style="font-size:15px;"> "Do you love me just as much as ever?"
She nodded her head. They reached a strip of yellow road, he asking after her father, her mother, her brothers and sisters, and when he saw that they were unobserved he slipped his arm about her and drew her head to him.
"Now we can," he said.
She felt the force of his desire but she missed that note of adoration which had seemed to characterize his first lovemaking. How true it was he had changed! He must have. The city had made her seem less significant. It hurt her to think that life should treat her so. But perhaps she could win him back – could hold him anyhow.
They drove over toward Okoonee, a little crossroads settlement, near a small lake of the same name, a place which was close to the Blue house, and which the Blue's were wont to speak of as "home." On the way Eugene learned that her youngest brother David was a cadet at West Point now and doing splendidly. Samuel had become western freight agent of the Great Northern and was on the way to desirable promotion. Benjamin had completed his law studies and was practising in Racine. He was interested in politics and was going to run for the state legislature. Marietta was still the gay carefree girl she had always been, not at all inclined to choose yet among her many anxious suitors. Eugene thought of her letter to him – wondered if she would look her thoughts into his eyes when he saw her.
"Oh, Marietta," Angela replied when Eugene asked after her, "she's just as dangerous as ever. She makes all the men make love to her."
Eugene smiled. Marietta was always a pleasing thought to him. He wished for the moment that it was Marietta instead of Angela that he was coming to see.
She was as shrewd as she was kind in this instance. Her appearance on meeting Eugene was purposely indifferent and her attitude anything but coaxing and gay. At the same time she suffered a genuine pang of feeling, for Eugene appealed to her. If it were anybody but Angela, she thought, how she would dress and how quickly she would be coquetting with him. Then his love would be won by her and she felt that she could hold it. She had great confidence in her ability to keep any man, and Eugene was a man she would have delighted to hold. As it was she kept out of his way, took sly glances at him here and there, wondered if Angela would truly win him. She was so anxious for Angela's sake. Never, never, she told herself, would she cross her sister's path.
At the Blue homestead he was received as cordially as before. After an hour it quite brought back the feeling of three years before. These open fields, this old house and its lovely lawn, all served to awaken the most poignant sensations. One of Marietta's beaux, over from Waukesha, appeared after Eugene had greeted Mrs. Blue and Marietta, and the latter persuaded him to play a game of tennis with Angela. She invited Eugene to make it a four with her, but not knowing how he refused.
Angela changed to her tennis suit and Eugene opened his eyes to her charms. She was very attractive on the court, quick, flushed, laughing. And when she laughed she had a charming way of showing her even, small, white teeth. She quite awakened a feeling of interest – she looked so dainty and frail. When he saw her afterward in the dark, quiet parlor, he gathered her to his heart with much of the old ardour. She felt the quick change of feeling. Marietta was right. Eugene loved gaiety and color. Although on the way home she had despaired this was much more promising.
Eugene rarely entered on anything half heartedly. If interested at all he was greatly interested. He could so yield himself to the glamour of a situation as to come finally to believe that he was something which he was not. Thus, now he was beginning to accept this situation as Angela and Marietta wished he should, and to see her in somewhat the old light. He overlooked things which in his New York studio, surrounded by the influences which there modified his judgment, he would have seen. Angela was not young enough for him. She was not liberal in her views. She was charming, no doubt of that, but he could not bring her to an understanding of his casual acceptance of life. She knew nothing of his real disposition and he did not tell her. He played the part of a seemingly single-minded Romeo, and as such he was from a woman's point of view beautiful to contemplate. In his own mind he was coming to see that he was fickle but he still did not want to admit it to himself.
There was a night of stars after an evening of June perfection. At five old Jotham came in from the fields, as dignified and patriarchal as ever. He greeted Eugene with a hearty handshake, for he admired him. "I see some of your work now and then," he said, "in these monthly magazines. It's fine. There's a young minister down here near the lake that's very anxious to meet you. He likes to get hold of anything you do, and I always send the books down as soon as Angela gets through with them."
He used the words books and magazines interchangeably, and spoke as though they were not much more important to him than the leaves of the trees, as indeed, they were not. To a mind used to contemplating the succession of crops and seasons, all life with its multitudinous interplay of shapes and forms seemed passing shadows. Even men were like leaves that fall.
Eugene was drawn to old Jotham as a filing to a magnet. His was just the type of mind that appealed to him, and Angela gained by the radiated glory of her father. If he was so wonderful she must be something above the average of womanhood. Such a man could not help but produce exceptional children.
Left alone together it was hardly possible for Angela and Eugene not to renew the old relationship on the old basis. Having gone as far as he had the first time it was natural that he should wish to go as far again and further. After dinner, when she turned to him from her room, arrayed in a soft evening dress of clinging texture – somewhat low in the neck by request of Marietta, who had helped her to dress – Eugene was conscious of her emotional perturbation. He himself was distraught, for he did not know what he would do – how far he would dare to trust himself. He was always troubled when dealing with his physical passion, for it was a raging lion at times. It seemed to overcome him quite as a drug might or a soporific fume. He would mentally resolve to control himself, but unless he instantly fled there was no hope, and he did not seem able to run away. He would linger and parley, and in a few moments it was master and he was following its behest blindly, desperately, to the point almost of exposure and destruction.
Tonight when Angela came back he was cogitating, wondering what it might mean. Should he? Would he marry her? Could he escape? They sat down to talk, but presently he drew her to him. It was the old story – moment after moment of increasing feeling. Presently she, from the excess of longing and waiting was lost to all sense of consideration. And he —
"I shall have to go away, Eugene," she pleaded, when he carried her recklessly into his room, "if anything happens. I cannot stay here."
"Don't talk," he said. "You can come to me."
"You mean it, Eugene, surely?" she begged.
"As sure as I'm holding you here," he replied.
At midnight Angela lifted frightened, wondering, doubting eyes, feeling herself the most depraved creature. Two pictures were in her mind alternately and with pendulum-like reiteration. One was a composite of a marriage altar and a charming New York studio with friends coming in to see them much as he had often described to her. The other was of the still blue waters of Okoonee with herself lying there pale and still. Yes, she would die if he did not marry her now. Life would not be worth while. She would not force him. She would slip out some night when it was too late and all hope had been abandoned – when exposure was near – and the next day they would find her.
Little Marietta how she would cry. And old Jotham – she could see him, but he would never be really sure of the truth. And her mother. "Oh God in heaven," she thought, "how hard life is! How terrible it can be."
CHAPTER XXVII
The atmosphere of the house after this night seemed charged with reproach to Eugene, although it
