Winter came, a dry winter of cool mornings and nights, and days of clear sunshine. Against this sparkling background, Anne and Roger moved side by side in almost total silence. Anne still went to the loft but not regularly. Roger never asked why she stayed away or what she did with her time. He worked now far into the night, often even after Katya had gone with a comforting, indifferent "good night." Sometimes they left together and Roger walked as far as her car with her, talking of their plans, never of personal things. If she noticed that Anne no longer came regularly to the loft, she never mentioned it, nor did she make any comment when Anne ceased coming at all.
It was in February that Rogie had an attack of croup and Anne stayed away for two weeks. When he was well she did not return. On the first night of his illness she had moved his crib into the wing of the living-room they called a library and this arrangement was maintained. She bought a screen of silk and lacquer and converted the wing into a comfortable bedroom. Roger made no comment. For a few days their eyes held consciousness of the change and then they spoke indifferently of "your room" and "my room."
On the evenings when Roger was home, Anne usually retired first. Behind the impregnable wall of silk and lacquer, Roger heard the soft swish of her garments as she dropped them, then the even breathing of her sleep. For a little while, after their forced nearness in the illness of Rogie, Roger would sometimes close his book, and, with tightening muscles, glare at this thing of silk, or stare before him, trying to find a clew through the present to the past.
When had it all begun?
Farther back than the day that Anne had snatched at Rogie. Much farther back than that. Perhaps, back at the very beginning, when Anne had been afraid to tell her people. But when Roger visioned again the Indian graveyard, the weeks by the lake, the Basque herder playing his flute in the sunny meadow, the clinging of Anne's lips that last night, and moments in their first months, the clew vanished in hurt wonder.
If moments like those were not real, what was? If a certainty as real as the certainty that had come to him in the sweeping wind on the Bluff was false, what was true?
Had their nearness even then held within itself the germ of discord? Had this erosion of difference, that had at last eaten its way down to their physical relationship, always existed between himself and Anne? Did it exist between all men and women, and was that marvelous nearness only a cloak over the stark skeleton of sex? The hunger once appeased, was the purpose satisfied, and did the soul demand this separateness for its own development? Was marriage only the lowering of an ideal beyond the average man and woman to reach?
At farther and farther intervals, the puzzle held him. Then, wonder settled to acceptance. Roger no longer heard the swish of Anne's garments or her breathing behind the screen. He came from the office pleasantly tired and was content with the wide coolness of the big bed and freedom.
But his mouth grew firmer and his eyes lit less often. Like a copy done in fainter wash, his eyes at times had the loneliness of Black Tom's. Katya watched and found it harder and harder not to go to him on the nights they worked alone. Often after they had separated, and Katya sat in the ugly hall bedroom that had been her home for years, she would clench her fists and pound the washstand as if it were a rostrum and she were addressing a crowd:
"It had to come, with that little fool. She couldn't hold him back. He will grow now."