“Of course I can. I shouldn’t offer to pay if I couldn’t. I’m not a philanthropist.” “Very well, then. I will write and tell him what you say.” Pause. He was beginning to look rather annoyed. “And there’s just one other thing,” she said, putting on her hat ready for departure. “What’s that?” “Our arrangement will not terminate on the first of March. I shall continue and pay myself.” “As you wish....” He shrugged his shoulders. And she thought as she went out: “That was a neat stroke for me. But it’s going to be confoundedly expensive....” § 3 Henceforward Catherine assumed that George was her anonymous benefactor. His inability to pay the last quarter’s fees synchronized with his encounter with the Bishop’s Stortford magistrates, resulting in a bill, including costs and all expenses, of nearly twenty-five pounds. Undoubtedly it was George who was financing her. And the question arose: Why? And the only possible answer was that this quixotic and expensive undertaking was done out of love for her. Catherine did not particularly like it. She was not even vaguely grateful. She almost thought: He had no right to do it without asking me. And if he had asked me I shouldn’t have let him. Anyway, it was done behind my back. Treating me like a little child that doesn’t know what is best for itself.... At times she became violently angry with him for his absolute silence. Does he intend to carry the secret with him to the grave? she asked herself. The absurd ease with which he parried any attempts to entangle him in a confession intensely annoyed her. “I don’t believe he intends ever to tell me,” she thought. “And if I’m ever a well-known pianist he’ll congratulate himself in secret by thinking: ‘_I_ started her. _I_ gave her her first chance. She’d have been nothing but for me. _And she doesn’t know it_!’” The thought of George’s romantic self-satisfaction at such a juncture oppressed her strangely. There was also the subtle disappointment of discovering that Razounov had not “found” her as great pianists are supposed to “find” promising talent. But she was becoming accustomed to the shattering of her idealist creations. Besides, she was at this time deriving a good deal of hard satisfaction from her rapid and steady advancement, and no amount of retrospective disillusionment could cast a shadow across the future. Only she was annoyed at the quixotism of George Trant. One evening she asked him point-blank: “Did you pay for my first quarter’s lessons with Razounov?” She expected the blow by its very suddenness would tell. He started very slightly. “Me?” he said, in a tone of bewilderment which, if not genuine, was at least consummate acting. “Me?--I don’t understand. What do you----” “Well, somebody did,” she replied curtly, annoyed that her blow had been parried. “And I thought it might be you.” “Good heavens, no!” he said, and at that moment she did not know whether to believe him or not. § 4