“You’ll get them,” he said.  “This means a plunge.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Only for you!  Most of my income will vanish.  Even unbelieving biological demonstrators must respect decorum; and besides, you see—­you were a student.  We shall have—­hardly any money.”

“I don’t care.”

“Hardship and danger.”

“With you!”

“And as for your people?”

“They don’t count.  That is the dreadful truth.  This—­all this swamps them.  They don’t count, and I don’t care.”

Capes suddenly abandoned his attitude of meditative restraint.  “By Jove!” he broke out, “one tries to take a serious, sober view.  I don’t quite know why.  But this is a great lark, Ann Veronica!  This turns life into a glorious adventure!”

“Ah!” she cried in triumph.

“I shall have to give up biology, anyhow.  I’ve always had a sneaking desire for the writing-trade.  That is what I must do.  I can.”

“Of course you can.”

“And biology was beginning to bore me a bit.  One research is very like another....  Latterly I’ve been doing things....  Creative work appeals to me wonderfully.  Things seem to come rather easily....  But that, and that sort of thing, is just a day-dream.  For a time I must do journalism and work hard....  What isn’t a day-dream is this:  that you and I are going to put an end to flummery—­and go!”

“Go!” said Ann Veronica, clenching her hands.

“For better or worse.”

“For richer or poorer.”

She could not go on, for she was laughing and crying at the same time.  “We were bound to do this when you kissed me,” she sobbed through her tears.  “We have been all this time—­Only your queer code of honor—­Honor!  Once you begin with love you have to see it through.”

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH

THE LAST DAYS AT HOME

Part 1

They decided to go to Switzerland at the session’s end.  “We’ll clean up everything tidy,” said Capes....

For her pride’s sake, and to save herself from long day-dreams and an unappeasable longing for her lover, Ann Veronica worked hard at her biology during those closing weeks.  She was, as Capes had said, a hard young woman.  She was keenly resolved to do well in the school examination, and not to be drowned in the seas of emotion that threatened to submerge her intellectual being.

Nevertheless, she could not prevent a rising excitement as the dawn of the new life drew near to her—­a thrilling of the nerves, a secret and delicious exaltation above the common circumstances of existence.  Sometimes her straying mind would become astonishingly active—­embroidering bright and decorative things that she could say to Capes; sometimes it passed into a state of passive acquiescence, into a radiant, formless, golden joy.  She was aware of people—­her aunt, her father, her fellow-students, friends, and neighbors—­moving about outside this glowing secret, very much as an actor is aware of the dim audience beyond the barrier of the footlights.  They might applaud, or object, or interfere, but the drama was her very own.  She was going through with that, anyhow.