ear! Oh, Eugene, how can you? Have you no pity, no shame? Here in
your own home, too! Oh! oh! oh!"

To Eugene such hysterics were maddening. He could not understand how
anyone should want or find it possible to carry on in this fashion. He
was lying "out of the whole cloth" about Frieda, but Angela didn't know
and he knew she didn't know. All these tantrums were based on suspicion.
If she would do this on a mere suspicion, what would she not do when she
had a proved cause?

Still by her tears she as yet had the power of rousing his sympathies
and awakening his sense of shame. Her sorrow made him slightly ashamed
of his conduct or rather sorry, for the tougher nature was constantly
presenting itself. Her suspicions made the further pursuit of this love
quest practically impossible. Secretly he already cursed the day he had
married her, for Frieda's face was ever before him, a haunting lure to
love and desire. In this hour life looked terribly sad to him. He
couldn't help feeling that all the perfect things one might seek or find
were doomed to the searing breath of an inimical fate. Ashes of
roses--that was all life had to offer. Dead sea fruit, turning to ashes
upon the lips. Oh, Frieda! Frieda! Oh, youth, youth! That there should
dance before him for evermore an unattainable desire--the holy grail of
beauty. Oh life, oh death! Which was really better, waking or sleeping?
If he could only have Frieda now it would be worth living, but without
her--

CHAPTER XV

The weakness of Eugene was that he was prone in each of these new
conquests to see for the time being the sum and substance of bliss, to
rise rapidly in the scale of uncontrollable, exaggerated affection,
until he felt that here and nowhere else, now and in this particular
form was ideal happiness. He had been in love with Stella, with
Margaret, with Ruby, with Angela, with Christina, and now with Frieda,
quite in this way, and it had taught him nothing as yet concerning love
except that it was utterly delightful. He wondered at times how it was
that the formation of a particular face could work this spell. There was
plain magic in the curl of a lock of hair, the whiteness or roundness of
a forehead, the shapeliness of a nose or ear, the arched redness of
full-blown petal lips. The cheek, the chin, the eye--in combination with
these things--how did they work this witchery? The tragedies to which he
laid himself open by yielding to these spells--he neve