Ann Veronica | Page 4

first the Avenue, which ran in a consciously elegant curve from the
railway station into an undeveloped wilderness of agriculture, with big,
yellow brick villas on either side, and then there was the pavement, the
little clump of shops about the post-office, and under the railway arch
was a congestion of workmen's dwellings. The road from Surbiton and
Epsom ran under the arch, and, like a bright fungoid growth in the ditch,
there was now appearing a sort of fourth estate of little red-and-white
rough-cast villas, with meretricious gables and very brassy
window-blinds. Behind the Avenue was a little hill, and an iron-fenced

path went over the crest of this to a stile under an elm-tree, and forked
there, with one branch going back into the Avenue again.
"It's either now or never," said Ann Veronica, again ascending this stile.
"Much as I hate rows, I've either got to make a stand or give in
altogether."
She seated herself in a loose and easy attitude and surveyed the backs
of the Avenue houses; then her eyes wandered to where the new
red-and-white villas peeped among the trees. She seemed to be making
some sort of inventory. "Ye Gods!" she said at last. "WHAT a place!
"Stuffy isn't the word for it.
"I wonder what he takes me for?"
When presently she got down from the stile a certain note of internal
conflict, a touch of doubt, had gone from her warm-tinted face. She had
now the clear and tranquil expression of one whose mind is made up.
Her back had stiffened, and her hazel eyes looked steadfastly ahead.
As she approached the corner of the Avenue the blond, no-hatted man
in gray flannels appeared. There was a certain air of forced fortuity in
his manner. He saluted awkwardly. "Hello, Vee!" he said.
"Hello, Teddy!" she answered.
He hung vaguely for a moment as she passed.
But it was clear she was in no mood for Teddys. He realized that he
was committed to the path across the fields, an uninteresting walk at
the best of times.
"Oh, dammit!" he remarked, "dammit!" with great bitterness as he
faced it.

Part 2

Ann Veronica Stanley was twenty-one and a half years old. She had
black hair, fine eyebrows, and a clear complexion; and the forces that
had modelled her features had loved and lingered at their work and
made them subtle and fine. She was slender, and sometimes she
seemed tall, and walked and carried herself lightly and joyfully as one
who commonly and habitually feels well, and sometimes she stooped a
little and was preoccupied. Her lips came together with an expression
between contentment and the faintest shadow of a smile, her manner
was one of quiet reserve, and behind this mask she was wildly
discontented and eager for freedom and life.
She wanted to live. She was vehemently impatient--she did not clearly
know for what--to do, to be, to experience. And experience was slow in
coming. All the world about her seemed to be--how can one put it? --in
wrappers, like a house when people leave it in the summer. The blinds
were all drawn, the sunlight kept out, one could not tell what colors
these gray swathings hid. She wanted to know. And there was no
intimation whatever that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or
doors be opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a
blaze of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit. Dim souls flitted about her,
not only speaking but it would seem even thinking in undertones. . . .
During her school days, especially her earlier school days, the world
had been very explicit with her, telling her what to do, what not to do,
giving her lessons to learn and games to play and interests of the most
suitable and various kinds. Presently she woke up to the fact that there
was a considerable group of interests called being in love and getting
married, with certain attractive and amusing subsidiary developments,
such as flirtation and "being interested" in people of the opposite sex.
She approached this field with her usual liveliness of apprehension. But
here she met with a check. These interests her world promptly, through
the agency of schoolmistresses, older school-mates, her aunt, and a
number of other responsible and authoritative people, assured her she
must on no account think about. Miss Moffatt, the history and moral
instruction mistress, was particularly explicit upon this score, and they
all agreed in indicating contempt and pity for girls whose minds ran on
such matters, and who betrayed it in their conversation or dress or

bearing. It was, in fact, a group of interests quite unlike any other group,
peculiar and special, and one to be thoroughly ashamed of.
Nevertheless, Ann Veronica found