Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/103



"Oh God!" she cried, "Oh God!" and flung aside her opera-cloak, and for a time walked about the room--a Corsair's bride at a crisis of emotion. "Why can't he reason with me," she said, again and again, "instead of doing this?"

Part 3
There presently came a phase in which she said: "I WON'T stand it even now.  I will go to-night."

She went as far as her door, then turned to the window. She opened this and scrambled out--a thing she had not done for five long years of adolescence--upon the leaded space above the built-out bath-room on the first floor. Once upon a time she and Roddy had descended thence by the drain-pipe.

But things that a girl of sixteen may do in short skirts are not things to be done by a young lady of twenty-one in fancy dress and an opera-cloak, and just as she was coming unaided to an adequate realization of this, she discovered Mr. Pragmar, the wholesale druggist, who lived three gardens away, and who had been mowing his lawn to get an appetite for dinner, standing in a fascinated attitude beside the forgotten lawn-mower and watching her intently.

She found it extremely difficult to infuse an air of quiet correctitude into her return through the window, and when she was safely inside she waved clinched fists and executed a noiseless dance of rage.

When she reflected that Mr. Pragmar probably knew Mr. Ramage, and might describe the affair to him, she