A little later, she whispered fiercely: “Felix, are you thinking of that damned play? Then stop it!” It was true. Felix had been thinking of his play. He became annoyed with her. She wanted him to write plays, to be a personage—and now, when he tried.... As if in reply to his thought, she bent and said in his ear, “Felix, if you write a conventional play like Hawkins’s, and make a success of it, I shall leave you!” He was inwardly dismayed. “I wonder—” said Rose-Ann aloud, and then stopped, as if startled at hearing her voice. “Yes?” said Felix. “Nothing,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you afterward.” And afterward, in a café where they had stopped for a cool drink before going home to bed, she told him that she did not want him to be successful—that she meant it quite seriously. “It would spoil everything,” she said. “Never fear, I shan’t be so successful as that,” he said glumly. “But that’s just what I’m afraid of—that you will!” she said. “I looked at your scenario the other day when you were at the office; and it’s—well, I’ve seen that play a hundred times; it’s what they call sure-fire stuff.” She said this reproachfully, but Felix was elated. That was exactly what he had been trying to make it. “Do you really think so!” he asked. “I do,” she said. “And I know that if you keep on long enough, you’ll succeed. But I wish you wouldn’t.” “Why not?” “Because, Felix, that play isn’t true—not as we see truth. It makes people behave as people think they ought to—not as we know they feel. You deal in conventional emotions entirely. The only interesting person in the play is the wicked woman—and you know she isn’t wicked at all, Felix, you only pretend to think so to please your audience.” “You mean the woman who tries to take the other woman’s husband away from her? Oh, I know—it’s stupid stuff, but—” “Well, then, why do you do it? If you want to write about a girl who’s in love with another woman’s husband, why don’t you do it honestly? You and I don’t believe in those silly old notions. Why pretend that you think she is wicked? Just to make money? I’d rather we starved than have you write plays like that.” It was at once an immense relief to be told that he need not try any longer to write that stupid play, and a profound humiliation to be scolded by his wife. He did not know whether to be angry or ashamed. His eyes filled with tears, and he reached across the table and laid his hand in hers in silence. “What was it you were going to tell me there in the Park,” he said after a while. “I was thinking about ‘duty,’” she said. “Your attitude toward life reminds me of a little story I read the other day—I think it was in Anatole France ... a curious little story.... If you want to hear it?” “Yes, tell me.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXXIII. A Parable 1