“And there are men who wouldn’t feel as I do. But you and I, we belong to a class all by ourselves, don’t we?”
Apparently they were as devoted each to the other as ever. But each now sought a separate happiness—he perforce in his work, she perforce in the only way left open to her. When they were together, which meant several hours every day and usually one whole day in the week, they were at once seemingly absorbed each in the other with all the rest as background. But none the less, they were leading separate lives, with separate interests, separate tastes, separate modes of thinking. The “bourgeois” life which they had planned—both standing behind the counter and both adding up the results of the day’s business after they had put up the shutters, two as one in all the interests of life—became a dead and forgotten dream.
XXII. — THE SHENSTONE EPISODE.
On the way to or from the opera or a party, she would peep in on him, watching the back of his head as he bent over his desk or read away at some dull-looking book, wishing that he would feel her presence and turn with that smile which was always hers from him, yet fearing to make a sound and compel his attention.
“At times I think,” she said one day when he caught her in his arms on a sudden impulse and kissed her, “that the reason you don’t try to rule me is because you don’t care enough.”
“That’s precisely it.” He was smoothing her eyebrows with his forefinger. “I don’t care enough about ruling. I don’t care enough for the sort of love that responds to ‘must.’”
“But a woman likes to have ‘must’ said to her sometimes.”
“Does she? Do you? Well—I’ll say ‘must’ to you. You must love me freely and voluntarily, or not at all. You must do as you please.”