For a week he fidgeted and fumed about the studio, ashamed of his childish behaviour and yet unable to control it. He wondered why Rose-Ann did not tell him what she really thought of him.... It was as if he were trying, by a more and more outrageous parade of his weakness, to force her to break silence and speak out.
Late one afternoon, when he had crumpled up the sheet of paper on which he had been trying to write, and thrown it on the floor with a silly gesture of failure, she put down her sewing and came up to him.
She put her hand on his shoulder.
“What is the matter, Felix, dear?” she asked.
He drew himself away. “I wish you would let me alone,” he said.
“Very well,” Rose-Ann said gently, and went and put on her hat and cloak and left the studio.
2
For a moment he sat there, looking at the door through which she had gone with a sudden sense of utter desolation.
They had had quarrels before, but this was different. He had driven her away.... It would serve him right if she never came back....
Why had he been making such a fool of himself? Why had he been behaving like a silly child?