H. Wells - Ann Veronica

This afternoon, when she was urgent to explain her hampering and

tainting complication with Ramage, the realization of this alien

quality in her relationship with Manning became acute. Hitherto

it had been qualified by her conception of all life as a

compromise, by her new effort to be unexacting of life. But she

perceived that to tell Manning of her Ramage adventures as they

had happened would be like tarring figures upon a water-color.

They were in different key, they had a different timbre. How

could she tell him what indeed already began to puzzle herself,

why she had borrowed that money at all? The plain fact was that

she had grabbed a bait. She had grabbed! She became less and

less attentive to his meditative, self-complacent fragments of

talk as she told herself this. Her secret thoughts made some

hasty, half-hearted excursions into the possibility of telling

the thing in romantic tones--Ramage was as a black villain, she

as a white, fantastically white, maiden. . . . She doubted if

Manning would even listen to that. He would refuse to listen and

absolve her unshriven.

Then it came to her with a shock, as an extraordinary oversight,

that she could never tell Manning about Ramage--never.

She dismissed the idea of doing so. But that still left the

forty pounds! . . .

Her mind went on generalizing. So it would always be between

herself and Manning. She saw her life before her robbed of all

generous illusions, the wrappered life unwrappered forever,

vistas of dull responses, crises of make-believe, years of

exacting mutual disregard in a misty garden of fine sentiments.

But did any woman get anything better from a man? Perhaps every

woman conceals herself from a man perforce! . . .

She thought of Capes. She could not help thinking of Capes.

Surely Capes was different. Capes looked at one and not over

one, spoke to one, treated one as a visible concrete fact. Capes

saw her, felt for her, cared for her greatly, even if he did not

love her. Anyhow, he did not sentimentalize her. And she had

been doubting since that walk in the Zoological Gardens whether,

indeed, he did simply care for her. Little things, almost

impalpable, had happened to justify that doubt; something in his

manner had belied his words. Did he not look for her in the

morning when she entered--come very quickly to her? She thought

of him as she had last seen him looking down the length of the

laboratory to see her go. Why had he glanced up--quite in that

way? . . .

The thought of Capes flooded her being like long-veiled sunlight

breaking again through clouds. It came to her like a dear thing

rediscovered, that she loved Capes. It came to her that to marry

any one but Capes was impossible. If she could not marry him,

she would not marry any one. She would end this sham with

Manning. It ought never to have begun. It was cheating, pitiful

cheating. And then if some day Capes wanted her--saw fit to

alter his views upon friendship. . . .

Dim possibilities that she would not seem to look at even to

herself gesticulated in the twilight background of her mind.

She leaped suddenly at a desperate resolution, and in one moment

had made it into a new self. She flung aside every plan she had

in life, every discretion. Of course, why not? She would be

honest, anyhow!

She turned her eyes to Manning.

He was sitting back from the table now, with one arm over the

back of his green chair and the other resting on the little

table. He was smiling under his heavy mustache, and his head was

a little on one side as he looked at her.

"And what was that dreadful confession you had to make?" he was

saying. His quiet, kindly smile implied his serene disbelief in

any confessible thing. Ann Veronica pushed aside a tea-cup and

the vestiges of her strawberries and cream, and put her elbows

before her on the table. "Mr. Manning," she said, "I HAVE a

confession to make."

"I wish you would use my Christian name," he said.

She attended to that, and then dismissed it as unimportant.

Something in her voice and manner conveyed an effect of unwonted

gravity to him. For the first time he seemed to wonder what it

might be that she had to confess. His smile faded.

"I don't think our engagement can go on," she plunged, and felt

exactly that loss of breath that comes with a dive into icy

water.

"But, how," he said, sitting up astonished beyond measure, "not

go on?"

"I have been thinking while you have been talking. You see--I

didn't understand."

She stared hard at her finger-nails. "It is hard to express

one's self, but I do want to be honest with you. When I promised

to marry you I thought I could; I thought it was a possible

arrangement. I did think it could be done. I admired your

chivalry. I was grateful."

She paused.

"Go on," he said.

She moved her elbow nearer to him and spoke in a still lower

tone. "I told you I did not love you."

"I know," said Manning, nodding gravely. "It was fine and brave

of you."

"But there is something more."

She paused again.

"I--I am sorry-- I didn't explain. These things are difficult.

It wasn't clear to me that I had to explain. . . . I love some

one else."

They remained looking at each other for three or four seconds.

Then Manning flopped back in his chair and dropped his chin like

a man shot. There was a long silence between them.

"My God!" he said at last, with tremendous feeling, and then

again, "My God!"

Now that this thing was said her mind was clear and calm. She

heard this standard expression of a strong soul wrung with a

critical coldness that astonished herself. She realized dimly

that there was no personal thing behind his cry, that countless

myriads of Mannings had "My God!"-ed with an equal gusto at

situations as flatly apprehended. This mitigated her remorse

enormously. He rested his brow on his hand and conveyed

magnificent tragedy by his pose.

"But why," he said in the gasping voice of one subduing an agony,

and looked at her from under a pain-wrinkled brow, "why did you

not tell me this before?"

"I didn't know-- I thought I might be able to control myself."

"And you can't?"

"I don't think I ought to control myself."

"And I have been dreaming and thinking--"

"I am frightfully sorry. . . ."

"But-- This bolt from the blue! My God! Ann Veronica, you don't

understand. This--this shatters a world!"

She tried to feel sorry, but her sense of his immense egotism was

strong and clear.

He went on with intense urgency.

"Why did you ever let me love you? Why did you ever let me peep

through the gates of Paradise? Oh! my God! I don't begin to

feel and realize this yet. It seems to me just talk; it seems to

me like the fancy of a dream. Tell me I haven't heard. This is

a joke of yours." He made his voice very low and full, and

looked closely into her face.

She twisted her fingers tightly. "It isn't a joke," she said.

"I feel shabby and disgraced. . . . I ought never to have

thought of it. Of you, I mean. . . ."

He fell back in his chair with an expression of tremendous

desolation. "My God!" he said again. . . .

They became aware of the waitress standing over them with book

and pencil ready for their bill. "Never mind the bill," said

Manning tragically, standing up and thrusting a four-shilling

piece into her hand, and turning a broad back on her