That Celia should bring her school-books to the library, though unusual, was not unnatural, but the sight of Royce at work on page after page of foolscap was something requiring an explanation.
The room was perfectly quiet except for the scratch of his pen and the ticking of the clock; and Mrs. Royce decided that she would stand there silent until some other interruption occurred. It could not be very long before a servant entered or they themselves would weary of this work.
But the silence continued. Once Royce took out a book and glanced at some reference. Once Celia got up and lighted the lamps for both, but neither of them spoke.
For a long time Mrs. Royce stood there, transfixed by a curious conviction that came to her as she watched—the conviction that this silence carried with it a more perfect companionship than all her long talks with her husband had ever brought. Of course, she had long since realized that, as gradually as one season melts into another, her relationship to her husband had changed—changed inevitably, she had imagined, from the poetry of first love into something that resembled the prose of a business partnership. To her the change was not altogether to be regretted; in her eyes the business of being the head of a man’s house and the mother of his children was still charged with the romantic idea. But for the first time it now occurred to her to ask whether the change had been equally satisfactory to him. Ah, she admitted that a certain charm, a certain stimulation had gone from their affection, but never before had she thought, as she was thinking now, that the quality most conspicuously absent was intimacy. How was such a thing possible when she had lived twenty years of her life with him in perfect amity?
Yet, standing there, she saw that for many years she had not had the least conception of what had been going on in his mind. She had used the word business partnership, and, naturally, when they were together they often discussed the details of the business, only now she remembered that it was always in her department that the problems for discussion arose. Royce seemed to be able to manage his end of it without consultation. Why was this?
She tried desperately to see the thing clearly. Her whole life was built on the belief that she existed solely to be depended upon; and yet she saw that her husband, in all his more personal interests, far from depending on her, never even mentioned them to her. What did that mean? And why had she never observed this contradiction before? Could it be that, after all, she was not dependable, or had some unreckoned factor in his life rendered Royce more self-reliant than he had been in the early days of their marriage?
And at this point, before she realized her intention, she heard her own voice saying: “Celia, my dear, your lamp is flaring.”
Well, there was no question of the welcome with which both pairs of eyes lit up. “Mother, dear!” cried the girl. Both overwhelmed her with solicitude about her health. She did not have to ask after theirs. Never were two rosier, more unlined faces than theirs.
After a moment she asked what it was that her husband was writing, and he answered, almost timidly, that it was a book on trees; he had had the idea in his mind for a number of years but had never had the energy to begin it before.
“Why not?” she asked almost sharply, but before he had time to answer—and it was evident he himself had no idea of the real answer—Celia broke in: