She looked at him yearningly, for she realized that she had made him do things her way—this wild, unpractical, artistic soul. She wanted to yield then and there but something told her to wait.
"I won't tell you now," she said, "I want to talk to papa and mamma. I haven't told them anything as yet. I want to ask them about you, and then I'll tell you when I come again."
"Oh, Angela," he pleaded.
"Now, please wait, Mr. Witla," she pleaded. She had never yet called him Eugene. "I'll come again in two or three weeks. I want to think it over. It's better."
He curbed his desire and waited, but it made all the more vigorous and binding the illusion that she was the one woman in the world for him. She aroused more than any woman yet a sense of the necessity of concealing the eagerness of his senses—of pretending something higher. He even tried to deceive himself into the belief that this was a spiritual relationship, but underneath all was a burning sense of her beauty, her physical charm, her passion. She was sleeping as yet, bound in convention and a semi-religious interpretation of life. If she were aroused! He closed his eyes and dreamed.
CHAPTER XIII
In two weeks Angela came back, ready to plight her faith; and Eugene was waiting, eager to receive it. He had planned to meet her under the smoky train shed of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul depot, to escort her to Kinsley's for dinner, to bring her some flowers, to give her a ring he had secured in anticipation, a ring which had cost him seventy-five dollars and consumed quite all his savings; but she was too regardful of the drama of the situation to meet him anywhere but in the parlor of her aunt's house, where she could look as she wished. She wrote that she must come down early and when he arrived at eight of a Saturday evening she was dressed in the dress that seemed most romantic to her, the one she had worn when she first met him at Alexandria. She half suspected that he would bring flowers and so wore none, and when he came with pink roses, she added those to her corsage. She was a picture of rosy youth and trimness and not unlike the character by whose name he had christened her—the fair Elaine of Arthur's court. Her yellow hair was done in a great mass that hung sensuously about her neck; her cheeks were rosy with the elation of the hour; her lips moist; her eyes bright. She fairly sparkled her welcome as he entered.
At the sight of her Eugene was beside himself. He was always at the breaking point over any romantic situation. The beauty of the idea—the beauty of love as love; the delight of youth filled his mind as a song might, made him tense, feverish, enthusiastic.