Across the aisle were two women interestedly talking with each other, one of them a young mother, with a rather frightened little tow-headed boy of a year old in her lap. He had been enduring this strange adventure rather stoically, but he felt neglected, and his lips were curving down further and further toward the danger point of tears. He was feeling very sorry for himself.... Rose-Ann had watched the small lips begin to twist and the round chin begin to tremble, and she leaned forward and smiled at him—a smile which interested him, which he considered hesitantly, and at last found irresistible and answered wholeheartedly with a beaming one of his own. This was not such a cold and indifferent world after all; somebody did love him!
Rose-Ann looked up, rather furtively, at Felix, who was engaged in computing his rent-paying capacity. The women got out at the next stop, and she leaned back in her seat.
“Some time,” Felix was saying, “we might be able to have a house in the country like Clive’s....”
“We don’t want a house in the country,” said Rose-Ann energetically. “What would we do with a house in the country? No, we want a place in town, convenient to our work, yours and mine.”
“Your work?—you mean your dramatic class?” asked Felix, reflecting that Rose-Ann was rather changeable. Only a few days ago she had hated to come to town....
“No—I mean a real job. I don’t know what, yet. But I’m going to get one. I’m tired of playing with children.”
Felix looked at her vaguely, still doing sums in his head. And for a moment he seemed to her very stupid. And perhaps he was. Yet it is an exacting demand to make upon a young husband that he be able to read his wife’s mind, and know the wishes which she will not even admit the existence of to herself!
They reached Woods Point, and took a waiting taxi.
“If I only knew what you really want!” he said, as they started up their path.
“What I really want?”