he carriage moved forward slowly and hid him.
Ann Veronica sat back with a sigh of relief. Manning might go on now
idealizing her as much as he liked. She was no longer a confederate in
that. He might go on as the devoted lover until he tired. She had done
forever with the Age of Chivalry, and her own base adaptations of its
traditions to the compromising life. She was honest again.

But when she turned her thoughts to Morningside Park she perceived the
tangled skein of life was now to be further complicated by his romantic
importunity.

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT

Part 1

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 to be doing anything.

He came in with his hands in his trousers pockets and a general air
of depression in his bearing. He was engaged in detesting Manning and
himself in almost equal measure. His face brightened at the sight of
her, and he came toward her.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Ann Veronica, and stared over her shoulder out of the
window.

"So am I.... Lassitude?"

"I suppose so."

"_I_ can't work."

"Nor I," said Ann Veronica.

Pause.

"It's the spring," he said. "It's the warming up of the year, the coming
of the light mornings, the way in which everything begins to run about
and begin new things. Work becomes distasteful; one thinks of holidays.
This year--I've got it badly. I want to get away. I've never wanted to
get away so much."

"Where do you go?"

"Oh!--Alps."

"Climbing?"

"Yes."

"That's rather a fine sort of holiday!"

He made no answer for three or four seconds.

"Yes," he said, "I want to get away. I feel at moments as though I could
bolt for it.... Silly, isn't it? Undisciplined."

He went to the window and fidgeted with the blind, looking out to where
the tree-tops of Regent's Park showed distantly over the houses. He
turned round toward her and found her looking at him and standing very
still.

"It's the stir of spring," he said.

"I believe it is."

She glanced out of the window, and the distant trees were a froth of
hard spring green and almond blossom. She formed a wild resolution,
and, lest she should waver from it, she set about at onc