“I don’t see at all how you can be managing,” said Miss Stanley, and Ann Veronica hastened to reply, “I do on very little.” Her mind went back to that treaty. “And aren’t there fees to pay at the Imperial College?” her aunt was saying--a disagreeable question. “There are a few fees.” “Then how have you managed?” “Bother!” said Ann Veronica to herself, and tried not to look guilty. “I was able to borrow the money.” “Borrow the money! But who lent you the money?” “A friend,” said Ann Veronica. She felt herself getting into a corner. She sought hastily in her mind for a plausible answer to an obvious question that didn’t come. Her aunt went off at a tangent. “But my dear Ann Veronica, you will be getting into debt!” Ann Veronica at once, and with a feeling of immense relief, took refuge in her dignity. “I think, aunt,” she said, “you might trust to my self-respect to keep me out of that.” For the moment her aunt could not think of any reply to this counterstroke, and Ann Veronica followed up her advantage by a sudden inquiry about her abandoned boots. But in the train going home her aunt reasoned it out. “If she is borrowing money,” said Miss Stanley, “she MUST be getting into debt. It’s all nonsense....” Part 4 It was by imperceptible degrees that Capes became important in Ann Veronica’s thoughts. But then he began to take steps, and, at last, strides to something more and more like predominance. She began by being interested in his demonstrations and his biological theory, then she was attracted by his character, and then, in a manner, she fell in love with his mind. One day they were at tea in the laboratory and a discussion sprang up about the question of women’s suffrage. The movement was then in its earlier militant phases, and one of the women only, Miss Garvice, opposed it, though Ann Veronica was disposed to be lukewarm. But a man’s opposition always inclined her to the suffrage side; she had a curious feeling of loyalty in seeing the more aggressive women through. Capes was irritatingly judicial in the matter, neither absurdly against, in which case one might have smashed him, or hopelessly undecided, but tepidly sceptical. Miss Klegg and the youngest girl made a vigorous attack on Miss Garvice, who had said she thought women lost something infinitely precious by mingling in the conflicts of life. The discussion wandered, and was punctuated with bread and butter. Capes was inclined to support Miss Klegg until Miss Garvice cornered him by quoting him against himself, and citing a recent paper in the Nineteenth Century, in which, following Atkinson, he had made a vigorous and damaging attack on Lester Ward’s case for the primitive matriarchate and the predominant importance of the female throughout the animal kingdom.