“Sometimes,” he said, “you seem for a moment to go far away from me, even when you are here in my arms. I can’t bear that.” He held her more closely, as though to reassure himself of the reality of her presence. “Then it all begins to seem like a dream again.... I’ve always been lonely for you, all my life, wanting you always ... and not believing I was ever going to find you ... trying to adjust myself to a world in which you didn’t exist. And sometimes, even now—But you are real, aren’t you?” “I dreamed of you, too, Felix....” “Isn’t it strange? And strangest of all, that the story should have a happy ending.” “This—is just the beginning, Felix....” A faint sadness in her tone, that he had heard before in the very midst of their happiness, frightened him. “The beginning, yes,” he said. “The beginning of happiness.” “And—afterward, Felix?” “More happiness.... Doesn’t that satisfy you?” “Yes, but—Oh, of course it’s beautiful and wonderful to me, Felix. But I’m afraid....” “Of what, darling?” “We love just being together, now. But will we always? I mean—doesn’t something happen to happiness, after a while? I know it sounds absurd. I don’t mean we’ll fall out of love—not that—but won’t we lose the beauty of this—this intimacy, in time? You know how other people sometimes seem—cooped up and used to each other—just that. It’s ugly, to me ... I suspect we are rather awful, Felix, talking about such things!...” “No,” he said. “It isn’t enough to feel—we must know why we feel.” She sighed. “I guess we _are_ like that. We can’t even take happiness without asking why.” It was true; they encouraged each other in what would have seemed, to some people, an exaggerated curiosity about things of no importance—and, to many lovers, a prying into matters best left alone. Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? They did not seem to fear it. “I suppose,” said Felix reflectively, “people must care a great deal for each other.... It would be dreadful, this closeness, if one didn’t want it.” “But does one keep on wanting it?... Yes, Felix, that’s what I’m afraid of. If this is only for a while—and then we were to be just like other people—sunk in a greasy domesticity—Felix, I couldn’t keep on living.” He took her hand tenderly. “But we aren’t like those other people, Rose-Ann,” he said. He had a baffling sense of this speech contradicting something he had said or thought before.... “Do you really think our marriage is so different from other people’s, Felix?” They seemed to have exchanged places in the argument—that argument, so absurd and yet so poignant, which kept arising, neither of them knowing why, nor quite what it was all about.... “Of course our marriage is different,” he was saying. “How many married people really want to know each other? How many of them can really talk to one another about what is going on in their inmost minds—as we do!”