CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT
Part 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.
