The air was clean and clear as after a storm. She saw nothing but sheer absurdity in herself. She went back to Gifford Road and threw her whole soul into Chopin. That she was able to do so seemed to be convincing proof of what she desired to prove. She wrote half a dozen letters, and as she methodically stamped the envelopes one after another she thought: This is life! Not emotional fireworks, but the sheer methodical doing of one thing after another. And I am not in love.... From the businesslike stamping of her envelopes she extracted that subtle consolation. Somehow there existed in her the weird idea that being in love would militate against the successful stamping of envelopes. She was immensely, incalculably pleased at the decision she had come to. Thereafter, every action of hers confirmed it. When she went for a motor drive into the Forest and enjoyed it thoroughly, she thought: This shows that I cannot be in love. And when she played Chopin she felt vaguely: A person in love would not play Chopin like this.... She discovered that platonic friendship meant the friendship of men and women devoid of ulterior motives.... Henceforth she was a passionate disciple of platonism, ignorant of the fact that a disciple of platonism must never be passionate. She applied platonism thus: I can be friendly with him without being in love with him. I can be and shall be. He is capable of platonic friendship: so am I.... § 2 A time came when she told herself: I am changing.... She was becoming more serious, less impressionable. Or so, at any rate, it seemed. Conversations with him had given her intellect a stimulus. She read Shaw and Ibsen, not so much to give herself ideas (though that result was inevitable) as to provide fascinating topics of discussion with him. For in those days Shaw was a rising and Ibsen a waning star in the intellectual firmament. Platonism was ever in her mind. She and Verreker met with moderate frequency, for his position as her concert organizer involved much business intercourse. They talked music and politics and economics and literature, and always she was afraid of two things, lest the conversation might flag, and lest she might make some absurd remark which would betray the poverty of her knowledge. And yet when she managed to discuss with him intelligently she never imagined that she was deceiving him. She knew that he knew that all her knowledge was recently acquired, that her brain was only slightly above average, that she only imperfectly comprehended most of the topics she ventured remarks upon. An occasional remark of rank stupidity was almost inevitable under such conditions, and she knew it would not surprise him. He had no illusions about her which she could break. And yet the fear always hung over her when she was with him that some day she might say something irrevocably, catastrophically absurd. It was almost a relief to her when their meetings were over. The sensation