Ann Veronica, a Modern Love Story

ANN VERONICA CHAPTER THE FIRST ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER § 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 r

CHAPTER THE SECOND ANN VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW § 1 "ARE you coming to the Fadden Dance, Ann Veronica?" asked Constance Widgett. Ann Veronica considered her answer. "I mean to," she replied. "You are making your dress?" "Such as it is." They were in the elder Widgett girl's bedroom; Hetty was

CHAPTER THE THIRD THE MORNING OF THE CRISIS § 1 TWO days after came the day of the Crisis, the day of the Fadden Dance. It would have been a crisis anyhow, but it was complicated in Ann Veronica's mind by the fact that a letter lay on the breakfast-table from Mr. Manning, and that her aunt focussed

CHAPTER THE FOURTH THE CRISIS § 1 WE left Miss Stanley with Ann Veronica's fancy dress in her hands and her eyes directed to Ann Veronica's pseudo-Turkish slippers. When Mr. Stanley came home at a quarter to six—an earlier train by fifteen minutes than he affected—his sister met him in the hall with

CHAPTER THE FIFTH THE FLIGHT TO LONDON § 1 ANN VERONICA had an impression that she did not sleep at all that night, and at any rate she got through an immense amount of feverish feeling and thinking. What was she going to do? One main idea possessed her: she must get away from home, she must assert

CHAPTER THE SIXTH EXPOSTULATIONS § 1 THE next morning opened calmly, and Ann Veronica sat in her own room, her very own room, and consumed an egg and marmalade, and read the advertisements in the Daily Telegraph. Then began expostulations, preluded by a telegram and headed by her aunt. The telegram

And now for some weeks Ann Veronica was to test her market value in the world. She went about in a negligent November London that had become very dark and foggy and greasy and forbidding indeed, and tried to find that modest but independent employment she had so rashly assumed. She went about, inten

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 t

One afternoon, soon after Ann Veronica's great discovery, a telegram came into the laboratory for her. It ran: —————————————————————————- | Bored | and | nothing | to | do | |—————|—————-|—————|————|————| | will | you | dine | with | me | |—————|—————-|—————|————|————| | to-night | somewhere | and |

"There is only one way out of all this," said Ann Veronica, sitting up in her little bed in the darkness and biting at her nails. "I thought I was just up against Morningside Park and father, but it's the whole order of things—the whole blessed order of things...." She shivered. She frowned and grip

The first night in prison she found it impossible to sleep. The bed was hard beyond any experience of hers, the bed-clothes coarse and insufficient, the cell at once cold and stuffy. The little grating in the door, the sense of constant inspection, worried her. She kept opening her eyes and looking

Ann Veronica made a strenuous attempt to carry out her good resolutions. She meditated long and carefully upon her letter to her father before she wrote it, and gravely and deliberately again before she despatched it. "MY DEAR FATHER," she wrote,—"I have been thinking hard about everything since I w

For a time that ring set with sapphires seemed to be, after all, the satisfactory solution of Ann 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

Spring 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 Ann Veronica, Capes came into the laboratory at lunch-time and found her alone there standing by the open window, and not even pretending t

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 day-dreams and an unappeasable longing for her lover, Ann Veronica worked hard at her biology during those closing weeks. She was, as Capes had

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH IN PERSPECTIVE § 1 About four years and a quarter later—to be exact, it was four years and four months—Mr. and Mrs. Capes stood side by side upon an old Persian carpet that did duty as a hearthrug in the dining-room of their flat and surveyed a shining dinner-table set for fo