Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/39

 are running about as free as air practically, with registry offices and all sorts of accommodation round the corner. Nothing to check their proceedings but a declining habit of telling the truth and the limitations of their imaginations. And in that respect they stir up one another. Not my affair, of course, but I think we ought to teach them more or restrain them more. One or the other. They're too free for their innocence or too innocent for their freedom. That's my point. Are you going to have any apple-tart, Stanley? The apple-tart's been very good lately—very good!"

At the end of dinner that evening Ann Veronica began: "Father!"

Her father looked at her over his glasses and spoke with grave deliberation; "If there is anything you want to say to me," he said, "you must say it in the study. I am going to smoke a little here, and then I shall go to the study.  I don't see what you can have to say.  I should have thought my note cleared up everything.  There are some papers I have to look through to-night—important papers."

"I won't keep you very long, daddy," said Ann Veronica.

"I don't see, Mollie," he remarked, taking a cigar from the box on the table as his sister and daughter rose, "why you and Vee shouldn't discuss this little affair—whatever it is—without bothering me."

It was the first time this controversy had become triangular, for all three of them were shy by habit.