1
FELIX, astonished and perturbed, came over and petted her. “What’s the matter, darling?” he asked.
“Oh, Felix,” she said, putting her head against his breast, “do you love me?”
“Of course I love you! Don’t you know it?”
“I suppose so. But—all this—I’ve felt separated from you. I’ve felt—I don’t know what—I suppose it was what my father said—that this was just going to be him and my mother all over again....”
“He said that!”
“No, that isn’t what he said. But that’s what it made me feel. Felix, we aren’t going to stop loving one another now, are we?”
“Of course not. But what was it your father did say?”
“Nothing—only he spoke of how many distinguished friends we had, and—I knew he meant it all satirically—and that you had the makings of a successful man in you, if they were properly brought out by an ambitious wife—meaning me. And I felt as though—as though—Felix, I don’t want to behave to you as my mother did to my father....”
“What do you mean?” he asked quietly, still petting her like a child.
“You know, they were married very young, and he gave up business for the ministry after they were married, and we were very poor until my brothers left school and commenced to make money—and I think she never forgave him for that. And I’ve always—”
“Can’t we live our own life and love, Rose-Ann, without letting it get mixed up with our fathers and mothers?” Felix asked sadly.
Rose-Ann rubbed from her face the last vestige of her tears. “That’s why I didn’t want father to come to see us,” she said. “In-laws always mess things up, don’t they?”
“Even when they are the nicest people in the world, like your father.”
“Felix—I’m so glad to be back with you again—I feel as though I had been away from you, somehow. I don’t like it.”
“Don’t go away again, Rose-Ann-dear.”
“I won’t.” She pressed her head closer against his breast. “I’ll never go away again.”
Again the storm had passed, leaving Felix again wondering how it could have arisen. Some of the things they had said to each other were really incredible. How hard and hostile they had been to each other! And—quarrelling over Phyllis! Why, the whole thing was absurd, the product of fevered imaginations.... Why had they both been so willing to indulge those grotesque fantasies about Phyllis and Howard Morgan?... And then, what of Rose-Ann’s freakish accusation against him—for that was what it amounted to!—of being in love with Phyllis? Phyllis, whom he had seen but once in his life, and that on the occasion of his own marriage! Had Rose-Ann really been jealous? It was too extravagantly farcical.
But oughtn’t they discuss these things, and settle them, once and for all? Wasn’t that what their mutual candour was for, to expose and kill these silly doubts and fears and suspicions? Or—did talking about such things only give them new vitality? Were these things too senseless to talk about?
“I love you, Felix.”
“I love you, Rose-Ann.”
There was a true magic, it seemed, in words like those! They brought happiness ... and forgetfulness....
“Darling....”
“Yes....”
“Did we have a quarrel?”
“I don’t know—did we?”
“Yes—but what was it about?”
“I can’t remember!”
“Neither can I!”
They laughed happily at their folly.