“Don’t you?” she mocked gently. “The truth, Felix!”
“Oh, it’s beautiful enough! As death is more beautiful than life. As for me, after a little cupful of death, I prefer pain and heartbreak. I prefer you.”
“But—it’s as if you wanted me to make you unhappy, Felix.... That’s what you are saying!”
“Isn’t it true? You have made me unhappy. And happy, too, Rose-Ann. The two things go together. I want them both. Not this mad, mystical peace that is like death.”
“The mad mystical peace of death,” she repeated. “You make it very alluring, Felix. One gets tired of life.... Just as you got tired of me. But perhaps—perhaps I am not what you think I am. Perhaps I can understand the joys of a little cupful of death—I, too.”
The waiter arrived with a savoury stew. He uncovered the dish with a flourish. It reeked of nutritiousness. They stared at it helplessly. The waiter went away.
“I can’t eat,” Rose-Ann said appealingly.
Sympathetically he passed her a cigarette.
“Felix,” she said, “I know what you think you want. It’s like that stew. You ought to want it; but you don’t. You want coffee and cigarettes and talk and poetry—not the solid food of life.... You try to fool yourself. And you try to fool me.”
She paused and then went on with sudden passion, “You’ve accused me of lying to you. It’s you who have lied! Whose fault is it if I didn’t mean what I said—that time? You’ve never been honest with me. You were never willing to face the future. I tried to talk with you, but you wouldn’t. You made me feel that I was wrong. And so I tried to believe differently about our marriage. And when the real truth came out—yes, the truth!—I wasn’t prepared to meet it. I was a coward.—Perhaps I’m a coward still. I don’t know. But I know this—I’m not willing to do what you say you want me to do—bind you, tame you, keep you. No! I won’t be ... a wife.”