To Anne's relief, by which she measured to a hairline her previous anxiety, the dinner was a success. If Roger made an effort to meet the Mitchells on their own ground, his tact exceeded Anne's keen sensitiveness to discover. He kept the conversation at anecdotal level, apparently because that mood was his own. James Mitchell laughed as Anne had rarely heard him laugh, and reciprocated with uninteresting, tedious reminiscences of the office. In her delight at "papa's mood," Hilda was sobered to quiet dignity. Belle was a little bored, as she always was when she did not direct the conversation, but content, for she had expected to shoulder the social responsibility at this initial dinner, and she was not in the vein. She watched Roger and Anne and wondered whether they were really as united as they seemed. Belle had had more experience than even Hilda suspected.
Roger felt the evening glide pleasantly away and was glad that Anne had done this. The Mitchells interested him not at all. He thought Hilda a vapid fool, Belle pretentious and James a nonentity. They were a perfect illustration of the bewildered and confused sheep. Anne's birth among them was a miracle. But the miracle had happened and they would always be more or less in the background of life.
A little after ten the Mitchells went. They kissed Anne and Anne returned their kisses while Roger tried not to resent this very natural act. They had kissed Anne and she had kissed them years before he had known of her existence, but now, she was so exclusively his, her delicate fairness so fully the outward expression of their love and understanding, that this intimate physical contact with the Mitchells echoed a discordant note in the perfect harmony.
So he forced himself, in rebuke of his jealousy, to the unnecessary courtesy of seeing them down the long flight of stairs with a flashlight, because the porchlight just missed a weak spot below the second landing. But he came back three steps at a time to Anne.
"Well, little hostess, that was some dinner you got up." He went about switching out all the lights except one, as he always did when people had gone. With this dimming of the light, he closed out intruding personalities, focussed life back to the points of himself and Anne. "How did I behave?"
He had then felt the need to "behave."
The unconsciousness of the confession chilled Anne's joy a little. It made her feel a traitor to her people and she moved away and stood looking thoughtfully down into the fire. Her mother, so stiff and subdued in the new waist, so happy in her happiness; Belle, bored, but generous always in her love; even her father so genial that she had wondered several times during dinner whether, if the conditions of his life had been different, he would have been quite so dull and gray-souled and selfish. Each in his own way was a little vain and proud of the way she now lived. To her father and mother, at least, she was a very real part of life; through her, they touched experience not their own. But they were no longer a needed part of her life. Across the chasm of the full present and her future with Roger, they stood apart in the past, a tiny group, a little isolated and lonely, even Belle.
Her eyes filled with tears and Roger took her quickly in his arms.
"Why, Princess, what is it?"