Undine watches Raymond walk away from her as if he were in a trance. She knows he will always be courteous toward her as if nothing had happened between them. She also knows that nothing will ever change in her marriage or in her life. She will spend miserable winters in the old estate and there will be numerous battles between her and Raymond over money.

She wants to react as she has ever since childhood. She wants to get angry and lash out at Raymond to hurt and even possibly destroy him and everything that stands in her way. No matter how carefully she examines her situation, though, she can find no way out. Raymond will never give in to her. He may never even show that she has hurt him. Until this moment in her life, she had always believed she could conquer any situation and bring it about to her advantage, but now the world seems to be plotting against her.

Undine looks around the room where Raymond has left her. If she were bold enough to sell everything just in that one room alone, she would have more than enough money to escape from all her cares. This estate, as well as the house in Paris that her husband’s family owns, provides the kind of setting that Undine had always thought appropriate for a beautiful woman such as herself. Had she stayed with Moffatt, though, he would not only have given her houses such as these but he would also have encouraged her to develop her own power.

As Undine thinks about Moffatt, she reflects on how they met in Apex, so many years ago. Moffatt had arrived in the small town without anyone knowing where he came from. Nonetheless, he had impressed the local townspeople—all of them, from the preacher to the town drunks. Moffatt was an amiable man even in his youth. Although he was sometimes brash, he was also eloquent. He had a knack for making speeches that inspired people. This gift provided him with the only references he owned, and the only references he ever needed in Apex. He easily won people over to his side, and they responded with their friendship as well as good jobs and nice houses in which to live.

Moffatt quickly rose in esteem with the town’s elders until he made one fatal mistake. He had been asked to speak at a meeting whose organizers were rallying for the Temperance Movement, an effort to encourage people to eliminate their consumption of alcohol. At the meeting, while waiting to speak, Elmer sat with a group of friends at the back of the room. By the time he rose to his feet to deliver his talk, he was drunk.

It was during his disgrace that Undine found herself becoming attracted to young Elmer Moffatt. She enjoyed the way the respectable elders scrutinized her whenever they saw her walking down the street with Moffatt. Then Moffatt kissed her, and Undine felt that this kiss was the first real one she had ever received in her life.

It is with these memories fresh in her mind that Undine now looks for the telephone book in the Chelles house, knowing that Moffatt is still in Paris and thus still her within reach.