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; now 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.
She 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.
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