d a weak, yearning smile and looked at Eugene. "I'll take
care of her," he said, bending over her. He swore a great oath to
himself. He would be decent--he would be clean henceforth and for ever.
The child was put beside her for a little while, but she could not move.
She sank steadily and died.

Eugene sat by the bed holding his head in his hands. So, he had his
wish. She was really dead. Now he had been taught what it was to fly in
the face of conscience, instinct, immutable law. He sat there an hour
while Myrtle begged him to come away.

"Please, Eugene!" she said. "Please!"

"No, no," he replied. "Where shall I go? I am well enough here."

After a time he did go, however, wondering how he would adjust his life
from now on. Who would take care of of----

"Angela" came the name to his mind. Yes, he would call her "Angela." He
had heard someone say she was going to have pale yellow hair.

******

The rest of this story is a record of philosophic doubt and speculation
and a gradual return to normality, his kind of normality--the artistic
normality of which he was capable. He would--he thought--never again be
the maundering sentimentalist and enthusiast, imagining perfection in
every beautiful woman that he saw. Yet there was a period when, had
Suzanne returned suddenly, all would have been as before between them,
and even more so, despite his tremulousness of spirit, his speculative
interest in Christian Science as a way out possibly, his sense of
brutality, almost murder, in the case of Angela--for, the old attraction
still gnawed at his vitals. Although he had Angela, junior, now to look
after, and in a way to divert him,--a child whom he came speedily to
delight in--his fortune to restore, and a sense of responsibility to
that abstract thing, society or public opinion as represented by those
he knew or who knew him, still there was this ache and this
non-controllable sense of adventure which freedom to contract a new
matrimonial alliance or build his life on the plan he schemed with
Suzanne gave him. Suzanne! Suzanne!--how her face, her gestures, her
voice, haunted him. Not Angela, for all the pathos of her tragic ending,
but Suzanne. He thought of Angela often--those last hours in the
hospital, her last commanding look which meant "please look after our
child," and whenever he did so his vocal cords tightened as under the
grip of a hand and his eyes threatened to overflow, but even so, and
even then, that un