because they are sexless; they hated men who loved them passionately
because such love was tainted with the romantic and imaginative quality
that spurs them to the folly of science and art and exploration. And yet
surely there were other women. Surely there was a woman somewhere who,
if one loved her, would prove not a mere possession who would either
bore one or go and get lost just when one had grown accustomed to it,
but would be an endless research. A woman who would not be a mere film
of graceful submissiveness but real as a chemical substance, so that one
could observe her reactions and find out her properties; and like a
chemical substance, irreducible to final terms, so that one never came
to an end. A woman who would get excited about life as men do and could
laugh and cheer. A woman whose beauty would be forever significant with
speculation. He perceived with a shock that he was thinking of this
woman not as one thinks of a hypothetical person, but with the glowing
satisfaction which one feels in recounting the charms of a new friend.
He was thinking of some real person. It was someone he had met quite
lately, someone with red hair. He was thinking of that little Ellen
Melville.

He looked across the hall at her. Their eyes met.


IV

When he went over to her side at the end of the meeting she glowered at
him and said, "Oh, it's you!" as if it was the first time she had set
eyes upon him that evening; but he knew that that was just because she
was shy, and he shook hands rather slowly and looked her full in the
face as he said he had liked the speeches so that she might see she
couldn't come it over _him_. And he asked if he might see her home.