 CHAPTER XIII. PART ONE For a time that ring set with sapphires seemed to be, after all, the satisfactory solution of Anne Veronica's difficulties. It was like pouring a strong acid over dulled metal. A tarnish of constraint that had recently spread over her intercourse with capes vanished again. They embarked upon an open and declared friendship. They even talked about friendship. They went to the zoological gardens together one Saturday, to see for themselves a point of morphological interest about the two kens' fill—that friendly and entertaining bird. And they spent the rest of the afternoon walking about and elaborating in general terms this theme and the superiority of intellectual fellowship to all merely passionate relationships. Upon this topic capes was heavy and conscientious, but that seemed to her to be just exactly what he ought to be. He was also, had she known it, more than a little insincere. We are only in the dawn of the age of friendship, he said, when interest, I suppose, will take the place of passions. Either you have had to love people or hate them—which is a sort of love, too, in its way—to get anything out of them. Now more and more we're going to be interested in them, to be curious about them, and quite mildly experimental with them. He seemed to be elaborating ideas as he talked. They watched the chimpanzees in the new apes' house, and admired the gentle humanity of their eyes, so much more human than human beings. And they watched the agile human in the next apartment, doing wonderful leaps and aerials, some sorts. I wonder which of us enjoys that the most, said capes. Does he, or do we? He seems to get a zest. He does it and forgets it. We remember it. His joyful bounds just lace into the stuff of my memories and stay there for ever. Living's just material. It's very good to be alive. It's better to know life than be life. One may do both, said Anne Veronica. She was in a very uncritical state that afternoon. When he said, Let's go and see the Warthog, she thought no one ever had had so quick a flow of good ideas as he. And when he explained that sugar and not buns was the talisman of popularity among the animals, she marveled at his practical omniscience. Finally at the exit to Regent's Park, they ran against Miss Clegg. It was the expression of Miss Clegg's face that put the idea into Anne Veronica's head of showing manning at the college one day, an idea which she didn't for some reason or other carry out for a fortnight. When at last she did so, the sapphire ring took on a new quality in the imagination of cakes. It ceased to be the symbol of liberty and a remote and quite abstracted person, and became suddenly and very disagreeably the token of a large and potentious body visible and tangible. Manning appeared just at the end of the afternoon's work, and the biologist was going through some perplexities the Scotchman had created by a metaphysical treatment of the skulls of hyrax and a young African elephant. He was clearing up these difficulties by tracing a partially obliterated suture the Scotchman had overlooked when the door from the passage opened and manning came into his universe. Seen down the length of the laboratory, manning looked a very handsome and shapely gentleman indeed, and at the sight of his eager advance to his fiancée, Miss Clegg replaced one long cherished romance about Anne Veronica by one more normal and simple. He carried a cane and a silk hat with a mourning band in one grey-gloved hand. His rock coat and trousers were admirable. His handsome face, his black moustache, his prominent brow conveyed an eager solicitude. I want, he said with a white hand outstretched, to take you out to tea. I've been clearing up, said Anne Veronica brightly. All your dreadful scientific things, he said, with a smile that Miss Clegg thought extraordinary kindly. All my dreadful scientific things, said Anne Veronica. He stood back smiling with an air of proprietorship and looking about him at the businesslike equipment of the room. The low ceiling made him seem abnormally tall. Anne Veronica wiped a scalpel, put a card over a watch-glass containing thin shreds of embryonic guinea pig swimming in morph stain, and dismantled her microscope. I wish I understood more of biology, said manning. I'm ready, said Anne Veronica, closing her microscope box with a click, and looking for one brief instant up the laboratory. We have no airs and graces here, and my hat hangs from a peg in the passage. She led the way to the door, and manning passed behind her and round her, and opened the door for her. When capes glanced up at them for a moment, manning seemed to be holding his arms all about her, and there was nothing but quiet acquiescence in her bearing. After capes had finished the scotchman's troubles, he went back into the preparation room. He sat down on the sill of the open window, folded his arms, and stared straight before him for a long time over the wilderness of tiles and chimney-pots into a sky that was blue and empty. He was not addicted to monologue, and the only audible comment he permitted himself at first upon a universe that was evidently anything but satisfactory to him that afternoon was one compact and entirely unassigned, damn! The word must have had some gratifying quality, because he repeated it. Then he stood up and repeated it again. "'The fool I have been!' he cried, and now speech was coming to him. He tried this sentence with expletives. "'Ass!' he went on, still warming. "'Muckheaded, moral ass! I ought to have done anything! I ought to have done anything! What's a man for? Friendship!' He doubled up his fist and seemed to contemplate thrusting it through the window. He turned his back on that temptation. Then suddenly he seized a new preparation bottle that stood upon his table, and contained the better part of a week's work, a displayed dissection of a snail beautifully done, and hurled it across the room to smash resoundingly upon the cemented floor under the bookcase. Then without either haste or pause he swept his arm along a shelf of reagents and sent them to mingle with the debris on the floor. They fell in a diapason of smashes. "'Hmmm!' he said, regarding the wreckage with a calmer visage. "'Silly!' he remarked after a pause. One hardly knows—all the time.' He put his hands in his pockets, his mouth puckered to a whistle, and he went to the door of the outer preparation room and stood there, looking, save for the faintest intensification of his natural ruddiness, the embodiment of blond serenity. "'Gellet!' he called. "'Just come and clear up a mess, will you? I've smashed some things.' Part III. There was one serious flaw in Anne Veronica's arrangements for self-rehabilitation, and that was Rammage. He hung over her. He and his loan to her, and his connection with her, and that terrible evening—a vague, disconcerting possibility of annoyance and exposure. She could not see any relief from this anxiety except repayment, and repayment seemed impossible. The raising of twenty-five pounds was a task altogether beyond her powers. Her birthday was four months away, and that, at its extremest point, might give her another five pounds. The thing rankled in her mind night and day. She would wake in the night to repeat her bitter cry. Oh, why did I burn those notes? It added greatly to the annoyance of the situation that she had twice seen Rammage in the avenue since her return to the shelter of her father's roof. He had saluted her with elaborate civility, his eyes distended with indecipherable meanings. She felt she was bound in honour to tell the whole affair to Manning sooner or later. Indeed it seemed inevitable that she must clear it up with his assistance, or not at all. And when Manning was not about the thing seemed simple enough, she would compose extremely lucid and honourable explanations. But when it came to broaching them, it proved to be much more difficult than she had supposed. They went down the great staircase of the building, and while she sought in her mind for a beginning, he broke into appreciation of her simple dress and self-congratulations upon their engagement. It makes me feel, he said, that nothing is impossible, to have you here beside me. I said that day at Serviton, there's many good things in life, but there's only one best, and that's the wild-haired girl who's pulling away at that oar. I will make her my grail, and some day, perhaps, of God-wills, she shall become my wife. He looked very hard before him, as he said this, and his voice was full of deep feeling. Grail, said Ann Veronica, and then, oh yes, of course, anything but a holy one, I'm afraid. All together holy, Ann Veronica, ah, but you can't imagine what you are to me, and what you mean to me, as opposed there is something mystical and wonderful about all women. There is something mystical and wonderful about all human beings. I don't see that men need banquet with the women. A man does, said Manning, a true man anyhow, and for me there is only one treasure house. By Jove, when I think of it, I want to leap and shout. It would astonish that man with the barrow. It astonishes me that I don't, said Manning, in a tone of intense self-enjoyment. I think, began Ann Veronica, that you don't realize. He disregarded her entirely. He waved an arm and spoke with peculiar resonance. I feel like a giant. I believe now I shall do great things. God's what it must be to pour out strong, splendid verse. Mighty lines, mighty lines. If I do Ann Veronica, it will be you. It will be all together you. I will dedicate my books to you. I will lay them all at your feet. He beamed upon her. I don't think you realize, Ann Veronica began again, that I am rather a defective human being. I don't want to, said Manning. They say there are spots on the sun. Not for me. It warms me and lights me and fills my world with flowers. Why should I peep at it through smoked glass to see things that don't affect me? He smiled his delight at his companion. I've got bad faults. He shook his head slowly, smiling mysteriously. But perhaps I want to confess them. I grant you absolution. I don't want absolution. I want to make myself visible to you. I wish I could make you visible to yourself. I don't believe in the faults. They're just a joyous softening of the outline. They're more beautiful than perfection, like the flaws of an old marble. If you talk of your faults, I shall talk of your splendors. I do want to tell you things nevertheless. We'll have, thank God, ten myriad days to tell each other things, what I think of it. But these are things I want to tell you now. I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I've no name for it yet. Epithalomy might do. Like him who stood on Darien, I view on Chartered Sea, ten thousand days ten thousand nights before my Queen and me. And that only brings me up to about sixty-five. A gritting wilderness of time that to the sunset reaches, no keel is yet its waves has plowed or gritted on its features, and we will sail that splendor-wide from day to day together, from isle to isle of happiness through years of God's own weather. Yes, said his prospective fellow sailor, that's very pretty. She stopped short, full of things, un-said, pretty, ten thousand days ten thousand nights. You shall tell me your faults, said Manning, if they matter to you they matter. It isn't precisely faults, said Anne Veronica, it's something that bothers me. Ten thousand, put that way it seemed so different. Then assuredly, said Manning, she found a little difficulty in beginning. She was glad when he went on. I want to be your city of refuge from every sort of bother. I want to stand between you and all the force and valeness of the world. I want to make you feel that here is a place where the crowd does not clamour, nor ill winds blow. It is all very well, said Anne Veronica, unheeded. That is my dream of you, said Manning, warming. I want my life to be beaten gold just in order to make it a fitting setting for yours. There you will be in an inner temple. I want to enrich it with hangings and gladden it with verses. I want to fill it with fine and precious things, and by degrees, perhaps, that made in distrust of yours that makes you shrink from my kisses will vanish. Give me a certain warmth, creeps into my words. The park is green and grey to-day, but I am glowing pink and gold. It is difficult to express these things." Part 4 They sat with tea and strawberries and creamed before them at a little table in front of the pavilion in Regent's Park. Her confession was still unmade. Manning leaned forward on the table, talking discursively on the probable brilliance of their married life. And Veronica sat back in an attitude of inattention, her eyes on a distant game of cricket, her mind perplexed and busy. She was recalling the circumstances under which she had engaged herself to Manning, and trying to understand a curious development of the quality of this relationship. The particulars of her engagement were very clear in her memory. She had taken care he should have this momentous talk with her on a garden seat commanded by the windows of the house. She had been playing tennis with his manifest intention looming over her. "'Let us sit down for a moment,' he had said. He made his speech a little elaborately. She plucked at the knots of her racket and heard him to the end, then spoke in a restrained undertone. "'You ask me to be engaged to you, Mr. Manning,' she began. "'I want to lay all my life at your feet. Mr. Manning, I do not think I love you. I want to be very plain with you. I have nothing—nothing that can possibly be passion for you. I am sure—nothing at all.' He was silent for some moments. "'Perhaps that is only sleeping,' he said. "'How can you know?' "'I think—perhaps I am rather a cold-blooded person.' She stopped. He remained listening attentively. "'You have been very kind to me,' she said. "'I would give my life for you.' Her heart had warmed toward him. It had seemed to her that life might be very good indeed with his kindness and sacrifice about her. She thought of him as always courteous and helpful, as realising indeed his ideal of protection and service, as chivalrously leaving her free to live her own life, rejoicing with an infinite generosity in every detail of her irresponsible being. She twang'd the cat-gut under her fingers. "'It seems so unfair,' she said, to take all you offer me and give so little in return. "'It is all the world to me, and we are not traders looking at equivalents.' "'You know, Mr. Manning, I do not really want to marry.' "'No. It seems so—so unworthy,' she peaked among her phrases, "'of the noble love you give.' She stopped through the difficulty she found in expressing herself. "'But I am judge of that,' said Manning. "'Would you wait for me?' Manning was silent for a space. "'As my lady wills. "'Would you let me go on studying for a time?' "'If you order patience.' "'I think, Mr. Manning. I do not know. It is so difficult. When I think of the love you give me, one ought to give you back love.' "'You like me?' "'Yes, and I'm grateful to you.' Manning tapped with his racket on the turf through some moments of silence. "'You are the most perfect, the most glorious of creative things. "'Tender, frank and electoral, brave, beautiful. I am your servitor. I am ready to wait for you, to wait your pleasure, to give all my life to winning it. Let me only wear your livery. Give me but leave to try. You want to think for a time, to be free for a time. "'That is so like you, Diana. "'Palestine. Palestine is better. You are all the slender goddesses. I understand. Let me engage myself. That is all I ask.' She looked at him. His face, downcast and in profile, was handsome and strong. Her gratitude swelled within her. "'You are too good for me,' she said in a low voice. "'Then you, you will?' A long pause. "'It isn't fair. But will you?' "'Yes.' For some seconds he had remained quite still. "'If I sit here,' he said, standing up before her abruptly, "'I shall have to shout. Let us walk about. "'Tum, tum, tum, tum, tum, tum, tum.' That thing of Mendelssohn's. "'If making one human being absolutely happy "'is any satisfaction to you.' He held up his hands, and she also stood up. He drew her close up to him with a strong, steady pull. Then suddenly, in front of all those windows, he folded her in his arms and pressed her to him and kissed her unresisting face. "'Don't!' cried Anne Veronica, struggling faintly, and he released her. "'Forgive me,' he said, but I am at singing pitch.' She had a moment of sheer panic at the thing she had done. "'Mr. Manning,' she said, "'for a time, will you tell no one? "'Will you keep this our secret? "'I'm doubtful. Will you please not even tell my aunt?' "'As you will,' he said, "'but if my manna tells, I cannot help it if that shows. "'You only mean a secret for a little time.'" "'Just for a little time,' she said. "'Yes.'" But the ring and her aunt's triumphant eye, and a note of approval in her father's manna, and a novel disposition in him to praise Manning in a just, impartial voice, had soon placed very definite qualifications upon that covenanted secrecy. Part Five At first the quality of her relationship to Manning seemed moving and beautiful to Anne Veronica. She admired and rather pitied him, and she was unfainedly grateful to him. She even thought that perhaps she might come to love him, in spite of that faint, indefinable flavour of absurdity that pervaded his courtly bearing. She would never love him as she loved capes, of course, but there are grades and qualities of love. For Manning it would be a more temperate love altogether. Much more temperate. The discreet and joyless love of a virtuous, reluctant, condescending wife. She had been quite convinced that an engagement with him, and at last a marriage, had exactly that quality of compromise which distinguishes the ways of the wise. It would be the rapid world almost at its best. She saw herself building up a life upon that. A life restrained, kindly, beautiful, a little pathetic, and altogether dignified. A life of great disciplines and suppressions and extensive reserves. But the ramage affair needed clearing up, of course. It was a flaw upon that project. She had to explain about and pay off that forty pounds. Then, quite insensibly, her queenliness had declined. She was never able to trace the changes her attitude had undergone, from the time when she believed herself to be the pampered queen of fortune, the crown of a good man's love, and secretly but nobly worshipping someone else. To the time when she realized she was, in fact, just a mannequin for her lover's imagination, and that he cared no more for the realities of her being, for the things she felt and desired, for the passions and dreams that might move her, than a child cares for the sawdust in its doll. She was the actress his whim had chosen to play a passive part. It was one of the most educational disillusionments in Anne Veronica's career. But did many women get anything better? This afternoon, when she was urgent to explain her hampering and tainting complication with ramage, the realization of this alien quality in her relationship with manning became acute. Here the two had been qualified by her conception of all life as a compromise, by her new effort to be unexacting of life. But she perceived that to tell manning of her ramage adventures as they had happened would be like tiring figures upon a water-color. They were in different key, they had a different timbre. How could she tell him what indeed already began to puzzle herself? Why she had borrowed that money at all? The plain fact was that she had grabbed a bait. She had grabbed! She became less and less attentive to his meditative, self-complacent fragments of talk as she told herself this. The secret thoughts made some hasty, half-hearted excursions into the possibility of telling the thing in romantic tones. Ramage was as a black villain, she as a white, fantastically white maiden. She doubted if manning would even listen to that. He would refuse to listen and absolve her untriven. Then it came to her with a shock, as an extraordinary oversight, that she could never tell manning about ramage, never. She dismissed the idea of doing so. But that still left the forty pounds. Her mind went on generalising. So it would always be between herself and manning. She saw her life before her robbed of all generous illusions, the rapid life, unrappid forever, vistas of dull responses, crises of make-believe, years of exacting neutral disregard and a misty garden of fine sentiments. But did any woman get anything better from a man? Perhaps every woman conceals herself from a man perforce. She thought of Capes. She could not help thinking of Capes. Surely Capes was different. Capes looked at one and not over one, spoke to one, treated one as a visible concrete fact. Capes saw her, felt for her, cared for her greatly, even if he did not love her. Anyhow he did not sentimentalise her, and she had been doubting since that walk in his zoological gardens whether indeed he did simply care for her. Little things, almost impulpable, had happened to justify that doubt. Something in his manner had belied his words. Did he not look for her in the morning when she entered, come very quickly to her? She thought of him as she had last seen him looking down the length of the laboratory to see her go. Why had he glanced up? Quite in that way. The thought of Capes flooded her being like long veiled sunlight breaking again through clouds. It came to her like a dear thing rediscovered, that she loved Capes. It came to her that to marry anyone but Capes was impossible. If she could not marry him, she would not marry anyone. She would end this sham with manning. It ought never to have begun. It was cheating, pitiful cheating. And then if some day Capes wanted her, saw fit to alter his views upon friendship, dim possibilities that she would not seem to look at even to herself, gesticulated in the twilight background of her mind. She leapt suddenly at a desperate resolution, and in one moment had made it into a new self. She flung aside every plan she had in life, every discretion. Of course. Why not? She would be honest, anyhow. She turned her eyes to manning. He was sitting back from the table now, with one arm over the back of his green chair, and the other resting on the little table. He was smiling under his heavy moustache, and his head was a little on one side as he looked at her. And what was that dreadful confession you had to make? He was saying. His quiet, kindly smile implied his serene disbelief in any confessible thing. Anne Veronica pushed aside a teacup and the vestiges of her strawberries and cream, and put her elbows before her on the table. Mr. Manning, she said, I have a confession to make. I wish you would use my Christian name, he said. She attended to that, and then dismissed it as unimportant. Manning in her voice and manner conveyed an effect of unwanted gravity to him. For the first time he seemed to wonder what it might be that she had to confess. His smile faded. I don't think our engagement can go on, she plunged, and felt exactly that loss of breath that comes with a dive into icy water. But how? He said, sitting up astonished beyond measure. Not go on. I have been thinking while you have been talking. You see, I didn't understand. She stared hard at her fingernails. It is hard to express oneself, but I do want to be honest with you. When I promised to marry you, I thought I could. I thought it was a possible arrangement. I did think it could be done. I admired your chivalry. I was grateful. She paused. Go on, he said. She moved her elbow nearer to him, and spoke in a still lower tone. I told you I did not love you. I know, said Manning, nodding gravely. It was fine and brave of you. But there is something more. She paused again. I—I'm sorry. I didn't explain. These things are difficult. It wasn't clear to me that I had to explain. I love someone else. They remained looking at each other for three or four seconds. Then Manning flopped back in his chair and dropped his chin like a man shot. There was a long silence between them. My God! He said at last, with tremendous feeling. And then again, My God! Now that this thing was said, her mind was clear and calm. She heard this standard expression of a strong soul rung with a critical coldness that astonished herself. She realized dimly that there was no personal thing behind his cry, that countless myriads of Mannings had, My God! with an equal gusto at situations as flatly apprehended. This mitigated her remorse enormously. He rested his brow on his hand and conveyed magnificent tragedy by his pose. But why? He said in the gasping voice of one subduing an agony and looked at her from under a pain-winkled brow. Why did you not tell me this before? I didn't know. I thought I might be able to control myself. And you can't? I don't think I ought to control myself. And I have been dreaming and thinking. I am frightfully sorry. But this bolt from the blue, My God! Anne Veronica, you don't understand. This shatters a world. She tried to feel sorry, but her sense of his immense egotism was strong and clear. He went on with intense urgency. Why did you ever let me love you? Why did you ever let me peep through the gates of paradise? Oh, my God! I don't begin to feel and realise this yet. It seems to me just talk. It seems to me like the fancy of a dream. Tell me I haven't heard. This is a joke of yours. He made his voice very low and full, and looked closely into her face. She twisted her fingers tightly. It isn't a joke, she said. I feel shabby and disgraced. I ought never to have thought of it. Of you, I mean. He fell back in his chair with an expression of tremendous desolation. My God! he said again. They became aware of the waitress standing over them with book and pencil ready for their bill. Never mind the bill, said Manning tragically, standing up and thrusting a four-shilling piece into her hand, and turning a broad back on her astonishment. Let us walk across the park, at least, he said to Anne Veronica. Just at present my mind simply won't take hold of this at all. I tell you, never mind the bill, keep it, keep it! Part 6 They walked a long way that afternoon. They crossed the park to the westward, and then turned back and walked round the circle about the royal botanical gardens, and then southwardly toward Waterloo. They trudged and talked, and Manning struggled, as he said, to get the hang of it all. It was a long, meandering talk, stupid, shameful, and unavoidable. Anne Veronica was apologetic to the bottom of her soul. At the same time she was wildly exultant at the resolution she had taken, the end she had made to her blunder. She had only to get through this, to solace Manning as much as she could, to put such clumsy plasterings on his wounds as were possible. And then, anyhow, she would be free, free to put her fate to the test. She made a few protests, a few excuses for her action in accepting him, a few lame explanations, but he did not heed them or care for them. Then she realised that it was her business to let Manning talk, and impose his own interpretations upon the situations, so far as he was concerned. She did her best to do this, but about his unknown rival he was acutely curious. He made her tell him the core of the difficulty. I cannot say who he is, said Anne Veronica, but he is a married man. No, I do not even know that he cares for me. It is no good going into that. Only I just want him. I just want him, and no one else will do. It is no good arguing about a thing like that. But you thought you could forget him. I suppose I must have thought so. I didn't understand. Now I do. By God! said Manning, making the most of the word. I suppose it's fate. Fate! You are so frank, so splendid. I'm taking this calmly now, he said, almost as if he apologised. Because I'm a little stunned. Then he asked, Tell me, has this man, has he dared to make love to you? Anne Veronica had a vicious moment. I wish he had, she said. But the long and consecutive conversation by that time was getting on her nerves. When one wants a thing more than anything else in the world, she said without rage as frankness. One naturally wishes, one had it. She shocked him by that. She shattered the edifice he was building up of himself as a devoted lover, waiting only his chance to win her from a hopeless and consuming passion. Mr. Manning, she said, I warned you not to idealise me. Then ought not to idealise any woman. We aren't worth it. We've done nothing to deserve it. And it hampers us. You don't know the thoughts we have, the things we can do and say. You are a sisterless man. You have never heard the ordinary talk that goes on at a girl's boarding school. Oh, but you are splendid and open and fearless, as if I couldn't allow. What are all these little things? Nothing. Nothing. You can't sully yourself. You can't. I tell you frankly you may break off your engagement to me. I shall hold myself still engaged to you. Yours just the same. As for this infatuation, it's like some obsession, some magic thing laid upon you. It's not you, not a bit. It's a thing that's happened to you. It is like some accident. I don't care. In a sense I don't care. It makes no difference. All the same I wish I had that fellow by the throat. Just the virile, unregenerate man in me wishes that. I suppose I should let go if I had. You know, he went on, this doesn't seem to me to end anything. I'm rather a persistent person. I'm the sort of dog, if you turn it out of the room it lies down on the mat at the door. I'm not a lovesick boy. I'm a man and I know what I mean. It's a tremendous blow, of course, but it doesn't kill me. And the situation it makes. The situation. Thus manning, egotistical, inconsecutive, unreal. And Anne Veronica walked beside him, trying in vain to soften her heart to him by the thought of how she had ill used him. And all the time as her feet and mind grew reary together, rejoicing more and more that at the cost of this one interminable walk she escaped the prospect of. What was it? Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights in his company. Whatever happened she did never return to that possibility. For me, manning went on, this isn't final. In a sense it alters nothing. I shall still wear your favour, even if it is a stolen and forbidden favour. In my casque, I shall still believe in you, trust you. He repeated several times that he would trust her, though it remained obscure just exactly where the trust came in. Look here! He cried out of a silence with a sudden flash of understanding. Did you mean to throw me over when you came out with me this afternoon? Anne Veronica hesitated, and with a startled mind realized the truth. No, she answered reluctantly. Very well, said many, that I don't take this as final. That's all. I've bored you or something. You think you love this other man. No doubt you do love him, before you have lived. He became darkly prophetic. He thrust out to rhetorical hand. I will make you love me, until he has faded, faded into a memory. He saw her into the train at Waterloo, and stood, a tall, grey figure with hat up raised, as the carriage moved forward slowly and hid him. Anne Veronica sat back with a sigh of relief. Anne might go on now, idealizing her as much as he liked. She was no longer a confederate in that. He might go on as the devoted lover until he tired. She had done forever with the age of chivalry, and her own base adaptations of its traditions to the compromising life. She was honest again. But when she turned her thoughts to Morningside Park, she perceived the tangled skin of life as now to be further complicated by his romantic importunity. CHAPTER XIV PART I Manning had held back that year until the dawn of May, and then spring and summer came with a rush together. Two days after this conversation between Manning and Anne Veronica, Capes came into the laboratory at lunchtime, and found her alone there standing by the open window, and not even pretending to be doing anything. He came in with his hands in his trousers' pockets, and a general air of depression in his bearing. He was engaged in detesting Manning and himself in almost equal measure. His face brightened at the sight of her, and he came toward her. "'What are you doing?' he asked. "'Nothing,' said Anne Veronica, and stared over her shoulder out of the window. "'So am I. Lassitude.' "'I suppose so.' "'I can't work.' "'Nor I,' said Anne Veronica. "'Pause.' "'It's the spring,' he said. "'It's the warming up of the year, the coming of the light mornings, the way in which everything begins to run about and begin new things. Work becomes distasteful. One thinks of holidays. "'This year, I've got it badly. I want to get away. I've never wanted to get away so much.' "'Where do you go?' "'Oh, Alps.' "'Climbing.' "'Yes.' "'That's rather a fine sort of holiday.' He made no answer for three or four seconds. "'Yes,' he said. "'I want to get away. I feel at moments as though I could bolt for it. Silly, isn't it? Undisciplined.' He went to the window and fidgeted with the blind, looking out to where the treetops of Regent's Park showed distantly over the houses. He turned round to water, and found her looking at him and standing very still. "'It's the stir of spring,' he said. "'I believe it is.' She glanced out of the window, and the distant trees were a froth of hard spring-green and almond blossom. She formed a wild resolution, and, lest she should waver from it, she set about at once to realise it. "'I've broken off my engagement,' she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, and found her heart thumping in her neck. He moved slightly, and she went on, with a slight catching of her breath. "'It's a bother and disturbance, but you see—' She had to go through with it now, because she could think of nothing but her preconceived words. Her voice was weak and flat. "'I fall in in love.' He never helped her by a sound. "'I—' "'I didn't love the man I was engaged to,' she said. She met his eyes for a moment and could not interpret their expression. They struck her as cold and indifferent. Her heart failed her, and her resolution became water. She remained standing stiffly, unable even to move. She could not look at him through an interval that seemed to her a vast gulf of time. But she felt his lax figure become rigid. At last his voice came to release her tension. "'I thought you weren't keeping up to the mark. You—' "'It's dolly of you to confide in me. Still!' Then, with incredible and obviously deliberate stupidity, and a voice as flat as her own, he asked, "'Who is the man?' Her spirit raged within her at the dumbness, the paralysis that had fallen upon her. Grace, confidence, the power of movement even seemed gone from her. A fever of shame ran through her being. Horrible doubts assailed her. She sat down awkwardly and helplessly on one of the little stools by her table, and covered her face with her hands. "'Can't you see how things are?' she said. Part II Before Capes could answer her in any way, the door at the end of the laboratory opened noisily, and Miss Clegg appeared. She went to her own table and sat down. At the sound of the door, Anne Veronica uncovered a tearless face, and with one swift movement assumed a conversational attitude. Things hung for a moment in an awkward silence. "'You see,' said Anne Veronica, staring before her at the window-sash, "'that's the form my question takes at the present time.' Capes had not quite the same power of recovery. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at Miss Clegg's back. His face was white. "'It's—it's a difficult question.' He appeared to be paralyzed by obstruous acoustic calculations. And very awkwardly he took a stool and placed it at the end of Anne Veronica's table and sat down. He glanced at Miss Clegg again, and spoke quickly and vertically, with eager eyes on Anne Veronica's face. "'I had a faint idea once that things were as you say they are, but the affair of the ring—of the unexpected ring—puzzled me. "'Wish she,' he indicated Miss Clegg's back with a nod, was at the bottom of the sea. "'I would like to talk to you about this. Soon. If you don't think it would be a social outrage, perhaps I might walk with you to your railway station.' "'I will wait,' said Anne Veronica, still not looking at him, and we will go into Regent's Park. "'No. You shall come with me to Waterloo.' "'Right,' he said, and hesitated, and then got up and went into the preparation room. Part III. For a time they walked in silence through the back streets that led southward from the college—capes for a face of infinite perplexity. "'The thing I feel most disposed to say, Miss Stanley,' he began at last, is that this is very sudden. "'It's been coming on since first I came into the laboratory.' "'What do you want?' he asked bluntly. "'You,' said Anne Veronica. "'The sense of publicity, of people coming and going about them, kept them both unemotional, and neither had any of that theatricality which demands gestures and facial expression. "'I suppose you know I like you tremendously,' he pursued. "'You told me that in the zoological gardens.' "'She found her muscles a tremble. But there was nothing in her bearing that a passer-by would have noted to tell of the excitement that possessed her. "'I—' He seemed to have a difficulty with the word. "'I love you. I've told you that practically already, but I can give it its name now. You needn't be in any doubt about it. I tell you that because it puts us on a footing. They went on for a time without another word. "'But don't you know about me?' he said at last. "'Something. Not much.' "'I'm a married man, and my wife won't live with me for reasons that I think most women would consider sound, or I should have made love to you long ago.' "'There came a silence again.' "'I don't care,' said Anne Veronica. "'But if you knew anything of that, I did. It doesn't matter.' "'Why did you tell me? I thought—I thought we were going to be friends.' He was suddenly resentful. He seemed to charge her with the ruin of their situation. "'Why on earth did you tell me?' he cried. "'I couldn't help it. It was an impulse. I had to.' "'But it changes things. I thought you understood.' "'I had to,' she repeated. I was sick of the make-believe. I don't care. I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did.' "'Look here,' said Capes. "'What on earth do you want? What do you think we can do? Don't you know what men are, and what life is? To come to me, and talk to me like this?' "'I know—something anyhow. But I don't care. I haven't a spark of shame. I don't see any good in life if it hasn't got you in it. I wanted you to know. And now you know. And the fences are down for good. You can't look me in the eyes and say you don't care for me.' "'I've told you,' he said. "'Very well,' said Anvironica, with an air of concluding the discussion. They walked side by side for a time. In that laboratory one gets to disregard these passions,' began Capes. "'Men are curious animals, with a trick of falling in love readily with girls about your age. One has to train oneself not to. I've accustomed myself to think of you, as if you were like every other girl who works at the schools, as something quite outside these possibilities. If only out of loyalty to co-education, one has to do that. Apart from everything else, this meeting of ours is a breach of a good rule.' "'Rules are for every day,' said Anvironica. "'This is not every day. This is something above all rules.' "'For you?' "'Not for you.' "'No. No. I'm going to stick to the rules. It's odd, but nothing but cliché seems to meet this case. You've placed me in a very exceptional position, Miss Stanley.' The note of his own voice exasperated him. "'Oh, damn,' he said. She made no answer, and for a time he debated some problems with himself. "'No,' he said aloud at last. "'The plain common sense of the case,' he said, "'is that we can't possibly be lovers in the ordinary sense. That, I think, is manifest. "'You know, I've done no work at all this afternoon. I've been smoking cigarettes in the preparation room and thinking this out. We can't be lovers in the ordinary sense, but we can be great and intimate friends.' "'We are,' said Anvironica. "'You've interested me enormously.' He paused with a sense of ineptitude. "'I want to be your friend,' he said. "'I said that a zoo, and I mean it. Let us be friends, as near and close as friends can be.' Anvironica gave him a pallid profile. "'What is the good of pretending?' she said. "'We don't pretend. "'We do. Love is one thing and friendship quite another. Because I'm younger than you, I've got imagination. I know what I'm talking about. Mr. Capes, do you think? Do you think I don't know the meaning of love?' Part Four Capes made no answer for a time. "'My mind is full of confused stuff,' he said at length. "'I've been thinking all the afternoon. Oh, and weeks and months of thought and feeling they are bottled up, too. I feel a mixture of beast and uncle. I feel like a fraudulent trustee. Every rule is against me. Why did I let you begin this? I might have told.' "'I don't see that you could help. I might have helped. You couldn't. I ought to have all the same.' "'I wonder,' he said, and went off at a tangent. "'You know about my scandalous past.' "'Very little. It doesn't seem to matter. Does it?' "'I think it does, profoundly. "'How?' "'It prevents our marrying. It forbids all sorts of things. "'It can't prevent our loving. I'm afraid it can't, but by Jove it's going to make our loving a fiercely abstract thing. "'You're separated from your wife?' "'Yes, but do you know how?' "'Not exactly.' "'Why on earth?' "'A man ought to be labelled. You see, I'm separated from my wife, but she doesn't and won't divorce me. You don't understand the fix I am in, and you don't know what led to our separation. And, in fact, all round the problem, you don't know, and I don't see how I could possibly have told you before. "'I wanted to you that day in the zoo, but I trusted to that ring of yours.' "'Poor old ring,' said Anvironica. "'I ought never have gone to the zoo, I suppose. "'I asked you to go, but a man is a mixed creature. "'I wanted the time with you. I wanted it badly.' "'Tell me about yourself,' said Anvironica. "'To begin with, I was... I was in the divorce court. I was... I was a correspondent. You understand that term?' Anvironica smiled faintly. A modern girl does understand these terms. She reads novels and history and all sorts of things. Did you really doubt how I knew? No, but I don't suppose you can understand. I don't see why I shouldn't. To know things by name is one thing. To know them by seeing them and feeling them and being them quite another. That is where life takes advantage of youth. You don't understand. Perhaps I don't. You don't. That's the difficulty. If I told you the facts I expect, since you are in love with me, you'd explain the whole business as being very fine and honourable for me, the higher morality or something of that sort. It wasn't. I don't deal very much," said Anvironica, in the higher morality or the higher truth or any of those things. Perhaps you don't, but a human being who is young and clean as you are is apt to ennoble or explain away. I've had a biological training. I'm a hard young woman. Nice clean hardness anyhow. I think you are hard. There's something, something adult about you. I'm talking to you now as though you had all the wisdom and charity in the world. I'm going to tell you things plainly, plainly. It's best. And then you can go home and think things over before we talk again. I want you to be clear what you're really and truly up to anyhow." I don't mind knowing," said Anvironica. It's precious and romantic. Well, tell me. I married pretty young," said Capes. I've got—I have to tell you this to make myself clear—a streak of ardent animal in my composition. I married—I married a woman whom I still think one of the most beautiful persons in the world. She is a year or so older than I am and she is, well, of a very serene and proud and dignified temperament. If you met her you would, I'm certain, think her as fine as I do. She has never done a really ignoble thing that I know of—never. I met her when we were both very young, as young as you are. I loved her and may love to her, and I don't think she quite loved me back in the same way." He paused for a time. Anvironica said nothing. These are the sort of things that aren't supposed to happen. They leave them out of novels, these incompatibilities. Young people ignore them until they find themselves up against them. My wife doesn't understand—doesn't understand now. She despises me, I suppose. We married and for a time we were happy. She was fine and tender. I worshipped her and subdued myself. He left off abruptly. Do you understand what I'm talking about? It's no good if you don't. I think so, said Anvironica, and coloured. In fact, yes I do. Do you think of these things, these matters, as belonging to our higher nature or our lower? I don't deal in higher things, I tell you, said Anvironica, or lower for that matter of that. I don't classify." She hesitated. Flesh and flowers are all alike to me. That's the comfort of you. Well, after a time they came a fever in my blood. Don't think it was anything better than fever or a bit beautiful. It wasn't. Quite soon, after we were married, it was just within a year. I formed the friendship with the wife of a friend, a woman eight years older than myself. It wasn't anything splendid, you know. It was just a shabby, stupid, furtive business that began between us, like stealing. We dressed it in a little music. I want you to understand clearly that I was indebted to the man in many small ways. I was mean to him. It was the gratification of an immense necessity. We were two people with a craving. We felt like thieves. We were thieves. We liked each other well enough. Well, my friend found us out and would give no quarter. He divorced her. How do you like the story? Go on, said Anne Veronica, a little hoarsely. Tell me all of it. My wife was astounded, wounded beyond measure. She thought me filthy. All her pride raged at me. One particularly humiliating thing came out, humiliating for me. There was a second correspondent. I hadn't heard of him before the trial. I don't know why that should be so acutely humiliating. There's no logic in these things. It was. Poor you, said Anne Veronica. My wife refused absolutely to have anything more to do with me. She could hardly speak to me. She insisted relentlessly upon a separation. She had money of her own, much more than I have, and there was no need to scrabble about that. She has given herself up to social work. Well, that's all, practically all, and yet— Wait a little, you'd better have every bit of it. One doesn't go about with these passions allayed simply because they have made wreckage in a scandal. There one is, the same stuff still. One has a craving in one's blood, a craving roused, cut off from its redeeming and guiding emotional side. A man has more freedom to do evil than a woman. Irregularly, in a quite inglorious and unromantic way, you know, I am a vicious man. That's—that's my private life, until the last few months. It isn't what I have been, but what I am. I haven't taken much account of it until now. My honour has been in my scientific work and public discussion and the things I write. Lots of us are like that. But you see I'm smirched, for the sort of love-making you think about. I've muddled all this business. I've had my time and lost my chances. I'm damaged goods, and you're as clean as fire. You come with those clear eyes of yours, as valiant as an angel. He stopped abruptly. Well, she said. That's all. It's so strange to think of you, troubled by such things. I didn't think. I don't know what I thought. Suddenly all this makes you human. Makes you real. But don't you see how I must stand to you? Don't you see how it bars us from being lovers? You can't, at first. You must think it over. It's all outside the world of your experience. I don't think it makes a wrap of difference, except for one thing. I love you more. I've wanted you, always. I didn't dream, not even in my wildest dreaming, that you might have any need of me. He made a little noise in his throat, as if something had cried out within him, and for a time they were both too full for speech. They were going up the slope into Waterloo Station. You go home and think of all this, he said, and talk about it tomorrow. Don't say anything now, not anything. As for loving you, I do. I do with all my heart. It's no good hiding it any more. I could never have talked to you like this, forgetting everything that parts us, forgetting even your age if I did not love you utterly, if I were a clean, free man. We'll have to talk of all these things. Thank goodness there's plenty of opportunity. And we, too, can talk. Anyhow, now you've begun it, there's nothing to keep us in all this from being the best friends in the world and talking of every conceivable thing. Is there? Nothing, said Anne Veronica with a radiant face. Before this there was a sort of restraint, a make-believe. It's gone. It's gone. Friendship and love being separate things, and that confounded engagement. Gone. They came upon a platform and stood before her compartment. He took her hand and looked into her eyes and spoke, divided against himself in a voice that was forced and insincere. I shall be very glad to have you for a friend, he said. Loving friend, I had never dreamed of such a friend as you. She smiled, sure of herself beyond any pretending, into his troubled eyes. Hadn't they settled that already? I want you as a friend, he persisted, almost as if he disputed something. Part five. The next morning she waited in the laboratory at the lunch hour, in the reasonable certainty that he would come to her. Well, you have thought it over, he said, sitting down beside her. I've been thinking of you all night, she answered. Well, I don't care a wrap for all these things. He said nothing for a space. I don't see there's any getting away from the fact that you and I love each other, he said slowly. So far you've got me and are you. You've got me. I'm like a creature just wakened up. My eyes are open to you. I keep on thinking of you. I keep on thinking of little details and aspects of your voice, your eyes, the way you walk, the way your head goes back from the side of your forehead. I believe I have always been in love with you, always. Before ever I knew you. She sat motionless with her hand tightening over the edge of the table, and he too said no more. She began to tremble violently. He stood up abruptly and went to the window. We have, he said, to be the utmost friends. She stood up and held her arms toward him. I want you to kiss me, she said. He gripped the window sill behind him. If I do, he said, no. I want to do without that. I want to do without that for a time. I want to give you time to think. I am a man of a sort of experience. You are a girl with very little. Just sit down on that stool again and let's talk of this in cold blood, people of your sort. I don't want the instincts to rush our situation. Are you sure what it is you want of me? I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you. I want to be whatever I can to you." She paused for a moment. Is that plain? She asked. If I didn't love you better than myself, said Capes, I wouldn't fence like this with you. I'm convinced you haven't thought this out, he went on. You do not know what such a relation means. We are in love. Our heads swim with the thought of being together. But what can we do? Here am I, fixed to respectability in this laboratory. You're living at home. It means just furtive meetings. I don't care how we meet, she said. It will spoil your life. It will make it. I want you. I am clear I want you. You are different from all the world for me. You can think all round me. You are the one person I can understand and feel, feel right with. I don't idealise you. Don't imagine that. It isn't because you're good, but because I may be rotten bad. And there's something, something living and understanding in you, something that is born in you each time we meet, and pined when we are separated. You see, I'm selfish. I'm rather scornful. I think too much about myself. You're the only person I've really given good, straight, unselfish thought to. I'm making a mess of my life, unless you come in and take it. I am. In you, if you can love me, there is salvation, salvation. I know what I'm doing better than you do. Think, think of that engagement. Their talk had come to eloquent silences that contradicted all he had to say. She stood up before him, smiling faintly. I think we've exhausted this discussion, she said. I think we have. He answered gravely, and took her in his arms, and smoothed her hair from her forehead, and very tenderly kissed her lips. Part 6 They spent the next Sunday in Richmond Park, and mingled the happy sensation of being together uninterruptedly, through the long sunshine of a summer's day, with the ample discussion of their position. This is all the clean freshness of spring and youth, said Capes. It is love with the down-on. It is like the glitter of dew in the sunlight, to be lovers such as we are, with no more than one warm kiss between us. I love everything today, and all of you, but I love this, this, this innocence upon us, most of all. You can't imagine, he said, what a beastly thing a furtive love affair can be. This isn't furtive, said Anne Veronica. Not a bit of it, and we won't make it, sir. We mustn't make it, sir. They loitered under the trees. They sat on mossy banks. They gossiped on friendly benches. They came back to lunch at the star and garter, and talked their afternoon away in the garden that looks out upon the crescent of the river. They had a universe to talk about. Two universes. What are you going to do? said Capes, with his eyes on the broad distances beyond the ribbon of the river. I will do whatever you want, said Anne Veronica. My first love was all blundering, said Capes. He thought for a moment and went on. Love is something that has to be taken care of. One has to be so careful. It's a beautiful plant, but a tender one. I didn't know. I've had a dread of love dropping its petals, becoming mean and ugly. How can I tell you all I feel? I love you beyond measure, and I'm afraid. I'm anxious, joyfully anxious, like a man when he has found a treasure. You know, said Anne Veronica. I just came to you and put myself in your hands. That's why, in a way, I'm prudish. I've dreads. I don't want to tear at you with hot, rough hands. As you will, dear lover, but for me it doesn't matter. Nothing is wrong that you do. Nothing. I am quite clear about this. I know exactly what I'm doing. I give myself to you. God send you may never repent it, cried Capes. She put her hand in his to be squeezed. You see, he said, it is doubtful if we can ever marry. Very doubtful. I have been thinking, I will go to my wife again. I will do my utmost. But for a long time anyhow, we lovers have to be as if we were no more than friends. He paused. She answered slowly. That is as you will, she said. Why should it matter? He said. Then she answered nothing. Seeing that we are lovers. Part 7 It was rather less than a week after that walk that Capes came and sat down beside Ann Veronica for their customary talk in the lunch hour. He took a handful of almonds and raisins that she held out to him, for both these young people had given up the practice of going out for luncheon and kept her hand for a moment to kiss her fingertips. He did not speak for a moment. Well, she said. I say, he said, without any movement. Let's go. Go. She did not understand him at first and then her heart began to beat very rapidly. Stop this, this humbugging, he explained. It's like the picture and the bust. I can't stand it. Let's go. Go on. Let's go. Go off and live together until we can marry. Dare you? Do you mean now? At the end of the session it's the only clean way for us. Are you prepared to do it? Her hands clenched. Yes, she said very faintly. And then, of course, always, it is what I have wanted, and all along she stared before her trying to keep back a rush of tears. Capes kept obstinately stiff and spoke between his teeth. There's endless reasons, no doubt, why we shouldn't, he said. Endless. It's wrong in the eyes of most people. For many of them it will smudge us forever. You do understand. Who cares for most people? She said, not looking at him. I do. It means social isolation, struggle. If you dare, I dare, said Anne Veronica. I was never so clear in all my life as I have been in this business. She lifted steadfast eyes to him. Dare, she said. The tears were welling over now, but her voice was steady. You're not a man for me. You're never sex, I mean. You're just a particular being with nothing else in the world to class with you. You are just necessary to life for me. I've never met anyone like you. To have you is all important. Nothing else weighs against it. Morals only begin when that is settled. I shan't care a rap if we can never marry. I'm not a bit afraid of anything, scandal, difficulty, struggle. I rather want them. I do want them. You'll get them, he said. This means a plunge. Are you afraid? Only for you. Most of my income will vanish. Even unbelieving biological demonstrators must respect a quorum. And besides, you see, you were a student. We shall have hardly any money. I don't care. Hardship and danger? With you. It adds for your people? They don't count. That is the dreadful truth. All this wants them. They don't count, and I don't care. Cape suddenly abandoned his attitude of meditative restraint. By Jove, he broke out. One tries to take a serious sober view. I don't quite know why. But this is a great lark, Anne Veronica. This turns life into a glorious adventure. Ah! She cried in triumph. I shall have to give up biology anyhow. I've always had a sneaking desire for the writing trade. That is what I must do. I can. Of course you can. And biology was beginning to bore me a bit. One research is very like another. Laterally, I've been doing things. Creative work appeals to me wonderfully. Things seem to come rather easily. But that, and that sort of thing is just a daydream. For a time I must do journalism and work hard. What is it a daydream is this? That you and I are going to put an end to flurry and go. Go! said Anne Veronica, clenching her hands. For better or worse. For richer or poorer. She could not go on for she was laughing and crying at the same time. We were bound to do this when you kissed me. She sobbed through her tears. We have been all this time. Only your queer code of honour. Honour! Once you begin with love you have to see it through. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of Anne Veronica. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Joy Chan. Anne Veronica by H. G. Wells. Chapter 15 The Last Days at Home Part 1 They decided to go to Switzerland at the session's end. We'll clean up everything tidy, said Capes. For her pride's sake and to save herself from long daydreams and an unappeasable longing for her lover, Anne Veronica worked hard at her biology during those closing weeks. She was, as Capes had said, a hard young woman. She was keenly resolved to do well in the school examination and not to be drowned in the seas of emotion that threatened to submerge her intellectual being. Nevertheless, she could not prevent a rising excitement as the dawn of the new life drew near to her, a thrilling of the nerves, a secret and delicious exaltation above the common circumstances of existence. Sometimes her straying mind would become astonishingly active and brodering bright and decorative things that she could say to Capes. Sometimes it pass into a state of pacific reasons, into a radiant, formless, golden joy. She was aware of people, her aunt, her father, her fellow students, friends and neighbours, moving about outside this glowing secret, very much as an actor is aware of the dim audience beyond the barrier of the footlights. They might applaud or object or interfere, but the drama was not as clear as it could be. She was going through with that anyhow. The feeling of last days grew stronger with her as their number diminished. She went about the familiar home with a clearer and clearer sense of inevitable conclusions. She became exceptionally considerate and affectionate with her father and aunt and more and more concerned about the coming catastrophe that she was about to precipitate upon them. Her aunt had a once-exasperating habit of interrupting her work with her father, but now Anne Veronica rendered them with a queer readiness of anticipatory propitiation. She was greatly exercised by the problem of confiding in the widgets. They were deers, and she talked away two evenings with constants without broaching the topic. She made some vague intimations and letters to Miss Minerva that Miss Minerva failed to mark. But she did not bother her head very much about her relations with these sympathisers. And at length her penultimate day in Morningside Park dawned for her. She got up early and walked about the garden in the dewy June sunshine and revived her childhood. She was saying goodbye to childhood and home and her making. She was going out into the great multitudinous world. This time there would be no returning. She was at the end of girlhood and on the eve of a woman's crowning experience. She visited the corner that had been her own little garden. Her forget-me-nots and candy-tuff had long since been elbowed into insignificance by weeds. She visited the raspberry canes that had sheltered that first love affair with the little boy in Velvet and the greenhouse where she had been want to read her secret letters. Here was the place behind the shed where she had used to hide from Roddy's persecutions and here the board of herbaceous perennials in the back of the house had been the alps for climbing and the shrubs in front of it are to rye. The knots and broken pail that made the garden fence scalable and gave access to the fields behind were still to be traced and here against a wall were the plum trees. In spite of God and wasps and her father she had stolen plums and once because of discovered misdeeds and once because she had realised that her mother was dead in the grass beneath the elm trees that came beyond the vegetables and poured out her soul in weeping. Remote little Ann Veronica she would never know the heart of that child again. That child had loved fairy princes with velvet suits and golden locks and she was in love with a real man named Capes with little gleams of gold on his cheek and a pleasant voice and firm and shapely hands. She was going to him soon and certainly going to his strong embracing arms. She was going through a new world with him side by side. She had been so busy with life that for a vast gulf of time as it seemed she had given no thought to those ancient imagined things of her childhood. Now abruptly they were real again though very distant and she had come to say farewell to them across one sundering year. She was unusually helpful at breakfast and unselfish about the eggs and then she went off to catch the train before her father's. She did this to please him. He hated travelling second class with her indeed he never did but he also disliked travelling in the same train when his daughter was in inferior class because of the look of the thing. So he liked to go by a different train and in the avenue she had an encounter with Rammage. It was an odd little encounter that left vague indubitable impressions in her mind. She was aware of him a silk-hattered shiny black figure on the opposite side of the avenue and then abruptly and startlingly he crossed the road and saluted and spoke to her. I must speak to you he said. I can't keep away from you. She made some inane response she was struck by a change in his appearance his eyes looked a little bloodshot to her his face had lost something of its ruddy freshness he began a jerky broken conversation that lasted until they reached the station and left her puzzled at its drift and meaning she quickened her pace and so did he talking at her slightly adverted ear she made lumpish and inadequate interruptions rather than replies at times he seemed to be claiming pity from her at times he was threatening her with her check and exposure at times he was boasting of his inflexible will and how in the end he always got what he wanted he said that his life was boring and stupid without her something or other she did not catch what he was damned if he could stand he was evidently nervous and very anxious to be impressive his projecting eyes sought to dominate the crowning aspect of the incident for her mind was the discovery that he had her indiscretion with him no longer mattered very much its importance had vanished with her abandonment of compromise even her debt to him was a triviality now and of course she had a brilliant idea it surprised her she hadn't thought of it before she tried to explain that she was going to pay him 40 pounds without fail next week she said as much to him she repeated this breathlessly I was glad you did not send it back again he said he touched a long standing sore and Veronica found herself vainly trying to explain the inexplicable it's because I mean to send it back all together she said he ignored her protests in order to pursue some impressive line of his own here we are living in the same suburb he began we have to be modern her heart leapt within her as she caught that phrase that not also would be cut modern indeed she was going to be as primordial as chipped flint part two in the late afternoon as Anne Veronica was gathering flowers for the dinner table her father came strolling across the lawn toward her with an affectation of great deliberation I want to speak to you about a little thing V. said Mr. Stanley Anne Veronica's tense nerves started and she stood still with her eyes upon him wondering what it might be that impended you were talking to that fellow Rammage today in the avenue walking to the station with him so that was it he came and talked to me yes Mr. Stanley considered well I don't want you to talk to him he said very firmly Anne Veronica paused before she answered don't you think I ought to she asked very submissively no Mr. Stanley coughed and faced toward the house he is not I don't like him I think it inadvisable I don't want an intimacy to spring up between you and a man of that type Anne Veronica reflected I have had one or two talks with him daddy don't let there be any more I in fact I dislike him extremely suppose he comes and talks to me a girl can always keep a man at a distance if she cares to do it she she can snub him Anne Veronica picked a cornflower I wouldn't make this objection Mr. Stanley went on but there are things there are stories about Rammage he's he lives in a world of possibilities outside your imagination his treatment of his wife is most unsatisfactory most unsatisfactory a bad man in fact a dissipated loose living man I'll try not to see him again said Anne Veronica I didn't know you objected to him daddy strongly said Mr. Stanley very strongly the conversation hung Anne Veronica wondered what her father would do she would to tell him the full story about Rammage a man like that taints a girl by looking at her by his mere conversation he adjusted his glasses on his nose there was another little thing he had to say one has to be so careful of one's friends and acquaintances he remarked by way of transition they mould one insensibly his voice assumes an easy detached tone I suppose V you don't see much of those widgets now I go in and talk to Constance sometimes do you we were great friends at school no doubt still I don't know whether I quite like something ramshackle about those people V while I'm talking about your friends I feel I think you ought to know how I look at it his voice conveyed studied moderation I don't mind of course you're seeing her sometimes still there are differences differences in social atmospheres one gets drawn into things before you know where you are you find yourself in a complication I don't want to influence you unduly but they're artistic people V that's the fact about them we're different I suppose we are said V rearranging the flowers in her hand friendships that are all very well between schoolgirls don't always go on into later life it's a social difference I like Constance very much no doubt still one has to be reasonable as you admitted to me one has to square oneself with the world you don't know with people of that sort all sorts of things may happen we don't want things to happen Anne Veronica made no answer a vague desire to justify himself ruffled her father I may seem unduly anxious I can't forget about your sister it's that has always made me she you know was drawn into a set didn't discriminate private theatricals Anne Veronica remained anxious to hear more of her sister's story from her father's point of view but he did not go on even so much illusion as this to that family shadow she felt was an immense recognition of her ripening years she glanced at him he stood a little anxious and fussy bothered by the responsibility of her entirely careless of what her life was or was likely to be ignoring her thoughts and feelings ignorant of every fact of importance in her life explaining everything he could not understand in her as nonsense and perversity concerned only with a terror of bothers and undesirable situations we don't want things to happen never had he shown his daughter so clearly that the women kind he was persuaded he had to protect and control could please him in one way and in one way only and that was by doing nothing except the punctual domestic duties and being nothing except restful appearances he had quite enough to see to and worry about in the city without their doing things he had no use for Anne Veronica he had never had a use for her since she had been too old to sit upon his knee nothing but the constraint of social usage now linked him to her and the less anything happened the better the less she lived in fact the better these realizations rushed into Anne Veronica's mind and hardened her heart against him she spoke slowly I may not see the widgets for some little time father she said I don't think I shall some little tiff no but I don't think I shall see them suppose you were to add I'm going away I'm glad to hear you say it said Mr Stanley and was so evidently pleased her heart smote her I'm very glad to hear you say it he repeated and refrained from further inquiry I think we are growing sensible he said I think you are getting to understand me better he hesitated and walked away from her toward the house her eyes followed him the curve of his shoulders the very angle of his feet expressed relief at her parent obedience thank goodness he answered that retreating aspect that said and over these all right there's nothing happened at all she didn't mean he concluded to give him any more trouble ever and he was free to begin a fresh chromatic novel he had just finished the blue lagoon which he thought very beautiful and tender and absolutely relevant to Morningside Park or work in peace at his micro-term without bothering her in the least the immense disillusionment that awaited him the devastating disillusionment she had a vague desire to run after him to state her case to him to wring some understanding from him of what life was to her she felt a cheat and a sneak to his unsuspecting retreating back but what can one do asked Anne Veronica part three she dressed carefully for dinner in a black dress that her father liked and that made her look serious and responsible dinner was quite uneventful her father read a draft prospectus warily and her aunt dropped fragments of her projects for managing while the cook had a holiday after dinner Anne Veronica went into the drawing room with Miss Stanley and her father went up to his den for his pipe and pensive photography later in the evening she heard him whistling poor man she felt very restless and excited she refused coffee anyhow she was doomed to a sleepless night she took up one of her father's novels and put it down again fretted up to her own room for some work sat on her bed and meditated upon the room that she was now really abandoning forever and returned at length with the stocking to Darn her aunt was making herself cuffs out of little slips of insertion under the newly lit lamp Anne Veronica sat down in the other armchair and Darned badly for a minute or so then she looked at her aunt and traced with a curious eye the careful arrangement of her hair her sharp nose the little drooping lines of mouth and chin and cheek her thought spoke aloud were you ever in love aunt she asked her aunt glanced up startled and then sat very still with her mother and her father and her mother