At intervals Ann Veronica demanded to go, declaring her undying resolve to repay him at any cost, and made short movements doorward.
But at last this ordeal was over, and Ramage opened the door. She emerged with a white face and wide-open eyes upon a little, red-lit landing. She went past three keenly observant and ostentatiously preoccupied waiters down the thick-carpeted staircase and out of the Hotel Rococo, that remarkable laboratory of relationships, past a tall porter in blue and crimson, into a cool, clear night.
Part 6
When Ann Veronica reached her little bed-sitting-room again, every nerve in her body was quivering with shame and self-disgust.
She threw hat and coat on the bed and sat down before the fire.
“And now,” she said, splintering the surviving piece of coal into indignant flame-spurting fragments with one dexterous blow, “what am I to do?
“I’m in a hole!—mess is a better word, expresses it better. I’m in a mess—a nasty mess! a filthy mess! Oh, no end of a mess!
“Do you hear, Ann Veronica?—you’re in a nasty, filthy, unforgivable mess!
“Haven’t I just made a silly mess of things?
“Forty pounds! I haven’t got twenty!”