Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

In June 1923, Vera and Winifred travel to Oxford for a class reunion. Vera receives a card from a former male student inviting her to tea. Vera tears up the card and discards it. In August, she receives a package from her publisher with a note in the same handwriting as the card at Oxford.

At this point in her life, Vera is not interested in marriage or children. She says that she has achieved the kind of life that she has always wanted and does not want to change it. Vera continues to correspond with the man from New College Oxford. He soon writes that he will be coming to London for a long vacation in June and that he thinks that she is the student he knew as Virginia Dennison. Vera thinks of telling him that she does not want...