Ann Veronica | Page 3

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ANN VERONICA A MODERN LOVE STORY BY H. G. WELLS

CONTENTS
CHAP. I. ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER II. ANN
VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW III. THE MORNING OF
THE CRISIS IV. THE CRISIS V. THE FLIGHT TO LONDON VI.
EXPOSTULATIONS VII. IDEALS AND A REALITY VIII.
BIOLOGY IX. DISCORDS X. THE SUFFRAGETTES XI.
THOUGHTS IN PRISON XII. ANN VERONICA PUTS THINGS IN
ORDER XIII. THE SAPPHIRE RING XIV. THE COLLAPSE OF
THE PENITENT XV. THE LAST DAYS AT HOME XVI. IN THE

MOUNTAINS XVII. IN PERSPECTIVE
"The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well-bred
girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own
thoughts and her own knowledge."

ANN VERONICA

CHAPTER THE
FIRST
ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER
Part 1
One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley
came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite
resolved to have things out with her father that very evening. She had
trembled on the verge of such a resolution before, but this time quite
definitely she made it. A crisis had been reached, and she was almost
glad it had been reached. She made up her mind in the train home that
it should be a decisive crisis. It is for that reason that this novel begins
with her there, and neither earlier nor later, for it is the history of this
crisis and its consequences that this novel has to tell.
She had a compartment to herself in the train from London to
Morningside Park, and she sat with both her feet on the seat in an
attitude that would certainly have distressed her mother to see, and
horrified her grandmother beyond measure; she sat with her knees up to
her chin and her hands clasped before them, and she was so lost in
thought that she discovered with a start, from a lettered lamp, that she
was at Morningside Park, and thought she was moving out of the
station, whereas she was only moving in. "Lord!" she said. She jumped
up at once, caught up a leather clutch containing notebooks, a fat

text-book, and a chocolate-and-yellow-covered pamphlet, and leaped
neatly from the carriage, only to discover that the train was slowing
down and that she had to traverse the full length of the platform past it
again as the result of her precipitation. "Sold again," she remarked.
"Idiot!" She raged inwardly while she walked along with that air of
self-contained serenity that is proper to a young lady of nearly
two-and-twenty under the eye of the world.
She walked down the station approach, past the neat, obtrusive offices
of the coal merchant and the house agent, and so to the wicket-gate by
the butcher's shop that led to the field path to her home. Outside the
post-office stood a no-hatted, blond young man in gray flannels, who
was elaborately affixing a stamp to a letter. At the sight of her he
became rigid and a singularly bright shade of pink. She made herself
serenely unaware of his existence, though it may be it was his presence
that sent her by the field detour instead of by the direct path up the
Avenue.
"Umph!" he said, and regarded his letter doubtfully before consigning it
to the pillar-box. "Here goes," he said. Then he hovered undecidedly
for some seconds with his hands in his pockets and his mouth puckered
to a whistle before he turned to go home by the Avenue.
Ann Veronica forgot him as soon as she was through the gate, and her
face resumed its expression of stern preoccupation. "It's either now or
never," she said to herself. . . .
Morningside Park was a suburb that had not altogether, as people say,
come off. It consisted, like pre-Roman Gaul, of three parts. There was