From eight o’clock in the morning until about half-past eleven Monica Tyrell suffered from her nerves, and suffered so terribly that these hours were—agonizing, simply. It was not as though she could control them. “Perhaps if I were ten years younger . . .” she would say. For now that she was thirty-three she had queer little way of referring to her age on all occasions, of looking at her friends with grave, childish eyes and saying: “Yes, I remember how twenty years ago . . .” or of drawing Ralph’s attention to the girls—real girls—with lovely youthful arms and throats and swift hesitating movements who sat near them in restaurants. “Perhaps if I were ten years younger . . .” “Why don’t you get Marie to sit outside your door and absolutely forbid anybody to come near your room until you ring your bell?” “Oh, if it were as simple as that!” She threw her little gloves down and pressed her eyelids with her fingers in the way he knew so well. “But in the first place I’d be so conscious of Marie sitting there, Marie shaking her finger at Rudd and Mrs. Moon, Marie as a kind of cross between a wardress and a nurse for mental cases! And then, there’s the post. One can’t get over the fact that the post comes, and once it has come, who—who—could wait until eleven for the letters?” His eyes grew bright; he quickly, lightly clasped her. “_My_ letters, darling?” “Perhaps,” she drawled, softly, and she drew her hand over his reddish hair, smiling too, but thinking: “Heavens! What a stupid thing to say!” But this morning she had been awakened by one great slam of the front door. Bang. The flat shook. What was it? She jerked up in bed, clutching the eiderdown; her heart beat. What could it be? Then she heard voices in the passage. Marie knocked, and, as the door opened, with a sharp tearing rip out flew the blind and the curtains, stiffening, flapping, jerking. The tassel of the blind knocked—knocked against the window. “Eh-h, _voilà!_” cried Marie, setting down the tray and running. “_C’est le vent, Madame. C’est un vent insupportable._” Up rolled the blind; the window went up with a jerk; a whitey-greyish light filled the room. Monica caught a glimpse of a huge pale sky and a cloud like a torn shirt dragging across before she hid her eyes with her sleeve. “Marie! the curtains! Quick, the curtains!” Monica fell back into the bed and then “Ring-ting-a-ping-ping, ring-ting-a-ping-ping.” It was the telephone. The limit of her suffering was reached; she grew quite calm. “Go and see, Marie.”