o 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 Co