gone on a "buggy-ride" with a young gentleman from Deposit--a dentist's
assistant--and had let him kiss her, and given him the flower from her
hair. She loathed the thought of him now: she loathed all the people
about her, and most of all the disdainful Miss Wincher. It enraged her
to think that the Winchers classed her with the "hotel crew"--with the
"belles" who awaited their Sunday young men. The place was forever
blighted for her, and the next week she dragged her amazed but thankful
parents back to Apex.

But Miss Wincher's depreciatory talk had opened ampler vistas, and the
pioneer blood in Undine would not let her rest. She had heard the call
of the Atlantic seaboard, and the next summer found the Spraggs at Skog
Harbour, Maine. Even now Undine felt a shiver of boredom as she recalled
it. That summer had been the worst of all. The bare wind-beaten inn, all
shingles without and blueberry pie within, was "exclusive," parochial,
Bostonian; and the Spraggs wore through the interminable weeks in blank
unmitigated isolation. The incomprehensible part of it was that every
other woman in the hotel was plain, dowdy or elderly--and most of them
all three. If there had been any competition on ordinary lines Undine
would have won, as Van Degen said, "hands down." But there wasn't--the
other "guests" simply formed a cold impenetrable group who walked,
boated, played golf, and discussed Christian Science and the Subliminal,
unaware of the tremulous organism drifting helplessly against their
rock-bound circle.

It was on the day the Spraggs left Skog Harbour that Undine vowed to
herself with set lips: "I'll never try anything again till I try New
York." Now she had gained her point and tried New York, and so far, it
seemed, with no better success. From small things to great, everything
went against her. In such hours of self-searching she was ready enough