“Yes.... She was speaking about Christmas. She thought it would be nice to have some sort of little celebration.”
“Sure! “We’ll invite some people, and I’ll reserve a table downstairs in the dining-room—”
“I don’t think that’s quite what she meant. I think something more—intimate, Alfred....”
“I see! Then how about having a supper sent up here—champagne and so on?”
“That would be very nice, of course.... But—you know she’s very young for her years.... I thought if you and I could arrange a little surprise—a Christmas tree—”
“Great! I’ve never had one in my life!”
“You see, she’s always had one, since she was a baby. I suppose it seems silly—”
“Not to me, it doesn’t. It’s just one of those nice, pretty little ideas that I fall short in. My one idea is to buy things. It seems so wonderful to buy what you want. I’m not used to it yet.... Gosh! You can’t imagine how much I learn from you! That’s what we need—my kind. We need to learn how to live—oh—poetically, from the people like you. We never get those ideas. We’re too darned worried about food. At first I used to be pretty hard and vindictive, and talk about bringing the comfortable people down to earth. But now I’d like to take the other people a little bit off the earth—a little bit up.”
She thought as she went home in a taxi, what a loveable creature he was. He was everything that she had always imagined a husband ought to be, a comrade, kind, loyal, never interfering, never attempting to impose his own will. Their life was what she had often dreamed of; Andrée had freedom combined with love.
And yet—it wasn’t satisfactory; it was so little satisfactory that it frightened her.