the first time in an atmosphere of
almost lurid dismay. Her father's peculiar stiffness of soul presented
itself now as something altogether left out of the calculations upon
which her plans were based, and, in particular, she had not anticipated
the difficulty she would find in borrowing the forty pounds she needed
for Ramage. That had taken her by surprise, and her tired wits had
failed her. She was to have fifteen pounds, and no more. She knew that
to expect more now was like anticipating a gold-mine in the garden. The
chance had gone. It became suddenly glaringly apparent to her that it
was impossible to return fifteen pounds or any sum less than twenty
pounds to Ramage--absolutely impossible. She realized that with a pang
of disgust and horror.

Already she had sent him twenty pounds, and never written to explain to
him why it was she had not sent it back sharply directly he returned
it. She ought to have written at once and told him exactly what had
happened. Now if she sent fifteen pounds the suggestion that she had
spent a five-pound note in the meanwhile would be irresistible. No! That
was impossible. She would have just to keep the fifteen pounds until she
could make it twenty. That might happen on her birthday--in August.

She turned about, and was persecuted by visions, half memories,
half dreams, of Ramage. He became ugly and monstrous, dunning her,
threatening her, assailing her.

"Confound sex from first to last!" said Ann Veronica. "Why can't we
propagate by sexless spores, as the ferns do? We restrict each other, we
badger each other, friendship is poisoned and buried under it!... I
MUST pay off that forty pounds. I MUST."

For a time there seemed no comfort for her even in Capes. She was to see
Capes to-morrow, but now, in this state of misery she had achieved, she
felt assured he would turn his back upon her, take no notice of her at
all. And if he didn't, what was the good of seeing him?

"I wish he was a woman," she said, "then I could make him my friend. I
want him as my friend. I want to talk to him and go about with him. Just
go about with him."

She was silent for a time, with her nose on the pillow, and that brought
her to: "What's the good of pretending?

"I love him," she said aloud to the dim forms of her room, and repeated
it, and went on to imagine herself doing acts of tragically dog-like
devotion to the biologist, who, for the purposes of the drama, remained
entirely unconscious