It was so true what he said; middle-class people were ridiculously squeamish about money.  Why should they be?

She and Ramage were friends, very good friends.  If she was in a position to help him she would help him; only it happened to be the other way round.  He was in a position to help her.  What was the objection?

She found it impossible to look her own diffidence in the face.  So she went to Ramage and came to the point almost at once.

“Can you spare me forty pounds?” she said.

Mr. Ramage controlled his expression and thought very quickly.

“Agreed,” he said, “certainly,” and drew a checkbook toward him.

“It’s best,” he said, “to make it a good round sum.

“I won’t give you a check though—­Yes, I will.  I’ll give you an uncrossed check, and then you can get it at the bank here, quite close by....  You’d better not have all the money on you; you had better open a small account in the post-office and draw it out a fiver at a time.  That won’t involve references, as a bank account would—­and all that sort of thing.  The money will last longer, and—­it won’t bother you.”

He stood up rather close to her and looked into her eyes.  He seemed to be trying to understand something very perplexing and elusive.  “It’s jolly,” he said, “to feel you have come to me.  It’s a sort of guarantee of confidence.  Last time—­you made me feel snubbed.”

He hesitated, and went off at a tangent.  “There’s no end of things I’d like to talk over with you.  It’s just upon my lunch-time.  Come and have lunch with me.”

Ann Veronica fenced for a moment.  “I don’t want to take up your time.”

“We won’t go to any of these City places.  They’re just all men, and no one is safe from scandal.  But I know a little place where we’ll get a little quiet talk.”

Ann Veronica for some indefinable reason did not want to lunch with him, a reason indeed so indefinable that she dismissed it, and Ramage went through the outer office with her, alert and attentive, to the vivid interest of the three clerks.  The three clerks fought for the only window, and saw her whisked into a hansom.  Their subsequent conversation is outside the scope of our story.

“Ritter’s!” said Ramage to the driver, “Dean Street.”

It was rare that Ann Veronica used hansoms, and to be in one was itself eventful and exhilarating.  She liked the high, easy swing of the thing over its big wheels, the quick clatter-patter of the horse, the passage of the teeming streets.  She admitted her pleasure to Ramage.