"No, no, Eugene," she begged. "No, no! Save me from myself. Save me from myself. Oh, Eugene!"
He paused a moment to look at her face. It was wrought in lines of intense suffering—pale as though she were ill. Her body was quite limp. Only the hot, moist lips told the significant story. He could not stop at once. Slowly he drew his hand away, then let his sensitive artists' fingers rest gently on her neck—her bosom.
She struggled lamely at this point and slipped to her knees, her dress loosened at the neck.
"Don't, Eugene," she begged, "don't. Think of my father, my mother. I, who have boasted so. I of whom they feel so sure. Oh, Eugene, I beg of you!"
He stroked her hair, her cheeks, looking into her face as Abélard might have looked at Héloïse.
"Oh, I know why it is," she exclaimed, convulsively. "I am no better than any other, but I have waited so long, so long! But I mustn't! Oh, Eugene, I mustn't! Help me!"
Vaguely Eugene understood. She had been without lovers. Why? he thought. She was beautiful. He got up, half intending to carry her to his room, but he paused, thinking. She was such a pathetic figure. Was he really as bad as this? Could he not be fair in this one instance? Her father had been so nice to him—her mother—He saw Jotham Blue before him, Mrs. Blue, her admiring brothers and sisters, as they had been a little while before. He looked at her and still the prize lured him—almost swept him on in spite of himself, but he stayed.
"Stand up, Angela," he said at last, pulling himself together, looking at her intensely. She did so. "Leave me now," he went on, "right away! I won't answer for myself if you don't. I am really trying. Please go."
She paused, looking at him fearfully, regretfully.
"Oh, forgive me, Eugene," she pleaded.
"Forgive me," he said. "I'm the one. But you go now, sweet. You don't know how hard this is. Help me by going."
She moved away and he followed her with his eyes, yearningly, burningly, until she reached the door. When she closed it softly he went into his own room and sat down. His body was limp and weary. He ached from head to foot from the intensity of the mood he had passed through. He went over the recent incidents, almost stunned by his experience and then went outside and stood under the stairs, listening. Tree toads were chirping, there were suspicious cracklings in the grass as of bugs stirring. A duck quacked somewhere feebly. The bell of the family cow tinkled somewhere over near the water of the little stream. He saw the great dipper in the sky, Sirius, Canopus, the vast galaxy of the Milky Way.
"What is life anyway?" he asked himself. "What is the human body? What produces passion? Here we are for a few years surging with a fever of longing and then we burn out and die." He thought of some lines he might write, of pictures he might paint. All the while, reproduced before his mind's eye like a cinematograph, were views of Angela as she had been tonight in his arms, on her knees. He had seen her true form. He had held her in his arms. He had voluntarily resigned her charms for tonight; anyhow, no harm had come. It never should.
CHAPTER XIX
It would be hard to say in what respect, if any, the experiences of this particular night altered Eugene's opinion of Angela. He was inclined to like her better for what he would have called her humanness. Thus frankly to confess her weakness and inability to save herself was splendid. That he was given the chance to do a noble deed was fortunate and uplifting. He knew now that he could take her if he wished, but once calm again he resolved to be fair and not to insist. He could wait.
The state of Angela's mind, on the contrary, once she had come out of her paroxysm and gained the privacy of her own room, or rather the room she shared with Marietta at the other extreme of the house, was pitiable. She had for so long considered herself an estimable and virtuous girl. There was in her just a faint trace of prudery which might readily have led to an unhappy old maid existence for her if Eugene, with his superiority, or non-understanding, or indifference to conventional theories and to old-maidish feelings, had not come along and with his customary blindness to material prosperity and age limitations, seized upon and made love to her. He had filled her brain with a whirlwind of notions hitherto unfamiliar to her world and set himself up in her brain as a law unto himself. He was not like other men—she could see that. He was superior to them. He might not make much money, being an artist, but he could make other things which to her seemed more desirable. Fame, beautiful pictures, notable friends, were not these things far superior to money? She had had little enough money in all conscience, and if Eugene made anything at all it would be enough for her. He seemed to be under the notion that he needed a lot to get married, whereas she would have been glad to risk it on almost anything at all.
This latest revelation of herself, besides tearing her mind from a carefully nurtured belief in her own virtuous impregnability, raised at the same time a spectre of disaster in so far as Eugene's love for her was concerned. Would he, now that she had allowed him those precious endearments which should have been reserved for the marriage bed only, care for her as much as he had before? Would he not think of her as a light minded, easily spoiled creature who was waiting only for a propitious moment to yield herself? She had been lost to all sense of right and wrong in that hour, that she knew. Her father's character and what he stood for, her mother's decency and love of virtue, her cleanly-minded, right-living brothers and sisters—all had been forgotten and here she was, a tainted maiden, virtuous in technical sense it is true, but tainted. Her convention-trained conscience smote her vigorously and she groaned in her heart. She went outside the door of her own room and sat down on the damp grass in the early morning to think. It was so cool and calm everywhere but in her own soul. She held her face in her hands, feeling her hot cheeks, wondering what Eugene was thinking now. What would her father think, her mother? She wrung her hands more than once and finally went inside to see if she could not rest. She was not unconscious of the beauty and joy of the episode, but she was troubled by what she felt she ought to think, what the consequences to her future might be. To hold Eugene now—that was a subtle question. To hold up her head in front of him as she had, could she? To keep him from going further. It was a difficult situation and she tossed restlessly all night, getting little sleep. In the morning she arose weary and disturbed, but more desperately in love than ever. This wonderful youth had revealed an entirely new and intensely dramatic world to her.
When they met on the lawn again before breakfast, Angela was garbed in white linen. She looked waxen and delicate and her eyes showed dark rings as well as the dark thoughts that were troubling her. Eugene took her hand sympathetically.
"Don't worry," he said, "I know. It isn't as bad as you think." And he smiled tenderly.
"Oh, Eugene, I don't understand myself now," she said sorrowfully. "I thought I was better than that."
"We're none of us better than that," he replied simply. "We just think we are sometimes. You are not any different to me. You just think you are."
"Oh, are you sure?" she asked eagerly.
"Quite sure," he replied. "Love isn't a terrible thing between any two. It's just lovely. Why should I think worse of you?"
"Oh, because good girls don't do what I have done. I have been raised to know better—to do better."
"All a belief, my dear, which you get from what has been taught you. You think it wrong. Why? Because your father and mother told you so. Isn't that it?"
"Oh, not that alone. Everybody thinks it's wrong. The Bible teaches that it is. Everybody turns his back on you when he finds out."
"Wait a minute,"