as if to make sure of its being shut

He glanced again at his daughter's door, as if to make sure of its being shut; then, standing close before his wife, he lowered his voice to say: "I saw Elmer Moffatt down town to-day." "Oh, Abner!" A wave of almost physical apprehension passed over Mrs. Spragg. Her jewelled hands trembled in her black brocade lap, and the pulpy curves of her face collapsed as if it were a pricked balloon. "Oh, Abner," she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter's door. Mr. Spragg's black eyebrows gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident that his anger was not against his wife. "What's the good of Oh Abner-ing? Elmer Moffatt's nothing to us--no more'n if we never laid eyes on him." "No--I know it; but what's he doing here? Did you speak to him?" she faltered. He slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. "No--I guess Elmer and I are pretty well talked out." Mrs. Spragg took up her moan. "Don't you tell her you saw him, Abner." "I'll do as you say; but she may meet him herself." "Oh, I guess not--not in this new set she's going with! Don't tell her ANYHOW." He turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her hand on his arm. "He can't do anything to her, can he?" "Do anything to her?" He swung about furiously. "I'd like to see him touch her--that's all!" Chapter 2 Undine's white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops of the Central Park. She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth Avenue--and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!