Chapter XVII…

Chapter XVII

From Biloxi, because of the approach of summer when it would be unbearably warm there, and because his funds were so low that it was necessary to make a decisive move of some kind whether it led to complete disaster or not, he decided to return to New York. In storage with Kellners (M. Charles had kindly volunteered to take care of them for him) were a number of the pictures left over from the original show, and nearly all the paintings of the Paris exhibition. The latter had not sold well. Eugene's idea was that he could slip into New York quietly, take a room in some side street or in Jersey City or Brooklyn where he would not be seen, have the pictures in the possession of M. Charles returned to him, and see if he could not get some of the minor art dealers or speculators of whom he had heard to come and look at them and buy them outright. Failing that, he might take them himself, one by one, to different dealers here and there and dispose of them. He remembered now that Eberhard Zang had, through Norma Whitmore, asked him to come and see him. He fancied that, as Kellners had been so interested, and the newspaper critics had spoken of him so kindly the smaller dealers would be eager to take up with him. Surely they would buy this material. It was exceptional--very. Why not?

Eugene forgot or did not know the metaphysical side of prosperity and failure. He did not realize that "as a man thinketh so is he," and so also is the estimate of the whole world at the time he is thinking of himself thus--not as he is but as he thinks he is. The sense of it is abroad--by what processes we know not, but so it is.

Eugene's mental state, so depressed, so helpless, so fearsome--a rudderless boat in the dark, transmitted itself as an impression, a wireless message to all those who knew him or knew of him. His breakdown, which had first astonished M. Charles, depressed and then weakened the latter's interest in him. Like all other capable, successful men in the commercial world M. Charles was for strong men--men in the heyday of their success, the zenith of their ability. The least variation from this standard of force and interest was noticeable to him. If a man was going to fail--going to get sick and lose his interest in life or have his viewpoint affected, it might be very sad, but there was just one thing to do under such circumstances--get away from him. Failures of any kind were dangerous things to countenance. One must not have anything to do with them. They were very unprofitable. Such people as Temple Boyle and Vincent Beers, who had been his instructors in the past and who had heard of him in Chicago at the time of his success, Luke Severas, William McConnell, Oren Benedict, Hudson Dula, and others wondered what had become of him. Why did he not paint any more? He was never seen in the New York haunts of art! It was rumored at the time of the Paris exhibition that he was going to London to do a similar group of views, but the London exhibition never came off. He had told Smite and MacHugh the spring he left that he might do Chicago next, but that came to nothing. There was no evidence of it. There were rumors that he was very rich, that his art had failed him, that he had lost his mind even, and so the art world that knew him and was so interested in him no longer cared very much. It was too bad but--so thought the rival artists--there was one less difficult star to contend with. As for his friends, they were sorry, but such was life. He might recover. If not,--well--.

As time went on, one year, another year, another year, the strangeness of his suddenly brilliant burst and disappearance became to the talented in this field a form of classic memory. He was a man of such promise! Why did he not go on painting? There was an occasional mention in conversation or in print, but Eugene to all intents and purposes was dead.

When he came to New York it was after his capital had been reduced to three hundred dollars and he had given Angela one hundred and twenty-five of this to take her back to Blackwood and keep her there until he could make such arrangements as would permit her to join him. After a long discussion they had finally agreed that this would be best, for, seeing that he could neither paint nor illustrate, there was no certainty as to what he would do. To come here on so little money with her was not advisable. She had her home where she was welcome to stay for a while anyhow. Meanwhile he figured he could weather any storm alone.

The appearance of the metropolis, after somewhat over two years of absence during which he had wandered everywhere, was most impressive to Eugene. It was a relief after the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee and the loneliness of the Biloxi coast, to get back to this swarming city where millions were hurrying to and fro, and where one's misery as well as one's prosperity was apparently swallowed up in an inconceivable mass of life. A subway was being built. The automobile, which only a few years before was having a vague, uncertain beginning, was now attaining a tremendous vogue. Magnificent cars of new design were everywhere. From the ferry-house in Jersey City he could see notable changes in the skyline, and a single walk across Twenty-third Street and up Seventh Avenue showed him a changing world--great hotels, great apartment houses, a tremendous crush of vainglorious life which was moulding the city to its desires. It depressed him greatly, for he had always hoped to be an integral part of this magnificence and display and now he was not--might never be again.

It was still raw and cold, for the spring was just beginning to break, and Eugene was compelled to buy a light overcoat, his own imperishable great coat having been left behind, and he had no other fit to wear. Appearances, he thought, demanded this. He had spent forty of his closely-guarded one hundred and seventy-five dollars coming from Biloxi to New York, and now an additional fifteen was required for this coat, leaving him one hundred and twenty-five dollars with which to begin his career anew. He was greatly worried as to the outcome, but curiously also he had an abiding subconscious feeling that it could not be utterly destructive to him.

He rented a cheap room in a semi-respectable neighborhood in West Twenty-fourth Street near Eleventh Avenue solely because he wanted to keep out of the run of intellectual life and hide until he could get on his feet. It was an old and shabby residence in an old and shabby red brick neighborhood such as he had drawn in one of his views, but it was not utterly bad. The people were poor but fairly intellectual. He chose this particular neighborhood with all its poverty because it was near the North River where the great river traffic could be seen, and where, because of some open lots in which were stored wagons, his one single west window gave him a view of all this life. About the corner in Twenty-third Street, in another somewhat decayed residence, was a moderate priced restaurant and boarding house. Here he could get a meal for twenty-five cents. He cared nothing for the life that was about him. It was cheap, poor, from a money point of view, dingy, but he would not be here forever he hoped. These people did not know him. Besides the number 552 West 24th Street did not sound bad. It might be one of the old neighborhoods with which New York was dotted, and which artists were inclined to find and occupy.

After he had secured this room from a semi-respectable Irish landlady, a dock weigher's wife, he decided to call upon M. Charles. He knew that he looked quite respectable as yet, despite his poverty and decline. His clothes were good, his overcoat new, his manner brisk and determined. But what he could not see was that his face in its thin sallowness, and his eyes with their semi-feverish lustre bespoke a mind that was harassed by trouble of some kind. He stood outside the office of Kellner and Son in Fifth Avenue--a half block from the door, wondering whether he should go in, and just what he should say. He had written to M. Charles from time to time that his health was bad and that he couldn't work--always that he hoped to be better soon. He had always hoped that a reply would come that another of his pictures had been sold. One year had gone and then two, and now a third was under way and still he was not any better. M. Charles would look at him searchingly. He would have to bear his gaze unflinchingly. In his present nervous state this was difficult and yet he was not without a kind of defiance even now. He would force himself back into favor with life sometime.

He finally mustered up his courage and entered and M. Charles greeted him warmly.

"This certainly is good,--to see you again. I had almost given up hope that you would ever come back to New York. How is your health now? And how is Mrs. Witla? It doesn't seem as though it had been three years. You're looking excellent. And how is painting going now? Getting to the point where you can do something again?"

Eugene felt for the moment as though M. Charles believed him to be in excellent condition, whereas that shrewd observer of men was wondering what could have worked so great a change. Eugene appeared to be eight years older. There were marked wrinkles between his eyes and an air of lassitude and weariness. He thought to himself, "Why, this man may possibly be done for artistically. Something has gone from him which I noted the first time I met him: that fire and intense enthusiasm which radiated force after the fashion of an arclight. Now he seems to be seeking to draw something in,--to save himself from drowning as it were. He is making a voiceless appeal for consideration. What a pity!"

The worst of it all was that in his estimation nothing could be done in such a case. You couldn't do anything for an artist who could do nothing for himself. His art was gone. The sanest thing for him to do would be to quit trying, go at some other form of labor and forget all about it. It might be that he would recover, but it was a question. Nervous breakdowns were not infrequently permanent.

Eugene noticed something of this in his manner. He couldn't tell exactly what it was, but M. Charles seemed more than ordinarily preoccupied, careful and distant. He wasn't exactly chilly in his manner, but reserved, as though he were afraid he might be asked to do something which he could not very well do.

"I noticed that the Paris scenes did not do very well either here or in Paris," observed Eugene with an air of nonchalance, as though it were a matter of small importance, at the same time hoping that he would have some favorable word. "I had the idea that they would take better than they did. Still I don't suppose I ought to expect everything to sell. The New York ones did all right."

"They did very well indeed, much better than I expected. I didn't think as many would be sold as were. They were very new and considerably outside the lines of current interest. The Paris pictures, on the other hand, were foreign to Americans in the wrong sense. By that I mean they weren't to be included in that genre art which comes from abroad, but is not based on any locality and is universal in its appeal--thematically speaking. Your Paris pictures were, of course, pictures in the best sense to those who see art as color and composition and idea, but to the ordinary lay mind they were, I take it, merely Paris scenes. You get what I mean. In that sense they were foreign, and Paris has been done illustratively anyhow. You might have done better with London or Chicago. Still you have every reason to congratulate yourself. Your work made a distinct impression both here and in France. When you feel able to return to it I have no doubt you will find that time has done you no harm."

He tried to be polite and entertaining, but he was glad when Eugene went away again.

The latter turned out into the street disconsolate. He could see how things were. He was down and out for the present and would have to wait.

Chapter XVIII

The next thing was to see what could be done with the other art dealers and the paintings that were left. There were quite a number of them. If he could get any reasonable price at all he ought to be able to live quite awhile--long enough anyhow to get on his feet again. When they came to his quiet room and were unpacked by him in a rather shamefaced and disturbed manner and distributed about, they seemed wonderful things. Why, if the critics had raved over them and M. Charles had thought they were so fine, could they not be sold? Art dealers would surely buy them! Still, now that he was on the ground again and could see the distinctive art shops from the sidewalks his courage failed him. They were not running after pictures. Exceptional as he might be, there were artists in plenty--good ones. He could not run to other well known art dealers very well for his work had become identified with the house of Kellner and Son. Some of the small dealers might buy them but they would not buy them all--probably one or two at the most, and that at a sacrifice. What a pass to come to!--he, Eugene Witla, who three years before had been in the heyday of his approaching prosperity, wondering as he stood in the room of a gloomy side-street house how he was going to raise money to live through the summer, and how he was going to sell the paintings which had seemed the substance of his fortune but two years before. He decided that he would ask several of the middle class dealers whether they would not come and look at what he had to show. To a number of the smaller dealers in Fourth, Sixth, Eighth Avenues and elsewhere he would offer to sell several outright when necessity pinched. Still he had to raise money soon. Angela could not be left at Blackwood indefinitely.

He went to Jacob Bergman, Henry LaRue, Pottle Frères and asked if they would be interested to see what he had. Henry Bergman, who was his own manager, recalled his name at once. He had seen the exhibition but was not eager. He asked curiously how the pictures of the first and second exhibitions had sold, how many there were of them, what prices they brought. Eugene told him.

"You might bring one or two here and leave them on sale. You know how that is. Someone might take a fancy to them. You never can tell."

He explained that his commission was twenty-five per cent, and that he would report when a sale was made. He was not interested to come and see them. Eugene could select any two pictures he pleased. It was the same with Henry LaRue and Pottle Frères, though the latter had never heard of him. They asked him to show them one of his pictures. Eugene's pride was touched the least bit by this lack of knowledge on their part, though seeing how things were going with him he felt as though he might expect as much and more.

Other art dealers he did not care to trust with his paintings on sale, and he was now ashamed to start carrying them about to the magazines, where at least one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty per picture might be expected for them, if they were sold at all. He did not want the magazine art world to think that he had come to this. His best friend was Hudson Dula, and he might no longer be Art Director of Truth. As a matter of fact Dula was no longer there. Then there were Jan Jansen and several others, but they were no doubt thinking of him now as a successful painter. It seemed as though his natural pride were building insurmountable barriers for him. How was he to live if he could not do this and could not paint? He decided on trying the small art dealers with a single picture, offering to sell it outright. They might not recognize him and so might buy it direct. He could accept, in such cases, without much shock to his pride, anything which they might offer, if it were not too little.

He tried this one bright morning in May, and though it was not without result it spoiled the beautiful day for him. He took one picture, a New York scene, and carried it to a third rate art dealer whose place he had seen in upper Sixth Avenue, and without saying anything about himself asked if he would like to buy it. The proprietor, a small, dark individual of Semitic extraction, looked at him curiously and at his picture. He could tell from a single look that Eugene was in trouble, that he needed money and that he was anxious to sell his picture. He thought of course that he would take anything for it and he was not sure that he wanted the picture at that. It was not very popular in theme, a view of a famous Sixth Avenue restaurant showing behind the track of the L road, with a driving rain pouring in between the interstices of light. Years after this picture was picked up by a collector from Kansas City at an old furniture sale and hung among his gems, but this morning its merits were not very much in evidence.

"I see that you occasionally exhibit a painting in your window for sale. Do you buy originals?"

"Now and again," said the man indifferently--"not often. What have you?"

"I have an oil here that I painted not so long ago. I occasionally do these things. I thought maybe you would like to buy it."

The proprietor stood by indifferently while Eugene untied the string, took off the paper and stood the picture up for inspection. It was striking enough in its way but it did not appeal to him as being popular. "I don't think it's anything that I could sell here," he remarked, shrugging his shoulders. "It's good, but we don't have much call for pictures of any kind. If it were a straight landscape or a marine or a figure of some kind--. Figures sell best. But this--I doubt if I could get rid of it. You might leave it on sale if you want to. Somebody might like it. I don't think I'd care to buy it."

"I don't care to leave it on sale," replied Eugene irritably. Leave one of his pictures in a cheap side-street art store--and that on sale! He would not. He wanted to say something cutting in reply but he curbed his welling wrath to ask,

"How much do you think it would be worth if you did want it?"

"Oh," replied the proprietor, pursing his lips reflectively, "not more than ten dollars. We can't ask much for anything we have on view here. The Fifth Avenue stores take all the good trade."

Eugene winced. Ten dollars! Why, what a ridiculous sum! What was the use of coming to a place like this anyhow? He could do better dealing with the art directors or the better stores. But where were they? Whom could he deal with? Where were there any stores much better than this outside the large ones which he had already canvassed. He had better keep his pictures and go to work now at something else. He only had thirty-five of them all told and at this rate he would have just three hundred and fifty dollars when they were all gone. What good would that do him? His mood and this preliminary experience convinced him that they could not be sold for any much greater sum. Fifteen dollars or less would probably be offered and he would be no better off at the end. His pictures would be gone and he would have nothing. He ought to get something to do and save his pictures. But what?

To a man in Eugene's position--he was now thirty-one years of age, with no training outside what he had acquired in developing his artistic judgment and ability--this proposition of finding something else which he could do was very difficult. His mental sickness was, of course, the first great bar. It made him appear nervous and discouraged and so more or less objectionable to anyone who was looking for vigorous healthy manhood in the shape of an employee. In the next place, his look and manner had become decidedly that of the artist--refined, retiring, subtle. He also had an air at times of finicky standoffishness, particularly in the presence of those who appeared to him commonplace or who by their look or manner appeared to be attempting to set themselves over him. In the last place, he could think of nothing that he really wanted to do--the idea that his art ability would come back to him or that it ought to serve him in this crisis, haunting him all the time. Once he had thought he might like to be an art director; he was convinced that he would be a good one. And another time he had thought he would like to write, but that was long ago. He had never written anything since the Chicago newspaper specials, and several efforts at concentrating his mind for this quickly proved to him that writing was not for him now. It was hard for him to formulate an intelligent consecutive-idea'd letter to Angela. He harked back to his old Chicago days and remembering that he had been a collector and a driver of a laundry wagon, he decided that he might do something of that sort. Getting a position as a street-car conductor or a drygoods clerk appealed to him as possibilities. The necessity of doing something within regular hours and in a routine way appealed to him as having curative properties. How should he get such a thing?

If it had not been for the bedeviled state of his mind this would not have been such a difficult matter, for he was physically active enough to hold any ordinary position. He might have appealed frankly and simply to M. Charles or Isaac Wertheim and through influence obtained something which would have tided him over, but he was too sensitive to begin with and his present weakness made him all the more fearful and retiring. He had but one desire when he thought of doing anything outside his creative gift, and that was to slink away from the gaze of men. How could he, with his appearance, his reputation, his tastes and refinement, hobnob with conductors, drygoods clerks, railroad hands or drivers? It wasn't possible--he hadn't the strength. Besides all that was a thing of the past, or he thought it was. He had put it behind him in his art student days. Now to have to get out and look for a job! How could he? He walked the streets for days and days, coming back to his room to see if by any chance he could paint yet, writing long, rambling, emotional letters to Angela. It was pitiful. In fits of gloom he would take out an occasional picture and sell it, parting with it for ten or fifteen dollars after he had carried it sometimes for miles. His one refuge was in walking, for somehow he could not walk and feel very, very bad. The beauty of nature, the activity of people entertained and diverted his mind. He would come back to his room some evenings feeling as though a great change had come over him, as though he were going to do better now; but this did not last long. A little while and he would be back in his old mood again. He spent three months this way, drifting, before he realized that he must do something--that fall and winter would be coming on again in a little while and he would have nothing at all.

In his desperation he first attempted to get an art directorship, but two or three interviews with publishers of magazines proved to him pretty quickly that positions of this character were not handed out to the inexperienced. It required an apprenticeship, just as anything else did, and those who had positions in this field elsewhere had the first call. His name or appearance did not appear to strike any of these gentlemen as either familiar or important in any way. They had heard of him as an illustrator and a painter, but his present appearance indicated that this was a refuge in ill health which he was seeking, not a vigorous, constructive position, and so they would have none of him. He next tried at three of the principal publishing houses, but they did not require anyone in that capacity. Truth to tell he knew very little of the details and responsibilities of the position, though he thought he did. After that there was nothing save drygoods stores, street-car registration offices, the employment offices of the great railroads and factories. He looked at sugar refineries, tobacco factories, express offices, railroad freight offices, wondering whether in any of these it would be possible for him to obtain a position which would give him a salary of ten dollars a week. If he could get that, and any of the pictures now on show with Jacob Bergman, Henry LaRue and Pottle Frères should be sold, he could get along. He might even live on this with Angela if he could sell an occasional picture for ten or fifteen dollars. But he was paying seven dollars a week for nothing save food and room, and scarcely managing to cling to the one hundred dollars which had remained of his original traveling fund after he had paid all his opening expenses here in New York. He was afraid to part with all his pictures in this way for fear he would be sorry for it after a while.

Work is hard to get under the most favorable conditions of health and youth and ambition, and the difficulties of obtaining it under unfavorable ones need not be insisted on. Imagine if you can the crowds of men, forty, fifty, one hundred strong, that wait at the door of every drygoods employment office, every street-car registration bureau, on the special days set aside for considering applications, at every factory, shop or office where an advertisement calling for a certain type of man or woman was inserted in the newspapers. On a few occasions that Eugene tried or attempted to try, he found himself preceded by peculiar groups of individuals who eyed him curiously as he approached, wondering, as he thought, whether a man of his type could be coming to apply for a job. They seemed radically different from himself to his mind, men with little education and a grim consciousness of the difficulties of life; young men, vapid looking men, shabby, stale, discouraged types--men who, like himself, looked as though they had seen something very much better, and men who looked as though they had seen things a great deal worse. The evidence which frightened him was the presence of a group of bright, healthy, eager looking boys of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and twenty-two who, like himself when he first went to Chicago years before, were everywhere he went. When he drew near he invariably found it impossible to indicate in any way that he was looking for anything. He couldn't. His courage failed him; he felt that he looked too superior; self-consciousness and shame overcame him.

He learned now that men rose as early as four o'clock in the morning to buy a newspaper and ran quickly to the address mentioned in order to get the place at the head of the line, thus getting the first consideration as an applicant. He learned that some other men, such as waiters, cooks, hotel employees and so on, frequently stayed up all night in order to buy a paper at two in the morning, winter or summer, rain or snow, heat or cold, and hurry to the promising addresses they might find. He learned that the crowds of applicants were apt to become surly or sarcastic or contentious as their individual chances were jeopardized by ever-increasing numbers. And all this was going on all the time, in winter or summer, heat or cold, rain or snow. Pretending interest as a spectator, he would sometimes stand and watch, hearing the ribald jests, the slurs cast upon life, fortune, individuals in particular and in general by those who were wearily or hopelessly waiting. It was a horrible picture to him in his present condition. It was like the grinding of the millstones, upper and nether. These were the chaff. He was a part of the chaff at present, or in danger of becoming so. Life was winnowing him out. He might go down, down, and there might never be an opportunity for him to rise any more.

Few, if any of us, understand thoroughly the nature of the unconscious stratification which takes place in life, the layers and types and classes into which it assorts itself and the barriers which these offer to a free migration of individuals from one class to another. We take on so naturally the material habiliments of our temperaments, necessities and opportunities. Priests, doctors, lawyers, merchants, appear to be born with their particular mental attitude and likewise the clerk, the ditch-digger, the janitor. They have their codes, their guilds and their class feelings. And while they may be spiritually closely related, they are physically far apart. Eugene, after hunting for a place for a month, knew a great deal more about this stratification than he had ever dreamed of knowing. He found that he was naturally barred by temperament from some things, from others by strength and weight, or rather the lack of them; from others, by inexperience; from others, by age; and so on. And those who were different from him in any or all of these respects were inclined to look at him askance. "You are not as we are," their eyes seemed to say; "why do you come here?"

One day he approached a gang of men who were waiting outside a car barn and sought to find out where the registration office was. He did not lay off his natural manner of superiority--could not, but asked a man near him if he knew. It had taken all his courage to do this.

"He wouldn't be after lookin' fer a place as a conductor now, would he?" he heard someone say within his hearing. For some reason this remark took all his courage away. He went up the wooden stairs to the little office where the application blanks were handed out, but did not even have the courage to apply for one. He pretended to be looking for someone and went out again. Later, before a drygoods superintendent's office, he heard a youth remark, "Look what wants to be a clerk." It froze him.

It is a question how long this aimless, nervous wandering would have continued if it had not been for the accidental recollection of an experience which a fellow artist once related to him of a writer who had found himself nervously depressed and who, by application to the president of a railroad, had secured as a courtesy to the profession which he represented so ably a position as an apprentice in a surveying corps, being given transportation to a distant section of the country and employed at a laborer's wages until he was well. Eugene now thought of this as quite an idea for himself. Why it had not occurred to him before he did not know. He could apply as an artist--his appearance would bear him out, and being able to speak from the vantage point of personal ability temporarily embarrassed by ill health, his chances of getting something would be so much better. It would not be the same as a position which he had secured for himself without fear or favor, but it would be a position, different from farming with Angela's father because it would command a salary.

Chapter XIX

This idea of appealing to the president of one of the great railroads that entered New York was not so difficult to execute. Eugene dressed himself very carefully the next morning, and going to the office of the company in Forty-second Street, consulted the list of officers posted in one of the halls, and finding the president to be on the third floor, ascended. He discovered, after compelling himself by sheer will power to enter, that this so-called office was a mere anteroom to a force of assistants serving the president, and that no one could see him except by appointment.

"You might see his secretary if he isn't busy," suggested the clerk who handled his card gingerly.

Eugene was for the moment undetermined what to do but decided that maybe the secretary could help him. He asked that his card might be taken to him and that no explanation be demanded of him except by the secretary in person. The latter came out after a while, an under secretary of perhaps twenty-eight years of age, short and stout. He was bland and apparently good natured.

"What is it I can do for you?" he asked.

Eugene had been formulating his request in his mind--some method of putting it briefly and simply.

"I came up to see Mr. Wilson," he said, "to see if he would not send me out as a day-laborer of some kind in connection with some department of the road. I am an artist by profession and I am suffering from neurasthenia. All the doctors I have consulted have recommended that I get a simple, manual position of some kind and work at it until I am well. I know of an instance in which Mr. Wilson, assisted, in this way, Mr. Savin the author, and I thought he might be willing to interest himself in my case."

At the sound of Henry Savin's name the under-secretary pricked up his ears. He had, fortunately, read one of his books, and this together with Eugene's knowledge of the case, his personal appearance, a certain ring of sincerity in what he was saying, caused him to be momentarily interested.

"There is no position in connection with any clerical work which the president could give you, I am sure," he replied. "All of these things are subject to a system of promotion. It might be that he could place you with one of the construction gangs in one of the departments under a foreman. I don't know. It's very hard work, though. He might consider your case." He smiled commiseratingly. "I question whether you're strong enough to do anything of that sort. It takes a pretty good man to wield a pick or a shovel."

"I don't think I had better worry about that now," replied Eugene in return, smiling wearily. "I'll take the work and see if it won't help me. I think I need it badly enough."

He was afraid the under-secretary would repent of his suggestion and refuse him entirely.

"Can you wait a little while?" asked the latter curiously. He had the idea that Eugene was someone of importance, for he had suggested as a parting argument that he could give a number of exceptional references.

"Certainly," said Eugene, and the secretary went his way, coming back in half an hour to hand him an enveloped letter.

"We have the idea," he said quite frankly waiving any suggestion of the president's influence in the matter and speaking for himself and the secretary-in-chief, with whom he had agreed that Eugene ought to be assisted, "that you had best apply to the engineering department. Mr. Hobsen, the chief-engineer, can arrange for you. This letter I think will get you what you want."

Eugene's heart bounded. He looked at the superscription and saw it addressed to Mr. Woodruff Hobsen, Chief Engineer, and putting it in his pocket without stopping to read it, but thanking the under-secretary profusely, went out. In the hall at a safe distance he stopped and opened it, finding that it spoke of him familiarly as "Mr. Eugene Witla, an artist, temporarily incapacitated by neurasthenia," and went on to say that he was "desirous of being appointed to some manual toil in some construction corps. The president's office recommends this request to your favor."

When he read this he knew it meant a position. It roused curious feelings as to the nature and value of stratification. As a laborer he was nothing: as an artist he could get a position as a laborer. After all, his ability as an artist was worth something. It obtained him this refuge. He hugged it joyously, and a few moments later handed it to an under-secretary in the Chief-Engineer's office. Without being seen by anyone in authority he was in return given a letter to Mr. William Haverford, "Engineer of Maintenance of Way," a pale, anæmic gentleman of perhaps forty years of age, who, as Eugene learned from him when he was eventually ushered into his presence a half hour later, was a captain of thirteen thousand men. The latter read the letter from the Engineer's office curiously. He was struck by Eugene's odd mission and his appearance as a man. Artists were queer. This was like one. Eugene reminded him of himself a little in his appearance.

"An artist," he said interestedly. "So you want to work as a day laborer?" He fixed Eugene with clear, coal-black eyes looking out of a long, pear-shaped face. Eugene noticed that his hands were long and thin and white and that his high, pale forehead was crowned by a mop of black hair.

"Neurasthenia. I've heard a great deal about that of late, but have never been troubled that way myself. I find that I derive considerable benefit when I am nervous from the use of a rubber exerciser. You have seen them perhaps?"

"Yes," Eugene replied, "I have. My case is much too grave for that, I think. I have traveled a great deal. But it doesn't seem to do me any good. I want work at something manual, I fancy--something at which I have to work. Exercise in a room would not help me. I think I need a complete change of environment. I will be much obliged if you will place me in some capacity."

"Well, this will very likely be it," suggested Mr. Haverford blandly. "Working as a day-laborer will certainly not strike you as play. To tell you the truth, I don't think you can stand it." He reached for a glass-framed map showing the various divisions of the railroad stretching from New England to Chicago and St. Louis, and observed quietly. "I could send you to a great many places, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Canada." His finger roved idly about. "I have thirteen thousand men in my department and they are scattered far and wide."

Eugene marveled. Such a position! Such authority! This pale, dark man sitting as an engineer at a switch board directing so large a machine.

"You have a large force," he said simply. Mr. Haverford smiled wanly.

"I think, if you will take my advice, you will not go in a construction corps right away. You can hardly do manual labor. There is a little carpenter shop which we have at Speonk, not very far outside the city, which I should think would answer your needs admirably. A little creek joins the Hudson there and it's out on a point of land, the shop is. It's summer now, and to put you in a broiling sun with a gang of Italians would be a little rough. Take my advice and go here. It will be hard enough. After you are broken in and you think you want a change I can easily arrange it for you. The money may not make so much difference to you but you may as well have it. It will be fifteen cents an hour. I will give you a letter to Mr. Litlebrown, our division engineer, and he will see that you are properly provided for."

Eugene bowed. Inwardly he smiled at the thought that the money would not be acceptable to him. Anything would be acceptable. Perhaps this would be best. It was near the city. The description of the little carpenter shop out on the neck of land appealed to him. It was, as he found when he looked at the map of the immediate division to which this belonged, almost within the city limits. He could live in New York--the upper portion of it anyhow.

Again there was a letter, this time to Mr. Henry C. Litlebrown, a tall, meditative, philosophic man whom Eugene found two days later in the division offices at Yonkers, who in turn wrote a letter to Mr. Joseph Brooks, Superintendent of Buildings, at Mott Haven, whose secretary finally gave Eugene a letter to Mr. Jack Stix, foreman carpenter at Speonk. This letter, when presented on a bright Friday afternoon, brought him the advice to come Monday at seven A. M., and so Eugene saw a career as a day laborer stretching very conspicuously before him.

The "little shop" in question was located in the most charming manner possible. If it had been set as a stage scene for his especial artistic benefit it could not have been better. On a point of land between the river and the main line of the railroad and a little creek, which was east of the railroad and which the latter crossed on a trestle to get back to the mainland again, it stood, a long, low two-storey structure, green as to its roof, red as to its body, full of windows which commanded picturesque views of passing yachts and steamers and little launches and row-boats anchored safely in the waters of the cove which the creek formed. There was a veritable song of labor which arose from this shop, for it was filled with planes, lathes and wood-turning instruments of various kinds, to say nothing of a great group of carpenters who could make desks, chairs, tables, in short, office furniture of various kinds, and who kept the company's needs of these fittings for its depots and offices well supplied. Each carpenter had a bench before a window on the second floor, and in the centre were the few necessary machines they were always using, small jig, cross cut, band and rip saws, a plane, and four or five lathes. On the ground floor was the engine room, the blacksmith's shop, the giant plane, the great jig and cross cut saws, and the store room and supply closets. Out in the yard were piles of lumber, with tracks in between, and twice every day a local freight called "The Dinky" stopped to switch in or take out loaded cars of lumber or finished furniture and supplies. Eugene, as he approached on the day he presented his letter, stopped to admire the neatness of the low board fence which surrounded it all, the beauty of the water, the droning sweetness of the saws.

"Why, the work here couldn't be very hard," he thought. He saw carpenters looking out of the upper windows, and a couple of men in brown overalls and jumpers unloading a car. They were carrying great three-by-six joists on their shoulders. Would he be asked to do anything like that. He scarcely thought so. Mr. Haverford had distinctly indicated in his letter to Mr. Litlebrown that he was to be built up by degrees. Carrying great joists did not appeal to him as the right way, but he presented his letter. He had previously looked about on the high ground which lay to the back of the river and which commanded this point of land, to see if he could find a place to board and lodge, but had seen nothing. The section was very exclusive, occupied by suburban New Yorkers of wealth, and they were not interested in the proposition which he had formulated in his own mind, namely his temporary reception somewhere as a paying guest. He had visions of a comfortable home somewhere now with nice people, for strangely enough the securing of this very minor position had impressed him as the beginning of the end of his bad luck. He was probably going to get well now, in the course of time. If he could only live with some nice family for the summer. In the fall if he were improving, and he thought he might be, Angela could come on. It might be that one of the dealers, Pottle Frères or Jacob Bergman or Henry LaRue would have sold a picture. One hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars joined to his salary would go a long way towards making their living moderately comfortable. Besides Angela's taste and economy, coupled with his own art judgment, could make any little place look respectable and attractive.

The problem of finding a room was not so easy. He followed the track south to a settlement which was visible from the shop windows a quarter of a mile away, and finding nothing which suited his taste as to location, returned to Speonk proper and followed the little creek inland half a mile. This adventure delighted him for it revealed a semi-circle of charming cottages ranged upon a hill slope which had for its footstool the little silvery-bosomed stream. Between the stream and the hill slope ran a semi-circular road and above that another road. Eugene could see at a glance that here was middle class prosperity, smooth lawns, bright awnings, flower pots of blue and yellow and green upon the porches, doorsteps and verandas. An auto standing in front of one house indicated a certain familiarity with the ways of the rich, and a summer road house, situated at the intersection of a road leading out from New York and the little stream where it was crossed by a bridge, indicated that the charms of this village were not unknown to those who came touring and seeking for pleasure. The road house itself was hung with awnings and one dining balcony out over the water. Eugene's desire was fixed on this village at once. He wanted to live here--anywhere in it. He walked about under the cool shade of the trees looking at first one door yard and then another wishing that he might introduce himself by letter and be received. They ought to welcome an artist of his ability and refinement and would, he thought, if they knew. His working in a furniture factory or for the railroad as a day laborer for his health simply added to his picturesque character. In his wanderings he finally came upon a Methodist church quaintly built of red brick and grey stone trimmings, and the sight of its tall, stained glass windows and square fortress-like bell-tower gave him an idea. Why not appeal to the minister? He could explain to him what he wanted, show him his credentials--for he had with him old letters from editors, publishers and art houses--and give him a clear understanding as to why he wanted to come here at all. His ill health and distinction ought to appeal to this man, and he would probably direct him to some one who would gladly have him. At five in the afternoon he knocked at the door and was received in the pastor's study--a large still room in which a few flies were buzzing in the shaded light. In a few moments the minister himself came in--a tall, grey-headed man, severely simple in his attire and with the easy air of one who is used to public address. He was about to ask what he could do for him when Eugene began with his explanation.

"You don't know me at all. I am a stranger in this section. I am an artist by profession and I am coming to Speonk on Monday to work in the railroad shop there for my health. I have been suffering from a nervous breakdown and am going to try day labor for awhile. I want to find a convenient, pleasant place to live, and I thought you might know of someone here, or near here, who might be willing to take me in for a little while. I can give excellent references. There doesn't appear to be anything in the immediate neighborhood of the shop."

"It is rather isolated there," replied the old minister, studying Eugene carefully. "I have often wondered how all those men like it, traveling so far. None of them live about here." He looked at Eugene solemnly, taking in his various characteristics. He was not badly impressed. He seemed to be a reserved, thoughtful, dignified young man and decidedly artistic. It struck him as very interesting that he should be trying so radical a thing as day labor for his nerves.

"Let me see," he said thoughtfully. He sat down in his chair near his table and put his hand over his eyes. "I don't think of anyone just at the moment. There are plenty of families who have room to take you if they would, but I question very much whether they would. In fact I'm rather sure they wouldn't. Let me see now."

He thought again.

Eugene studied his big aquiline nose, his shaggy grey eyebrows, his thick, crisp, grey hair. Already his mind was sketching him, the desk, the dim walls, the whole atmosphere of the room.

"No, no," he said slowly. "I don't think of anyone. There is one family--Mrs. Hibberdell. She lives in the--let me see--first, second, third, tenth house above here. She has one nephew with her at present, a young man of about your age, and I don't think anyone else. I don't know that she would consider taking you in, but she might. Her house is quite large. She did have her daughter with her at one time, but I'm not sure that she's there now. I think not."

He talked as though he were reporting his own thoughts to himself audibly.

Eugene pricked up his ears at the mention of a daughter. During all the time he had been out of New York he had not, with the exception of Frieda, had a single opportunity to talk intimately with any girl. Angela had been with him all the time. Here in New York since he had been back he had been living under such distressing conditions that he had not thought of either youth or love. He had no business to be thinking of it now, but this summer air, this tree-shaded village, the fact that he had a position, small as it was, on which he could depend and which would no doubt benefit him mentally, and that he was somehow feeling better about himself because he was going to work, made him feel that he might look more interestedly on life again. He was not going to die; he was going to get well. Finding this position proved it. And he might go to the house now and find some charming girl who would like him very much. Angela was away. He was alone. He had again the freedom of his youth. If he were only well and working!

He thanked the old minister very politely and went his way, recognizing the house by certain details given him by the minister, a double balconied veranda, some red rockers, two yellow jardinières at the doorstep, a greyish white picket fence and gate. He walked up smartly and rang the bell. A very intelligent woman of perhaps fifty-five or sixty with bright grey hair and clear light blue eyes was coming out with a book in her hand. Eugene stated his case. She listened with keen interest, looking him over the while. His appearance took her fancy, for she was of a strong intellectual and literary turn of mind.

"I wouldn't ordinarily consider anything of the kind, but I am alone here with my nephew and the house could easily accommodate a dozen. I don't want to do anything which will irritate him, but if you will come back in the morning I will let you know. It would not disturb me to have you about. Do you happen to know of an artist by the name of Deesa?"

"I know him well," replied Eugene. "He's an old friend of mine."

"He is a friend of my daughter's, I think. Have you enquired anywhere else here in the village?"

"No," said Eugene.

"That is just as well," she replied.

He took the hint.

So there was no daughter here. Well, what matter? The view was beautiful. Of an evening he could sit out here in one of the rocking chairs and look at the water. The evening sun, already low in the west was burnishing it a bright gold. The outline of the hill on the other side was dignified and peaceful. He could sleep and work as a day laborer and take life easy for a while. He could get well now and this was the way to do it. Day laborer! How fine, how original, how interesting. He felt somewhat like a knight-errant reconnoitring a new and very strange world.

Chapter XX

The matter of securing admission to this house was quickly settled. The nephew, a genial, intelligent man of thirty-four, as Eugene discovered later, had no objection. It appeared to Eugene that in some way he contributed to the support of this house, though Mrs. Hibberdell obviously had some money of her own. A charmingly furnished room on the second floor adjoining one of the several baths was assigned him, and he was at once admitted to the freedom of the house. There were books, a piano (but no one to play it), a hammock, a maid-of-all-work, and an atmosphere of content and peace. Mrs. Hibberdell, a widow, presumably of some years of widowhood, was of that experience and judgment in life which gave her intellectual poise. She was not particularly inquisitive about anything in connection with him, and so far as he could see from surface indications was refined, silent, conservative. She could jest, and did, in a subtle understanding way. He told her quite frankly at the time he applied that he was married, that his wife was in the West and that he expected her to return after his health was somewhat improved. She talked with him about art and books and life in general. Music appeared to be to her a thing apart. She did not care much for it. The nephew, Davis Simpson, was neither literary nor artistic, and apparently cared little for music. He was a buyer for one of the larger department stores, a slight, dapper, rather dandified type of man, with a lean, not thin but tight-muscled face, and a short black mustache, and he appeared to be interested only in the humors of character, trade, baseball and methods of entertaining himself. The things that pleased Eugene about him were that he was clean, simple, direct, good-natured and courteous. He had apparently no desire to infringe on anybody's privacy, but was fond of stirring up light discussions and interpolating witty remarks. He liked also to grow flowers and to fish. The care of a border of flowers which glorified a short gravel path in the back yard received his especial attention evenings and mornings.

It was a great pleasure for Eugene to come into this atmosphere after the storm which had been assailing him for the past three years, and particularly for the past ninety days. He was only asked to pay eight dollars a week by Mrs. Hibberdell, though he realized that what he was obtaining in home atmosphere here was not ordinarily purchasable at any price in the public market. The maid saw to it that a little bouquet of flowers was put on his dressing table daily. He was given fresh towels and linen in ample quantities. The bath was his own. He could sit out on the porch of an evening and look at the water uninterrupted or he could stay in the library and read. Breakfast and dinner were invariably delightful occasions, for though he rose at five-forty-five in order to have his bath, breakfast, and be able to walk to the factory and reach it by seven, Mrs. Hibberdell was invariably up, as it was her habit to rise thus early, had been so for years. She liked it. Eugene in his weary mood could scarcely understand this. Davis came to the table some few moments before he would be leaving. He invariably had some cheery remark to offer, for he was never sullen or gloomy. His affairs, whatever they were, did not appear to oppress him. Mrs. Hibberdell would talk to Eugene genially about his work, this small, social centre of which they were a part and which was called Riverwood, the current movements in politics, religion, science and so forth. There were references sometimes to her one daughter, who was married and living in New York. It appeared that she occasionally visited her mother here. Eugene was delighted to think he had been so fortunate as to find this place. He hoped to make himself so agreeable that there would be no question as to his welcome, and he was not disappointed.

Between themselves Mrs. Hibberdell and Davis discussed him, agreeing that he was entirely charming, a good fellow, and well worth having about. At the factory where Eugene worked and where the conditions were radically different, he made for himself an atmosphere which was almost entirely agreeable to him, though he quarreled at times with specific details. On the first morning, for instance, he was put to work with two men, heavy clods of souls he thought at first, familiarly known about the yard as John and Bill. These two, to his artistic eye, appeared machines, more mechanical than humanly self-directive. They were of medium height, not more than five feet, nine inches tall and weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds each. One had a round, poorly modeled face very much the shape of an egg, to which was attached a heavy yellowish mustache. He had a glass eye, complicated in addition by a pair of spectacles which were fastened over his large, protruding red ears with steel hooks. He wore a battered brown hat, now a limp shapeless mass. His name was Bill Jeffords and he responded sometimes to the sobriquet of "One Eye."

The other man was John alias "Jack" Duncan, an individual of the same height and build with but slightly more modeling to his face and with little if any greater intelligence. He looked somewhat the shrewder--Eugene fancied there might be lurking in him somewhere a spark of humor, but he was mistaken. Unquestionably in Jeffords there was none. Jack Stix, the foreman-carpenter, a tall, angular, ambling man with red hair, a red mustache, shifty, uncertain blue eyes and noticeably big hands and feet, had suggested to Eugene that he work with these men for a little while. It was his idea to "try him out," as he told one of the associate foremen who was in charge of a gang of Italians working in the yard for the morning, and he was quite equal to doing it. He thought Eugene had no business here and might possibly be scared off by a little rough work.

"He's up here for his health," he told him. "I don't know where he comes from. Mr. Brooks sent him up here with orders to put him on. I want to see how he takes to real work for awhile."

"Look out you don't hurt him," suggested the other. "He don't look very strong to me."

"He's strong enough to carry a few spiles, I guess. If Jimmy can carry 'em, he can. I don't intend to keep him at it long."

Eugene knew nothing of this, but when he was told to "come along, new man" and shown a pile of round, rough ash trunk cutting six inches in diameter and eight feet long, his courage failed him. He was suffered to carry some of these to the second floor, how many he did not know.

"Take 'em to Thompson up there in the corner," said Jeffords dully.

Eugene grasped one uncertainly in the middle with his thin, artistic hands. He did not know that there were ways of handling lumber just as there were ways of handling a brush. He tried to lift it but could not. The rough bark scratched his fingers cruelly.

"Yah gotta learn somepin about that before yuh begin, I guess," said Jack Duncan, who had been standing by eyeing him narrowly.

Jeffords had gone about some other work.

"I suppose I don't know very much about it," replied Eugene shamefacedly stopping and waiting for further instructions.

"Lemme show you a trick," said his associate. "There's tricks in all these here trades. Take it by the end this-a-way, and push it along until you can stand it up. Stoop down now and put your shoulder right next the middle. Gotta pad under your shirt? You oughtta have one. Now put your right arm out ahead o'yuh, on the spile. Now you're all right."

Eugene straightened up and the rough post balanced itself evenly but crushingly on his shoulder. It appeared to grind his muscles and his back and legs ached instantly. He started bravely forward straining to appear at ease but within fifty feet he was suffering agony. He walked the length of the shop, however, up the stairs and back again to the window where Thompson was, his forehead bursting with perspiration and his ears red with blood. He fairly staggered as he neared the machine and dropped the post heavily.

"Look what you're doin'," said a voice behind him. It was Thompson, the lathe worker. "Can't you put that down easy?"

"No, I can't," replied Eugene angrily, his face tinged with a faint blush from his extreme exertion. He was astonished and enraged to think they should put him to doing work like this, especially since Mr. Haverford had told him it would be easy. He suspected at once a plot to drive him away. He would have added "these are too damn heavy for me," but he restrained himself. He went down stairs wondering how he was to get up the others. He fingered about the pole gingerly hoping that the time taken this way would ease his pain and give him strength for the next one. Finally he picked up another and staggered painfully to the loft again. The foreman had his eye on him but said nothing. It amused him a little to think Eugene was having such a hard time. It wouldn't hurt him for a change, would do him good. "When he gets four carried up let him go," he said to Thompson, however, feeling that he had best lighten the situation a little. The latter watched Eugene out of the tail of his eye noting the grimaces he made and the strain he was undergoing, but he merely smiled. When four had been dropped on the floor he said: "That'll do for the present," and Eugene, heaving a groan of relief, went angrily away. In his nervous, fantastic, imaginative and apprehensive frame of mind, he imagined he had been injured for life. He feared he had strained a muscle or broken a blood vessel somewhere.

"Good heavens, I can't stand anything like this," he thought. "If the work is going to be this hard I'll have to quit. I wonder what they mean by treating me this way. I didn't come here to do this."

Visions of days and weeks of back-breaking toil stretched before him. It would never do. He couldn't stand it. He saw his old search for work coming back, and this frightened him in another direction. "I mustn't give up so easily," he counseled himself in spite of his distress. "I have to stick this out a little while anyhow." It seemed in this first trying hour as though he were between the devil and the deep sea. He went slowly down into the yard to find Jeffords and Duncan. They were working at a car, one inside receiving lumber to be piled, the other bringing it to him.

"Get down, Bill," said John, who was on the ground looking up at his partner indifferently. "You get up there, new man. What's your name?"

"Witla," said Eugene.

"Well, my name's Duncan. We'll bring this stuff to you and you pile it."

It was more heavy lumber, as Eugene apprehensively observed, quarter cut joists for some building--"four by fours" they called them--but after he was shown the art of handling them they were not unmanageable. There were methods of sliding and balancing them which relieved him of a great quantity of labor. Eugene had not thought to provide himself with gloves though, and his hands were being cruelly torn. He stopped once to pick a splinter out of his thumb and Jeffords, who was coming up, asked, "Ain't cha got no gloves?"

"No," said Eugene, "I didn't think to get any."

"Your hands'll get pretty well bunged up, I'm afraid. Maybe Joseph'll let you have his for to-day, you might go in and ask him."

"Where's Joseph?" asked Eugene.

"He's inside there. He's taking from the plane."

Eugene did not understand this quite. He knew what a plane was, had been listening to it sing mightily all the morning, the shavings flying as it smoothed the boards, but taking?

"Where's Joseph?" he asked of the plane driver.

He nodded his head to a tall hump-shouldered boy of perhaps twenty-two. He was a big, simple, innocent looking fellow. His face was long and narrow, his mouth wide, his eyes a watery blue, his hair a shock of brown, loose and wavy, with a good sprinkling of sawdust in it. About his waist was a big piece of hemp bagging tied by a grass rope. He wore an old faded wool cap with a long visor in order to shield his eyes from the flying chips and dust, and when Eugene came in one hand was lifted protectingly to shield his eyes. Eugene approached him deprecatingly.

"One of the men out in the yard said that you might have a pair of gloves you would lend me for to-day. I'm piling lumber and it's tearing my hands. I forgot to get a pair."

"Sure," said Joseph genially waving his hand to the driver to stop. "They're over here in my locker. I know what that is. I been there. When I come here they rubbed it into me jist as they're doin' to you. Doncher mind. You'll come out all right. Up here for your health, are you? It ain't always like that. Somedays there ain't most nothin' to do here. Then somedays ag'in there's a whole lot. Well, it's good healthy work, I can say that. I ain't most never sick. Nice fresh air we git here and all that."

He rambled on, fumbling under his bagging apron for his keys, unlocking his locker and producing a great pair of old yellow lumber gloves. He gave them to Eugene cheerfully and the latter thanked him. He liked Eugene at once and Eugene liked him. "A nice fellow that," he said, as he went back to his car. "Think of how genially he gave me these. Lovely! If only all men were as genial and kindly disposed as this boy, how nice the world would be." He put on the gloves and found his work instantly easier for he could grasp the joists firmly and without pain. He worked on until noon when the whistle blew and he ate a dreary lunch sitting by himself on one side, pondering. After one he was called to carry shavings, one basket after another back through the blacksmith shop to the engine room in the rear where was a big shaving bin. By four o'clock he had seen almost all the characters he was going to associate with for the time that he stayed there. Harry Fornes, the blacksmith or "the village smith," as Eugene came to call him later on, Jimmy Sudds, the blacksmith's helper or "maid-of-all-work" as he promptly named him; John Peters, the engineer, Malachi Dempsey, the driver of the great plane, Joseph Mews and, in addition, carpenters, tin-smiths, plumbers, painters, and those few exceptional cabinet makers who passed through the lower floor now and then, men who were about the place from time to time and away from it at others all of whom took note of Eugene at first as a curiosity.

Eugene was himself intensely interested in the men. Harry Fornes and Jimmy Sudds attracted him especially. The former was an undersized American of distant Irish extraction who was so broad chested, swollen armed, square-jawed and generally self-reliant and forceful as to seem a minor Titan. He was remarkably industrious, turning out a great deal of work and beating a piece of iron with a resounding lick which could be heard all about the hills and hollows outside. Jimmy Sudds, his assistant, was like his master equally undersized, dirty, gnarled, twisted, his teeth showing like a row of yellow snags, his ears standing out like small fans, his eye askew, but nevertheless with so genial a look in his face as to disarm criticism at once. Every body liked Jimmy Sudds because he was honest, single-minded and free of malicious intent. His coat was three and his trousers two times too large for him, and his shoes were obviously bought at a second-hand store, but he had the vast merit of being a picture. Eugene was fascinated with him. He learned shortly that Jimmy Sudds truly believed that buffaloes were to be shot around Buffalo, New York.

John Peters, the engineer, was another character who fixed his attention. John was almost helplessly fat and was known for this reason as "Big John." He was a veritable whale of a man. Six feet tall, weighing over three hundred pounds and standing these summer days in his hot engine room, his shirt off, his suspenders down, his great welts of fat showing through his thin cotton undershirt, he looked as though he might be suffering, but he was not. John, as Eugene soon found out, did not take life emotionally. He stood mostly in his engine room door when the shade was there staring out on the glistening water of the river, occasionally wishing that he didn't need to work but could lie and sleep indefinitely instead.

"Wouldja think them fellers would feel purty good sittin' out there on the poop deck of them there yachts smokin' their perfectos?" he once asked Eugene, apropos of the magnificent private vessels that passed up and down the river.

"I certainly would," laughed Eugene.

"Aw! Haw! That's the life fer yer uncle Dudley. I could do that there with any of 'em. Aw! Haw!"

Eugene laughed joyously.

"Yes, that's the life," he said. "We all could stand our share."

Malachi Dempsey, the driver of the great plane, was dull, tight-mouthed, silent, more from lack of ideas than anything else, though oyster-wise he had learned to recede from all manner of harm by closing his shell tightly. He knew no way to avoid earthly harm save by being preternaturally silent, and Eugene saw this quickly. He used to stare at him for long periods at a time, marvelling at the curiosity his attitude presented. Eugene himself, though, was a curiosity to the others, even more so than they to him. He did not look like a workingman and could not be made to do so. His spirit was too high, his eye too flashing and incisive. He smiled at himself carrying basketful after basketful of shavings from the planing room, where it rained shavings and from which, because of the lack of a shaving blower, they had to be removed back to the hot engine room where Big John presided. The latter took a great fancy to Eugene, but something after the fashion of a dog for a master. He did not have a single idea above his engine, his garden at home, his wife, his children and his pipe. These and sleep--lots of it--were his joys, his recreations, the totality of his world.

Chapter XXI

There were many days now, three months all told, in which Eugene obtained insight into the workaday world such as he had not previously had. It is true he had worked before in somewhat this fashion, but his Chicago experience was without the broad philosophic insight which had come to him since. Formerly the hierarchies of power in the universe and on earth were inexplicable to him--all out of order; but here, where he saw by degrees ignorant, almost animal intelligence, being directed by greater, shrewder, and at times it seemed to him possibly malicious intelligences--he was not quite sure about that--who were so strong that the weaker ones must obey them, he began to imagine that in a rough way life might possibly be ordered to the best advantage even under this system. It was true that men quarreled here with each other as to who should be allowed to lead. There was here as elsewhere great seeking for the privileges and honors of direction and leadership in such petty things as the proper piling of lumber, the planing of boards, the making of desks and chairs, and men were grimly jealous of their talents and abilities in these respects, but in the main it was the jealousy that makes for ordered, intelligent control. All were striving to do the work of intelligence, not of unintelligence. Their pride, however ignorant it might be, was in the superior, not the inferior. They might complain of their work, snarl at each other, snarl at their bosses, but after all it was because they were not able or permitted to do the higher work and carry out the orders of the higher mind. All were striving to do something in a better way, a superior way, and to obtain the honors and emoluments that come from doing anything in a superior way. If they were not rewarded according to their estimate of their work there was wrath and opposition and complaint and self-pity, but the work of the superior intelligence was the thing which each in his blind, self-seeking way was apparently trying to do.

Because he was not so far out of his troubles that he could be forgetful of them, and because he was not at all certain that his talent to paint was ever coming back to him, he was not as cheerful at times as he might have been; but he managed to conceal it pretty well. This one thought with its attendant ills of probable poverty and obscurity were terrible to him. Time was slipping away and youth. But when he was not thinking of this he was cheerful enough. Besides he had the ability to simulate cheerfulness even when he did not feel it. Because he did not permanently belong to this world of day labor and because his position which had been given him as a favor was moderately secure, he felt superior to everything about him. He did not wish to show this feeling in any way--was very anxious as a matter of fact to conceal it, but his sense of superiority and ultimate indifference to all these petty details was an abiding thought with him. He went to and fro carrying a basket of shavings, jesting with "the village smith," making friends with "Big John," the engineer, with Joseph, Malachi Dempsey, little Jimmy Sudds, in fact anyone and everyone who came near him who would be friends. He took a pencil one day at the noon hour and made a sketch of Harry Fornes, the blacksmith, his arm upraised at the anvil, his helper, Jimmy Sudds, standing behind him, the fire glowing in the forge. Fornes, who was standing beside him, looking over his shoulder, could scarcely believe his eyes.

"Wotcha doin'?" he asked Eugene curiously, looking over his shoulder, for it was at the blacksmith's table, in the sun of his window that he was sitting, looking out at the water. Eugene had bought a lunch box and was carrying with him daily a delectable lunch put up under Mrs. Hibberdell's direction. He had eaten his noonday meal and was idling, thinking over the beauty of the scene, his peculiar position, the curiosities of this shop--anything and everything that came into his head.

"Wait a minute," he said genially, for he and the smith were already as thick as thieves.

The latter gazed interestedly and finally exclaimed:

"W'y that's me, ain't it?"

"Yep!" said Eugene.

"Wat are you goin' to do with that wen you get through with it?" asked the latter avariciously.

"I'm going to give it to you, of course."

"Say, I'm much obliged fer that," replied the smith delightedly. "Gee, the wife'll be tickled to see that. You're a artist, ain't cher? I hearda them fellers. I never saw one. Gee, that's good, that looks just like me, don't it?"

"Something," said Eugene quietly, still working.

The helper came in.

"Watcha' doin'?" he asked.

"He's drawin' a pitcher, ya rube, watchye suppose he's doin'," informed the blacksmith authoritatively. "Don't git too close. He's gotta have room."

"Aw, whose crowdin'?" asked the helper irritably. He realized at once that his superior was trying to shove him in the background, this being a momentous occasion. He did not propose that any such thing should happen. The blacksmith glared at him irritably but the progress of the art work was too exciting to permit of any immediate opportunities for hostilities, so Jimmy was allowed to crowd close and see.

"Ho, ho! that's you, ain't it," he asked the smith curiously, indicating with a grimy thumb the exact position of that dignitary on the drawing.

"Don't," said the latter, loftily--"sure! He's gotta have room."

"An' there's me. Ho! Ho! Gee, I look swell, don't I? Ho! ho!"

The little helper's tushes were showing joyously--a smile that extended far about either side of his face. He was entirely unconscious of the rebuke administered by the smith.

"If you're perfectly good, Jimmy," observed Eugene cheerfully still working, "I may make a sketch of you, sometime!"

"Na! Will you? Go on! Say, hully chee. Dat'll be fine, won't it? Say, ho! ho! De folks at home won't know me. I'd like to have a ting like dat, say!"

Eugene smiled. The smith was regretful. This dividing of honors was not quite all that it might be. Still his own picture was delightful. It looked exactly like the shop. Eugene worked until the whistle blew and the belts began to slap and the wheels to whirr. Then he got up.

"There you are, Fornes," he said. "Like it?"

"Gee, it's swell," said the latter and carried it to the locker. He took it out after a bit though and hung it up over his bench on the wall opposite his forge, for he wanted everyone to see. It was one of the most significant events in his life. This sketch was the subject immediately of a perfect storm of discussion. Eugene was an artist--could draw pictures--that was a revelation in itself. Then this picture was so life-like. It looked like Fornes and Sudds and the shop. Everyone was interested. Everyone jealous. They could not understand how God had favored the smith in this manner. Why hadn't Eugene sketched them before he did him? Why didn't he immediately offer to sketch them now? Big John came first, tipped off and piloted by Jimmy Sudds.

"Say!" he said his big round eyes popping with surprise. "There's some class to that, what? That looks like you, Fornes. Jinged if it don't! An' Suddsy! Bless me if there ain't Suddsy. Say, there you are, kid, natural as life, damned if you ain't. That's fine. You oughta keep that, smith."

"I intend to," said the latter proudly.

Big John went back to his engine room regretfully. Next came Joseph Mews, his shoulders humped, his head bobbing like a duck, for he had this habit of nodding when he walked.

"Say, wot d'ye thinka that?" he asked. "Ain't that fine. He kin drawr jist as good as they do in them there magazines. I see them there things in them, now an' then. Ain't that swell? Lookit Suddsy back in there. Eh, Suddsy, you're in right, all right. I wisht he'd make a picture o' us out there. We're just as good as you people. Wats the matter with us, eh?"

"Oh, he ain't goin' to be bothered makin' pitchers of you mokes," replied the smith jestingly. "He only draws real ones. You want to remember that, Mews. He's gotta have good people to make sketches of. None o' your half-class plane-drivers and jig-saw operators."

"Is that so? Is that so?" replied Joseph contemptuously, his love of humor spurred by the slight cast upon his ability. "Well if he was lookin' for real ones he made a mistake wen he come here. They're all up front. You don't want to forget that, smith. They don't live in no blacksmith's shop as I ever seen it."

"Cut it out! Cut it out!" called little Sudds from a position of vantage near the door. "Here comes the boss," and Joseph immediately pretended to be going to the engine room for a drink. The smith blew up his fire as though it were necessary to heat the iron he had laid in the coals. Jack Stix came ambling by.

"Who did that?" he asked, stopping after a single general, glance and looking at the sketch on the wall.

"Mr. Witla, the new man," replied the smith, reverently.

"Say, that's pretty good, ain't it?" the foreman replied pleasantly. "He did that well. He must be an artist."

"I think he is," replied the smith, cautiously. He was always eager to curry favor with the boss. He came near to his side and looked over his arm. "He done it here today at noon in about a half an hour."

"Say, that's pretty good now," and the foreman went on his way, thinking.

If Eugene could do that, why was he here? It must be his run down condition, sure enough. And he must be the friend of someone high in authority. He had better be civil. Hitherto he had stood in suspicious awe of Eugene, not knowing what to make of him. He could not figure out just why he was here--a spy possibly. Now he thought that he might be mistaken.

"Don't let him work too hard," he told Bill and John. "He ain't any too strong yet. He came up here for his health."

He was obeyed in this respect, for there was no gain-saying the wishes of a foreman, but this open plea for consideration was the one thing if any which could have weakened Eugene's popularity. The men did not like the foreman. He would have been stronger at any time in the affections of the men if the foreman had been less markedly considerate or against him entirely.

******

The days which followed were restful enough though hard, for Eugene found that the constant whirl of work which went on here, and of which he had naturally to do his share, was beneficial to him. For the first time in several years he slept soundly. He would don his suit of blue overalls and jumper in the morning a few minutes before the whistle blew at seven and from then on until noon, and from one o'clock until six he would carry shavings, pile lumber for one or several of the men in the yard, load or unload cars, help Big John stoke his boilers, or carry chips and shavings from the second floor. He wore an old hat which he had found in a closet at Mrs. Hibberdell's, a faded, crumpled memory of a soft tan-colored sombrero which he punched jauntily to a peak and wore over one ear. He had big new yellow gloves which he kept on his hands all day, which were creased and frayed, but plenty good enough for this shop and yard. He learned to handle lumber nicely, to pile with skill, to "take" for Malachi Dempsey from the plane, to drive the jig-saw, and other curious bits. He was tireless in his energy because he was weary of thinking and hoped by sheer activity to beat down and overcome his notion of artistic inability--to forget that he believed that he couldn't paint and so be able to paint again. He had surprised himself in these sketches he had made, for his first feeling under the old régime would have been that he could not make them. Here, because the men were so eager and he was so much applauded, he found it rather easy and, strange to say, he thought they were good.

At the home of Mrs. Hibberdell at night he would lay off all his working clothes before dinner, take a cold bath and don a new brown suit, which because of the assurance of this position he had bought for eighteen dollars, ready made. He found it hard to get off to buy anything, for his pay ceased (fifteen cents an hour) the moment he left the shop. He had put his pictures in storage in New York and could not get off (or at least did not want to take the time off) to go and sell any. He found that he could leave without question if he wanted no pay, but if he wanted pay and had a good reason he could sometimes be excused. His appearance about the house and yard after six-thirty in the evening and on Sundays was attractive enough. He looked delicate, refined, conservative, and, when not talking to someone, rather wistful. He was lonely and restless, for he felt terribly out of it. This house was lonely. As at Alexandria, before he met Frieda, he was wishing there were some girls about. He wondered where Frieda was, what she was doing, whether she had married. He hoped not. If life had only given him a girl like Frieda--so young, so beautiful! He would sit and gaze at the water after dark in the moonlight, for this was his one consolation--the beauty of nature--thinking. How lovely it all was! How lovely life was,--this village, the summer trees, the shop where he worked, the water, Joseph, little Jimmy, Big John, the stars. If he could paint again, if he could be in love again. In love! In love! Was there any other sensation in the world like that of being in love?

A spring evening, say, some soft sweet odours blowing as they were tonight, the dark trees bending down, or the twilight angelically silver, hyacinth, orange, some soothing murmurs of the wind; some faint chirping of the tree-toads or frogs and then your girl. Dear God! Could anything be finer than that? Was anything else in life worth while? Your girl, her soft young arms about your neck, her lips to yours in pure love, her eyes speaking like twin pools of color here in the night.

So had it been only a little while ago with Frieda. So had it been once with Angela. So long ago with Stella! Dear, sweet Stella, how nice she was. And now here he was sick and lonely and married and Angela would be coming back soon--and--He would get up frequently to shut out these thoughts, and either read or walk or go to bed. But he was lonely, almost irritably so. There was only one true place of comfort for Eugene anywhere and that was in the spring time in love.

Chapter XXII

It was while he was mooning along in this mood, working, dreaming, wishing, that there came, one day to her mother's house at Riverwood, Carlotta Wilson--Mrs. Norman Wilson, in the world in which she moved--a tall brunette of thirty-two, handsome after the English fashion, shapely, graceful, with a knowledge of the world which was not only compounded of natural intelligence and a sense of humor, but experiences fortunate and unfortunate which had shown her both the showy and the seamy sides of life. To begin with she was the wife of a gambler--a professional gambler--of that peculiar order which essays the rôle of a gentleman, looks the part, and fleeces unmercifully the unwary partakers of their companionship. Carlotta Hibberdell, living with her mother at that time in Springfield, Massachusetts, had met him at a local series of races, which she was attending with her father and mother, where Wilson happened to be accidentally upon another mission. Her father, a real estate dealer, and fairly successful at one time, was very much interested in racing horses, and owned several of worthy records though of no great fame. Norman Wilson had posed as a real estate speculator himself, and had handled several fairly successful deals in land, but his principal skill and reliance was in gambling. He was familiar with all the gambling opportunities of the city, knew a large circle of those who liked to gamble, men and women in New York and elsewhere, and his luck or skill at times was phenomenal. At other times it was very bad. There were periods when he could afford to live in the most expensive apartment houses, dine at the best restaurants, visit the most expensive country pleasure resorts and otherwise disport himself in the companionship of friends. At other times, because of bad luck, he could not afford any of these things and though he held to his estate grimly had to borrow money to do it. He was somewhat of a fatalist in his interpretation of affairs and would hang on with the faith that his luck would turn. It did turn invariably, of course, for when difficulties began to swarm thick and fast he would think vigorously and would usually evolve some idea which served to help him out. His plan was always to spin a web like a spider and await the blundering flight of some unwary fly.

At the time she married him Carlotta Hibberdell did not know of the peculiar tendencies and subtle obsession of her ardent lover. Like all men of his type he was suave, persuasive, passionate, eager. There was a certain cat-like magnetism about him also which fascinated her. She could not understand him at that time and she never did afterwards. The license which he subsequently manifested not only with her but with others astonished and disgusted her. She found him selfish, domineering, outside his own particular field shallow, not at all artistic, emotional, or poetic. He was inclined to insist on the last touch of material refinement in surroundings (so far as he understood them) when he had money, but she found to her regret that he did not understand them. In his manner with her and everyone else he was top-lofty, superior, condescending. His stilted language at times enraged and at other times amused her, and when her original passion passed and she began to see through his pretence to his motives and actions she became indifferent and then weary. She was too big a woman mentally to quarrel with him much. She was too indifferent to life in its totality to really care. Her one passion was for an ideal lover of some type, and having been thoroughly mistaken in him she looked abroad wondering whether there were any ideal men.

Various individuals came to their apartments. There were gamblers, blasé society men, mining experts, speculators, sometimes with, sometimes without a wife. From these and from her husband and her own observation she learned of all sorts of scoundrels, mes-alliances, [sic] queer manifestations of incompatibility of temper, queer freaks of sex desire. Because she was good looking, graceful, easy in her manners, there were no end of proposals, overtures, hints and luring innuendos cast in her direction. She had long been accustomed to them. Because her husband deserted her openly for other women and confessed it in a blasé way she saw no valid reason for keeping herself from other men. She chose her lovers guardedly and with subtle taste, beginning after mature deliberation with one who pleased her greatly. She was seeking refinement, emotion, understanding coupled with some ability and they were not so easy to find. The long record of her liaisons is not for this story, but their impress on her character was important.

She was indifferent in her manner at most times and to most people. A good jest or story drew from her a hearty laugh. She was not interested in books except those of a very exceptional character--the realistic school--and these she thought ought not to be permitted except to private subscribers, nevertheless she cared for no others. Art was fascinating--really great art. She loved the pictures of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Correggio, Titian. And with less discrimination, and more from a sensual point of view the nudes of Cabanel, Bouguereau and Gerome. To her there was reality in the works of these men, lightened by great imagination. Mostly people interested her, the vagaries of their minds, the idiosyncrasies of their characters, their lies, their subterfuges, their pretences, their fears. She knew that she was a dangerous woman and went softly, like a cat, wearing a half-smile not unlike that seen on the lips of Monna Lisa, but she did not worry about herself. She had too much courage. At the same time she was tolerant, generous to a fault, charitable. When someone suggested that she overdid the tolerance, she replied, "Why shouldn't I? I live in such a magnificent glass house."

The reason for her visit home on this occasion was that her husband had practically deserted her for the time being. He was in Chicago for some reason principally because the atmosphere in New York was getting too hot for him, as she suspected. Because she hated Chicago and was weary of his company she refused to go with him. He was furious for he suspected her of liaisons, but he could not help himself. She was indifferent. Besides she had other resources than those he represented, or could get them.

A certain wealthy Jew had been importuning her for years to get a divorce in order that he might marry her. His car and his resources were at her command but she condescended only the vaguest courtesies. It was within the ordinary possibilities of the day for him to call her up and ask if he could not come with his car. He had three. She waved most of this aside indifferently. "What's the use?" was her pet inquiry. Her husband was not without his car at times. She had means to drive when she pleased, dress as she liked, and was invited to many interesting outings. Her mother knew well of her peculiar attitude, her marital troubles, her quarrels and her tendency to flirt. She did her best to keep her in check, for she wanted to retain for her the privilege of obtaining a divorce and marrying again, the next time successfully. Norman Wilson, however, would not readily give her a legal separation even though the preponderance of evidence was against him and, if she compromised herself, there would be no hope. She half suspected that her daughter might already have compromised herself, but she could not be sure. Carlotta was too subtle. Norman made open charges in their family quarrels, but they were based largely on jealousy. He did not know for sure.

Carlotta Wilson had heard of Eugene. She did not know of him by reputation, but her mother's guarded remarks in regard to him and his presence, the fact that he was an artist, that he was sick and working as a laborer for his health aroused her interest. She had intended to spend the period of her husband's absence at Narragansett with some friends, but before doing so she decided to come home for a few days just to see for herself. Instinctively her mother suspected curiosity on her part in regard to Eugene. She threw out the remark that he might not stay long, in the hope that her daughter might lose interest. His wife was coming back. Carlotta discerned this opposition--this desire to keep her away. She decided that she would come.

"I don't know that I want to go to Narragansett just now," she told her mother. "I'm tired. Norman has just worn my nerves to a frazzle. I think I'll come up home for a week or so."

"All right," said her mother, "but do be careful how you act now. This Mr. Witla appears to be a very nice man and he's happily married. Don't you go casting any looks in his direction. If you do I won't let him stay here at all."

"Oh, how you talk," replied Carlotta irritably. "Do give me a little credit for something. I'm not going up there to see him. I'm tired, I tell you. If you don't want me to come I won't."

"It isn't that, I do want you. But you know how you are. How do you ever expect to get free if you don't conduct yourself circumspectly? You know that you--"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, I hope you're not going to start that old argument again," exclaimed Carlotta defensively. "What's the use beginning on that? We've been all over it a thousand times. I can't go anywhere or do anything but what you want to fuss. Now I'm not coming up there to do anything but rest. Why will you always start in to spoil everything?"

"Well now, you know well enough, Carlotta--" reiterated her mother.

"Oh, chuck it. I'll not come. To hell with the house. I'll go to Narragansett. You make me tired!"

Her mother looked at her tall daughter, graceful, handsome, her black hair parted in rich folds, irritated and yet pleased with her force and ability. If she would only be prudent and careful, what a figure she might yet become! Her complexion was like old rose-tinted ivory, her lips the color of dark raspberries, her eyes bluish grey, wide set, large, sympathetic, kindly. What a pity she had not married some big, worthy man to begin with. To be tied up to this gambler, even though they did live in Central Park West and had a comparatively sumptuous apartment, was a wretched thing. Still it was better than poverty or scandal, though if she did not take care of herself both might ensue. She wanted her to come to Riverwood for she liked her company, but she wanted her to behave herself. Perhaps Eugene would save the day. He was certainly restrained enough in his manner and remarks. She went back to Riverwood, and Carlotta, the quarrel smoothed over, followed her.

Eugene did not see her during the day she arrived, for he was at work; and she did not see him as he came in at night. He had on his old peaked hat and carried his handsome leather lunch box jauntily in one hand. He went to his room, bathed, dressed and then out on the porch to await the call of the dinner gong. Mrs. Hibberdell was in her room on the second floor and "Cousin Dave," as Carlotta called Simpson, was in the back yard. It was a lovely twilight. He was in the midst of deep thoughts about the beauty of the scene, his own loneliness, the characters at the shop-work, Angela and what not, when the screen door opened and she stepped out. She had on a short-sleeved house dress of spotted blue silk with yellow lace set about the neck and the ends of the sleeves. Her shapely figure, beautifully proportioned to her height, was set in a smooth, close fitting corset. Her hair, laid in great braids at the back, was caught in a brown spangled net. She carried herself with thoughtfulness and simplicity, seeming naturally indifferent.

Eugene rose. "I'm in your way, I think. Won't you have this chair?"

"No, thanks. The one in the corner will do. But I might as well introduce myself, since there isn't anyone here to do it. I'm Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Hibberdell's daughter. You're Mr. Witla?"

"Yes, I answer to that," said Eugene, smiling. He was not very much impressed at first. She seemed nice and he fancied intelligent--a little older than he would have preferred any woman to be who was to interest him. She sat down and looked at the water. He took his chair and held his peace. He was not even interested to talk to her. She was nice to look at, however. Her presence lightened the scene for him.

"I always like to come up here," she volunteered finally. "It's so warm in the city these days. I don't think many people know of this place. It's out of the beaten track."

"I enjoy it," said Eugene. "It's such a rest for me. I don't know what I would have done if your mother hadn't taken me in. It's rather hard to find any place, doing what I am."

"You've taken a pretty strenuous way to get health, I should say," she observed. "Day labor sounds rough to me. Do you mind it?"

"Not at all. I like it. The work is interesting and not so very hard. It's all so new to me, that's what makes it easy. I like the idea of being a day laborer and associating with laborers. It's only because I'm run down in health that I worry. I don't like to be sick."

"It is bad," she replied, "but this will probably put you on your feet. I think we're always inclined to look on our present troubles as the worst. I know I am."

"Thanks for the consolation," he said.

She did not look at him and he rocked to and fro silently. Finally the dinner gong struck. Mrs. Hibberdell came down stairs and they went in.

The conversation at dinner turned on his work for a few moments and he described accurately the personalities of John and Bill and Big John the engineer, and little Suddsy and Harry Fornes, the blacksmith. Carlotta listened attentively without appearing to, for everything about Eugene seemed singular and exceptional to her. She liked his tall, spare body, his lean hands, his dark hair and eyes. She liked the idea of his dressing as a laboring man in the morning, working all day in the shop, and yet appearing so neat and trim at dinner. He was easy in his manner, apparently lethargic in his movements and yet she could feel a certain swift force that filled the room. It was richer for his presence. She understood at a glance that he was an artist, in all probability a good one. He said nothing of that, avoided carefully all reference to his art, and listened attentively. She felt though as if he were studying her and everyone else, and it made her gayer. At the same time she had a strong leaning toward him. "What an ideal man to be associated with," was one of her repeated thoughts.

Although she was about the house for ten days and he met her after the third morning not only at dinner, which was natural enough, but at breakfast (which surprised him a little), he paid not so very much attention to her. She was nice, very, but Eugene was thinking of another type. He thought she was uncommonly pleasant and considerate and he admired her style of dressing and her beauty, studying her with interest, wondering what sort of a life she led, for from various bits of conversation he overheard not only at table but at other times he judged she was fairly well to do. There was an apartment in Central Park West, card parties, automobile parties, theatre parties and a general sense of people--acquaintances anyhow, who were making money. He heard her tell of a mining engineer, Dr. Rowland; of a successful coal-mining speculator, Gerald Woods; of a Mrs. Hale who was heavily interested in copper mines and apparently very wealthy. "It's a pity Norman couldn't connect with something like that and make some real money," he heard her say to her mother one evening. He understood that Norman was her husband and that he probably would be back soon. So he kept his distance--interested and curious but hardly more.

Mrs. Wilson was not so easily baffled, however. A car appeared one evening at the door immediately after dinner, a great red touring car, and Mrs. Wilson announced easily, "We're going for a little spin after dinner, Mr. Witla. Don't you want to come along?"

Eugene had never ridden in an automobile at that time. "I'd be very pleased," he said, for the thought of a lonely evening in an empty house had sprung up when he saw it appear.

There was a chauffeur in charge--a gallant figure in a brown straw cap and tan duster, but Mrs. Wilson manoeuvred for place.

"You sit with the driver, coz," she said to Simpson, and when her mother stepped in she followed after, leaving Eugene the place to the right of her.

"There must be a coat and cap in the locker," she said to the chauffeur; "let Mr. Witla have it."

The latter extracted a spare linen coat and straw cap which Eugene put on.

"I like automobiling, don't you?" she said to Eugene good-naturedly. "It's so refreshing. If there is any rest from care on this earth it's in traveling fast."

"I've never ridden before," replied Eugene simply. Something about the way he said it touched her. She felt sorry for him because he appeared lonely and gloomy. His indifference to her piqued her curiosity and irritated her pride. Why shouldn't he take an interest in her? As they sped under leafy lanes, up hill and down dale, she made out his face in the starlight. It was pale, reflective, indifferent. "These deep thinkers!" she chided him. "It's terrible to be a philosopher." Eugene smiled.

When they reached home he went to his room as did all the others to theirs. He stepped out into the hall a few minutes later to go to the library for a book, and found that her door which he had to pass was wide open. She was sitting back in a Morris chair, her feet upon another chair, her skirts slightly drawn up revealing a trim foot and ankle. She did not stir but looked up and smiled winningly.

"Aren't you tired enough to sleep?" he asked.

"Not quite yet," she smiled.

He went down stairs and turning on a light in the library stood looking at a row of books reading the titles. He heard a step and there she was looking at the books also.

"Don't you want a bottle of beer?" she asked. "I think there is some in the ice box. I forgot that you might be thirsty."

"I really don't care," he said. "I'm not much for drinks of any kind."

"That's not very sociable," she laughed.

"Let's have the beer then," he said.

She threw herself back languidly in one of the big dining room chairs when she had brought the drinks and some Swiss cheese and crackers, and said: "I think you'll find some cigarettes on the table in the corner if you like."

He struck her a match and she puffed her cigarette comfortably. "I suppose you find it lonely up here away from all your friends and companions," she volunteered.

"Oh, I've been sick so long I scarcely know whether I have any."

He described some of his imaginary ailments and experiences and she listened to him attentively. When the beer was gone she asked him if he would have more but he said no. After a time because he stirred wearily, she got up.

"Your mother will think we're running some sort of a midnight game down here," he volunteered.

"Mother can't hear," she said. "Her room is on the third floor and besides she doesn't hear very well. Dave don't mind. He knows me well enough by now to know that I do as I please."

She stood closer to Eugene but still he did not see. When he moved away she put out the lights and followed him to the stairs.

"He's either the most bashful or the most indifferent of men," she thought, but she said softly, "Good-night. Pleasant dreams to you," and went her way.

Eugene thought of her now as a good fellow, a little gay for a married woman, but probably circumspect withal. She was simply being nice to him. All this was simply because, as yet, he was not very much interested.

There were other incidents. One morning he passed her door. Her mother had already gone down to breakfast and there was the spectacle of a smooth, shapely arm and shoulder quite bare to his gaze as she lay on her pillow apparently unconscious that her door was open. It thrilled him as something sensuously beautiful for it was a perfect arm. Another time he saw her of an evening just before dinner buttoning her shoes. Her dress was pulled three-quarters of the way to her knees and her shoulders and arms were bare, for she was still in her corset and short skirts. She seemed not to know that he was near. One night after dinner he started to whistle something and she went to the piano to keep him company. Another time he hummed on the porch and she started the same song, singing with him. He drew his chair near the window where there was a couch after her mother had retired for the night, and she came and threw herself on it. "You don't mind if I lie here?" she said, "I'm tired tonight."

"Not at all. I'm glad of your company. I'm lonely."

She lay and stared at him, smiling. He hummed and she sang. "Let me see your palm," she said, "I want to learn something." He held it out. She fingered it temptingly. Even this did not wake him.

She left for five days because of some necessity in connection with her engagements and when she returned he was glad to see her. He had been lonesome, and he knew now that she made the house gayer. He greeted her genially.

"I'm glad to see you back," he said.

"Are you really?" she replied. "I don't believe it."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Oh, signs, omens and portents. You don't like women very well I fancy."

"Don't I!"

"No, I think not," she replied.

She was charming in a soft grayish green satin. He noticed that her neck was beautiful and that her hair looped itself gracefully upon the back of it. Her nose was straight and fine, sensitive because of its thin partitioning walls. He followed her into the library and they went out on the porch. Presently he returned--it was ten o'clock--and she came also. Davis had gone to his room, Mrs. Hibberdell to hers.

"I think I'll read," he said, aimlessly.

"Why anything like that?" she jested. "Never read when you can do anything else."

"What else can I do?"

"Oh, lots of things. Play cards, tell fortunes, read palms, drink beer--" She looked at him wilfully.

He went to his favorite chair near the window, side by side with the window-seat couch. She came and threw herself on it.

"Be gallant and fix my pillows for me, will you?" she asked.

"Of course I will," he said.

He took a pillow and raised her head, for she did not deign to move.

"Is that enough?" he inquired.

"One more."

He put his hand under the first pillow and lifted it up. She took hold of his free hand to raise herself. When she had it she held it and laughed a curious excited laugh. It came over him all at once, the full meaning of all the things she had been doing. He dropped the pillow he was holding and looked at her steadfastly. She relaxed her hold and leaned back, languorous, smiling. He took her left hand, then her right and sat down beside her. In a moment he slipped one arm under her waist and bending over put his lips to hers. She twined her arms about his neck tightly and hugged him close; then looking in his eyes she heaved a great sigh.

"You love me, don't you?" he asked.

"I thought you never would," she sighed, and clasped him to her again.

Chapter XXIII

The form of Carlotta Wilson was perfect, her passion eager, her subtlety a match for almost any situation. She had deliberately set out to win Eugene because he was attractive to her and because, by his early indifference, he had piqued her vanity and self-love. She liked him though, liked every one of his characteristics, and was as proud of her triumph as a child with a new toy. When he had finally slipped his arm under her waist she had thrilled with a burning, vibrating thrill throughout her frame and when she came to him it was with the eagerness of one wild for his caresses. She threw herself on him, kissed him sensuously scores of times, whispered her desire and her affection. Eugene thought, now that he saw her through the medium of an awakened passion, that he had never seen anything more lovely. For the time being he forgot Frieda, Angela, his loneliness, the fact that he was working in supposed prudent self-restraint to effect his recovery, and gave himself up to the full enjoyment of this situation.

Carlotta was tireless in her attentions. Once she saw that he really cared, or imagined he did, she dwelt in the atmosphere of her passion and affection. There was not a moment that she was not with or thinking of Eugene when either was possible. She lay in wait for him at every turn, gave him every opportunity which her skill could command. She knew the movements of her mother and cousin to the least fraction--could tell exactly where they were, how long they were likely to remain, how long it would take them to reach a certain door or spot from where they were standing. Her step was noiseless, her motions and glances significant and interpretative. For a month or thereabouts she guided Eugene through the most perilous situations, keeping her arms about him to the last possible moment, kissing him silently and swiftly at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected surroundings. Her weary languor, her seeming indifference, disappeared, and she was very much alive--except in the presence of others. There her old manner remained, intensified even, for she was determined to throw a veil of darkness over her mother and her cousin's eyes. She succeeded admirably for the time being, for she lied to her mother out of the whole cloth, pretending that Eugene was nice but a little slow so far as the ways of the world were concerned. "He may be a good artist," she volunteered, "but he isn't very much of a ladies' man. He hasn't the first trace of gallantry."

Mrs. Hibberdell was glad. At least there would be no disturbance here. She feared Carlotta, feared Eugene, but she saw no reason for complaint. In her presence all was seemingly formal and at times almost distant. She did not like to say to her daughter that she should not come to her own home now that Eugene was here, and she did not like to tell him to leave. Carlotta said she liked him fairly well, but that was nothing. Any married woman might do that. Yet under her very eyes was going forward the most disconcerting license. She would have been astounded if she had known the manner in which the bath, Carlotta's chamber and Eugene's room were being used. The hour never struck when they were beyond surveillance but what they were together.

Eugene grew very indifferent in the matter of his work. From getting to the point where he was enjoying it because he looked upon it as a form of exercise which was benefiting him, and feeling that he might not have to work indefinitely if he kept up physical rehabilitation at this pace, he grew languid about it and moody over the time he had to give to it. Carlotta had the privilege of a certain automobile and besides she could afford to hire one of her own. She began by suggesting that he meet her at certain places and times for a little spin and this took him away from his work a good portion of the time.

"You don't have to work every day, do you?" she asked him one Sunday afternoon when they were alone. Simpson and Mrs. Hibberdell had gone out for a walk and they were in her room on the second floor. Her mother's was on the third.

"I don't have to," he said, "if I don't mind losing the money they pay. It's fifteen cents an hour and I need that. I'm not working at my regular profession, you must remember."

"Oh, chuck that," she said. "What's fifteen cents an hour? I'll give you ten times that to come and be with me."

"No, you won't," he said. "You won't give me anything. We won't go anywhere on that basis."

"Oh, Eugene, how you talk. Why won't you?" she asked. "I have lots of it--at least lots more than you have just now. And it might as well be spent this way as some other. It won't be spent right anyhow--that is not for any exceptional purpose. Why shouldn't you have some of it? You can pay it back to me."

"I won't do it," said Eugene. "We won't go anywhere on that basis. I'd rather go and work. It's all right, though. I can sell a picture maybe. I expect to hear any day of something being sold. What is it you want to do?"

"I want you to come automobiling with me tomorrow. Ma is going over to her sister Ella's in Brooklyn. Has that shop of yours a phone?"

"Sure it has. I don't think you'd better call me up there though."

"Once wouldn't hurt."

"Well, perhaps not. But we'd better not begin that, or at least not make a practice of it. These people are very strict. They have to be."

"I know," said Carlotta. "I won't. I was just thinking. I'll let you know. You know that river road that runs on the top of the hill over there?"

"Yes."

"You be walking along there tomorrow at one o'clock and I'll pick you up. You can come this once, can't you?"

"Sure," said Eugene. "I can come. I was just joking. I can get some money." He had still his hundred dollars which he had not used when he first started looking for work. He had been clinging to it grimly, but now in this lightened atmosphere he thought he might spend some of it. He was going to get well. Everything was pointing that way. His luck was with him.

"Well, I'll get the car. You don't mind riding in that, do you?"

"No," he said. "I'll wear a good suit to the shop and change over there."

She laughed gaily, for his scruples and simplicity amused her.

"You're a prince--my Prince Charming," she said and she flung herself in his lap. "Oh, you angel man, heaven-born! I've been waiting for you I don't know how long. Wise man! Prince Charming! I love you! I love you! I think you're the nicest thing that ever was."

Eugene caressed her gently.

"And you're my wise girl. But we are no good, neither you nor I. You're a wastrel and a stray. And I--I hesitate to think what I am."

"What is a wastrel?" she asked. "That's a new one on me. I don't remember."

"Something or someone that can be thrown away as useless. A stray is a pigeon that won't stay with the flock."

"That's me," said Carlotta, holding out her firm, smooth arms before her and grinning mischievously. "I won't stay with any flock. Nix for the flocks. I'd rather be off with my wise man. He is nice enough for me. He's better nor nine or ten flocks." She was using corrupt English for the joy of it. "Just me and you, Prince Charming. Am I your lovely wastrel? Do you like strays? Say you do. Listen! Do you like strays?"

Eugene had been turning his head away, saying "scandalous! terrible, you're the worst ever," but she stopped his mouth with her lips.

"Do you?"

"This wastrel, yes. This stray," he replied, smoothing her cheek. "Ah, you're lovely, Carlotta, you're beautiful. What a wonderful woman you are."

She gave herself to him completely.

"Whatever I am, I'm yours, wise man," she went on. "You can have anything you want of me, do anything you please with me. You're like an opiate to me, Eugene, sweet! You stop my mouth and close my eyes and seal my ears. You make me forget everything I suppose I might think now and then but I don't want to. I don't want to! And I don't care. I wish you were single. I wish I were free. I wish we had an island somewhere together. Oh, hell! Life is a wearisome tangle, isn't it? 'Take the cash and let the credit go.'"

By this time Carlotta had heard enough of Eugene's life to understand what his present condition was. She knew he was sick though not exactly why. She thought it was due to overwork. She knew he was out of funds except for certain pictures he had on sale, but that he would regain his art ability and re-establish himself she did not doubt. She knew something of Angela and thought it was all right that she should be away from him, but now she wished the separation might be permanent. She went into the city and asking about at various art stores learned something of Eugene's art history and his great promise. It made him all the more fascinating in her eyes. One of his pictures on exhibition at Pottle Frères was bought by her after a little while and the money sent to Eugene, for she had learned from him how these pictures, any pictures, were exhibited on sale and the painter paid, minus the commission, when the sale was made. She took good care to make it clear to the manager at Pottle Frères that she was doing this so that Eugene could have the money and saw to it that the check reached him promptly. If Eugene had been alone this check of three hundred dollars would have served to bring Angela to him. As it was it gave him funds to disport himself with in her company. He did not know that she had been the means of his getting it, or to whom the picture had been sold. A fictitious name was given. This sale somewhat restored Eugene's faith in his future, for if one of his pictures would sell so late in the day for this price, others would.

There were days thereafter of the most curious composition. In the morning he would leave dressed in his old working suit and carrying his lunch box, Carlotta waving him a farewell from her window, or, if he had an engagement outside with Carlotta, wearing a good suit, and trusting to his overalls and jumper to protect it, working all day with John and Bill, or Malachi Dempsey and Joseph--for there was rivalry between these two groups as to which should have his company--or leaving the shop early and riding with her a part of the time, coming home at night to be greeted by Carlotta as though she had not seen him at all. She watched for his coming as patiently as a wife and was as eager to see if there was anything she could do for him. In the shop Malachi and Joseph or John and Bill and sometimes some of the carpenters up stairs would complain of a rush of work in order that they might have his assistance or presence. Malachi and Joseph could always enter the complaint that they were in danger of being hampered by shavings, for the latter were constantly piling up in great heaps, beautiful shavings of ash and yellow pine and walnut which smelled like resin and frankincense and had the shape of girl's curls or dry breakfast food, or rich damp sawdust. Or John and Bill would complain that they were being overworked and needed someone in the car to receive. Even Big John, the engineer, tried to figure out some scheme by which he could utilize Eugene as a fireman, but that was impossible; there was no call for any such person. The foreman understood well enough what the point was but said nothing, placing Eugene with the particular group which seemed to need him most. Eugene was genial enough about the matter. Wherever he was was right. He liked to be in the cars or on a lumber pile or in the plane room. He also liked to stand and talk to Big John or Harry Fornes, his basket under his arm--"kidding," as he called it. His progress to and fro was marked by endless quips and jests and he was never weary.

When his work was done at night he would hurry home, following the right bank of the little stream until he reached a path which led up to the street whereon was the Hibberdell house. On his way he would sometimes stop and study the water, its peaceful current bearing an occasional stick or straw upon its bosom, and contrasting the seeming peace of its movement with his own troubled life. The subtlety of nature as expressed in water appealed to him. The difference between this idyllic stream bank and his shop and all who were of it, struck him forcefully. Malachi Dempsey had only the vaguest conception of the beauty of nature. Jack Stix was scarcely more artistic than the raw piles of lumber with which he dealt. Big John had no knowledge of the rich emotions of love or of beauty which troubled Eugene's brain. They lived on another plane, apparently.

And at the other end of the stream awaiting him was Carlotta, graceful, sophisticated, eager in her regard for him, lukewarm in her interest in morals, sybaritic in her moods, representing in a way a world which lived upon the fruits of this exploited toil and caring nothing about it. If he said anything to Carlotta about the condition of Joseph Mews, who carried bundles of wood home to his sister of an evening to help save the expense of fuel, she merely smiled. If he talked of the poverty of the masses she said, "Don't be doleful, Eugene." She wanted to talk of art and luxury and love, or think of them at least. Her love of the beauty of nature was keen. There were certain inns they could reach by automobile where they could sit and dine and drink a bottle of wine or a pitcher of claret cup, and here she would muse on what they would do if they were only free. Angela was frequently in Carlotta's thoughts, persistently in Eugene's, for he could not help feeling that he was doing her a rank injustice.

She had been so patient and affectionate all this long time past, had tended him as a mother, waited on him as a servant. Only recently he had been writing in most affectionate terms, wishing she were with him. Now all that was dead again. It was hard work to write. Everything he said seemed a lie and he did not want to say it. He hated to pretend. Still, if he did not write Angela would be in a state of mortal agony, he thought, and would shortly come to look him up. It was only by writing, protesting his affection, explaining why in his judgment it was unadvisable for her to come at present, that she could be made to stay where she was. And now that he was so infatuated with Carlotta this seemed very desirable. He did not delude himself that he would ever be able to marry her. He knew that he could not get a divorce, there being no grounds, and the injustice to Angela being such a bar to his conscience; and as for Carlotta, her future was very uncertain. Norman Wilson, for all that he disregarded her at times, did not want to give her up. He was writing, threatening to come back to New York if she did not come to him, though the fact that she was in her mother's home, where he considered her safe, was some consolation to him. Angela was begging Eugene to let her come. They would get along, she argued, on whatever he got and he would be better off with her than alone. She pictured him living in some uncomfortable boarding house where he was not half attended to and intensely lonely. Her return meant the leaving of this lovely home--for Mrs. Hibberdell had indicated that she would not like to keep him and his wife--and so the end of this perfect romance with Carlotta. An end to lovely country inns and summer balconies where they were dining together! An end to swift tours in her automobile, which she guided skilfully herself, avoiding the presence of a chauffeur. An end to lovely trysts under trees and by pretty streams where he kissed and fondled her and where she lingered joyously in his arms!

"If ma could only see us now," she would jest; or,

"Do you suppose Bill and John would recognize you here if they saw you?"

Once she said: "This is better than the engine room, isn't it?"

"You're a bad lot, Carlotta," he would declare, and then would come to her lips the enigmatic smile of Monna Lisa.

"You like bad lots, don't you? Strays make fine hunting."

In her own philosophy she was taking the cash and letting the credit go.

Chapter XXIV

Days like this could not go on forever. The seed of their destruction was in their beginning. Eugene was sad. He used to show his mood at times and if she asked him what was the matter, would say: "We can't keep this thing up much longer. It must come to an end soon."

"You're certainly a gloomy philosopher, Genie," she would say, reproachfully, for she had hopes that it could be made to last a long while under any circumstances. Eugene had the feeling that no pretence would escape Angela's psychology. She was too sensitive to his unspoken moods and feelings. She would come soon, willynilly, and then all this would be ended. As a matter of fact several things combined to bring about change and conclusion.

For one thing Mrs. Hibberdell had been more and more impressed with the fact that Carlotta was not merely content to stay but that once having come she was fairly determined to remain. She had her own apartment in the city, ostensibly closed for the summer, for she had protested that it was too hot to live in town when she first proposed going to Narragansett. After seeing Eugene she figured out a possible use for it, though that use was dangerous, for Norman Wilson might return at any time. Nevertheless, they had been there on occasions--this with the double effect of deceiving her mother and entertaining Eugene. If she could remain away from Riverwood a percentage of the time, she argued with Eugene, it would make her stay less suspicious and would not jeopardize their joy in companionship. So she did this. At the same time she could not stay away from Riverwood entirely, for Eugene was there necessarily morning and evening.

Nevertheless, toward the end of August Mrs. Hibberdell was growing suspicious. She had seen an automobile entering Central Park once when Carlotta had phoned her that she had a sick headache and could not come up. It looked to Mrs. Hibberdell, who had gone down town shopping on the strength of this ailment and who had phoned Carlotta that she was going to call at her apartment in the evening, as though Eugene and Carlotta were in it. Eugene had gone to work that morning, which made it seem doubtful, but it certainly looked very much like him. Still she did not feel sure it was he or Carlotta either. When she came to the latter's apartment Carlotta was there, feeling better, but stating that she had not been out. Mrs. Hibberdell concluded thoughtfully that she must have been mistaken.

Her own room was on the third floor, and several times after all had retired and she had come down to the kitchen or dining room or library for something, she had heard a peculiar noise as of someone walking lightly. She thought it was fancy on her part, for invariably when she reached the second floor all was dark and still. Nevertheless she wondered whether Eugene and Carlotta could be visiting. Twice, between breakfast and the time Eugene departed, she thought she heard Eugene and Carlotta whispering on the second floor, but there was no proof. Carlotta's readiness to rise for breakfast at six-thirty in order to be at the same table with Eugene was peculiar, and her giving up Narragansett for Riverwood was most significant. It remained for one real discovery to resolve all her suspicions into the substance of fact and convict Carlotta of being the most conscienceless of deceivers.

It came about in this fashion. One Sunday morning Davis and Mrs. Hibberdell had decided to go automobiling. Eugene and Carlotta were invited but had refused, for Carlotta on hearing the discussion several days before had warned Eugene and planned to have the day for herself and her lover. She cautioned him to pretend the need of making visits down town. As for herself she had said she would go, but on the day in question did not feel well enough. Davis and Mrs. Hibberdell departed, their destination being Long Island. It was an all day tour. After an hour their machine broke, however, and after sitting in it two hours waiting for repairs--long enough to spoil their plans--they came back by trolley. Eugene had not gone down town. He was not even dressed when the door opened on the ground floor and Mrs. Hibberdell came in.

"Oh, Carlotta," she called, standing at the foot of the stairs and expecting Carlotta to appear from her own room or a sort of lounging and sewing room which occupied the front of the house on the second floor and where she frequently stayed. Carlotta unfortunately was with Eugene and the door to this room was commanded from where Mrs. Hibberdell was standing. She did not dare to answer.

"Oh, Carlotta," called her mother again.

The latter's first thought was to go back in the kitchen and look there, but on second thoughts she ascended the steps and started for the sewing room. Carlotta thought she had entered. In an instant she had seized the opportunity to step into the bath which was next to Eugene's room but she was scarcely quick enough. Her mother had not gone into the room--only opened the door and looked in. She did not see Carlotta step out of Eugene's room, but she did see her entering the bath, in negligee, and she could scarcely have come from anywhere else. Her own door which was between Eugene's room and the sewing room was ten feet away. It did not seem possible that she could have come from there: she had not had time enough, and anyhow why had she not answered?

The first impulse of Mrs. Hibberdell was to call to her. Her second thought was to let the ruse seem successful. She was convinced that Eugene was in his room, and a few moments later a monitory cough on his part--coughed for a purpose--convinced her.

"Are you in the bath, Carlotta?" she called quietly, after looking into Carlotta's room.

"Yes," came the reply, easily enough now. "Did your machine break down?"

A few remarks were exchanged through the door and then Mrs. Hibberdell went to her room. She thought over the situation steadily for it greatly irritated her. It was not the same as the discovered irregularity of a trusted and virtuous daughter. Carlotta had not been led astray. She was a grown woman, married, experienced. In every way she knew as much about life as her mother--in some respects more. The difference between them was in ethical standards and the policy that aligns itself with common sense, decency, self preservation, as against its opposite. Carlotta had so much to look out for. Her future was in her own hands. Besides, Eugene's future, his wife's rights and interests, her mother's home, her mother's standards, were things which she ought to respect--ought to want to respect. To find her lying as she had been this long time, pretending indifference, pretending absence, and no doubt associating with Eugene all the while, was disgusting. She was very angry, not so much at Eugene, though her respect for him was greatly lowered, artist though he was, as at Carlotta. She ought to do better. She ought to be ashamed not to guard herself against a man like Eugene, instead of luring him on. It was Carlotta's fault, and she determined to reproach her bitterly and to break up this wretched alliance at once.

There was an intense and bitter quarrel the next morning, for Mrs. Hibberdell decided to hold her peace until Eugene and Davis should be out of the house. She wanted to have this out with Carlotta alone, and the clash came shortly after breakfast when both the others had left. Carlotta had already warned Eugene that something might happen on account of this, but under no circumstances was he to admit anything unless she told him to. The maid was in the kitchen out of ear shot, and Mrs. Hibberdell and Carlotta were in the library when the opening gun was fired. In a way Carlotta was prepared, for she fancied her mother might have seen other things--what or how much she could not guess. She was not without the dignity of a Circe, for she had been through scenes like this before. Her own husband had charged her with infidelity more than once, and she had been threatened with physical violence by him. Her face was pale but calm.

"Now, Carlotta," observed her mother vigorously, "I saw what was going on yesterday morning when I came home. You were in Mr. Witla's room with your clothes off. I saw you come out. Please don't deny it. I saw you come out. Aren't you ashamed of yourself? How can you treat me that way after your promise not to do anything out of the way here?"

"You didn't see me come out of his room and I wasn't in there," said Carlotta brazenly. Her face was pale, but she was giving a fair imitation of righteous surprise. "Why do you make any such statement as that?"

"Why, Carlotta Hibberdell, how dare you contradict me; how dare you lie! You came out of that room. You know you did. You know that you were in there. You know that I saw you. I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, slipping about this house like a street girl and your own mother in it. Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Have you no sense of decency left? Oh, Carlotta, I know you are bad, but why will you come here to be so? Why couldn't you let this man alone? He was doing well enough. It's a shame, the thing you have done. It's an outrage. Mrs. Witla ought to come here and whip you within an inch of your life."

"Oh, how you talk," said Carlotta, irritably. "You make me tired. You didn't see me. It's the old story--suspicion. You're always full of suspicion. You didn't see me and I wasn't in there. Why do you start a fuss for nothing!"

"A fuss! A fuss for nothing--the idea, you evil woman. A fuss for nothing. How can you talk that way! I can hardly believe my senses. I can hardly believe you would dare to brazenly face me in this way. I saw you and now you deny it."

Mrs. Hibberdell had not seen her, but she was convinced that what she said was true.

Carlotta brazened it out. "You didn't," she insisted.

Mrs. Hibberdell stared. The effrontery of it took her breath away.

"Carlotta," she exclaimed, "I honestly think you are the worst woman in the world. I can't think of you as my daughter--you are too brazen. You're the worst because you're calculating. You know what you're doing, and you are deliberate in your method of doing it. You're evil-minded. You know exactly what you want and you set out deliberately to get it. You have done it in this case. You started out to get this man and you have succeeded in doing it. You have no sense of shame, no pride, no honesty, no honor, no respect for me or anyone else. You do not love this man. You know you don't. If you did you would never degrade him and yourself and me as you have done. You've simply indulged in another vile relationship because you wanted to, and now when you're caught you brazen it out. You're evil, Carlotta. You're as low as a woman can be, even if you are my daughter."

"It isn't true," said Carlotta. "You're just talking to hear yourself talk."

"It is true and you know it," reproved her mother. "You talk about Norman. He never did a thing worse in his life than you have done. He may be a gambler and immoral and inconsiderate and selfish. What are you? Can you stand there and tell me you're any better? Pah! If you only had a sense of shame something could be done for you, but you haven't any. You're just vile, that's all."

"How you talk, ma," she observed, calmly; "how you carry on, and that on a mere suspicion. You didn't see me. I might have been in there but you didn't see me and I wasn't. You're making a storm just because you want to. I like Mr. Witla. I think he's very nice, but I'm not interested in him and I haven't done anything to harm him. You can turn him out if you want to. That's none of my affairs. You're simply raging about as usual without any facts to go upon."

Carlotta stared at her mother, thinking. She was not greatly disturbed. It was pretty bad, no doubt of that, but she was not thinking so much of that as of the folly of being found out. Her mother knew for certain, though she would not admit to her that she knew. Now all this fine summer romance would end--the pleasant convenience of it, anyhow. Eugene would be put to the trouble of moving. Her mother might say something disagreeable to him. Besides, she knew she was better than Norman because she did not associate with the same evil type of people. She was not coarse, she was not thick-witted, she was not cruel, she was not a user of vile language or an expresser of vile ideas, and Norman was at times. She might lie and she might be calculating, but not to anyone's disadvantage--she was simply passion driven--boldly so and only toward love or romance. "Am I evil?" she often asked herself. Her mother said she was evil. Well, she was in one way; but her mother was angry, that was all. She did not mean all she said. She would come round. Still Carlotta did not propose to admit the truth of her mother's charges or to go through this situation without some argument. There were charges which her mother was making which were untenable--points which were inexcusable.

"Carlotta Hibberdell, you're the most brazen creature I ever knew! You're a terrible liar. How can you stand there and look me in the eye and say that, when you know that I know? Why lie in addition to everything else? Oh! Carlotta, the shame of it. If you only had some sense of honor! How can you lie like that? How can you?"

"I'm not lying," declared Carlotta, "and I wish you would quit fussing. You didn't see me. You know you didn't. I came out of my room and you were in the front room. Why do you say you weren't. You didn't see me. Supposing I am a liar. I'm your daughter. I may be vile. I didn't make myself so. Certainly I'm not in this instance. Whatever I am I come by it honestly. My life hasn't been a bed of roses. Why do you start a silly fight? You haven't a thing to go on except suspicion and now you want to raise a row. I don't care what you think of me. I'm not guilty in this case and you can think what you please. You ought to be ashamed to charge me with something of which you are not sure."

She walked to the window and stared out. Her mother shook her head. Such effrontery was beyond her. It was like her daughter, though. She took after her father and herself. Both were self-willed and determined when aroused. At the same time she was sorry for her girl, for Carlotta was a capable woman in her way and very much dissatisfied with life.

"I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, Carlotta, whether you admit it to me or not," she went on. "The truth is the truth and it must hurt you a little. You were in that room. We won't argue that, though. You set out deliberately to do this and you have done it. Now what I have to say is this: You are going back to your apartment today, and Mr. Witla is going to leave here as quick as he can get a room somewhere else. You're not going to continue this wretched relationship any longer if I can help it. I'm going to write to his wife and to Norman too, if I can't do anything else to break this up. You're going to let this man alone. You have no right to come between him and Mrs. Witla. It's an outrage, and no one but a vile, conscienceless woman would do it. I'm not going to say anything to him now, but he's going to leave here and so are you. When it's all over you can come back if you want to. I'm ashamed for you. I'm ashamed for myself. If it hadn't been for my own feelings and those of Davis, I would have ordered you both out of the house yesterday and you know it. It's consideration for myself that's made me smooth it over as much as I have. He, the vile thing, after all the courtesy I have shown him. Still I don't blame him as much as I do you, for he would never have looked at you if you hadn't made him. My own daughter! My own house! Tch! Tch! Tch!"

There was more conversation--that fulgurous, coruscating reiteration of charges. Eugene was no good. Carlotta was vile. Mrs. Hibberdell wouldn't have believed it possible if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. She was going to tell Norman if Carlotta didn't reform--over and over, one threat after another.

"Well," she said, finally, "you're going to get your things ready and go into the city this afternoon. I'm not going to have you here another day."

"No I'm not," said Carlotta boldly, pondering over all that had been said. It was a terrible ordeal, but she would not go today. "I'm going in the morning. I'm not going to pack that fast. It's too late. I'm not going to be ordered out of here like a servant."

Her mother groaned, but she gave in. Carlotta could not be made to do anything she did not want to do. She went to her room, and presently Mrs. Hibberdell heard her singing. She shook her head. Such a personality. No wonder Eugene succumbed to her blandishments. What man wouldn't?

Chapter XXV

The sequel of this scene was not to be waited for. At dinner time Mrs. Hibberdell announced in the presence of Carlotta and Davis that the house was going to be closed up for the present, and very quickly. She and Carlotta were going to Narragansett for the month of September and a part of October. Eugene, having been forewarned by Carlotta, took it with a show of polite surprise. He was sorry. He had spent such a pleasant time here. Mrs. Hibberdell could not be sure whether Carlotta had told him or not, he seemed so innocent, but she assumed that she had and that he like Carlotta was "putting on." She had informed Davis that for reasons of her own she wanted to do this. He suspected what they were, for he had seen signs and slight demonstrations which convinced him that Carlotta and Eugene had reached an understanding. He did not consider it anything very much amiss, for Carlotta was a woman of the world, her own boss and a "good fellow." She had always been nice to him. He did not want to put any obstacles in her way. In addition, he liked Eugene. Once he had said to Carlotta jestingly, "Well, his arms are almost as long as Norman's--not quite maybe."

"You go to the devil," was her polite reply.

Tonight a storm came up, a brilliant, flashing summer storm. Eugene went out on the porch to watch it. Carlotta came also.

"Well, wise man," she said, as the thunder rolled. "It's all over up here. Don't let on. I'll see you wherever you go, but this was so nice. It was fine to have you near me. Don't get blue, will you? She says she may write your wife, but I don't think she will. If she thinks I'm behaving, she won't. I'll try and fool her. It's too bad, though. I'm crazy about you, Genie."

Now that he was in danger of losing Carlotta, her beauty took on a special significance for Eugene. He had come into such close contact with her, had seen her under such varied conditions, that he had come to feel a profound admiration for not only her beauty but her intellect and ability as well. One of his weaknesses was that he was inclined to see much more in those he admired than was really there. He endowed them with the romance of his own moods--saw in them the ability to do things which he only could do. In doing this of course he flattered their vanity, aroused their self-confidence, made them feel themselves the possessors of latent powers and forces which before him they had only dreamed of. Margaret, Ruby, Angela, Christina and Carlotta had all gained this feeling from him. They had a better opinion of themselves for having known him. Now as he looked at Carlotta he was intensely sorry, for she was so calm, so affable, so seemingly efficient and self reliant, and such a comfort to him in these days.

"Circe!" he said, "this is too bad. I'm sorry. I'm going to hate to lose you."

"You won't lose me," she replied. "You can't. I won't let you. I've found you now and I'm going to keep you. This don't mean anything. We can find places to meet. Get a place where they have a phone if you can. When do you think you'll go?"

"Right away," said Eugene. "I'll take tomorrow morning off and look."

"Poor Eugene," she said sympathetically. "It's too bad. Never mind though. Everything will come out right."

She was still not counting on Angela. She thought that even if Angela came back, as Eugene told her she would soon, a joint arrangement might possibly be made. Angela could be here, but she, Carlotta, could share Eugene in some way. She thought she would rather live with him than any other man on earth.

It was only about noon the next morning when Eugene had found another room, for, in living here so long, he had thought of several methods by which he might have obtained a room in the first place. There was another church, a library, the postmaster and the ticket agent at Speonk who lived in the village. He went first to the postmaster and learned of two families, one the home of a civil engineer, where he might be welcome, and it was here that he eventually settled. The view was not quite so attractive, but it was charming, and he had a good room and good meals. He told them that he might not stay long, for his wife was coming back soon. The letters from Angela were becoming most importunate.

He gathered up his belongings at Mrs. Hibberdell's and took a polite departure. After he was gone Mrs. Hibberdell of course changed her mind, and Carlotta returned to her apartment in New York. She communicated with Eugene not only by phone but by special delivery, and had him meet her at a convenient inn the second evening of his departure. She was planning some sort of a separate apartment for them, when Eugene informed her that Angela was already on her way to New York and that nothing could be done at present.

Since Eugene had left her at Biloxi, Angela had spent a most miserable period of seven months. She had been grieving her heart out, for she imagined him to be most lonely, and at the same time she was regretful that she had ever left him. She might as well have been with him. She figured afterward that she might have borrowed several hundred dollars from one of her brothers, and carried out the fight for his mental recovery by his side. Once he had gone she fancied she might have made a mistake matrimonially, for he was so impressionable--but his condition was such that she did not deem him to be interested in anything save his recovery. Besides, his attitude toward her of late had been so affectionate and in a way dependent. All her letters since he had left had been most tender, speaking of his sorrow at this necessary absence and hoping that the time would soon come when they could be together. The fact that he was lonely finally decided her and she wrote that she was coming whether he wanted her to or not.

Her arrival would have made little difference except that by now he was thoroughly weaned away from her again, had obtained a new ideal and was interested only to see and be with Carlotta. The latter's easy financial state, her nice clothes, her familiarity with comfortable and luxurious things--better things than Eugene had ever dreamed of enjoying--her use of the automobile, her freedom in the matter of expenditures--taking the purchase of champagne and expensive meals as a matter of course--dazzled and fascinated him. It was rather an astonishing thing, he thought, to have so fine a woman fall in love with him. Besides, her tolerance, her indifference to petty conventions, her knowledge of life and literature and art--set her in marked contrast to Angela, and in all ways she seemed rare and forceful to him. He wished from his heart that he could be free and could have her.

Into this peculiar situation Angela precipitated herself one bright Saturday afternoon in September. She was dying to see Eugene again. Full of grave thoughts for his future, she had come to share it whatever it might be. Her one idea was that he was sick and depressed and lonely. None of his letters had been cheerful or optimistic, for of course he did not dare to confess the pleasure he was having in Carlotta's company. In order to keep her away he had to pretend that lack of funds made it inadmissible for her to be here. The fact that he was spending, and by the time she arrived had spent, nearly the whole of the three hundred dollars his picture sold to Carlotta had brought him, had troubled him--not unduly, of course, or he would not have done it. He had qualms of conscience, severe ones, but they passed with the presence of Carlotta or the reading of his letters from Angela.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," he said to himself from time to time. "I guess I'm no good." He thought it was a blessing that the world could not see him as he was.

One of the particular weaknesses of Eugene's which should be set forth here and which will help to illuminate the bases of his conduct was that he was troubled with a dual point of view--a condition based upon a peculiar power of analysis--self-analysis in particular, which was constantly permitting him to tear himself up by the roots in order to see how he was getting along. He would daily and hourly when not otherwise employed lift the veil from his inner mental processes as he might lift the covering from a well, and peer into its depths. What he saw was not very inviting and vastly disconcerting, a piece of machinery that was not going as a true man should, clock fashion, and corresponding in none of its moral characteristics to the recognized standard of a man. He had concluded by now, from watching various specimens, that sane men were honest, some inherently moral, some regulated by a keen sense of duty, and occasionally all of these virtues and others were bound up in one man. Angela's father was such an one. M. Charles appeared to be another. He had concluded from his association with Jerry Mathews, Philip Shotmeyer, Peter MacHugh and Joseph Smite that they were all rather decent in respect to morals. He had never seen them under temptation but he imagined they were. Such a man as William Haverford, the Engineer of Maintenance of Way, and Henry C. Litlebrown, the Division Engineer of this immense road, struck him as men who must have stuck close to a sense of duty and the conventions of the life they represented, working hard all the time, to have attained the positions they had. All this whole railroad system which he was watching closely from day to day from his little vantage point of connection with it, seemed a clear illustration of the need of a sense of duty and reliability. All of these men who worked for this company had to be in good health, all had to appear at their posts on the tick of the clock, all had to perform faithfully the duties assigned them, or there would be disasters. Most of them had climbed by long, arduous years of work to very modest positions of prominence, as conductors, engineers, foremen, division superintendents. Others more gifted or more blessed by fortune became division engineers, superintendents, vice-presidents and presidents. They were all slow climbers, rigid in their sense of duty, tireless in their energy, exact, thoughtful. What was he?

He looked into the well of his being and there he saw nothing but shifty and uncertain currents. It was very dark down there. He was not honest, he said to himself, except in money matters--he often wondered why. He was not truthful. He was not moral. This love of beauty which haunted him seemed much more important than anything else in the world, and his pursuit of that seemed to fly in the face of everything else which was established and important. He found that men everywhere did not think much of a man who was crazy after women. They might joke about an occasional lapse as an amiable vice or one which could be condoned, but they wanted little to do with a man who was overpowered by it. There was a case over in the railroad yard at Speonk recently which he had noted, of a foreman who had left his wife and gone after some hoyden in White Plains, and because of this offense he was promptly discharged. It appeared, though, that before this he had occasionally had such lapses and that each time he had been discharged, but had been subsequently forgiven. This one weakness, and no other, had given him a bad reputation among his fellow railroad men--much as that a drunkard might have. Big John Peters, the engineer, had expressed it aptly to Eugene one day when he told him in confidence that "Ed Bowers would go to hell for his hide," the latter being the local expression for women. Everybody seemed to pity him, and the man seemed in a way to pity himself. He had a hang-dog look when he was re-instated, and yet everybody knew that apart from this he was a fairly competent foreman. Still it was generally understood that he would never get anywhere.

From that Eugene argued to himself that a man who was cursed with this peculiar vice could not get anywhere; that he, if he kept it up, would not. It was like drinking and stealing, and the face of the world was against it. Very frequently it went hand in hand with those things--"birds of a feather" he thought. Still he was cursed with it, and he no more than Ed Bowers appeared to be able to conquer it. At least he was yielding to it now as he had before. It mattered not that the women he chose were exceptionally beautiful and fascinating. They were women, and ought he to want them? He had one. He had taken a solemn vow to love and cherish her, or at least had gone through the formality of such a vow, and here he was running about with Carlotta, as he had with Christina and Ruby before her. Was he not always looking for some such woman as this? Certainly he was. Had he not far better be seeking for wealth, distinction, a reputation for probity, chastity, impeccable moral honor? Certainly he had. It was the way to distinction apparently, assuming the talent, and here he was doing anything but take that way. Conscience was his barrier, a conscience unmodified by cold self-interest. Shame upon himself! Shame upon his weak-kneed disposition, not to be able to recover from this illusion of beauty. Such were some of the thoughts which his moments of introspection brought him.

On the other hand, there came over him that other phase of his duality--the ability to turn his terrible searchlight of intelligence which swept the heavens and the deep as with a great white ray--upon the other side of the question. It revealed constantly the inexplicable subtleties and seeming injustices of nature. He could not help seeing how the big fish fed upon the little ones, the strong were constantly using the weak as pawns; the thieves, the grafters, the murderers were sometimes allowed to prey on society without let or hindrance. Good was not always rewarded--frequently terribly ill-rewarded. Evil was seen to flourish beautifully at times. It was all right to say that it would be punished, but would it? Carlotta did not think so. She did not think the thing she was doing with him was very evil. She had said to him over and over that it was an open question, that he was troubled with an ingrowing conscience. "I don't think it's so bad," she once told him. "It depends somewhat on how you were raised." There was a system apparently in society, but also apparently it did not work very well. Only fools were held by religion, which in the main was an imposition, a graft and a lie. The honest man might be very fine but he wasn't very successful. There was a great to-do about morals, but most people were immoral or unmoral. Why worry? Look to your health! Don't let a morbid conscience get the better of you. Thus she counselled, and he agreed with her. For the rest the survival of the fittest was the best. Why should he worry? He had talent.

It was thus that Eugene floundered to and fro, and it was in this state, brooding and melancholy, that Angela found him on her arrival. He was as gay as ever at times, when he was not thinking, but he was very thin and hollow-eyed, and Angela fancied that it was overwork and worry which kept him in this state. Why had she left him? Poor Eugene! She had clung desperately to the money he had given her, and had most of it with her ready to be expended now for his care. She was so anxious for his recovery and his peace of mind that she was ready to go to work herself at anything she could find, in order to make his path more easy. She was thinking that fate was terribly unjust to him, and when he had gone to sleep beside her the first night she lay awake and cried. Poor Eugene! To think he should be tried so by fate. Nevertheless, he should not be tortured by anything which she could prevent. She was going to make him as comfortable and happy as she could. She set about to find some nice little apartment or rooms where they could live in peace and where she could cook Eugene's meals for him. She fancied that maybe his food had not been exactly right, and when she got him where she could manifest a pretence of self-confidence and courage that he would take courage from her and grow better. So she set briskly about her task, honeying Eugene the while, for she was confident that this above all things was the thing he needed. She little suspected what a farce it all appeared to him, how mean and contemptible he appeared to himself. He did not care to be mean--to rapidly disillusion her and go his way; and yet this dual existence sickened him. He could not help but feel that from a great many points of view Angela was better than Carlotta. Yet the other woman was wider in her outlook, more gracious in her appearance, more commanding, more subtle. She was a princess of the world, subtle, deadly Machiavellian, but a princess nevertheless. Angela was better described by the current and acceptable phrase of the time--a "thoroughly good woman," honest, energetic, resourceful, in all things obedient to the race spirit and the conventional feelings of the time. He knew that society would support her thoroughly and condemn Carlotta, and yet Carlotta interested him more. He wished that he might have both and no fussing. Then all would be beautiful. So he thought.

Chapter XXVI

The situation which here presented itself was subject to no such gracious and generous development. Angela was the soul of watchfulness, insistence on duty, consideration for right conduct and for the privileges, opportunities and emoluments which belonged to her as the wife of a talented artist, temporarily disabled, it is true, but certain to be distinguished in the future. She was deluding herself that this recent experience of reverses had probably hardened and sharpened Eugene's practical instincts, made him less indifferent to the necessity of looking out for himself, given him keener instincts of self-protection and economy. He had done very well to live on so little she thought, but they were going to do better--they were going to save. She was going to give up those silly dreams she had entertained of a magnificent studio and hosts of friends, and she was going to start now saving a fraction of whatever they made, however small it might be, if it were only ten cents a week. If Eugene could only make nine dollars a week by working every day, they were going to live on that. He still had ninety-seven of the hundred dollars he had brought with him, he told her, and this was going in the bank. He did not tell her of the sale of one of his pictures and of the subsequent dissipation of the proceeds. In the bank, too, they were going to put any money from subsequent sales until he was on his feet again. One of these days if they ever made any money, they were going to buy a house somewhere in which they could live without paying rent. Some of the money in the bank, a very little of it, might go for clothes if worst came to worst, but it would not be touched unless it was absolutely necessary. She needed clothes now, but that did not matter. To Eugene's ninety-seven was added Angela's two hundred and twenty-eight which she brought with her, and this total sum of three hundred and twenty-five dollars was promptly deposited in the Bank of Riverwood.

Angela by personal energy and explanation found four rooms in the house of a furniture manufacturer; it had been vacated by a daughter who had married, and they were glad to let it to an artist and his wife for practically nothing so far as real worth was concerned, for this was a private house in a lovely lawn. Twelve dollars per month was the charge. Mrs. Witla seemed very charming to Mrs. Desenas, who was the wife of the manufacturer, and for her especial benefit a little bedroom on the second floor adjoining a bath was turned into a kitchen, with a small gas stove, and Angela at once began housekeeping operations on the tiny basis necessitated by their income. Some furniture had to be secured, for the room was not completely furnished, but Angela by haunting the second-hand stores in New York, looking through all the department stores, and visiting certain private sales, managed to find a few things which she could buy cheaply and which would fit in with the dressing table, library table, dining table and one bed which were already provided. The necessary curtains for the bath and kitchen windows she cut, decorated and hung for herself. She went down to the storage company where the unsold and undisplayed portion of Eugene's pictures were and brought back seven, which she placed in the general living-room and dining-room. All Eugene's clothes, his underwear and socks particularly, received her immediate attention, and she soon had his rather attenuated wardrobe in good condition. From the local market she bought good vegetables and a little meat and made delightful stews, ragouts, combinations of eggs and tasty meat juices after the French fashion. All her housekeeping art was employed to the utmost to make everything look clean and neat, to maintain a bountiful supply of varied food on the table and yet to keep the cost down, so that they could not only live on nine dollars a week, but set aside a dollar or more of that for what Angela called their private bank account. She had a little hollow brown jug, calculated to hold fifteen dollars in change, which could be opened when full, which she conscientiously endeavored to fill and refill. Her one desire was to rehabilitate her husband in the eyes of the world--this time to stay--and she was determined to do it.

For another thing, reflection and conversation with one person and another had taught her that it was not well for herself or for Eugene for her to encourage him in his animal passions. Some woman in Blackwood had pointed out a local case of locomotor-ataxia which had resulted from lack of self-control, and she had learned that it was believed that many other nervous troubles sprang from the same source. Perhaps Eugene's had. She had resolved to protect him from himself. She did not believe she could be injured, but Eugene was so sensitive, so emotional.

The trouble with the situation was that it was such a sharp change from his recent free and to him delightful mode of existence that it was almost painful. He could see that everything appeared to be satisfactory to her, that she thought all his days had been moral and full of hard work. Carlotta's presence in the background was not suspected. Her idea was that they would work hard together now along simple, idealistic lines to the one end--success for him, and of course, by reflection, for her.

Eugene saw the charm of it well enough, but it was only as something quite suitable for others. He was an artist. The common laws of existence could not reasonably apply to an artist. The latter should have intellectual freedom, the privilege of going where he pleased, associating with whom he chose. This marriage business was a galling yoke, cutting off all rational opportunity for enjoyment, and he was now after a brief period of freedom having that yoke heavily adjusted to his neck again. Gone were all the fine dreams of pleasure and happiness which so recently had been so real--the hope of living with Carlotta--the hope of associating with her on easy and natural terms in that superior world which she represented. Angela's insistence on the thought that he should work every day and bring home nine dollars a week, or rather its monthly equivalent, made it necessary for him to take sharp care of the little money he had kept out of the remainder of the three hundred in order to supply any deficiency which might occur from his taking time off. For there was no opportunity now of seeing Carlotta of an evening, and it was necessary to take a regular number of afternoons or mornings off each week, in order to meet her. He would leave the little apartment as usual at a quarter to seven in the morning, dressed suitably for possible out-door expeditions, for in anticipation of difficulty he had told Angela that it was his custom to do this, and sometimes he would go to the factory and sometimes he would not. There was a car line which carried him rapidly cityward to a rendezvous, and he would either ride or walk with her as the case might be. There was constant thought on his and her part of the risk involved, but still they persisted. By some stroke of ill or good fortune Norman Wilson returned from Chicago, so that Carlotta's movements had to be calculated to a nicety, but she did not care. She trusted most to the automobiles which she could hire at convenient garages and which would carry them rapidly away from the vicinity where they might be seen and recognized.

It was a tangled life, difficult and dangerous. There was no peace in it, for there is neither peace nor happiness in deception. A burning joy at one time was invariably followed by a disturbing remorse afterward. There was Carlotta's mother, Norman Wilson, and Angela, to guard against, to say nothing of the constant pricking of his own conscience.

It is almost a foregone conclusion in any situation of this kind that it cannot endure. The seed of its undoing is in itself. We think that our actions when unseen of mortal eyes resolve themselves into nothingness, but this is not true. They are woven indefinably into our being, and shine forth ultimately as the real self, in spite of all our pretences. One could almost accept the Brahmanistic dogma of a psychic body which sees and is seen where we dream all to be darkness. There is no other supposition on which to explain the facts of intuition. So many individuals have it. They know so well without knowing why they know.

Angela had this intuitive power in connection with Eugene. Because of her great affection for him she divined or apprehended many things in connection with him long before they occurred. Throughout her absence from him she had been haunted by the idea that she ought to be with him, and now that she was here and the first excitement of contact and adjustment was over, she was beginning to be aware of something. Eugene was not the same as he had been a little while before he had left her. His attitude, in spite of a kindly show of affection, was distant and preoccupied. He had no real power of concealing anything. He appeared at times--at most times when he was with her--to be lost in a mist of speculation. He was lonely and a little love-sick, because under the pressure of home affairs Carlotta was not able to see him quite so much. At the same time, now that the fall was coming on, he was growing weary of the shop at Speonk, for the gray days and slight chill which settled upon the earth at times caused the shop windows to be closed and robbed the yard of that air of romance which had characterized it when he first came there. He could not take his way of an evening along the banks of the stream to the arms of Carlotta. The novelty of Big John and Joseph Mews and Malachi Dempsey and Little Suddsy had worn off. He was beginning now to see also that they were nothing but plain workingmen after all, worrying over the fact that they were not getting more than fifteen or seventeen and a half cents an hour; jealous of each other and their superiors, full of all the frailties and weaknesses to which the flesh is heir.

His coming had created a slight diversion for them, for he was very strange, but his strangeness was no longer a novelty. They were beginning to see him also as a relatively commonplace human being. He was an artist, to be sure, but his actions and intentions were not so vastly different from those of other men.

A shop of this kind, like any other institution where people are compelled by force of circumstances to work together whether the weather be fair or foul, or the mood grave or gay, can readily become and frequently does become a veritable hell. Human nature is a subtle, irritable, irrational thing. It is not so much governed by rules of ethics and conditions of understanding as a thing of moods and temperament. Eugene could easily see, philosopher that he was, that these people would come here enveloped in some mist of home trouble or secret illness or grief and would conceive that somehow it was not their state of mind but the things around them which were the cause of all their woe. Sour looks would breed sour looks in return; a gruff question would beget a gruff answer; there were long-standing grudges between one man and another, based on nothing more than a grouchy observation at one time in the past. He thought by introducing gaiety and persistent, if make-believe, geniality that he was tending to obviate and overcome the general condition, but this was only relatively true. His own gaiety was capable of becoming as much of a weariness to those who were out of the spirit of it, as was the sour brutality with which at times he was compelled to contend. So he wished that he might arrange to get well and get out of here, or at least change his form of work, for it was plain to be seen that this condition would not readily improve. His presence was a commonplace. His power to entertain and charm was practically gone.

This situation, coupled with Angela's spirit of honest conservatism was bad, but it was destined to be much worse. From watching him and endeavoring to decipher his moods, Angela came to suspect something--she could not say what. He did not love her as much as he had. There was a coolness in his caresses which was not there when he left her. What could have happened, she asked herself. Was it just absence, or what? One day when he had returned from an afternoon's outing with Carlotta and was holding her in his arms in greeting, she asked him solemnly:

"Do you love me, Honeybun?"

"You know I do," he asseverated, but without any energy, for he could not regain his old original feeling for her. There was no trace of it, only sympathy, pity, and a kind of sorrow that she was being so badly treated after all her efforts.

"No, you don't," she replied, detecting the hollow ring in what he said. Her voice was sad, and her eyes showed traces of that wistful despair into which she could so readily sink at times.

"Why, yes I do, Angelface," he insisted. "What makes you ask? What's come over you?" He was wondering whether she had heard anything or seen anything and was concealing her knowledge behind this preliminary inquiry.

"Nothing," she replied. "Only you don't love me. I don't know what it is. I don't know why. But I can feel it right here," and she laid her hand on her heart.

The action was sincere, unstudied. It hurt him, for it was like that of a little child.

"Oh, hush! Don't say that," he pleaded. "You know I do. Don't look so gloomy. I love you--don't you know I do?" and he kissed her.

"No, no!" said Angela. "I know! You don't. Oh, dear; oh, dear; I feel so bad!"

Eugene was dreading another display of the hysteria with which he was familiar, but it did not come. She conquered her mood, inasmuch as she had no real basis for suspicion, and went about the work of getting him his dinner. She was depressed, though, and he was fearful. What if she should ever find out!

More days passed. Carlotta called him up at the shop occasionally, for there was no phone where he lived, and she would not have risked it if there had been. She sent him registered notes to be signed for, addressed to Henry Kingsland and directed to the post office at Speonk. Eugene was not known there as Witla and easily secured these missives, which were usually very guarded in their expressions and concerned appointments--the vaguest, most mysterious directions, which he understood. They made arrangements largely from meeting to meeting, saying, "If I can't keep it Thursday at two it will be Friday at the same time; and if not then, Saturday. If anything happens I'll send you a registered special." So it went on.

One noontime Eugene walked down to the little post office at Speonk to look for a letter, for Carlotta had not been able to meet him the previous day and had phoned instead that she would write the following day. He found it safely enough, and after glancing at it--it contained but few words--decided to tear it up as usual and throw the pieces away. A mere expression, "Ashes of Roses," which she sometimes used to designate herself, and the superscription, "Oh, Genie!" made it, however, inexpressibly dear to him. He thought he would hold it in his possession just a little while--a few hours longer. It was enigmatic enough to anyone but himself, he thought, even if found. "The bridge, two, Wednesday." The bridge referred to was one over the Harlem at Morris Heights. He kept the appointment that day as requested, but by some necromancy of fate he forgot the letter until he was within his own door. Then he took it out, tore it up into four or five pieces quickly, put it in his vest pocket, and went upstairs intending at the first opportunity to dispose of it.

Meanwhile, Angela, for the first time since they had been living at Riverwood, had decided to walk over toward the factory about six o'clock and meet Eugene on his way home. She heard him discourse on the loveliness of this stream and what a pleasure it was to stroll along its banks morning and evening. He was so fond of the smooth water and the overhanging leaves! She had walked with him there already on several Sundays. When she went this evening she thought what a pleasant surprise it would be for him, for she had prepared everything on leaving so that his supper would not be delayed when they reached home. She heard the whistle blow as she neared the shop, and, standing behind a clump of bushes on the thither side of the stream, she waited, expecting to pounce out on Eugene with a loving "Boo!" He did not come.

The forty or fifty men who worked here trickled out like a little stream of black ants, and then, Eugene not appearing, Angela went over to the gate which Joseph Mews in the official capacity of gateman, after the whistle blew, was closing.

"Is Mr. Witla here?" asked Angela, peering through the bars at him. Eugene had described Joseph so accurately to her that she recognized him at sight.

"No, ma'am," replied Joseph, quite taken back by this attractive arrival, for good-looking women were not common at the shop gate of the factory. "He left four or five hours ago. I think he left at one o'clock, if I remember right. He wasn't working with us today. He was working out in the yard."

"You don't know where he went, do you?" asked Angela, who was surprised at this novel information. Eugene had not said anything about going anywhere. Where could he have gone?

"No'm, I don't," replied Joseph volubly. "He sometimes goes off this way--quite frequent, ma'am. His wife calls him up--er--now, maybe you're his wife."

"I am," said Angela; but she was no longer thinking of what she was saying, her words on the instant were becoming mechanical. Eugene going away frequently? He had never said anything to her! His wife calling him up! Could there be another woman! Instantly all her old suspicions, jealousies, fears, awoke, and she was wondering why she had not fixed on this fact before. That explained Eugene's indifference, of course. That explained his air of abstraction. He wasn't thinking of her, the miserable creature! He was thinking of someone else. Still she could not be sure, for she had no proof. Two adroit questions elicited the fact that no one in the shop had ever seen his wife. He had just gone out. A woman had called up.

Angela took her way home amid a whirling fire of conjecture. When she reached it Eugene was not there yet, for he sometimes delayed his coming, lingering, as he said, to look at the water. It was natural enough in an artist. She went upstairs and hung the broad-brimmed straw she had worn in the closet, and went into the kitchen to await his coming. Experience with him and the nature of her own temperament determined her to enact a rôle of subtlety. She would wait until he spoke, pretending that she had not been out. She would ask whether he had had a hard day, and see whether he disclosed the fact that he had been away from the factory. That would show her positively what he was doing and whether he was deliberately deceiving her.

Eugene came up the stairs, gay enough but anxious to deposit the scraps of paper where they would not be seen. No opportunity came for Angela was there to greet him.

"Did you have a hard job today?" she asked, noting that he made no preliminary announcement of any absence.

"Not very," he replied; "no. I don't look tired?"

"No," she said bitterly, but concealing her feelings; she wanted to see how thoroughly and deliberately he would lie. "But I thought maybe you might have. Did you stop to look at the water tonight?"

"Yes," he replied smoothly. "It's very lovely over there. I never get tired of it. The sun on the leaves these days now that they are turning yellow is so beautiful. They look a little like stained glass at certain angles."

Her first impulse after hearing this was to exclaim, "Why do you lie to me, Eugene?" for her temper was fiery, almost uncontrollable at times; but she restrained herself. She wanted to find out more--how she did not know, but time, if she could only wait a little, would help her. Eugene went to the bath, congratulating himself on the ease of his escape--the comfortable fact that he was not catechised very much; but in this temporary feeling of satisfaction he forgot the scraps of paper in his vest pocket--though not for long. He hung his coat and vest on a hook and started into the bedroom to get himself a fresh collar and tie. While he was in there Angela passed the bathroom door. She was always interested in Eugene's clothes, how they were wearing, but tonight there were other thoughts in her mind. Hastily and by intuition she went through his pockets, finding the torn scraps, then for excuse took his coat and vest down to clean certain spots. At the same moment Eugene thought of his letter. He came hurrying out to get it, or the pieces, rather, but Angela already had them and was looking at them curiously.

"What was that?" she asked, all her suspicious nature on the qui vive for additional proof. Why should he keep the torn fragments of a letter in his pocket? For days she had had a psychic sense of something impending. Everything about him seemed strangely to call for investigation. Now it was all coming out.

"Nothing," he said nervously. "A memorandum. Throw it in the paper box."

Angela noted the peculiarity of his voice and manner. She was taken by the guilty expression of his eyes. Something was wrong. It concerned these scraps of paper. Maybe it was in these she would be able to read the riddle of his conduct. The woman's name might be in here. Like a flash it came to her that she might piece these scraps together, but there was another thought equally swift which urged her to pretend indifference. That might help her. Pretend now and she would know more later. She threw them in the paper box, thinking to piece them together at her leisure. Eugene noted her hesitation, her suspicion. He was afraid she would do something, what he could not guess. He breathed more easily when the papers fluttered into the practically empty box, but he was nervous. If they were only burned! He did not think she would attempt to put them together, but he was afraid. He would have given anything if his sense of romance had not led him into this trap.

Chapter XXVII

Angela was quick to act upon her thought. No sooner had Eugene entered the bath than she gathered up the pieces, threw other bits of paper like them in their place and tried quickly to piece them together on the ironing board where she was. It was not difficult; the scraps were not small. On one triangular bit were the words, "Oh, Genie!" with a colon after it; on another the words, "The bridge," and on another "Roses." There was no doubt in her mind from this preliminary survey that this was a love note, and every nerve in her body tingled to the terrible import of it. Could it really be true? Could Eugene have found someone else? Was this the cause of his coolness and his hypocritical pretence of affection? and of his not wanting her to come to him? Oh, God! Would her sufferings never cease! She hurried into the front room, her face white, her hand clenching the tell-tale bits, and there set to work to complete her task. It did not take her long. In four minutes it was all together, and then she saw it all. A love note! From some demon of a woman. No doubt of it! Some mysterious woman in the background. "Ashes of Roses!" Now God curse her for a siren, a love thief, a hypnotizing snake, fascinating men with her evil eyes. And Eugene! The dog! The scoundrel! The vile coward! The traitor! Was there no decency, no morality, no kindness, no gratitude in his soul? After all her patience, all her suffering, all her loneliness, her poverty. To treat her like this! Writing that he was sick and lonely and unable to have her with him, and at the same time running around with a strange woman. "Ashes of Roses!" Oh, curses, curses, curses on her harlot's heart and brain! Might God strike her dead for her cynical, brutal seizing upon that sacred possession which belonged to another. She wrung her hands desperately.

Angela was fairly beside herself. Through her dainty little head ran a foaming torrent of rage, hate, envy, sorrow, self-commiseration, brutal desire for revenge. If she could only get at this woman! If she could only denounce Eugene now to his face! If she could only find them together and kill them! How she would like to strike her on the mouth! How tear her hair and her eyes out! Something of the forest cat's cruel rage shone in her gleaming eyes as she thought of her, for if she could have had Carlotta there alone she would have tortured her with hot irons, torn her tongue and teeth from their roots, beaten her into insensibility and an unrecognizable mass. She was a real tigress now, her eyes gleaming, her red lips wet. She would kill her! kill her!! kill her!!! As God was judge, she would kill her if she could find her, and Eugene and herself. Yes, yes, she would. Better death than this agony of suffering. Better a thousand times to be dead with this beast of a woman dead beside her and Eugene than to suffer this way. She didn't deserve it. Why did God torture her so? Why was she made to bleed at every step by this her sacrificial love? Had she not been a good wife? Had she not laid every tribute of tenderness, patience, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice and virtue on the altar of love? What more could God ask? What more could man want? Had she not waited on Eugene in sickness and health? She had gone without clothes, gone without friends, hidden herself away in Blackwood the seven months while he was here frittering away his health and time in love and immorality, and what was her reward? In Chicago, in Tennessee, in Mississippi, had she not waited on him, sat up with him of nights, walked the floor with him when he was nervous, consoled him in his fear of poverty and failure, and here she was now, after seven long months of patient waiting and watching--eating her lonely heart out--forsaken. Oh, the inconceivable inhumanity of the human heart! To think anybody could be so vile, so low, so unkind, so cruel! To think that Eugene with his black eyes, his soft hair, his smiling face, could be so treacherous, so subtle, so dastardly! Could he really be as mean as this note proved him to be? Could he be as brutal, as selfish? Was she awake or asleep? Was this a dream? Ah, God! no, no it was not a dream. It was a cold, bitter, agonizing reality. And the cause of all her suffering was there in the bathroom now shaving himself.

For one moment she thought she would go in and strike him where he stood. She thought she could tear his heart out, cut him up, but then suddenly the picture of him bleeding and dead came to her and she recoiled. No, no, she could not do that! Oh, no, not Eugene--and yet and yet----

"Oh, God, let me get my hands on that woman!" she said to herself. "Let me get my hands on her. I'll kill her, I'll kill her! I'll kill her!"

This torrent of fury and self-pity was still raging in her heart when the bathroom knob clicked and Eugene came out. He was in his undershirt, trousers and shoes, looking for a clean white shirt. He was very nervous over the note which had been thrown in scraps into the box, but looking in the kitchen and seeing the pieces still there he was slightly reassured. Angela was not there; he could come back and get them when he found out where she was. He went on into the bedroom, looking into the front room as he did so. She appeared to be at the window waiting for him. After all, she was probably not as suspicious as he thought. It was his own imagination. He was too nervous and sensitive. Well, he would get those pieces now if he could and throw them out of the window. Angela should not have a chance to examine them if she wanted to. He slipped out into the kitchen, made a quick grab for the little heap, and sent the pieces flying. Then he felt much better. He would never bring another letter home from anybody, that was a certainty. Fate was too much against him.

Angela came out after a bit, for the click of the bathroom knob had sobered her a little. Her rage was high, her pulse abnormal, her whole being shaken to its roots, but still she realized that she must have time to think. She must see who this woman was first. She must have time to find her. Eugene mustn't know. Where was she now? Where was this bridge? Where did they meet? Where did she live? She wondered for the moment why she couldn't think it all out, why it didn't come to her in a flash, a revelation. If she could only know!

In a few minutes Eugene came in, clean-shaven, smiling, his equanimity and peace of mind fairly well restored. The letter was gone. Angela could never know. She might suspect, but this possible burst of jealousy had been nipped in the bud. He came over toward her to put his arm round her, but she slipped away from him, pretending to need the sugar. He let this effort at love making go--the will for the deed, and sat down at the snow-white little table, set with tempting dishes and waited to be served. The day had been very pleasant, being early in October, and he was pleased to see a last lingering ray of light falling on some red and yellow leaves. This yard was very beautiful. This little flat, for all their poverty, very charming. Angela was neat and trim in a dainty house dress of mingled brown and green. A dark blue studio apron shielded her bosom and skirt. She was very pale and distraught-looking, but Eugene for the time was almost unconscious of it--he was so relieved.

"Are you very tired, Angela?" he finally asked sympathetically.

"Yes, I'm not feeling so well today," she replied.

"What have you been doing, ironing?"

"Oh, yes, and cleaning. I worked on the cupboard."

"You oughtn't to try to do so much," he said cheerfully. "You're not strong enough. You think you're a little horse, but you are only a colt. Better go slow, hadn't you?"

"I will after I get everything straightened out to suit me," she replied.

She was having the struggle of her life to conceal her real feelings. Never at any time had she undergone such an ordeal as this. Once in the studio, when she discovered those two letters, she thought she was suffering--but that, what was that to this? What were her suspicions concerning Frieda? What were the lonely longings at home, her grieving and worrying over his illness? Nothing, nothing! Now he was actually faithless to her. Now she had the evidence. This woman was here. She was somewhere in the immediate background. After these years of marriage and close companionship he was deceiving her. It was possible that he had been with this woman today, yesterday, the day before. The letter was not dated. Could it be that she was related to Mrs. Hibberdell? Eugene had said that there was a married daughter, but never that she was there. If she was there, why should he have moved? He wouldn't have. Was it the wife of the man he was last living with? No; she was too homely. Angela had seen her. Eugene would never associate with her. If she could only know! "Ashes of Roses!" The world went red before her eyes. There was no use bursting into a storm now, though. If she could only be calm it would be better. If she only had someone to talk to--if there were a minister or a bosom friend! She might go to a detective agency. They might help her. A detective could trace this woman and Eugene. Did she want to do this? It cost money. They were very poor now. Paugh! Why should she worry about their poverty, mending her dresses, going without hats, going without decent shoes, and he wasting his time and being upon some shameless strumpet! If he had money, he would spend it on her. Still, he had handed her almost all the money he had brought East with him intact. How was that?

All the time Eugene was sitting opposite her eating with fair heartiness. If the trouble about the letter had not come out so favorably he would have been without appetite, but now he felt at ease. Angela said she was not hungry and could not eat. She passed him the bread, the butter, the hashed brown potatoes, the tea, and he ate cheerfully.

"I think I am going to try and get out of that shop over there," he volunteered affably.

"Why?" asked Angela mechanically.

"I'm tired of it. The men are not so interesting to me now. I'm tired of them. I think Mr. Haverford will transfer me if I write to him. He said he would. I'd rather be outside with some section gang if I could. It's going to be very dreary in the shop when they close it up."

"Well, if you're tired you'd better," replied Angela. "Your mind needs diversion, I know that. Why don't you write to Mr. Haverford?"

"I will," he said, but he did not immediately. He went into the front room and lit the gas eventually, reading a paper, then a book, then yawning wearily. Angela came in after a time and sat down pale and tired. She went and secured a little workbasket in which were socks undarned and other odds and ends and began on those, but she revolted at the thought of doing anything for him and put them up. She got out a skirt of hers which she was making. Eugene watched her a little while lazily, his artistic eye measuring the various dimensions of her features. She had a well-balanced face, he finally concluded. He noted the effect of the light on her hair--the peculiar hue it gave it--and wondered if he could get that in oil. Night scenes were harder than those of full daylight. Shadows were so very treacherous. He got up finally.

"Well, I'm going to turn in," he said. "I'm tired. I have to get up at six. Oh, dear, this darn day labor business gives me a pain. I wish it were over."

Angela did not trust herself to speak. She was so full of pain and despair that she thought if she spoke she would cry. He went out, saying: "Coming soon?" She nodded her head. When he was gone the storm burst and she broke into a blinding flood of tears. They were not only tears of sorrow, but of rage and helplessness. She went out on a little balcony which was there and cried alone, the night lights shining wistfully about. After the first storm she began to harden and dry up again, for helpless tears were foreign to her in a rage. She dried her eyes and became white-faced and desperate as before.

The dog, the scoundrel, the brute, the hound! she thought. How could she ever have loved him? How could she love him now? Oh, the horror of life, its injustice, its cruelty, its shame! That she should be dragged through the mire with a man like this. The pity of it! The shame! If this was art, death take it! And yet hate him as she might--hate this hellish man-trap who signed herself "Ashes of Roses"--she loved him, too. She could not help it. She knew she loved him. Oh, to be crossed by two fevers like this! Why might she not die? Why not die, right now?

Chapter XXVIII

The hells of love are bitter and complete. There were days after that when she watched him, followed him down the pleasant lane from the house to the water's edge, slipping out unceremoniously after he had gone not more than eight hundred feet. She watched the bridge at Riverwood at one and six, expecting that Eugene and his paramour might meet there. It just happened that Carlotta was compelled to leave town for ten days with her husband, and so Eugene was safe. On two occasions he went downtown--into the heart of the great city, anxious to get a breath of the old life that so fascinated him, and Angela followed him only to lose track of him quickly. He did nothing evil, however, merely walked, wondering what Miriam Finch and Christina Channing and Norma Whitmore were doing these days and what they were thinking of him in his long absence. Of all the people he had known, he had only seen Norma Whitmore once and that was not long after he returned to New York. He had given her a garbled explanation of his illness, stated that he was going to work now and proposed to come and see her. He did his best to avoid observation, however, for he dreaded explaining the reason of his non-productive condition. Miriam Finch was almost glad that he had failed, since he had treated her so badly. Christina Channing was in opera, as he quickly discovered, for he saw her name blazoned one day the following November in the newspapers. She was a star of whose talent great hopes were entertained, and was interested almost exclusively in her career. She was to sing in "Bohème" and "Rigoletto."

Another thing, fortunate for Eugene at this time, was that he changed his work. There came to the shop one day an Irish foreman, Timothy Deegan, master of a score of "guineas," as he called the Italian day laborers who worked for him, who took Eugene's fancy greatly. He was of medium height, thick of body and neck, with a cheerful, healthy red face, a keen, twinkling gray eye, and stiff, closely cropped gray hair and mustache. He had come to lay the foundation for a small dynamo in the engine room at Speonk, which was to supply the plant with light in case of night work, and a car of his had been backed in, a tool car, full of boards, barrows, mortar boards, picks and shovels. Eugene was amused and astonished at his insistent, defiant attitude and the brisk manner in which he was handing out orders to his men.

"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels now! Get the picks!" he heard him shout. "Bring some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement now? Where's the cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement. What arre ye all doing? Hurry now, hurry! Bring the cement."

"Well, he knows how to give orders," commented Eugene to Big John, who was standing near. "He certainly does," replied the latter.

To himself Eugene observed, hearing only the calls at first, "the Irish brute." Later he discovered a subtle twinkle in Deegan's eyes as he stood brazenly in the door, looking defiantly about. There was no brutality in it, only self-confidence and a hearty Irish insistence on the necessity of the hour.

"Well, you're a dandy!" commented Eugene boldly after a time, and laughed.

"Ha! ha! ha!" mocked Deegan in return. "If you had to work as harred as these men you wouldn't laugh."

"I'm not laughing at them. I'm laughing at you," explained Eugene.

"Laugh," said Deegan. "Shure you're as funny to me as I am to you."

Eugene laughed again. The Irishman agreed with himself that there was humor in it. He laughed too. Eugene patted his big rough shoulder with his hands and they were friends immediately. It did not take Deegan long to find out from Big John why he was there and what he was doing.

"An arrtist!" he commented. "Shewer he'd better be outside than in. The loikes of him packin' shavin's and him laughin' at me."

Big John smiled.

"I believe he wants to get outside," he said.

"Why don't he come with me, then? He'd have a foine time workin' with the guineas. Shewer 'twould make a man av him--a few months of that"--and he pointed to Angelo Esposito shoveling clay.

Big John thought this worth reporting to Eugene. He did not think that he wanted to work with the guineas, but he might like to be with Deegan. Eugene saw his opportunity. He liked Deegan.

"Would you like to have an artist who's looking for health come and work for you, Deegan?" Eugene asked genially. He thought Deegan might refuse, but it didn't matter. It was worth the trial.

"Shewer!" replied the latter.

"Will I have to work with the Italians?"

"There'll be plenty av work for ye to do without ever layin' yer hand to pick or shovel unless ye want to. Shewer that's no work fer a white man to do."

"And what do you call them, Deegan? Aren't they white?"

"Shewer they're naat."

"What are they, then? They're not black."

"Nagurs, of coorse."

"But they're not negroes."

"Will, begad, they're naat white. Any man kin tell that be lookin' at thim."

Eugene smiled. He understood at once the solid Irish temperament which could draw this hearty conclusion. There was no malice in it. Deegan did not underestimate these Italians. He liked his men, but they weren't white. He didn't know what they were exactly, but they weren't white. He was standing over them a moment later shouting, "Up with it! Up with it! Down with it! Down with it!" as though his whole soul were intent on driving the last scrap of strength out of these poor underlings, when as a matter of fact they were not working very hard at all. His glance was roving about in a general way as he yelled and they paid little attention to him. Once in a while he would interpolate a "Come, Matt!" in a softer key--a key so soft that it was entirely out of keeping with his other voice. Eugene saw it all clearly. He understood Deegan.

"I think I'll get Mr. Haverford to transfer me to you, if you'll let me come," he said at the close of the day when Deegan was taking off his overalls and the "Eyetalians," as he called them, were putting the things back in the car.

"Shewer!" said Deegan, impressed by the great name of Haverford. If Eugene could accomplish that through such a far-off, wondrous personality, he must be a remarkable man himself. "Come along. I'll be glad to have ye. Ye can just make out the O. K. blanks and the repoarts and watch over the min sich times as I'll naat be there and--well--all told, ye'll have enough to keep ye busy."

Eugene smiled. This was a pleasant prospect. Big John had told him during the morning that Deegan went up and down the road from Peekskill on the main line, Chatham on the Midland Division, and Mt. Kisco on a third branch to New York City. He built wells, culverts, coal bins, building piers--small brick buildings--anything and everything, in short, which a capable foreman-mason ought to be able to build, and in addition he was fairly content and happy in his task. Eugene could see it. The atmosphere of the man was wholesome. He was like a tonic--a revivifying dynamo to this sickly overwrought sentimentalist.

That night he went home to Angela full of the humor and romance of his new situation. He liked the idea of it. He wanted to tell her about Deegan--to make her laugh. He was destined unfortunately to another kind of reception.

For Angela, by this time, had endured the agony of her discovery to the breaking point. She had listened to his pretences, knowing them to be lies, until she could endure it no longer. In following him she had discovered nothing, and the change in his work would make the chase more difficult. It was scarcely possible for anyone to follow him, for he himself did not know where he would be from day to day. He would be here, there, and everywhere. His sense of security as well as of his unfairness made him sensitive about being nice in the unimportant things. When he thought at all he was ashamed of what he was doing--thoroughly ashamed. Like the drunkard he appeared to be mastered by his weakness, and the psychology of his attitude is so best interpreted. He caressed her sympathetically, for he thought from her drawn, weary look that she was verging on some illness. She appeared to him to be suffering from worry for him, overwork, or approaching malady.

But Eugene in spite of his unfaithfulness did sympathize with Angela greatly. He appreciated her good qualities--her truthfulness, economy, devotion and self-sacrifice in all things which related to him. He was sorry that his own yearning for freedom crossed with her desire for simple-minded devotion on his part. He could not love her as she wanted him to, that he knew, and yet he was at times sorry for it, very. He would look at her when she was not looking at him, admiring her industry, her patience, her pretty figure, her geniality in the face of many difficulties, and wish that she could have had a better fate than to have met and married him.

Because of these feelings on his part for her he could not bear to see her suffer. When she appeared to be ill he could not help drawing near to her, wanting to know how she was, endeavoring to make her feel better by those sympathetic, emotional demonstrations which he knew meant so much to her. On this particular evening, noting the still drawn agony of her face, he was moved to insist. "What's the matter with you, Angelface, these days? You look so tired. You're not right. What's troubling you?"

"Oh, nothing," replied Angela wearily.

"But I know there is," he replied. "You can't be feeling well. What's ailing you? You're not like yourself at all. Won't you tell me, sweet? What's the trouble?"

He was thinking because Angela said nothing that it must be a real physical illness. Any emotional complaint vented itself quickly.

"Why should you care?" she asked cautiously, breaking her self-imposed vow of silence. She was thinking that Eugene and this woman, whoever she was, were conspiring to defeat her and that they were succeeding. Her voice had changed from one of weary resignation to subtle semi-concealed complaint and offense, and Eugene noted it. Before she could add any more, he had observed, "Why shouldn't I? Why, how you talk! What's the matter now?"

Angela really did not intend to go on. Her query was dragged out of her by his obvious sympathy. He was sorry for her in some general way. It made her pain and wrath all the greater. And his additional inquiry irritated her the more.

"Why should you?" she asked weepingly. "You don't want me. You don't like me. You pretend sympathy when I look a little bad, but that's all. But you don't care for me. If you could get rid of me, you would. That is so plain."

"Why, what are you talking about?" he asked, astonished. Had she found out anything? Was the incident of the scraps of paper really closed? Had anybody been telling her anything about Carlotta? Instantly he was all at sea. Still he had to pretend.

"You know I care," he said. "How can you say that?"

"You don't. You know you don't!" she flared up suddenly. "Why do you lie? You don't care. Don't touch me. Don't come near me. I'm sick of your hypocritical pretences! Oh!" And she straightened up with her finger nails cutting into her palms.

Eugene at the first expression of disbelief on her part had laid his hand soothingly on her arm. That was why she had jumped away from him. Now he drew back, nonplussed, nervous, a little defiant. It was easier to combat rage than sorrow; but he did not want to do either.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked, assuming a look of bewildered innocence. "What have I done now?"

"What haven't you done, you'd better ask. You dog! You coward!" flared Angela. "Leaving me to stay out in Wisconsin while you go running around with a shameless woman. Don't deny it! Don't dare to deny it!"--this apropos of a protesting movement on the part of Eugene's head--"I know all! I know more than I want to know. I know how you've been acting. I know what you've been doing. I know how you've been lying to me. You've been running around with a low, vile wretch of a woman while I have been staying out in Blackwood eating my heart out, that's what you've been doing. Dear Angela! Dear Angelface! Dear Madonna Doloroso! Ha! What have you been calling her, you lying, hypocritical coward! What names have you for her, Hypocrite! Brute! Liar! I know what you've been doing. Oh, how well I know! Why was I ever born?--oh, why, why?"

Her voice trailed off in a wail of agony. Eugene stood there astonished to the point of inefficiency. He could not think of a single thing to do or say. He had no idea upon what evidence she based her complaint. He fancied that it must be much more than had been contained in that little note which he had torn up. She had not seen that--of that he was reasonably sure--or was he? Could she have taken it out of the box while he was in the bath and then put it back again? This sounded like it. She had looked very bad that night. How much did she know? Where had she secured this information? Mrs. Hibberdell? Carlotta? No! Had she seen her? Where? When?

"You're talking through your hat," he said aimlessly and largely in order to get time. "You're crazy! What's got into you, anyhow? I haven't been doing anything of the sort."

"Oh, haven't you!" she sneered. "You haven't been meeting her at bridges and road houses and street cars, have you? You liar! You haven't been calling her 'Ashes of Roses' and 'River Nymph' and 'Angel Girl.'" Angela was making up names and places out of her own mind. "I suppose you used some of the pet names on her that you gave to Christina Channing, didn't you? She'd like those, the vile strumpet! And you, you dog, pretending to me--pretending sympathy, pretending loneliness, pretending sorrow that I couldn't be here! A lot you cared what I was doing or thinking or suffering. Oh, I hate you, you horrible coward! I hate her! I hope something terrible happens to you. If I could get at her now I would kill her and you both--and myself. I would! I wish I could die! I wish I could die!"

Eugene was beginning to get the measure of his iniquity as Angela interpreted it. He could see now how cruelly he had hurt her. He could see now how vile what he was doing looked in her eyes. It was bad business--running with other women--no doubt of it. It always ended in something like this--a terrible storm in which he had to sit by and hear himself called brutal names to which there was no legitimate answer. He had heard of this in connection with other people, but he had never thought it would come to him. And the worst of it was that he was guilty and deserving of it. No doubt of that. It lowered him in his own estimation. It lowered her in his and her own because she had to fight this way. Why did he do it? Why did he drag her into such a situation? It was breaking down that sense of pride in himself which was the only sustaining power a man had before the gaze of the world. Why did he let himself into these situations? Did he really love Carlotta? Did he want pleasure enough to endure such abuse as this? This was a terrible scene. And where would it end? His nerves were tingling, his brain fairly aching. If he could only conquer this desire for another type and be faithful, and yet how dreadful that seemed! To confine himself in all his thoughts to just Angela! It was not possible. He thought of these things, standing there enduring the brunt of this storm. It was a terrible ordeal, but it was not wholly reformatory even at that.

"What's the use of your carrying on like that, Angela?" he said grimly, after he had listened to all this. "It isn't as bad as you think. I'm not a liar, and I'm not a dog! You must have pieced that note I threw in the paper box together and read it. When did you do it?"

He was curious about that and about how much she knew. What were her intentions in regard to him? What in regard to Carlotta? What would she do next?

"When did I do it?" she replied. "When did I do it? What has that to do with it? What right have you to ask? Where is this woman, that's what I want to know? I want to find her. I want to face her. I want to tell her what a wretched beast she is. I'll show her how to come and steal another woman's husband. I'll kill her. I'll kill her and I'll kill you, too. Do you hear? I'll kill you!" And she advanced on him defiantly, blazingly.

Eugene was astounded. He had never seen such rage in any woman. It was wonderful, fascinating, something like a great lightning-riven storm. Angela was capable of hurling thunderbolts of wrath. He had not known that. It raised her in his estimation--made her really more attractive than she would otherwise have been, for power, however displayed, is fascinating. She was so little, so grim, so determined! It was in its way a test of great capability. And he liked her for it even though he resented her abuse.

"No, no, Angela," he said sympathetically and with a keen wish to alleviate her sorrow. "You would not do anything like that. You couldn't!"

"I will! I will!" she declared. "I'll kill her and you, too!"

And then having reached this tremendous height she suddenly broke. Eugene's big, sympathetic understanding was after all too much for her. His brooding patience in the midst of her wrath, his innate sorrow for what he could not or would not help (it was written all over his face), his very obvious presentation of the fact by his attitude that he knew that she loved him in spite of this, was too much for her. It was like beating her hands against a stone. She might kill him and this woman, whoever she was, but she would not have changed his attitude toward her, and that was what she wanted. A great torrent of heart-breaking sobs broke from her, shaking her frame like a reed. She threw her arms and head upon the kitchen table, falling to her knees, and cried and cried. Eugene stood there contemplating the wreck he had made of her dreams. Certainly it was hell, he said to himself; certainly it was. He was a liar, as she said, a dog, a scoundrel. Poor little Angela! Well, the damage had been done. What could he do now? Anything? Certainly not. Not a thing. She was broken--heart-broken. There was no earthly remedy for that. Priests might shrive for broken laws, but for a broken heart what remedy was there?

"Angela!" he called gently. "Angela! I'm sorry! Don't cry! Angela!! Don't cry!"

But she did not hear him. She did not hear anything. Lost in the agony of her situation, she could only sob convulsively until it seemed that her pretty little frame would break to pieces.

Chapter XXIX

Eugene's feelings on this occasion were of reasonable duration. It is always possible under such circumstances to take the victim of our brutalities in our arms and utter a few sympathetic or repentant words. The real kindness and repentance which consists in reformation is quite another matter. One must see with eyes too pure to behold evil to do that. Eugene was not to be reformed by an hour or many hours of agony on anyone's part. Angela was well within the range of his sympathetic interests. He suffered with her keenly, but not enough to outrun or offset his own keen desire for what he considered his spiritual right to enjoy beauty. What harm did it do, he would have asked himself, if he secretly exchanged affectionate looks and feelings with Carlotta or any other woman who fascinated him and in turn was fascinated by him? Could an affinity of this character really be called evil? He was not giving her any money which Angela ought to have, or very little. He did not want to marry her--and she really did not want to marry him, he thought--there was no chance of that, anyhow. He wanted to associate with her. And what harm did that do Angela? None, if she did not know. Of course, if she knew, it was very sad for her and for him. But, if the shoe were on the other foot, and Angela was the one who was acting as he was acting now he would not care, he thought. He forgot to add that if he did not care it would be because he was not in love, and Angela was in love. Such reasoning runs in circles. Only it is not reasoning. It is sentimental and emotional anarchy. There is no will toward progress in it.

When Angela recovered from her first burst of rage and grief it was only to continue it further, though not in quite the same vein. There can only be one superlative in any field of endeavor. Beyond that may be mutterings and thunderings or a shining after-glow, but no second superlative. Angela charged him with every weakness and evil tendency, only to have him look at her in a solemn way, occasionally saying: "Oh, no! You know I'm not as bad as that," or "Why do you abuse me in that way? That isn't true," or "Why do you say that?"

"Because it is so, and you know it's so," Angela would declare.

"Listen, Angela," he replied once, with a certain amount of logic, "there is no use in brow-beating me in this way. It doesn't do any good to call me names. You want me to love you, don't you? That's all that you want. You don't want anything else. Will calling me names make me do it? If I can't I can't, and if I can I can. How will fighting help that?"

She listened to him pitifully, for she knew that her rage was useless, or practically so. He was in the position of power. She loved him. That was the sad part of it. To think that tears and pleadings and wrath might not really avail, after all! He could only love her out of a desire that was not self-generated. That was something she was beginning to see in a dim way as a grim truth.

Once she folded her hands and sat white and drawn, staring at the floor. "Well, I don't know what to do," she declared. "I suppose I ought to leave you. If it just weren't for my family! They all think so highly of the marriage state. They are so naturally faithful and decent. I suppose these qualities have to be born in people. They can't be acquired. You would have to be made over."

Eugene knew she would not leave him. He smiled at the superior condescension of the last remark, though it was not intended as such by her. To think of his being made over after the model Angela and her relatives would lay down!

"I don't know where I'd go or what I'd do," she observed. "I can't go back to my family. I don't want to go there. I haven't been trained in anything except school teaching, and I hate to think of that again. If I could only study stenography or book-keeping!" She was talking as much to clear her own mind as his. She really did not know what to do.

Eugene listened to this self-demonstrated situation with a shamed face. It was hard for him to think of Angela being thrown out on the world as a book-keeper or a stenographer. He did not want to see her doing anything like that. In a way, he wanted to live with her, if it could be done in his way--much as the Mormons might, perhaps. What a lonely life hers would be if she were away from him! And she was not suited to it. She was not suited to the commercial world--she was too homey, too housewifely. He wished he could assure her now that she would not have further cause for grief and mean it, but he was like a sick man wishing he could do the things a hale man might. There was no self-conviction in his thoughts, only the idea that if he tried to do right in this matter he might succeed, but he would be unhappy. So he drifted.

In the meanwhile Eugene had taken up his work with Deegan and was going through a very curious experience. At the time Deegan had stated that he would take him he had written to Haverford, making a polite request for transfer, and was immediately informed that his wishes would be granted. Haverford remembered Eugene kindly. He hoped he was improving. He understood from inquiry of the Superintendent of Buildings that Deegan was in need of a capable assistant, anyhow, and that Eugene could well serve in that capacity. The foreman was always in trouble about his reports. An order was issued to Deegan commanding him to receive Eugene, and another to Eugene from the office of the Superintendent of Buildings ordering him to report to Deegan. Eugene went, finding him working on the problem of constructing a coal bin under the depot at Fords Centre, and raising as much storm as ever. He was received with a grin of satisfaction.

"So here ye arre. Will, ye're just in time. I want ye to go down to the ahffice."

Eugene laughed. "Sure," he said. Deegan was down in a freshly excavated hole and his clothes were redolent of the freshly turned earth which surrounded him. He had a plumb bob in his hand and a spirit level, but he laid them down. Under the neat train shed to which he crawled when Eugene appeared and where they stood, he fished from a pocket of his old gray coat a soiled and crumpled letter which he carefully unfolded with his thick and clumsy fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.

"I want ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "and look after some bolts that arre theyer--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, an' ship thim down to me. They're not miny. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice an' take thim this O. K." And here he fished around and produced another crumpled slip. "It's nonsinse!" he exclaimed, when he saw it. "It's onraisonable! They're aalways yillen fer thim O. K. blanks. Ye'd think, begad, I was goin' to steal thim from thim. Ye'd think I lived on thim things. O. K. blanks, O. K. blanks. From mornin' 'til night O. K. blanks. It's nonsinse! It's onraisonable!" And his face flushed a defiant red.

Eugene could see that some infraction of the railroad's rules had occurred and that Deegan had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon--as defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow.

"I'll fix it," said Eugene. "That's all right. Leave it to me."

Deegan showed some signs of approaching relief. At last he had a man of "intilligence," as he would have expressed it. He flung a parting shot though at his superior as Eugene departed.

"Tell thim I'll sign fer thim when I git thim and naat before!" he rumbled.

Eugene laughed. He knew no such message would be accepted, but he was glad to give Deegan an opportunity to blow off steam. He entered upon his new tasks with vim, pleased with the out-of-doors, the sunshine, the opportunity for brief trips up and down the road like this. It was delightful. He would soon be all right now, that he knew.

He went to Woodlawn and signed for the bolts; went to the office and met the chief clerk (delivering the desired O. K. blanks in person) who informed him of the chief difficulty in Deegan's life. It appeared that there were some twenty-five of these reports to be made out monthly, to say nothing of endless O. K. blanks to be filled in with acknowledgments of material received. Everything had to be signed for in this way, it mattered not whether it was a section of a bridge or a single bolt or a pound of putty. If a man could sit down and reel off a graphic report of what he was doing, he was the pride of the chief clerk's heart. His doing the work properly was taken as a matter of course. Deegan was not efficient at this, though he was assisted at times by his wife and all three of his children, a boy and two girls. He was constantly in hot water.

"My God!" exclaimed the chief clerk, when Eugene explained that Deegan had thought that he might leave the bolts at the station where they would be safe until he needed them and then sign for them when he took them out. He ran his hands distractedly through his hair. "What do you think of that?" he exclaimed. "He'll leave them there until he needs them, will he? What becomes of my reports? I've got to have those O. K.'s. You tell Deegan he ought to know better than that; he's been long enough on the road. You tell him that I said that I want a signed form for everything consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him. And I want it without fail. Let him go and get it. The gall! He's got to come to time about this, or something's going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. You'd better help him in this. I've got to make out my reports on time."

Eugene agreed that he would. This was his field. He could help Deegan. He could be really useful.

Time passed. The weather grew colder, and while the work was interesting at first, like all other things it began after a time to grow monotonous. It was nice enough when the weather was fine to stand out under the trees, where some culvert was being built to bridge a small rivulet or some well to supply the freight engines with water, and survey the surrounding landscape; but when the weather grew colder it was not so nice. Deegan was always interesting. He was forever raising a ruction. He lived a life of hard, narrow activity laid among boards, wheelbarrows, cement, stone, a life which concerned construction and had no particular joy in fruition. The moment a thing was nicely finished they had to leave it and go where everything would be torn up again. Eugene used to look at the wounded ground, the piles of yellow mud, the dirty Italians, clean enough in their spirit, but soiled and gnarled by their labor, and wonder how much longer he could stand it. To think that he, of all men, should be here working with Deegan and the guineas! He became lonesome at times--terribly, and sad. He longed for Carlotta, longed for a beautiful studio, longed for a luxurious, artistic life. It seemed that life had wronged him terribly, and yet he could do nothing about it. He had no money-making capacity.

About this time the construction of a rather pretentious machine shop, two hundred by two hundred feet and four storeys high was assigned to Deegan, largely because of the efficiency which Eugene contributed to Deegan's work. Eugene handled his reports and accounts with rapidity and precision, and this so soothed the division management that they had an opportunity to see Deegan's real worth. The latter was beside himself with excitement, anticipating great credit and distinction for the work he was now to be permitted to do.

"'Tis the foine time we'll have, Eugene, me bye," he exclaimed, "puttin' up that buildin'. 'Tis no culvert we'll be afther buildin' now. Nor no coal bin. Wait till the masons come. Then ye'll see somethin'."

Eugene was pleased that their work was progressing so successfully, but of course there was no future in it for him. He was lonely and disheartened.

Besides, Angela was complaining, and rightfully enough, that they were leading a difficult life--and to what end, so far as she was concerned? He might recover his health and his art (by reason of his dramatic shake-up and changes he appeared to be doing so), but what would that avail her? He did not love her. If he became prosperous again it might be to forsake her, and at best he could only give her money and position if he ever attained these, and how would that help? It was love that she wanted--his love. And she did not have that, or only a mere shadow of it. He had made up his mind after this last fatal argument that he would not pretend to anything he did not feel in regard to her, and this made it even harder. She did believe that he sympathized with her in his way, but it was an intellectual sympathy and had very little to do with the heart. He was sorry for her. Sorry! Sorry! How she hated the thought of that! If he could not do any better than that, what was there in all the years to come but misery?

A curious fact to be noted about this period was that suspicion had so keyed up Angela's perceptions that she could almost tell, and that without knowing, when Eugene was with Carlotta or had been. There was something about his manner when he came in of an evening, to say nothing of those subtler thought waves which passed from him to her when he was with Carlotta, which told her instantly where he had been and what he had been doing. She would ask him where he had been and he would say: "Oh, up to White Plains" or "out to Scarborough," but nearly always when he had been with Carlotta she would flare up with, "Yes, I know where you've been. You've been out again with that miserable beast of a woman. Oh, God will punish her yet! You will be punished! Wait and see."

Tears would flood her eyes and she would berate him roundly.

Eugene stood in profound awe before these subtle outbreaks. He could not understand how it was that Angela came to know or suspect so accurately. To a certain extent he was a believer in spiritualism and the mysteries of a subconscious mind or self. He fancied that there must be some way of this subconscious self seeing or apprehending what was going on and of communicating its knowledge in the form of fear and suspicion to Angela's mind. If the very subtleties of nature were in league against him, how was he to continue or profit in this career? Obviously it could not be done. He would probably be severely punished for it. He was half terrified by the vague suspicion that there might be some laws which tended to correct in this way all the abuses in nature. There might be much vice and crime going seemingly unpunished, but there might also be much correction going on, as the suicides and deaths and cases of insanity seemed to attest. Was this true? Was there no escape from the results of evil except by abandoning it entirely? He pondered over this gravely.

Getting on his feet again financially was not such an easy thing. He had been out of touch now so long with things artistic--the magazine world and the art agencies--that he felt as if he might not readily be able to get in touch again. Besides he was not at all sure of himself. He had made sketches of men and things at Speonk, and of Deegan and his gang on the road, and of Carlotta and Angela, but he felt that they were weak in their import--lacking in the force and feeling which had once characterized his work. He thought of trying his hand at newspaper work if he could make any sort of a connection--working in some obscure newspaper art department until he should feel himself able to do better; but he did not feel at all confident that he could get that. His severe breakdown had made him afraid of life--made him yearn for the sympathy of a woman like Carlotta, or of a larger more hopeful, more tender attitude, and he dreaded looking for anything anywhere. Besides he hated to spare the time unless he were going to get somewhere. His work was so pressing. But he knew he must quit it. He thought about it wearily, wishing he were better placed in this world; and finally screwed up his courage to leave this work, though it was not until something else was quite safely in his hands.