Book Five

Garfield Boulevard

XLI. Changes

1

THE second year of marriage began for Felix with a sense of uneasy anticipation. It was as if things—strange, unknown things—were about to happen.

He tried, by taking thought, to discover the reason for his vague anxieties. But, viewed rationally, they seemed absurd. He attempted to dismiss them.

He was happy. And Rose-Ann, in her own restless fashion, was happy, too. What could the future bring to disturb their happiness? Nothing!

His economic status, moreover, even upon Clive’s calculations, was secure for another year at least. And he was writing again, this time to please himself. Rose-Ann should have no cause for complaint upon that score....

And yet the vague anxieties persisted in the background of his thoughts.

It was as though he had in some way lost confidence in Rose-Ann.

He told himself that it was only that he knew her better now. He had been foolish to assume that he could trust utterly in her instincts for guidance. She was, like him, a bewildered wanderer, not knowing the right path. She was more like himself than he had ever dreamed.

He could not rely blindly upon her. He must decide things for himself.

It made him feel a little lonely, a little frightened—as one might feel in the woods, discovering that one’s guide is a romantic ignoramus like oneself!

2

That was one reason why he did not want to show Rose-Ann the new play upon which he was working. It would have pleased her—perhaps all too well! In this play, a variation upon the familiar triangle situation, the heroine kept her husband because she was not afraid to lose him....

Yes, that would have pleased Rose-Ann. Then why did Felix feel absurdly guilty of some kind of spiritual disloyalty to her in writing it?

He did not quite know; but it was true that when Rose-Ann was in the studio he could not with any freedom work on that play....

Rose-Ann felt this, and presently suggested that he try the experiment of working in a rented room somewhere not too far from the studio. He was surprised to find that in talking with Rose-Ann he indignantly repelled the idea as totally objectionable. He was absurdly angry at her for suggesting it.

It would have been intolerable if Rose-Ann had been jealous of his writing; and yet he was behaving as though she _ought_ to be jealous of it.... A strange quirk of the imagination!

Was he disappointed in her for not being the mentor and guide he had tried to believe her—angry at her for insisting upon his finding his own pathway through the woods?

3

When Rose-Ann brought up for a second time the subject of a work-room, Felix admitted that it might be worth considering. And that same day he went out room-hunting. He had not admitted to himself that he really wanted such a place—but when, in a house on Garfield Boulevard, he found a little room with a table and a cot, he decided that he must have it. He told the landlady he would probably need it only a short time, and paid two weeks’ rent, with the option of renewal....

He did not want to tell Rose-Ann about it. He said to himself that he wanted to wait until he found whether he liked it or not. And he did wait until he had spent an afternoon there writing, before telling her.

It was curious, the feeling of being in a room of his own that nobody in the world knew about, not even Rose-Ann! That afternoon he seemed to throw off some impalpable burden. He felt—free! He could sit there and write, or dream, as long as he wished, with nobody to call him to account for the way he spent his time. Not that Rose-Ann ever did call him to account in such a manner; it was the last thing in the world she would ever have done. But now, as never since his marriage, he felt utterly by himself.... He sat dreaming for a while, and then commenced to write swiftly a little play, something he had not thought of at all before, a light, bright, rather cynical and pretty little play that seemed to flow out by its own energy—a play dealing with characters as unreal as those of Congreve or Wycherly, inhabitants of the same polite and witty realm of the imagination as Millamant and Mirabell.

He told Rose-Ann that he had rented a room, but not that he had written a play—for it was a short one-act affair of twenty pages, which he had practically completed at a sitting. He took an inward satisfaction in this harmless secret; and he was pleased that Rose-Ann did not ask exactly where his room was, but only congratulated him on being so sensible.

4

It was only a few days later that Rose-Ann came home with the news that she had carried out her long cherished intention of getting a job. She had learned by accident that there was an opening in a moving-picture magazine. She had gone there, made an impression, and been engaged as assistant editor.

Felix had a guilty sense that his desertion of their studio, if only for an occasional afternoon, had been responsible for her action. Certainly he was no longer in a position to oppose her wishes in this matter. His plea had been that a job would deprive him of her society. He had—though, it is true, at her suggestion—entered into an arrangement which threatened to deprive her of much of his society. But, if there was any spirit of retaliation behind her decision, it was not apparent from her manner.

She was delighted with the new scope that this work gave her superabundant energies; and though it consisted chiefly of rewriting illiterate press-agentish articles, it yielded her a renewed sense of self-respect. And after observing, a little uneasily, for a week or two, its effect upon her, he found himself rather pleased.

Her office hours, though fixed, were not arduous. And if they had less time to spend together, that time had come to seem more precious.... They would be sitting together at breakfast in their studio, Rose-Ann in a flame-coloured silk kimono that matched her curls, pouring coffee for him; all the more delightfully his, because he realized that when the occasion had been prolonged another five minutes, she would glance at the clock, and run behind the screen, to emerge dressed for her day’s work—no longer his, but belonging to some impersonal enterprise for which he cared less than nothing....

They would meet again at luncheon at the little Hungarian restaurant. Clive would be there. And the fact that they were all three of them snatching this hour of golden talk and comradeship from the midst of a working day, gave a special zest to the occasion.... They were, it seemed, happier than ever before.

“I’ve always something I can do for my old magazine in the evening,” said Rose-Ann. “I won’t be lonely. Why don’t you go to your work-room?”

Two or three evenings a week he took her at her word, and in those solitary hours it seemed to him that his creative fancy had begun to bloom again.

XLII. An Apparition

1

HE had occupied the room on odd afternoons and evenings for a month, when a strange encounter occurred—if seeing somebody could be called an encounter.

It was a warm evening early in April, when he did not feel in the least like working....

And besides, he had been looking over the three little one-act plays which were the fruit of his month’s work, and they seemed to him trivial and silly; if this was all he could do, he had better stop trying to write plays. He was glad he had not shown them to Rose-Ann. They were caricatures of life—not without some grace, touched with a queer, decadent, heartless beauty, but essentially worthless. Why should he write things like that? One’s work was a reflection of one’s mind, of one’s life, critics said. If he had judged those plays as a critic, he would have drawn from them certain inevitable implications with respect to the author’s philosophy and mode of life; they were apparently the work of a man who did not believe in anything, and who found in reality no true satisfactions—otherwise why should he turn to this unreal realm of modernized Pierrots and Columbines for solace?

Pondering this enigma, he sat in the open window and looked out on the street. And in the distance he saw a figure that he knew—a girl.

It was Phyllis, the girl who had been at their wedding. She was coming toward him, and he recognized her with certainty despite the fact that he had seen her only once before in his life.

She was coming down the street, on the opposite side; at the corner, she crossed over, coming toward the house where Felix was sitting perched in his third story window. She came straight to the front door of that very building, and then, after the slightest interval, Felix heard the door slam. She had entered the house.

Felix concluded that he must have been mistaken as to her identity. It was somebody else who looked like Phyllis—that was all. Phyllis was still at the Teachers’ Institute; Clive had spoken only the other day of receiving a letter from her. But—

He listened; some one was coming up the second stairway. Was it she? And if so, what in the world was she doing here? It was too late to be calling on any one; besides, she had not rung the bell; she had entered, as if she belonged here. If it were Phyllis, she must be living in this house. And that was impossible.

Felix, listening at the door, heard the person, whoever it was, cross the hall—and it seemed to him that she had stopped at his door. But no—there was a jingling of keys, and he realized that the room next to his own was being unlocked. He opened his door quietly—uncertain now if he would be able to recognize Phyllis, and anxious not to make any foolish mistake. She was standing at the door, with her back to him, turning the key in the lock.

Of course it was Phyllis!

But if he were so certain, why didn’t he speak to her? He was so close that he could have touched her. Why did he let her go without a word?... She went in, and he stood staring foolishly at the closed door.

It was Phyllis, without the slightest doubt.... And yet—it would be awkward to knock at a young woman’s door at midnight and, if she turned out to be the wrong person, stammer out a lame and unconvincing apology. Why, she was probably some one whom he had seen, in his unseeing way, on the stairs a dozen times, some one who had seen him so often that his explanation of mistaken identity would sound very hollow indeed....

2

The next evening, coming to his room, he heard the girl moving about in hers.

He had decided, with that part of his mind which dealt with questions of practical fact, that she was not really Phyllis. He had not mentioned his queer notion about her to Rose-Ann. But if it pleased him to think his neighbour was Phyllis, why shouldn’t he?

It did please him; and in some odd way helped him in his work. She seemed to bring with her into his place of dreams some breath of sane and kindly reality. Her unseen presence there in the next room took some of the fever out of his strange dramatic fantasies, made them more human. He wrote more easily, with greater zest; and in the intervals of his writing it was comforting to hear her movements, her mere steps across the floor, the sound of paper rustling in her hands, and sometimes the bubbling of coffee over an alcohol lamp.

When she made the coffee the pungent fumes of it found their way through the locked door which separated his room from hers.... He smiled, thinking how startled she would be if he should knock on that door, and demand a cup of coffee.... At this point he had to remind himself that it was not really Phyllis there on the other side of that door.

3

But it really was Phyllis!—that was the strange thing about the whole affair.... Clive had at last confided to him that Phyllis was in town, but told him nothing more; it was Rose-Ann who told him that Phyllis had come to Chicago, unknown to Clive, and got herself a job, before letting him know anything of her plans.

“He’s finding her quite too much for him,” said Rose-Ann.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean—she’s been his pupil, as it were, all along. Now she’s demonstrating her independence.”

“Where is she living?” he asked, and when Rose-Ann said she didn’t know, he told her of the girl he had seen who looked like Phyllis.

“Why didn’t you speak to her and find out?” she asked impatiently.

“Why, I thought it must be a mistake,” he said awkwardly.

“You really don’t care anything about people at all, do you, Felix?” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. You’re interested only in ideas. A girl who was at your wedding comes and lives in the same house with you, and you never even speak to her! You are a strange creature, Felix. For heaven’s sake, knock at her door, and bring her around to see us. Just because she wants to be queer and not see anybody is no reason why we shouldn’t be friendly.”

4

Yes, it was Phyllis; he saw her again, late that night, from the window, plainly revealed by the glare of an arclight, walking with Clive along the street toward the house; he had an impulse to shout to them, but he refrained, and only looked on while they came slowly over, and stood talking in front of the door. It was Phyllis, but she had changed; or was it only some constraint in her manner? No wonder he had not been certain of her identity. She had a different air; all the quietness was gone from her—she seemed the embodiment of a defiant restlessness. There was a reckless impudence in the whole pose of her body, the tilt of her head as she stood talking to Clive, in the very gesture of her arm as she held out her hand to Clive in good-bye.... Clive went abruptly; she was entering.

Felix could hear her running up the stairs. He ought to go out and speak to her. But he did not want to. He had a sense of her having changed, being a new and different person that he did not like. He wanted to keep the companionship of the Phyllis whom he had known these past weeks in imagination—he did not want for a neighbour this restless girl whom she had become in actuality. He heard her unlock her door, and enter; and he said to himself that his refuge was spoiled—he would have to find another place to work in....

It was true, what Rose-Ann had said; he cared nothing for people—only for ideas ... and dreams. He cared for his dream of Phyllis. He was sorry to lose that.

Well—he would have to see her.

He heard her walking restlessly up and down her room; her light firm step sounded clearly through the door which separated their two rooms. She paused, walked the length of the room, and paused again. She was standing just on the other side of that door....

He went over to that door and knocked.

XLIII. Nocturne

1

THE next moment he called himself a fool for going about it in this way; but he might as well go through with it now. He knocked again, more loudly, and called out her name, cheerfully. “Phyllis?”

“Who is it?” she asked, in a startled, questioning voice.

He called his own name. “I’ve just discovered we are fellow-lodgers!” he added. “Can I see you?”

She fumbled with the lock, and opened the door. She had just taken off her hat and coat, and she was wearing a black dress that made her seem pale. She looked older; her face was not so untroubledly serene as he had remembered it. But the sight of her gave him just such a momentary unreasonable panic as on that winter night when Clive had brought her into the room at Woods Point. She seemed again the impossible person of his secret dreams.... And then the illusion vanished. She was only—Clive’s girl-problem.

“What are you doing here?”

They both asked the question of each other at once, and then both laughed. “You first,” said Phyllis.

“I’m using this as a work-room occasionally,” he explained.

“Really!” She looked past him into his room. “Right next to mine. How odd!... You and Rose-Ann haven’t separated or anything, have you?”

“Why, no!” he laughed. “Why should you think—?”

“It’s absurd, isn’t it? But that was what came into my head. I’m glad it isn’t so.... You work there? I see!”

“And you?” he demanded.

“Me? I’ve run away at last!”

“I heard something about it....”

“Yes, run away—from school—from home—from everything! And come to Chicago to make my living. Even Clive didn’t know. I’ve been here three weeks, and I’ve a real job. Not much of a one; just working on a trade-journal. It pays for this room, and my meals—and I’m glad I’ve taken the plunge.... Isn’t it curious, our being neighbours like this!... But come in!”

They were still standing there, one on each side of the doorsill. He entered, and looked about her room. It was almost as bare as his own, but larger. A cot, with her coat and hat tossed upon it, a bureau, a writing table, an old trunk, and two chairs, both of them much repaired and one of them still rickety, were its furnishings.

“Not much to look at, is it?” she said. “But wait! Some day I shall have a grand studio like yours!” She sat down on the cot, and motioned him to draw up the less rickety chair. “The first day I was in town I slunk past your studio and peeped in. Some one was going out the door, and I got a glimpse of the inside.”

“Why in the world didn’t you come in and see us?”

“I don’t know.... I thought perhaps you wouldn’t remember me. And besides, I wanted to get established before I let any of my friends know—even Clive. I wanted to prove that I could do something by myself.” A curious smile lit her face as she added: “It annoys Clive that I should have got a job without his help!”

“But why?” he wondered. He remembered what Clive had once said about the “battle” between himself and Phyllis. It had seemed absurd at the time....

She did not reply, and so he asked: “Why shouldn’t you be willing to be helped by your friends?”

“Well—one sometimes isn’t,” she said defensively.

All at once he felt the pathetic helplessness behind her masquerade of independence. And, moved by an odd impulse, he wanted to make her admit the truth to him.

“Is it just because it’s Clive?” he asked.

For a moment she looked at him coldly as if about to rebuke his presumption, and then looked down and said: “I suppose so....”

“I thought you were in love with him,” he said bluntly.

She laughed.

“But aren’t you?” he insisted.

“What a question!” she retorted. “Are I or aren’t I? You talk like my mother!... How do I know?”

“And you talk like Clive!” he said.

“Probably I learned it from him.... I’ve learned ’most everything I know from him.”

“You’re an odd girl,” he told her.

“So Clive says.... You’re very like Clive yourself, do you know?”

“I wish I were more like him, in some ways; but in other respects—”

“Yes—you’re very much like him. Only—more so!”

“What do you mean? You rather alarm me.”

“Oh, you needn’t be alarmed. My meaning is very flattering. I think a lot of Clive!”

“Then why do you run away from him?” Felix demanded.

“Is coming to Chicago running away from him?”

“He wanted you to come to Chicago three years ago—didn’t he?”

“Yes, but—Oh, it’s very involved. Are you really interested? I’m not sure that I understand it myself.”

He was quite sure that she wanted to tell him the whole story. And he wanted to hear it.

“I’m very much interested,” he said. “And perhaps,” he hazarded, “—perhaps I could help you to understand.”

“I wish you could.... I don’t know where to begin.”

Yes—she did want to tell him. And it would be interesting to know the truth about Clive and Phyllis—at last!

“Begin with yourself—before Clive came along,” he commanded.

“Oh—you think he changed me?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Well—perhaps. Oh, of course I was a romantic little goose before he came along. And yet—that isn’t so, either.... I was hard-headed, in a way. It was I who made my father go into the taxi business and save the family from complete poverty. I did know some things—better than my father.”

“I’ve wondered about your folks,” he said. “Tell me about your father.”

“He wanted to be a farmer. He wanted to go out west and take up government land, but he didn’t have the nerve. And his own farm was no good. He slaved himself on it year after year and was always in debt. Then he quit and took a job on the railroad. But he doesn’t like machinery; curious, he’d rather dig in the ground than anything else in the world. But what was the use? We actually didn’t have enough money to buy shoes. I quit school and clarked in Wilson’s store, so I could have decent clothes. And I sewed for my sisters, so as not to be ashamed of the way they looked. I used to hate my father—and my mother, too, for never complaining, for always putting up with things. ‘Your father is a good man, Phyllis,’ she would say. ‘He doesn’t drink, or play cards, and he’s never used an unkind word to me or you children. And he’s terribly patient.’ That’s it—he was so _terribly_ patient! If he’d been a drunkard, there might have been some excuse.... Tell me—does all this bore you?”

“No, it doesn’t bore me. Go on.”

“I wanted to be a teacher.... Clive thinks I went off to become a teacher just to spite him. But it was an old ambition of mine. I wanted to put the family on its feet—and I wanted to do something that had to do with books. It’s silly, isn’t it? But teaching was all I could think of. Only, how was I to do it? I kept up with the school studies at home, nights, besides helping mother with the house and making clothes for Bess and Emmy. I got one of the teachers to bring me a copy of the final examination questions, and I wrote out my answers at home. I did it fairly, too—and he marked them for me.”

“Who was ‘he’?”

“The teacher, Mr. Andrews—the science teacher. He was all right. He lent me books, and talked to me.”

Felix smiled to himself. So Clive Bangs had not been the only one who had lent books and talked to Phyllis! He had only been the latest one to minister to an insatiable hunger for new knowledge. He had not, as he so egotistically thought, changed the current of her life; or perhaps he had: Phyllis’ story would show. But already it was a different personality from any suggested by Clive’s remarks or Felix’s own dreaming, that began to appear.

“Only—how was I ever to get to school? There were no boys in the family—I often felt as though I were the man of the family—I had to raise some money myself.... At last I thought of the taxi idea. I talked father into it.... It was the hardest battle I ever had.”

“How old were you then?”

“Sixteen.... You mustn’t think my father was a—a bad father. I really loved him very much. He wanted to take care of his family, but he just didn’t know how. I had to take things into my own hands. I persuaded him to borrow the money for our first car. That year we paid for it, and I made him borrow the money to buy another, and let me run it. Well—we made lots of money, and now we’ve five cars—so that’s all right.... I don’t know why I got off the track and told you all this stuff. You wanted to know about me and Clive.”

“Yes, then Clive came along?”

“He had been there all the time—only he never saw me. Why should he? I don’t think he ever would have seen me, if one night when I was driving him home I hadn’t noticed that he was carrying an interesting-looking book with a white label. I glanced at it rather obviously. He held it up, and asked me if I had ever read any of Bernard Shaw’s plays. I was scared to death—I had wanted to talk to him for two years, and here was my chance. I had to make good. Of course, I’d never read anything of Shaw’s, but what did that matter? It was my chance to prove to him that I was worth talking to. So I swallowed hard, and said, yes, I’d read everything I could find of Shaw’s. I knew if he asked me any questions, I could say, no, I hadn’t been able to get hold of that yet.... Well, it worked. And that night—the library was closed, but I knew the librarian and I made him go there with me and open it up long enough for me to get the only two volumes of Shaw the library had. I read one of them that night and the other the next day. I liked them, too, though they did seem a little queer to me at the very first....”

“What were they?” Felix asked.

“The ‘Three Plays for Puritans,’ and ‘Man and Superman.’ I read them all, prefaces, appendixes and everything. I said, if these are the things he likes, I can like them too, and I will! I got a liberal education out of those two books. I was a different person when I saw him three days later and he lent me ‘Cashel Byron’s Profession.’ ... And yet I wasn’t, either. I told you that I was a romantic little goose.... If there’s one thing I have learned, it’s—not to be ashamed to tell anything. So I don’t mind telling you what a little fool I was. Think! I had just stocked my brain full of Bernard Shaw, and yet—it _is_ hard to tell—I was carrying on a romantic fairy-tale at the same time, with Clive as the hero-prince! I thought—in spite of everything, you see, I was only a silly girl—that he wanted to marry me. I even commenced secretly to sew things, to get my clothes ready for the wedding.... And at the same time—It’s queer—but I think I should have despised him if he _had_ wanted to marry me!... My mother warned me against him. Poor dear father, he didn’t even know what was going on. But mother was very much worried. Well! she needn’t have been. She was just as much mistaken about Clive’s intentions as I was! All he wanted was to modernize me. Heavens! the trouble we took, the stealthy meetings, the secret rendezvous—to discuss the Life Force! It’s really funny!”

“I don’t think it’s so funny,” Felix said soberly.

“No,” said Phyllis, “the worst of it is, he did modernize me. I don’t know why I should complain—but somehow I resent his power over me. He’s always told me what to do; and in the end I’ve always done it. But I’ve hated to. He told me to go to Chicago three years ago. He told me that what I needed was work, and adventure, and love. And yet, for three years I tried to work out some silly plan of my own. I didn’t want to admit that he was right.”

“Are you sure that he _is_ right?” Felix asked.

“Of course? Aren’t you? Work—adventure—love? Why not? This is the twentieth century—and I’m twenty-two years old. Why shouldn’t I have all those things?”

“No reason—if you really want them. But—”

“Yes?”

“Well—”

“You aren’t going to tell me that woman’s place is in the home, and that I ought to get married? That would sound strange, coming from you!”

“Why? I am married.”

“Yes.... You’re lucky,” she said looking at him, sombrely.

“I know I am. But what do you mean?”

“Your marriage. You’re _living_ your theories.”

Felix smiled. “What theories do you mean? You didn’t take seriously everything Clive said at our wedding, did you?”

She looked at him earnestly. “Clive wrote me you _were_ living up to your theories—you and Rose-Ann. Isn’t it true?”

“Oh—that.”

He knew that she meant the Dorothy episode. Rose-Ann had told Clive about it, and Clive had used the anecdote more than once to point a modernistic moral. Phyllis was not the only young person who had heard strange tales of this wonderful “free” marriage.

Phyllis’s eyes questioned him fiercely, anxiously.

“I see you’ve heard the story,” he said. “Well, something of that sort did happen. But—”

“So it’s true!” She said it triumphantly. “I’m so tired of all this talk that never gets anywhere. You don’t know how much you and Rose-Ann have meant to me—your marriage. It convinced me that there was something to modernism after all.”

“So you doubted it—in spite of all Clive’s talk?”

“Yes—I did. Because it was _just_ talk.... Look at me! Do you doubt that I wanted everything Clive told me about? work—adventure—love.... I’ve wanted them all along. If Clive had only said, ‘Come with me to Chicago—’!”

“What _did_ he say?”

“He left it to me to decide.... That was fair enough. If I didn’t have sense enough to decide by myself—. Only, I think he should have dropped me, let me alone. He’s been too patient. I’ve lost my respect for him.”

“What do you want him to do—_make_ you marry him?”

“Not now. Three years ago I was foolish enough to believe in marriage. I couldn’t marry anybody now—least of all Clive: the man who taught me not to believe in marriage!”

“But you believe in—Rose-Ann’s and my marriage, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” There was a wealth of devoutness in her utterance, and her eyes opened wide as if in astonishment at her belief being questioned. “Of course. But that’s different.... You two,” she said, a little sadly, “are the only people in the world that I do believe in,—you and Rose-Ann. If _you_ went back on me, and I felt that I was making a mistake in becoming a modern woman, why—” She laughed, and added, “No doubt my modernism seems ridiculous to you. I admit that it’s only talk, so far! I—why, I don’t even smoke cigarettes. Clive has been to immense pains to educate my mind; but my habits are still those of—of my middle-western childhood. It’s going to be strange.... I _am_ a queer person. Restless, discontented, fed up on radical theories for three years.... Do I seem ridiculous to you?”

“No,” Felix said gravely. “Not ridiculous.” He hesitated.... There were things he wanted to say to her; but _he_ would be ridiculous, saying those things. And yet he did want to say them.... Her hand lay near him on the couch. He covered it with his own. The touch gave him the encouragement he needed; but when he spoke it was in unpremeditated words.

“I’m awfully sorry, Phyllis,” he said.

2

For a moment her flippant hardness disappeared. She became for a moment, in response to his tone, the girl he had first known—the real person, simple and genuine, that still underlay all her pretences.... She let her hand rest in his for a moment, and then withdrew it. “Why sorry?” she asked quietly. “I’m sorry for myself; but why should you be sorry for me, Felix?”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “But—I like you, and I want you to be happy. And Clive’s modernism doesn’t seem to me to be what you want.”

She frowned at him. “What _do_ I want?” she asked.

“Not a hectic, experimental kind of existence,” he said.

“I don’t?”

“No. Not for yourself. You may want to be that sort of person to please Clive. But _you_ don’t want it. You want—I’ll tell you what you want.” He spoke confidently. “It’s very simple. You want a husband, and children, and a home, and you want to stay there—you want to be _made_ to stay there.”

She stirred restlessly, and seemed about to speak, but he motioned her abruptly to keep still, and went on authoritatively. “Oh, don’t deny it. You want somebody to take you in charge—some one in whom you really believe, that you can really depend upon, somebody who can boss the job. Don’t you!” he finished rather imperiously.

She smiled at him quizzically, and then said, “Yes. Maybe I do. How did you guess?”

“I knew,” he said.

“Well, don’t tell anybody that I’m such a ridiculous person!” she said. And suddenly she slipped down from the bed to the floor, and put her arm across his knees, and laid her head against it, without speaking. After a while she looked up, and asked timidly, “Do you mind? I wanted to.”

3

Felix caressed her shoulder with his hand, lightly—feeling in some queer way that she was a child and that he was some infinitely older and wiser person.

They sat there a long time, she with her head resting against his knee, and he with his hand touching her shoulder. At last she took his other hand and held it against her face, with an apparently unconscious and instinctive gesture, as if she were in truth a child. He had a deep conviction that this was not love-making in any ordinary sense. There was some blessed healing in these contacts for them both—that was all.

Yes—for him, too. For as he bent over her, with his hand nourished against her cheek, he seemed to be finding rest, finding some quiet peace which his spirit needed. This touch was enough. It was balm for a weariness of which he had not been aware. It was rest, it was peace, it was his dream of her come true.

She lifted her head at last, like some one who has waked from a refreshing sleep. “You are very good to me,” she said, and rose up.

He stood up, suddenly conscious of how long they had been together, and wondered what time it was.

She glanced at her clock on the mantel, and his look followed hers. It was three o’clock.

“Gracious!” she whispered.

He started to walk across the floor, and a board creaked; he finished the journey to his door on tiptoe, half ashamed and angry at taking such a precaution. It gave an air of the illicit to the occasion. At the door he turned.

She had remained standing beside his chair. He could not shake hands with her without going back. But why was he hurrying away in such a frightened manner, as if he had done something wrong? He recrossed the room and held out his hand.

“Good night, Phyllis.”

“Good night, Felix Fay.”

He walked boldly back to his own room, and closed the door with a defiant bang.

4

It had been very beautiful.... And why, now, must it be so awkward, the task of finding a place for this beauty in his ordinary life?

Explanations!...

Rose-Ann would understand, of course. But, even so, the telling of it was difficult. He could think of no words to convey the simplicity and naturalness of the incident.

It was all very well to talk of telling the truth to one’s beloved; but the truth was not such an easy thing to tell!...

So Felix was reflecting, as he put on his coat and hat to go home, when there was a knock on the door he had banged shut, and Phyllis entered.

“I want a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I’ll walk over to your place with you if you don’t mind.”

XLIV. Aubade

1

“THERE’S a light burning in your studio,” she said as they turned the corner. They had been silent all the way, Phyllis happy to be out in the moonlight, and Felix rather moodily uneasy at this prolongation of an incident that had already had its due ending.

“Yes, Rose-Ann is still up,” he said.

He unlocked the door, and Phyllis ran in eagerly. Rose-Ann sprang up from the table where she had been working over some magazine proofs.

“Phyllis!” she cried, and the two girls embraced like old friends long parted.

“I’ve been keeping Felix up, listening to the story of my life,” said Phyllis.

“Is it late? I’ve been fixing up the dummy of the Motion Picture World. I’m just finished. I have to get it down at the printer’s at eight in the morning.” She went over to the table, and swept the scattered proofs into a portfolio, laying the dummy upon them, and tying the strings. “How about some coffee? Or are you sleepy?” “Wide awake!” said Phyllis. “It’s so nice to find you up. I did want to see your studio.”

“Felix, will you make some coffee?”

Felix came back in a moment and sadly reported that the coffee was “all gone!”

“Oh, I forgot—I used the last of it this evening.... What a pity!”

Felix, returning into their presence from behind the screen, had a curious sense of being a third, an intruder into a friendly intimacy. He had had, in the very moment of their meeting, a startled impression of their being the oldest friends each other had, far more deeply acquainted with each other than he with either of them! And now, in the mere two minutes in which he had been out of their sight searching for coffee, they had begun to talk for all the world like two old schoolmates who had, after a long separation, much to tell each other. His entrance had, or so it seemed to him, the effect of an interruption.

“I’ll look again,” he said awkwardly. “There may be some left of that G. Washington coffee. I think there is.” And he went behind the screen again.

There was no “G. Washington coffee.” He found the empty can at once. But he sat down on the bed, grinning sheepishly at himself, instead of returning. He could hear them out there talking in the swift, breathless, low tones of confidential feminine narrative. Now Phyllis’s voice ceased on a note of inquiry, and Rose-Ann spoke without interruption to a hushed listener. Her voice became louder, and there was a ring of pride in it. Both girls suddenly laughed and then Rose-Ann went on talking....

What on earth could they be talking about? Felix found himself listening curiously, with decidedly the feeling of an eavesdropper, but he could distinguish only an unrevealing word or two now and then. “Clive’s house,” he heard, and after a while, “scissors,” followed by another laugh; but that was all.

If someone had assured him, beforehand, that Rose-Ann, in spite of what had seemed to him an ungenerous hostility to Phyllis, would have instantly taken her to her bosom like this, he would have been pleased; but now, with that fact before him, he was not so much pleased as astonished. He was even a little annoyed.

Why should he be annoyed? It was doubtless natural enough for these two girls to want to talk together. Phyllis’s having been at Rose-Ann’s wedding constituted a bond between them.... And Felix remembered that when they had first met they had seemed to like each other at once. He was behaving rather ridiculously in staying out here; they could talk just as well in his presence.

He returned to them and again reported failure. And once more, as he entered, he had the feeling of being an intruder. This time it was as if they had forgotten his existence, and were rather startled to find him there, and puzzled for a moment to know how to get rid of him!

“Oh!” said Rose-Ann to his news of the total absence of any coffee whatever.

“I’ve some coffee over at my place,” said Phyllis. “Won’t you come over there? I’d like to show you my room. And we can talk.”

Distinctly her glance at him told Felix that he was not wanted along.

Rose-Ann jumped up. “Let’s!” she said. And then to Felix, “you needn’t bother to come with us. Phyllis and I want to talk.”

“All right!” he said, smiling. But as he saw them depart together out of the door of the studio into the moonlight, he had an odd feeling of being a little boy left out of the conversation of his elders.... And perhaps, too, there was a strange feeling of jealous unease.

2

He took a book, went to bed, and tried to read himself to sleep. But at six o’clock he was still awake, and Rose-Ann had not returned. At seven he rose, and went—well, perhaps not exactly to look for her, but to his work-room.

Through the inner door he could hear their voices, in animated conversation. He went to the door, flung it open, and cried,

“My God, are you girls still talking!”

They looked up, startled, and then laughed. “What time is it?” asked Rose-Ann. “I’ve been telling Phyllis the history of our marriage....”

So that was what they were talking about! Half-appeased, at having been after all included in the conversation, he looked at his watch. “Seven-thirty,” he said.

“I have to have my dummy at the printer’s at eight,” said Rose-Ann. “I wonder if you will take it there for me, Felix, while I take a bath. And we’ll all meet at breakfast. Clive and Phyllis are going to have breakfast at Henrici’s, and we’ll join them. Will you?”

Felix went back to the studio for the dummy. As he went, he carried in his mind the picture he had seen when he opened the door of Phyllis’s room—Phyllis sitting on the floor at Rose-Ann’s feet precisely as a few hours earlier she had sat at his, with what must have been the same worshipful expression on her face as she listened to Rose-Ann’s words. Rose-Ann had also probably been deciding her young destinies for her.

Felix laughed. It was certainly odd enough!

Yes, but what ideas had Rose-Ann been putting into her head? What kind of story had Rose-Ann told her about their marriage? Had Rose-Ann talked about their mutual “freedom”? That theme would have accounted for Phyllis’s rapt and devout attention. It was what Phyllis wanted to hear, what she wanted to believe—that love could be like that!

Anyway, he was glad that Phyllis and Rose-Ann were friends.

3

The four of them breakfasted together at Henrici’s, and at noon Phyllis was inducted into the magic circle of their mid-day comradeship at the corner table in the little Hungarian restaurant; and that afternoon they took the train for Woods Point—whither Phyllis had to go as it were in disguise, or at least stealthily, for her family must not know that she was spending the night at Clive’s: an ironic precaution, for their relations were still as vexatiously and chastely intellectual as they had been in the earliest days of their clandestine meetings.

In spite of their need of sleep—and fortified by the thought that tomorrow was Sunday and they could sleep as long as they liked—they sat up until all hours, talking. It was like a reunion, and the memory of their first meeting here touched it with romantic suggestion. The promise of comradeship which had been implicit in that first meeting, obscured at the time by the anxieties and discomforts of a tribal ceremonial, had now, after so long an interval, come true. They felt that they had discovered each other, to a new extent, in this new grouping. It is not often that two couples can happily coalesce into that infinitely fluid and various arrangement, a group of four. But it had quite unmistakably and thrillingly happened!

XLV. Foursome

1

THE conversational permutations and combinations of this new fourfold intimacy inevitably threw new light for each upon the character of the others, and led to endless discussions.

“But why,” Felix exclaimed to Rose-Ann, after an evening spent in the company of the two others, “doesn’t Phyllis make up her mind about Clive, one way or the other. Why should she keep on tormenting him this way?”

“Why doesn’t Clive make up his own mind?” Rose-Ann retorted. “It’s he that’s torturing her. I understand Phyllis’s attitude perfectly.”

“We both seem to have rather changed our views about them,” he observed. “You used to blame Phyllis.”

“I don’t any more,” said Rose-Ann. “I blame Clive.”

“For what, precisely?”

“For not knowing what he wants!”

“He wants Phyllis. That’s simple enough.”

“No, he doesn’t. It would be simple enough if he did. He could have her in a moment. She’s crazy about him. She wants nothing else than to be really his sweetheart.”

“Then why isn’t she?”

“Because he won’t let her!”

“What nonsense, Rose-Ann!”

“It’s perfectly true. I was going to tell you; while you and Clive were over in the corner tonight talking about that novel of his, she was explaining to me what she was angry at him about. She had proposed to him that they rent an apartment together in Chicago this fall.”

“And he refused?” Felix asked incredulously.

“Yes ... unless she would marry him first. And she wouldn’t.”

“But why not?” he asked.

“Don’t you understand, Felix?... Before, when they first knew each other, she would gladly have married him—but he wouldn’t ask her. He wanted her to be a ‘free-woman.’ And now that she’s ready to be, he insists on ‘protecting’ her with a marriage. Can’t you see? he wants her to admit that she’s not in earnest, that she’s afraid.... And she won’t. I quite agree with her!”

“But what a fuss over nothing,” said Felix.

“Over nothing? Aren’t ideas anything? Isn’t pride anything?”

“Not in comparison with happiness. They’ve been making each other miserable for two years with their ideas, and their silly pride. The important thing is to get them—yes, damn it!—into the same bed together!”

Rose-Ann laughed. “They’ve tried even that, Felix! and it did no good.”

“What!”

“No—they spent the night arguing about whether they really loved each other!”

Felix groaned. “I never heard of such a crazy pair in my life!”

“Yes, it was utterly ridiculous,” Rose-Ann agreed. “Phyllis told Clive she was perfectly willing, for the sake of companionship, to become his mistress—but he wouldn’t have her on those terms. He wanted her to say she loved him.”

“I can’t exactly blame him for asking that,” said Felix. “Why shouldn’t she say it?—it was true!”

“She just wasn’t sure; I can understand that, Felix. She wanted to find out whether she did or not. And if he couldn’t be sure for both of them— You see, it was his cowardice, not hers.”

“Madness!” said Felix. “Is this what modern love has come to!”

2

Again, Clive and Felix were at the “Tavern,” across the street from the Chronicle, sitting in front of their afternoon ale.

“Phyllis,” said Clive, “talks about nothing but you, nowadays—you and Rose-Ann. I gather that you are the most wonderful two people in the world, with the possible exception of Bernard Shaw and Ellen Key.”

“I hear much more extravagant reports than that about myself,” said Felix. “Bernard Shaw isn’t in it. I gather that I am almost as wonderful a person as Clive Bangs!”

Clive shook his head. “I am a deserted altar,” he declared, with mock mournfulness. “You are the new divinity. How does it feel?”

“It’s—slightly embarrassing sometimes,” said Felix.

Clive grinned. “You just hate it, don’t you? It makes you bored to be adored!”

“Not exactly,” said Felix. “But Phyllis does have a disturbing way, when we are alone together, of seeming to be a—well, a child, a very young child with a ... a beloved parent!”

“Or why not say, a worshipper in the presence of a god!” Clive laughed. “You find it embarrassing, do you?”

“And also agreeable in a curious way!” Felix confessed. “I’ve never been regarded as a supernaturally wise being, before. I find I rather like it!”

“I know,” said Clive. “The truth is, it’s tremendously gratifying to one’s egotism. It’s nice to be a god. But I fell off my pedestal early in the game. And what I’d like to know is, how do you manage to stay on yours so serenely?”

“It comes naturally to me, to be a god, I expect,” said Felix modestly. “I was probably born that way. I’ve often been told I’m not human. But I imagine the trouble with you was that you made love to her. That was a mistake. You should let her make love to you.”

“It sounds all right, Felix—not to make love to her: but do you really find it so terribly easy?”

“Oh,” said Felix, “I just keep in mind that I am supposed to be calm, benignant, Olympian intelligence! And really, you know, there’s nothing in the world less conducive to romance. A gesture betraying anything more than a condescending paternal affection would shatter the picture. An importunate lover is merely human, you know, Clive!”

“So I’ve found!” said Clive.

“But it’s your own damned fault. I mean this seriously, Clive. You taught her this preposterous evasiveness. She’s only learned your characteristic attitude—or your favourite trick, whichever it is.”

“I must say she’s learned it well.... So you think it’s all a mask. And what do you imagine is underneath?” Clive asked carelessly.

“I don’t imagine—I know,” Felix said earnestly, thinking of the real person he had evoked from under her intellectual disguises that first night of talk in her room. “Something so simple, Clive, that you’d never believe it.”

Clive yawned. “I might not believe it, but I can guess what you’re about to say, Felix: a Woman, God bless her, with a capital W!... Come on, Felix, you’ve reached the maudlin stage; let’s go back to the office.”

3

“Phyllis,” said Clive to Rose-Ann one afternoon at Field’s where they had met by chance at the stationery counter, and had gone together to the tea-room for tea and talk, “complains to me that Felix hasn’t been to his work-room all this week; she seems to think he is idling away his time in the society of his wife, when he ought to be writing plays and letting her make coffee for him.”

Rose-Ann laughed. “Whether it’s Phyllis’s coffee or not, he does seem to be getting some good work done. I really like that new play.”

“‘The Dryad’? A lovely little thing. Why don’t you make him send it to Gregory Storm?”

Gregory Storm was an enthusiast who was organizing a company of amateurs to give plays by Schnitzler and Wedekind and other moderns, and Felix had vainly been urged by Clive to submit some of his one-act plays to them.

“I’m not going to ‘make’ Felix do anything,” Rose-Ann said impatiently. “Make him yourself, if you want him to! I _won’t_ manage his career for him.”

“Afraid he’ll blame you if it fails?” Clive asked maliciously.

“No—afraid he’ll blame me if it succeeds!” she laughed.

“You’re right,” said Clive. “I never saw any one so afraid of success.”

“Oh, it’s not success he’s afraid of. It’s rather, I think, that he’s afraid of enjoying himself! You know, Clive, he really is a Puritan!”

“Harsh words, Mrs. Fay! On what grounds do you accuse Felix of the horrid crime of Puritanism?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean, Clive! You were saying that Felix hadn’t been to his work-room this week. And you know why. It’s because he’s afraid of Phyllis. Isn’t it absurd!”

“Absurd? Not at all! I’m very much afraid of her, myself!”

“Well, I’m not! Felix ought to know that I’m just as fond of Phyllis as he is, and that I can perfectly well understand how nice it is to have her around. I like to have her make coffee for me, and sit at _my_ feet. And suppose he did kiss her—she’s very kissable; I wish he would, and get over being afraid of her.”

“No use, Rose-Ann; he never will. And what’s worse, she never will, either. She’s just as much afraid of him as he is of her. I’m afraid theirs is a hopeless passion!”

They both commenced to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

4

Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled again, and Phyllis felt in need of encouragement in her Clive-less way of life. She leaned on Rose-Ann for philosophic guidance, and the two girls spent many evenings together in the studio; while Felix, without the sustenance of Phyllis’s coffee, worked at revising “The Dryad,” which he had decided to submit to Gregory Storm. But one evening Phyllis came in disconsolately, and said to Felix:

“I’ve been to the studio and Rose-Ann isn’t there!”

“She’s at the printer’s,” said Felix, “reading page-proof.” He pushed back his manuscript. “Do you want to make me some—”

“Coffee? No,” said Phyllis, “but you can take me out and buy me a cocktail or something; and—and give me some spiritual guidance. I need it!”

They went to a quiet restaurant in the Loop which Clive had discovered, a foreign-looking place where people sat for hours over one drink: a place to talk. It was almost empty at this hour. A table across the room was occupied by an elderly Swede or Dane, who sat moodily sipping a liqueur.

“What,” Phyllis demanded, fingering the stem of her glass, “_shall_ I do—I mean, with my life. Tell me, Felix!”

“If I tell you, will you do it?” he demanded.

She hesitated for a moment. “Yes—I will!”

“Marry!”

“Oh—I might have known you would say that.” She sipped her cocktail disappointedly. “I could have got that advice from St. Paul!”

“I suppose you prefer to take Walter Pater’s advice,” he said laughingly.

“What is that?”

“Burn always with a hard, gem-like flame! But, no—St. Paul is right: it is better to marry!”

“Don’t tease me, Felix. I’m in earnest.”

“So am I. I’ve told you what to do.”

“Marry—yes. But why?”

“You’ll find out why, my dear. ‘Open your mouth and shut your eyes—’”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Not a bit.”

“Marry, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m not to ask why?”

“No.”

“Then—whom?”

“A man.”

“Any man?”

“Any man you happen to like.”

“But I don’t happen to like many men.”

“Marry one of those fortunate few.”

“I suppose you mean Clive?”

“He’ll do.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t believe in marriage. And, Felix, one of the two people must believe in a marriage, for it to _be_ a marriage!”

“Then marry—Herbert Bond.”

Herbert Bond was a staid young business man with whom Phyllis had flirted outrageously during her last quarrel with Clive.

“You said—any man I happened to _like_,” she protested.

“What kind of man _do_ you happen to like, then?”

“Clive’s kind!”

“I suspected as much,” he said. “Well, then, marry one of Clive’s kind—but without Clive’s fatal weakness.”

“Not believing in marriage—is that his fatal weakness?”

“Not being able to believe in anything!—in marriage—in love—”

“Or in me,” said Phyllis sadly.

Felix was silent.

“Can any one—any one of Clive’s kind—believe in me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

“Are you sure?” she demanded, leaning across the table.

“Quite sure,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze.

She looked down. “There’s only one other man—of Clive’s kind—that I can think of,” she said. “And he’s—out of my reach.”

“Then you must look around for some others,” Felix said, smiling.

“Are there others?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course. It’s only youth and ignorance that makes you imagine they are scarce. You don’t find them by the dozens in little country towns, of course; but you are in Chicago, now. They are a type familiar in all great cities. How long have you been here? A few months! And because you’ve only found two, so far—”

She sighed. “You think there may be a third?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you think I’ll find him?”

“If you look.”

“And will he like _me_, do you think?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he did, rather!”

“Thank you!” she said mockingly. “It is awfully kind of you to say so!”

At this moment they noticed the man who was sitting across the room, the elderly Scandinavian, rising and bowing in their direction. They looked at him in surprise, and he came over to their table, and bowed again. He was drunk, but none the less a gentleman.

“Pardon me,” he said, speaking quietly, in a voice which had only the trace of an alien accent, “for the liberty I take in addressing you. But I have been sitting there, seeing you—seeing your happiness—and it gave me such pleasure that I wanted to tell you—to thank you. Yes, to thank you!” He put his hand on his breast.

“I felt sure,” he said, smiling affectionately at them, “—I said to myself, these two happy lovers will forgive a lonely old man for telling them how much it has meant only to look on for a moment at their happiness—their young happiness!”

He bowed again. “Pardon me,” he said, smiling, and again bowed, and went out the door.

Felix and Phyllis stared after him, and then looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

5

But, interesting as such incidental discussions might be, the heart of their fourfold relationship was in the mid-day discussions at the little Hungarian restaurant. They named it the Rendezvous. There they talked of everything in the world that interested them.... Two people talking together tell secrets; three people talking are a conspiracy; but four talkers are a world. They told the truth; they were hard in their sincerity; and nobody flinched. They were proud of their robustness. The theme of a tête-à-tête confession might at any moment be flung into the stark publicity of that arena. They no longer had secrets; or, if they had, it was because these were secrets of which they had not become aware.

One day Clive said laughingly, “If anything ever happens to us, of the sort that ‘can’t’ be discussed, we’ll come here, and discuss it in the teeth of God and Nature!”

6

They had planned a vacation together, but Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled once more, and Felix and Rose-Ann set out disappointedly by themselves on the appointed day, through Gary and beyond to “the Dunes.” But, after a little having pitched their tent and wandered out over the great wastes of sand by the Lake, they were conscious, both of them, of a sense of release. In this wilderness of sandhills, they seemed to be a million miles distant from all the world they had lived in.

“It’s good to be away from people,” said Rose-Ann.

“Even from Clive and Phyllis,” said Felix.

Rose-Ann’s lips pouted mutinously. “_Especially_ from Clive and Phyllis!” she said.

“Yes....” Felix said hesitatingly. “But—why?”

“They’re family all over again,” said Rose-Ann. “I thought I had escaped from families.... But one never does.”

They cooked and ate and slept and kissed and bathed in the lake, and lay idly on the sand. They did not discuss anything all week long. And when the end came, and it was time to begin the miles-long walk back to the nearest street-car line, they stood looking back lingeringly at the peace they were leaving behind.

“It would be nice to have a house here,” said Rose-Ann.

“Yes,...” said Felix.

“Only—the lake and the sand are sort of wasted, without children to enjoy them.”

A burning flash of memory lighted Felix’s mind, and he saw himself and Rose-Ann, the summer before, walking in a park under great trees that lifted their shivering glooms to the sky.... “Everything is all right now,” she had said—now that they were to have no child....

He felt, again, forces that he did not understand hurling themselves on his heart, crushing and stunning it.... He looked at her, questioning her with his eyes.

“I hope,” she was saying, “that Clive and Phyllis make up again—soon. We _are_ rather dull without them, aren’t we?”

XLVI. The Rehearsal

1

COMING back to town, Felix forced himself to ask for another raise in salary. It was less because he needed the money than because he wanted to assure himself that he really was what he was supposed to be—a person of some importance. He got his raise—one which made his pay now commensurate with his position as dramatic critic of a great newspaper.

And the same week he received word that the Artists’ Theatre had accepted his play, “The Dryad.” It was to be presented on the opening bill, along with Schnitzler and Wedekind!

The acceptance of this play, taken in conjunction with such a realistic fact as his raise in salary, seemed to mean something; he wanted to believe that it did—but he was rather afraid to believe it. Instead, he began to tell himself that in sober truth it meant nothing at all.

He went to see Gregory Storm, the director, and was urged to attend the rehearsals. “At all events,” he said to himself, “I can look on and learn something practical about the mechanics of the theatre.”

2

Rose-Ann refused to accompany him to the rehearsal. “You are getting into a terrible habit of having me on your mind whenever I’m around,” she said. “I’ve noticed it when you write; I bother you. I’d rather stay away. Besides, if I went, I should want to be in it myself!”

He went alone, reflecting that what Rose-Ann had said was true. If she were in the room he was more selfconscious, by reason of being so conscious of her. He must get over it....

He found the players assembled on their tiny stage, hardly larger than the one in the children’s theatre at Community House. The house would seat ninety-nine people only; one more seat, and the Artists’ Theatre would have come within the theatre ordinance and been required to pay a theatre-tax. Officially then, as a theatre, it did not exist. The actors, Felix knew, received no pay; they were lawyers and doctors, painters and poets, business men’s wives and ambitious young women just out of school. The authors of the plays would receive no royalty; the income from seat-sales would not cover the rent of the theatre itself, and the deficit would have to be made up by enthusiasts.... In a manner of speaking, it wasn’t a theatre at all—it was a dream.

As soon as he entered the theatre Felix felt its irresistible dream quality. Upon the stage, walking up and down, was the slight, striking, dramatic figure of Gregory Storm—the dreamer whose dream all this was, the man who still, in the years of maturity, was trying to achieve a childish, absurd and delightful impossibility. It was he who had named this enterprise “The Artists’ Theatre”; no one else in Chicago would have been so brave, or so foolish....

He turned, saw Felix, nodded at him, and clapped his hands. “Cast of ‘The Dryad’!” he cried.

Three men and a girl stood up. The others left the stage. Felix clambered up over the place where the footlights would have been if Gregory Storm had not passionately disbelieved in footlights.

Gregory Storm shook Felix’s hand hastily, and turned to the others. “This is the author, Mr. Fay. Miss Macklin, Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Whipple, Mr. Deedy.” Felix bowed. “We’ll have the scenery.” He clapped his hands again. “Set for ‘The Dryad’!”

A man whom Felix recognized as an enterprising young architect appeared at the back, struggling with a tall painted canvas frame.... As the set was put together, Felix felt a genuine thrill of pleasure; it was so completely, and so startlingly, in the spirit of his play. He had feared that he would be given a realistic woodland setting—and that would have shown up the utter artifice of his play. But this was a wood as some artist of the Yellow Book in his gayest mood might have pictured it—a wood that was, after all, a fashionable drawing-room or a perfumed boudoir, set for the graceful and heartless loves of shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in silks and satins.... The young architect grinned at him. “Like it?” he whispered. “I did it myself. Pretty good, I think!”

“We had a good deal of difficulty with that little song in your play,” said Gregory Storm. “The one the fat man sings.” He smiled appreciatively. “We set it to two or three old ballad tunes before we got the right one. Would you mind, Mr. Deedy, trying it for us?”

Mr. Deedy, who was to take the part of the Banker in the play, stepped forward and sang in a mournful voice:

“_Do you remember when first we met, How, in that April weather, Chasing a butterfly, we ran, Over the hills together!_”

“Good!” said Gregory Storm. “Now the last stanza.”

“_But shall we then withhold our hands And stay our foolish feet When next illusion flutters by? I wonder, O my sweet!_”

The effect was quite as droll as Felix had desired.

“Mr. Whipple,” said Gregory Storm, “is the Advertising Man. Mr. Deedy is the Guide. And Miss Macklin, of course, is the Dryad. Are you ready?” He clapped his hands again.

Miss Macklin stepped back into the wings; the three men lay down, in attitudes of sleep, beside what was supposed to be a camp-fire in a forest, and Felix’s play had begun.

Felix was looking at the girl in the wings. He had never taken the performance of his play very seriously; he had never supposed that any group of people would ever be able to enter into its spirit. He had misjudged Gregory Storm. No fantasy was too quaint and absurd for him to understand, it seemed: and moreover, he had conveyed to these men on the stage his own zest in the fantasy—they really succeeded in transporting one into this realm of pseudo-reality in which anything might happen.... And that girl: she was, of all persons in the world, the one to play that part. She had an elvish look, the very air and gesture of one of those soulless, ever-living creatures of the wood, who have in one form or another haunted and tormented the imagination of masculine mankind. There was something about the shape of her mouth, a delicate sharpness of contour, which made it look inhuman, as though not made for mortal kisses; and the way her forehead went up and back on each side in strange receding planes to the roots of her tangled black hair—there was foreignness, and remoteness, and mystery, in that face.... He took his eyes from her.

These men were doing very well indeed. But what would an audience think? That was a different matter.

He waited for the Dryad’s entrance. He wanted to hear her speak—she had not as yet uttered a single word.... Yes, her voice was all that it should be—low, deep, cool, clear, and as if from far away, beautiful and emotionless, the voice of an elf.... And really, it was amusing, this absurd discussion of morals that ensued, when the Dryad offered to accompany these men to Chicago—the discussion of what their wives would think, and her naïve questions, and their laboured explanations of marriage, and morality, and clothes, all the civilized things which a poor Dryad would find it so hard to understand and a Banker and an Advertising Man so difficult to explain. And then the Guide, the very Shavian Guide with a philosophy of his own—not a bad touch!

When Felix left the Artists’ Theatre that night, he had a feeling that he had been away from the real world for a long time—like Rip Van Winkle coming back from a brief stay in the Troll’s Garden to find his friends all dead or grown old.... It was too deep an allurement. He must not go to any more rehearsals. They could get along well enough without him.

“How did the rehearsal go?” Rose-Ann waked up to ask.

“Beautifully,” he said. “But the theatre is too much for me. I feel as though if I went behind the scenes again I would never come back.”

“Would that be so terrible?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“But—I might go, too.... I’d like to play a part like your Dryad—if I could.”

He remembered her suddenly as he had seen her among the children at the Community House Theatre. Yes, she could play such a part. But ... he didn’t want her to—for some reason which he could not understand. She must stay here in the world of reality—and keep him here.

“They said something about a ball—to make some money for the theatre,” he remarked. “I suppose we’ll have to go?”

“I’d like to go,” she said, and commenced planning their costumes with enthusiasm.

XXLVII. The Fortunate Youth

1

ON the occasion of the opening bill of the Artists’ Theatre, a young man who had just joined the staff of the Chronicle was delegated to attend and criticize the performance; what he said in praise or blame would not matter either way.... The play came off very well, was generously applauded, and there was an excited little supper afterward at which Felix and Rose-Ann and Clive and Phyllis and the cast of “The Dryad” drank a good deal of wine, and many compliments were bandied back and forth. And that, Felix thought, was the end of the matter.

But it seemed not. Of course, the young man who criticized the play for the Chronicle had to make a fool of himself and Felix by hailing him as “our new Barrie”; but that did not do any real harm. Most of the critics were sensible, and treated the event with casual indifference. But old Jennison, the “dean of the fraternity,” had gone the second night, and given the play a most astonishing commendation, well-calculated to turn any young playwright’s head—besides remarking privately to Felix on the street that he was wasting his time fooling with amateurs—why didn’t he aim for Broadway, he had the stuff in him, and so forth.... And the bill was going so well, on account, it was said, of Felix’s play, that the original run of two weeks had been extended to three.

Success? So his friends called it lightly, and though he made an effort to see it in its true perspective, Felix felt a glow of elation. Perhaps he had really shown that he could do something!

In this frame of mind, on the final night of the bill, which had managed to eke out a four weeks’ run, he went to another little supper party, with Rose-Ann, Clive and Phyllis, and the players, and heard—with somewhat less sense of being “guyed”—their extravagant praises.... Besides, he knew something that they did not know—not even, as yet, Rose-Ann: an actor-manager-playwright from New York, who happened to be in town, had seen “The Dryad,” liked it, and said that it could be made into a successful three-act play—had, in fact, offered to collaborate with him upon it! That sounded like the real thing. Perhaps these praises were not the absurdities they seemed....

That evening Clive was in a difficult mood; he and Phyllis had been tormenting each other of late to the point of exacerbation. Clive’s ironies lacked tonight the quality, whatever it was, that made them agreeable. He managed by some satirical remark to offend Miss Macklin, to whom he had been paying special attentions. He commenced to drink recklessly. Phyllis refused contemptuously to speak to him. And then suddenly he disappeared.

Phyllis came home with Felix and Rose-Ann. At the studio they made coffee, and talked about the ball and their costumes. At last Felix told them about the actor-manager and his offer.

“Well,” Phyllis asked, “how does it feel to have everything you want?”

“It feels,” Felix said, “unreal—disturbing. It can’t be true. Do you remember the story of Polycrates?”

“No,” said Phyllis.

“Herodotus tells about it—and I was thinking about it only today, and I made up a little rhyme about it. I’ll tell you the story....”

2

Phyllis, sitting on the floor, with her coffee beside her, was looking up at him with eager eyes, eyes full of pride greater even than Rose-Ann’s. Rose-Ann was a realist. She knew all this did not amount to so much. This story was addressed to Phyllis. Rose-Ann, reclining on the settle, seemed a little outside the circle of its intention, someone accidentally looking on.

“He was a Persian king—very rich, very powerful, very happy. And there came to visit him a Greek philosopher. The Persian king asked him, ‘What is the use of philosophy?’ And the Greek philosopher answered. ‘It serves to reconcile us to the unhappiness of our lot.’ ‘Then what use is it to me?’ the king asked. ‘I am not unhappy. I am the happiest of mortals.’ ‘Yes,’ said the philosopher, ‘you are too happy. You had better beware!’ ‘Of What?’ asked the king. ‘Of the jealousy of the gods,’ said the philosopher.

“That sounded reasonable enough to the king. He had nothing to fear from men; but the gods—they might well be jealous of him. ‘What shall I do to appease their wrath?’ he asked.

“Take the most precious thing you own, and throw it into the sea!” was the advice of the philosopher.

“Now the king had a certain ring, which at the beginning of his reign he had taken from the hand of a conquered monarch, and which he had always cherished as the symbol of his victorious career. It seemed to him the most precious of all his possessions, and so he went and threw it into the sea.

“But the next evening as the king and the philosopher sat down to dinner, the cook came running in with the ring, which he had that moment found in the entrails of a fish which was going to be the king’s dinner. The king took it with great satisfaction, saying, ‘The gods have given me back my ring.’

“But the philosopher turned pale, and said, ‘The gods have rejected your gift,’ and immediately went home, fearing to be in that kingdom when the wrath of the gods descended upon it.

“And when he had returned to Greece, he heard that the king’s enemies had descended upon the kingdom and overthrown it, and sacked the palace, and carried away the king’s wives, and built a great pyre of the palace furnishings and set the king on top of it on his golden throne, to be burnt....

“The story ends happily after all, in Herodotus. But it was a narrow squeak, and the gods only relented at the last minute, by softening the hearts of his conquerors and sending a rain to put out the fire. But the gods are capricious—and perhaps the next time they wouldn’t change their minds.”

“And the rhyme you made up about it?” Phyllis asked.

“Well, it points the moral of the tale:

“_When there is nothing left to wish, And Earth’s too much like Heaven, Throw away some lovely gift Of all the gods have given!_

“_Too happy, like that king of old Who gave the sea his ring— Find out if there’s in store for you The fate of that old king!_”

Rose-Ann sat up and smiled at him. “But Felix,” she said, “you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t understand the moral of that old fable at all!”

“No?”

“No!” said Rose-Ann. “The gods were angry at that old king because he didn’t appreciate what they had done for him.... It was because he threw away some of the loveliness that they had given him, that they punished him. He was a coward—and the gods don’t like cowards!”

“No?” ... Felix was realizing now consciously what he had meant by the story. Those evenings in his work-room, with the door open between him and Phyllis, and Phyllis come in to sit on the floor beside him in some interval of his work—intervals that grew longer and longer—all the sweetness of that friendship, so much more than friendship that it was almost like love ... it was this that he was going to throw away. He was going to give up his room, and get another, or return to the studio to work. It was this intention that he had unconsciously in mind when he wrote—

“_Throw away some lovely gift Of all the gods have given!_”

“No, Felix,” Rose-Ann was saying, “there’s no use being afraid of good fortune. When the gods give us beauty, we must take it—not run away from it.”

“So!...” he said. “I’m afraid the Greeks thought differently.”

“They were so much less Greek, then,” said Rose-Ann.

3

“It’s late,” said Phyllis. “I must go home. Will you take me, Felix?”

He put on his hat and went out with her silently.

They walked along the empty streets without a word until they reached the door of the house in which she lived. Then she lifted her face up to him, and said,

“You know that I love you, Felix.”

XLVIII. Dream-Tryst

1

THE foundations of Felix’s existence seemed to crack and fall apart, the whole edifice of thought and emotion in which he lived to topple and tumble in ruins.

“No,” he said slowly, “——I didn’t know.”

They turned, and walked down the street toward the corner, side by side. At the corner they paused, and looked at each other helplessly.

“Yes, I do too know,” Felix said. “I must have always known.”

They stood looking at each other for a moment, and then turned back, walking along the street in silence, past the door of the house, to the corner, where they stopped again.

“I couldn’t stand it,” Phyllis said, “not to tell you. It hurt so—to have to keep it a secret, as if it were something to be ashamed of. And I thought—if there is anything in this modernism—this talk—if it really means anything, if it isn’t all just a damned fake—I could tell you. I wanted to. I had to, Felix.”

Yes ... of course. That was the meaning of it all....

“You aren’t angry at me, Felix, for telling you?”

No——he wasn’t angry. It seemed to him magnificent——the simplicity, the bravery, the candour of that confession. She was to him in that moment a person more quietly sure of herself, more nobly honest, than anything in all this tangled insincerity of modern life——a creature out of some poem of the world’s youth. Beside him, as she walked, her very person seemed magnified—her soft brown hair, her dark quiet eyes, her serene mouth, seemed the features of an epic heroine, who faced life strong-limbed, clear-eyed and unafraid. She was the embodiment of that calm, serene, strong girl-goddess who had been with him a recurring love-dream since childhood. The beauty, the simplicity, of that confession of love stirred him to the depths of his emotions.... And he realized that he had something to confess in return—something that this honesty of hers required of him. But they had turned again and walked back to the other corner before he could say it. It came with difficulty, with an effort that took all his courage, all his strength. And yet it must be said....

“I love you, too, Phyllis.”

She looked up at him, as if puzzled, startled, incredulous.

“I didn’t know it till just this moment—but it’s true.”

“But—why?” She put her hand as if defensively to her bosom, to ward off a danger she had not apprehended.

“Why should you love _me_?”

He pondered. “I don’t know. Why do people love each other? I don’t know.”

“_You love me!_” she repeated, as if it were a problem for which she were seeking the answer.

“Yes,” Felix said soberly.

“But then—”

She did not finish her sentence, and they turned and walked again slowly back to the other corner.

“That makes a difference,” she said. “I never thought of that. It was all so simple before.”

“Are you sorry I—love you?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I don’t dare realize it. Of course I’m glad—and sorry, too—and frightened. Oh, Felix, what shall we do?”

She looked at him with grave, awed eyes.

“I—” Felix began, and stopped; and they resumed their walk, not touching each other....

Felix had no sense of the street upon which he walked. He was detached from everything, except the knowledge of what had happened—that little cleared space of certainties, about which was a whirling chaos in which all things fell confusedly into nothingness....

He realized that he had to adjust this thing that had happened, to all the rest of his life, to Rose-Ann, to his marriage, to his career. The sense of those things, even of Rose-Ann, came slowly; his mind was reluctant to face them. He wanted to stay here, in this cleared space in which one thing was beautifully true. But already that moment was passing. With the sense of those other things, this that had happened was no longer beautiful, but terrible—a burden, a problem....

He shook his head as if to free it from heaviness, the intolerable weight of thought. But he _must_ think.... Was it true that he cared for nothing but this moment of mad beauty? Rose-Ann, his marriage, his home, his plans, his future—was it true that these things meant nothing to him? Could he forget them all in an instant? Had a word, a phrase, shattered the whole edifice of his life? Was all this elaborate structure of plans and ambitions, this sober adjustment to the world of solid reality, a bubble that vanished at a touch?

That was what he had been afraid of, that day in the hospital, when he had tried to tell Rose-Ann about himself. He had wanted to tell her what a fool he was. He had wanted to assure her that he would be such a fool no longer. And he had not had the courage. She had taken him as he was. She had exacted no promises.... Well, this was what he was like—this!

No—he must be sane. Just because this moment seemed the only thing in the world worth holding to, just because he wanted to stay in this dream-world, just because he cared about nothing else, he must fight his way back to reality. He must not surrender. This was the test: whether he could be a sane man, or must spend his whole life in the following of disconnected impulses, a vagabond and a fool. He wanted to keep this beauty: well, then, he must give it up.

They had stopped again, at the other corner. Phyllis regarded him quietly with troubled eyes. “Rose-Ann....” she said.

“Yes. I know. Rose-Ann. And everything.”

“No. We can’t,” she said.

“No. We mustn’t.”

They looked at each other bravely, and a little pitifully, and recommenced their silent promenade along the deserted street.

At the door, she stopped firmly, and held out her hand. “You must go,” she said. “Good night. I’m—glad, in spite of everything. Good night.”

He held her hand in his, desperately anxious to keep this moment’s beauty a little longer, before he returned to the world of reality. “Will you—kiss me?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Not even in good-bye?” he urged.

She laughed, with a sudden resumption of lightness. “A good-bye kiss? There’s no such thing, Felix! A kiss is always the beginning of things.—Good night!” She held his hand a moment, and added in the most friendly way, as if they were almost strangers, “I shall see you at the ball tomorrow night?”

2

He turned away, glad that she had been so sane—and sorry. Angry at her, for no reason. Happy that he was going home to Rose-Ann—to Rose-Ann, lovely and real now in his mind—out of all this madness!

He commenced to whistle tunelessly....

And then, as if brought by the night-breeze, a breath of dream-nostalgia overwhelmed him, making him dizzy and faint. He stopped, trembling all over....

By God, he must get over this.... He must get back to reality.

And Rose-Ann must help him. He would tell her everything.... He opened the door of the studio and cried out her name, like a frightened child come back to its mother.

“Yes?” she called back. She was sitting up in bed, sewing spangles on her costume for the ball tomorrow night.

He suddenly realized that everything was all right—that there was nothing to tell.

XLIX. A Matter of Convention

1

NO—nothing to tell!... They talked about the ball, and the costumes they were to wear; and in the profound reassuring consciousness that life is something that need only be lived, that need not be discussed and understood, he fell asleep.

The next morning he was sorry he had not told Rose-Ann. But the moment to tell had passed.... Life was going on as usual, ignoring these private crises. Yes—he and Rose-Ann and Phyllis, just as if nothing had happened, were going to the Artists’ Theatre Ball! Rose-Ann was going in a Spanish dress with a wonderful shawl for which she had long awaited the proper occasion, and Felix as a pirate, in green sash and orange shirt.... They were going to dance—instead of, as would have seemed most fitting to Felix, to discuss their destinies.

2

It was precisely this mere matter of dancing that now incongruously troubled him.

Felix was not a dancing man. And that would have been all right, if he had not wanted to dance. But he did want to dance! Even at this moment, with so much more important things to think about, it began to occupy all his thoughts. He wanted to dance. It was annoying not to be able to.... He had more than once gone through the excruciating agony of trying to learn. He had, in fact, learned, so far as one can learn anything against which there operates some mysterious inward paralysis. He knew the steps as well as he knew the multiplication table. But just as sometimes in school there had come upon him a fatal helpless confusion in which he was unable to remember whether nine times seven was eighty-one or sixty-four, so it was when he tried to put his knowledge in practice in a ballroom. He reminded himself of nothing so much as the hapless hero of that old joke, who said, “Yes, I can dance, except that the music bothers me and the girl gets in my way!”

And he might have accepted his inability to dance as a fact, and let it go at that—except that it wasn’t a fact! Somehow, heaven only knew how, half a dozen times in his adult life he _had_ been able to dance—and not badly. But what were the circumstances which magically operated to liberate him from this mysterious paralysis, he did not know. He never knew whether he was going to be able to dance or not. He always went fearing the worst, and generally it happened. Rose-Ann could not understand it, because once when there had been impromptu dancing to a phonograph after a dinner party at some one’s home, he had danced with her without the slightest awkwardness; but when, while dancing with her a second time, she whispered to him to ask some of the other girls to dance, he became embarrassed, and made protestations of his inability. She knew that he _could_ dance, and she at first regarded his attitude as a kind of stupid stubbornness. But no scoldings, nor any patient gentleness for that matter, was able to change it.

Tonight Felix knew from the beginning that he was not going to be able to dance. He sat in the box with Rose-Ann and Phyllis and Clive and several of the players, utterly miserable. They had arrayed themselves for the ball at the Artists’ Theatre, and that preliminary part of the affair had been, as it always was, delightful. He wished one could dress up to go to a ball, and then not go. The dressing, the showing off of costumes, the banter, the laughter, the drinking of cocktails and black coffee, all the preparations, had been good fun; but now commenced the evening’s misery. Rose-Ann looked at him inquiringly as the orchestra struck up a two-step, and he shook his head. No—he couldn’t do it tonight. And so she stepped off in the arms of Clive. Phyllis—he had never danced with Phyllis—was waiting, he thought, for him to ask her. He doggedly leaned over the edge of the box and watched the dancers. Why, he asked himself, had he come? He saw Phyllis a minute later, dancing with a man in a pseudo-monkish costume, one of the actors. Elva Macklin—had she taken that name Elva because she knew she was elvish, or had the prevision of parents bestowed it upon her?—was dancing with Gregory Storm. The box was vacated, except for Felix, who sat looking on the scene with a jealous and angry eye.

A few pieces of coloured cloth, a bangle, some rouge, a military coat, a shawl, a sash, a bit of lace, a strain of music, and these people were transformed, one and all, out of their accustomed workaday mood, gone happily into an atmosphere of fantasy such as with infinite labour was created in the theatre. They were acting, all of them—not paying any attention to what part any one else was acting, but content to be in an environment in which their own play-impulses were released. They went as in a dream—smiling, moved by the music as the leaves of a tree are moved by the wind, surrendering themselves utterly to its influence. They were not here, not here in this plush and gilt room, amid commonplace mortals decorated with coloured cloth, but in some dreamland, some fairyland of their own wishes. The person whom one held in one’s arms was not a real person, in whom one was really interested, not a person to love or hate, but a part of the dream. A wand had been waved over this assemblage, commanding them to forget, to dream, to be free and happy and young. And all of them, except himself only, had obeyed. Why could he not surrender himself to this influence? Why must he remain, in spite of his sash and coloured shirt, so obstinately and awkwardly and unhappily himself? Why did not that music touch some secret spring in his soul, too, to make him its creature, a leaf wind-blown on the tree of life? Why did his eyes still see the persons underneath their costumes—the girls not as dancing partners but as “personalities”? Personalities, indeed!—these men and women had left their personalities gladly behind in the cloakroom; they were free of them for the evening; tomorrow they would go back to being lawyers and wives, clarks and poets and college students; tonight they were—

Well, what were they? If one chose to think so, bodies, merely that, bodies surrendering themselves to each other as shamelessly and frankly as to the music which swayed them.... But no, he knew better than that: they were—if ever, now, precisely now—immortal souls; this spectacle was spirit triumphing over flesh and using it for its own beautiful uses, the magic uses of a dream. These arms and bosoms and bodies were the instruments of a poetry which these couples created in a magnificently impersonal way—the poetry of beauty met with strength; it was not Dick and Jane, it was essential man and woman, in love with some eternal beauty in themselves and each other of which they were, as persons, the fleeting and mortal agents.

But why the devil couldn’t _he_ feel that way? Each time that the girls of his party returned to the box, flushed and laughing in an interim between the dances, he felt their presence as a demand upon him, a demand which it was disgraceful not to meet. Every glance of Rose-Ann’s was a look, or so he interpreted it, of inquiry or reproach. She _knew_ he could dance; that was the worst of it. He could dance—with her—easily enough; he would dance with her now, if there was no one else around that they knew. But if he danced with her, he would have no excuse for not dancing with the others—his last defence would be gone.... He fled from the box in the direction of the bar, was pulled down into a chair by Eddie Silver, who was buying drinks for a group of men and girls, and asked what he would have. “Whiskey straight,” he said humbly. Why, after all, should he despise this time-honoured refuge from the hardships of life, from problems too complex to be solved and responsibilities too great to be borne?

3

He could not, it seemed, get drunk. The whiskey only made him think with a preternatural clearness; and the more clearly he thought upon himself, as a straggler here in the bar-room from the battle-field of life out there on the dancing floor, the more he despised himself.... But he seemed to be despising some one else named Felix Fay, from whom he felt utterly detached and for whom he felt no responsibility. Funny Felix! In a way he could understand the poor devil.... He had been brought up in a puritanical way, and then had acquired a lot of romantic notions from poetry-books; and in spite of all his fine intellectual theories he was still just a romantic boy-prude, to whom the idea of taking a strange girl in his arms and walking her around the room to music would naturally be upsetting.... A funny boy, that Felix Fay! Why, he had been thinking quite seriously of making love to another girl besides his wife—and he would be quite equal to it, too ... after arguing it out theoretically and finding that it was his sociological duty or something of that sort!... He wanted things to be plain and straightforward, black and white; either he was making love to a girl or he wasn’t—it was the in-between things that confused and appalled him. To this Felix Fay person it would be simple enough to defy the conventions; what he couldn’t do was adjust himself to them like everybody else. He could intellectually conceive, and if it came to that, undertake to carry into practice, some preposterous theory of free-love that he had read about in Havelock Ellis or Ellen Key; but he couldn’t dance with a girl he liked! No, that was too difficult; it wasn’t a theory, and he hadn’t read about it in a book.... If people _didn’t_ dance, and some one wrote a book and proved that they ought to, Felix Fay would believe it, and argue about it, and finally do it in a mood of stern conscientious futuristic morality—if they killed him for it! But do something that everybody else did—no. Not Felix. Somebody else would have kissed Phyllis long ago, and said nothing about it. If somebody else had thought of having a love-affair with Phyllis, the last person in the world he would have thought of discussing it with would have been his own wife. The world forgave people who kissed in corners, who had secret love-affairs while pretending to believe—while actually believing—in the ten commandments and the laws of the state of Illinois. If you accepted what everybody believed, you could have the same freedom as everybody else. It was only if you believed in freedom, really believed in it, that you couldn’t have any. Why couldn’t Felix Fay understand that?... Poor devil, he was going to get in trouble some time....

The being who thus in a state of utter detachment scornfully and sadly criticized Felix Fay, floated back airily, or at least with no sense of treading any actual floor with mortal feet, to the ballroom. Across the room he saw some one coming toward him, smiling. It was Elva Macklin; but it was not by that name, nor as the actress who had taken a part in his play, that he identified her; it was rather as a childhood playmate—a girl with whom he had once danced, long years ago, in a garret. She was dressed as a dryad, disguised in a leafy covering, but he recognized her well enough. It was clear to him that they had an engagement to dance together—an engagement that had waited all these years. The music struck up, he held out his arms, and she walked into them without a word. They floated off across the room, into the maze of dancers, threading their way among the others with that ease which comes of senses quickened with music, pausing and turning, drawing upon the floor an intricate pattern of movement born of fancy. The others in the room did not exist for him, save as shadows, bright shadows cast by the music. They were alone, in a dream, in a soft wordless dream; they did not so much listen to the music as create it by their own movements. They had left the world of reality, as if for ever, they were in some realm of golden light, a land of fruits and flowers, a place of quiet, triumphant happiness. This girl with him was no real girl, but a part of the dream; he had always known her; she was the companion of many wanderings through the lands of reverie; they understood each other too well to need words; she was his dream comrade. Not a girl, not any one that one must love or not love, fight for and work for, but a shadow like himself in this place of bright shadows, in this peaceful and happy realm beyond life and beyond death....

The music stopped, and he awoke with some astonishment to find that he, Felix Fay, had been dancing. Elva Macklin smiled, gave his hand a grateful pressure, and turned to the young man who came up asserting that the next dance was his.

Suddenly alarmed, Felix turned to flee from the ballroom; but it was too late. Phyllis had detached herself from her partner, and came over to him. “Aren’t you going to dance with me?” she asked. The handclapping died away as the musicians took up their instruments again. Phyllis faced him confidently—a lovely and to him at this moment a terrifying figure. All the sweetness of the love that might have been—that might be—his, kindled for him in her grave eyes. Dance with her? No, he couldn’t. But he must. Self-consciously, ashamed of himself, hating her, he took her hand, put his arm about her, and listening intently to the music, stepped off. But something was wrong; he could not get the rhythm; he stopped. She had surrendered herself to his guidance utterly, but now that that was at fault she began to try to guide him. That made him angry; he paused once more, listened to the music, and said, “Oh, confound it—it’s a waltz. I’m sorry—I can’t waltz.” She regretfully walked back with him to the edge of the dancing floor, where he tried desperately to think of something to say to her. It was shameful to be thus at a loss. Did she despise him? She ought to.... Some one else came along, and she danced off, leaving Felix furious and relieved. He went back to the box.

Rose-Ann was there, resting from innumerable dances, talking with Clive. “I see you’ve been dancing!” she said. “Yes,” he told her, “I don’t know how it happened. Will you try the next one with me?” At least, if he made a failure of it with Rose-Ann, she would forgive him.

“Yes,” she said. “Just this one more dance, and then we’ll go home.”

Because it was the last dance, because he need fear nothing more tonight, and because he had secretly resolved never to subject himself to this torment again, the demon in his mind that argued and discussed and made him awkward and afraid, went to sleep. His last dance, his last dance ever—and then ... back to a desk, where he belonged!

“Why!” said Rose-Ann, “you dance beautifully!” She said it in a puzzled tone.

Felix was annoyed. He lost the rhythm and stepped on her foot.

“It’s my fault!” she said. But he knew it wasn’t. Why did he try to dance when he couldn’t? Wouldn’t that music ever stop?

He wanted to tell Rose-Ann about—about Phyllis. She would understand.

L. Babes in the Wood

1

HE told her that night; they talked till dawn. She did understand; and so, it seemed to him, did he—for the first time. Everything became simple and clear again—a final proof, if the doubting mind required such proof, that candour was a medicine for all the ills of love.

Things like this—emotional upsets—occurred in all marriages; the trouble was that the disturbed emotions were left to fester in secret. Talking with Rose-Ann had put the incident in its true light. Yes—of course he and Phyllis loved each other; that was not strange. There was an element of love in every friendship between man and woman; and that it should be here in this friendship of his and Phyllis’s was right and natural. It was not a thing to be afraid of, to run away from—it was something rather to be glad about. It had been there between them all this while, enriching their two lives, his and Phyllis’s, making their friendship one full of tenderness and understanding; it had done them no harm, certainly! Civilization meant the possibility of such friendships, instead of a timid restricting of the emotions to a single person. The world was full of men and women friends who were in this sense lovers; only they did not usually confess it to each other. Sometimes they were afraid to let each other know the truth; sometimes afraid to face the truth themselves. But was there anything terrible in such a truth? Phyllis and he had faced it, that was all. They had spoken out what was usually left unspoken. And why should that change their lives?

It was the fault of Romance, that suave peddler of spiritual poisons; and of Puritanism, that maniacal purveyor of chains and padlocks—it was the fault of these two that the situation should ever for a moment have seemed alarming. Over the scene, as he and Phyllis had stood together telling each other a secret that any one else in the world could have read at a glance, there had brooded these two antique and ridiculous fantasms—Romance and Puritanism. Romance had whispered to them: “This is a moment such as comes only once in a lifetime—a moment beautiful and tragic! You were born for this! You cannot escape! You are Paris and Helen, Antony and Cleopatra, Lancelot and Guenevere, Tristram and Iseult! You are the hero and heroine of all myths, all dreams! Your love is doomed and beautiful! Some death will run its sudden finger round this spark and sever you from the rest.... Kiss now, and die!” And on the other side that gibbering lunatic Puritanism had cried out: “No! no! Put on these chains. Blindfold your eyes so that you cannot see beauty, stop up your ears against all sweet voices! Tie your hands together lest they touch what is not yours, and put a chain upon your feet lest they stray from the accustomed path. Padlock your lips, lest they say what is in your heart, and seal up your heart so that no tenderness, no generous faith, no natural affection may escape! Be blind and deaf and dumb, become as one dead, for only in this is safety!” And between these two fantastic ghosts they had stood and trembled, finding it hard to discover of themselves the obvious and simple thing to do, but reading it at last in each other’s eyes—to go on being in love with each other and behave exactly as before!

So it seemed to Felix as he lay and talked with Rose-Ann till dawn.... He felt that he was something of a simpleton, but that life itself was easy enough to live if one could only learn to deal with it directly and see it as it was.

2

It was strange that after that beautiful discovery Felix should have waked to a sense of dull unhappiness, of loss, of grief.... He tried to conceal these feelings from Rose-Ann. It was as if he had not been sincere in giving up the possibility of happiness with Phyllis—that possibility which had seemed to exist so long as he left his secret untold, but which he had killed with his confession. Was it so simple a matter, after all? He sometimes suspected that he would be content with nothing less than the impossible....

The first afternoon that he had not had to work at the office, an afternoon when ordinarily he would have gone to his work-room, and met Phyllis there when she came home from her work, and stopped writing to talk with her—that afternoon he stayed in his studio. And he asked himself—was it because he did not believe that things were as he and Rose-Ann had told each other? Was it because he would feel conscious of a chain of duty, and preferred to wear it, if at all, here at home? Yes, what was the use of being hypocritical about the situation? Why pretend that love was so docile, so manageable and good-natured, so tame a beast? It was a creature of the jungle—or was it, really? Perhaps the reason he did not trust himself with Phyllis was that he feared to discover that they were merely good friends after all!

He stayed at home and was restless and discontented. If he could really believe—his incorrigible utopianism demanded that—in his freedom, he could be content. He loved Rose-Ann. But why this sham, this lie—that he could love Phyllis, too, and no harm done? Of course he wanted Phyllis—and was willing to give her up, if it were understood that that was what he was doing. But it was intolerable, this pretence that he could do as he pleased. Could he? Yes, suppose it had pleased him to say—

Rose-Ann interrupted his thoughts, the fifth evening. She was sitting at her desk, and Felix at his. Suddenly she rose.

“Felix,” she said. Her voice had a ring of painful resolution in it. He turned, with a feeling of fear. She stood leaning back against her desk, resting her hands on it.

“Felix! I have made up my mind.... Don’t talk, I want to say what I have to say.... I’m not mistaken this time. I’ve seen you. You’re unhappy.... I know you don’t believe I meant what I said—that you could have your freedom. But it’s true.... You love Phyllis. Don’t you?”

It was a challenge. This thing had to be settled now. Did he love Phyllis? The devil only knew. But for the purposes of this damned argument—

“Yes!” he said defiantly. “I do!”

His mind went back to the time when they had innocently rehearsed this scene in farce.... Now it was happening in deadly earnest. Yes—in deadly earnest.

“The thing I can’t stand,” he said, between clenched teeth, “is hearing you say such things and not believing you mean them....”

“You can believe me, Felix.... I want you to be happy, more than anything else in the world. I don’t care.... You’ve been wanting her all week. Go to her.... And—don’t worry about me, Felix. Everything will come out all right.”

They stared solemnly at each other, trying to realize what was happening—bracing themselves to meet a moment which they had lightly envisaged in theory, in discussion, but which in reality had an air of terribleness about it. That conversation should have taken place against a background of thunders and lightnings. It was as if with these words they had pushed aside the dear, familiar walls of everyday reality, and were face to face with naked, elemental forces—as if they were suddenly alone and helpless in the midst of a huge, impersonal, indifferent and awful universe.

3

“Go to her,” Rose-Ann repeated softly; and with the feeling of one strangely doomed, one who rested under the burden of a frightful duty not to be flinched from, Felix went quietly out of the studio.

He could still see Rose-Ann’s eyes in his imagination: those eyes, not tearful now, but grave and brooding, full of courage.... Yes, at last he believed her.

LI. “Bienfaits de la Lune”

1

ON the sidewalk, the branches and leaves of a tree made an enchanting pattern of shadow—cast it seemed by the moonlight, though it was only by the electric arc on the corner. But, as Felix looked up, he saw, past that false light, the moon itself, above the low roofs. It seemed to spring free from an encumbering wrack of grey clouds, and stay poised, alone and splendid, in the blue depths of sky. Felix’s gaze went to that far white beacon with a sense of return to his own world—and with a sense of profound release in that return.... For there was a world besides the world of daylit reality; a world not of work and wages, of code and custom, of law and habit; another world besides that in which men and women customarily dwelt—yes, there was this world lit by the changing and ranging moon! Though people turned their backs upon it, and hid within their houses, and sought to escape its disturbing influences, it was there. It always had been there, it always would be there. It was as real as the workaday world. And it was his world. He had tried to renounce it, to shut it out, to flee from its magic. He had tried to believe that there was nothing in life except that routine of daily reality in which he was immersed. A world of debts, and promises to pay; a world of roofs, owned and dwelt under and ever returned to. There was something close and cloying about that world; something of the fetid odour of toil hung about its very pleasures. It was slavery; its laughter and kisses were the gilt upon the chains. Believing in that slavery, men had built the four walls of the world, stone upon stone. And yet, outside, was freedom....

Felix became aware of himself, standing bareheaded a few steps from the door of his studio, gazing at the moon. He was aware of the absurdity of that moment of moonstruck vision. He remembered the errand he was upon, and how weighted with tragedy it had seemed a minute since. He realized the symbolic character of his departure from the studio. Yes—symbolic! For he knew now that he did not care two pins for Phyllis—as a person. What Rose-Ann had said of him was utterly true. He did not care for persons—not even for Rose-Ann. He lived in a world of ideas. And because he had found the idea of Rose-Ann as his jailor intolerable, he had taken her at her word, accepted his liberation, gone out of the door. But not—he smiled at the foolish thought—not into another captivity, not into the warm, constraining, anxious arms of Phyllis, or any other! No—he was free now of the idea of that tyranny; and Rose-Ann was free of it. With her gesture motioning him to go, she had broken the intolerable chain that had irked their lives. Free now, his own master, drawing his breath without permission from any other living being, once more able to call his soul his own, he could enjoy at last the companionship, in a common love of beauty, of the one being on earth who loved beauty as he loved it—and who understood freedom and the need of freedom better, indeed, than he had ever understood it! She had never lied to herself or to him. From the first she had disdained to accept the promises which he had been so eager to make. She was a true child of the moon, blessed with its gifts, no staid denizen of the sober realm of day, but fleet of soul and changeable and free like her immortal mother and mistress!

No—he realized it now—no mere woman could hold his love; it had been folly to hope and pretend so; not Rose-Ann, not Phyllis, not any woman. But one who could be more and less than woman, who did not, as mortal women do, want to own and be owned; who possessed herself with a divine aloofness, who had her own orbit that nothing could deflect—in her he could find a companionship deeper than any mortal love.

Even to himself, as he conned over these thoughts, standing bareheaded on the sidewalk, with a mind confused as by the splendour of a revelation, they seemed wanting in final definite clearness. He was happy in a profound discovery, which he sought to put into words to carry back to Rose-Ann. Not that she did not know already; for had she not forced this discovery upon him? She had known all along! And when he returned, there would be no words needed. But still he must seek for the words.... But any way he tried to put it to himself sounded so damned mystical, like some cryptic sentence of William Blake’s. And it was all so obvious! _They were free._ Yet that meant nothing. Foolish people like Clive Bangs were always talking about “freedom.” They were free, one might put it that way, free _not_ to love each other! A blessed freedom.... One might love any woman. But here was something greater than love. To know that there was something in themselves still uncaptured, ever unattainable—something which could not be yielded, by whose inviolable having they moved secure and serene among a world of emotional bond-slaves, like the moon among the shattered vainly-grasping clouds! More beautiful in her than any bodily beauty was that ultimate self-possession, that unshaken and unshakeable identity, of which that gesture of hers, pointing him to the door, had been the symbol. Not because they needed each other, not because they were so poor in spirit that each must lean upon the other—no, not in poverty of soul, but in a sublime indifference, their love had its origin. Because they did not need each other, because they could do without each other, this was added unto them, this happiness of being together. Felix saw himself and Rose-Ann like mountain-climbers, high on some chill peak above a coward, sleepy world that dozed and battened beneath its coverlets. Or like two eagles, circling in the austere upper air. Theirs should be no common happiness....

He turned to re-enter the studio.

2

The door was locked, and he had to use his key. He did so only half-consciously, and blinked at the blaze of light inside. It was a few seconds before he saw.

On the settle, and strewn over chairs, and on the floor, lay half of Rose-Ann’s wardrobe; and Rose-Ann herself, with her face hidden in her arms, was seated ridiculously in an open suitcase on the floor, from which the ends of stockings strayed out—seated there, with her arms on her knees, rocking back and forth, and crying, with a low, choked sobbing—rocking back and forth, back and forth, in the suitcase, like a child in a cradle, crying....

She had been packing up. To go. And she was crying. He stared at her, and the vision he had had outside of their splendid happiness was obliterated by the wash of a vast wave of bitterness.

She looked up, her face distorted, made ugly with a choked sob, stained with tears. She tried to speak. He stared at her. He was beginning to pity her.... But he must not pity her. If he did, he would despise her. He did not dare see her, so soon after this mad nonsense under the moon, as little, weak, lonely, afraid. He tried not to see her at all—and she seemed to recede from him, to grow dim and faint and remote.

“Go away!” she cried, and turned her face from him, still stooped in that ridiculous, infantile, pitiful posture.

He did not pity her now. He stood dazed as from a blow, dazed with the terrific shock of the impact of reality upon his dream. He tried to rouse himself, to see, to feel. But everything was misty and unreal to him. He spoke to her, as though across a vast space, dully.

“So you didn’t mean it?”

She sprang up.

“Why are you here? Didn’t you go? Aren’t you going? Are you trying to torture me?”

She advanced upon him with eyes that blazed, hair wild, and hands that had transformed themselves into claws ready to scratch and tear him. He saw all this as if it were a picture—a picture irrelevant to the text. He made a little gesture as if to turn the leaf.

“So you didn’t mean it,” he said again.

She stopped, close to him; looked at him searchingly. “Where have you been?” she asked uncertainly.

He laughed mirthlessly. “Outside the door—looking at the moon.”

“I thought—” she said.

“No,” he said, quietly, sadly. All this ought to matter greatly. But somehow it didn’t matter at all.

“But—” she said.

They looked at each other.

“So you didn’t mean it,” he said once more, like a refrain.

Her demeanour changed suddenly. She looked at the clothes on the chairs and on the floor, and went over and stood beside the open suitcase.

“I don’t know what I meant,” she said wearily. “I couldn’t stand it. I was going home.” She gave the suitcase a little kick, and came back to Felix. “But I don’t understand you!” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” he said indifferently.

“Felix!” she said desperately. “What has happened? Where are we? Do we love each other? I don’t understand anything any more. Tell me! Help me!”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.

“Oh!” she said savagely. “You don’t know! Why do you stand there and look at me like that? Are you dead, or am I?”

“I don’t know.”

She took hold of his shoulders fiercely, to shake him, and then dropped her hands. “Are you angry at me?” she asked. “Why?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not angry. I just—don’t seem to care.”

“I know I’m a fool!” she said. “And—Felix, I did mean it. I thought I did. But—it was too terrible.... After all, I’m human, Felix.”

“Yes—I see you are.”

“And you’re not. No—you’re not human. You’re a monster.... I—hate you! Not because of Phyllis—no; you don’t love her, either. You don’t love anybody. You stand there—can’t you understand, can’t you say something, can’t you pity me a little? Felix!”

He saw, he heard, across an infinite gulf. He would have liked to stir, to speak. But he was encased in an icy armour. Nothing of this touched him.

She sat down on a chair, spilling its burden of clothing to the floor. “How long,” she asked between clenched teeth, “is this going to go on?”

He did not answer.

“Because,” she said, “I can’t bear it. It’s—it’s worse than the other. I could have borne that, I think—now. I was really sorry for you, Felix. But you aren’t sorry for me. I know—I pretended to be a superwoman; and I’m not. But can’t you forgive me? Can’t you allow me my—my feelings?... No—you haven’t got any feelings.... Well—I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it. I—”

His mind came back reluctantly to the scene. He sat down.

“I’m very tired,” he said. “Can’t we stop talking about it?”

She brushed her hand bewilderedly across her forehead. “Why is it?” she said. “I’m being made to feel like a criminal? Have I done anything?”

He spoke with an effort. “No,” he said. “Everything is all right—I think. I’m sorry I’m behaving this way. Forgive me if you can. I can’t help it.”

“Forgive you? For what?”

“For—for thinking you meant it. I should have known.”

She sprang up. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “I must go somewhere to think things out. I can’t stay here and have you say that to me, over and over.... Felix, I’m going away somewhere for a while. I’ll come back, I suppose. But—you see I must go, don’t you?”

“No. But it’s all right.”

He watched her pack her suitcase, still in the strange half-trance which made him unable to stir. It was as if he were drunk or hypnotized. He could see that she was going; he knew that he ought to stop her. But it did not seem to matter.... Only when she was dressed for the journey, and standing before him to say good-bye, did the numbness begin to vanish. He was ashamed of himself—ashamed and frightened. He felt that he had been under the influence of a kind of insanity—for surely that was the very essence of insanity, to be utterly indifferent to all the events of the outside world! She did not know, even though she had seen, how remote from her he had been—how dead to her, how dead to all reality....

In the sudden uprush of consciousness, as the spell broke, he took her in his arms, and kissed her and clung to her. “Don’t go!” he cried. “Don’t go!” He vaguely remembered having told himself that they were different from other people—different, in that they could do without each other. What folly! He had thought himself strong, self-sufficient. He was the weakest, loneliest, most helpless person in the world. “Don’t go, Rose-Ann!”

But she was hard now, though his pleading moved her. She kissed him wildly. “I will come back,” she said. “I think I shall. But I must be by myself. I must.” And she tore herself from his arms, and left the studio.

He flung himself on the floor and cried, like a broken-hearted child.

LII. Sleepless Nights

1

IT was preposterous that one should go to an office the next day after a night like that—to an office, and write a foolish editorial, and smile, and talk to people, as if nothing had happened. But it was better that way; one actually forgot for minutes at a time what had happened, till it came back with a bewildering influx of memory. There was also a play which one could go to, even though it seemed strange to be by oneself, sitting beside an empty seat. One could pay attention to the play, could even think of things to say about it, could write those things coherently on paper, could go out and mail them in the box on the corner, just as usual.

There was only one flaw in the usualness of all this. It was not usual for Felix Fay to write so solemnly about a new play. It was his habit to treat serious plays lightly, and light plays seriously; but it was a departure from his manner to be actually grave about anything. This play happened to be about a man who, after a lifetime of self-deluded egotism, had suddenly found out by accident what sort of person he actually was. Here was material for Felix’s customary light irony; why should he write upon the theme so solemnly—“that day when one walks upon a reeling earth under an insane sky”—as if it were Judgment Day he was talking about, and he himself had been there!

He had explained—or not explained—Rose-Ann’s absence in a phrase. “She’s gone off somewhere—I don’t know just where.”

It was the calm, indifferent tone of this remark that carried the impression of everything being quite all right. It carried, indeed, the conviction, redoubled and renewed, of this being a remarkable, a wonderful, an exemplary marriage. These people really lived up to their modernist theories! Rose-Ann had wanted to go off somewhere, and she had not bothered to tell Felix where she was going, nor he to inquire! That, truly, was freedom!

2

To Phyllis, indeed, the notion occurred—only to be devoutly disbelieved, repudiated and forgotten—that Rose-Ann’s absence was a consequence of her own talk with Felix the other night. But Felix’s imperturbable demeanour, when she met him and Clive at lunch, his air of being somewhat preoccupied with a literary problem, the complete absence of any anxiety in his face, reassured her. She had been happy in telling Felix the truth—or what seemed to emerge from her tangled emotions as the truth. She had wished to believe that this was possible; and she had dared herself to prove it possible. She had told him, in defiance of all convention, that she loved him! There was a splendour in it for which her doubting mind ached, as a parched throat for an appeasing drink. That he should tell her that he loved her in return was bewildering and troubling; and if it was news that she secretly desired to hear, had secretly hoped to elicit, she would not let herself realize it. For a moment _her_ universe had been shaken; but for a moment only. Things had righted themselves, after an intoxicating earthquake-tremour, in which all sorts of possibilities, vast and terrible and sweet, had presented themselves. For a moment she had felt for Felix a new emotion, one of pity mixed with tenderness; almost, her ideal of him had crumbled, when he said that he loved her in return. For it was as Rose-Ann’s husband that she loved him—as the partner of an ideal marriage. For a dismayed second she had thought he was going to tell her that he no longer loved Rose-Ann; but it wasn’t so. Things were as they should be.... Except that he shouldn’t have wanted to kiss her. She disdained him for that weakness. She had been meaning to ask for that kiss herself! As a gift, a concession from his strength to her weakness—yes; but not as something he wanted....

But, as she remembered the event, she forgave him even that, for it seemed to her that he had been sorry for her. That was why he had wanted to kiss her; and if she had realized that, she would have let him.... As she re-enacted the scene in memory, it seemed to her that he had been magnificently untouched by it all. She saw herself, discontented, unhappy, making her confession of love; and he, listening quietly, as one who had the right to be loved.... So it should be—so she had thought of him. And he had said that he loved her too: he had not been afraid that she would misunderstand him. She flushed at the thought that she almost had misunderstood.... But, no—everything had gone beautifully.

And Rose-Ann—he had of course told Rose-Ann—what did she think of it? Rose-Ann would not begrudge her this confession, this moment of beauty. Rose-Ann had gone away. Why? Perhaps her plans had jibed with the generous desire to let these two, Felix and Phyllis, be more together. Perhaps it was her way of showing that it was all right....

Underneath all these rationalizations there was, deep in Phyllis’s mind, a panic fear which she would not recognize—a fear which was also a desire. If she could have thought of Felix as her lover without despising him, she would have yielded to that thought. But it was only as some one already too happy to need her love, that she could love him. If she could have thought that she was capable of harming his happiness, he would have ceased to be admirable in her eyes. If it were possible to have him for a lover, he would be like anybody else.... No, she must believe in the miraculous perfection of Felix’s marriage in order to go on being in love with him....

3

It seemed incredible to Felix that one mad moment could have done all this. For one moment only he had surrendered to an insane illusion; and the results had been profound and incalculable. All this time, for two years, ever since the day in Port Royal when he had burnt his crazy novel, he had been struggling unceasingly with his own folly. No one had understood that struggle, no one had helped him. Rose-Ann had not understood. She had sought in every way to encourage him in what was, in the end, sheer madness. Only by keeping his feet upon the earth, only by continually distrusting himself, by trying to find what was most difficult to do, and doing that—subjecting himself to the discipline of reality—only so could he save himself. Step by step he had deserted that firm ground, and gone into the world of dreams—where, he knew now, he could not live except alone. He did not want to be alone. He wanted the world of dear, familiar realities—he wanted Rose-Ann. He wanted Rose-Ann.

4

And, meanwhile, where was she? At her father’s home, probably. Should he write to her there? No—a stubborn pride surged up in him, forbidding him to write. She must come back.

Was it true, then, that he did not love her? Surely, if he loved her, he would ask her to return!

But he could not.

She must be there, at home. There was nothing to worry about.... And yet, by day and night, disturbing fantasies arose in his mind, of all the accidents that might have happened to her—gruesome fantasies, that unwound themselves in his mind. He would awake from one of these imaginings with a sense of guilt, as though he had actually been gloating over the picture. He tried to think her safe. But his imagination would present—yes, her very death before his eyes. It was horrible, like a recurring nightmare.

A week passed, and she did not return. He worried about her, night and day; and yet he could not force himself to write the few lines that might bring her back to his side. Perhaps she only wanted to be reassured. Perhaps she was waiting for that summons.... Well, she must come back without it.

As a practical matter, it became more and more difficult to carry on the pose that everything was all right. His secret burden became almost intolerable. He wanted to tell some one. But who could understand? Not Clive, not Phyllis....

He stayed in the studio every moment when he was not in the office, for fear she would return and not find him there. He must be there when she came back.

It never occurred to him that she might not come back.

The issue in his own mind was clear—he had gone over it a thousand times; at night he rehearsed it to himself sleeplessly, hour after hour. _He had made a fool of himself. But it had been her fault._

Yes, her fault. That was why he could not write. He would have to write humbly, if he wrote at all; and he was in no humble mood. His loneliness, his need of her, only exasperated his sense of the injury she had done him.... She had urged him on to folly—that was hard enough to forgive—and then she had turned and fled from a situation which she herself had created.... All this could be discussed and understood between them; but first she must come back. That surrender was essential.

It was hard to stick it out this way, in lonely, sleepless waiting. But she knew—it was her own fault; her return would be an admission of that. _Then_ he could say how ashamed he was of himself. But first....

He must wait—till she came back.

Who had talked of “freedom”? Who had refused to face the facts of marriage? Who had engineered, planned, touched the match to this explosion? She knew well enough! He need not say these things to her, ever. She would confess them by her return. That would be enough.

She was stubborn—but he was still more stubborn. He could wait.

She would come back—and then....

They would start all over again—sensibly.

5

Rose-Ann, meanwhile, as her husband supposed, was at her father’s home in Springfield. If her presence there excited any curiosity, she was scarcely aware of it. She was not concerned with anything but the problem of herself and Felix....

She was not, however, as he sometimes imagined, waiting for a letter from him to make easy her return home. She was, as she had told him, trying to “think things out.”

She had gone away with that sentence of his ringing in her mind: “_So you didn’t mean it after all!_”

She had not slept that night, on the train; nor very much since that time. She was too busy trying to think things out; and the chief thing to think out was: _had_ she meant it when she offered Felix his freedom?

No, obviously enough! And yet her pride revolted from that fact. Had she been a liar, a hypocrite, all this while? Had she only pretended? It was too shameful....

She really had meant it. She had been in earnest. She had understood what she was saying. She _had_ thought she could do it....

Was she too weak, then? Oh, no! It was a mere momentary weakness, a spiritual infirmity that she had not expected, but that she could have conquered. If only Felix had not come in just then! What a fool she must have seemed! What a liar!

But why couldn’t he have understood? She was a woman, after all.

No! he had been quite right to disdain her. After all she had said to him, to sit there on the floor, blubbering.... She blushed with infinite shame.

That was the trouble.... She had not had time to adjust herself to the situation. It had been a moment of madness when she suddenly commenced packing to go home. She had not known what she was doing.... An hour later, she would have been calm again, herself, assured, smiling. He need never have known....

But—if she really meant it—then she must prove it.

Well?

In among these reasoned arguments that pursued each other in an endless weary circle in her mind, floated irrelevant memories—the pressure of Felix’s arm about her shoulders that afternoon on the train going out to Woods Point to be married—a fragment of that wild letter he had written her from Canal Street, about the girl in Iowa—the look in his eyes as he had seen her among the children at the Community Theatre.... and still more irrelevant memories—the complaining tones of her mother, saying cruel and unjust things about her father, things not meant for a child’s ears, years ago—and her father’s face, with its wise, mocking, incredulous, ironic smile, cutting her to the heart....

Well?

If she went back, if she proved that she meant what she had said—things would have to be different. They had been too close. They had been like other married people. That was his fault. Yes, it was his fault, after all, that she had not been able to carry out her promises. He had made it too hard for her.... They never should have lived together under the same roof. They never should have become legally married in the first place....

They would have to live apart, in separate studios. They must not pretend to be man and wife. She would be—yes, that was the word which made their relationship clear—his mistress. It was a good word, making no pretences. His mistress—yes, she could be that. If she loved him enough....

What? Did she love him enough only to be his wife? Not enough to give him his freedom?

Her father’s face, with its mocking, incredulous, ironic smile, came into her mind, blurring her thoughts, rousing her to a queer anger against herself.

No. Or yes?...

Well, then?

LIII. Two Letters

1

ON the tenth day of Felix’s stubborn waiting, a letter came from Rose-Ann. It was at the studio when he returned there early in the afternoon, lying on the floor where the postman had stuck it under the door.

He picked it up, and sat down at his desk. At the very sight of it, of her large undisciplined handwriting on the square envelope, her presence seemed suddenly to fill the room, like a perfume of flowers—seemed to touch and envelope and caress him. He breathed deeply, and the constraint that had held him tense, that had held him rigid all these days and nights, flowed from him. It was as if she had returned herself—and all at once all that had passed was like a nightmare, terrible and queer, but already vanishing into oblivion with the daylight.

He could feel her presence, hear her voice, sweet and familiar; she was as if beside him in the room. All that their marriage had been flooded his mind, memories of peace and happiness and lovely companionship.

Nothing—nothing could break that bond. She knew it as well as he. As if a mere moment could hurt that lifetime of theirs together!

He tore open the letter.

_Dear Felix Fay_—

That was the way it began....

_Dear Felix Fay—What has happened of course makes it necessary for us to make a decision—a decision which I cannot make alone. We have many things in common—tastes, ideas, a love of beauty—and it seems that it would be a pity if we were to lose the opportunity for companionship altogether. We cannot, of course, go on as before—I mean living together so intimately. I can find another studio, perhaps near yours.—But I do not know if I am making myself clear. It may sound as if I were proposing to break off our relationship altogether. I have considered that, too; but that is, after all, in your hands. What I am suggesting is that each of us retain our freedom, and live in such a way that we can use that freedom without hurting each other’s feelings—but not pretending to be married any more. Only the situation must be quite clear to both of us. Please tell me whether you agree definitely to these terms. If so, I think everything can be arranged in detail so that we both will be happy._

_Rose-Ann._

2

Felix’s first feeling, oddly enough, when he read this letter, was a sense of Rose-Ann’s disloyalty to their studio—the studio which they had made together.... His imagination, stunned and shocked, clung bitterly to this one point, as if that were the crux of the matter.... That she should not want to live in this studio, this studio whose walls she had kalsomined, whose very floor she had painted! Why, every part of it spelled her! As if he could take her studio, and let her go and live in another! If there was any moving to be done, he would do it. He would get another place. She could live here—she must live here.... He would take a few books—no, he would take nothing. It was all hers....

Some obliquity of the imagination helped him, like a drug, anaesthetizing his emotions, during the first few minutes after reading that letter. His mind was actually busy with the practical details of taking up a new residence, as if that were all that mattered.

And then his mind began to feel the pain of what had happened, slowly, increasingly, terrifically.... She had repudiated their marriage.

He felt knocked down, trampled, stamped upon, hurt all over.

So _this_ was what she had been thinking of! Not of coming home to him—but of living apart from him.

He read the letter again, with a rising anger that mingled with his pain. What was it she said? “_We have many things in common—tastes, ideas, a love of beauty._”—“_Pity if we were to lose the opportunity for companionship altogether_”—“_Not pretending to be married any more._” So it meant nothing to her, then, this marriage? She could end it so easily? And companionship, mere companionship—that did mean something to her? That was what she wanted to keep! “_Everything can be arranged in detail so that we both will be happy._”

What could he reply to a letter like that? What could he say to a girl who told him that her happiness lay in their not being married any more? “_Everything could be arranged in detail._” What detail? Where she was going to live? What did that matter to him? Why should she think that she had to live near him? She need not be so kind. If their marriage meant nothing to her, he could give her up altogether. “_Companionship._” The dead body of their love for consolation? No, she need not have offered him that.... She might have spared that touch.

“_Whether you agree definitely to these terms._” How could she think he would want anything like that? Had she only written that to torture him? She did not insist on breaking off the relationship “altogether.” He stared at the words. Was that what she thought of him? That he would be happy—that was her word—happy ... if—

Verses from a poem, bitter verses, came into his mind:

“_A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave Of a great flood that whirls us to the sea. But as you will! we’ll sit contentedly And eat our pot of honey on the grave._”

He laid his head on his arms, bent over the table, shivering with a fit of cold anger and disgust. Then he roused himself, and wrote quickly an answer to Rose-Ann’s letter.

It was only a few lines. He read them over, sealed the envelope, and went out to mail it in the box on the corner ... where he had gone so often to mail his criticism, so that he could return and talk the night through at Rose-Ann’s side.

3

Rose-Ann had composed her letter with difficulty. At the last moment, interfering with a perfectly clear statement of the case to him, had come a distaste for proposing herself as any man’s mistress—even her husband’s.... She must put it in such a way that he would understand her willingness. He would understand, too, why she had failed before. It was her apologia.... And if they lived apart, and—didn’t want to have other love-affairs, then they would both be sure that it wasn’t her fault. Doubtless she had been rather silly about it. He hadn’t really been in love with Phyllis....

It would be possible to go back to him, now. By that letter she had exorcised that ghastly cry that had kept ringing in her ears, night and day—“_You didn’t mean it after all!_” She could sleep, now.

She slept.... But why didn’t his answer come? The mails were uncertain. His letter might be in the post-office now. It would be delivered tomorrow morning.

She packed for her return journey, and slept again, peacefully.

His letter came, and her father presented it to her with his wise smile. She took it to her room and tore it open.

_Rose-Ann, I think it had better be all over for good. I want you to have the studio. I will go somewhere else._

_Felix._

4

Incredulous, with that letter burning her flesh, tearing and rasping at her heart where she had thrust it into the bosom of her dress, she made the journey to Chicago.

“_All over ... all over ... all over...._” She could not understand it.

Felix was not in the studio. She called him up at the office. He was not there.

Was he with Phyllis?

She waited. Three days.

“Well,” she said aloud to the empty studio. “It’s true. It is all over.”

She went back to the Motion Picture World, gave some explanation of her absence, and started in making up the magazine.

“You know,” said Bodger, the editor, “we’re considering moving out to California in the course of the next few months. Los Angeles. Might as well be on the spot.... I don’t suppose you’d consider coming along with us?”

“Oh, I might!” said Rose-Ann.

LIV. The God and the Pedestal

1

FOR some hours after sending his reply to Rose-Ann, Felix kept his mind steeled against any realization of its consequences. He was in a peculiar state of righteousness—like one who has struck a fatal blow and keeps insisting that he has been struck first. To him, his letter to Rose-Ann appeared but the reflex of her own—and she, as it were, the author of both letters. Yes, the crime was hers!

But just what this crime was, he still managed to keep from realizing—even when, after mailing his letter and sitting for an hour in a kind of stupour at his desk, he rose, took a book from the shelf, and went away to find a room. The book was “The Bab Ballads.”

He took the Illinois Central in, and a north side elevated train out again, as though seeking to be as far as possible from the studio. He got off, at a venture, at Wilson Avenue, and within an hour found a small apartment of two rooms and bath, furnished “for light-housekeeping,” situated over a coffee-and-tea store, three flights up. It had a fairly large sitting room at the front. He noticed a small book case filled with sets of “The Ivanhoe Novels” and “The Complete Works of Bulwer-Lytton.” Felix told the fat middle-aged woman from the store who showed it to him that he would want the bookcase for books of his own, but not immediately; he remarked that he would probably buy some of her coffee in the morning to make his breakfast on; and assured her that he would not set the hot cup on the bare table-top, which she said was real mahogany and had been left her by a deceased roomer whom she had looked after when he was sick. When she had gone, leaving him the keys, Felix put the Bab Ballads in between the Waverly Novels and the Complete Works of Bulwer-Lytton, and sat down in an old plush-upholstered chair, to make himself at home.

In a few minutes there was a knock—it was the fat woman from the store, who had brought him up a pound of her best coffee.

“Not that I want to bother you,” she said. “You needn’t be afraid I’ll be knocking at your door and keeping watch of your comings and goings—live and let live, is what I say. But I knew from the way you spoke of coffee that you really liked it, and I just thought I’d bring you some for your breakfast. A man that makes his own coffee knows what coffee is—isn’t that so!”

He thanked her, and sat down to look out of the window. The interest of the room itself had been exhausted; it was empty equally of memories and of hopes; it was just so many dismal square feet of space. He had uprooted himself from the place in which he had lived for months that were like years, and years that were like lifetimes; he had lived in that studio—really lived in it; he was living there now, in his thoughts; it would take longer to uproot his mind from that place than it had his body. And yet—he could foresee the time, incredible though it was, when that studio life with Rose-Ann would be only a memory, a part of his past ... like his life with his Iowa sweetheart during their brief idyl, years ago. Yes, the time would come when all this, that was now so warm and near, would be dim and remote; a time when it would no longer hurt him to think about it all....

As he sat there facing the window, looking out unseeingly at the lighted facade of the building opposite, the strains of dance music reached him, and he saw couples float past the windows of the hall on the floor opposite his own. He watched and listened with a kind of dull fascination, for a long time.... He was very tired. He thought of going to bed. But that music from across the street would never stop—it would keep on with its silly gaiety hour after hour.

He rose at last and went out. He was going to his work-room. He could spend several hours cleaning up there—destroying manuscripts he didn’t want to keep, reducing the amount of things to be moved to a minimum.

Phyllis might be in her room.... He thought of her there, and the thought comforted him. He saw her again, in his thoughts, as he had seen her first—serene and kind and strong. It was good to think of her.

Still his mind did not quite encompass the situation. It was as though something had happened to him—something stupendous, terrible, and almost unbearable, like the death of a beloved friend—something not wholly to be realized. And it had the resistlessness of some such event; he did not conceive it as something within his power to alter or prevent—nor in any sense as something which he had done himself. If he had thought of himself as having done this thing, he might have thought of undoing it. But it was a thing which had happened, like an earthquake....

In his room he gathered up fragments of manuscript—jottings of ideas, efforts, experiments, unfinished things—and tore them up after a casual glance. There would be little to take with him. That was good.... He had the feeling that a new life had begun for him, a life at which he still stared in vague bewilderment, like a creature painfully new-born into an uncomprehended world.

2

He could hear Phyllis moving about on the other side of the partition. He finished his work; the wastebasket was full of torn manuscript, and his Roget’s Thesaurus and his favourite penholder lay together on the table, ready to take to his new home. He no longer had need of a work-room, a special refuge from the distracting intimacies of marriage. He was free from all that. Yes—think of that—free!... He laughed out loud.

Presently Phyllis would come and knock on his door. She had heard him enter, she knew he was there. He wanted to see her, he wanted the comfort of her eyes, her hands. He wanted her serenity, her kindness, her strength. But he lacked even the energy to ask for it. He could only sit and wait until she came to him.

He felt as though the last strength he possessed were being used up in some terrific effort—an effort that would cease when she came. Then it would make no difference that he had no strength left—her courage and kindness would sustain him.

The impossible had happened—yes, the impossible. For it was unthinkable that Rose-Ann should have destroyed their marriage. But she had.... And now in this strange world there was only one certainty left—Phyllis’s eyes, her arms, her understanding love. Here was reality, here firm ground amidst a reeling chaos of fantastic madness.... Phyllis!

He could hear, as in a dream, the bubbling of coffee, could taste the fragrance of its odour stealing through the door.... Presently, very soon, she would come....

He heard her knock, and he thought he answered, but it seemed not, for she knocked again, and then opened the door. He sat there limply in his chair, glad she had come.

“Did I disturb you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“You’re tired!” she said, and came quickly to him and put her hand on his forehead. “I’ve made some coffee,” she said. “It will be good for you.”

“Yes,” he said, and rose.

She led the way into her room, and pointed to the couch. “Lie down and rest,” she said. “I’ll give you your coffee in a moment.”

She busied herself with cups and saucers, and he watched her from the couch. She came toward him, a cup of coffee in her hand, her arm bare to the elbow, and above it her eyes shining under a tangle of soft brown hair.

“Here!” she said.

When he made no effort to take the cup, she set it down on the stool beside the bed. He took her hand, and drew her toward him. She yielded to his gesture and sat down beside him on the couch, looking at him with a kind of startled amusement as he took her arm and pressed his cheek against it.

“You’re very tired, aren’t you?” she said sympathetically, and touched his shoulder with her other hand.

He clung to her arm. It was cool against his cheek. All the beauty, all the peace, all the rest in the world seemed to be in that cool white flesh. Was it because it was hers—or because it was a girl’s arm, promising rest and comfort? He did not know. He only clung to it.

“Is it your work—are you having difficulties?” she asked.

He laughed. His work!

That laugh seemed to reassure her in some way. She smiled down at him, bent over him, her hair blinded him, and then her lips brushed his.

“Dear!” she said.

He held her close to him, and their lips met—hungrily, thirstily. At first all her body relaxed into the embrace, and it seemed to him that the peace he needed flowed into him from her kiss, from her arms, her body—rest, the infinite sweetness of rest.... And then she seemed to grow frightened. She held herself away from him, she looked at him questioningly.

But, again reassured, she bent again, and surrendered herself to the embrace. But something in the exigence of his mood came to her even in this surrender, and once more, suddenly and coolly, she drew herself away.

“What _is_ the matter?” she demanded, looking at him with alien eyes. She bent, not tenderly, and took his shoulder, as if to shake his secret out of him.

“The matter is,” said Felix, “that my marriage has gone to hell.”

3

“What!” The exclamation came in a tone of utter incredulous astonishment from the girl at his side, who sat there, rigid, as though frozen by that news.

“Yes, I tell you!” he cried. “We’ve—busted up everything—for good and all.”

And feeling himself uncontrollably about to cry, he turned his face against the couch, and lay shaken with convulsive strangling sobs.

The girl sprang up, and looked down at him. She had never seen him cry. She had not known that he could cry. As a matter of fact, he had not cried very many times in his life, and he did not know how, and did it badly.

He looked up at last, brushing his eyes with his coatsleeve. He wanted her pity.

He saw her looking at him with haughty anger. Her whole gesture was one of outrage. When she saw him look up, she clenched her fists, and said,

“You never told me—”

“Never told you?” His anger burst out against her, anger mixed with self-pity. “What did you expect?”

She turned half away from him in disdain.

“Not this!” she said.

“No!” he said, sitting up. “No, you little idiot, I suppose you didn’t.... And I didn’t either. Well—you see.”

She looked back over her shoulder with repugnance, as if she were looking at something sick, wounded, or diseased.

“Yes,” she said doubtfully, “I see....”

She turned back to him, her hostility gone, and a mournful look in her eyes.

“I never supposed,” she said haltingly, “that you—”

She paused, and then went on,

“—You too—”

Under her glance he straightened up, ashamed of himself. He rose. He must, he supposed, have looked silly....

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry too—Felix,” she answered, and there was in her tone the quality of a farewell.

There was something bracing at this moment in her scornful silence as she let him walk out of the room.... He went to the bathroom and washed his face; looked at himself in the mirror: was the face he saw there the one that had been twisted in grotesque sobbing a few minutes ago? No one would have guessed it.... He looked hard at that face, for some sign of weakness. But it seemed to him that the weakness had been burned out of it by the fire of a girl’s scorn. It was a face indifferent and aloof from sorrow, with amused eyes and jauntily smiling mouth. Yes, that was Felix Fay as he should be.

He went back to his room, tossed his Roget’s Thesaurus and his favourite penholder into the wastebasket with the torn manuscripts, put on his hat—and then noticed his stick in the corner.

He picked it up, hung it over his arm, turned out the gas, and went out whistling.