“I was glad you did not send it back again,” he said.
He touched a long-standing sore, and Ann Veronica found herself vainly trying to explain—the inexplicable. “It’s because I mean to send it back altogether,” she said.
He ignored her protests in order to pursue some impressive line of his own.
“Here we are, living in the same suburb,” he began. “We have to be—modern.”
Her heart leaped within her as she caught that phrase. That knot also would be cut. Modern, indeed! She was going to be as primordial as chipped flint.
Part 2
In the late afternoon, as Ann Veronica was gathering flowers for the dinner-table, her father came strolling across the lawn toward her with an affectation of great deliberation.
“I want to speak to you about a little thing, Vee,” said Mr. Stanley.
Ann Veronica’s tense nerves started, and she stood still with her eyes upon him, wondering what it might be that impended.
“You were talking to that fellow Ramage to-day—in the Avenue. Walking to the station with him.”