Jane shivered as she thought of it. Men should marry when they were young. André should have married when he loved her. But if he had he would never have become one of France’s most distinguished sons. Chicago would have stifled him. André might have been a banker by this time, thought Jane, if he had taken her on at nineteen. And he had had the sense to foresee it. His abrupt departure from her life had been much in the romantic tradition established by Romeo in the balcony window. His alternatives had been the same. “I must be gone and live, or stay and die!”
But she had married young. And Stephen had been young when she married him. They had had together those ridiculous, unthinking, heartbreaking years of almost adolescent domesticity, with two babies in the sand pile and another in the perambulator and a contagious disease sign often on the front door and a didy always on the clothesline! They’d had all that. But had they really had romance? Romance, such as she’d known with André? Stephen had had it, perhaps, in the first years of their marriage. But—had she? Hadn’t she always been rather afraid of romance, all those young years when it might have been hers for the taking? Did a woman ever really value romance until she felt it slipping away from her? Wasn’t that the surest sign of all of being middle-aged? You might be still slim and agile and not grey, but when you felt that wistful, almost desperate impulse to live your life to the full before it was over, didn’t it really mean that it was over, that youth, at any rate, was over, that it was too late to recapture the glamour that you saw only in retrospect—
But this was ridiculous, thought Jane. Life wasn’t over at thirty-six. She loved Stephen and Stephen loved her. He had never looked at another woman. Anything they wanted was theirs for the taking. Their personal relationship was only what they made it. She must say to Stephen, “Look at me, Stephen! Really look at me! You haven’t for ten years!” And he would laugh—of course he always laughed at her—
That was Stephen’s step on the stair.
Jane looked quickly about the bedroom. Yes, it was very neat. Mrs. Carver was an excellent housekeeper and Jane herself was always tidy. Her underclothes were meticulously folded on a chair by the dressing-table and the linen sheets of the twin four-poster mahogany beds were turned smoothly down over the rose-coloured comforters. Stephen’s clean blue pajamas were folded on his pillow.
As he opened the door, Jane rose from her mirror to meet him. He stood a moment on the threshold, smiling contentedly around the lamplit room. Dear old Stephen—even in the soft light he still looked white and jaded. Jane walked slowly over to him.
“Glad to be here?” she smiled up into his eyes.
“You bet!” said Stephen fervently.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Jane.
Stephen closed the door.
“How’s it been?” said Stephen. “Family been bothering you?”
“Oh, no,” said Jane.
Stephen slipped off his grey sack coat and hung it carefully over the back of a chair.
“It’s a pretty good old place,” said Stephen. He walked over to the window in his shirtsleeves and peered out into the darkness beyond the screen.
“Smell that sea-breeze,” said Stephen. He snuffed the briny air luxuriously for a moment in silence.
“Put out the lamp,” said Stephen. “The moon’s just rising over the bay.”
Smiling a little, Jane pushed the button and walked blindly over to him in the darkness. She slipped her arm though his. The brown film of screen had grown suddenly transparent. The lawn and beach and harbour were flooded with silver light. The waning moon swung low in the eastern sky. Jane gazed in silence as small objects on the lawn slowly took form and substance in the unearthly radiance. The outcrops of granite rock cast clear-cut shadows on the greyish grass. The weather beaten outline of a clump of stunted cedars at the foot of the pier stood out in black silhouette against the silver waters of the harbour. The slender mast of the catboat rocked uneasily at its moorings. A lighthouse winked, deliberately, far out in the bay. One white flash and two red. Jane could hear the little harbour waves, quite distinctly, as they rippled on the shingle. Then the faint moaning of the bell-buoy that marked the hidden reef beyond the point. Jane pressed her cheek gently against Stephen’s arm.
“I’m very glad you’ve come,” she said.
Stephen turned his head abruptly. Her voice seemed to rouse him from revery.
“I guess it was time,” he said cheerfully. “Mother seems a bit on edge.”
Jane dropped his arm. She moved away from him in the square of moonlight that fell through the casement.
“What about?” she asked.
“Oh—nothing much,” said Stephen still cheerfully. Then, after a moment, “Don’t you think, Jane, you could persuade Miss Parrot to use the back stairs?”
Jane moved in silence back to her dressing-table. She switched on the light abruptly and sat down on her chair.
“I’ve said all I could,” said Jane. “You know how Miss Parrot is. She’s an awfully good heart nurse. I don’t want to rock the boat.”
Stephen untied his necktie and removed his collar in silence. He walked slowly across the room to place them on top of his chest of drawers. Jane watched him in her mirror. Suddenly she caught the gleam of irritation in her own
