“You shut up and mind your own business!” said Al, and no more than that, no other defense or praise of her.
Perhaps she didn’t realize how tired he was, or how secretly guilty Tomlinson’s reproaches had made him, for after the comrades had gone, she took occasion to speak her mind, and she found him unusually irritable. They took a long stride forward in frankness that afternoon. She called him vulgar and coarse, and he said she was idle and selfish.
All this Al remembered now, walking up and down the room.
“It mustn’t be this way,” he thought. “It must not be. And I’m the one to change it. I’m older—I’m responsible. I knew there’d be difficulties—it’s my job to explain and to reason, and not to quarrel with her. There must be some common ground....”
“And even if there isn’t,” he went on. “Even if we never think alike, it needn’t matter. Good God! Haven’t I enough restraint and common decency to get along with the woman I love, even if she has different opinions? Let her be herself!”
He washed his flushed face in cold water and brushed his unruly hair; he subdued his spirit, and went to look for Andrée. He found her in the library, dressed for the street, drawing on her gloves.
“Going out?” he asked, unnecessarily.
She said “Yes,” curtly, and then her heart melted; he looked so neat and subdued and good.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Do you want to come?”
They went out together into the bright Winter air; but try as they would, no words of reconciliation came from either of them. No words at all....