thousand dollars a year to live,
and their expenses were constantly growing larger rather than smaller.
Eugene appeared to become more and more extravagant.

"I think we are doing too much entertaining," Angela had once protested,
but he waived the complaint aside. "I can't do what I'm doing and not
entertain. It's building me up. People in our position have to." He
threw open the doors finally to really remarkable crowds and most of the
cleverest people in all walks of life--the really exceptionally
clever--came to eat his meals, to drink his wines, to envy his comfort
and wish they were in his shoes.

During all this time Eugene and Angela instead of growing closer
together, were really growing farther and farther apart. She had never
either forgotten or utterly forgiven that one terrific lapse, and she
had never believed that Eugene was utterly cured of his hedonistic
tendencies. Crowds of beautiful women came to Angela's teas, lunches and
their joint evening parties and receptions. Under Eugene's direction
they got together interesting programmes, for it was no trouble now for
him to command musical, theatrical, literary and artistic talent. He
knew men and women who could make rapid charcoal or crayon sketches of
people, could do feats in legerdemain, and character representation,
could sing, dance, play, recite and tell humorous stories in a droll and
off-hand way. He insisted that only exceptionally beautiful women be
invited, for he did not care to look at the homely ones, and curiously
he found dozens, who were not only extremely beautiful, but singers,
dancers, composers, authors, actors and playwrights in the bargain.
Nearly all of them were brilliant conversationalists and they helped to
entertain themselves--made their own entertainment, in fact. His table
very frequently was a glittering spectacle. One of his "Stunts" as he
called it was to bundle fifteen or twenty people into three or four
automobiles after they had lingered in his rooms until three o'clock in
the morning and motor out to some out-of-town inn for breakfast and "to
see the sun rise." A small matter like a bill for $75.00 for auto hire
or thirty-five dollars for a crowd for breakfast did not trouble him. It
was a glorious sensation to draw forth his purse and remove four or five
or six yellow backed ten dollar bills, knowing that it made little real
difference. More money was coming to him from the same source. He could
send down to the ca