Ann Veronica

She had one idea, she found, very clear in her mind – that she would get a Research Scholarship, and so contrive another year in the laboratory.

“Now I see what everything means,” said Ann Veronica to herself; and it really felt for some days as though the secret of the universe, that had been wrapped and hidden from her so obstinately, was at last altogether displayed.

CHAPTER THE NINTH

DISCORDS

Part 1

One afternoon, soon after Ann Veronica’s great discovery, a telegram came into the laboratory for her. It ran:

Bored and nothing to do will you dine with me to-night somewhere and talk I shall be grateful

    Ramage

Ann Veronica was rather pleased by this. She had not seen Ramage for ten or eleven days, and she was quite ready for a gossip with him. And now her mind was so full of the thought that she was in love – in love! – that marvellous state! that I really believe she had some dim idea of talking to him about it. At any rate, it would be good to hear him saying the sort of things he did – perhaps now she would grasp them better – with this world-shaking secret brandishing itself about inside her head within a yard of him.

She was sorry to find Ramage a little disposed to be melancholy.

“I have made over seven hundred pounds in the last week,” he 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.