Eugene followed, astonished, ashamed, rebuked, guilty minded, almost terror-stricken—he hardly knew what.
"Why, Angela," he urged pleadingly, leaning over her and attempting to raise her. "You know that isn't true."
"It is! It is!!" she insisted. "Don't touch me! Don't come near me! You know it is true! You don't love me. You haven't treated me right at all since I've been here. You haven't done anything that you should have done. She insulted me openly to my face."
She was speaking with sobs, and Eugene was at once pained and terrorized by the persistent and unexpected display of emotion. He had never seen Angela like this before. He had never seen any woman so.
"Why, Angelface," he urged, "how can you go on like this? You know what you say isn't true. What have I done?"
"You haven't told your friends—that's what you haven't done," she exclaimed between gasps. "They still think you're single. You keep me here hidden in the background as though I were a—were a—I don't know what! Your friends come and insult me openly to my face. They do! They do! Oh!" and she sobbed anew.
She knew very well what she was doing in her anger and rage. She felt that she was acting in the right way. Eugene needed a severe reproof; he had acted very badly, and this was the way to administer it to him now in the beginning. His conduct was indefensible, and only the fact that he was an artist, immersed in cloudy artistic thoughts and not really subject to the ordinary conventions of life, saved him in her estimation. It didn't matter that she had urged him to marry her. It didn't absolve him that he had done so. She thought he owed her that. Anyhow they were married now, and he should do the proper thing.
Eugene stood there cut as with a knife by this terrific charge. He had not meant anything by concealing her presence, he thought. He had only endeavored to protect himself very slightly, temporarily.
"You oughtn't to say that, Angela," he pleaded. "There aren't any more that don't know—at least any more that I care anything about. I didn't think. I didn't mean to conceal anything. I'll write to everybody that might be interested."
He still felt hurt that she should brutally attack him this way even in her sorrow. He was wrong, no doubt, but she? Was this a way to act, this the nature of true love? He mentally writhed and twisted.