1
THE second year of marriage began for Felix with a sense of uneasy
anticipation. It was as if things—strange, unknown things—were about to
happen.
He tried, by taking thought, to discover the reason for his vague
anxieties. But, viewed rationally, they seemed absurd. He attempted to
dismiss them.
He was happy. And Rose-Ann, in her own restless fashion, was happy, too.
What could the future bring to disturb their happiness? Nothing!
His economic status, moreover, even upon Clive’s calculations, was
secure for another year at least. And he was writing again, this time to
please himself. Rose-Ann should have no cause for complaint upon that
score....
And yet the vague anxieties persisted in the background of his thoughts.
It was as though he had in some way lost confidence in Rose-Ann.
He told himself that it was only that he knew her better now. He had
been foolish to assume that he could trust utterly in her instincts for
guidance. She was, like him, a bewildered wanderer, not knowing the
right path. She was more like himself than he had ever dreamed.
He could not rely blindly upon her. He must decide things for himself.
It made him feel a little lonely, a little frightened—as one might feel
in the woods, discovering that one’s guide is a romantic ignoramus like
oneself!
2
That was one reason why he did not want to show Rose-Ann the new play
upon which he was working. It would have pleased her—perhaps all too
well! In this play, a variation upon the familiar triangle situation,
the heroine kept her husband because she was not afraid to lose him....
Yes, that would have pleased Rose-Ann. Then why did Felix feel absurdly
guilty of some kind of spiritual disloyalty to her in writing it?
He did not quite know; but it was true that when Rose-Ann was in the
studio he could not with any freedom work on that play....
Rose-Ann felt this, and presently suggested that he try the experiment
of working in a rented room somewhere not too far from the studio. He
was surprised to find that in talking with Rose-Ann he indignantly
repelled the idea as totally objectionable. He was absurdly angry at her
for suggesting it.
It would have been intolerable if Rose-Ann had been jealous of his
writing; and yet he was behaving as though she _ought_ to be jealous of
it.... A strange quirk of the imagination!
Was he disappointed in her for not being the mentor and guide he had
tried to believe her—angry at her for insisting upon his finding his own
pathway through the woods?
3
When Rose-Ann brought up for a second time the subject of a work-room,
Felix admitted that it might be worth considering. And that same day he
went out room-hunting. He had not admitted to himself that he really
wanted such a place—but when, in a house on Garfield Boulevard, he found
a little room with a table and a cot, he decided that he must have it.
He told the landlady he would probably need it only a short time, and
paid two weeks’ rent, with the option of renewal....
He did not want to tell Rose-Ann about it. He said to himself that he
wanted to wait until he found whether he liked it or not. And he did
wait until he had spent an afternoon there writing, before telling her.
It was curious, the feeling of being in a room of his own that nobody in
the world knew about, not even Rose-Ann! That afternoon he seemed to
throw off some impalpable burden. He felt—free! He could sit there and
write, or dream, as long as he wished, with nobody to call him to
account for the way he spent his time. Not that Rose-Ann ever did call
him to account in such a manner; it was the last thing in the world she
would ever have done. But now, as never since his marriage, he felt
utterly by himself.... He sat dreaming for a while, and then commenced
to write swiftly a little play, something he had not thought of at all
before, a light, bright, rather cynical and pretty little play that
seemed to flow out by its own energy—a play dealing with characters as
unreal as those of Congreve or Wycherly, inhabitants of the same polite
and witty realm of the imagination as Millamant and Mirabell.
He told Rose-Ann that he had rented a room, but not that he had written
a play—for it was a short one-act affair of twenty pages, which he had
practically completed at a sitting. He took an inward satisfaction in
this harmless secret; and he was pleased that Rose-Ann did not ask
exactly where his room was, but only congratulated him on being so
sensible.
4
It was only a few days later that Rose-Ann came home with the news that
she had carried out her long cherished intention of getting a job. She
had learned by accident that there was an opening in a moving-picture
magazine. She had gone there, made an impression, and been engaged as
assistant editor.
Felix had a guilty sense that his desertion of their studio, if only for
an occasional afternoon, had been responsible for her action. Certainly
he was no longer in a position to oppose her wishes in this matter. His
plea had been that a job would deprive him of her society. He
had—though, it is true, at her suggestion—entered into an arrangement
which threatened to deprive her of much of his society. But, if there
was any spirit of retaliation behind her decision, it was not apparent
from her manner.
She was delighted with the new scope that this work gave her
superabundant energies; and though it consisted chiefly of rewriting
illiterate press-agentish articles, it yielded her a renewed sense of
self-respect. And after observing, a little uneasily, for a week or two,
its effect upon her, he found himself rather pleased.
Her office hours, though fixed, were not arduous. And if they had less
time to spend together, that time had come to seem more precious....
They would be sitting together at breakfast in their studio, Rose-Ann in
a flame-coloured silk kimono that matched her curls, pouring coffee for
him; all the more delightfully his, because he realized that when the
occasion had been prolonged another five minutes, she would glance at
the clock, and run behind the screen, to emerge dressed for her day’s
work—no longer his, but belonging to some impersonal enterprise for
which he cared less than nothing....
They would meet again at luncheon at the little Hungarian restaurant.
Clive would be there. And the fact that they were all three of them
snatching this hour of golden talk and comradeship from the midst of a
working day, gave a special zest to the occasion.... They were, it
seemed, happier than ever before.
“I’ve always something I can do for my old magazine in the evening,”
said Rose-Ann. “I won’t be lonely. Why don’t you go to your work-room?”
Two or three evenings a week he took her at her word, and in those
solitary hours it seemed to him that his creative fancy had begun to
bloom again.
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