"The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every
well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even
ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge."




ANN VERONICA




CHAPTER THE FIRST

ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER


Part 1


One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came
down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to
have things out with her father that very evening. She had trembled on
the verge of such a resolution before, but this time quite definitely
she made it. A crisis had been reached, and she was almost glad it had
been reached. She made up her mind in the train home that it should be
a decisive crisis. It is for that reason that this novel begins with
her there, and neither earlier nor later, for it is the history of this
crisis and its consequences that this novel has to tell.