Some obliquity of the imagination helped him, like a drug, anaesthetizing his emotions, during the first few minutes after reading that letter. His mind was actually busy with the practical details of taking up a new residence, as if that were all that mattered. And then his mind began to feel the pain of what had happened, slowly, increasingly, terrifically.... She had repudiated their marriage. He felt knocked down, trampled, stamped upon, hurt all over. So _this_ was what she had been thinking of! Not of coming home to him—but of living apart from him. He read the letter again, with a rising anger that mingled with his pain. What was it she said? “_We have many things in common—tastes, ideas, a love of beauty._”—“_Pity if we were to lose the opportunity for companionship altogether_”—“_Not pretending to be married any more._” So it meant nothing to her, then, this marriage? She could end it so easily? And companionship, mere companionship—that did mean something to her? That was what she wanted to keep! “_Everything can be arranged in detail so that we both will be happy._” What could he reply to a letter like that? What could he say to a girl who told him that her happiness lay in their not being married any more? “_Everything could be arranged in detail._” What detail? Where she was going to live? What did that matter to him? Why should she think that she had to live near him? She need not be so kind. If their marriage meant nothing to her, he could give her up altogether. “_Companionship._” The dead body of their love for consolation? No, she need not have offered him that.... She might have spared that touch. “_Whether you agree definitely to these terms._” How could she think he would want anything like that? Had she only written that to torture him? She did not insist on breaking off the relationship “altogether.” He stared at the words. Was that what she thought of him? That he would be happy—that was her word—happy ... if— Verses from a poem, bitter verses, came into his mind: “_A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave Of a great flood that whirls us to the sea. But as you will! we’ll sit contentedly And eat our pot of honey on the grave._” He laid his head on his arms, bent over the table, shivering with a fit of cold anger and disgust. Then he roused himself, and wrote quickly an answer to Rose-Ann’s letter. It was only a few lines. He read them over, sealed the envelope, and went out to mail it in the box on the corner ... where he had gone so often to mail his criticism, so that he could return and talk the night through at Rose-Ann’s side. 3