at you consider
right and wrong. For eleven or twelve years now I have stood it. I have
sat with you every morning at breakfast and every evening at dinner,
most of the time when I didn't want to. I have listened to your theories
of life when I didn't believe a word of what you said, and didn't care
anything about what you thought. I've done it because I thought I ought
to do it so as not to hurt your feelings, but I'm through with all that.
What have I had? Spying on me, opposition, searching my pockets for
letters, complaining if I dared to stay out a single evening and did not
give an account of myself.

"Why didn't you leave me after that affair at Riverdale? Why do you hang
on to me when I don't love you? One'd think I was prisoner and you my
keeper. Good Christ! When I think of it, it makes me sick! Well, there's
no use worrying over that any more. It's all over. It's all beautifully
over, and I'm done with it. I'm going to live a life of my own
hereafter. I'm going to carve out some sort of a career that suits me.
I'm going to live with someone that I can really love, and that's the
end of it. Now you run and do anything you want to."

He was like a young horse that had broken rein and that thinks that by
rearing and plunging he shall become forever free. He was thinking of
green fields and delightful pastures. He was free now, in spite of what
she had told him. This night had made him so, and he was going to remain
free. Suzanne would stand by him, he felt it. He was going to make it
perfectly plain to Angela that never again, come what may, would things
be as they were.

"Yes, Eugene," she replied sadly, after listening to his protestations
on this score, "I think that you do want your freedom, now that I see
you. I'm beginning to see what it means to you. But I have made such a
terrible mistake. Are you thinking about me at all? What shall I do? It
is true that there will be a child unless I die. I may die. I'm afraid
of that, or I was. I am not now. The only reason I would care to live
would be to take care of it. I didn't think I was going to be ill with
rheumatism. I didn't think my heart was going to be affected in this
way. I didn't think that you were going to do as you have done, but now
that you have, nothing matters. Oh," she said sadly, hot tears welling
to her eyes, "it is all such a mistake! If I only hadn't done this!"

Eugene stared at the floor. He wasn't softened one bit. He did not think
s