524
PARTISAN REVIEW
In her relief at waking, and her melancholy in remembering that
time when she had been enchanted with David and had believed in
their love, she almost wept. The tears rose back of her eyes and dried
there. She still believed she loved David, but whatever it was he under–
stood as love was a mystery to her. She believed she thought of love
::J.S
tenderness and faithfulness and gaiety and a true goodness of the
heart to the loved one: she wanted David to be comfortable, she
wished to be easy within herself, and though David would seem
coldly to devour everything, yet it was as if he were alone, he would
not share with her, he would give nothing back. He sulked when she
was painting and would not work, but wandered about aimlessly. He
did not like her friends, and he made none of his own. He would not
listen to music with her, he could not dance, he would not share her
moods or make some life of his own she might share, he lived like
a prisoner within himself, he would not let the door be unlocked.
Her list of accusations grew. They had agreed never to marry because
they must be free, marriage was a bondage humiliating to civilized
beings: yet what was this tie between them but marriage, and mar–
riage of the vvorst sort, with all the restraint and jealousy and burden
but with none of its warmth and safety, no honest acknowledgement
of faith and love? Ah, it was high time to think a little. She had
fallen in love with him, recklessly, on sight (why?) and she went
over the hurdle at once because she did not dare to think then. Once
the hurdle was cleared, she no longer felt reckless, but happy and
clear in her feelings and strangely bound to David. She had believed
he felt the same, for a year at least she had believed the bond was
real and would hold fast. They were going to make a splendid life
together.
Little by little she had been dismayed by his stubborn resistance
to love, as if it were an enemy force outside them both, his refusal to
take part in any plan that would engage him for even the nearest
future. She had believed that his silence was a sign of strength and
reserve; but when he was drunken he was vulgar and silly, as
if
the
binding strings of his character were cut and he fell apart. She had
believed
his
contemptuous analysis of her friends was the sign of a
discrimination superior to her own. Now it seemed to her that David
watched and listened so narrowly for the fallacy, the blind spot, the
small but certain marks of secret weakness in others because finding
them soothed his own fear, his deep uncertainty. Had he always been
like that, or was it just his defense against her? Or was he like that
and she could not see it because she was so much in love? But what
was there to love in him, then? How could she have loved him?
