ROSALIND: Well-here's one little thing. There was a little poor boy we met in Rye Tuesday afternoonand, oh, Dawson took him on his lap and talked to him and promised him an Indian suitand next day he remembered and bought itand, oh, it was so sweet and I couldn't help thinking he'd be so nice toto our childrentake care of themand I wouldn't have to worry.
AMORY: (In despair) Rosalind! Rosalind!
ROSALIND: (With a faint roguishness) Don't look so consciously suffering.
AMORY: What power we have of hurting each other!
ROSALIND: (Commencing to sob again) It's been so perfect-you and I. So like a dream that I'd longed for and never thought I'd find. The first real unselfishness I've ever felt in my life. And I can't see it fade out in a colorless atmosphere!
AMORY: It won'ti-t won't!
ROSALIND: I'd rather keep it as a beautiful memorytucked away in my heart.
AMORY: Yes, women can do thatbut not men. I'd remember always, not the beauty of it while it lasted, but just the bitterness, the long bitterness.
ROSALIND: Don't!
AMORY: All the years never to see you, never to kiss you, just a gate shut and barredyou don't dare be my wife.
ROSALIND: No-no-I'm taking the hardest course, the strongest course. Marrying you would be a failure and I never failif you don't stop walking up and down I'll scream!
(Again he sinks despairingly onto the lounge.)
AMORY: Come over here and kiss me.
ROSALIND: No.
AMORY: Don't you want to kiss me?
ROSALIND: To-night I want you to love me calmly and coolly.
AMORY: The beginning of the end.
ROSALIND: (With a burst of insight) Amory, you're young. I'm young. People excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating people like Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. But you've got a lot of knocks coming to you AMORY: And you're afraid to take them with me.
ROSALIND: No, not that. There was a poem I read somewhere-you'll say Ella Wheeler Wilcox and laugh-but listen:
"For this is wisdom-to love and live, To take what fate or the gods may give, To ask no question, to make no prayer, To kiss the lips and caress the hair, Speed passion's ebb as we greet its flow, To have and to hold, and, in timelet go."
AMORY: But we haven't had.
ROSALIND: Amory, I'm yours-you know it. There have been times in the last month I'd have been completely yours if you'd said so.
But I can't marry you and ruin both our lives.
AMORY: We've got to take our chance for happiness.
ROSALIND: Dawson says I'd learn to love him.
(AMORY with his head sunk in his hands does not move. The life seems suddenly gone out of him.)
ROSALIND: Lover! Lover! I can't do with you, and I can't imagine life without you.
AMORY: Rosalind, we're on each other's nerves. It's just that we're both high-strung, and this week (His voice is curiously old. She crosses to him and taking his face in her hands, kisses him.)
ROSALIND: I can't, Amory. I can't be shut away from the trees and flowers, cooped up in a little flat, waiting for you. You'd hate me in a narrow atmosphere. I'd make you hate me.
(Again she is blinded by sudden uncontrolled tears.)
AMORY: Rosalind ROSALIND: Oh, darling, go Don't make it harder! I can't stand it AMORY: (His face drawn, his voice strained) Do you know what you're saying? Do you mean forever?
(There is a difference somehow in the quality of their suffering.)
ROSALIND: Can't you see AMORY: I'm afraid I can't if you love me. You're afraid of taking two years' knocks with me.
ROSALIND: I wouldn't be the Rosalind you love.
AMORY: (A little hysterically) I can't give you up! I can't, that's all! I've got to have you!
ROSALIND: (A hard note in her voice) You're being a baby now.
AMORY: (Wildly) I don't care! You're spoiling our lives!
ROSALIND: I'm doing the wise thing, the only thing.
AMORY: Are you going to marry Dawson Ryder?
ROSALIND: Oh, don't ask me. You know I'm old in some waysin otherswell, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulnessand I dread responsibility. I don't want to think about pots and kitchens and brooms. I want to worry whether my legs will get slick and brown when I swim in the summer.
AMORY: And you love me.
ROSALIND: That's just why it has to end. Drifting hurts too much.
We can't have any more scenes like this.
(She draws his ring from her finger and hands it to him. Their eyes blind again with tears.)
AMORY: (His lips against her wet cheek) Don't! Keep it, pleaseoh, don't break my heart!
(She presses the ring softly into his hand.)
ROSALIND: (Brokenly) You'd better go.
AMORY: Good-by (She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, infinite sadness.)
ROSALIND: Don't ever forget me, Amory AMORY: Good-by (He goes to the door, fumbles for the knob, finds itshe sees him throw back his headand he is gone. Gone-she half starts from the lounge and then sinks forward on her face into the pillows.)
ROSALIND: Oh, God, I want to die! (After a moment she rises and with her eyes closed feels her way to the door. Then she turns and looks once more at the room. Here they had sat and dreamed: that tray she had so often filled with matches for him; that shade that they had discreetly lowered one long Sunday afternoon.
Misty-eyed she stands and remembers; she speaks aloud.) Oh, Amory, what have I done to you?
(And deep under the aching sadness that will pass in time, Rosalind feels that she has lost something, she knows not what, she knows not why.)
BOOK TWO
