1
THEY had come back to civilization. But—unwittingly, at first—into this life of talk, of ideas, of theory, of vague ambition and of self-congratulatory superiority to the mere plain facts of life, they brought somewhat more than a memory of their vagabond adventuring. In their brief and joyous return to nature they had surrendered themselves to its purposes more deeply than they had been aware. But presently Rose-Ann announced that she would have to visit the doctor of whom Dorothy Sheridan had once told her. Rose-Ann did not say that she was with child—that phrase was never used between them in their few discussions of the incident. For that phrase would have implied that she intended to bear a child. It was discussed rather as an accident, an annoying but not serious interruption to their plans. Rose-Ann took the matter, not lightly, but in a soberly practical spirit. And so convincing was her tone that it did not occur to Felix to question the sincerity of her apparent attitude.
Secretly he was troubled. In spite of Rose-Ann’s confidence, he distressed himself with what appeared to be needless forebodings. It seemed to be true that real life was, in this matter as in others, different from fiction. In a story, this would have been a desperate situation; but in actual fact it appeared to have no such gravity. He hoped that was indeed the truth; and, afterward, it appeared that she had been right.... He wondered why he had been so absurd about it!
She would never know how absurd.... He would never tell her how, one night, walking alone along a dark stretch of lake shore, his courage had failed him utterly; how all the terrible things of which he had ever heard had rushed into his mind, filling and flooding it with a kind of nameless remorse, until he had ceased to be a man, and had become a mere terrified child—and how in the influence of that guilty terror he had sunk on his knees in the wet sand, praying to a God he did not believe in, whispering like a child to a kind Father: “God, don’t let anything happen to her!” He had not thought of her then as a free woman acting wisely in her own right—no, but only as a helpless and lovely girl, his beloved, given him to cherish and protect, whom he had let go down to the very gates of death—in vain! Not in the terrible triumph of creation, but meaninglessly.... And he prayed: “Give me back Rose-Ann!”...
No, he would never tell her what a fool he had been.