Chapter XVII: Book SIX: Wilson Avenue (13)

He looked in the direction of her upward glance, and saw outlined against the sky a curious accidental roof-line made by the juxtaposition of two buildings. It was nothing—and it had the pure beauty of a design by Hiroshige.

“Yes,” he said, gazing at it. An accidental scrap of beauty, unseen by millions of passing eyes, and only revealed, it seemed, to such people as themselves! He gazed, and the knowledge that she too saw it, that her world was full of such moments, and that they could share them together, satisfied his need of companionship. He pressed her arm closer to his side.

They resumed their walk. “You can’t see things like that if you care about people,” she said. “And that’s how it works out.... But it’s nice to know some one else like that. Only—I don’t think this will last, with you....”

“Why?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“So you believe I’ll go back to caring—to being human, as they call it—to having remorse about the past and worries about the future, to being all tangled up in unhappiness again!” he said incredulously.

She laughed, and sang, in a low voice, close to his ear, the lines of a song that went to an old ballad measure:

“_Oh, the briary-bush,
That pricks my heart so sore!
If I ever get out of the briary-bush
I’ll never get in any more!_”

“You think you won’t, Felix, but you will! People do go back to the briary-bush. You have to learn early, to stay out.... But I’m glad you came to see me while you’re in this mood. You know, you may get over it in an hour or two!”

“Wait and see!”

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LVI. Eulenspiegel

1

“ALL right—I’ll wait....”

“Shall we sup in luxury at one of these gilded hotels?”

“Yes, let’s,” she said.

They went to the grill-room. It was gay with its midnight crowd, an orchestra was playing, and in the cleared space couples were dancing. The waiter found them a little table in the corner.

“I’m really hungry,” she said. “I forgot to eat dinner.”

“Silly child!” he said. “So did I.”

“Who’s a silly child?”

“I was waiting for my playmate.”

They laughed.

With her cloak thrown back carelessly on the chair, leaning forward with bare elbows on the table, her black hair tousled about her curiously slanting temples, her blouse askew over one shoulder, she was indeed very much a child. And he felt like a child too, and rejoiced in her as a careless and happy playfellow.

“Let’s start,” she said, ignoring the menu, “with all the different kinds of little fishes.”

“Good. And—” he consulted the menu—“a filet mignon?”

She nodded. “And petit pois?... And then what? Some kind of salad, I suppose.”

“One of the things you keep pulling apart all evening.”

“Yes—what are they called? Artichoke. With Hollandaise sauce. And what kind of cocktail?” he asked.

“The one that has a dash of electricity in it.”

“A Daiquerai!” he affirmed.

“Right.”

“Well, that will do to begin with.—Oh, yes, wine.”

“Nothing sweet,” she warned him.

“A Sauterne, then?”

“That will be nice,” she said.

He gave the order, and when he had finished turned to her. “You know,” he said, “it always makes me feel reckless to order wine. I’m always sure that I’m not going to have enough left to tip the waiter.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she said. “It’s no fun to dine with people who are blasé about ordering wine—unless you can feel wickedly extravagant about it, you might just as well drink water. The thrill is all in the idea, anyway. I think wine is a much overrated institution—so far as its effects go.... I ordered a liqueur once, a beautiful purple thing I had just discovered—I forget the name of it; I ordered it, not to drink, but just to look at—and when the man I was dining with called my attention to my neglect, and I explained, he was outraged!... But I wish they would bring the little fishes—I shan’t neglect _them_.”

“It’s nice,” he said, “to be able to think and talk about things that don’t matter.”

“Such as what?”

“Such as little fishes, and poetry. I’ve been so dreadfully serious-minded for a long time.—Is Gregory going to put on ‘The Land of Heart’s Desire’?”

“He hasn’t decided. If he does—”

“If he does, you must play Mary. It won’t be Yeats’s Mary, but it will be something very exciting, if you play it.”

“I hope he’ll let me.”

“Do you know ‘On Baile’s Strand’?”

“He’s thinking of doing that, too. I haven’t read it. But I hear there’s nothing in it for me.”

“Oh, yes, there is! There’s the part of the young prince. It wouldn’t be a half bad idea. You’re quite as much a boy as a girl. You’d be a very striking young prince.”

“Thank you!”

“However, I was thinking of another part for you—the part of the warrior-queen that the two kings talk about. You remember?”

“No.”

“She doesn’t actually appear in the play. But she ought to. I’d like to write you a play about her.”

“Tell me about her!”

“She fights like a man, and bears a love-child to a soldier-king—and then makes war on him. He is speaking about her afterward, in Yeats’s play, and he says to the older king:

“_You have never seen her—ah! Conchobar, had you seen her
With that high, laughing, turbulent head of hers
Thrown backward, and the bowstring at her ear,
Or sitting at the fire with these grave eyes
Full of good counsel as it were with wine,
Or when love ran through all the lineaments
Of her wild body...._”

She drank in the lines eagerly, and when he paused she looked at him gratefully. “I’d like to do a part like that,” she said.

The cocktails came, but she pushed hers aside. “Tell me some more about her. She loves and hates the same man? Does he understand that—her lover, I mean.”

“Perhaps not at first—in my play, he wouldn’t. But in Yeats’s play, years later, he does understand. When the older king complains that even his former sweetheart makes war on him, he says:

“_No wonder in that, no wonder at all in that.
I never have known love but as a kiss
In the mid battle, and a difficult truce
Of oil and water, candles and dark night,
Hillside and hollow, the hot-footed sun
And the cold, sliding, slippery-footed moon—
A brief forgiveness between opposites
That have been hatreds for three times the age
Of this long ’stablished ground._”

“A kiss in the mid-battle!” she repeated. “That is lovely.”

She raised her cocktail. “Here’s to our play!”

They drank.

“Now,” he said, a little embarrassedly, “I feel that I shall have to write that play!”

She put her hand on his for a moment. “Don’t feel that,” she said. “I know—people dream of things and ... don’t do them. I shan’t hold you to account. But it’s a lovely dream—and that’s what I’m drinking to.”

“But wouldn’t you rather have the play than the dream?” he asked.

“I don’t know.... By the time you wrote it—I would be interested in something else, and you would want another girl to do it. Why should we bother with promises? We’re not that kind.... If I said I loved you—and I could say that right now—I always love people who think of lovely things, and that play was a lovely thing to think of—why, I wouldn’t expect you to hold me to account for it ... later.”

“Do you love me?” he asked, in a casual tone.

“Yes.... Here are the fishes!... Of course I do. You are a terribly nice person. You love me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Felix.

The waiter went away, and she laughed. “That was a test,” she said. “A man who can talk about love in the presence of the waiter without looking awkward—! But I meant it, too.... These _are_ good, aren’t they?”

“Delicious! Especially these sprats. I don’t know what a sprat is, but I’m sure this is one.”

“That’s another thing—people ought to be able to talk about love, and food, and art, and money, in the same tone of voice. Some men would be shocked to hear me discuss love and little fishes all in the same breath.”

“I seem to be passing all your tests.”

“Yes—it doesn’t even make you nervous to be compared with other men.”

“Oh, I suppose there _are_ other men in the world,” said Felix. “They don’t interest me, but I don’t mind your alluding to them.”

“So long as it’s to their disadvantage!”

“Or any other way. I simply can’t take them seriously. Men seem ridiculous creatures to me.”

“I’ve known some very interesting ones!”

“You thought so at the time. A pardonable mistake. The truth is, Bobbie Eulenspiegel, you and I are the only truly interesting people alive in the world at this moment.”

She laughed up into his eyes. “I think so too,” she said.

She had suddenly become very much a girl, with the light of a feminine magic gleaming in her mischievous eyes.

“Are you flirting with me?” he demanded.

“How did you guess?” she asked.

The orchestra struck up again.

“Shall we dance?” she said, jumping up from the table.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you know, the last time I danced with you, I had been drinking, and thought I was dancing with a childhood playmate.”

“Aren’t I your childhood playmate?” she asked pausing at the edge of the dancing space.

“No, Serpent of the Nile,” he said, taking her in his arms. “And you aren’t a dryad, either,” he went on, as they mingled with the dancers. “You are a water-witch, that’s what you are. You dance like water in the sunlight. You are an exhalation from the salt sea wave. You have no body—which is even worse than having no soul; if I knew the proper magic words to pronounce, this which seems to be your body would dissolve, and I would hold in my arms only a handful of shining mist. You are really not here at all—there is no one here but me, talking to myself. In fact, now I think you must be somebody that I invented in a fanciful mood—a quite imaginary person.”

“You seem to have a number of contradictory theories about me,” she said.

“Yes—the only thing I am quite sure of is that you don’t really exist.”

“Are you sure that _you_ exist?” she mocked.

“No, now that I think of it, I’m not sure.”

“Perhaps you are an imaginary person that _I_ invented,” she insisted.

“If any one could invent me, I think you might.”

“Oh, easily!”

“That shows how little you know me,” he said. “I don’t think you invented me, after all. You would be prouder of me if you had. Masterpieces like that are not thrown off every day.”

“Masterpiece? A mere jeu d’esprit!”

“I renounce you utterly,” he said. “You are a base pretender. Besides, you are too young to have thought of such things. I believe you said you were twenty-five.”

“I lied, to impress you. I am twenty-four. How old are you?”

“I am twenty-four, too,” he said. “Remarkable coincidence!”

“Not at all. I am really twenty-seven.”

“Devil! How old are you?”

“Older than you, anyway.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I _am_ an awful liar,” she said, with an air of telling him a secret.

“I shall distrust every word you say henceforth.”

“Good—then I shall always tell the truth, and you’ll be no wiser. You can’t hold me.”

“Who wants to hold you? Not I!” he said.

“Oh, don’t you?”

“What would I do with you? What are you good for? No, I don’t want you. Go home,” he told her.

“Now I sha’n’t.”

“All right, stay then.”

“I’ve a rehearsal at ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” she remarked.

“What’s that to me?”

“I ought to go home and get some sleep.”

“Then you probably won’t.”

“No. I probably won’t.... There’s the waiter bringing our food.”

“It can wait,” he said.

“You’re in no hurry to get home, I take it?”

“No.”

The music ended. He led her back to their table.

“Besides—” he said. “I didn’t tell you about my new home, did I? It’s on the north side.”

“Where? I live on the north side too. Think of us two living in the midst of Wilson Avenue respectability. It’s very amusing.... Is it the dancing or the cocktail that gives us such an appetite?”

“Or the fact that we had no dinner, perhaps? Just off Wilson Avenue, near the L station. A dingy bachelor apartment.”

“It can’t be worse than mine. I fear I have no talent for home-making.”

“There’s a dance hall just across the street,” he said. “That’s why I left home tonight.”

“Why let that annoy you? Why not dance there?”

“Yes, why not? Will you go and dance with me?”

Her eyes lit up. “When?”

“Any time. I imagine it’s always in full blast. Tonight?”

“Yes!” She clapped her hands. “Now!”

“Our supper....”

“What of it? There are other places to eat, a dog-wagon will do. Come!” She rose, her eyes dancing.

He rose too, throwing his napkin on the table. “Never put off till tomorrow—”

He helped her on with her coat, and when the surprised waiter came with the wine, he demanded his check.

“Yes, sir. And the wine, sir?”

“Give it to me!” said the girl.

He handed it over with a dignified gesture.

“You should have borrowed a corkscrew, too!” said Felix, as they left the room.

“I didn’t want the wine,” she said. “I just wanted to walk out with it under my arm. I thought you might object.”

“Again you misjudge me,” said Felix. “You can do all the foolish things you want to—but don’t waste your time doing them to see whether I care. I don’t care. You can stand on your head here on Michigan Avenue if you like. I sha’n’t mind.”

“Shouldn’t you?” she said. “Well, then, if I may do as I please, then I sha’n’t do anything very outrageous. Would it be very outrageous to visit your apartment in the dead of night with this wine, before we go to the dance across the street? Will you be put out?”

“Probably,” said Felix. “But there are other places to live. There is always the park bench, when you have had me turned out of all my apartments.”

“Oh, my enthusiasm for you won’t last that long. Never fear!... Have we enough money to taxi up there?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s take the L. It’s quicker. Do you like me, Felix?”

“I sha’n’t tell you!”

They climbed the elevated steps, and waited for a train. A weary policeman waited there, the only other person on the platform.

“How do you suppose this adventure is going to end?” she asked, as they walked.

“Who knows?” he answered. “That’s the fun of an adventure—one never does know.”

She sighed. “If I thought you thought you knew—! But you don’t, do you?”

“And I don’t care.”

“Amazing youth! I can’t tease you, can I? So I won’t try any more.... Don’t you think I ought to go home and go to bed?”

“I’m sure you ought.”

“If we danced all night—”

“I think I will kiss you, right now. The idea has just occurred to me.”

Standing on the platform in the glare of the electric lights, under the amused eye of the policeman, they kissed each other.

“I _must_ go to that rehearsal at ten o’clock!” she said.

“You shall have three cups of the best coffee the Wilson Avenue Tea and Coffee Store affords,” he said smiling, “made by the most expert hands.”

She looked frightened. “Let’s _walk_ up to Wilson Avenue,” she said suddenly.

“Good. We can make it by breakfast time. I’d like a nice long walk!”

“No,” she said. “There’s our train coming! Besides, I can change my mind several times more on the way up....”

2

“You do make good coffee, Felix!” she said, the next morning. “One more cup, and I think I’ll be equal to the rehearsal. No, you mustn’t come with me.”

“I wasn’t going to go with you, foolish child. I’m merely going to escort you to the front door.”

At the street door she kissed him. “Don’t expect me!” she said. “If you wait for me, I shan’t come back.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’ll probably find me curled up on your doorstep when you come home. Good-bye.”

He watched her disappear around the corner, then went out and looked on the sidewalk, and in the street. He was looking for a little book which he had tossed out of the window the night before.

He did not find it. Somebody had picked it up and carried it away.... But that was better than finding it crumpled and muddy in the gutter. It was the last thing binding him to his old life, and it was just as well that it should be utterly gone.

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LVII. Three Days

1

“THERE are,” writes the learned Winckler in his History of Love, “erotic adventures, or misadventures, which do not arise from any real emotion between the two people immediately concerned, but are a banal reaction from the recent—or even remote—hurts of some other, authentic relationship. Made much of in modern fiction, these misadventures scarcely deserve such attention. It is unprofitable, even for the philosophic moralist, to inquire closely into the details of such baffling relationships; if mere flirtations, they are adulteries none the less; and if adulteries, they still remain mere flirtations. Lacking as they do any personal significance, these misadventures are as devoid of lasting interest to others as to the misadventures themselves.”

With all due deference to the learned Winckler, it may perhaps be suggested that the lack of any personal significance in such relationships, and the discovery of it by the persons involved, is worthy of record.... There is a charm, real if evanescent, in impersonality; and at times the weary mind finds in this charm a blessed anodyne. It seems, at such times, as though the very nothingness at the heart of such a relationship were the most beautiful thing in the world. A wanderer shipwrecked in a tumultuous tropic sea might well yearn to be cast up on some arctic shore. Deeper than the demands of the senses is the yearning for the Snow Princess, whose kisses are as cool as snowflakes. There is no fever of love in those kisses; their sweet hard chill is like the sight of marble contours; they have the calm of eternity in them.

During his first hours with Elva Macklin, it had seemed to Felix that he knew the profoundest secret of human wisdom—the vanity of desire. He desired nothing in the world, least of all any gift from his light-hearted companion in Nirvana. She had nothing to give; and whatever she might give and he might take, it was still nothing. It was strange, how like fire ice could be; but fire burns, and leaves nothing the same as before—it transmutes, or destroys; and this crystal flame left them both as they had been. They felt no need of each other; and they could not be disappointed. They were satisfied with themselves; and they could be content to remain strangers for all their nearness. No kiss could bridge the gulf between them; they did not want it bridged; and if they kissed, it was as though to prove that no intimacy, none whatever, could shatter their splendid and perfect isolation, no mere happy human closeness merge their triumphant individual identities. There was a defiance in their kisses—they were proving that they could be to each other everything and yet nothing.

It was quite true that Felix did not care, when Elva Macklin went off to her rehearsal, whether he ever saw her again; he knew she would return; but it made no difference. It never would make any difference. They were strangers; they would remain strangers for ever. There was no danger of love.

And as long as there was no danger, they would enjoy the happy charm of each other’s strangeness....

Felix did not go to his office; he stayed in the apartment, writing—writing a play. It was the same play he had been writing ever since his marriage; a new version, and different from all the others. Before, he had written fantastically of people as he wished them to be; now he wrote of them as they were. He knew, now, what human beings were like; himself outside the boundaries of their hopes and fears, he understood them, pitied them, loved them. He wrote of himself as he had been—caught hopelessly in the briary-bush of human passions.... Yes, this was a play at last. One must, it seemed, be outside things to understand them.

He was beginning to weary of this warm human nature in which his imagination was immersed, when Elva Macklin came, suddenly....

“Writing?” she said indifferently.

“Yes—a play.”

“Is there a part for me in it?”

“No—not in this one.”

She talked of the rehearsal. He put his manuscript aside.... She did not care, aside from the question of a part for her, whether he wrote plays or not; thank heaven! She did not care whether he ever became a playwright. She did not care if he ever did anything. She did not, the gods be praised, believe in him!

He went over and kissed her.

2

The second day he wrote again on his play, all day, while again she went to rehearsals. He had not gone to the office at all. He mentioned the fact. It was evident that she did not care. Whether or not the Evening Chronicle had a dramatic editor made no difference to her.

She talked of herself. She was doing her part in “Anatol” magnificently, she said.

He pressed her hand, glad that she was so pleased with herself. She did not need his reassurance. He could not have given it. He did not believe that she would ever do that part well.

He remarked that he was writing a great play. She smiled, and patted his hand. Probably she did not believe it. Anyway, she didn’t care, so long as he didn’t need sympathy and encouragement....

They were very happy....

3

The end came suddenly, on the morning of the fourth day. They were having coffee.

She yawned, and asked for another cup. “I don’t think I’ll come back today,” she said casually.

He laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“You, too?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said frankly. “I’m getting interested in my play.... I suppose I’ve been rather a nuisance, talking about that play!”

“And you’re bored hearing what a great actress I am!” she said.

They smiled at each other.

“It’s been very nice!” she said.

“You are a darling!” he told her.

“I’ll pay you a real compliment,” she said. “You are as much of an egotist as I am. I like you. I can go off now and think about my part and never give you another thought.... And you won’t mind.”

“No. But I, on the contrary, shall think about you often—and put you in a play sometime.”

They chatted until it was time for her to go to the rehearsal.

“Will you button my spats?” she asked.

He knelt and pried the buttons into their eyelets.

“Good-bye,” she said, and lifted her face to be kissed.

For the first time, in this good-bye kiss, there was expressed a real affection. At least, they were friends now. They wished each other well. They cared—a little—about each other. Doubtless that was why they had begun wanting each other’s praise, begun to be annoyed at each other’s indifference. They were friends already—they might perhaps become more than friends. That was why they were not going to see each other any more.

It had been perfect. It must not be spoiled.

“Good-bye, Felix dear.”

He put his arms about her.

“Good-bye, Bobbie Eulenspiegel.”

“I do like you.”

“I like you, too.”

They kissed again, and she went.

He turned back to his play.

4

Late that evening he finished the rough draft of his second act. That was as far as he could go. He had put into his characters all he knew of them. The rest of the play would wait. He put his manuscript away.

And as he put it away, the thoughts that it had shut out by its dream-like presentment of them began painfully to crowd in upon him.... Elva had been right; not caring was only a mood with him—and it was already over. She had predicted that it would last three hours. It had lasted three days.

All the emotions that he had forgotten and escaped rushed in to hurt and confuse him. His little moment of careless freedom was over.... Tomorrow he would go back to the office and see if he still had a job.

And what had been his marriage ... it could not be ended like this. He could not simply run away. They would have to meet and talk. Make arrangements.... The obsequies of marriage....

The past and the present were back again on his calendar.

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LVIII. Rendezvous

1.

GOING back to the office the next morning, Felix had the sense of his absence—so momentous to himself—not having been particularly remarked.... True, there had been no new plays opening that week; and the editorial page could get along without his assistance. But it was strange to go back to the real world and find that it does not know you have been away!... He worked all morning, distractedly, on a column for the Saturday page, and arranged a layout of photographs of actors and actresses.

He had glanced that morning into the busy editorial writers’ room, and Clive had not been there. He had been assailed by a vague feeling of self-reproach, as his imagination presented to him the possible meaning of that absence. He had quite amazingly—it now seemed to him—left Clive out of his considerations altogether. How all this might affect Clive had simply not occurred to him.... They all of them had had a way of treating each other as super-people. They had disdained the notion of sparing each other’s feelings; they had not even been willing to admit that they had feelings which might require to be spared!... But there was no reason to believe that Clive, any more than himself, should come out of this emotional earthquake unscathed.

At noon he went in to ask about his friend. But as soon as he entered, Willie Smith looked up and said,

“Oh, here you are! Well, tell us what it’s all about!”

“What what’s about?” Felix asked, confused.

“Clive’s getting married. You know about it, don’t you? You don’t? Well, I thought you’d know all about it!”

“Is he married?”

“Where’s that card, Hosmer? Well, I’m surprised. I thought you’d be in on it.—Can’t you find that card? He’s married all right. To some girl named—I forget her name. And you didn’t know anything about it! Well, he had us guessing all week. He didn’t show up, and we thought he must be sick. And then Hosmer saw in the morning papers that a license had been issued to John C. Bangs and some girl. Hosmer’s entitled to all the credit for deducing that John C. Bangs was our old friend Clive—I wouldn’t believe it. And then the announcement came.—Oh, here it is, right here. Have you got any idea who the girl is?”

Felix took the card, on which was written in Clive’s small, precise handwriting:

_Phyllis Nelson and Clive Bangs
announce their marriage
at the City Hall in Chicago
Friday, November twenty-eighth_

“Today!” he said. “Yes.... I know the girl. Will you give me the card? I suppose there’s one waiting for me at home, but I’d like to have this now.”

2

California!... Rose-Ann went about her work that same morning with the thought always in her mind. Going away would simplify everything. In California one could start one’s life anew.

There was no need to make a fuss about anything. She had her work. Life would go on. She would make new friends.... Yes, going away made it easy. She wouldn’t even have to plan for a new place to live, if she were going away soon; she could just take a room anywhere, and not tell any one where it was. Or she might even stay on in the studio. It was only for a little longer.

Yes, she would stay there; she wouldn’t hide herself. Nobody need pity her. After all, she and Felix had been drifting apart for a long time; they had been seeing less and less of each other; the break had come gradually; this was merely the end. There were some things about it that she did not understand—but no matter. She accepted the situation as it stood.

In that spirit of bravado, she went that noon to the little Hungarian restaurant where she and Felix and Clive and Phyllis had lunched so often. She went to her accustomed table, and sat there, remembering what Clive had once said and they had all laughingly agreed to, in the days when they believed themselves wonderful young people who could talk about anything—that if anything ever happened to them of the sort that “couldn’t be discussed,” they would come here and discuss it “in the teeth of God and Nature.”

Well, she was here and they were not.

She wondered at little at Clive’s absence. Was he off breaking his heart somewhere? Or had he, as they had all boasted of themselves, no heart to break? At all events, she had stood her ground.

Some one entered, and she looked up, as of old habit when she arrived first.

It was Felix.

3

She sat quietly and waited for him. He came over, seeming glad to see her, and slouched into a chair. “I wondered if I’d find you here,” he said.

“I wondered if you’d come!” she said. She was astonished to find in herself no emotion except that of being glad that he had come—simply that.

“Last night,” he said, “I wanted to come to see you. And I was afraid to, I guess. Because of things I didn’t want to tell you about—that I thought you wouldn’t understand.”

The table, that place dedicated to the telling of impossible truths, still had for them its old magic. “Last night,” she said, smiling ruefully, “I set the alarm clock to go off at midnight.... If you didn’t come by then, I was going to forget you.”

“And I didn’t come,” he said.

“No.... I waited till the clock went off. I said that if you came before that I would forgive you everything—anything.”

“How could I come?” he asked. “Before one can be forgiven, one must be ashamed. And I wasn’t ashamed. I’m not now.”

“Why should you be?” she asked.

“But you don’t know,” he said. “Or do you? Have you seen Phyllis?”

“Phyllis? No!”

“Neither have I—for three days.”

“But I thought—”

“No you didn’t.” He leaned forward. “Tell me—did you ever _believe_—not your mind, but with your emotions!—that I was in love with Phyllis? Were you ever really jealous of her? Did you ever take her seriously, as your rival?”

“No—not the real Phyllis—no. The real Phyllis I liked, and was sorry for and ... perhaps a little afraid of—but not as a rival. I _was_ jealous of the Phyllis who—who existed only in your mind.”

“My illusion of her, yes. But why?”

“Felix, you robbed me to give to that illusion. You loved in her what you refused to see in me to love. I might have been all that she was to you—and you wouldn’t let me! When you spoke of her, I kept thinking, ‘He might say those things of me!’—and you might, much more truly.”

“Then why did you push me into her arms—into the arms of the real Phyllis ... the one you were afraid of! Because you knew she’d hurt me? Was that it?”

They were talking in the eager low tones of their accustomed discussion, cut off by the influences of this spot from any disturbing sense of outer things—alone in an enchanted solitude, a magic circle into which none but the waiter could intrude.

“Hurt you?” A look of tenderness shone fleetingly in Rose-Ann’s eyes, half-contradicted by a triumphant smile. “Did she hurt you? I’m sorry, Felix.”

“Are you?”

“No—I’m glad! I wanted you to be hurt! I wanted to punish you—for dreaming of her—punish you by making you find out....”

“It would serve you right if the illusion had turned out to be true after all, wouldn’t it?”

“I thought it had, Felix. What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly. But look at this!”

He took the card from his pocket and put it before her.

At that moment the waiter came up, bowing them welcome. “You haf’ not been here for many days now,” he said. “I begin to think you desert us! Haf’ you your order ready?”

“You know what we want,” said Felix absently.

“Yes, sir. Everything shall be as always!” He beamed and ceased to exist.

Felix turned again to Rose-Ann, who sat staring quietly at the card.

“You aren’t surprised?” he asked.

“I feel that I knew it all along, somehow!” she said.

“Yes, so did I.... That’s the queer thing. All this other—”

“Was just Phyllis’s game with Clive. I don’t mean she did it on purpose. She couldn’t help it!”

“It was Clive’s game too,” he insisted.

“In a sense, yes.... She tormented him, ran away from him—and played up to you—all for Clive’s sake.... I’m sorry, Felix!”

“For me? You needn’t be. You were victimized too. By your pride—just as I by my vanity.”

“Yes,” she said, “and now—at last—they can have their happiness!”

They were silent for a moment, contemplating the tragic farce in which they had acted their tragi-comic parts.

“So,” he said ironically, “it was to make their marriage possible that we were so busy destroying our own!”

“No—I won’t have that. If she’s hurt you, I’m sorry, Felix; I really am. But I can’t think of us just as helpless victims. Why did we do it? We have our own quarrel, Felix.”

“Yes—a quarrel in which no one else counts. I know. But first let me explain. She did hurt me. But I found consolation.”

“In whom?” she asked sharply.

“Elva Macklin.”

“That queer egotistic little theatre-waif! Felix!”

“Say what you like—I’m not ashamed of it.”

“You _couldn’t_ love her!”

“No—I never pretended to. Nor she.”

“I’m ashamed for you, Felix, if you’re not!”

“Be ashamed, then. I can’t be. I’ve tried.”

“Why try?”

“People that are ashamed—can be forgiven.”

“But I can’t understand it....”

“Neither can I.”

“If it had been some one you loved—”

“You might have lost me.”

“I’ve lost you now,” she said sadly.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell you one thing I _am_ ashamed of. No—I don’t know whether I can or not. It’s too silly.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll tell it backwards.... This morning I found a bottle of wine in my apartment—the relic of that orgy of which you are so scornful. It was unopened. I decided to make a present of it to my landlady. She thanked me and rummaged on a shelf and gave me in return a book—a book with my name in it that she had found in her area-way. She had been saving it for me.... That’s the end of the story. Here’s the book.”

He took from his pocket a soiled copy of the Bab Ballads. She gazed at it.

“Oh! you took it with you?”

“To my new home, yes—to remember you by. But wait. It did make me remember you—too well—and so I flung it out the window. That’s what I am ashamed of, Rose-Ann. I know it’s absurd. But we’re telling each other the truth.... And it’s not Elva, nor anything else—but just what I did to that book, that I want to ask your forgiveness for....”

“Was _she_ there?”

“Yes. That was why.”

“I’m glad you did it!”

“You don’t understand. That book—it’s more than just you, Rose-Ann: it’s all you stand for to me.... I wanted to get rid of it all.”

“What _do_ I stand for, to you?”

He thought a moment, and then answered, as if the word had pushed itself up out of the deeps of his mind.

“Reality.”

“Merely that?” Her voice was disdainful and challenging.

He took up its challenge.

“No—more than that. Pain. You stand for that.”

“I?”

“And heartbreak.”

“I?”

“And yesterday and tomorrow.”

“And am I,” she demanded quietly, “never to stand for any of the beautiful things?—Must you find them—or think you find them—in Phyllis ... and Elva?...”

He felt as though they had reached the crux of their discussion at last. And he felt, too, that it was a perilous moment. He could sense the forces of an intense resistance gathering in her mind.

“Yes, that’s our quarrel,” he said.

“What?”

He spoke with a sudden anger, only half repressed.

“You won’t help me. You never have. You tell me lies....”

“Felix!”

“Yes, you do. And I—I believe you, because it is you who tell them. Lies about life.”

“What have I told you?”

“That I could be free. I _was_ free, Rose-Ann. With Elva. For three days. That was quite enough. And that’s why I am not ashamed or sorry. I learned something from her that you refused to tell me.”

“What did you learn—from her?”

“That I don’t want freedom.”

“Don’t you?” she mocked gently. “The truth, Felix!”

“Oh, it’s beautiful enough! As death is more beautiful than life. As for me, after a little cupful of death, I prefer pain and heartbreak. I prefer you.”

“But—it’s as if you wanted me to make you unhappy, Felix.... That’s what you are saying!”

“Isn’t it true? You _have_ made me unhappy. And happy, too, Rose-Ann. The two things go together. I want them both. Not this mad, mystical peace that is like death.”

“The mad mystical peace of death,” she repeated. “You make it very alluring, Felix. One gets tired of life.... Just as you got tired of me. But perhaps—perhaps I am not what you think I am. Perhaps I can understand the joys of a little cupful of death—I, too.”

The waiter arrived with a savoury stew. He uncovered the dish with a flourish. It reeked of nutritiousness. They stared at it helplessly. The waiter went away.

“I can’t eat,” Rose-Ann said appealingly.

Sympathetically he passed her a cigarette.

“Felix,” she said, “I know what you think you want. It’s like that stew. You ought to want it; but you don’t. You want coffee and cigarettes and talk and poetry—not the solid food of life.... You try to fool yourself. And you try to fool me.”

She paused and then went on with sudden passion, “You’ve accused me of lying to you. It’s you who have lied! Whose fault is it if I didn’t mean what I said—that time? You’ve never been honest with me. You were never willing to face the future. I tried to talk with you, but you wouldn’t. You made me feel that I was wrong. And so I tried to believe differently about our marriage. And when the real truth came out—yes, the truth!—I wasn’t prepared to meet it. I was a coward.—Perhaps I’m a coward still. I don’t know. But I know this—I’m not willing to do what you say you want me to do—bind you, tame you, keep you. No! I won’t be ... _a wife_.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LIX. Unanswered Questions

1

FELIX smiled at her. “Nor even a woman, Rose-Ann?”

“If that’s what being a woman is, no. But you’re mistaken. A woman can be something else besides that.”

“So it seems. I always had the notion that they understood life better than I did. But I’m mistaken, I guess.”

“Would you like to be _my_ keeper?” she flashed out. “Would _you_ want to guard and watch after me, and keep me in the paths I should go in?”

He looked at her intently. “So that—that is what you want?” he hazarded.

For a moment that seemed to him the truth hidden behind all Rose-Ann’s evasions. But before he had time to read confirmation in her startled eyes, the waiter came up.

“Is there anything else?—You don’t like the stew today?”

He stood there, a statue of injured pride, looking at the neglected dish.

“It’s a noble stew,” said Felix. “Nothing wrong with the stew. Bring our coffee.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I take away the stew?”

“Please.”

He bore it away with a mournful air.

2

Rose-Ann was sitting back in her chair with the air of the discussion having become too absurd to go on with.

Felix looked inquiry.

“How little we know each other after all,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“Have you forgotten what you said? I hope so.... Felix, if I wanted those things from my lover ... to be kept and guarded ... would I have chosen _you_?”

She dealt the blow lightly, looking away from him. He paled a little. “Perhaps not,” he said sullenly. And then—“Forgive me for being ridiculous.”

“I only meant,” she said, still looking away, “that I don’t want to spoil you. I like you as you are.... And if you insist upon being taught the cave-man virtues, why you will have to get some other woman to teach them to you. I decline the office.”

“Very well,” he said, “I sha’n’t ask you again.”

3

“It’s just as well the way it has turned out,” she said. “We might have made ourselves miserable trying to please each other. Now we can be ourselves.”

“And what is your notion of that?”

“For me—freedom.”

He smiled incredulously, scornfully.

“I’ve been trying,” she said, “against all my principles, to be a wife—for nearly two years. We both agree that I was a failure at it. I shall never try to be a wife again, Felix.... As for freedom—You speak as one who knows what it is. I have still to find out. Do you think you can forbid me my little cupfuls of mad, mystical peace?”

“Your coffee,” said the waiter.

“If I choose to have adventures, who are you to say No to me?” she said mockingly.

Felix did not answer.

4

“My paper is moving to Los Angeles this winter,” Rose-Ann said presently, in a casual tone.

“And I suppose,” he replied, in an equally casual way, “that you are going along....”

“I hope so,” she said. “The details aren’t settled yet, but I expect to go.... Perhaps very soon.”

“I forgot to tell you,” he remarked, “that I am writing another play.”

“I should like to see it before I go. Won’t you come in to see me occasionally? I’m going to stay in the studio until I leave. There’s no reason why we can’t be friends.”

“None whatever,” he said.

“I’m glad we’ve had this talk, Felix. Talk does straighten things out, doesn’t it? And now I must hurry back to the office. You _will_ come and see me?”

“Yes. I’ll stay and finish my coffee if you don’t mind.”

She went away, and he sat there for a long time, smoking cigarettes.

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LX. A Leave-taking

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, even 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; 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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LXI. Two Men Discuss a Girl

1

THERE was one thing about writing which Felix felt had never been done justice to by those who had praised the art of literature—it could quite astonishingly fill up the hollow emptiness of one’s idle hours. This quality, to be sure, it shared with drinking, opium-smoking, mathematics, pure science, pre-pragmatic philosophy, chess and the collecting of first editions, Japanese prints and postage stamps. But it was less debilitating than drink and philosophy; a surer refuge than chess; and there were no auctions to attend. Moreover one could work out the third act of a play with a triumphant certitude and power such as is denied to people who are engaged in trying to work out conclusions in their personal lives.

When he finished his play, late in January, he was appalled to find that he had nothing with which to occupy his spare time.... Of course, he might write his play over again. But he was angry at that play, now he had finished it. It had ended happily. Couldn’t one end anything happily except on paper?

On a sudden impulse, he went to the railway station one evening and inquired what time a train left for Springfield. He had got to thinking of Rose-Ann’s father. For some reason he wanted to see him.... He found that there was a train leaving in half an hour which would reach Springfield in the middle of the night....

He wanted to see Rose-Ann’s father: if he waited to make sensible arrangements and pack a bag, something would happen to keep him from going.... He bought a ticket, feeling of his unshaven cheek with ink-stained fingers and reflecting that he looked like a tramp—and went aboard the train.

2

The streets of Springfield were covered with new fallen snow. There were apparently no street cars running at that hour. Felix started to walk toward the Prentiss residence.

He walked for an hour. It was still dark when he reached the big house on the corner. As he approached from a side-street he could see a light burning in the Rev. Mr. Prentiss’s study, at the back of the house.