When dinner was over Dion said:
“Shall we be off?”
She did not ask where they were going; she had no need to ask. After a moment’s hesitation she said:
“Not just yet. Come into the drawing-room. You can smoke, and if you like I’ll play you something.”
“All right.”
They went into the drawing-room. It was dimly lighted. Blinds and curtains were drawn. Dion sank down heavily in a chair.
“The cigarettes are there!”
“Yes, I see. Thanks.”
A strange preoccupation seemed to be descending upon him and to be covering him up. Sonia came in with coffee. Dion put his cup, full, down beside him on a table. He did not sip the coffee, nor did he light a cigarette. While Mrs. Clarke was drinking her coffee he sat without uttering a word.
She went to the piano. She played really well. Otherwise she would not have played to him, or to any one. She was specially at home in the music of Chopin, and had studied minutely many of the “Etudes.” Now she began to play the Etude in E flat. As she played she felt that the intense nervous irritation which had possessed her was diminishing slightly, was becoming more bearable. She played several of the Etudes, and presently began the one in Thirds and Sixths which she had once found abominably difficult. She remembered what a struggle she had had with it before she had conquered it. She had been quite a girl then, but already she had been a worshipper of will-power, and had resolved to cultivate and to increase her own will. And she had used this Etude as a means of testing herself. Over and over again, when she had almost despaired of ever overcoming its difficulties, she had said to herself, “Vouloir c’est pouvoir;” and at last she had succeeded in playing the excessively difficult music as if it were quite easy to her. That had been the first stepping upwards towards power.