children, visiting with people who could not possibly have heard, or
ever would except in a vague, uncertain way for that matter. If it
became evident, as she thought it might, that there was to be a scandal,
Mrs. Dale proposed to say that Eugene had attempted to establish an
insidious hold on her child in defiance of reason and honor, and that
she had promptly broken it up, shielding Suzanne, almost without the
latter's knowledge. It was plausible enough.

What was he to do now? how live? was his constant thought. Go into a
wee, small apartment in some back street with Angela, where he and she,
if he decided to stay with her, could find a pretty outlook for a little
money and live? Never. Admit that he had lost Suzanne for a year at
least, if not permanently, in this suddenly brusque way? Impossible. Go
and confess that he had made a mistake, which he still did not feel to
be true? or that he was sorry and would like to patch things up as
before? Never. He was not sorry. He did not propose to live with Angela
in the old way any more. He was sick of her, or rather of that
atmosphere of repression and convention in which he had spent so many
years. He was sick of the idea of having a child thrust on him against
his will. He would not do it. She had no business to put herself in this
position. He would die first. His insurance was paid up to date. He had
carried during the last five years a policy for something over eighteen
thousand in her favor, and if he died she would get that. He wished he
might. It would be some atonement for the hard knocks which fate had
recently given her, but he did not wish to live with her any more.
Never, never, child or no child. Go back to the apartment after this
night--how could he? If he did, he must pretend that nothing had
happened--at least, nothing untoward between him and Suzanne. She might
come back. Might! Might! Ah, the mockery of it--to leave him in this way
when she really could have come to him--should have--oh, the bitterness
of this thrust of fate!

There was a day when the furniture was sent away and Angela went to live
with Myrtle for the time being. There was another tearful hour when she
left New York to visit her sister Marietta at Racine, where they now
were, intending to tell her before she came away, as a profound secret,
the terrible tragedy which had overtaken her. Eugene went to the train
with her, but with no desire to be there. Angela's one thought, in all
this