uzanne had only heightened his
affection for her. The condition of Angela had given him pause, for it
was an interesting question what would become of her. "If she would only
die!" he said to himself, for we have the happy faculty of hating most
joyously on this earth the thing we have wronged the most. He could
scarcely go and see her, so obsessed was he with the idea that she was a
handicap to his career. The idea of her introducing a child into his
life only made him savage. Now, if she should die, he would have the
child to care for and Suzanne, because of it, might never come to him.

His one idea at this time was not to be observed too much, or rather not
at all, for he considered himself to be in great disfavor, and only
likely to do himself injury by a public appearance--a fact which was
more in his own mind than anywhere else. If he had not believed it, it
would not have been true. For this reason he had selected this quiet
neighborhood where the line of current city traffic was as nothing, for
here he could brood in peace. The family that he lived with knew nothing
about him. Winter was setting in. Because of the cold and snow and high
winds, he was not likely to see many people hereabouts--particularly
those celebrities who had known him in the past. There was a great deal
of correspondence that followed him from his old address, for his name
had been used on many committees, he was in "Who's Who," and he had many
friends less distinguished than those whose companionship would have
required the expenditure of much money who would have been glad to look
him up. He ignored all invitations, however; refused to indicate by
return mail where he was for the present; walked largely at night; read,
painted, or sat and brooded during the day. He was thinking all the time
of Suzanne and how disastrously fate had trapped him apparently through
her. He was thinking that she might come back, that she ought. Lovely,
hurtful pictures came to him of re-encounters with her in which she
would rush into his arms, never to part, from him any more. Angela, in
her room at the hospital, received little thought from him. She was
there. She was receiving expert medical attention. He was paying all the
bills. Her serious time had not yet really come. Myrtle was seeing her.
He caught glimpses of himself at times as a cruel, hard intellect
driving the most serviceable thing his life had known from him with
blows, but somehow it seemed ju