"So was I. I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought you'ld never speak to me again, that you'd gone off in a huff, like the heroes in the story books."
"But the heroes always come back in the story books."
"I know, and that's just why I thought that very likely you wouldn't in real life. I was so unhappy I cried myself to sleep."
"We were sillies, weren't we?"
"But it was worth it," said April.
"Worth it?"
"Don't you remember how nice you were to me when we made it up?"
They laughed and kissed, and the minutes passed pleasantly. But their love-making fell short of Roland's ideal of love. It was jolly; it was comfortable; but it was little more. He was not thrilled when the back of his hand brushed accidentally against hers; their kisses were hardly a lyric ecstasy. Even when he held her in his arms he was conscious of himself, outside their embrace, watching it, saying to himself: "Those two are having a good time together," and being outside it he was envious, jealous of a happiness he did not share. It was someone else who was holding April's hand, someone else's head that bent to her slim shoulder. It was an exciting experience. But then had it not been exciting to walk across Hampstead Heath on a Sunday evening and observe the feverish ardours of the prostrate lovers.
He despised himself; he reminded himself that he was extraordinarily lucky to have a girl such as April in love with him; he was unworthy of her. Was not Ralph eating out his heart with envy? And yet he was dissatisfied. The Curtises' house had become a prison for him; a soft, warm prison, with cushions and shaded lights and gentle voices, but it was a prison none the less. He was still able to leave it at will, but the time was coming when that freedom would be denied him. In a year or two their understanding would be an engagement; the engagement would drift to marriage. For the rest of his life he would be enclosed in that warm, clammy atmosphere. There was a conspiracy at work against him. His father had already begun to speak of his marriage as an accomplished fact. His mother was chiefly glad he was doing well in business because success there would make an early marriage possible. On all sides inducements were being offered him to marry—marriage with its corollary to settle down. Marry and settle down, when he was still under twenty!—before he had begun to live!