1
SPRING had held back that year until the dawn of
May, and then spring and summer came with a
rush together. Two days after this conversation
between Manning and Ann Veronica, Capes came into the
laboratory at lunch-time and found her alone there
standing by the open window, and not even pretending
to be doing anything. He came in with his hands in his
trousers pockets and a general air of depression in his
bearing. He was engaged in detesting Manning and
himself in almost equal measure. His face brightened
at the sight of her, and he came toward her.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Ann Veronica, and stared over her
shoulder out of the window.
“So am I. . . . Lassitude?”
“I suppose so.”
“I can't work.”
“Nor I,” said Ann Veronica.
Pause.
“It's the spring,” he said. “It's the warming up of
the year, the coming of the light mornings, the way in
which everything begins to run about and begin new
things. Work becomes distasteful; one thinks of
holidays. This year —I've got it badly. I want to get
away. I've never wanted to get away so much.”
“Where do you go?”
“Oh! —Alps.”
“Climbing?”
“Yes.”
“That's rather a fine sort of holiday!”
He made no answer for three or four seconds.
“Yes,” he said, “I want to get away. I feel at
moments as though I could bolt for it. . . . Silly, isn't it?
Undisciplined.”
He went to the window and fidgeted with the blind,
looking out to where the tree-tops of Regent's Park
showed distantly over the houses. He turned round
toward her and found her looking at him and standing
very still.
“It's the stir of spring,” he said.
“I believe it is.”
She glanced out of the window, and the distant trees
were a froth of hard spring green and almond blossom.
She formed a wild resolution, and, lest she should waver
from it, she set about at once to realize it. “I've broken
off my engagement,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone,
and found her heart thumping in her neck. He moved
slightly, and she went on, with a slight catching of her
breath: “It's a bother and disturbance, but you see —”
She had to go through with it now, because she could
think of nothing but her preconceived words. Her
voice was weak and flat. “I've fallen in love.”
He never helped her by a sound.
“I —I didn't love the man I was engaged to,” she said.
She met his eyes for a moment, and could not interpret
their expression. They struck her as cold and indifferent.
Her heart failed her and her resolution became water.
She remained standing stiffly, unable even to move.
She could not look at him through an interval that
seemed to her a vast gulf of time. But she felt his lax
figure become rigid.
At last his voice came to release her tension.
“I thought you weren't keeping up to the mark.
You — It's jolly of you to confide in me. Still —”
Then, with incredible and obviously deliberate stupidity,
and a voice as flat as her own, he asked, “Who is the
man?”
Her spirit raged within her at the dumbness, the
paralysis that had fallen upon her. Grace, confidence,
the power of movement even, seemed gone from her.
A fever of shame ran through her being. Horrible
doubts assailed her. She sat down awkwardly and
helplessly on one of the little stools by her table and
covered her face with her hands.
“Can't you see how things are?” she
said.
