etermined to go on. He proposed accompanying Suzanne to her
friends, the Almerdings, but she changed her mind and decided to go
home. "I want to see whether mama has heard anything," she insisted.

Eugene had to escort her to Staten Island and then order the chauffeur
to put on speed so as to reach Riverside by four. He was somewhat
remorseful, but he argued that his love-life was so long over, in so far
as Angela was concerned, that it could not really make so very much
difference. Since Suzanne wanted to wait a little time and proceed
slowly, it was not going to be as bad for Angela as he had anticipated.
He was going to give her a choice of going her way and leaving him
entirely, either now, or after the child was born, giving her the half
of his property, stocks, ready money, and anything else that might be
divisible, and all the furniture, or staying and tacitly ignoring the
whole thing. She would know what he was going to do, to maintain a
separate menage, or secret rendezvous for Suzanne. He proposed since
Suzanne was so generous not to debate this point, but to insist. He must
have her, and Angela must yield, choosing only her conditions.

When he came to the house, a great change had come over Angela. In the
morning when he left she was hard and bitter in her mood. This afternoon
she was, albeit extremely sad, more soft and melting than he had ever
seen her. Her hard spirit was temporarily broken, but in addition she
had tried to resign herself to the inevitable and to look upon it as the
will of God. Perhaps she had been, as Eugene had often accused her of
being, hard and cold. Perhaps she had held him in too tight leading
strings. She had meant it for the best. She had tried to pray for light
and guidance, and after a while something softly sad, like a
benediction, settled upon her. She must not fight any more, she thought.
She must yield. God would guide her. Her smile, kindly and wan, when
Eugene entered the room, took him unawares.

Her explanation of her mood, her prayers, her willingness to give him up
if need be, even in the face of what was coming to her, moved him more
than anything that had ever passed between them. He sat opposite her at
dinner, looking at her thin hands and face, and her sad eyes, trying to
be cheerful and considerate, and then, going back into her room and
hearing her say she would do whatever he deemed best, burst into tears.
He cried from an excess of involuntary and uncontroll