The Avoidance Amplifier — A Room with a View

Sir Harry signs, the Miss Alans take offence, and Mr Beebe tells Mrs Honeychurch that Freddy must call on the newcomers. Lucy is in despair, then decides it cannot matter. She is engaged. The Emersons will hardly insult her, and Cecil may bring whom he likes into the neighbourhood. A visit to Mrs Vyse falls due. She is glad. They move into Cissie Villa while she is safe in the London flat. The evening she arrives she creeps into Cecil's arms and says she does not know what she would do without him. He thinks that at last she longs for attention, as a woman should.

Charlotte's letter is the first since the flight to Rome. Miss Lavish, sitting in the Summer Street churchyard while a puncture was mended, saw George come out of the cottage opposite. He said his father had just taken the house. He said he did not know that Lucy lived nearby, and Charlotte puts a question mark after that. He never offered Miss Lavish a cup of tea. Charlotte advises a clean breast of his past behaviour to Lucy's mother, to Freddy, and to Mr Vyse, who will forbid him the house.

Lucy answers from Beauchamp Mansions. She cannot tell her mother. Charlotte made her promise silence in Italy, because Mrs Honeychurch would blame the chaperon for not being always there. She has already told her mother and Cecil that the Emersons are respectable, which she does think. George probably had no tea to give. She likes the old father and looks forward to seeing him. She is sorry for the son, not for herself. They expect to be married in January. Charlotte is not to write Private on the envelope again. Once, while she and Cecil laugh about a beautiful lady who smote his heart at school, Lucy tries to tell him. Her body behaves so ridiculously that she stops.

At a dinner made up of the grandchildren of famous people, they ask her to play. Cecil calls for Beethoven. She shakes her head and plays Schumann again. Mrs Vyse tells her son to make Lucy one of them. The girl is purging off the Honeychurch taint. He must marry her next January. That night a cry comes from Lucy's room. Mrs Vyse finds her sitting up, one hand on her cheek. Just dreams. Cecil admires her more than ever, Mrs Vyse says. Dream of that. Lucy returns the kiss, still covering her cheek. Cecil, whom the cry did not wake, snores. Darkness enveloped the flat.