Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to scenes involving suicidal ideation and sexual harassment.

“Oh, he had hundreds of hours and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.”

As his train arrives at the station, Denis regrets all the time he did not spend writing. This is the first place a character expresses anxiety about the passage of time and the first place Denis fears that his creative resources are limited.

“He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii.”

Denis imagines Crome as an ancient city whose residents are long dead, further emphasizing both his anxiety about time and establishing the relationship between history and the present as a major theme.

“A match between the Spurs and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast and so complicated that it was not to be wondered at if she sometimes made a mistake about the outcome.”

This passage satirizes Priscilla’s use of astrology to predict the outcome of sports matches and sarcastically demonstrates the way Priscilla justifies the fact that this system does not work.