ntly? He had never said anything to her! His wife calling him
up! Could there be another woman! Instantly all her old suspicions,
jealousies, fears, awoke, and she was wondering why she had not fixed on
this fact before. That explained Eugene's indifference, of course. That
explained his air of abstraction. He wasn't thinking of her, the
miserable creature! He was thinking of someone else. Still she could not
be sure, for she had no proof. Two adroit questions elicited the fact
that no one in the shop had ever seen his wife. He had just gone out. A
woman had called up.

Angela took her way home amid a whirling fire of conjecture. When she
reached it Eugene was not there yet, for he sometimes delayed his
coming, lingering, as he said, to look at the water. It was natural
enough in an artist. She went upstairs and hung the broad-brimmed straw
she had worn in the closet, and went into the kitchen to await his
coming. Experience with him and the nature of her own temperament
determined her to enact a role of subtlety. She would wait until he
spoke, pretending that she had not been out. She would ask whether he
had had a hard day, and see whether he disclosed the fact that he had
been away from the factory. That would show her positively what he was
doing and whether he was deliberately deceiving her.

Eugene came up the stairs, gay enough but anxious to deposit the scraps
of paper where they would not be seen. No opportunity came for Angela
was there to greet him.

"Did you have a hard job today?" she asked, noting that he made no
preliminary announcement of any absence.

"Not very," he replied; "no. I don't look tired?"

"No," she said bitterly, but concealing her feelings; she wanted to see
how thoroughly and deliberately he would lie. "But I thought maybe you
might have. Did you stop to look at the water tonight?"

"Yes," he replied smoothly. "It's very lovely over there. I never get
tired of it. The sun on the leaves these days now that they are turning
yellow is so beautiful. They look a little like stained glass at certain
angles."

Her first impulse after hearing this was to exclaim, "Why do you lie to
me, Eugene?" for her temper was fiery, almost uncontrollable at times;
but she restrained herself. She wanted to find out more--how she did not
know, but time, if she could only wait a little, would help her. Eugene
went to the bath, congratulating himself on the ease of his escape--the
comfortable fact that he