2
Felix’s first feeling, oddly enough, when he read this letter, was a sense of Rose-Ann’s disloyalty to their studio—the studio which they had made together.... His imagination, stunned and shocked, clung bitterly to this one point, as if that were the crux of the matter.... That she should not want to live in this studio, this studio whose walls she had kalsomined, whose very floor she had painted! Why, every part of it spelled her! As if he could take her studio, and let her go and live in another! If there was any moving to be done, he would do it. He would get another place. She could live here—she must live here.... He would take a few books—no, he would take nothing. It was all hers....
Some obliquity of the imagination helped him, like a drug, anaesthetizing his emotions, during the first few minutes after reading that letter. His mind was actually busy with the practical details of taking up a new residence, as if that were all that mattered.
And then his mind began to feel the pain of what had happened, slowly, increasingly, terrifically.... She had repudiated their marriage.
He felt knocked down, trampled, stamped upon, hurt all over.
So this was what she had been thinking of! Not of coming home to him—but of living apart from him.
He read the letter again, with a rising anger that mingled with his pain. What was it she said? “We have many things in common—tastes, ideas, a love of beauty.”—“Pity if we were to lose the opportunity for companionship altogether”—“Not pretending to be married any more.” So it meant nothing to her, then, this marriage? She could end it so easily? And companionship, mere companionship—that did mean something to her? That was what she wanted to keep! “Everything can be arranged in detail so that we both will be happy.”
What could he reply to a letter like that? What could he say to a girl who told him that her happiness lay in their not being married any more? “Everything could be arranged in detail.” What detail? Where she was going to live? What did that matter to him? Why should she think that she had to live near him? She need not be so kind. If their marriage meant nothing to her, he could give her up altogether. “Companionship.” The dead body of their love for consolation? No, she need not have offered him that.... She might have spared that touch.
“Whether you agree definitely to these terms.” How could she think he would want anything like that? Had she only written that to torture him? She did not insist on breaking off the relationship “altogether.” He stared at the words. Was that what she thought of him? That he would be happy—that was her word—happy ... if—
Verses from a poem, bitter verses, came into his mind:
“A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
Of a great flood that whirls us to the sea.
But as you will! we’ll sit contentedly
And eat our pot of honey on the grave.”
He laid his head on his arms, bent over the table, shivering with a fit of cold anger and disgust. Then he roused himself, and wrote quickly an answer to Rose-Ann’s letter.
It was only a few lines. He read them over, sealed the envelope, and went out to mail it in the box on the corner ... where he had gone so often to mail his criticism, so that he could return and talk the night through at Rose-Ann’s side.