II
Below, in the little cabin allotted to them at the time of their marriage, Jerome and Lili were quarreling. Jerome looked haggard and sombre since the death of his baby; but Lili, though she had cried a good deal and had a dull expression in her eyes sometimes, seemed not particularly altered.
They were not quarreling violently; it was more the irritability of fatigue and depressing emotion which found utterance in mutual dissatisfaction. Now that his little son was gone, Jerome was asking himself how much longer this farce with Lili would have to be kept up.
Her eyes grew heavier and heavier. Her sumptuous hair was done into a tight braid down her back. She was already in her bunk, while Jerome sat glumly on the edge, still in his clothes.
She nodded and half drifted off for a moment; then, as he moved, she opened her eyes. And she murmured, her voice obscurely troubled and with no longer the petulant ring it had more or less carried all the evening: “Jerry....”
“Well?”
“Don’t you care about me at all any more?”
“What did you say?” he demanded bluntly, coming back to his drab present apparently from very far off.
“Jerry, don’t you remember how you used to tease me to marry you?” she asked, her heavy eyes making a desperate effort to beam a little.
“Yes, I remember.” And he added, rather dryly: “How could any one forget a thing like that?”