The order of performance was not definite. Catherine did not know when she might be asked. Of course, she had not a trace of nervousness. She had lost that completely now after constant appearances on public concert platforms. And this was only a drawing-room affair: there were no musical critics frowning in the front row, there was probably nobody in the room who would know if she played a false note. Besides, she would _not_ play a false note, She smiled contemptuously as she heard the applause evoked by a timid rendering of a drawing-room ballad. She had an unmitigated contempt for these drawing-room ballads. Her theatrical experience had given her an intense hatred of cheap sentimental music of the kind sold in music shops at one-and-sixpence a copy. The particular song that had just been sung was of this class: its title was monosyllabic, and its music composed with an eye to vamping the accompaniment.... “That’s a nice little thing,” said Mr. Trant. “I don’t believe I’ve heard it before, either.... Reminds me of something, though ... I can’t think what....” Then in the blurred distance she could discern Mrs. Trant’s white frocked form travelling swiftly across the room and engaging in conversation with somebody unseen. “Oh, please,” she heard, “please do! Everybody would be so glad. Helen, do persuade him. Really----” The rest was drowned in the tuning of a violin. Then Mrs. Trant, returning to her seat, whispering to her husband, getting up, standing with her back to the corner of the piano, and announcing: “We are now to have a pianoforte solo”--impressive pause; Catherine guessed what was coming--“by Mr. Ray Verreker!” Catherine had guessed wrong.... § 6 But it was his presence there which startled her. Why was he at such a gathering? She knew his stormy contempt for the kind of musical suburbinanity that flourished in Upton Rising: it was his boast that he never attended a local concert and never would. “Suburbinanity”--that was his own word for it. She knew his fierce hatred of the kind of things that had been going on for over an hour--that particular violin piece by Dvořák, for instance, was anathema to him. She knew also his passionate intolerance of mediocrity of any kind. She could imagine his sensations when listening to that girl’s rendering of “The Dandy Fifth.” The puzzle was, why had he come? He knew the kind of thing it would be. He must have known the inevitable ingredients of a suburban musical evening. And yet he had come. He had conquered his detestation for social gatherings of this kind so far as to come. It was rather extraordinary, completely uncharacteristic of him. To Catherine, always the egoist, came the thought: “Has he come here because he knew I should be here?” Yet even a second thought dismissed that idea as unwarrantly absurd. That would be rather an additional reason for his staying away. For every Saturday that she visited him convinced her more and more that he despised her and her ways.