Beautifully unreal were those dreams of hers. Always was she the heroine and Verreker the hero. Always were their present positions reversed, she, famous and wealthy and adored, and he, alone, uncared for, helpless and in poverty, unknown and loving her passionately. Always her action was the opposite of what his was in reality: she was his kind angel, stooping to his fallen fortunes, and lifting them and him by her own bounty.... Beautiful, unreal dreams! During the day she had no time for these wandering fictions: work and worry kept her mind constantly in the realm of stern reality; but at night-time, when her determination held no longer sway, she sketched her future according to her heart’s desire and filled it in with touches of passionate romance. To wake from these scenes of her own imagining into the drab reality of her morning’s work was fraught with horror unutterable.... Worst, perhaps, of all, her arm did not improve. It seemed as if the three guineas’ worth per week of electric massage treatment were having simply no effect at all, save to bring nearer the day of financial cataclysm. And even if her neuritis were now to leave her, the long period during which she had had no practice would have left unfortunate results. Even granted complete and immediate recovery, it would be fully a month, spent in laborious and intensive practising, before she dare play again in public. Then, too, it would be necessary for her to play brilliantly to retrieve the reputation tarnished by her performance at the New Year’s concert. Moreover, she had no organizer now, and she did not know quite what the work entailed by that position was. And she felt nervous of playing again, lest she might further damage her reputation. But as long as she could not use her right arm these difficulties were still hidden in the future. Bills began to pour in by every post. Possibly Minnie Walker had used her unrivalled position for disseminating gossip to spread rumours of Catherine’s financial difficulties. At any rate, from the saloon-bar of the High Wood Hotel the tale blew Bockleywards with marvellous rapidity, and caused every tradesman with whom Catherine had an account to send in his bill for immediate payment. There were bills from shops that Catherine had forgotten all about. Photographers, picture-framers, dyers and cleaners, leather-goods fanciers, all contributed their quota to the gathering avalanche of ruin. When every conceivable bill had arrived and had been added to the rest, the deficit on the whole was over a hundred and twenty pounds. This included a bill of over thirty pounds from a West-end dressmaker’s. Catherine had got past the point when this appalling situation could have power to frighten her. She just gathered all the unpaid bills into one small drawer of her bureau, rigidly economized in all housekeeping expenses, and looked around the house for things she did not want and could sell for a good figure.