She bit her lip heroically. She was on the point of bursting into uncontrollable tears. Her eyes flashed wet and lustrous. And as she realized the pivotal significance of his reply, a great fragment of her universe tumbled to ruin.... They were strolling at a leisurely pace along the High Road. It was a late October afternoon, and Catherine was playing at a London concert in the evening. She was now well known: a poster depicting her red hair and a post-impressionist keyboard was a familiar sight in the district between Upper Regent Street and the Marble Arch. Also her name in spidery capitals was a common feature of that wonderful front page of the Saturday _Telegraph_. Undoubtedly she was “making a name for herself.” Also money. She was thinking of buying a car and learning to drive. And she began to regard it as inevitable that some day she would have to leave Mrs. Carbass. A tiny cottage near High Wood appealed to her. There was a large garden, and the Forest surrounded it almost completely. It would be idyllic to live there.... It piqued her that her rapid rise to fame made no difference at all to her relations with Verreker. He treated her exactly as he had always treated her--that is to say, rudely, disrespectfully, sometimes contemptuously, always as a master dealing with a pupil. She admired him for his absolute lack of sycophancy, yet there were times when she almost wished for an excuse for despising him. Especially since the very things that hurt her were among those that drew her admiration. Now she was stormily resentful because she had not succeeded in imposing on him. She had desired to appear capable of sympathy and understanding: she had striven to guide their relations into the paths of “soul-affinity.” He had dealt a death-blow to that particular sphere of enterprise. For several hundred yards they walked on in silence. Then he began to talk, as if recording impressions just as they crossed his vision.