THEY had come back to civilization. But—unwittingly, at first—into this life of talk, of ideas, of theory, of vague ambition and of self-congratulatory superiority to the mere plain facts of life, they brought somewhat more than a memory of their vagabond adventuring. In their brief and joyous return to nature they had surrendered themselves to its purposes more deeply than they had been aware. But presently Rose-Ann announced that she would have to visit the doctor of whom Dorothy Sheridan had once told her. Rose-Ann did not say that she was with child—that phrase was never used between them in their few discussions of the incident. For that phrase would have implied that she intended to bear a child. It was discussed rather as an accident, an annoying but not serious interruption to their plans. Rose-Ann took the matter, not lightly, but in a soberly practical spirit. And so convincing was her tone that it did not occur to Felix to question the sincerity of her apparent attitude.
Secretly he was troubled. In spite of Rose-Ann’s confidence, he distressed himself with what appeared to be needless forebodings. It seemed to be true that real life was, in this matter as in others, different from fiction. In a story, this would have been a desperate situation; but in actual fact it appeared to have no such gravity. He hoped that was indeed the truth; and, afterward, it appeared that she had been right.... He wondered why he had been so absurd about it!
She would never know how absurd.... He would never 248tell her how, one night, walking alone along a dark stretch of lake shore, his courage had failed him utterly; how all the terrible things of which he had ever heard had rushed into his mind, filling and flooding it with a kind of nameless remorse, until he had ceased to be a man, and had become a mere terrified child—and how in the influence of that guilty terror he had sunk on his knees in the wet sand, praying to a God he did not believe in, whispering like a child to a kind Father: “God, don’t let anything happen to her!” He had not thought of her then as a free woman acting wisely in her own right—no, but only as a helpless and lovely girl, his beloved, given him to cherish and protect, whom he had let go down to the very gates of death—in vain! Not in the terrible triumph of creation, but meaninglessly.... And he prayed: “Give me back Rose-Ann!”...
No, he would never tell her what a fool he had been.
2
And he would never tell her—for he had safely forgotten now—the moment when, knowing that their lives could go on now as before, they had walked again in the Park under great trees that lifted their shivering glooms to the sky. Through the bushes had come the gleam of motor-cars that glided swiftly down the avenue. “You were a dear to worry,” she had said. “But you needn’t any more. Everything’s quite all right now.”
He had looked at her, cut through with a strange unreal pain, his whole mind quivering. Forces that he did not understand were hurling themselves on his heart, crushing and stunning it. He breathed with difficulty. He looked away from her. He could not speak.
But one forgets things like that. It would not be pleasant to remember them. Nor is it hard to forget unpleasant things in the midst of civilization, with its friendships, parties, talk, books and theories.
So, looking at life realistically, Felix felt that he and Rose-Ann were very fortunate, after all.