“Oh, don’t worry ... I’ve had some,” she lied. As she fled upstairs she heard him murmuring something. A great change had come over him since his wife died. He had been getting ever slower and feebler. It was becoming more and more evident that it had been only his wife’s incessant nagging that had spurred him to the minimum of activity. Now he pottered aimlessly about the garden. His attendances at the Duke Street Chapel became more and more infrequent, and finally ceased altogether. People said (often facetiously) that he was pining away of grief at his wife’s death. It is doubtful if this were a complete diagnosis.... Up in the little back bedroom Catherine did a thing which she had not done for a long time. She prayed. Ch-artinevin was no longer a choleric old gentleman with white side-whiskers and a devouring passion for adulatory worship. He had long ago ceased to be that, and he had not begun to be anything else. Catherine, though she never altogether recognized her position, had no very definite belief in either Him or the rest of the accepted doctrines of Christianity. She prayed, not out of religious fervour, but from a variety of complex motives, one of which was certainly a desire to straighten out her own ideas by reducing them to more or less coherent form. Among other things, she prayed for a grand piano. “Lord, give me a grand piano,” was her unorthodox variant upon the more usual bedtime supplications. “Lord, _do_ give me a grand piano,” she pleaded. It is curious, but she did not in the least expect the Lord to take any notice. She was even doubtful whether the Lord were listening. Yet she kept on repeating the demand for a grand piano. Also she decided how she would catalogue the whole George Trant episode. It was nothing. It was to be regarded as nothing. Tears broke in upon her decision to regard it as nothing. The grand piano and all that it meant to her kept looming on the horizon. Then she felt a little ashamed of crying. “I never used to cry,” she thought. “Not even after a sound thrashing.” She tried to calm herself. “I’m getting soppy,” she reflected. “Crying like a little kid. All because of that piano. That’s what done it....” It was long past midnight when she fell into troubled sleep. CHAPTER IV NOCTURNE § 1 ON a certain bitterly cold night in November, Catherine stood on the doorstep of No. 24, Kitchener Road, with her overcoat and hat in her hands. Despite the chilliness of the atmosphere her cheeks were hot and flushed, and her sensations took no notice of the blustering wind that raged along the road. For several moments she stood still on the doorstep, with heaving breast and head flung back defiantly. Then, still carrying her hat and overcoat, she went out into the street, omitted to shut the gate behind her, and walked at a terrific pace in the direction of the Bockley High Street.