2
They breakfasted lazily Sunday noon at a tea-shop in Santa Monica, kept by three quaint little Englishwomen; they dawdled over their shirred eggs and toast and coffee until mid-afternoon, talking. Their table was on a porch under a stucco archway, half screened from the road by a trellis covered with roses.
“Everything is too beautiful,” said Rose-Ann. “What have we done to deserve this?”
“Would you like to live here—always?” he asked.
“I’d like to have been a child here,” she said. “But the mid-western winter has got into my blood. I guess I want to see snow again!”
“It does seem immoral,” he laughed, “—flowers in February!”
“I may go away,” she said. “Soon.... But not back to Chicago.”
“Why?” he asked in surprise.
“This—this magazine adventure—is over.... I was working to become editor. And now they’ve offered me the position. And I don’t want it. Isn’t it funny? It just doesn’t mean anything to me.... I shall try something different....”
“So shall I,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m tired of my job, too.”