Ann Veronica, page 129 by H.G. Wells
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r comparison with her father's letter, she got out Ramage's check from the box that contained her papers. For so far she had kept it uncashed. She had not even endorsed it.
"Suppose I chuck it," she remarked, standing with the mauve slip in her hand--"suppose I chuck it, and surrender and go home! Perhaps, after all, Roddy was right!
"Father keeps opening the door and shutting it, but a time will come--
"I could still go home!"
She held Ramage's check as if to tear it across. "No," she said at last; "I'm a human being--not a timid female. What could I do at home? The other's a crumple-up--just surrender. Funk! I'll see it out."
CHAPTER THE
EIGHTH
BIOLOGY
Part 1
January found Ann Veronica a student in the biological laboratory of the Central Imperial College that towers up from among the back streets in the angle between Euston Road and Great Portland Street. She was working very steadily at the Advanced Course in Comparative Anatomy, wonderfully relieved to have her mind engaged upon one methodically developing theme in the place of the discursive uncertainties of the previous two months, and doing her utmost to keep right in the back of her mind and out of sight the facts, firstly, that she had achieved this haven of satisfactory activity by incurring a debt to Ramage of forty pounds, and, secondly, that her present position was necessarily temporary and her outlook quite uncertain.
The biological laboratory had an atmosphere that was all its own.
It was at the top of the building, and looked clear over a clustering mass of inferior buildings toward Regent's Park. It was long and narrow, a well-lit, well-ventilated, quiet gallery of small tables and sinks, pervaded by a thin smell of methylated spirit and of a mitigated and sterilized organic decay. Along the inner side was a wonderfully arranged series of displayed specimens that Russell hi