r been even a disguise between them, as though
from the first it was no more than a fancy dress they had put quite
understandingly upon their relationship. He had set out to win her, and
she had let him start. And at the thought of that other lover--he was
convinced that that beloved person was a lover, and she found herself
unable to say a word to explain to him that this other person, the
person she loved, did not even know of her love--Ramage grew angry
and savage once more, and returned suddenly to gibe and insult. Men do
services for the love of women, and the woman who takes must pay. Such
was the simple code that displayed itself in all his thoughts. He left
that arid rule clear of the least mist of refinement or delicacy.

That he should pay forty pounds to help this girl who preferred another
man was no less in his eyes than a fraud and mockery that made her
denial a maddening and outrageous disgrace to him. And this though he
was evidently passionately in love with her.

For a while he threatened her. "You have put all your life in my hands,"
he declared. "Think of that check you endorsed. There it is--against
you. I defy you to explain it away. What do you think people will make
of that? What will this lover of yours make of that?"

At intervals Ann Veronica demanded to go, declaring her undying resolve
to repay him at any cost, and made short movements doorward.

But at last this ordeal was over, and Ramage opened the door. She
emerged with a white face and wide-open eyes upon a little, red-lit
landing. She went past three keenly observant and ostentatiously
preoccupied waiters down the thick-carpeted staircase and out of the
Hotel Rococo, that remarkable laboratory of relationships, past a tall
porter in blue and crimson, into a cool, clear night.

Part 6

When Ann Veronica reached her little bed-sitting-room again, every nerve
in her body was quivering with shame and self-disgust.

She threw hat and coat on the bed and sat down before the fire.

"And now," she said, splintering the surviving piece of coal into
indignant flame-spurting fragments with one dexterous blow, "what am I
to do?

"I'm in a hole!--mess is a better word, expresses it better. I'm in a
mess--a nasty mess! a filthy mess! Oh, no end of a mess!

"Do you hear, Ann Veronica?--you're in a nasty, filthy, unforgivable
mess!

"Haven't I just made a silly mess of things?

"Forty pounds! I haven't got twenty!"

She got up, s