Flushed and tingling at the hurt, René rushed away, savagely wound up his engine, and glided back into the city, to the narrow place where he had till now lived in comfort and the pleasures of simplicity. Small and confined he saw it now, mean and untidy. But it had been and was still his refuge. He had been happy, and the world had ignored his happiness and snatched it away from him. He was actively angry and jealous.
He frightened Ann by the hungry affection with which he greeted her when she came home, after working overtime to keep pace with a rush of work at her factory. She liked it too. It was exciting. Yet she could not conceal her fear. She was more than his match in exuberance, but here was a demand upon her that she could not recognize and very soon she was in tears; not her happy tears that had so often reconciled him and made him gleeful and proud. He was humbled and acutely conscious of separation from her, though they clung together. For a few moments the whole weight of their relationship was thrown upon their loyalty, and it did not yield. She slept at last, her hand in his, but he lay awake staring back into the past, fascinated as the light growing in him showed it up in continually sharpening relief--his parting from his father; him he could see very clearly; but his mother was in shadow, sitting, head down, hands busy, never stirring, in acceptance. And Linda? He could see her at that absurd tea-party when his father had shown her his picture. She walked into his life then. They sat by the tulips and she was gone. He could remember his own desire and after, only its horrible, inexplicable disappearance.
Could I find a place to be alone with Heaven I would speak my heart out.
THE next night Ann went out alone. She insisted that it must be alone, though she gave him her most happy smile to reassure him.
He sat reading a copy of _Extracts from Browning_ which he had bought for twopence from old Lunt. The book was against his temper, but he found a certain pleasure in making himself read from page to page. At nine o'clock Kilner came in. He was gaunt and haggard, and his collar was dirty. He nodded, produced a pipe, and sank, as he lit it, into the wicker chair opposite René's.