Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/145



"You're like a Princess in Exile!" he repeated, overruling her. "You come into these sordid surroundings--you mustn't mind my calling them sordid--and it makes them seem as though they didn't matter. . . . I don't think they do matter.  I don't think any surroundings could throw a shadow on you."

Ann Veronica felt a slight embarrassment. "Won't you have some more tea, Mr. Manning?" she asked.

"You know--," said Mr. Manning, relinquishing his cup without answering her question, "when I hear you talk of earning a living, it's as if I heard of an archangel going on the Stock Exchange--or Christ selling doves. . . . Forgive my daring.  I couldn't help the thought."

"It's a very good image," said Ann Veronica.

"I knew you wouldn't mind."

"But does it correspond with the facts of the case? You know, Mr. Manning, all this sort of thing is very well as sentiment, but does it correspond with the realities? Are women truly such angelic things and men so chivalrous?  You men have, I know, meant to make us Queens and Goddesses, but in practice--well, look, for example, at the stream of girls one meets going to work of a morning, round-shouldered, cheap, and underfed!  They aren't queens, and no one is treating them as queens.  And look, again, at the women one finds letting lodgings. . . .  I was looking for rooms last week.  It got on my nerves--the women I saw.  Worse than any man.  Everywhere I went and rapped at a door I found behind it another dreadful dingy woman--another fallen queen, I suppose--dingier than the last, dirty, you know, in grain.  Their poor hands!"