H. Wells - Ann Veronica

she had a little tinge of annoyance at Miss Garvice's advantage.

Afterwards she hunted up the article in question, and it seemed

to her quite delightfully written and argued. Capes had the gift

of easy, unaffected writing, coupled with very clear and logical

thinking, and to follow his written thought gave her the

sensation of cutting things with a perfectly new, perfectly sharp

knife. She found herself anxious to read more of him, and the

next Wednesday she went to the British Museum and hunted first

among the half-crown magazines for his essays and then through

various scientific quarterlies for his research papers. The

ordinary research paper, when it is not extravagant theorizing,

is apt to be rather sawdusty in texture, and Ann Veronica was

delighted to find the same easy and confident luminosity that

distinguished his work for the general reader. She returned to

these latter, and at the back of her mind, as she looked them

over again, was a very distinct resolve to quote them after the

manner of Miss Garvice at the very first opportunity.

When she got home to her lodgings that evening she reflected with

something like surprise upon her half-day's employment, and

decided that it showed nothing more nor less than that Capes was

a really very interesting person indeed.

And then she fell into a musing about Capes. She wondered why he

was so distinctive, so unlike other men, and it never occurred to

her for some time that this might be because she was falling in

love with him.

Part 5

Yet Ann Veronica was thinking a very great deal about love. A

dozen shynesses and intellectual barriers were being outflanked

or broken down in her mind. All the influences about her worked

with her own predisposition and against all the traditions of her

home and upbringing to deal with the facts of life in an

unabashed manner. Ramage, by a hundred skilful hints had led her

to realize that the problem of her own life was inseparably

associated with, and indeed only one special case of, the

problems of any woman's life, and that the problem of a woman's

life is love.

"A young man comes into life asking how best he may place

himself," Ramage had said; "a woman comes into life thinking

instinctively how best she may give herself."

She noted that as a good saying, and it germinated and spread

tentacles of explanation through her brain. The biological

laboratory, perpetually viewing life as pairing and breeding and

selection, and again pairing and breeding, seemed only a

translated generalization of that assertion. And all the talk of

the Miniver people and the Widgett people seemed always to be

like a ship in adverse weather on the lee shore of love. "For

seven years," said Ann Veronica, "I have been trying to keep

myself from thinking about love. . . .

"I have been training myself to look askance at beautiful

things."

She gave herself permission now to look at this squarely. She

made herself a private declaration of liberty. "This is mere

nonsense, mere tongue-tied fear!" she said. "This is the slavery

of the veiled life. I might as well be at Morningside Park.

This business of love is the supreme affair in life, it is the

woman's one event and crisis that makes up for all her other

restrictions, and I cower--as we all cower--with a blushing and

paralyzed mind until it overtakes me! . . .

"I'll be hanged if I do."

But she could not talk freely about love, she found, for all that

manumission.

Ramage seemed always fencing about the forbidden topic, probing

for openings, and she wondered why she did not give him them.

But something instinctive prevented that, and with the finest

resolve not to be "silly" and prudish she found that whenever he

became at all bold in this matter she became severely scientific

and impersonal, almost entomological indeed, in her method; she

killed every remark as he made it and pinned it out for

examination. In the biological laboratory that was their

invincible tone. But she disapproved more and more of her own

mental austerity. Here was an experienced man of the world, her

friend, who evidently took a great interest in this supreme topic

and was willing to give her the benefit of his experiences! Why

should not she be at her ease with him? Why should not she know

things? It is hard enough anyhow for a human being to learn, she

decided, but it is a dozen times more difficult than it need be

because of all this locking of the lips and thoughts.

She contrived to break down the barriers of shyness at last in

one direction, and talked one night of love and the facts of love

with Miss Miniver.

But Miss Miniver was highly unsatisfactory. She repeated phrases

of Mrs. Goopes's: "Advanced people," she said, with an air of

great elucidation, "tend to GENERALIZE love. 'He prayeth best

who loveth best--all things both great and small.' For my own

part I go about loving."

"Yes, but men;" said Ann Veronica, plunging; "don't you want the

love of men?"

For some seconds they remained silent, both shocked by this

question.

Miss Miniver looked over her glasses at her friend almost

balefully. "NO!" she said, at last, with something in her voice

that reminded Ann Veronica of a sprung tennis-racket.

"I've been through all that," she went on, after a pause.

She spoke slowly. "I have never yet met a man whose intellect I

could respect."

Ann Veronica looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and decided

to persist on principle.

"But if you had?" she said.

"I can't imagine it," said Miss Miniver. "And think, think"--her

voice sank--"of the horrible coarseness!"

"What coarseness?" said Ann Veronica.

"My dear Vee!" Her voice became very low. "Don't you know?"

"Oh! I know--"

"Well--" Her face was an unaccustomed pink.

Ann Veronica ignored her friend's confusion.

"Don't we all rather humbug about the coarseness? All we women, I

mean," said she. She decided to go on, after a momentary halt.

"We pretend bodies are ugly. Really they are the most beautiful

things in the world. We pretend we never think of everything

that makes us what we are."

"No," cried Miss Miniver, almost vehemently. "You are wrong! I

did not think you thought such things. Bodies! Bodies! Horrible

things! We are souls. Love lives on a higher plane. We are not

animals. If ever I did meet a man I could love, I should love

him" --her voice dropped again--"platonically."

She made her glasses glint. "Absolutely platonically," she said.

"Soul to soul."

She turned her face to the fire, gripped her hands upon her

elbows, and drew her thin shoulders together in a shrug. "Ugh!"

she said.

Ann Veronica watched her and wondered about her.

"We do not want the men," said Miss Miniver; "we do not want

them, with their sneers and loud laughter. Empty, silly, coarse

brutes. Brutes! They are the brute still with us! Science some

day may teach us a way to do without them. It is only the women

matter. It is not every sort of creature needs--these males. Some

have no males."

"There's green-fly," admitted Ann Veronica. "And even then--"

The conversation hung for a thoughtful moment.

Ann Veronica readjusted her chin on her hand. "I wonder which of

us is right," she said. "I haven't a scrap--of this sort of

aversion."

"Tolstoy is so good about this," said Miss Miniver, regardless of