. He wanted freedom of action and companionship,
but he was afraid of Angela, afraid of society, in a way afraid of
himself and what positive liberty might do to him. He felt sorry for
Angela--for the intense suffering she would endure if he forced her in
some way to release him--and at the same time he felt sorry for himself.
The lure of beauty had never for one moment during all these years of
upward mounting effort been stilled.

It is curious how things seem to conspire at times to produce a climax.
One would think that tragedies like plants and flowers are planted as
seeds and grow by various means and aids to a terrible maturity. Roses
of hell are some lives, and they shine with all the lustre of infernal
fires.

In the first place Eugene now began to neglect his office work
thoroughly, for he could not fix his mind upon it any more than he could
upon the affairs of the Sea Island Company, or upon his own home and
Angela's illness. The morning after his South Beach experience with
Suzanne and her curious reticence, he saw her for a little while upon
the veranda of Daleview. She was not seemingly depressed, or at least,
not noticeably so, and yet there was a gravity about her which indicated
that a marked impression of some kind had been made upon her soul. She
looked at him with wide frank eyes as she came out to him purposely to
tell him that she was going with her mother and some friends to
Tarrytown for the day.

"I have to go," she said. "Mamma has arranged it by phone."

"Then I won't see you any more here?"

"No."

"Do you love me, Suzanne?"

"Oh, yes, yes," she declared, and walked wearily to an angle of the wall
where they could not be seen.

He followed her quickly, cautiously.

"Kiss me," he said, and she put her lips to his in a distraught
frightened way. Then she turned and walked briskly off and he admired
the robust swinging of her body. She was not tall, like himself, or
small like Angela, but middle sized, full bodied, vigorous. He imagined
now that she had a powerful soul in her, capable of great things, full
of courage and strength. Once she was a little older, she would be very
forceful and full of strong, direct thought.

He did not see her again for nearly ten days, and by that time he was
nearly desperate. He was wondering all the time how he was to arrange
this. He could not go on in this haphazard way, seeing her occasionally.
Why she might leave town for the fall a little late