"So you knew it? Perhaps he boasts of it—as one of his 'sacrifices for the Revolution.' When did he tell you?"
"He didn't tell me," Roger answered patiently. "Katya did, one day when we were talking about Merle."
Anne's small frame tightened. "Well! Of all things to discuss with another woman!"
"Oh, hell," Roger exploded, "come off that pedestal, Anne. It's ridiculous."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For a week the tension between Roger and Anne lasted, pulling a little weaker each day under the pressure of proximity, little Rogie, and the habit of agreement. Anne did not mention Merle again and tried not to think of the staring, embryonic eyes of what might have been Merle's child. She knew such thought was morbid and unhealthy. As Merle had said, one million women a year, in the United States alone, recognized this as their right of escape. To Belle it was perhaps a very ordinary occurrence. Anne herself would have hesitated to call it "wicked." She called it "horrible" instead. But she was glad when Merle stopped coming and never asked about her.
Autumn passed and the holiday season came with early rain. Hilda spoke tentatively of another Christmas dinner, although Belle was in Europe now with a rich patient. But Anne evaded these suggestions and did not even mention them to Roger.
On Christmas Eve Anne bought a tiny tree and decorated it, but Rogie was fretful and squirmed away from it, crying; so that Anne put out the candles and did not light them again.
On Christmas morning she and Roger exchanged their presents and immediately after the late breakfast Roger began work on a complicated case that was to come up right after the New Year.
Just before noon it began to rain again, a thin, icy drizzle that soaked all the cheer and hope from life. Anne tried to read or sew, but the thin, cold, inexhaustible rain washed away all interest. She could not even make up her mind to go to Hilda, although it was Christmas day and she had not been for a week. No decision could crystallize in that icy drip, never condensing to a real downpour, never ceasing, trickling into one's courage until it washed away desire.