The damnable stolidity of the door enraged her, and, when she knocked its impassiveness made her numb and sick. Her heart was wilting in a frost, and, as the last cold ache died away in oblivion, arrows of flame would horribly restore it to life and agony. She rang the bells again, one after another; she rang them slowly in studied permutations; quickly and savagely she pressed them all together with the length of her forearm. The cherubs on the carved porch turned to demons, and from demons vanished into nothing. The palings on either side of the steps became invalid, unsubstantial, deliquescent like material objects in a nightmare. A catastrophe of all emotion collapsed about her mind, and when gladly she seemed to be fainting, Jenny heard the voice of Castleton a long way off. "Oh, Fuz, where is he? Where's Maurice?" "Why, I thought you were meeting him. I've been out all day." Then Jenny realized the door was still shut. "He wasn't there. Not at Waterloo." She was walking slowly upstairs now beside Castleton. The fever of disappointment had left her, and outwardly tranquil, she was able to explain her reeling agitation. The studio looked cavernously empty; already on the well-remembered objects lay a web of dust. The jars still held faded pink tulips. The fragments of The Tired Dancer still littered the grate. "Wait a minute," Castleton said; "I'll see if there's a letter for me downstairs." Presently he came back with a sheet of crackling paper. "Shall I read you what he says?" Jenny nodded, and, while he read, wrote with her finger, "3.30 Claybridge," many times in the dust that lay thick on the closed lid of the piano. This was the letter: Dear Castleton, I've settled not to come back to England for a while. One makes plans and the plans don't come off. I can't work in England and am better out of it. Let me hear that Jenny is all right. I think she will be. I didn't write to her. I just sent a post card saying I should not be at Waterloo on the first of May. I expect you'll think I'm heartless, but something has gone snap inside me and I don't honestly care what you think. I'm going to Morocco in two or three days. I want adventures. I'll send you a check for my share of the rent in June. If you write, write to me at the English Post Office, Tangiers. Yours, Maurice Avery. "Is that what he says?" Jenny asked. "That's all." "And he wants to hear I'm all right?" "He says so." "Tell him from me this little girl's all right," said Jenny. "There's plenty more mothers got sons. Plenty. Tell him that when you write." Her sentences rattled like musketry. Castleton stared vaguely in the direction of the river as if a friendship were going out on the tide. "But I don't want to write," he said. "I couldn't. Still, there's one thing. I don't believe it's another woman."