to herself on Angela's appearance and to
her disadvantage. In her manner had been the statement that his wife was
not very important after all, not of the artistic and superior world to
which she and he belonged.

"How do you like her?" he asked tentatively after she had gone, feeling
a strong current of opposition, but not knowing on what it might be
based exactly.

"I don't like her," returned Angela petulantly. "She thinks she's sweet.
She treats you as though she thought you were her personal property. She
openly insulted me about your not telling her. Miss Whitmore did the
same thing--they all do! They all will! Oh!!"

She suddenly burst into tears and ran crying toward their bedroom.

Eugene followed, astonished, ashamed, rebuked, guilty minded, almost
terror-stricken--he hardly knew what.

"Why, Angela," he urged pleadingly, leaning over her and attempting to
raise her. "You know that isn't true."

"It is! It is!!" she insisted. "Don't touch me! Don't come near me! You
know it is true! You don't love me. You haven't treated me right at all
since I've been here. You haven't done anything that you should have
done. She insulted me openly to my face."

She was speaking with sobs, and Eugene was at once pained and terrorized
by the persistent and unexpected display of emotion. He had never seen
Angela like this before. He had never seen any woman so.

"Why, Angelface," he urged, "how can you go on like this? You know what
you say isn't true. What have I done?"

"You haven't told your friends--that's what you haven't done," she
exclaimed between gasps. "They still think you're single. You keep me
here hidden in the background as though I were a--were a--I don't know
what! Your friends come and insult me openly to my face. They do! They
do! Oh!" and she sobbed anew.

She knew very well what she was doing in her anger and rage. She felt
that she was acting in the right way. Eugene needed a severe reproof; he
had acted very badly, and this was the way to administer it to him now
in the beginning. His conduct was indefensible, and only the fact that
he was an artist, immersed in cloudy artistic thoughts and not really
subject to the ordinary conventions of life, saved him in her
estimation. It didn't matter that she had urged him to marry her. It
didn't absolve him that he had done so. She thought he owed her that.
Anyhow they were married now, and he should do the proper thing.

Eugene stood there cut as wit