Ann sniffed.
"If I was a man, I'd go after what I wanted." Then her eyes softened. "But I'm only a woman. All I can do is to tell you—you're always welcome at Cromley."
She turned and ran up the steps to her laboratory.
In this conversation I realized the basic difference between Ann's point of view and mine, more clearly than before. Her philosophy taught her to be, if not satisfied, at least content, with half things. If she could not get just what she wanted, nor all of it, she tried to be happy with what was available. Doubtless she found life better worth living than I did. But such an attitude towards Suzanne would have seemed to me a desecration. Perhaps if I had sought her out, argued with her, tried to dominate her will—tried figuratively to "beat her a little"—I might have persuaded her to marry me. Perhaps. But what I might have won in this way, would not only have been less than what I wanted, but something quite different.
It had taken no "persuading" to make me love Suzanne. I had seen numberless women, had met, I suppose, several thousands. Many I had known longer than Suzanne. But she stood out from the rest, not as "another" woman, not as a more beautiful, or cleverer or more earnest woman—although she was all these—but as something quite different—my woman. If she did not recognize me, in the same sudden, unarguable way as her man, there was nothing I could do about it. She did not.
The wise man of Israel said that the way of a man with a maid is past all finding out. It would be truer to say that the ways of men with maidens are too varied and numerous for any classifying. My way was perhaps insane. Very likely I was asking of life more than is granted to mortals. But that is small comfort.
Perhaps Suzanne did love me and had, in running away, obeyed some age-old, ineradicable instinct of her sex. It is possible that she mourned because I did not play the venerable game of pursuit. Perhaps if I had taken advantage of the hour when she was wholly mine, it might have "turned the balance." I might have entered into the glory. I do not understand the forces of life which rule our mating. But one thing I know—I was not in love with any Suzanne who could have been "persuaded."
I sat for some time on a bench in Union Square, thinking this out, after I left Ann. I had a strange reluctance to plunge back into the old life. I remember watching with envy two tramps who sat in contemplative silence on a bench opposite me. I was tempted to wander away, out of the world of responsibilities, out into that strange land where nothing matters. There are two sorts of wanderlust; the one which pushes the feet and the one which pushes the spirit. But at last I shook this cowardly lassitude from me and walked downtown to the Teepee.
Nina threw her arms about my neck. Norman pounded me on the back, the little lassie Marie kissed me shyly, and Guiseppe hobbled in from the kitchen to complete the welcome. While they were still storming me with questions, Norman went back to his work. He had a large sheet of drawing paper thumbtacked to the table and was sketching an advertisement for a new brand of pickles. When the rest of them disappeared to kill the fatted calf, he put a hand on my shoulder and looked me over carefully.
"Been on the rocks?" he said.