Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/465

Rh "But surely!—what else?"

"I talked to him in London and then I thought he was quite in the wrong. Since that I've thought all sorts of things—even that you might be in the wrong. In certain minor things."

"Don't mind my vanity now," she cried. "Tell me."

"You see you have defined things—very clearly. You have made it clear to him what you expect him to be, and what you expect him to do. It is like having built a house in which he is to live. For him, to go to her is like going out of a house, a very fine and dignified house, I admit, into something larger, something adventurous and incalculable. She is—she has an air of being—natural. She is as lax and lawless as the sunset, she is as free and familiar as the wind. She doesn't—if I may put it in this way—she doesn't love and respect him when he is this, and disapprove of him highly when he is that; she takes him altogether. She has the quality of the open sky, of the flight of birds, of deep tangled places, she has the quality of the high sea. That I think is what she is for him, she is the Great Outside. You—you have the quality"

He hesitated.

"Go on," she insisted. "Let us get the meaning."

"Of an edifice I don't sympathise with him," said Melville. "I am a tame cat and I should scratch and mew at the door directly I got outside things. I don't want to go out. The thought scares me. But he is different."

"Yes," she said, "he is different."