The Martian War Read Online Free PDF Page B

and articles. Wells was happy to fill the need. As long as he was with Jane, nothing could be so bad after all.
    He glanced at the pages he had finished, picked up the pen again and instinctively scratched out a few words, scribbling in corrections. Before he realized it, another ten minutes had passed. He forced himself to stop. Priorities, Wells! old T.H. Huxley would have told him, ten years ago. The lovely Miss Jane would be waiting for him, probably already dressed to go out.
    He grinned like an eager schoolboy as he pulled open the door to his makeshift study. Spending time with her was far more enjoyable than writing inane articles.
    Jane had tied back all the curtains and opened the windows to let in fresh breezes, since their rented rooms in Euston were far enough away from the dirty factory smoke in London and upwind from the smelly waters of the Thames. Now, in spring, the flowers the landlady had planted around the small house were in bloom. Starlings sat in the trees, and blackbirds flew over the nearby hedgerows and fields.
    Jane was indeed there, ostensibly waiting for him but preoccupied with her own studies. She sat at the window with a guidebook of the birds of England on her lap, a pair of opera glasses obscuring her dark, wide-set eyes, as she stared out at the trees and the nearby meadow. Her loveliness always took his breath away.
    “My dear Miss Robbins,” he said, a smile appearing below his thin moustache. He sketched a bow. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”
    “Indeed, Mr. Wells,” she answered, setting her book and her opera glasses aside and standing up to offer him a curtsey. “I believe we had an appointment?” She wore a long white skirt and black boots. A lacy shawl covered her shoulders, though Wells doubted the air would be cool enough to require it. Her high-cheekboned face was finely featured, and the irises of her brown eyes were lenses to a clever mind that showed the sharpness of her wit and intelligence. “Besides, this close to home I am not likely to see anything more interesting than a robin or a pigeon. On our walk, perhaps I should take my Guidebook of Wildflowers?”
    “I shall not be looking at anything but you, my dear.”
    “You are a liar, H.G.”
    “I am a writer, Jane. There is a difference.”
    She was quite the opposite from Wells’s newly estranged wife, Isabel. Years ago, as soon as he’d been able to support himself after graduating from the Normal School, he had ill-advisedly married his cousin on the recommendation of her mother and his own parents. It had been a terrible error in judgment. Isabel Wells had a calm personality, a beatific acceptance of things, and an utter lack of curiosity. She was unworldly, shy, and— worst of all—uninteresting. Within weeks of their marriage, they had both known that they’d made a mistake.
    “Shall we go for our walk?” Jane asked him now, taking her opera glasses and the guidebooks for birds and flowers. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”
    “I can think of nothing better to do with the rest of the day.”
    She sniffed. “Really? So much for your supposedly refined imagination.” Jane came forward to give him a quick kiss, then a longer one before reluctantly pulling away with a long sigh.
    “Let me think on it.”
    For a time, Wells had loved Isabel well enough, but she possessed no spark, nothing to engage his furiously working mind. One of Wells’s students, however—Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he called “Jane”—held the fire he needed. Meeting Jane was like sipping fine wine after he’d had only vinegar all his life.
    Now, while Jane adjusted the pale yellow hat that perched on her neatly coiffed auburn hair, he admired her. “Of all the discoveries made by men of science, I believe that you, Jane, will always be my greatest discovery.”
    She took him by the arm, guiding him to the door. “The day awaits us, H.G., and if you continue with this flattery, we will never be about our