Michael began to wish it were not exactly a quarter-of-an-hour before lunch. Such a period was too essentially consecrated to orderly ideas and London smoothness for it to admit the intrusion of anything more disturbing than the sound of a gong. What could have brought Stella back from Vienna?
“Did you come this morning?” he asked.
“Oh, no. Last night. Why?” she demanded. “Do I look as crumpled as all that?”
For Stella to imply so directly that something had happened which she had expected to change materially even her outward appearance was perhaps a sign he would soon be granted her confidence. He rather wished she would be quick with it. If he were left too long to form his own explanations, he would be handicapped at the crucial moment. Useless indeed he were imagining all this, he thought in supplement, as the lunch-gong restored by its clamor the atmosphere of measured life where nothing really happens.
After lunch Stella went up to her room: the effect of the journey, she turned round to say, still called for sleep. Michael did not see her again before dinner. She came down then, looking very much older than he had ever seen her, whether because she was dressed in oyster-gray satin or was in fact much older, Michael did not know. She grumbled at him for not putting on a dinner jacket.
“Don’t look so horrified at the notion,” she cried petulantly. “Can’t you realize that after a year with long-haired students I want a change?”
After dinner Michael asked her to come and play in the studio.
“Play?” she echoed. “I’m never going to play again.”
“What perfect rot you are talking,” said Michael, in a damnatory generalization which was intended to cover not merely all she had been saying, but even all she had been doing almost since she first announced her intention of going to Vienna.