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.But one did have to teach, and Margaret preferred to live in unstructured solitude rather than face a sea of students, arrogant and needy."Stand it? I live for it!" Edward said."'All men by nature desire to know,' said Aristotle.And I am in a place dedicated to the desire to know.I fulfill the desire to know, I satisfy it.Even Lily, the eminently silly Lily, desires to know.She's wrong about everything, isn't she, but on she rushes, determined, lusty, indomitable in her quest, a creature of desire, of the desire to know.Ah, Lily.How many of her students desire to know little Lily, I wonder.""Oh, please," Margaret said, and then she cupped her chin in her hand.Sometimes she felt as small and aloof as a spider, hanging by its thread.No ground beneath its several feet, nor water.But at least a spider could spin a web, a frail sticky gathering place for stray passersby.Till had spun a web, drawing people to her simply by the strength of her desire, her desire to have them there.Edward had spun a web of enthusiasm and pleasure for all around him.Of course, this was a perverse and counterproductive way of viewing friendship: as a trap for struggling, buzzing prey.Still, Margaret thought, shall I spin a web? Isn't that better than being the struggling, buzzing prey in the nets of others?"Margaret, you're so competitive," Edward said when she voiced these ideas on the nature of sociability."And you're so serious.You're even more earnest than I am, and no one is more earnest than I.Friendship! It's not a commandment, my darling.""Yes, but you hear people talking of falling in love, don't you? When you talk of friends, though, you don't fall at all.You make friends.""Well then! To work!"Margaret sighed."Anyway, I'm your friend, aren't I?" Edward said."That's just the trouble, Edward." She looked at him and thought how large he loomed in her life, filling it with interesting talk and real understanding and tender exchanges and good sex and irritating habits and jokes and obscure quotations.He helped her in her work and liked her and cherished her.She wanted nothing else.It didn't seem right."It doesn't seem right.To be satisfied.Don't you want more?""'I exist as I am—that is enough; if no other in the world be aware, I sit content; and if each and all be aware, I sit content.'""Oh, Edward, for heaven's sake.You go ahead and sit content.And get obscenely fat on oysters like Walt Whitman.Is that who you quoted? Well, he's dead now.And I'm not.""Margaret, bless you, you've gone mad at last.How I've longed for this moment.A mad wife! Lock her in the attic.Chain her! Feed her oysters— against her will.Ravage her till dawn.Till noon! Quite my ideal, a mad wife."Oh well, Margaret thought, as Edward pulled her to him.Dissatisfaction can wait.Edward sometimes brought students home for dinner, and Margaret had always welcomed these gatherings, for they pitted her against amateurs only, an enemy far more frightened of her than she was of them.At one of these pleasant, unthreatening dinners, Margaret listened with some interest as a student of Edward's, a boy from Oregon, described his father's mink farm, and as she listened she watched the other student guest.She was from some suburb of Boston, pretty, a little shy, and she had not taken her eyes off Edward all evening.I used to be a girl from some suburb of Boston, pretty, a little shy, and I used to gaze with longing at my professors, Margaret thought.Have you come here to haunt me?Edward smiled indulgently at the girl, but then Edward smiled indulgently at the world.Still, Margaret thought.And she turned away from the girl with a sinking feeling, as a man turns hopelessly from his fate, and then stared at Edward without realizing it, until he turned and smiled at her and reached for her hand and squeezed it.MARGARET HAD BEEN talking to Till for almost forty minutes, which for her pretty much obviated any need to see Till for at least two months, when it occurred to her that people like Till and Edward didn't let that happen
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