“But this is a surprise!” said Ramage.  “This is wonderful!  I’ve been feeling that you had vanished from my world.  Have you been away from Morningside Park?”

“I’m not interrupting you?”

“You are.  Splendidly.  Business exists for such interruptions.  There you are, the best client’s chair.”

Ann Veronica sat down, and Ramage’s eager eyes feasted on her.

“I’ve been looking out for you,” he said.  “I confess it.”

She had not, she reflected, remembered how prominent his eyes were.

“I want some advice,” said Ann Veronica.

“Yes?”

“You remember once, how we talked—­at a gate on the Downs?  We talked about how a girl might get an independent living.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, you see, something has happened at home.”

She paused.

“Nothing has happened to Mr. Stanley?”

“I’ve fallen out with my father.  It was about—­a question of what I might do or might not do.  He—­In fact, he—­he locked me in my room.  Practically.”

Her breath left her for a moment.

“I say!” said Mr. Ramage.

“I wanted to go to an art-student ball of which he disapproved.”

“And why shouldn’t you?”

“I felt that sort of thing couldn’t go on.  So I packed up and came to
London next day.”

“To a friend?”

“To lodgings—­alone.”

“I say, you know, you have some pluck.  You did it on your own?”

Ann Veronica smiled.  “Quite on my own,” she said.

“It’s magnificent!” He leaned back and regarded her with his head a little on one side.  “By Jove!” he said, “there is something direct about you.  I wonder if I should have locked you up if I’d been your father.  Luckily I’m not.  And you started out forthwith to fight the world and be a citizen on your own basis?” He came forward again and folded his hands under him on his desk.

“How has the world taken it?” he asked.  “If I was the world I think I should have put down a crimson carpet, and asked you to say what you wanted, and generally walk over me.  But the world didn’t do that.”

“Not exactly.”

“It presented a large impenetrable back, and went on thinking about something else.”

“It offered from fifteen to two-and-twenty shillings a week—­for drudgery.”

“The world has no sense of what is due to youth and courage.  It never has had.”

“Yes,” said Ann Veronica.  “But the thing is, I want a job.”

“Exactly!  And so you came along to me.  And you see, I don’t turn my back, and I am looking at you and thinking about you from top to toe.”

“And what do you think I ought to do?”

“Exactly!” He lifted a paper-weight and dabbed it gently down again.  “What ought you to do?”

“I’ve hunted up all sorts of things.”

“The point to note is that fundamentally you don’t want particularly to do it.”