“It doesn’t matter. We’ll just forget all this. You’ve made me so happy in so many ways, Fliss. A home and you——”
“But I can’t reach down in you; I never get down.”
“It’s all right, Fliss dear. You get down far enough. Don’t let’s wreck things by asking too much of the fates.”
She played her last card. “If, perhaps we had a baby?”
He smiled at her with great tenderness.
“I’d love to have a baby, Fliss dear, but you mustn’t give up or try to give up everything for me.”
She must have seen, as she looked, that no sentimentality would ever break him down, ever penetrate those depths which she had come to revere and to covet so much.
“Let’s go downstairs now, and you can get me some supper, if there’s anything in the house,” he suggested, trying to get back to solid ground again. She shook her head.
“Let me go alone for a little while. Come down later.”
She went downstairs, through the beautiful rooms which she had planned so carefully and which meant so much to her, her head hanging a little as if she had been a rebuffed child. The front door was open, blown open by a gust of wind after her careless closing. Moved by some impulse, she went out on the veranda. The street was quiet. It was a street of affluence, the entrance and door lights on the houses glowing softly, the red lights of motors quietly signaling through the snow. Wealth, luxury, comfort. Perhaps Fliss knew dimly that her only step towards acquiring the strength which might win Matthew’s complete respect was to go away from him now, now that their bargain was broken and she loved him as he did not love her. She might go away.