Artists -- Relations with women -- Fiction; Artists -- United States -- Fiction
Out at her aunt's house, where she came for the Saturday and Sunday
preceding his departure, he walked the floor with her gloomily, counted
the lapse of the hours after which he would be with her no more,
pictured the day when he would return successful to fetch her. Angela
had a faint foreboding fear of the events which might intervene. She had
read stories of artists who had gone to the city and had never come
back. Eugene seemed such a wonderful person, she might not hold him; and
yet he had given her his word and he was madly in love with her--no
doubt of that. That fixed, passionate, yearning look in his eyes--what
did it mean if not enduring, eternal love? Life had brought her a great
treasure--a great love and an artist for a lover.
"Go, Eugene!" she cried at last tragically, almost melodramatically. His
face was in her hands. "I will wait for you. You need never have one
uneasy thought. When you are ready I will be here, only, come soon--you
will, won't you?"
"Will I!" he declared, kissing her, "will I? Look at me. Don't you
know?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" she exclaimed, "of course I know. Oh, yes! yes!"
The rest was a passionate embrace. And then they parted. He went out
brooding over the subtlety and the tragedy of life. The sharp October
stars saddened him more. It was a wonderful world but bitter to endure
at times. Still it could be endured and there was happiness and peace in
store for him probably. He and Angela would find it together living in
each other's company, living in each other's embrace and by each other's
kisses. It must be so. The whole world believed it--even he, after
Stella and Margaret and Ruby and Angela. Even he.
The train which bore him to New York bore a very meditative young man.
As it pulled out through the great railroad yards of the city, past the
shabby back yards of the houses, the street crossings at grade, the
great factories and elevators, he thought of that other time when he had
first ventured in the city. How different! Then he was so green, so raw.
Since then he had become a newspaper artist, he could write, he could
find his tongue with women, he knew a little something about the
organization of the world. He had not saved any money, true, but he had
gone through the art school, had given Angela a diamond ring, had this
two hundred dollars with which he was venturing to reconnoitre the great
social metropolis of the country. He was passing Fifty-seventh Street;
he recognized the neighborhood he traversed so often in visiting Ruby.
He had not said good-bye to her and there in the distance were the rows
of commonplace, two family frame dwellings, one of which she occupied
with her foster parents. Poor little Ruby! and she liked him. It was a
shame, but what was he to do about it? He didn't care for her. It really
hurt him to think and then he tried not to remember. These tragedies of
the world could not be healed by thinking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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