She couldn't
possibly look at it any way but that. And now that she was free,
self-discovered, victorious, was it likely she would submit to its blind
caprices again? The thing Randolph had said was his notion of Heaven,
she'd triumphantly attained. Wouldn't it be her notion of Heaven too?
But she had won, among the rest of her spoils of victory, the thing she
had originally set out to get. His friendship and respect. Friendship,
he remembered her saying, was a thing you had to earn. When you'd earned
it, it couldn't be withheld from you. Well, it was right she should be
told that; made to understand it to the full. He couldn't ask her to
come back to him. But she must know that her respect was as necessary
now to him, as she'd once said his was to her. He must tell her that. He
must see her and tell her that.
He stopped abruptly in his walk. His bones, as the Psalmist said, turned
to water. How should he confront that gaze of hers, which knew so much
and understood so deeply--he with the memory of his two last ignominious
encounters with her, behind him?
CHAPTER III
FRIENDS
Except for the vacuum where the core and heart of it all ought to have
been, Rose's life in New York during the year that put her on the high
road to success as a designer of costumes for the theater, was a good
life, broadening, stimulating, seasoning.
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