The river still sparkled, but Big Ben had struck four o'clock without them sitting together in the studio. The taxi had a narrow escape from a bad accident. Ordinarily Jenny would have been terrified; but now, bitterly and profoundly careless, she accepted the jar of the brakes, the volley of recriminations and the gaping of foot passengers with remote equanimity. Notwithstanding her presentiment of the worst, as the taxi reached the familiar line of houses by which she had so often driven passionate, sleepy, mirthful, sometimes one of a jolly party, sometimes alone with Maurice in ecstasies unparagoned, Jenny began to tell herself that nothing was the matter, that when she arrived at the studio he would be there. Perhaps, after all, he thought he had mentioned another train: his post card in alteration of the date had not confirmed the time. Already she was beginning to rail at herself for being upset so easily, when the taxi stopped and Jenny alighted. She let the man drive off before she rang. When he was out of sight she pressed the studio bell three times so that Maurice should not think it was "kids"; and ran down the steps and across the road looking up to the top floor for the heartening wave. The windows were closed: they seemed steely and ominous. She rang again, knowing it was useless; yet the bell was often out of order. She peered over at the basement for a glimpse of Mrs. Wadman. Hysterical by now, she rang the bells of other floors. Nobody answered; not even Fuz was in. Wings of fire, alternating with icy fans, beat against her brain. The damnable stolidity of the door enraged her, and, when she knocked its impassiveness made her numb and sick. Her heart was wilting in a frost, and, as the last cold ache died away in oblivion, arrows of flame would horribly restore it to life and agony. She rang the bells again, one after another; she rang them slowly in studied permutations; quickly and savagely she pressed them all together with the length of her forearm. The cherubs on the carved porch turned to demons, and from demons vanished into nothing. The palings on either side of the steps became invalid, unsubstantial, deliquescent like material objects in a nightmare. A catastrophe of all emotion collapsed about her mind, and when gladly she seemed to be fainting, Jenny heard the voice of Castleton a long way off.
"Oh, Fuz, where is he? Where's Maurice?"
"Why, I thought you were meeting him. I've been out all day."
Then Jenny realized the door was still shut.
"He wasn't there. Not at Waterloo."
She was walking slowly upstairs now beside Castleton. The fever of disappointment had left her, and outwardly tranquil, she was able to explain her reeling agitation. The studio looked cavernously empty; already on the well-remembered objects lay a web of dust. The jars still held faded pink tulips. The fragments of The Tired Dancer still littered the grate.
"Wait a minute," Castleton said; "I'll see if there's a letter for me downstairs."
Presently he came back with a sheet of crackling paper.
"Shall I read you what he says?"
Jenny nodded, and, while he read, wrote with her finger, "3.30 Claybridge," many times in the dust that lay thick on the closed lid of the piano.