Plead with her, make promises, threaten, weep? That was child’s play. Rose-Ann was not going away because he had omitted to make a scene.
They were past the day of scenes; they had had scenes enough. It wasn’t that she wanted. Her going wasn’t an idle gesture to evoke his tears. She meant it.
He had never understood her; he realized it now. He had had her in his arms and let her slip out of them; and he didn’t know how to win her back.
It was precisely as if they had never been married at all. He was wooing her under difficulties. He wasn’t succeeding....
On the evening before she took her train for Los Angeles—she had been very sweet to him in a touch-me-not way all that week—he said to her:
“Must you go, Rose-Ann? I wish you wouldn’t.”
It was hard to say even so much. He said it quietly enough: there was no need to dramatize the situation. She knew what she was doing to him in going away. He couldn’t ask for her pity.
She looked hastily around. She was making fudge in her dismantled studio for a party of friends, and Felix was assisting her. But nobody had overheard his—as it seemed—improper proposal.
She bent close to him, touching his shoulder with hers. “Don’t spoil my good-bye party!” she whispered reproachfully; and then stealthily patted his knee with her hand, as if to make amends for her scolding.
He did not ask, after that, to see her off; it was she who commanded his presence. He went sullenly.