1
rose-ann left for los angeles during the christmas holidays. during the month that had elapsed before her departure, felix had been to see her several times a week.... there is something disconcerting in finding oneself treated by one’s wife as a new acquaintance—in a politely friendly manner, quite as she treats any other guest. he had gone away more than once secretly enraged, swearing that he would not go again; at other times it seemed to him a prodigious joke.
to knock at the door of his own studio; to sit as a guest upon a chair he had painted with his own hands; that was sufficiently strange. to invite formally to dinner—in order not to be merely one of several of her friends and admirers, in order to have a word with her alone—the girl with whom one has talked all night more nights than one could remember: that was stranger still. but to be met at the door, when you came to your studio a little early to escort her to that dinner, by a rather shy startled figure in a scarlet dressing gown well-known to you, but now clasped with firm fingers at her bosom, and asked to wait before the fire while she finished dressing behind the screen at the back, in a tone which cancelled utterly the countless intimacies that you have shared—that was the strangest of all.... was it any wonder that, having thus achieved the opportunity for a word or two alone with her he should have found it impossible to say any words whatever except such as would be appropriate addressed to a young woman with whom one stood on such a footing? one might talk to her seriously about ideas, or lightly about friends; one might be argumentative or witty; one might pay her compliments, 398even equivocal and daring compliments, of whose double meaning she would seem unconscious; one might, in short, pay court to her as one might to a hundred others.
but as for anything more—
try it and see.... treat a young woman to whom you are a perfect stranger, with an air of familiar lang syne; show up her airs of reserve as an absurd affectation; stand for no nonsense from her! do not let her pretend; break down that silly barrier of proud virginal constraint. remind her that in some previous existence, millions of years ago, she was the docile companion of your pillow. what right has she to that look of a defiant vestal?... yes, tell her so!
did you think she was yours, that she belonged to you now and henceforth? well you are mistaken. she belongs to herself.
you remember a time when—? well, she doesn’t remember. pay your court! perhaps in another thousand years or so you may get to be fairly well acquainted with her. not so well acquainted as tom, who jests with her familiarly, or billy, whom she pets, or that young painter, of whom she seems quite fond; but she likes you, after a fashion—yes, she even encourages you to persevere.
“had we but world enough, and time
this coyness, lady, were no crime!”
but day after day, in this preposterous fashion, is slipping past; and she says she is going to los angeles: and who are you to prevent her?
to felix it bore very much the aspect of ironic comedy. one can often see a joke when one cannot laugh at it. but what, after all, was the point of this particular joke?
if it was a demonstration that a married couple who have parted may continue to remain good friends, it was eminently successful. that appeared to be the way everybody took it. after the first shock, people seemed pleased. he and rose-ann had illustrated the virtues of modernistic marriage; 399now they were illustrating the virtues of modernistic divorce—something even more exciting!
was this a divorce?—the human fact which the law in its laborious way confirmed after due and hypocritic consideration! they were apart; rose-ann was going away; what did that mean except a complete separation of their lives? it might be unthinkable, and yet happen just the same. everything that had happened was unthinkable: divorce was no more so than any of the rest.
he loved her? well, she knew that. and she loved him—there was no need of questioning that. but she was going away nevertheless: and he was going to let her go away.
how the devil could he stop her?
plead with her, make promises, threaten, weep? that was child’s play. rose-ann was not going away because he had omitted to make a scene.
they were past the day of scenes; they had had scenes enough. it wasn’t that she wanted. her going wasn’t an idle gesture to evoke his tears. she meant it.
he had never understood her; he realized it now. he had had her in his arms and let her slip out of them; and he didn’t know how to win her back.
it was precisely as if they had never been married at all. he was wooing her under difficulties. he wasn’t succeeding....
on the evening before she took her train for los angeles—she had been very sweet to him in a touch-me-not way all that week—he said to her:
“must you go, rose-ann? i wish you wouldn’t.”
it was hard to say even so much. he said it quietly enough: there was no need to dramatize the situation. she knew what she was doing to him in going away. he couldn’t ask for her pity.
she looked hastily around. she was making fudge in her dismantled studio for a party of friends, and felix was assisting her. but nobody had overheard his—as it seemed—improper proposal.
400she bent close to him, touching his shoulder with hers. “don’t spoil my good-bye party!” she whispered reproachfully; and then stealthily patted his knee with her hand, as if to make amends for her scolding.
he did not ask, after that, to see her off; it was she who commanded his presence. he went sullenly.
she talked about everything which least concerned them, and he wished himself away. he hated her at that moment.
they were in the pullman, with one more minute by felix’s watch before the train started. he was wishing it were over, when she smiled reminiscently and said “do you remember seeing me off to springfield two years ago?”
“i remember,” he said doggedly. why did she want to torment him?
“only two years—and a whole lifetime to forget them in,” she mused. “we ought to be able to manage that.”
he looked up, but did not reply.
“aren’t you going to kiss me good-bye?” she said.
he put his arms about her—and once more, as a long time ago, they were swept together in a passionate embrace, that sought by its very pain to impress this moment on their souls, to annihilate time and space for them, and make them remember it always....
and then felix was outside on the platform, and she was waving him a cheerful good-bye.
2
back in his apartment, where he had not been since morning, he found a note from clive, asking him to come out and spend the week-end in woods point. clive had thrown up his job on the chronicle to write his long postponed novel. as he had told it, he and phyllis had tossed up a penny to decide which should come first—his novel or her baby ... and he had lost.
the invitation annoyed felix. he didn’t want to go to woods point to hear about clive’s novel.
he sat down at his desk and took out the manuscript of his unfinished play.
