In two weeks Angela had seen Roger only once. He telephoned every day, pleading, beseeching, entreating. On the one occasion when she did permit him to call there were almost tears in his eyes. “But, darling, what did I do? If you’d only tell me that. Perhaps I could explain away whatever it is that’s come between us.” But there was nothing to explain she told him gravely, it was just that he was harder, more cruel than she had expected; no, it wasn’t the coloured people, she lied and felt her soul blushing, it was that now she knew him when he was angry or displeased, and she could see how ruthless, how determined he was to have things his way. His willingness to pay the costs of the possible lawsuit had filled her with a sharp fear. What could one do against a man, against a group of men such as he and his kind represented who would spend time and money to maintain a prejudice based on a silly, timeworn tradition?
Yet she found she did not want to lose sight of him completely. The care, the attention, the flattery with which he had surrounded her were beginning to produce their effect. In the beautiful but slightly wearying balminess of the Spring she missed the blue car which had been constantly at her call; eating a good but homely meal in her little living room with the cooking odours fairly overwhelming her from the kitchenette, she found herself longing unconsciously for the dainty food, the fresh Spring delicacies which she knew he would be only too glad to procure for her. Shamefacedly she had to acknowledge that the separation which she was so rigidly enforcing meant a difference in her tiny exchequer, for it had now been many months since she had regularly taken her main meal by herself and at her own expense.
Today she was especially conscious of her dependence upon him, for she was to spend the afternoon in Van Cortlandt Park with Anthony. There had been talk of subways and the Elevated. Roger would have had the blue car at the door and she would have driven out of Jayne Street in state. Now it transpired that Anthony was to deliver some drawings to a man, a tricky customer, whom it was best to waylay if possible on Saturday afternoon. Much as he regretted it he would probably be a little late. Angela, therefore, to save time must meet him at Seventy-second Street. Roger would never have made a request like that; he would have brought his lawyer or his businessman along in the car with him and, dismissing him with a curt “Well I’ll see if I can finish this tomorrow,” would have hastened to her with his best Walter Raleigh manner, and would have produced the cloak, too, if she would but say so. Perhaps she’d have to take him back. Doubtless later on she could manage his prejudices if only he would speak. But how was she to accomplish that?
Still it was lovely being here with Anthony in the park, so green and fresh, so new with the recurring newness of Spring. Anthony touched her hand and said as he had once before, “I’m so content to be with you, Angel. I may call you Angel, mayn’t I? You are that to me, you know. Oh if you only knew how happy it makes me to be content, to be satisfied like this. I could get down on my knees and thank God for it like a little boy.” He looked like a little boy as he said it. “Happiness is a hard thing to find and harder still to keep.”
She asked him idly, “Haven’t you always been happy?”
His face underwent a startling change. Not only did the old sadness and strain come back on it, but a great bitterness such as she had never before seen.
“No,” he said slowly as though thinking through long years of his life. “I haven’t been happy for years, not since I was a little boy. Never once have I been happy nor even at ease until I met you.”
But she did not want him to find his happiness in her. That way would only lead to greater unhappiness for him. So she said, to change the subject: “Could you tell me about it?”
But there was nothing to tell, he assured her, his face growing darker, grimmer. “Only my father was killed when I was a little boy, killed by his enemies. I’ve hated them ever since; I never stopped hating them until I met you.” But this was just as dangerous a road as the other plus the possibilities of reopening old wounds. So she only shivered and said vaguely, “Oh, that was terrible! Too terrible to talk about. I’m sorry, Anthony!” And then as a last desperate topic: “Are you ever going back to Brazil?” For she knew that he had come to the United States from Rio de Janeiro. He had spent Christmas at her house, and had shown her pictures of the great, beautiful city and of his mother, a slender, dark-eyed woman with a perpetual sadness in her eyes.
The conversation languished, She thought: “It must be terrible to be a man and to have these secret hates and horrors back of one.” Some Spanish feud, a matter of hot blood and ready knives, a sudden stroke, and then this deadly memory for him.
“No,” he said after a long pause. “I’m never going back to Brazil. I couldn’t.” He turned to
