ch they clung to
each other desperately, moments in which he took her in his arms,
moments in which he whispered his dreams of the future. He took the ring
he had bought and put it on her finger. He was going to be a great
artist, she was going to be an artist's bride; he was going to paint her
lovely face, her hair, her form. If he wanted love scenes he would paint
these which they were now living together. They talked until one in the
morning and then she begged him to go, but he would not. At two he left,
only to come early the next morning to take her to church.

There ensued for Eugene a rather astonishing imaginative and emotional
period in which he grew in perception of things literary and artistic
and in dreams of what marriage with Angela would mean to him. There was
a peculiar awareness about Eugene at this time, which was leading him
into an understanding of things. The extraordinary demands of some
phases of dogma in the matter of religion; the depths of human
perversity in the matter of morality; the fact that there were worlds
within worlds of our social organism; that really basically and actually
there was no fixed and definite understanding of anything by
anybody. From Mathews he learned of philosophies--Kant, Hegel,
Schopenhauer--faint inklings of what they believed. From association
with Howe he heard of current authors who expressed new moods, Pierre
Loti, Thomas Hardy, Maeterlinck, Tolstoi. Eugene was no person to
read--he was too eager to live,--but he gained much by conversation and
he liked to talk. He began to think he could do almost anything if he
tried--write poems, write plays, write stories, paint, illustrate, etc.
He used to conceive of himself as a general, an orator, a
politician--thinking how wonderful he would be if he could set himself
definitely to any one thing. Sometimes he would recite passages from
great speeches he had composed in his imagination as he walked. The
saving grace in his whole make-up was that he really loved to work and
he would work at the things he could do. He would not shirk his
assignments or dodge his duties.

After his evening class Eugene would sometimes go out to Ruby's house,
getting there by eleven and being admitted by an arrangement with her
that the front door be left open so that he could enter quietly. More
than once he found her sleeping in her little room off the front room,
arrayed in a red silk dressing gown and curled up like a little
black-h