, was that somehow time would effect a reconciliation. If she could
just wait long enough; if she could keep her peace and live and not die,
and not give him a divorce, he might eventually recover his sanity and
come to think of her as at least worth living with. The child might do
it, its coming would be something that would affect him surely. He was
bound to see her through it. She told herself she was willing and
delighted to go through this ordeal, if only it brought him back to her.
This child--what a reception it was to receive, unwanted, dishonored
before its arrival, ignored; if by any chance she should die, what would
he do about it? Surely he would not desert it. Already in her nervous,
melancholy way, she was yearning toward it.

"Tell me," she said to Eugene one day, when they were alternately
quarreling and planning, "if the baby comes, and I--and I--die, you
won't absolutely desert it? You'll take it, won't you?"

"I'll take it," he replied. "Don't worry. I'm not an absolute dog. I
didn't want it. It's a trick on your part, but I'll take it. I don't
want you to die. You know that."

Angela thought if she lived that she would be willing to go through a
period of poverty and depression with him again, if only she could live
to see him sane and moral and even semi-successful. The baby might do
it. He had never had a child. And much as he disliked the idea now,
still, when it was here, he might change his mind. If only she could get
through that ordeal. She was so old--her muscles so set. Meanwhile she
consulted a lawyer, a doctor, a fortune teller, an astrologer and the
Christian Science practitioner to whom Myrtle had recommended her. It
was an aimless, ridiculous combination, but she was badly torn up, and
any port seemed worth while in this storm.

The doctor told her that her muscles were rather set, but with the
regimen he prescribed, he was satisfied she would be all right. The
astrologer told her that she and Eugene were fated for this storm by the
stars--Eugene, particularly, and that he might recover, in which case,
he would be successful again in a measure. As for herself, he shook his
head. Yes, she would be all right. He was lying. The fortune teller laid
the cards to see if Eugene would ever marry Suzanne, and Angela was
momentarily gratified to learn that she would never enter his life--this
from a semi-cadaverous, but richly dressed and bejeweled lady whose
ante-room was filled with women wh