him with
these reprehensible episodes?

She came back to the trunk where she was working and sat down. Her eyes
were hard and cold for the time, but at the same time there was a touch
of terror and of agonized affection. A face that, in the ordinary lines
of its repose, was very much like that of a madonna, was now drawn and
peaked and gray. Apparently Christina had forsaken him, or it might be
that they still corresponded secretly. She got up again at that thought.
Still the letters were old. It looked as though all communication had
ceased two years ago. What had he written to her?--love notes. Letters
full of wooing phrases such as he had written to her. Oh, the
instability of men, the insincerity, the lack of responsibility and
sense of duty. Her father,--what a different man he was; her
brothers,--their word was their bond. And here was she married to a man
who, even in the days of his most ardent wooing, had been deceiving her.
She had let him lead her astray, too,--disgrace her own home. Tears came
after a while, hot, scalding tears that seared her cheeks. And now she
was married to him and he was sick and she would have to make the best
of it. She wanted to make the best of it, for after all she loved him.

But oh, the cruelty, the insincerity, the unkindness, the brutality of
it all.

The fact that Eugene was out for several hours following her discovery
gave her ample time to reflect as to a suitable course of action. Being
so impressed by the genius of the man, as imposed upon her by the
opinion of others and her own affection, she could not readily think of
anything save some method of ridding her soul of this misery and him of
his evil tendencies, of making him ashamed of his wretched career, of
making him see how badly he had treated her and how sorry he ought to
be. She wanted him to feel sorry, very sorry, so that he would be a long
time repenting in suffering, but she feared at the same time that she
could not make him do that. He was so ethereal, so indifferent, so lost
in the contemplation of life that he could not be made to think of her.
That was her one complaint. He had other gods before her--the god of his
art, the god of nature, the god of people as a spectacle. Frequently she
had complained to him in this last year--"you don't love me! you don't
love me!" but he would answer, "oh, yes I do. I can't be talking to you
all the time, Angel-face. I have work to do. My art has to be
cultivated. I