erwhelming clearness it came to her that whatever happened she
would never be able to tell her father about her debt. The completest
capitulation would not wipe out that trouble. And she felt that if she
went home it was imperative to pay. She would always be going to and fro
up the Avenue, getting glimpses of Ramage, seeing him in trains....

For a time she promenaded the room.

"Why did I ever take that loan? An idiot girl in an asylum would have
known better than that!

"Vulgarity of soul and innocence of mind--the worst of all conceivable
combinations. I wish some one would kill Ramage by accident!...

"But then they would find that check endorsed in his bureau....

"I wonder what he will do?" She tried to imagine situations that might
arise out of Ramage's antagonism, for he had been so bitter and savage
that she could not believe that he would leave things as they were.

The next morning she went out with her post-office savings bank-book,
and telegraphed for a warrant to draw out all the money she had in the
world. It amounted to two-and-twenty pounds. She addressed an envelope
to Ramage, and scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, "The rest shall
follow." The money would be available in the afternoon, and she would
send him four five-pound notes. The rest she meant to keep for
her immediate necessities. A little relieved by this step toward
reinstatement, she went on to the Imperial College to forget her muddle
of problems for a time, if she could, in the presence of Capes.

Part 7

For a time the biological laboratory was full of healing virtue. Her
sleepless night had left her languid but not stupefied, and for an hour
or so the work distracted her altogether from her troubles.

Then, after Capes had been through her work and had gone on, it came to
her that the fabric of this life of hers was doomed to almost immediate
collapse; that in a little while these studies would cease, and perhaps
she would never set eyes on him again. After that consolations fled.

The overnight nervous strain began to tell; she became inattentive
to the work before her, and it did not get on. She felt sleepy and
unusually irritable. She lunched at a creamery in Great Portland Street,
and as the day was full of wintry sunshine, spent the rest of the
lunch-hour in a drowsy gloom, which she imagined to be thought upon the
problems of her position, on a seat in Regent's Park. A girl of fifteen
or sixteen gave her a handbill