could not get off (or at
least did not want to take the time off) to go and sell any. He found
that he could leave without question if he wanted no pay, but if he
wanted pay and had a good reason he could sometimes be excused. His
appearance about the house and yard after six-thirty in the evening and
on Sundays was attractive enough. He looked delicate, refined,
conservative, and, when not talking to someone, rather wistful. He was
lonely and restless, for he felt terribly out of it. This house was
lonely. As at Alexandria, before he met Frieda, he was wishing there
were some girls about. He wondered where Frieda was, what she was doing,
whether she had married. He hoped not. If life had only given him a girl
like Frieda--so young, so beautiful! He would sit and gaze at the water
after dark in the moonlight, for this was his one consolation--the
beauty of nature--thinking. How lovely it all was! How lovely life
was,--this village, the summer trees, the shop where he worked, the
water, Joseph, little Jimmy, Big John, the stars. If he could paint
again, if he could be in love again. In love! In love! Was there any
other sensation in the world like that of being in love?

A spring evening, say, some soft sweet odours blowing as they were
tonight, the dark trees bending down, or the twilight angelically
silver, hyacinth, orange, some soothing murmurs of the wind; some faint
chirping of the tree-toads or frogs and then your girl. Dear God! Could
anything be finer than that? Was anything else in life worth while? Your
girl, her soft young arms about your neck, her lips to yours in pure
love, her eyes speaking like twin pools of color here in the night.

So had it been only a little while ago with Frieda. So had it been once
with Angela. So long ago with Stella! Dear, sweet Stella, how nice she
was. And now here he was sick and lonely and married and Angela would be
coming back soon--and--He would get up frequently to shut out these
thoughts, and either read or walk or go to bed. But he was lonely,
almost irritably so. There was only one true place of comfort for Eugene
anywhere and that was in the spring time in love.

CHAPTER XXII

It was while he was mooning along in this mood, working, dreaming,
wishing, that there came, one day to her mother's house at Riverwood,
Carlotta Wilson--Mrs. Norman Wilson, in the world in which she moved--a
tall brunette of thirty-two, handsome after the English fashion,
shapely, g