r mother, and she had been
vastly impressed by the great building, its artistic finish, Eugene's
palatial surroundings. Surely he was the most remarkable young man she
had ever known. Then came his incandescent attentions to her, his
glowing, radiant presence and then----

Eugene speculated deeply on how he should proceed. All at once, after
this night, the whole problem of his life came before him. He was
married; he was highly placed socially, better than he had ever been
before. He was connected closely with Colfax, so closely that he feared
him, for Colfax, in spite of certain emotional vagaries of which Eugene
knew, was intensely conventional. Whatever he did was managed in the
most offhand way and with no intention of allowing his home life to be
affected or disrupted. Winfield, whom also Mrs. Dale knew, was also
conventional to outward appearances. He had a mistress, but she was held
tightly in check, he understood. Eugene had seen her at the new casino,
or a portion of it, the East Wing, recently erected at Blue Sea, and he
had been greatly impressed with her beauty. She was smart, daring,
dashing. Eugene looked at her then, wondering if the time would ever
come when he could dare an intimacy of that character. So many married
men did. Would he ever attempt it and succeed?

Now that he had met Suzanne, however, he had a different notion of all
this, and it had come over him all at once. Heretofore in his dreams, he
had fancied he might strike up an emotional relationship somewhere which
would be something like Winfield's towards Miss De Kalb, as she was
known, and so satisfy the weary longing that was in him for something
new and delightful in the way of a sympathetic relationship with beauty.
Since seeing Suzanne, he wanted nothing of this, but only some
readjustment or rearrangement of his life whereby he could have Suzanne
and Suzanne only. Suzanne! Suzanne! Oh, that dream of beauty. How was he
to obtain her, how free his life of all save a beautiful relationship
with her? He could live with her forever and ever. He could, he could!
Oh, this vision, this dream!

It was the Sunday following the dance that Suzanne and Eugene managed to
devise another day together, which, though, it was one of those
semi-accidental, semi-voiceless, but nevertheless not wholly thoughtless
coincidences which sometimes come about without being wholly agreed upon
or understood in the beginning, was nevertheless seized upon by them