The rest of Buckland’s remarks were comparatively of no significance at all. All that mattered to Catherine was this sudden amazing revelation of something that Verreker had done. He had come to Cambridge, not primarily to deliver a lecture on Economics, but for something else. He had intended to come to Cambridge on this particular date, even if a lecture could not be arranged for. What, then, could be the real, the primary, the basic object of his visit? Obviously it was her concert that attracted him, and how could it be her concert? He had scores of opportunities of visiting her concerts in London. He was not (he had frequently asserted) an admirer of her playing. He knew she was going to play the Kreutzer Sonata, and he hated the Kreutzer Sonata. The Guildhall he had declared unequivocally to be the ugliest building in England. It could not be the concert that brought him to Cambridge. Then what could it be? All the way from the café in Sidney Street to the University Arms Hotel, Catherine debated that question. Could it be herself, for instance? That was a very daring thought for her to think. For all the past was strewn with the memories of occasions on which he had insulted her, avoided her, ignored her, shown her as much consideration as if she were no more than the dust he trod on. And yet (it was strange that this had never entirely occurred to her before) this was no worse than the treatment he accorded to everybody. She had never known him to be polite. Even when he was trying to be so it was for him so consciously an effort that he appeared sarcastically urbane and nothing more. She had suffered his vagaries of temper no more than others who knew him. And their arguments! Was it not a subtle mark of his appreciation of her that he condescended to spend irritating hours explaining to her what a fool she was? Was not the very pain she had suffered something she might have treasured as indicating his deep and abiding interest in her? He was standing at the entrance of the hotel when she came in sight. Not often since that night at the Forest Hotel had she seen him in evening dress, and now she was reminded poignantly of that far-off occasion with all its strangely distorted memories. He descended the steps to meet her. His handshake was cordial. The whole of his attitude towards her seemed different from anything she had previously experienced. “Come into the lounge,” he said, and took her arm. “I’ve been waiting for you.”