strong man, she
said, always strange. He and Angela might not have been well mated. But
all could be righted in _Science_. There was a dreary period of packing
and storing for Angela, in which she stood about amid the ruins of her
previous comfort and distinction and cried over the things that had
seemed so lovely to her. Here were all Eugene's things, his paintings,
his canes, his pipes, his clothes. She cried over a handsome silk
dressing gown in which he had been wont to lounge about--it smacked so
much, curiously, of older and happier days. There were hard, cold and
determined conferences also in which some of Angela's old fighting,
ruling spirit would come back, but not for long. She was beaten now, and
she knew it--wrecked. The roar of a cold and threatening sea was in her
ears.

It should be said here that at one time Suzanne truly imagined she loved
Eugene. It must be remembered, however, that she was moved to affection
for him by the wonder of a personality that was hypnotic to her. There
was something about the personality of Eugene that was subversive of
conventionality. He approached, apparently a lamb of conventional
feelings and appearances; whereas, inwardly, he was a ravening wolf of
indifference to convention. All the organized modes and methods of life
were a joke to him. He saw through to something that was not material
life at all, but spiritual, or say immaterial, of which all material
things were a shadow. What did the great forces of life care whether
this system which was maintained here with so much show and fuss was
really maintained at all or not? How could they care? He once stood in a
morgue and saw human bodies apparently dissolving into a kind of
chemical mush and he had said to himself then how ridiculous it was to
assume that life meant anything much to the forces which were doing
these things. Great chemical and physical forces were at work, which
permitted, accidentally, perhaps, some little shadow-play, which would
soon pass. But, oh, its presence--how sweet it was!

Naturally Suzanne was cast down for the time being, for she was capable
of suffering just as Eugene was. But having given her word to wait, she
decided to stick to that, although she had not stuck to her other. She
was between nineteen and twenty now--Eugene was nearing forty. Life
could still soothe her in spite of herself. In Eugene's case it could
only hurt the more. Mrs. Dale went abroad with Suzanne and the other