light understanding with
Frieda Roth--it couldn't have been much or she would have seen it, she
thought--but she had managed to break it up. Eugene was cross,
naturally, but that was due more to her quarreling than anything else.
These storms of feeling on her part--not always premeditated--seemed
very essential. Eugene must be made to understand that he was married
now; that he could not look upon or run after girls as he had in the old
days. She was well aware that he was considerably younger than she was
in temperament, inclined to be exceedingly boyish, and this was apt to
cause trouble anywhere. But if she watched over him, kept his attention
fixed on her, everything would come out all right. And then there were
all these other delightful qualities--his looks, his genial manner, his
reputation, his talent. What a delightful thing it had become to
announce herself as Mrs. Eugene Witla and how those who knew about him
sat up. Big people were his friends, artists admired him, common,
homely, everyday people thought he was nice and considerate and able and
very worth while. He was generally liked everywhere. What more could one
want?

Angela knew nothing of his real thoughts, for because of sympathy, a
secret sense of injustice toward her on his part, a vigorous, morbid
impression of the injustice of life as a whole, a desire to do things in
a kindly or at least a secret and not brutal way, he was led to pretend
at all times that he really cared for her; to pose as being comfortable
and happy; to lay all his moods to his inability to work. Angela, who
could not read him clearly, saw nothing of this. He was too subtle for
her understanding at times. She was living in a fool's paradise; playing
over a sleeping volcano.

He grew no better and by fall began to get the notion that he could do
better by living in Chicago. His health would come back to him there
perhaps. He was terribly tired of Blackwood. The long tree-shaded lawn
was nothing to him now. The little lake, the stream, the fields that he
had rejoiced in at first were to a great extent a commonplace. Old
Jotham was a perpetual source of delight to him with his kindly, stable,
enduring attitude toward things and his interesting comment on life, and
Marietta entertained him with her wit, her good nature, her intuitive
understanding; but he could not be happy just talking to everyday,
normal, stable people, interesting and worthwhile as they might be. The
doing o