Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/169

 down a crimson carpet, and asked you to say what you wanted, and generally walk over me. But the world didn't do that."

"Not exactly."

"It presented a large impenetrable back, and went on thinking about something else."

"It offered from fifteen to two-and-twenty shillings a week—for drudgery."

"The world has no sense of what is due to youth and courage. It never has had."

"Yes," said Ann Veronica. "But the thing is, I want a job."

"Exactly! And so you came along to me. And you see, I don't turn my back, and I am looking at you and thinking about you from top to toe."

"And what do you think I ought to do?"

"Exactly!" He lifted a paper-weight and dabbed it gently down again. "What ought you to do?"

"I've hunted up all sorts of things."

"The point to note is that fundamentally you don't want particularly to do it."

"I don't understand."

"You want to be free and so forth, yes. But you don't particularly want to do the job that sets you free—for its own sake. I mean that it doesn't interest you in itself."

"I suppose not."

"That's one of our differences. We men are like children. We can get absorbed in play, in games, in the business we do. That's really why we do them sometimes rather well and get on. But women—women as a rule don't throw themselves into things