All the trees and bushes beat about her. She picks as quickly as she can, but she is quite distracted. She doesn’t mind what she does — she pulls the plants up by the roots and bends and twists them, stamping her foot and swearing.

“For heaven’s sake keep the front door shut! Go round to the back,” shouts someone. And then she hears Bogey:

“Mother, you’re wanted on the telephone. Telephone, Mother. It’s the butcher.”

How hideous life is — revolting, simply revolting…. And now her hat-elastic’s snapped. Of course it would. She’ll wear her old tam and slip out the back way. But mother has seen.

“Matilda. Matilda. Come back im-me-diately! What on earth have you got on your head? It looks like a tea cosy. And why have you got that mane of hair on your forehead?”

“I can’t come back, Mother. I’ll be late for my lesson.”

“Come back immediately!”

She won’t. She won’t. She hates Mother. “Go to hell,” she shouts, running down the road.

In waves, in clouds, in big round whirls the dust comes stinging, and with it little bits of straw and chaff and manure. There is a loud roaring sound from the trees in the gardens, and standing at the bottom of the road outside Mr Bullen’s gate she can hear the sea sob: “Ah! … Ah! … Ah-h!” But Mr Bullen’s drawing-room is as quiet as a cave. The windows are closed, the blinds half pulled, and she is not late. The-girl-before-her has just started playing MacDowell’s “To an Iceberg”. Mr Bullen looks over at her and half smiles.

“Sit down,” he says. “Sit over there in the sofa corner, little lady.”

How funny he is. He doesn’t exactly laugh at you … but there is just something…. Oh, how peaceful it is here. She likes this room. It smells of art serge and stale smoke and chrysanthemums … there is a big vase of them on the mantelpiece behind the pale photograph of Rubinstein … à mon ami Robert Bullen…. Over the black glittering piano hangs “Solitude” — a dark tragic woman draped in white, sitting on a rock, her knees crossed, her chin on her hands.

“No, no!” says Mr Bullen, and he leans over the other girl, puts his arms over her shoulders and plays the passage for her. The stupid — she’s blushing! How ridiculous!

Now the-girl-before-her has gone; the front door slams. Mr Bullen comes back and walks up and down, very softly, waiting for her. What an extraordinary thing.