Undine, late the next day, waited alone under the leafless trellising of
a wistaria arbour on the west side of the Central Park. She had put on
her plainest dress, and wound a closely, patterned veil over her least
vivid hat; but even thus toned down to the situation she was conscious
of blazing out from it inconveniently.
The habit of meeting young men in sequestered spots was not unknown to
her: the novelty was in feeling any embarrassment about it. Even now
she--was disturbed not so much by the unlikely chance of an accidental
encounter with Ralph Marvell as by the remembrance of similar meetings,
far from accidental, with the romantic Aaronson. Could it be that the
hand now adorned with Ralph's engagement ring had once, in this very
spot, surrendered itself to the riding-master's pressure? At the thought
a wave of physical disgust passed over her, blotting out another memory
as distasteful but more remote.
It was revived by the appearance of a ruddy middle-sized young man, his
stoutish figure tightly buttoned into a square-shouldered over-coat, who
presently approached along the path that led to the arbour. Silhouetted
against the slope of the asphalt, the newcomer revealed an outline thick
yet compact, with a round head set on a neck in which, at the first
chance, prosperity would be likely to develop a red crease. His face,
with its rounded surfaces, and the sanguine innocence of a complexion
belied by prematurely astute black eyes, had a look of jovial cunning
which Undine had formerly thought "smart" but which now struck her as
merely vulgar. She felt that in the Marvell set Elmer Moffatt would have
been stamped as "not a gentleman." Nevertheless something in his look
seemed to promise the capacity to develop into any character he might
care to assume; though it did not seem probable that, for the present,
that of a gentleman would be among them. He had always had a brisk
swaggering step, and the faintly impudent tilt of the head that she had
once thought "dashing"; but whereas this look had formerly denoted
a somewhat desperate defiance of the world and its judgments it now
suggested an almost assured relation to these powers; and Undine's heart
sank at the thought of what the change implied.
As he drew nearer, the young man's air of assurance was replaced by an
expression of mildly humorous surprise.
"Well--this is white of you. Undine!" he said, taking her lifeless
fingers into his dapperly gloved hand.