During the meal they talked because Mrs. Clarke exerted herself.  She was helped, perhaps, by her concealed excitement.  She had never before felt so excited, so almost feverishly alert in body and mind as she felt that night, except at the climax of her divorce case.  And she was waiting now for condemnation or acquittal as she had waited then.  It was horrible.  She was painfully conscious of a desperate strength in Dion.  It was as if he had grown abruptly, and she had as abruptly diminished.  His savage assertion about the past had impressed her disagreeably.  It might be true.  He might really have succeeded in slaying his love for his wife.  If so, what chance had the woman who had taken him of regaining her freedom of action.  She was afraid to play her last card.

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.

She remembered that now and she set her teeth.  “Vouloir c’est pouvoir.”  She had proved the saying true again and again; she must prove it true to-night.  She willed her release; she would somehow obtain it.

Directly she finished the Etude she got up from the piano.