keep
Christina's letters; they were so charming.

"Yes, you love me!" flared Angela. "I see how you love me. Those letters
show it! Oh, dear! oh, dear! I wish I were dead."

"Listen to me, Angela," replied Eugene desperately, "I know this
correspondence looks bad. I did make love to Miss Kenny and to Christina
Channing, but you see I didn't care enough to marry either of them. If I
had I would have. I cared for you. Believe it or not. I married you. Why
did I marry you? Answer me that? I needn't have married you. Why did I?
Because I loved you, of course. What other reason could I have?"

"Because you couldn't get Christina Channing," snapped Angela, angrily,
with the intuitive sense of one who reasons from one material fact to
another, "that's why. If you could have, you would have. I know it. Her
letters show it."

"Her letters don't show anything of the sort," returned Eugene angrily.
"I couldn't get her? I could have had her, easily enough. I didn't want
her. If I had wanted her, I would have married her--you can bet on
that."

He hated himself for lying in this way, but he felt for the time being
that he had to do it. He did not care to stand in the role of a jilted
lover. He half-fancied that he could have married Christina if he had
really tried.

"Anyhow," he said, "I'm not going to argue that point with you. I didn't
marry her, so there you are; and I didn't marry Ruby Kenny either. Well
you can think all you want; but I know. I cared for them, but I didn't
marry them. I married you instead. I ought to get credit for something
on that score. I married you because I loved you, I suppose. That's
perfectly plain, isn't it?" He was half convincing himself that he had
loved her--in some degree.

"Yes, I see how you love me," persisted Angela, cogitating this very
peculiar fact which he was insisting on and which it was very hard
intellectually to overcome. "You married me because you couldn't very
well get out of it, that's why. Oh, I know. You didn't want to marry me.
That's very plain. You wanted to marry someone else. Oh, dear! oh,
dear!"

"Oh, how you talk!" replied Eugene defiantly. "Marry someone else! Who
did I want to marry? I could have married often enough if I had wanted
to. I didn't want to marry, that's all. Believe it or not. I wanted to
marry you and I did. I don't think you have any right to stand there and
argue so. What you say isn't so, and you know it."

Angela cogitated this argument