w days?" he asked.
"Yes, if I'm here, maybe."
"It's all right to call you up if I use another name?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Let's choose new names for each, so that we'll know who's calling. You
shall be Jenny Lind and I Allan Poe." Then they fell to ardent
love-making until the time came when they had to return. For him, so far
as work was concerned, the afternoon was gone.
CHAPTER IX
There followed now a series of meetings contrived with difficulty,
fraught with danger, destructive of his peace of mind, of his recently
acquired sense of moral and commercial responsibility, of the sense of
singleness of purpose and interest in his editorial and publishing
world, which had helped him so much recently. The meetings nevertheless
were full of such intense bliss for him that it seemed as though he were
a thousand times repaid for all the subtlety and folly he was
practicing. There were times when he came to the ice house in a hired
car, others when she notified him by phone or note to his office of
times when she was coming in to town to stay. He took her in his car one
afternoon to Blue Sea when he was sure no one would encounter him. He
persuaded Suzanne to carry a heavy veil, which could be adjusted at odd
moments. Another time--several, in fact she came to the apartment in
Riverside Drive, ostensibly to see how Mrs. Witla was getting along, but
really, of course, to see Eugene. Suzanne did not really care so much
for Angela, although she did not dislike her. She thought she was an
interesting woman, though perhaps not a happy mate for Eugene. The
latter had told her not so much that he was unhappy as that he was out
of love. He loved her now, Suzanne, and only her.
The problem as to where this relationship was to lead to was complicated
by another problem, which Eugene knew nothing of, but which was
exceedingly important. For Angela, following the career of Eugene with
extreme pleasure and satisfaction on the commercial side, and fear and
distrust on the social and emotional sides, had finally decided to risk
the uncertain outcome of a child in connection with Eugene and herself,
and to give him something which would steady his life and make him
realize his responsibilities and offer him something gladdening besides
social entertainment and the lure of beauty in youth. She had never
forgotten the advice which Mrs. Sanifore and her physician had given her
in Philadelphia, nor had she ever ceased her c
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