g 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