H. Wells - Ann Veronica

longer, and--it won't bother you."

He stood up rather close to her and looked into her eyes. He

seemed to be trying to understand something very perplexing and

elusive. "It's jolly," he said, "to feel you have come to me.

It's a sort of guarantee of confidence. Last time--you made me

feel snubbed."

He hesitated, and went off at a tangent. "There's no end of

things I'd like to talk over with you. It's just upon my

lunch-time. Come and have lunch with me."

Ann Veronica fenced for a moment. "I don't want to take up your

time."

"We won't go to any of these City places. They're just all men,

and no one is safe from scandal. But I know a little place where

we'll get a little quiet talk."

Ann Veronica for some indefinable reason did not want to lunch

with him, a reason indeed so indefinable that she dismissed it,

and Ramage went through the outer office with her, alert and

attentive, to the vivid interest of the three clerks. The three

clerks fought for the only window, and saw her whisked into a

hansom. Their subsequent conversation is outside the scope of our

story.

"Ritter's!" said Ramage to the driver, "Dean Street."

It was rare that Ann Veronica used hansoms, and to be in one was

itself eventful and exhilarating. She liked the high, easy swing

of the thing over its big wheels, the quick clatter-patter of the

horse, the passage of the teeming streets. She admitted her

pleasure to Ramage.

And Ritter's, too, was very amusing and foreign and discreet; a

little rambling room with a number of small tables, with red

electric light shades and flowers. It was an overcast day,

albeit not foggy, and the electric light shades glowed warmly,

and an Italian waiter with insufficient English took Ramage's

orders, and waited with an appearance of affection. Ann Veronica

thought the whole affair rather jolly. Ritter sold better food

than most of his compatriots, and cooked it better, and Ramage,

with a fine perception of a feminine palate, ordered Vero Capri.

It was, Ann Veronica felt, as a sip or so of that remarkable

blend warmed her blood, just the sort of thing that her aunt

would not approve, to be lunching thus, tete-a-tete with a man;

and yet at the same time it was a perfectly innocent as well as

agreeable proceeding.

They talked across their meal in an easy and friendly manner

about Ann Veronica's affairs. He was really very bright and

clever, with a sort of conversational boldness that was just

within the limits of permissible daring. She described the

Goopes and the Fabians to him, and gave him a sketch of her

landlady; and he talked in the most liberal and entertaining way

of a modern young woman's outlook. He seemed to know a great

deal about life. He gave glimpses of possibilities. He roused

curiosities. He contrasted wonderfully with the empty

showing-off of Teddy. His friendship seemed a thing worth

having. . . .

But when she was thinking it over in her room that evening vague

and baffling doubts came drifting across this conviction. She

doubted how she stood toward him and what the restrained gleam of

his face might signify. She felt that perhaps, in her desire to

play an adequate part in the conversation, she had talked rather

more freely than she ought to have done, and given him a wrong

impression of herself.

Part 7

That was two days before Christmas Eve. The next morning came a

compact letter from her father.

"MY DEAR DAUGHTER," it ran,--"Here, on the verge of the season of

forgiveness I hold out a last hand to you in the hope of a

reconciliation. I ask you, although it is not my place to ask

you, to return home. This roof is still open to you. You will

not be taunted if you return and everything that can be done will

be done to make you happy.

"Indeed, I must implore you to return. This adventure of yours

has gone on altogether too long; it has become a serious distress

to both your aunt and myself. We fail altogether to understand

your motives in doing what you are doing, or, indeed, how you are

managing to do it, or what you are managing on. If you will

think only of one trifling aspect--the inconvenience it must be

to us to explain your absence--I think you may begin to realize

what it all means for us. I need hardly say that your aunt joins

with me very heartily in this request.

"Please come home. You will not find me unreasonable with you.

"Your affectionate

"FATHER."

Ann Veronica sat over her fire with her father's note in her

hand. "Queer letters he writes," she said. "I suppose most

people's letters are queer. Roof open--like a Noah's Ark. I

wonder if he really wants me to go home. It's odd how little I

know of him, and of how he feels and what he feels."

"I wonder how he treated Gwen."

Her mind drifted into a speculation about her sister. "I ought to

look up Gwen," she said. "I wonder what happened."

Then she fell to thinking about her aunt. "I would like to go

home," she cried, "to please her. She has been a dear.

Considering how little he lets her have."

The truth prevailed. "The unaccountable thing is that I wouldn't

go home to please her. She is, in her way, a dear. One OUGHT to

want to please her. And I don't. I don't care. I can't even

make myself care."

Presently, as if for comparison with her father's letter, she got

out Ramage's check from the box that contained her papers. For

so far she had kept it uncashed. She had not even endorsed it.

"Suppose I chuck it," she remarked, standing with the mauve slip

in her hand--"suppose I chuck it, and surrender and go home!

Perhaps, after all, Roddy was right!

"Father keeps opening the door and shutting it, but a time will

come--

"I could still go home!"

She held Ramage's check as if to tear it across. "No," she said

at last; "I'm a human being--not a timid female. What could I do

at home? The other's a crumple-up--just surrender. Funk! I'll

see it out."

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

BIOLOGY

Part 1

January found Ann Veronica a student in the biological laboratory

of the Central Imperial College that towers up from among the

back streets in the angle between Euston Road and Great Portland

Street. She was working very steadily at the Advanced Course in

Comparative Anatomy, wonderfully relieved to have her mind

engaged upon one methodically developing theme in the place of

the discursive uncertainties of the previous two months, and

doing her utmost to keep right in the back of her mind and out of

sight the facts, firstly, that she had achieved this haven of

satisfactory activity by incurring a debt to Ramage of forty

pounds, and, secondly, that her present position was necessarily

temporary and her outlook quite uncertain.

The biological laboratory had an atmosphere that was all its own.

It was at the top of the building, and looked clear over a

clustering mass of inferior buildings toward Regent's Park. It

was long and narrow, a well-lit, well-ventilated, quiet gallery

of small tables and sinks, pervaded by a thin smell of methylated

spirit and of a mitigated and sterilized organic decay. Along

the inner side was a wonderfully arranged series of displayed

specimens that Russell himself had prepared. The supreme effect

for Ann Veronica was its surpassing relevance; it made every

other atmosphere she knew seem discursive and confused. The