H. Wells - Ann Veronica

She stopped with an air of interrogation.

Ramage looked at her for a long and discriminating interval

without speaking. He seemed to be hesitating between two courses

of action. "I don't know much about the technique of music," he

said at last, with his eyes upon her. "It's a matter of feeling

with me."

He contradicted himself by plunging into an exposition of motifs.

By a tacit agreement they ignored the significant thing between

them, ignored the slipping away of the ground on which they had

stood together hitherto. . . .

All through the love music of the second act, until the hunting

horns of Mark break in upon the dream, Ann Veronica's

consciousness was flooded with the perception of a man close

beside her, preparing some new thing to say to her, preparing,

perhaps, to touch her, stretching hungry invisible tentacles

about her. She tried to think what she should do in this

eventuality or that. Her mind had been and was full of the

thought of Capes, a huge generalized Capes-lover. And in some

incomprehensible way, Ramage was confused with Capes; she had a

grotesque disposition to persuade herself that this was really

Capes who surrounded her, as it were, with wings of desire. The

fact that it was her trusted friend making illicit love to her

remained, in spite of all her effort, an insignificant thing in

her mind. The music confused and distracted her, and made her

struggle against a feeling of intoxication. Her head swam. That

was the inconvenience of it; her head was swimming. The music

throbbed into the warnings that preceded the king's irruption.

Abruptly he gripped her wrist. "I love you, Ann Veronica. I

love you--with all my heart and soul."

She put her face closer to his. She felt the warm nearness of

his. "DON'T!" she said, and wrenched her wrist from his

retaining hand.

"My God! Ann Veronica," he said, struggling to keep his hold

upon her; "my God! Tell me--tell me now--tell me you love me!"

His expression was as it were rapaciously furtive. She answered

in whispers, for there was the white arm of a woman in the next

box peeping beyond the partition within a yard of him.

"My hand! This isn't the place."

He released her hand and talked in eager undertones against an

auditory background of urgency and distress.

"Ann Veronica," he said, "I tell you this is love. I love the

soles of your feet. I love your very breath. I have tried not to

tell you--tried to be simply your friend. It is no good. I want

you. I worship you. I would do anything--I would give anything

to make you mine. . . . Do you hear me? Do you hear what I am

saying? . . . Love!"

He held her arm and abandoned it again at her quick defensive

movement. For a long time neither spoke again.

She sat drawn together in her chair in the corner of the box, at

a loss what to say or do--afraid, curious, perplexed. It seemed

to her that it was her duty to get up and clamor to go home to

her room, to protest against his advances as an insult. But she

did not in the least want to do that. These sweeping dignities

were not within the compass of her will; she remembered she liked

Ramage, and owed things to him, and she was interested--she was

profoundly interested. He was in love with her! She tried to

grasp all the welter of values in the situation simultaneously,

and draw some conclusion from their disorder.

He began to talk again in quick undertones that she could not

clearly hear.

"I have loved you," he was saying, "ever since you sat on that

gate and talked. I have always loved you. I don't care what

divides us. I don't care what else there is in the world. I

want you beyond measure or reckoning. . . ."

His voice rose and fell amidst the music and the singing of

Tristan and King Mark, like a voice heard in a badly connected

telephone. She stared at his pleading face.

She turned to the stage, and Tristan was wounded in Kurvenal's

arms, with Isolde at his feet, and King Mark, the incarnation of

masculine force and obligation, the masculine creditor of love

and beauty, stood over him, and the second climax was ending in

wreaths and reek of melodies; and then the curtain was coming

down in a series of short rushes, the music had ended, and the

people were stirring and breaking out into applause, and the

lights of the auditorium were resuming. The lighting-up pierced

the obscurity of the box, and Ramage stopped his urgent flow of

words abruptly and sat back. This helped to restore Ann

Veronica's self-command.

She turned her eyes to him again, and saw her late friend and

pleasant and trusted companion, who had seen fit suddenly to

change into a lover, babbling interesting inacceptable things.

He looked eager and flushed and troubled. His eyes caught at

hers with passionate inquiries. "Tell me," he said; "speak to

me." She realized it was possible to be sorry for him--acutely

sorry for the situation. Of course this thing was absolutely

impossible. But she was disturbed, mysteriously disturbed. She

remembered abruptly that she was really living upon his money.

She leaned forward and addressed him.

"Mr. Ramage," she said, "please don't talk like this."

He made to speak and did not.

"I don't want you to do it, to go on talking to me. I don't want

to hear you. If I had known that you had meant to talk like this

I wouldn't have come here."

"But how can I help it? How can I keep silence?"

"Please!" she insisted. "Please not now."

"I MUST talk with you. I must say what I have to say!"

"But not now--not here."

"It came," he said. "I never planned it-- And now I have

begun--"

She felt acutely that he was entitled to explanations, and as

acutely that explanations were impossible that night. She wanted

to think.

"Mr. Ramage," she said, "I can't-- Not now. Will you please--

Not now, or I must go."

He stared at her, trying to guess at the mystery of her thoughts.

"You don't want to go?"

"No. But I must--I ought--"

"I MUST talk about this. Indeed I must."

"Not now."

"But I love you. I love you--unendurably."

"Then don't talk to me now. I don't want you to talk to me now.

There is a place-- This isn't the place. You have misunderstood.

I can't explain--"

They regarded one another, each blinded to the other. "Forgive

me," he decided to say at last, and his voice had a little quiver

of emotion, and he laid his hand on hers upon her knee. "I am

the most foolish of men. I was stupid--stupid and impulsive

beyond measure to burst upon you in this way. I--I am a love-

sick idiot, and not accountable for my actions. Will you forgive

me--if I say no more?"

She looked at him with perplexed, earnest eyes.

"Pretend," he said, "that all I have said hasn't been said. And

let us go on with our evening. Why not? Imagine I've had a fit

of hysteria--and that I've come round."

"Yes," she said, and abruptly she liked him enormously. She felt

this was the sensible way out of this oddly sinister situation.

He still watched her and questioned her.

"And let us have a talk about this--some other time. Somewhere,

where we can talk without interruption. Will you?"

She thought, and it seemed to him she had never looked so

self-disciplined and deliberate and beautiful. "Yes," she said,

"that is what we ought to do." But now she doubted again of the

quality of the armistice they had just made.