H. Wells - Ann Veronica

astonishment. "Let us walk across the Park at least," he said to

Ann Veronica. "Just at present my mind simply won't take hold of

this at all. . . . I tell you--never mind the bill. Keep it!

Keep it!"

Part 6

They walked a long way that afternoon. They crossed the Park to

the westward, and then turned back and walked round the circle

about the Royal Botanical Gardens and then southwardly toward

Waterloo. They trudged and talked, and Manning struggled, as he

said, to "get the hang of it all."

It was a long, meandering talk, stupid, shameful, and

unavoidable. Ann Veronica was apologetic to the bottom of her

soul. At the same time she was wildly exultant at the resolution

she had taken, the end she had made to her blunder. She had only

to get through this, to solace Manning as much as she could, to

put such clumsy plasterings on his wounds as were possible, and

then, anyhow, she would be free--free to put her fate to the

test. She made a few protests, a few excuses for her action in

accepting him, a few lame explanations, but he did not heed them

or care for them. Then she realized that it was her business to

let Manning talk and impose his own interpretations upon the

situation so far as he was concerned. She did her best to do

this. But about his unknown rival he was acutely curious.

He made her tell him the core of the difficulty.

"I cannot say who he is," said Ann Veronica, "but he is a married

man. . . . No! I do not even know that he cares for me. It is

no good going into that. Only I just want him. I just want him,

and no one else will do. It is no good arguing about a thing

like that."

"But you thought you could forget him."

"I suppose I must have thought so. I didn't understand. Now I

do."

"By God!" said Manning, making the most of the word, "I suppose

it's fate. Fate! You are so frank so splendid!

"I'm taking this calmly now," he said, almost as if he

apologized, "because I'm a little stunned."

Then he asked, "Tell me! has this man, has he DARED to make love

to you?"

Ann Veronica had a vicious moment. "I wish he had," she said.

"But--"

The long inconsecutive conversation by that time was getting on

her nerves. "When one wants a thing more than anything else in

the world," she said with outrageous frankness, "one naturally

wishes one had it."

She shocked him by that. She shattered the edifice he was

building up of himself as a devoted lover, waiting only his

chance to win her from a hopeless and consuming passion.

"Mr. Manning," she said, "I warned you not to idealize me. Men

ought not to idealize any woman. We aren't worth it. We've done

nothing to deserve it. And it hampers us. You don't know the

thoughts we have; the things we can do and say. You are a

sisterless man; you have never heard the ordinary talk that goes

on at a girls' boarding-school."

"Oh! but you ARE splendid and open and fearless! As if I couldn't

allow! What are all these little things? Nothing! Nothing! You

can't sully yourself. You can't! I tell you frankly you may

break off your engagement to me--I shall hold myself still

engaged to you, yours just the same. As for this

infatuation--it's like some obsession, some magic thing laid upon

you. It's not you--not a bit. It's a thing that's happened to

you. It is like some accident. I don't care. In a sense I

don't care. It makes no difference. . . . All the same, I wish

I had that fellow by the throat! Just the virile, unregenerate

man in me wishes that. . . .

"I suppose I should let go if I had.

"You know," he went on, "this doesn't seem to me to end anything.

I'm rather a persistent person. I'm the sort of dog, if you turn

it out of the room it lies down on the mat at the door. I'm not

a lovesick boy. I'm a man, and I know what I mean. It's a

tremendous blow, of course--but it doesn't kill me. And the

situation it makes!--the situation!"

Thus Manning, egotistical, inconsecutive, unreal. And Ann

Veronica walked beside him, trying in vain to soften her heart to

him by the thought of how she had ill-used him, and all the time,

as her feet and mind grew weary together, rejoicing more and more

that at the cost of this one interminable walk she escaped the

prospect of--what was it?--"Ten thousand days, ten thousand

nights" in his company. Whatever happened she need never return

to that possibility.

"For me," Manning went on, "this isn't final. In a sense it

alters nothing. I shall still wear your favor--even if it is a

stolen and forbidden favor--in my casque. . . . I shall still

believe in you. Trust you."

He repeated several times that he would trust her, though it

remained obscure just exactly where the trust came in.

"Look here," he cried out of a silence, with a sudden flash of

understanding, "did you mean to throw me over when you came out

with me this afternoon?"

Ann Veronica hesitated, and with a startled mind realized the

truth. "No," she answered, reluctantly.

"Very well," said Manning. "Then I don't take this as final.

That's all. I've bored you or something. . . . You think you

love this other man! No doubt you do love him. Before you have

lived--"

He became darkly prophetic. He thrust out a rhetorical hand.

"I will MAKE you love me! Until he has faded--faded into a

memory. . ."

He saw her into the train at Waterloo, and stood, a tall, grave

figure, with hat upraised, as the carriage moved forward slowly

and hid him. Ann Veronica sat back with a sigh of relief.

Manning might go on now idealizing her as much as he liked. She

was no longer a confederate in that. He might go on as the

devoted lover until he tired. She had done forever with the Age

of Chivalry, and her own base adaptations of its traditions to

the compromising life. She was honest again.

But when she turned her thoughts to Morningside Park she

perceived the tangled skein of life was now to be further

complicated by his romantic importunity.

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT

Part 1

Spring had held back that year until the dawn of May, and then

spring and summer came with a rush together. Two days after this

conversation between Manning and Ann Veronica, Capes came into

the laboratory at lunch-time and found her alone there standing

by the open window, and not even pretending to be doing anything.

He came in with his hands in his trousers pockets and a general

air of depression in his bearing. He was engaged in detesting

Manning and himself in almost equal measure. His face brightened

at the sight of her, and he came toward her.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Ann Veronica, and stared over her shoulder out of

the window.

"So am I. . . . Lassitude?"

"I suppose so."

"_I_ can't work."

"Nor I," said Ann Veronica.

Pause.

"It's the spring," he said. "It's the warming up of the year,

the coming of the light mornings, the way in which everything

begins to run about and begin new things. Work becomes

distasteful; one thinks of holidays. This year--I've got it

badly. I want to get away. I've never wanted to get away so

much."

"Where do you go?"

"Oh!--Alps."

"Climbing?"

"Yes."

"That's rather a fine sort of holiday!"

He made no answer for three or four seconds.

"Yes," he said, "I want to get away. I feel at moments as though