1
ROSE-ANN had suddenly become a problem. In spite of everything he was falling in love with her. He criticized her to himself, harshly. She was a daughter of the bourgeoisie—a sort of madcap and runaway daughter, it was true, adventuring by herself in Chicago for a while, but destined, he told himself, after the flare of this rebellion had burned itself out, to return to the bourgeois fold. What else could she do? She was not an artist—or not enough of an artist—to face the world alone. She wrote a little, cleverly, but with no sustained strength; and what she wrote was inferior to what she thought and felt. She was one of those people who might have been, and never would be, writers; and the reason was, as Felix saw it, in her bringing up. Some softness had intervened between her and reality; she could see reality truly, far more truly than he could; but its sharp edges had never hurt her, it seemed; her mind had never been rowelled by the spur of painful experience. That was it. She had never been hurt enough; and one who has not been hurt has no need of the artist’s revenge—the act of re-creation by which he triumphs over pain. She had disliked her world; not profoundly, but a little; and she had changed it sufficiently by the mere act of coming to Chicago and living in a settlement house and playing with costumes and scenery. That would content her—would more than satisfy her rebellious impulses. She talked of herself as one of the “queer” people of the settlement; but she wasn’t. She would go back, and this period of her life would provide her a fund of humorous reminiscence at bourgeois dinner parties in Springfield, Illinois, where she would be, no doubt, quite a figure. Paul, with his “pewter-platter” manner, Dick, the boy who had fled from Community House and died of pneumonia in the slums, and himself, would quaintly adorn her reminiscences.... So Felix argued against her to himself; and it was easy enough to say all these things about her when she was not there to deny them by her every word and gesture.
In her presence he could not think these things. She was a seeker like himself—imperfect like himself, but utterly sincere—a comrade in the very simple and obvious adventure of making the most out of life.... Why was he so suspicious of her? Was it because he had vaguely heard that her people were well-to-do? She was not to blame for that! She was herself. There seemed no reason to distrust her.
But these arguments sufficed to discourage any tendency to romanticize her. She was less a wonderful person to him now than a dangerous person. Dangerous only in the sense that she might make a fool of him. Her friendliness was almost more than mere friendliness, and it took an effort to adjust himself to it. If he had been less susceptible, he might have taken the relationship more easily for what it was. If, for example, he could only have put his arm around her shoulder with an authentic brotherliness! But he was afraid to. No, there was the possibility of his making a romantic damned fool of himself about her, and being laughed at—or perhaps gently chided, it was hard to tell which would be worse. He could run the risk of that; or he could stiffly keep his distance, and suffer an occasional sisterly caress without returning it. He preferred to keep his distance.
Yet there were times when all this seemed an absurd affectation. They would be sitting, he sprawled on her couch and she rather primly upright in her chair, discussing something, when suddenly it would occur to him that they were only pretending to be adults, only making-believe at this intellectual game—that they were really only boy and girl, with the ancient and traditional interest of boy and girl in each other. He would watch her as she bent forward, with her curious little eager frown, intent upon making herself clear; and then he would note his own attitude, tense with apparent interest in what was being said. “Hypocrites!” he would address himself and her in his mind. “I want to kiss you—and you want to, too. And we don’t. Isn’t it absurd!” And meantime he answered her arguments aloud. “Little liar!” he would be saying to her in his mind, “If I came over and put my arms about you—!” But he remained where he was.... And then, as suddenly, that tender and humorous insight into the situation would vanish, and she would appear to him an alien—an interesting young woman, but a complete stranger—and he would be glad he had not done anything silly.