llie, will you?" And Angela was his "little
pigtail."

There were no further grounds for jealousy during the time, almost two
years, in which they were wandering around together, for the reason that
she was always with him, almost his sole companion, and that they did
not stay long enough in any one place and under sufficiently free social
conditions to permit him to form those intimacies which might have
resulted disastrously. Some girls did take his eye--the exceptional in
youth and physical perfection were always doing that, but he had no
chance or very little of meeting them socially. They were not living
with people they knew, were not introduced in the local social worlds,
which they visited. Eugene could only look at these maidens whom he
chanced to spy from time to time, and wish that he might know them
better. It was hard to be tied down to a conventional acceptance of
matrimony--to pretend that he was interested in beauty only in a
sociological way. He had to do it before Angela though (and all
conventional people for that matter), for she objected strenuously to
the least interest he might manifest in any particular woman. All his
remarks had to be general and guarded in their character. At the least
show of feeling or admiration Angela would begin to criticize his choice
and to show him wherein his admiration was ill-founded. If he were
especially interested she would attempt to tear his latest ideal to
pieces. She had no mercy, and he could see plainly enough on what her
criticism was based. It made him smile but he said nothing. He even
admired her for her heroic efforts to hold her own, though every victory
she seemed to win served only to strengthen the bars of his own cage.

It was during this time that he could not help learning and appreciating
just how eager, patient and genuine was her regard for his material
welfare. To her he was obviously the greatest man in the world, a great
painter, a great thinker, a great lover, a great personality every way.
It didn't make so much difference to her at this time that he wasn't
making any money. He would sometime, surely, and wasn't she getting it
all in fame anyhow, now? Why, to be Mrs. Eugene Witla, after what she
had seen of him in New York and Paris, what more could she want? Wasn't
it all right for her to rake and scrape now, to make her own clothes and
hats, save, mend, press and patch? He would come out of all this silly
feeling about other women once