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.

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.