0.1 Book report on "advesary in the house_part2" by irving stone.  (Page 3/5)

What was now slowly filering through her consciousness was the realization that Gene Debs had no need for marriage at this early age, that he had need for good many other things: first work, understanding of the world around him, a sense of being useful to the society, of growing into a job where he could serve.

She turned away, went to the door, opened it lightly and stood there with her head down crying noiselessly.

He had never seen her cry. He went to the door, wrested her hand from the knob,took her in his arms. A tremor went through him when he saw how beautiful she was with tears in his eyes.

“Please don’t cry, Gloria,” he said, “We will go for our walk. There is nothing in this world I’d rather…”

It was a moment before she answered.

“No, Gene. You want to work. You have so much to do. You must never let a girl’s tears divert you.”

“Gloria, honestly, I did love to go out along the river.”

“I am jealous; that’s all,” she cried.

Before he could reply she had gone out of the door, leaving him alone. He stood there irresolute, then half stumbled to his chair and with his long arms and legs drooping, his senses in turmoil.

By 1877 the pressure on Gloria to tie the nuptial knot with a third person, if Eugene was unable to do so, was mounting. Gloria at first opportune moment raised the topic with Eugene. But Eugene because of his priority of the Union’s work was unable to give her a promise.

The inner conflict between his emotions and his commitment are very succinctly portrayed by Irving Stone.

“He stood unmoving, he knew that he had loved Gloria from the beginning of their childhood friendship: and in some dim forbidden chamber at the base of his consciousness he sensed that he would never find another Gloria Weston, never find anyone so lovely, so desirable, so superbly suited to his nature and his needs. Many of the Terre Haute boys he had grown up with were already married, had children, many of them earned no more than he did at Hulman’s; for the most part they were happy and contented with their lot. Then why did he not take Gloria in his arms, kiss her full on the mouth in declaration and avowal?

He could not; his life was so uncharted, his need for work and freedom so overwhelming. If only he were going to remain at Hulman’s, he could ask for a promotion, start a little home: everything would be happy, normal. But he knew that he could not stay much longer behind his clerk’s desk, that he wanted his full time for his real job. Deep in his consciousness he sensed also that he wanted to devote his entire life to unionism and to the civilizing cause that it had embodied. He knew now the history of labour, and he had just lived through a virulent anti-union drive; his future would be troubled, filled with conflict and terror. What would he have to offer Gloria? His love? The mere fact he stood here, not taking her in his arms, not comforting her or reassuring her, but rather telling himself that the future was too chaotic to risk marriage, did not this indicate that that he did not love Gloria with the wholehearted, passionate rapture he had read about in literature? And somehow he understood that this wholeheartedness, this passion, this rapture was reserved for his work.