He took her home. Down in London, after the Heath, the air seemed thick and stifling. The square in which he lived was surrounded with unsavoury streets from which smells that were almost overpowering were wafted in. His house was a once fashionable mansion now cut up into flats. He had what were once the servants' quarters under the roof, three rooms and a bathroom. The windows of his front room looked out on the tops of trees. Here he worked. The room contained nothing but a table, a chair, a piano, and a sofa. 'This is the only room,' he said. 'That woman was waiting for you,' said Clara. 'Was she? I didn't see her.' 'Yes. She whisked into her room when she saw me.' He took up his manuscript from the table. 'It has stopped short.' He turned it over ruefully; fingering the pages, he began to read and was sinking into absorption in it when she dashed it out of his hand. 'How dare you read it when I am with you?' she cried. 'It was written before you knew me. It isn't any good.... I know it isn't any good.' He was stunned by this outburst of jealousy and protested,-- 'There's years of work in it.' 'But what's the good of sitting here working, if you never do anything with it?' He pointed to the sofa and said,-- 'There's my work in there: full to the brim, notes, sketches, things half finished, things that need revision.... I've been waiting for something to happen. I could never work just to please other people and to fit successful actors with parts....' 'I'm a successful actress.' 'You? Oh, no.' 'But I am. I'm engaged to appear at the Imperium in _The Tempest_. Charles Mann is designing the production.' 'I saw something about that, but I didn't believe it.' 'Charles Mann's work was like that,' she pointed to the sofa, 'until I met him.' 'You know him?' 'Yes.... Yes.' (She could not bring herself to tell him.) 'Butcher will be too strong for him. You see, Butcher controls the machine.' 'But money controls Butcher!' He was enraged. 'You! You to talk of money! That is the secret of the whole criminal business. Money controls art. Money rejects art. Money's a sensitive thing, too. It rejects force, spontaneity, originality. It wants repetition, immutability, things calculable. Money... You can talk with satisfaction of money controlling Butcher after our heavenly day with the sweet air singing of our happiness!' 'One must face facts.' 'Certainly. But one need not embrace them.'