be, but it has been all in vain. I've known you haven't
liked me all these years. I've seen it in your eyes, Eugene. You have
never come very close to me as a lover should unless you had to or you
couldn't avoid me. You have been cold and indifferent, and now that I
look back I see that it has made me so. I have been cold and hard. I've
tried to steel myself to match what I thought was your steeliness, and
now I see what it has done for me. I'm sorry. But as for her, you don't
love her and you won't. She's too young. She hasn't any ideas that agree
with yours. You think she's soft and gentle, and yet big and wise, but
do you think if she had been that she could have stood up there as she
did tonight and looked me in the eyes--me, your wife--and told me that
she loved you--you, my husband? Do you think if she had any shame she
would be in there now knowing what she does, for I suppose you have told
her? What kind of a girl is that, anyway? You call her good? Good! Would
a good girl do anything like that?"

"What is the use of arguing by appearances?" asked Eugene, who had
interrupted her with exclamations of opposition and bitter comments all
through the previous address. "The situation is one which makes anything
look bad. She didn't intend to be put in a position where she would have
to tell you that she loved me. She didn't come here to let me make love
to her in this apartment. I made love to her. She's in love with me, and
I made her love me. I didn't know of this other thing. If I had, it
wouldn't have made any difference. However, let that be as it will. So
it is. I'm in love with her, and that's all there is to it."

Angela stared at the wall. She was half propped up on a pillow, and had
no courage now to speak of and no fighting strength.

"I know what it is with you, Eugene," she said, after a time; "it's the
yoke that galls. It isn't me only; it's anyone. It's marriage. You don't
want to be married. It would be the same with any woman who might ever
have loved and married you, or with any number of children. You would
want to get rid of her and them. It's the yoke that galls you, Eugene.
You want your freedom, and you won't be satisfied until you have it. A
child wouldn't make any difference. I can see that now."

"I want my freedom," he exclaimed bitterly and inconsiderately, "and,
what's more, I'm going to have it! I don't care. I'm sick of lying and
pretending, sick of common little piffling notions of wh