H. Wells - Ann Veronica

said.

"That's exhilarating," said Ann Veronica.

"Not a bit of it," he said; "it's only a score in a game."

"It's a score you can buy all sorts of things with."

"Nothing that one wants."

He turned to the waiter, who held a wine-card. "Nothing can cheer

me," he said, "except champagne." He meditated. "This," he said,

and then: "No! Is this sweeter? Very well."

"Everything goes well with me," he said, folding his arms under

him and regarding Ann Veronica with the slightly projecting eyes

wide open. "And I'm not happy. I believe I'm in love."

He leaned back for his soup.

Presently he resumed: "I believe I must be in love."

"You can't be that," said Ann Veronica, wisely.

"How do you know?"

"Well, it isn't exactly a depressing state, is it?"

"YOU don't know."

"One has theories," said Ann Veronica, radiantly.

"Oh, theories! Being in love is a fact."

"It ought to make one happy."

"It's an unrest--a longing-- What's that?" The waiter had

intervened. "Parmesan--take it away!"

He glanced at Ann Veronica's face, and it seemed to him that she

really was exceptionally radiant. He wondered why she thought

love made people happy, and began to talk of the smilax and pinks

that adorned the table. He filled her glass with champagne.

"You MUST," he said, "because of my depression."

They were eating quails when they returned to the topic of love.

"What made you think" he said, abruptly, with the gleam of

avidity in his face, "that love makes people happy?"

"I know it must."

"But how?"

He was, she thought, a little too insistent. "Women know these

things by instinct," she answered.

"I wonder," he said, "if women do know things by instinct? I

have my doubts about feminine instinct. It's one of our

conventional superstitions. A woman is supposed to know when a

man is in love with her. Do you think she does?"

Ann Veronica picked among her salad with a judicial expression of

face. "I think she would," she decided.

"Ah!" said Ramage, impressively.

Ann Veronica looked up at him and found him regarding her with

eyes that were almost woebegone, and into which, indeed, he was

trying to throw much more expression than they could carry.

There was a little pause between them, full for Ann Veronica of

rapid elusive suspicions and intimations.

"Perhaps one talks nonsense about a woman's instinct," she said.

"It's a way of avoiding explanations. And girls and women,

perhaps, are different. I don't know. I don't suppose a girl

can tell if a man is in love with her or not in love with her."

Her mind went off to Capes. Her thoughts took words for

themselves. "She can't. I suppose it depends on her own state of

mind. If one wants a thing very much, perhaps one is inclined to

think one can't have it. I suppose if one were to love some one,

one would feel doubtful. And if one were to love some one very

much, it's just so that one would be blindest, just when one

wanted most to see."

She stopped abruptly, afraid that Ramage might be able to infer

Capes from the things she had said, and indeed his face was very

eager.

"Yes?" he said.

Ann Veronica blushed. "That's all," she said "I'm afraid I'm a

little confused about these things."

Ramage looked at her, and then fell into deep reflection as the

waiter came to paragraph their talk again.

"Have you ever been to the opera, Ann Veronica?" said Ramage.

"Once or twice."

"Shall we go now?"

"I think I would like to listen to music. What is there?"

"Tristan."

"I've never heard Tristan and Isolde."

"That settles it. We'll go. There's sure to be a place

somewhere."

"It's rather jolly of you," said Ann Veronica.

"It's jolly of you to come," said Ramage.

So presently they got into a hansom together, and Ann Veronica

sat back feeling very luxurious and pleasant, and looked at the

light and stir and misty glitter of the street traffic from under

slightly drooping eyelids, while Ramage sat closer to her than he

need have done, and glanced ever and again at her face, and made

to speak and said nothing. And when they got to Covent Garden

Ramage secured one of the little upper boxes, and they came into

it as the overture began.

Ann Veronica took off her jacket and sat down in the corner

chair, and leaned forward to look into the great hazy warm brown

cavity of the house, and Ramage placed his chair to sit beside

her and near her, facing the stage. The music took hold of her

slowly as her eyes wandered from the indistinct still ranks of

the audience to the little busy orchestra with its quivering

violins, its methodical movements of brown and silver

instruments, its brightly lit scores and shaded lights. She had

never been to the opera before except as one of a congested mass

of people in the cheaper seats, and with backs and heads and

women's hats for the frame of the spectacle; there was by

contrast a fine large sense of space and ease in her present

position. The curtain rose out of the concluding bars of the

overture and revealed Isolde on the prow of the barbaric ship.

The voice of the young seaman came floating down from the

masthead, and the story of the immortal lovers had begun. She

knew the story only imperfectly, and followed it now with a

passionate and deepening interest. The splendid voices sang on

from phase to phase of love's unfolding, the ship drove across

the sea to the beating rhythm of the rowers. The lovers broke

into passionate knowledge of themselves and each other, and then,

a jarring intervention, came King Mark amidst the shouts of the

sailormen, and stood beside them.

The curtain came festooning slowly down, the music ceased, the

lights in the auditorium glowed out, and Ann Veronica woke out of

her confused dream of involuntary and commanding love in a glory

of sound and colors to discover that Ramage was sitting close

beside her with one hand resting lightly on her waist. She made a

quick movement, and the hand fell away.

"By God! Ann Veronica," he said, sighing deeply. "This stirs

one."

She sat quite still looking at him.

"I wish you and I had drunk that love potion," he said.

She found no ready reply to that, and he went on: "This music is

the food of love. It makes me desire life beyond measure. Life!

Life and love! It makes me want to be always young, always

strong, always devoting my life--and dying splendidly."

"It is very beautiful," said Ann Veronica in a low tone.

They said no more for a moment, and each was now acutely aware of

the other. Ann Veronica was excited and puzzled, with a sense of

a strange and disconcerting new light breaking over her relations

with Ramage. She had never thought of him at all in that way

before. It did not shock her; it amazed her, interested her

beyond measure. But also this must not go on. She felt he was

going to say something more--something still more personal and

intimate. She was curious, and at the same time clearly resolved

she must not hear it. She felt she must get him talking upon some

impersonal theme at any cost. She snatched about in her mind.

"What is the exact force of a motif?" she asked at random.

"Before I heard much Wagnerian music I heard enthusiastic

descriptions of it from a mistress I didn't like at school. She

gave me an impression of a sort of patched quilt; little bits of

patterned stuff coming up again and again."