“But why should you assume that my intentions—if I have any—are honourable, young man! What makes you think I want to get married to anybody? I think I’ll wait and see how your marriage turns out first!”
Felix walked home slowly, but it seemed only an instant before he opened the door of the studio. “Who is it?” called Rose-Ann from behind the screen. “It’s me,” he said, and locked the door, and stood there for a moment.... He felt a kind of vague bewilderment.
He had been so immersed in the story of these other unhappy lives, so poignantly concerned with their tangled doubts and fears, that it was strange to return to this scene of his own untroubled happiness. The sense of those other tormented lives burned at this moment more vividly in his imagination than his own life and Rose-Ann’s....
“Coming to bed?” Rose-Ann called from behind the screen.
“No,” he said vaguely, “I think I’ll write for a while.”
“All right, then I won’t bother you. Good-night!”
“Good-night, Rose-Ann.”
He went over to his desk, and turned on the electric light, and dipped his pen in the ink, and then sat dreaming before a white sheet of paper.