Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/124



"Perhaps by this time you will have heard of the step I have taken in leaving my home. Very likely you will disapprove highly of what I have done--l wonder?  You may, perhaps, think I have done it just in a fit of childish petulance because my father locked me in when I wanted to go to a ball of which he did not approve.  But really it is much more than that.  At Morningside Park I feel as though all my growing up was presently to stop, as though I was being shut in from the light of life, and, as they say in botany, etiolated.  I was just like a sort of dummy that does things as it is told--that is to say, as the strings are pulled.  I want to be a person by myself, and to pull my own strings.  I had rather have trouble and hardship like that than be taken care of by others.  I want to be myself. l wonder if a man can quite understand that passionate feeling?  It is quite a passionate feeling. So I am already no longer the girl you knew at Morningside Park. I am a young person seeking employment and freedom and self-development, just as in quite our first talk of all I said I wanted to be.

"I do hope you will see how things are, and not be offended with me or frightfully shocked and distressed by what I have done.


 * "Very sincerely yours,


 * "ANN VERONICA STANLEY."

Part 6
In the afternoon she resumed her search for apartments. The intoxicating sense of novelty had given place to a more business-like mood. She drifted northward