H. Wells - Ann Veronica

young and beautiful woman, and that all sorts of constructions

upon their relationship were possible, trusting her to go on from

that to the idea that all sorts of relationships were possible.

She responded with an unfaltering appearance of insensibility,

and never as a young and beautiful woman conscious of sex; always

in the character of an intelligent girl student.

His perception of her personal beauty deepened and quickened with

each encounter. Every now and then her general presence became

radiantly dazzling in his eyes; she would appear in the street

coming toward him, a surprise, so fine and smiling and welcoming

was she, so expanded and illuminated and living, in contrast with

his mere expectation. Or he would find something--a wave in her

hair, a little line in the contour of her brow or neck, that made

an exquisite discovery.

He was beginning to think about her inordinately. He would sit in

his inner office and compose conversations with her, penetrating,

illuminating, and nearly conclusive--conversations that never

proved to be of the slightest use at all with her when he met her

face to face. And he began also at times to wake at night and

think about her.

He thought of her and himself, and no longer in that vein of

incidental adventure in which he had begun. He thought, too, of

the fretful invalid who lay in the next room to his, whose money

had created his business and made his position in the world.

"I've had most of the things I wanted," said Ramage, in the

stillness of the night.

Part 3

For a time Ann Veronica's family had desisted from direct offers

of a free pardon; they were evidently waiting for her resources

to come to an end. Neither father, aunt, nor brothers made a

sign, and then one afternoon in early February her aunt came up

in a state between expostulation and dignified resentment, but

obviously very anxious for Ann Veronica's welfare. "I had a dream

in the night," she said. "I saw you in a sort of sloping,

slippery place, holding on by your hands and slipping. You

seemed to me to be slipping and slipping, and your face was

white. It was really most vivid, most vivid! You seemed to be

slipping and just going to tumble and holding on. It made me

wake up, and there I lay thinking of you, spending your nights up

here all alone, and no one to look after you. I wondered what

you could be doing and what might be happening to you. I said to

myself at once, 'Either this is a coincidence or the caper

sauce.' But I made sure it was you. I felt I MUST do something

anyhow, and up I came just as soon as I could to see you."

She had spoken rather rapidly. "I can't help saying it," she

said, with the quality of her voice altering, "but I do NOT think

it is right for an unprotected girl to be in London alone as you

are."

"But I'm quite equal to taking care of myself, aunt."

"It must be most uncomfortable here. It is most uncomfortable

for every one concerned."

She spoke with a certain asperity. She felt that Ann Veronica

had duped her in that dream, and now that she had come up to

London she might as well speak her mind.

"No Christmas dinner," she said, "or anything nice! One doesn't

even know what you are doing."

"I'm going on working for my degree."

"Why couldn't you do that at home?"

"I'm working at the Imperial College. You see, aunt, it's the

only possible way for me to get a good degree in my subjects, and

father won't hear of it. There'd only be endless rows if I was at

home. And how could I come home--when he locks me in rooms and

all that?"

"I do wish this wasn't going on," said Miss Stanley, after a

pause. "I do wish you and your father could come to some

agreement."

Ann Veronica responded with conviction: "I wish so, too."

"Can't we arrange something? Can't we make a sort of treaty?"

"He wouldn't keep it. He would get very cross one evening and no

one would dare to remind him of it."

"How can you say such things?"

"But he would!"

"Still, it isn't your place to say so."

"It prevents a treaty."

"Couldn't _I_ make a treaty?"

Ann Veronica thought, and could not see any possible treaty that

would leave it open for her to have quasi-surreptitious dinners

with Ramage or go on walking round the London squares discussing

Socialism with Miss Miniver toward the small hours. She had

tasted freedom now, and so far she had not felt the need of

protection. Still, there certainly was something in the idea of

a treaty.

"I don't see at all how you can be managing," said Miss Stanley,

and Ann Veronica hastened to reply, "I do on very little." Her

mind went back to that treaty.

"And aren't there fees to pay at the Imperial College?" her aunt

was saying--a disagreeable question.

"There are a few fees."

"Then how have you managed?"

"Bother!" said Ann Veronica to herself, and tried not to look

guilty. "I was able to borrow the money."

"Borrow the money! But who lent you the money?"

"A friend," said Ann Veronica.

She felt herself getting into a corner. She sought hastily in

her mind for a plausible answer to an obvious question that

didn't come. Her aunt went off at a tangent. "But my dear Ann

Veronica, you will be getting into debt!"

Ann Veronica at once, and with a feeling of immense relief, took

refuge in her dignity. "I think, aunt," she said, "you might

trust to my self-respect to keep me out of that."

For the moment her aunt could not think of any reply to this

counterstroke, and Ann Veronica followed up her advantage by a

sudden inquiry about her abandoned boots.

But in the train going home her aunt reasoned it out.

"If she is borrowing money," said Miss Stanley, "she MUST be

getting into debt. It's all nonsense. . . ."

Part 4

It was by imperceptible degrees that Capes became important in

Ann Veronica's thoughts. But then he began to take steps, and,

at last, strides to something more and more like predominance.

She began by being interested in his demonstrations and his

biological theory, then she was attracted by his character, and

then, in a manner, she fell in love with his mind.

One day they were at tea in the laboratory and a discussion

sprang up about the question of women's suffrage. The movement

was then in its earlier militant phases, and one of the women

only, Miss Garvice, opposed it, though Ann Veronica was disposed

to be lukewarm. But a man's opposition always inclined her to

the suffrage side; she had a curious feeling of loyalty in seeing

the more aggressive women through. Capes was irritatingly

judicial in the matter, neither absurdly against, in which case

one might have smashed him, or hopelessly undecided, but tepidly

sceptical. Miss Klegg and the youngest girl made a vigorous

attack on Miss Garvice, who had said she thought women lost

something infinitely precious by mingling in the conflicts of

life. The discussion wandered, and was punctuated with bread and

butter. Capes was inclined to support Miss Klegg until Miss

Garvice cornered him by quoting him against himself, and citing a

recent paper in the Nineteenth Century, in which, following

Atkinson, he had made a vigorous and damaging attack on Lester

Ward's case for the primitive matriarchate and the predominant

importance of the female throughout the animal kingdom.

Ann Veronica was not aware of this literary side of her teacher;