2
They had their explanations the next evening, but
they were explanations in quite other terms than Ann
Veronica had anticipated, quite other and much more
startling and illuminating terms. Ramage came for her
at her lodgings, and she met him graciously and kindly
as a queen who knows she must needs give sorrow to a
faithful liege. She was unusually soft and gentle in her
manner to him. He was wearing a new silk hat, with a
slightly more generous brim than its predecessor, and it
suited his type of face, robbed his dark eyes a little of
their aggressiveness and gave him a solid and dignified
and benevolent air. A faint anticipation of triumph
showed in his manner and a subdued excitement.
“We'll go to a place where we can have a private
room,” he said. “Then —then we can talk things out.”
So they went this time to the Rococo, in Germain
Street, and up-stairs to a landing upon which stood a
bald-headed waiter with whiskers like a French admiral
and discretion beyond all limits in his manner. He
seemed to have expected them. He ushered them with
an amiable flat hand into a minute apartment with a
little gas-stove, a silk crimson-covered sofa, and a bright
little table, gay with napery and hot-house flowers.
“Odd little room,” said Ann Veronica, dimly
apprehending that obtrusive sofa.
“One can talk without undertones, so to speak,” said
Ramage. “It's —private.” He stood looking at the
preparations before them with an unusual preoccupation
of manner, then roused himself to take her jacket,
a little awkwardly, and hand it to the waiter who hung
it in the corner of the room. It appeared he had
already ordered dinner and wine, and the whiskered waiter
waved in his subordinate with the soup forthwith.
“I'm going to talk of indifferent themes,” said
Ramage, a little fussily, “until these interruptions of the
service are over. Then —then we shall be together. . . .
How did you like Tristan?”
Ann Veronica paused the fraction of a second before
her reply came.
“I thought much of it amazingly beautiful.”
“Isn't it. And to think that man got it all out of
the poorest little love-story for a respectable titled lady!
Have you read of it?”
“Never.”
“It gives in a nutshell the miracle of art and the
imagination. You get this queer irascible musician
quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a
wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes
this, a tapestry of glorious music, setting
out love to
lovers, lovers who love in spite of all that is wise and
respectable and right.”
Ann Veronica thought. She did not want to seem
to shrink from conversation, but all sorts of odd questions
were running through her mind. “I wonder why
people in love are so defiant, so careless of other
considerations?”
“The very hares grow brave. I suppose because it
is the chief thing in life.” He stopped
and said earnestly:
“It is the chief thing in life, and everything else
goes down before it. Everything, my dear,
everything! . . . But we have got to talk upon indifferent
themes until we have done with this blond young gentleman
from Bavaria. . . .”
The dinner came to an end at last, and the whiskered
waiter presented his bill and evacuated the apartment
and closed the door behind him with an almost ostentatious
discretion. Ramage stood up, and suddenly
turned the key in the door in an off-hand manner.
“Now,” he said, “no one can blunder in upon us. We
are alone and we can say and do what we please. We
two.” He stood still, looking at her.
Ann Veronica tried to seem absolutely unconcerned.
The turning of the key startled her, but she did not
see how she could make an objection. She felt she had
stepped into a world of unknown usages.
“I have waited for this,” he said, and stood quite
still, looking at her until the silence became oppressive.
“Won't you sit down,” she said, “and tell me what
you want to say?” Her voice was flat and faint.
Suddenly she had become afraid. She struggled not to
be afraid. After all, what could happen?
He was looking at her very hard and earnestly.
“Ann Veronica,” he said.
Then before she could say a word to arrest him he
was at her side. “Don't!” she said, weakly, as he had
bent down and put one arm about her and seized her
hands with his disengaged hand and kissed her —kissed
her almost upon her lips. He seemed to do ten things
before she could think to do one, to leap upon her and
take possession.
Ann Veronica's universe, which had never been
altogether so respectful to her as she could have wished,
gave a shout and whirled head over heels. Everything
in the world had changed for her. If hate could kill,
Ramage would have been killed by a flash of hate.
“Mr. Ramage!” she cried, and struggled to her feet.
“My darling!” he said, clasping her resolutely in his
arms, “my dearest!”
“Mr. Ramage!” she began, and his mouth sealed hers
and his breath was mixed with her breath. Her eye
met his four inches away, and his was glaring, immense,
and full of resolution, a stupendous monster of an eye.
She shut her lips hard, her jaw hardened, and she set
herself to struggle with him. She wrenched her head
away from his grip and got her arm between his chest
and hers. They began to wrestle fiercely. Each became
frightfully aware of the other as a plastic energetic
body, of the strong muscles of neck against cheek, of
hands gripping shoulder-blade and waist. “How dare
you!” she panted, with her world screaming and grimacing
insult at her. “How dare you!”
They were both astonished at the other's strength.
Perhaps Ramage was the more astonished. Ann
Veronica had been an ardent hockey player and had had
a course of jiu-jitsu in the High School. Her defence
ceased rapidly to be in any sense ladylike, and became
vigorous and effective; a strand of black hair that had
escaped its hairpins came athwart Ramage's eyes, and
then the knuckles of a small but very hardly clinched
fist had thrust itself with extreme effectiveness and
painfulness under his jawbone and ear.
“Let go!” said Ann Veronica, through her teeth,
strenuously inflicting agony, and he cried out sharply
and let go and receded a pace.
“Now!” said Ann Veronica. “Why
did you dare to
do that?”