“I am Miss Weston,” gasped Catherine. Then, to everyone’s amazement, she proceeded furiously: “I know it--I know it. You needn’t tell me! I saw it in the papers ... I suppose they’ll say it’s all my fault.... Do they want me? ... if so, I’ll come. I’ll come with you now if you like....” The stranger raised his eyebrows slightly. “I have no desire for you to come anywhere with me.... I don’t know what you are talking about, either. My message is contained in this note, and there is no immediate necessity to reply to it.” Somebody said, rather in the spirit of a heckler at a political meeting: “Who sent it?” The stranger turned and said: “I should think Miss Weston and not I should be asked that.” The questioner subsided ignominiously. Catherine took the envelope that the stranger offered her. She put it unread into her pocket. The stranger bowed and walked out. Silence.... Then a chatter of conversation. “Admirer of yours,” said the violinist, thickly, from his couch. Everybody thought he had been asleep. “Didn’t exactly get you at a good moment,” remarked the tenor singer, flicking away his cigar-ash. “Looked like an undertaker,” said the soprano. “Or the ‘salary-doubled-in-a-fortnight’ man in the efficiency advertisements,” put in the monologuist. Catherine started to arrange her hair. “I’m going,” she said, and walked towards the balcony (there was no exit that way). Near the French windows she staggered and fell, fortunately upon the cushions of a couch. They all crowded round her. She did not attempt to rise. “She’s drunk,” muttered the violinist. “Possibly ...” said George Trant, bending down to her. “Fetch some water. I think she’s fainted....” CHAPTER VII TRAGEDY § 1 ON the first of May the weather was very sultry. Downsland Road, running past the front of the Council School, was both blazingly hot and distressingly conscious that it was Friday afternoon. The road was bursting out in little gouts of soft tar: costermongers were arranging their wares for the evening’s marketing, spitting contemplatively on the apples and polishing them afterwards on their coat-sleeves. Children with clanking iron hoops converged from all directions upon the four entrance gates of the Downsland Road Council School, respectively those of the boys’, girls’, infants’ and junior mixed departments. There they either carried or dragged them surreptitiously along, for the trundling of hoops was forbidden in the schoolyard.