"Strongly," said Mr. Stanley, "very strongly."
The conversation hung. Ann Veronica wondered what her father would do if she were to tell him the full story of her relations with Ramage.
"A man like that taints a girl by looking at her, by his mere conversation." He adjusted his glasses on his nose. There was another little thing he had to say. "One has to be so careful of one's friends and acquaintances," he remarked, by way of transition. "They mould one insensibly." His voice assumed an easy detached tone. "I suppose, Vee, you don't see much of those Widgetts now?"
"I go in and talk to Constance sometimes."
"Do you?"
"We were great friends at school."
"No doubt.... Still--I don't know whether I quite like--Something ramshackle about those people, Vee. While I am talking about your friends, I feel--I think you ought to know how I look at it." His voice conveyed studied moderation. "I don't mind, of course, your seeing her sometimes, still there are differences--differences in social atmospheres. One gets drawn into things. Before you know where you are you find yourself in a complication. I don't want to influence you unduly--But--They're artistic people, Vee. That's the fact about them. We're different."
"I suppose we are," said Vee, rearranging the flowers in her hand.
"Friendships that are all very well between school-girls don't always go on into later life. It's--it's a social difference."
"I like Constance very much."
"No doubt. Still, one has to be reasonable. As you admitted to me--one has to square one's self with the world. You don't know. With people of that sort all sorts of things may happen. We don't want things to happen."
Ann Veronica made no answer.
A vague desire to justify himself ruffled her father. "I may seem unduly--anxious. I can't forget about your sister. It's that has always made me--SHE, you know, was drawn into a set--didn't discriminate Private theatricals."
Ann Veronica remained anxious to hear more of her sister's story from her father's point of view, but he did not go on. Even so much allusion as this to that family shadow, she felt, was an immense recognition of her ripening years. She glanced at him. He stood a little anxious and fussy, bothered by the responsibility of her, entirely careless of what her life was or was likely to be, ignoring her thoughts and feelings, ignorant of every fact of importance in her life, explaining everything he could not understand in her as nonsense and perversity, concerned only with a terror of bothers and undesirable situations. "We don't want things to happen!" Never had he shown his daughter so clearly that the womenkind he was persuaded he had to protect and control could please him in one way, and in one way only, and that was by doing nothing except the punctual domestic duties and being nothing except restful appearances. He had quite enough to see to and worry about in the City without their doing things. He had no use for Ann Veronica; he had never had a use for her since she had been too old to sit upon his knee. Nothing but the constraint of social usage now linked him to her. And the less "anything" happened the better. The less she lived, in fact, the better. These realizations rushed into Ann Veronica's mind and hardened her heart against him. She spoke slowly. "I may not see the Widgetts for some little time, father," she said. "I don't think I shall."