let’s go down on the breakwater,” she said, “instead of dancing. It’s so hot here.” Bewildered and obedient, Stephen followed her, and a few moments later they were sitting side by side at the end of the moonlit pier.
“Doesn’t the water look nice?” cried Elfie, bending over it lovingly. “For two cents, I’d jump into it this very moment.”
“Please don’t!” expostulated Stephen, in alarm. She turned her bright eyes toward him.