ist. The common laws of
existence could not reasonably apply to an artist. The latter should
have intellectual freedom, the privilege of going where he pleased,
associating with whom he chose. This marriage business was a galling
yoke, cutting off all rational opportunity for enjoyment, and he was now
after a brief period of freedom having that yoke heavily adjusted to his
neck again. Gone were all the fine dreams of pleasure and happiness
which so recently had been so real--the hope of living with
Carlotta--the hope of associating with her on easy and natural terms in
that superior world which she represented. Angela's insistence on the
thought that he should work every day and bring home nine dollars a
week, or rather its monthly equivalent, made it necessary for him to
take sharp care of the little money he had kept out of the remainder of
the three hundred in order to supply any deficiency which might occur
from his taking time off. For there was no opportunity now of seeing
Carlotta of an evening, and it was necessary to take a regular number of
afternoons or mornings off each week, in order to meet her. He would
leave the little apartment as usual at a quarter to seven in the
morning, dressed suitably for possible out-door expeditions, for in
anticipation of difficulty he had told Angela that it was his custom to
do this, and sometimes he would go to the factory and sometimes he would
not. There was a car line which carried him rapidly cityward to a
rendezvous, and he would either ride or walk with her as the case might
be. There was constant thought on his and her part of the risk involved,
but still they persisted. By some stroke of ill or good fortune Norman
Wilson returned from Chicago, so that Carlotta's movements had to be
calculated to a nicety, but she did not care. She trusted most to the
automobiles which she could hire at convenient garages and which would
carry them rapidly away from the vicinity where they might be seen and
recognized.

It was a tangled life, difficult and dangerous. There was no peace in
it, for there is neither peace nor happiness in deception. A burning joy
at one time was invariably followed by a disturbing remorse afterward.
There was Carlotta's mother, Norman Wilson, and Angela, to guard
against, to say nothing of the constant pricking of his own conscience.

It is almost a foregone conclusion in any situation of this kind that it
cannot endure. The seed of its undoing is in it