"You didn't hurt your foot after all?"
"No. I didn't hurt it. I didn't want you to come and it was the first
thing I thought of."
Roger crumbled his bread on the cloth and waited. Anne tried to go on
calmly with her lunch, but she felt her face flushing and she knew
Roger was watching her, his eyes growing sterner, his mouth settling in
that straight line. She felt like a trapped animal, caught between a
quixotic pity of her people, a pity seen most clearly in moments when
Anne detested it most, and her longing to have Roger confess, unaided
by an explanation, the understanding she was sure he had. But Roger sat
on silent, waiting.
Before the strong, free youth of Roger, her father and mother shrank,
small, aging, pitiful. Little gray things, scuttling over the surface
of their flat, uninteresting world, never looking up, their worried
little eyes fastened on their own food and shelter. Units, among
incalculable millions of others, all frightened, worried, and avid
of personal comfort. To explain was to strip them bare, tear off the
meager covering of their self-respect, expose their one pride in all
its narrow rigidity.
At last Anne put down her knife and fork and looked at Roger.
"Roger, you asked me to trust you, yesterday. Won't you trust me?
You're right, I was not ill. Something did happen and I couldn't have
you come."
But no generous yielding softened Roger's eyes.
"It's different, Anne. Yesterday, when I asked you to have faith in me,
it was a question between ourselves. But this--there are others. I feel
surrounded by enemies. I don't even know which side----"
He bit the sentence, but Anne finished it for him.
"----I am on."
"Because you're not being open with me."
"Neither are you being honest. You do know, but you want to force me to
say."
Anne's lip trembled and Roger looked quickly away. In this, their first
misunderstanding, Roger wanted no emotional element to enter.
"Yes, I think I do. Your people don't approve of me. You've always
known it and that's why you didn't tell them. Why did you pretend it
was any other? I wouldn't have minded the truth."
"No, because you would scarcely recognize their existence as human
beings. They are of the 'spiritual bourgeoisie.' They are of the great,
spiritual middle class you despise so much."
Roger flushed. Anne went on:
"But they are my people. I live with them. I don't share their
standards. My brain despises their outlook on life. I can't help
knowing what their reactions will be. My father is bigoted and selfish
and, on the whole, rather mean. Sometimes, he is jolly and kind and a
little more tolerant, usually when a bet goes well. He is a clerk, a
corporation clerk, in body and soul. But he is a victim, too, of the
smallness of his own soul, just as much as the men who can't get work
are victims of 'the system.' And mamma----" Anne held her voice steady
by an effort, "I wouldn't hurt mamma for the world, or make things more
uncomfortable for her. In time----" but the tears welled over and ran
down Anne's cheeks.
Roger gripped her hand. "Don't, Princess, please don't. I was a brute.
I do understand, better than you think. But I hate meeting you round
in parks and public places, sneaking as if there were something to be
ashamed of. Last night, I wanted to sit close to you, in some warm,
comfortable room, like a human being."
Anne's lips moved in a warped smile. "You wouldn't have sat in a
comfortable room. It's one of the ugliest rooms I have ever seen.
There's a crayon portrait of a brother papa always hated and won't
have removed, and they would have watched us through hideous chenille
portières. That is, mamma would; papa would have pretended to read, in
a chair fixed so he could see us in the mantel glass. It would have
been ghastly."
Roger smiled, but his fingers held Anne's more firmly. "My high-strung,
beauty-loving Princess. We'll never have an ugly thing in the house,
will we?"
Anne shook her head. "No. We'll have nothing in it at all, rather than
that."
"Oh, it won't be as bad as that," Roger laughed.
"I don't care, Roger. Really I----"
Two people took the vacant places at the same table, so, in a few
moments, Anne and Roger finished and went. It was another day of
sunshine and dusty wind.
"I don't feel parky, to-day, do you? Then let's walk." Anne turned
north and Roger walked close beside her.
They walked slowly, Anne tingling with consciousness of Roger's
nearness, and of their isolation from others, in a new understanding
that had come to them. All these hurrying strangers were the world,
flowing around the little island on which she and Roger stood alone.
Block after block they walked in a silence rhythmic with shared dreams
and hopes that seemed to throb in unison with the perfect harmony of
their step.
Roger spoke first: "There was another call from Wainwright this morning
while I was out and he left word for me to see him this afternoon."
"I guess he wants a decision," Anne said casually.
"Yes. Yes, that's it, no doubt."
"Don't do anything you don't want to do." Anne's voice was even,
indifferent to the issue. Roger pressed her arm.
"Anne, you're a trump. The grandest little chum a fellow ever had."
Anne nodded valiantly. "And some hiker. Look where we've walked to.
Clear out to the City Hall."
"So we have! It didn't seem but a few blocks, did it?" Roger looked so
bewildered at the sight of the City Hall just before him, that Anne
laughed.
"Seeming is not being. There it is and I'll have to take a car right
straight back."
She moved, but suddenly Roger's hand held her arm and, at the strange
look on his face, Anne's eyes grew serious.
"Princess, let's go over and get the license now. It doesn't mean
much--but I would like to feel we'd gotten that far."
"Why! Roger! Now, this minute?"