1
ROSE-ANN had become restless again. Once more she threatened to go out and get a job. Books no longer contented her; and if she had secretly cherished, as Felix had thought, some dreams of writing, they had vanished, like her notebook, which was no more to be seen. They gave wild parties, extended the number of their friends, and went to dinner-parties, where Rose-Ann shone as always, and even Felix began to be able to take care of himself. She went to the theatre with Felix and took down his criticisms on her typewriter from dictation, as she had a year ago. But these activities did not quite content her volatile spirit.
Her restlessness expressed itself, delightfully enough, in a resumption of the endless midnight talks which had marked the first period of their married intimacy. Their daylight hours together now seemed never to suffice them for talking. Those hours were too filled up with work, and play, and friends. During the day a thousand ideas, observations, comments, stories, had been stored away by each for the other’s benefit. A glance at dinner had meant: “Did you see that? Yes—we’ll talk about it tonight.” In these gatherings, however friendly and outspoken, something was always left unsaid, reserved especially for each other. The heart of every occasion was in its midnight aftermath, in the long wakeful hours in bed, remembering, criticizing, laughing, talking, talking.... Marriage had come to mean above all else the peculiar magic of that intimacy. Sometimes her voice would come mysteriously out of the dark at his side, and again the moonlight would creep in over the roofs and tease the scene with its glamour. Their beds, in summer two little oases of coolness in the sultry night, became in winter warm-coverleted citadels against the cold—two little friendly islands, with two voices floating pleasantly back and forth. “Light me another cigarette,” Rose-Ann would say sleepily. Tired, but kept awake by all they had to tell each other, the mere thoughts and incidents of the day made precious by this re-living of them together, they lay and talked out their hearts.