.

"To the view that all women ought to have votes whether they like it or
not."

He shook his head, and his eyes and the mouth under the black mustache
wrinkled with his smile. And as he walked by her side they began a
wrangle that was none the less pleasant to Ann Veronica because it
served to banish a disagreeable preoccupation. It seemed to her in her
restored geniality that she liked Manning extremely. The brightness
Capes had diffused over the world glorified even his rival.

Part 7

The steps by which Ann Veronica determined to engage herself to marry
Manning were never very clear to her. A medley of motives warred in her,
and it was certainly not one of the least of these that she knew herself
to be passionately in love with Capes; at moments she had a giddy
intimation that he was beginning to feel keenly interested in her.
She realized more and more the quality of the brink upon which she
stood--the dreadful readiness with which in certain moods she
might plunge, the unmitigated wrongness and recklessness of such a
self-abandonment. "He must never know," she would whisper to herself,
"he must never know. Or else--Else it will be impossible that I can be
his friend."

That simple statement of the case was by no means all that went on in
Ann Veronica's mind. But it was the form of her ruling determination; it
was the only form that she ever allowed to see daylight. What else was
there lurked in shadows and deep places; if in some mood of reverie it
came out into the light, it was presently overwhelmed and hustled back
again into hiding. She would never look squarely at these dream forms
that mocked the social order in which she lived, never admit she
listened to the soft whisperings in her ear. But Manning seemed more and
more clearly indicated as a refuge, as security. Certain simple purposes
emerged from the disingenuous muddle of her feelings and desires. Seeing
Capes from day to day made a bright eventfulness that hampered her in
the course she had resolved to follow. She vanished from the laboratory
for a week, a week of oddly interesting days....

When she renewed her attendance at the Imperial College the third finger
of her left hand was adorned with a very fine old ring with dark blue
sapphires that had once belonged to a great-aunt of Manning's.

That ring manifestly occupied her thoughts a great deal. She kept
pausing in her work and regarding it, and when Capes came round to her,
she fi