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.