But he learned from Rose-Ann that his class was considered by the residents a real success. And fat old Mrs. Perk, one evening at the tiny theatre, said to him: “I hear you’re making poets out of the boys and girls. They say you’re a grand teacher!”
It was very odd: it seemed to make no difference that they could not take what he wanted to give them, or that he did not want to give them what they were getting; the class was a success anyway!
“Who was telling you?” he asked.
“That David Arenstein,” she told him. “The one that always used to be talking about committing suicide.” David was the ironical youth who had quoted Shelley at him. “But he’s far from committing suicide now—” and she smiled her comfortable smile. “He’s going to be married. Oh, yes, he comes and tells me all his troubles.”
Felix laughed. “I hope he doesn’t hold me to blame!”
She shook her head. “Well, you’ll be getting married yourself, pretty soon, I suppose?”
He did not venture to challenge her as to whom. But he said, “What in the world makes you think that?”
“Oh,” she said, “young folks do, sooner or later, I’ve noticed.”
3
It was nonsense, of course. He was in no position to think about such things, at all. And as for Rose-Ann, he had in the course of weeks become as it were acclimated to her loveliness, so that it no longer tormented him as at first. He was secretly proud of his imperturbability. And if Rose-Ann’s companionship had lately grown more disturbing than ever, it was for a very different reason. It was because of her flattering and at the same time annoying expectations of him as an artist—a poet—a creator. He attempted to deny any pretensions of this sort; he tried to evade any discussion of art at all. But they had formed the habit of going to the theater together, and he found it impossible to resist talking with her about how plays should be written.