about girls and how sad it was
not to have one to say a word to him. Stella was gone--that dream was
over. When would he find another like her?

After wandering around for nearly a month, during which time he was
compelled to use some money his mother sent him to buy a suit of clothes
on an instalment plan, he got a place as driver of a laundry, which,
because it paid ten dollars a week, seemed very good. He sketched now
and then when he was not tired, but what he did seemed pointless. So he
worked here, driving a wagon, when he should have been applying for an
art opening, or taking art lessons.

During this winter Myrtle wrote him that Stella Appleton had moved to
Kansas, whither her father had gone; and that his mother's health was
bad, and that she did so want him to come home and stay awhile. It was
about this time that he became acquainted with a little Scotch girl
named Margaret Duff, who worked in the laundry, and became quickly
involved in a relationship which established a precedent in his
experiences with women. Before this he had never physically known a
girl. Now, and of a sudden, he was plunged into something which awakened
a new, and if not evil, at least disrupting and disorganizing propensity
of his character. He loved women, the beauty of the curves of their
bodies. He loved beauty of feature and after a while was to love beauty
of mind,--he did now, in a vague, unformed way,--but his ideal was as
yet not clear to him. Margaret Duff represented some simplicity of
attitude, some generosity of spirit, some shapeliness of form, some
comeliness of feature,--it was not more. But, growing by what it fed on,
his sex appetite became powerful. In a few weeks it had almost mastered
him. He burned to be with this girl daily--and she was perfectly willing
that he should, so long as the relationship did not become too
conspicuous. She was a little afraid of her parents, although those two,
being working people, retired early and slept soundly. They did not seem
to mind her early philanderings with boys. This latest one was no
novelty. It burned fiercely for three months--Eugene was eager,
insatiable: the girl not so much so, but complaisant. She liked this
evidence of fire in him,--the hard, burning flame she had aroused, and
yet after a time she got a little tired. Then little personal
differences arose,--differences of taste, differences of judgment,
differences of interest. He really could not talk to her of an