f that--a cruel
situation. Perhaps he had better go back. He could be happy with her.
They could live in a studio and no doubt things would work out all
right. Had he better be cruel and not go? He hated to think of it.

Anyhow he did not answer Marietta's letter, and he did tear it up into a
thousand bits, as she requested. "If Angela knew no doubt she would feel
wretched," he thought.

In the meanwhile Angela was thinking, and her brooding led her to the
conclusion that it might be advisable, if ever her lover came back, to
yield herself in order that he might feel compelled to take her. She was
no reasoner about life in any big sense. Her judgment of affairs was
more confused at this time than at a later period. She had no clear
conception of how foolish any trickery of this sort would be. She loved
Eugene, felt that she must have him, felt that she would be willing to
die rather than lose him and the thought of trickery came only as a last
resource. If he refused her she was determined on one thing--the lake.
She would quit this dreary world where love was crossed with despair in
its finest moments; she would forget it all. If only there were rest and
silence on the other side that would be enough.

The year moved on toward spring and because of some note of this,
reiterated in pathetic phrases, he came to feel that he must go back.
Marietta's letter preyed on his mind. The intensity of Angela's attitude
made him feel that something desperate would happen. He could not, in
cold blood, sit down and write her that he would not see her any more.
The impressions of Blackwood were too fresh in his mind--the summer
incense and green beauty of the world in which she lived. He wrote in
April that he would come again in June, and Angela was beside herself
with joy.

One of the things which helped Eugene to this conclusion was the fact
that Christina Channing was not coming back from Europe that year. She
had written a few times during the winter, but very guardedly. A casual
reader could not have drawn from what she said that there had ever been
anything between them. He had written much more ardently, of course, but
she had chosen to ignore his eager references, making him feel by
degrees that he was not to know much of her in the future. They were
going to be good friends, but not necessarily lovers nor eventually
husband and wife. It irritated him to think she could be so calm about a
thing which to him seemed so impo