tell you now that you haven't. It's all over. If
there were fifty children, it's all over. Suzanne isn't going to believe
any such cheap story as that, and if she did she wouldn't leave me. She
knows why you do it. All the days of weariness are over for me, all the
days of being afraid. I'm not an ordinary man, and I'm not going to live
an ordinary life. You have always insisted on holding me down to the
little, cheap conventions as you have understood them. Out in Wisconsin,
out in Blackwood. Nothing doing. It's all over from now on. Everything's
over. This house, my job, my real estate deal--everything. I don't care
what your condition is. I love this girl in there, and I'm going to have
her. Do you hear me? I love her, and I'm going to have her. She's mine.
She suits me. I love her, and no power under God is going to stay me.
Now you think this child proposition you have fixed up is going to stay
me, but you are going to find out that it can't, that it won't. It's a
trick, and I know it, and you know it. It's too late. It might have last
year, or two years ago, or three, but it won't work now. You have played
your last card. That girl in there belongs to me, and I'm going to have
her."

Again he smoothed his face in a weary way, pausing to sway the least bit
in his chair. His teeth were set, his eyes hard. Consciously he realized
that it was a terrible situation that confronted him, hard to wrestle
with.

Angela gazed at him with the eyes of one who is not quite sure that she
even sees aright. She knew that Eugene had developed. He had become
stronger, more urgent, more defiant, during all these years in which he
had been going upward. He was no more like the Eugene who had clung to
her for companionship in the dark days at Biloxi and elsewhere than a
child is like a grown man. He was harder, easier in his manner, more
indifferent, and yet, until now, there had never been a want of traces
of the old Eugene. What had become of them so suddenly? Why was he so
raging, so bitter? This girl, this foolish, silly, selfish girl, with
her Circe gift of beauty, by tolerance of his suit, by yielding, perhaps
by throwing herself at Eugene's head, had done this thing. She had drawn
him away from her in spite of the fact that they had appeared to be
happily mated. Suzanne did not know that they were not. In this mood he
might actually leave her, even as she was, with child. It depended on
the girl. Unless she could influence her,