“It wasn’t enough, any longer. I want something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something to use up my energies. I can’t stay here and play keeping house in a studio. There’s no excuse for it. That’s why we have a studio, Felix! So we can each be free. Why are you so stubborn about it?”
“I’m not being stubborn, Rose-Ann. I’m just being candid. I can’t stop you from going out and getting a job. But I can tell the truth and say I don’t like the idea! And that’s all I can do. If it means so much to you, you’ll have to do it in spite of my not liking it, that’s all.... It isn’t as if there were some particular thing you wanted to do—I wouldn’t say a word against that. But work in general—work for the sake of work—that just means a little more money, which we don’t need, and your coming home tired at night.... After all, Rose-Ann, I want a wife....”
She grew suddenly cold. “Then you should have married somebody else,” she said. “I don’t want to be—a wife!”
And they went out to dinner in an estranged silence.
2
These silences, inexplicable and impenetrable, would spring up between them, and then as inexplicably dissolve—sometimes in tears, sometimes in laughter.
That night when they came home to their studio and started to undress for bed, Rose-Ann changed back suddenly to her accustomed self; and his own mood, a moment ago puzzled and angry, could not withstand the influence of her smile. Then both of them were sorry, and accused themselves inwardly of the fault.... Felix could see why she objected to being merely “a wife,” and wondered that he had been so crass as to say such a thing ... and they sought with passionate tenderness to make each other forget....
“Do I make you happy, Felix?”