"You'll get to like any other monomaniac who's been dead long enough."
"Are we quarreling?" Roger asked impatiently, exasperated by this eternal twisting of a general path back to the personal point. "I thought we were discussing that measure Tom's going to try and put through the convention."
"We are—as far as I am concerned. You dragged in Christ."
"I didn't drag Christ in except to try and make you see why Tom wants to get this particular measure across. I don't understand you, Anne. You say sometimes that you believe the man's sincere and yet you're always trying to measure him up with some little yardstick of inherited social convention. Tom's like the great central wheel of some high-powered machine, and you pick flaws because he's not the spring of some jeweled and useless little watch."
Anne shrugged and began to gather up the dinner things. What did it matter? If she and Roger talked half the night they would only branch from one difference to another. In the exhausting day behind her there was not one still spot wherein they could meet in perfect accord. To her, the day had been filled with whirling, human particles that obstructed her vision and stimulated Roger. All day Anne had felt choked by these particles; the mannerisms, the shop-worn jargon, the unrestrained enthusiasm, had gotten into her ears and eyes and down her throat like sand. She had meant to keep the dinner hour free from this sand, but it had filtered in. It always did. Anne was coming to feel that these people with whom she passed the day followed her home at night.
As Roger watched her moving, slight and graceful, about the room, putting it in evening order, he wondered why Anne had ever offered to come to the loft. She did the work well, as she had done John Lowell's, but with no more personal joy in it. And yet Anne had once felt a larger world calling for more than perfection of mechanical detail or conscientious accomplishment of the day's stint. At what point in their lives had that Anne slipped away into the fog in which he groped now without finding her? Behind his book Roger grappled with this problem, growing larger week by week.
Two years before they had started from the same point to walk along a road together. At no spot had they left the way. No emotional side-path had lured Roger from his faithfulness to Anne; no other way of life had tempted her. Their hope had been the same—to live beautifully a beautiful life. They were not living it beautifully. It was growing ugly, full of impatience on his side, suppressions on hers. Sometimes, for a few days, even a week, they managed to step from stone to stone of personal agreement, and then, on some little hidden rock, they stood and grew bitter toward each other.
In the kitchen Anne stacked the dishes for Mrs. Horton's coming in the morning, clicked off the light, and came back. She, too, took a book and curled up in her favorite spot on the couch to read.
Was she reading? Didn't she feel this fog closing in about them? What would happen if he asked her why she had wished to work with him, or suggested that she leave it? Would Anne be honest and tell him? Did she know herself?
But Roger did not ask. At ten he stopped reading. A few moments later Anne finished her chapter. They went to bed. From habit, Anne lay close for a little, with his arm about her. Then he kissed her and turned over on his side. Once more the harmony of sleep covered the tangled knots and broken threads of the day behind.